Changes spearheaded by Xi showing tangible results, many citizens say

A 10-episode political documentary that began airing last week has gained positive feedback from the public nationwide, with many people expressing confidence toward the Communist Party of China's ongoing efforts to comprehensively deepen reform.

The documentary, Jiang Gaige Jinxing Daodi (Carrying the Reform Through to the End), was aired with one episode each day on the state broadcaster, China Central Television, beginning on July 17. It highlighted President Xi Jinping's important speeches and his new thoughts on the governance of China.

Focusing on the achievements made by the CPC in deepening reforms in the past five years, the documentary's topics include the economy, politics, social management, Chinese culture, environment, military reform and the Party's thorough self-improvement.

The documentary, with about 45 minutes for each episode, will conclude on Wednesday. The latest episode aired on Sunday and focused on military reforms.

It has triggered wide discussion among the public over the effective reform measures put forward in the past five years.

Jin Yanlei, a geography teacher at Dongying No 1 Middle School in Shandong province, said the political documentary presented an "epiclike" story of China's reform, which has improved the people's lives from many aspects.

Noting that he had a second son early this year after the government adopted the universal second-child policy last year, Jin said he has benefited from the Party's new policies.

"I am glad to see that in the past several years, commodity prices are stable and, at the same time, my income has been rising gradually," he said.

Statistics from the government show the consumer price index increased by less than 3 percent annually in the past four consecutive years, and more than 13 million people found new jobs each year.

"I believe that under the leadership of the CPC with Comrade Xi as the core, we will see more measures to be taken to improve our livelihood after the 19th National Congress of the CPC," he added. The Party is going to hold its 19th National Congress later this year, which will lay the foundation for the country's development in the next five years.

Jing Linjun, a communications major at Shanxi University, said she is confident she will get a job after graduation next year.

"It's amazing that the government has managed to get rid of overcapacity and at the same time stabilized the employment in recent years," she said.

Comprehensively deepening reforms has been one of the most important tasks for the Party and the government since the CPC elected its new leadership, headed by Xi, in November 2012.

The president has taken the lead in proactively pushing the reform. In late 2013, the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform was established, with Xi as the group's head.

In the group's latest meeting on Wednesday, Xi called for solid moves to advance reforms.

The president urged local governments to be devoted to delivering reforms, shouldering their due responsibilities and making concrete and pioneering efforts.

While presiding over the 33rd meeting of the Central Leading Group in March, Xi told officials to pay more attention to reform tasks that could enhance the people's sense of gain.

Liu Zhencheng, a tea company manager in Rizhao, Shandong province, said that thanks to the new rules put forward by the local government last year, he managed to sign contracts with dozens of farmers to rent their farmland to plant tea trees.

"In the past, the farmers were reluctant to rent their farmland because they were afraid of being deprived of their usage rights, but after the government issued them paper certificates last year to protect their usage rights, they are prone to renting now," he said.

In August 2016, the Central Leading Group issued a guideline encouraging the farmers to rent their land to people with a larger scale of production. The farmers' land usage rights were to be protected by the government certificates. Such measures could increase the farmers' incomes and improve the efficiency of the land simultaneously.

Statistics from the government show that more than 70 million farmers nationwide have rented their land, accounting for 30 percent of the country's total farmers and 35 percent of the farmland.

Zhu Lijia, a professor of public administration at the Chinese Academy of Governance, said comprehensively deepening reform will be an arduous task for the Party and government in the coming years as China faces challenges both domestically and globally.

Domestically, China's traditional engine for economic growth is losing power, while the new engine is yet to take shape; internationally, the trade protectionism and instability of regional situations may pose threats to the development of China, he said.

With the Party's ongoing efforts to deepen reform, China will be able to resolve these challenges and overcome difficulties to usher in a new round of economic improvements, he added.
Sources said the withdrawal of the facility could spark a fresh round of tussle between the RJD and the BJP.

New Delhi: RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi, both former Bihar chief ministers, will have to go through strict security checks as regular passengers at Patna airport after the Union civil aviation ministry withdrew a facility which gave them direct access to the tarmac in their vehicles.

The order, issued by the ministry on Friday, angered RJD leaders who said this was being done to harass Lalu Yadav who has played a vital role in uniting Opposition parties against the BJP.

BJP leaders have welcomed the move. The ministry in its order dated July 21 said, It has now been decided that the permission accorded to Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ms Rabri Devi... Vide the order dated August 1, 2009, may be withdrawn henceforth.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) is, accordingly, requested to take immediate action to issue necessary instructions in this regard to all concerned so as to ensure implementation of the aforesaid decision of this ministry, it said.

The facility of direct access to the tarmac, bypassing security checks, was granted to the couple by the UPA government in 2009.

Sources said the withdrawal of the facility could spark a fresh round of tussle between the RJD and the BJP. Lalu Yadav had earlier accused the BJP-led NDA government of unleashing prosecuting agencies on him and his family members to implicate them in allegedly false corruption cases.

Bihar BJP spokesperson Vinod Narayan Jha said, None of the other former chief ministers, including Jitan Ram Manjhi and Jagannath Mishra, have been given the privilege. The decision, I am sure, has been taken after assessing details of their security.

Lalu Yadav was disqualified as Lok Sabha MP in October 2013, after he was convicted in a fodder scam case and sentenced to five years imprisonment. He is currently out on bail but has to appear before a court in Ranchi (Jharkhand) hearing another case related to the scam.

Lalu Yadavs RJD is the largest party in the grand secular alliance government in Bihar headed by chief minister Nitish Kumar, who is under pressure to remove his two sons  Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap - from the Cabinet after their names surfaced in graft cases and a series of benami land deals.

Civil Aviation Ministry withdraws VVIP privilege given to Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi at Patna Airport

It is still not clear why the VVIP access of the two senior most leaders of Bihar has been withdrawn by the civil aviation ministry but RJD leaders believe that the action has been taken only to harass Lalu Yadav who has played a vital role in uniting opposition parties against the BJP.

The VVIP access at the Patna airport was granted to the couple by the Civil Aviation ministry in 2009 when UPA government was in power. The special privilege meant that both Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi were allowed to drive up to the aircraft at the Patna airport in their own vehicle.

However, the BJP in Bihar has welcomed the move of Civil Aviation ministry scrapping the special privilege granted to the power couple in Bihar.

None of the other former chief ministers including Jitan Ram Manjhi and Jagannath Mishra have been given the special privilege. The decision I am sure has been taken after assessing details of their security. BJP spokesperson Vinod Narayan Jha said on Saturday.

Lalu Yadav was disqualified as Lok Sabha MP in October 2013, after he was convicted in fodder scam case and sentenced to five years. He is currently out on bail and appearing before a court in Ranchi (Jharkhand) for day to day hearing. His wife Rabri Devi served as Bihar Chief Minister from July 1997 to 2005.

Lalu Yadavs RJD is the largest party in the grand secular alliance government in Bihar headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is under pressure to remove his two sons  Tejaswi Yadav and Tej Pratap from the cabinet after their name surfaced in series of benami land deals in Patna and other places.

The last couple of month has been tough for Mr. Lalu Yadav and family as FIR registered by the CBI in connection with Land for Hotels scam not only mentions his name but also his wife Rabri Devi and their children including Tejaswi Yadav who is Bihar Deputy Chief Minister.
If my father were here, he would have stood by the dalit demonstrations, says King III

Bengaluru: American civil rights activist Martin Luther King III on Saturday said the state or Central administration of the day should be held responsible for incidents against dalits and poor in India.

King, the son of Martin Luther King Jr was responding to a query as to how the present central government could be held responsible for lynching incidents like in Dadri, when incidents against dalits and poor had been taking place under different state and Central governments for decades and that law and order was a state subject.

When incidents against dalits, oppressed and the poor take place, whoever is in power, he or she at the state or Central level, should be held accountable for such incidents, he told PTI in an interview here.

However, the facts show that such incidents against the oppressed and poor people have risen and the Indian Prime Minister should address the issue, he said.

On the popularity of Mr Modi still going up as reflected in repeated election victories, he said it is for the people of India to choose their rulers.

I think the real and biggest question is what do the people want. People in the last election chose the Modi administration. Whether people of India will rechoose Modi in the next election, I dont know. If they are against, they need to rise up in numbers to oppose his rule, he said. India still has a long way to go to solve the problems of poverty and incidents against the oppressed and poor people, he added.

Referring to the Trump administration, Mr King said the US President has to acknowledge the enviornment of hatred in the country and address it, something which he has not done so far. He said that in 2015, there was not much enviorment of hatred in the United States. When Donald Trump started running his rhetoric in 2016, things started going up. By the time he got elected, it kept going further up. He has to acknowledge this, but he hasnt so far. He should acknowledge, he said.

On Friday, in his inaugural address at B.R. Ambedkar International Conference  Quest For Equity  2017, King drew a parallel between India and the US, saying both the countries are ruled by people who have little regard for the poor, and where there is no respect for the rule of law.

Mr King had said both India and the US are seeing a rise in hate crimes. If my father were here, he would have stood by the dalit demonstrations that the country is seeing, he added.
The JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance has 178 members in the 243-member Bihar Assembly.

New Delhi: In an attempt to keep the grand alliance in Bihar intact amid the ongoing rift between the JD-U) and the RJD, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had a 40-minute meeting with chief minister Nitish Kumar in New Delhi on Saturday.

Mr Kumar visited the Tughlaq Lane residence of the Congress leader and, according to sources, shared his concern over the continuation of Bihar deputy chief minister and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadavs son, Tejashwi Yadav, in the state Cabinet since the CBI has registered an FIR against him on corruption charge.

The JD(U) has demanded that Tejashwi Yadav should either come clean with a detailed response to the ongoing investigations by multiple agencies on graft charges against him, or resign.

Later in the evening, Mr Kumar also attended the farewell dinner for President Pranab Mukherjee hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A few days ago, Mr Gandhi had a telephonic conversation with Mr Kumar and invited him to Delhi for talks following reports of differences between the JD(U) and RJD over graft charges against Lalu Yadav and his family members.

The meeting between Mr Gandhi and Bihar chief minister is being viewed as an attempt to save the grand alliance from breaking and preventing the BJP from acquiring a prominent role in Bihar by supporting the JD(U).

The JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance has 178 members in the 243-member Bihar Assembly. The RJD has 80 seats, the JD(U) has 71 members and the Congress has 27 MLAs. The BJP has 58 MLAs in the House.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad has so far ruled out any possibility of Tejashwi Yadav stepping down from the post of deputy chief minister. Mr Kumar has expressed serious reservations on Tejashwi Yadav continuing in the government, fearing that his presence in the Cabinet would impact his clean image.

The difference between the alliance partners were also visible during the recent presidential elections when Mr Kumar ignored the RJDs stand and supported NDAs candidate, now President-elect Ram Nath Kovind.

The RJD backed the combined Oppositions candidate, Meira Kumar.

Lalu Yadav and his family members have been facing heat from prosecuting agencies and mounting pressure from Mr Kumar to come clean.

The RJD chief and his family members were booked by the CBI earlier this month for alleged corruption in award of contracts for two railway hotels when he was railway minister. The probe agency searched over a dozen properties belonging to the RJD chief and his family members.

Lalu Yadavs daughter Misa Bharti has been chargesheeted by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a separate Rs 8,000 crore money laundering case. Ms Bhartis properties in Delhi were also searched by the agency.
Addressing an event in Karnataka on Friday, Gandhi accused PM Modi of seeking to subjugate various democratic institutions.

New Delhi: After Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Adolf Hitler and accused him of subjugating various democratic institutions in collusion with the RSS to mutilate the Constitution, Union minister Smriti Irani took to twitter to thank him sincerely for all that you do.

@OfficeOfRG, a bleak future awaits the Congress Party, not our Nation!...However, thank you @officeofRG for all that you do. Sincerely from the BJP!????, tweeted the Union minister, who had unsuccessfully contested against Mr Gandhi from the Amethi constituency in 2014.

In another tweet, Ms Irani wrote @OfficeOfRG u r 42 yrs late on this 1. No prizes for guessing who was inspired by Hitler, imposed the emergency and trampled over democracy.

Addressing an event in Karnataka on Friday, Mr Gandhi accused Mr Modi of seeking to subjugate various democratic institutions of the country in collusion with the RSS and the bureaucracy with an aim to mutilate the Constitution. Later, Mr Gandhi also tweeted, Hitler, once wrote: Keep a firm grasp on reality, so you can strangle it at any time(.) This is what is happening today-strangulation of reality. In another tweet, he said that emperor is completely naked but nobody around him has the courage to tell him that.
Nitish Kumar wants Tejashwi Yadav, whose name has surfaced in graft cases, to quit the Bihar cabinet to uphold probity in public life.

New Delhi: The Congress is struggling to persuade RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav to ask his son Tejashwi Yadav to step down as Bihar deputy chief minister  a precondition set by chief minister Nitish Kumar to keep alive the grand alliance in the state, sources said.

Despite the pressure mounted by the Congress, Lalu Yadav has ruled out Tejashwi Yadavs resignation and indicated that the Congress should first get rid of its own scam-tainted Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh, sources said.

Mr Kumar wants Tejashwi Yadav, whose name has surfaced in graft cases, to quit the Bihar cabinet to uphold probity in public life.

Sources said that Mr Kumar has in a series of meetings with top Congress leaders, including party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, said that he will not let the Bihar grand alliance go the same way as UPA II, which was plagued by allegations of corruption.

Mr Kumar, who met Mr Gandhi on Saturday, is understood to have told him that he wanted Tejashwi Yadav to explain to the people his defence on the corruption charges against him.

The Bihar chief minister met Tejashwi Yadav on Tuesday last week but was not satisfied with his response to the corruption charges.

The Congress and a section of the JD(U), led by senior leader Sharad Yadav, are in hectic talks to save the grand alliance in Bihar, which has come under strain since

Mr Kumar broke ranks with the Opposition to support NDA presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind.

However, Mr Kumar maintained that his support to Mr Kovind was a one-time affair and supported the Oppositions vice-presidential candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi for the August 5 poll.

Sources said that Mr Kumar does not want his government to acquire an image similar to that of UPA-II in which Manmohan Singh was perceived to be an honest head, surrounded by many scams.

Recently, raids were conducted by both the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) at properties belonging to Lalu Yadav and his family members. Tejashwi Yadav. The RJD chief and Tejashwi have alleged BJP-led NDA governments political vendetta behind the raids by the central agencies.
Party out of power in state for more than decade.

New Delhi: As the Congress tries to calculate its losses after its senior leader in Gujarat Shankar Singh Vagehla quit the party, another trouble is brewing in Madhya Pradesh. Having been out of power for more than a decade, the Congress wants to win the state, which goes to polls in November 2018.

In May this year, the Congress high command had zeroed in on senior leader and veteran parliamentarian Kamal Nath as the partys face in MP. But his anointment has been delayed as divergent views have come about. The new contender for the top post in the state is Congress chief whip in Lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia. Mr Nath is a master political strategist and Mr Scindia has his political and family legacy working in his favour.

Former CM Digvijay Singh is of the view that party reign in the state should be with somebody based in Madhya Pradesh and not somebody being para dropped by the Central leadership. This could be the reason why Arun Yadav continues to MP Congress chief. Though BJP is fighting incumbency, Vyapam scam and farmers agitation, many in the party are of the opinion that Mr Yadav is no contender to CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan.

Jyotiraditya Scindia

Stature of Mr Yadav is not big enough to take on the current chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan of the BJP. Hence, a senior leader with some stature is the need of the hour. Madhya Pradesh goes to polls in November 2018, admits an insider.

The indecision on the part of the Congress is costing them heavily. After the farmer agitation in Mandsaur and subsequent police firing in which six farmers died, the Congress has not been able to sustain the momentum against the state government. Many in the party say Congress lost an opportunity to target BJP government. The partys agitation for farmers was limited to courting arrest before cameras. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi tried to visit Mandsaur, got arrested and then went back. The act was repeated by other leaders, including Mr Nath, Mr Scindia and Mr Singh. They organised dharnas against the state government and after that, left the state to attend to their Parliament duties.

The mantle to take on the state government on a daily basis now lies with Mr Arun Yadav and leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Ajay Singh, alias Rahul Bhaiyya. In the last Assembly elections that were held in November 2013, the Congress announced Jyotiraditya Scindia as its face in September 2013. By then, it was too late for Mr Scindia to make a difference in the outcome of the election.

The Congress got even less seats than it had got in the 2008 assembly elections. In the upcoming election also, leaders feel that the high command should take a call and plan well in advance. The Congress has already effected changes in many states but in Madhya Pradesh, a stalemate continues.
The daring girl caught hold of the miscreant, pulled him down from the moving motorcycle and punched his face.

New Delhi: A 19-year-old girl, Lucky Malik, turned the tables on motorcycle-borne miscreants, who tried to snatch her mobile phone from Sector-5 Rohini in Delhi.

The incident took place on Friday when she was walking back home from work late in the evening.

The moment one among the three miscreants snatched Lucky's mobile phone from her hand, the daring girl caught hold of him, pulled him down from the moving motorcycle and punched his face.

Following this, he was overpowered with the locals standing nearby and was handed over to the police. He has been identified as Sandeep.

The police has also arrested the other two accused identified as Vikram Mehra and the third accused is a juvenile.

A case has been registered and further investigation is underway.
The girl who had gone to school to give an exam experienced stomach ache and went to the washroom, where she gave birth to the baby.

The girl reportedly told the police that she was raped four-five times by her 51-year-old neighbour during the past one year. (Photo: Representational/File)

New Delhi: A 15-year-old girl delivered a premature baby inside the washroom of a government school in North Delhi. Her neighbour who had allegedly raped her repeatedly over a period of one year has been arrested, police said.

The class 10 student had gone to the school in Mukherjee Nagar on Thursday to give an exam. She reportedly experienced stomach ache and went to the washroom, where she gave birth to the baby.

The girl was rushed to a hospital by the school authorities and the police was informed.

She reportedly told the police that she was raped four-five times by her 51-year-old neighbour during the past one year. The accused used to give money to the girl asking her not to inform about his activities to anyone, police said.

The accused was later identified by the girl and arrested yesterday. He hails from Bihar and works as a autorickshaw driver in Delhi, they said.

The man told the police that he gave the girl some abortion pills after she told him about her stomach pains but did not realise that they failed to work, a police official said.

The pills created complications due to which the girl delivered the premature baby in its 26th week only, the official said.

Even the girl's parents did not realise that their daughter was pregnant and ignored it thinking that her stomach problem was merely a gastric ailment.
Despite its noisy neighbourhood, the thick walls of the library manage to keep the cacophony out.

In 1902, the reading room was renamed the Delhi Public Library and was shifted to another building in Kaccha Bagh with only one clerk, a peon, and one librarian.

New Delhi: The Hardayal Municipal Public Library, one of the oldest reading destinations in the city, is an oasis of peace. Despite its noisy neighbourhood, the thick walls of the library manage to keep the cacophony out. However, it is dying a slow death. It hasnt added a single book to its inventory in the last 14 years.

Located in Chandni Chowk, the historical library has an intriguing story. In the 18th century, the Britishers  who undertook months-long voyages to India  would carry books with them that they donated to the reading room. Some of them even penned down their own travelogues during the trip and left those behind. In 1862, a library was set up as part of a reading club for the Englishmen. The books were given to the reading room, called the Institute Library. It was part of the Lawrence Institute, which was named after the then Viceroy of India. As of today, this building is the Town Hall, the former headquarters of the Municipal Corporation of India.

In 1902, the reading room was renamed the Delhi Public Library and was shifted to another building in Kaccha Bagh with only one clerk, a peon, and one librarian.

An incident on December 23, 1912, changed the fate of the library. A bomb was hurled at Lord Hardinge while he was riding an elephant. He was part of a procession that was passing through Company Bagh (now Gandhi Maidan). He escaped unhurt. Freedom fighter Lala Hardayal had organised the procession.

In 1916, to commemorate Hardinges escape, the Delhi Public Library was renamed Hardinge Municipal Library. Again, it was shifted to a new location, which is the present building in Chandni Chowk, with its old collection and furniture. All this led to the Hardinge Library becoming the Hardayal Library in 1970 which was only used by the whites.

Despite the historic past attached to the library, there has been no new addition to the stack of books since the past 14 years. Nonetheless, it has many historical books including History of the World by Sir Walter Ralleigh, Voyages Around the World by John Francis Jenili Koriri (1705), and Quran-e-Majid (1928). It holds a collection of 1.70 lakh books, including 20 books that are one of the rarest in the world and around 7,000 rare books.

The library completed 100 years last December but in spite of the huge coverage by the media, no funds have been provided to the library as of yet. The staff says that the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) has, for long, neglected the financial requirements of the library. I work in the mornings here and later I do a night job at a call center to earn my living, said Manish Sharma, the sole clerk who has not been paid for the past 10 months.

The chairperson, Shobha Vijender Gupta, said: I have complained to the MCD commissioner many times but there is no response from their side. They are not concerned about the library despite the fact that it is the oldest in India. The financial crunch, however, has not deterred Ms Vijender to make future plans for the library like digitising it and equipping it with modern amenities in collaboration with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

But we dont have the resources to digitise it. This would only be possible when NDMC will pay more attention towards the librarys funding crisis, she said, adding that recently DDA (Delhi Development Authority) has shelled out some money for the betterment of the library but it is not enough to revive it.

Another worry for Ms Vijender is the crowded and noisy location of the library. Rickshaw pullers and drug addicts make the environment worse, she added.
Force runs social media campaign against drugs, crime against women.

It is employing innovative measures to reach the masses and helping the youth to say no to drugs.

New Delhi: Mastering the art of tackling 140 characters on social media site Twitter, the Delhi police is turning heads of its followers with witty and quirky messages. It is employing innovative measures to reach the masses and helping the youth to say no to drugs.

Tickling the funny bones of lakhs of Twitterati and wearing wit and humour on his sleeves, the IPS rank officer and current deputy commissioner of police (PRO), Madhur Verma, sent a clear and loud message to the offenders with his series of tweets like Delhi police presents  Drug wale ko Delhi police wale le jayengae and Bhaag Charsi Bhaag.





Speaking to this correspondent, the senior police officer said, We came up with a strategy to project things in a better way to reach out to the masses at the maximum level. The quirkier you are, the better the message will come across. In order to achieve this, we decided to do a sustained campaign or drive against drug abuse with the help of Delhi polices creative team and advertisement agencies. What better way than to put the message on social media platform, with wit of course, to garner maximum response?

The Delhi police, that has upped its ante with a new and quirky way to send its message to drug addicts while also running a campaign for anti-ragging, is not leaving any stone unturned to educate the youth.

Be it on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter or working on the field, the Delhi police has been running these campaigns for the last few months, said Mr Verma.

He further said that the Delhi police, in order to reach out to youth, has not kept itself confined to social media or ground work alone. It has also been running a series of radio jingles regarding the anti-ragging campaign.

As soon as the tweet  a warning to drug addicts to not take drugs or indulge in ragging  posted by the senior police officer hit the Internet, Twitterati started giving hilarious responses. The tweets made from the Delhi police handle, particularly those made from Mr Vermas handle, garnered great response from the netizens.

When this correspondent spoke to Mr Verma, the senior police officer said, I hope that the messages are loud and clear and have reached the offenders. We are going to continue with our campaigns against drugs and ragging as of now.
Mr Adityanath said that over the last four months, his government had sensed a problem between the builders and buyers.

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday told businessmen that it was imperative to win the trust of the people and said the real estate sector was facing the challenge of meeting their expectations.

Trust is the base of any business. There are immense business opportunities in the state. But for success, it is imperative that the people repose their trust in the trade and the trader. Currently, the real estate business is facing the challenge of meeting the expectations of the people, he said at an event here.

Mr Adityanath said that over the last four months, his government had sensed a problem between the builders and buyers.

The biggest problem is the projects left midway. This is being reported from Noida and Greater Noida. Almost 1.5 lakh buyers did not get the possession of housing units even after paying the money. This has raised questions on the credibility of the real estate sector, he added.

He said following the efforts of the government, some builders had shown a positive attitude and decided on a time-frame for handing over the possession of housing units to the buyers.
Centre will allow states to make decision, says Prakash Javadekar.

Union minister Prakash Javadekar talks with the president of Indian Chamber of Commerce Shashwat Goenka during a panel discussion organised by Indian Chamber Of Commerce on Saturday. (Photo: Asian Age)

Kolkata: Union human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar said on Saturday that the centre would soon lift the no detention rule and introduce detention for students from class 5 to 8.

The draft has been prepared. Class 5 to 8 students will get a chance to appear for one examination in March and another chance to appear in May. If they fail in both attempts, they will have to stay in the same class, the HRD minister said, adding that 25 states had already given consent to the move.

He further said that the Centre was going to pass a bill amending the Right to Education in the Monsoon session, allowing the state government to take their decision on the detention of students.

The bills, which will be passed in the forthcoming session, will allow the state governments to take their own decision on the detention policy, the minister maintained at an Indian Chamber of Commerce discussion titled Way forward For Education Sector In Eastern Region.

According to the minister, the past policy of no detention from class 1 to 8 had affected the students.

We had introduced the move with the aim to take everybody along. However, we found that as there were no examinations many government schools in the country had become virtual mid-day meal schools where students would only come to have the meal and leave thereafter. We want to inspire students to be more inquisitive and innovative in their approach to studies under the guidance of able teachers, he said.

About tougher National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) questions in the Bengali version of the paper, Mr Javadekar said there would be no difference in the standards irrespective of the language.

From the next year, question papers in various languages will be the translations of just one language to the other, he said.
The petition said that the Sikh leader was ordained as a saint and by labelling him as a terrorist.

Mumbai: A member of the Damdami Taksal seminary of the Sikh community, has filed a writ petition in the Bombay high court against the Maharashtra state bureau of textbooks for terming Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale a terrorist in the Class 9 history and political science subject textbooks of the Maharashtra State Board for Secondary and Higher Secondary Education. The petition said that the Sikh leader was ordained as a saint and by labelling him as a terrorist, the board has hurt the feelings of the community, and hence the objectionable part should be removed with immediate effect. Meanwhile, the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee has taken cognisance of the same and written to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to intervene and ensure the objectionable content is removed.

The petition had come up for hearing in front of a division bench of Justices Anoop Mohta and Vibha Kankanwadi, wherein the petitioner Amritpal Singh Khalsa sought directions from the court to get the state board to remove references to Bhindranwale as a terrorist from the textbook. The petition stated that Bhindranwale was revered as a martyr for his role in the Sikh civil rights movement during the early 1980s. The plea also stated that since there was no FIR against Sant Bhindranwale recorded with the Union home ministry and the Punjab police, nor was he involved in any criminal activity, the use of the word terrorist in the textbook was wrong and should be removed immediately.

The court said that unless the matter was heard in detail it could not pass any ad-interim relief as sought by the petition, as the textbook was published and circulated onwards from April 27, 2017. We are declined to pass such ad-interim orders, unless we hear both parties at length, after considering the material and contentions. We require proper and due assistance and material before passing any such order, said the bench. Keeping in mind the urgency, the matter has been kept for hearing on July 27.

Meanwhile, SGPC chief, Prof Kirpal Singh Badungar strongly condemned the reference and called it as a highly insidious move by the Maharashtra education board. I had appealed to Mr Devendra Fadnavis to remove the objectionable portion from the textbook immediately. A delegation of the seminary also met education minister Mr Vinod Tawde, and urged him to get the offensive part removed from the textbook, he said.

Confirming the meeting with the Takhsal delegation, Mr Tawde said, I have referred the objections raised by the delegation to the concerned board members, who finalise the syllabus. He refrained from commenting further as the matter was sub judice.
The accused, who was found working in an ice factory in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested and brought to the city on Saturday.

Mumbai: The Thane (rural) police have nabbed an accused wanted in the rape of a minor girl in the coastal village of Uttan near Bhayandar, 10 months after the crime, as he was absconding. Acting on specific information received by its network of informers, they apprehended him from a remote village in Uttar Pradesh. According to the police, the accused, a 23 year-old local biryani vendor, had lured the victim to a secluded place near his shop in Uttan, and raped her in November 2016.

In an age, when the police banks on technology and innovative applications like call detail records, IP address trackers, mobile surveillance, IMEI numbers, data dump, social networking and CCTV footage to resolve crimes, the case was a challenging one for PSI Jagdish Bangar and his team, comprising of Amol Salunkhe and Kiran Thakur, who did not have even a photograph of the accused or his mobile number to bank upon technology to track his whereabouts.

PSI Bangar then turned to informers, who used to be the most trusted source for the cops, to gather inputs about absconding criminals. Based on information sourced out by human intelligence, the police team learnt that the accused was holed up in a remote village near Sambhal district in Uttar Pradesh. Armed just with his name, Bangar and his team camped in the village for five days and finally managed to nab him with the help of their Uttar Pradesh counterparts.

The accused, who was found working in an ice factory in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested and brought to the city on Saturday. Our informers network played a crucial role in hunting down the accused. He has been booked under section 376 of the IPC and relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, said Bangar.
Jhingada studied in Ismail Yusuf College in Jogeshwari.

Mumbai: A team of Mumbai crime branch has reached Thailand to appear before the court that has started hearing the case related to the extradition of gangster Sayyad Muzakkir Muddasar Hussain, alias Munna Jhingada. Jhingada, an alleged aide of Chhota Shakeel, is believed to have attacked rival gangster Chhota Rajan in Bangkok in September 2000. The court will hear the matter on Monday and officials are also likely to present their side before the court when it would weigh the evidence that has been put up before it.

The Indian side is banking on Jhingadas fingerprints and DNA samples of his family, which have been submitted as evidence before the court. The hearing will focus on weighing of evidences that have been submitted before the Thai court, with India having submitted the fugitive gangsters finger prints and DNA samples of his family members, collected in 2014.

Jhingada studied in Ismail Yusuf College in Jogeshwari and his college leaving certificate is also part of the evidence presented before the Thai court.

Pakistan has also been claiming Jhingada to be their national, as they have issued him a passport in the name of Mohammad Saleem. Pakistan had produced before the court a woman and child, claiming them to be Jhingadas wife and kid. He allegedly married the woman after fleeing to Pakistan and fathered the child there, officials said.

Despite being an Indian national, the accused holds a passport that has been illegally issued by Pakistan. He has been involved in several cases here and our stand is to get his custody to put him to trial for the crimes he has committed, said a crime branch officer.

Officials said it would be pointless to get into the battle of proving Jhingadas nationality and that his custody was important, which can be sought with the evidences that the Mumbai police has in its possession.

A team of crime branch had visited Thailand last month too, to clarify some of the details pertaining to the case documents and FIRs that have been submitted to the court.
The Muslim monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both Wahhabi, are practically at war with each other now.

The ummah is at war with itself. What other way is there to describe the brutal bloodletting by Muslims of Muslims in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Turkey and, of course, Pakistan.

To be fair, the ummah has not mattered for a long time to the governments or peoples of Muslim lands. State-to-state relations among Muslim countries have depended upon perceived self-interest, domestic politics and the whims of rulers. Just look at the evidence.

Pakistan was created on a religious premise. But, in the days of the Suez Crisis of 1956, Pakistans position was ambiguous. It refused to side with Gamal Abdel Nasser after he nationalised the Suez Canal and threw out the British. On the other hand, India was active in the Non-Aligned Movement, fully pro-Arab, and loud in support of liberating Palestine. To show gratitude, King Saud bin Abdul Aziz paid a state visit to India and declared that Indian Muslims were being treated well. There was outrage across Pakistan. Newspapers exploded in anger when Jawaharlal Nehru, on his return visit to Riyadh, was greeted by the king and with street banners in Riyadh bearing the slogan rasul-ul-salam (messenger of peace).

Today, Pakistan has disputes with both its Muslim neighbours, Afghanistan and Iran. Iran occasionally lobs artillery shells over to Pakistan, as does Afghanistan. Pakistan has reciprocated with its artillery, while PAF jets brought down an Iranian drone last month. Ironically, Pakistan has excellent relations with one of its neighbours  China, a communist state that has banned the beard and burqa in its only Muslim-dominated province.

The Muslim monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both Wahhabi, are practically at war with each other now. Teeny tiny Qatar, say the Saudis, is acting too big for its boots and cannot conduct its own foreign policy. Qatar has dismissed the Saudi-UAE demand to close down Al Jazeera. In response, all Qataris and their families have been expelled from Saudi Arabia.

Last year, Saudi Arabias highest civilian award was conferred upon Narendra Modi by King Salman. The Saudi king left Kashmir and pellet guns unmentioned.

Saudi Arabias war on Yemen shows the emptiness of the ummah notion. Directed against one of the worlds poorest Muslim countries, it has so far killed 7,600 and wounded 42,000 Muslims. Most casualties have resulted from air strikes of the Saudi-led multinational coalition. Pakistan has shown little concern.

Ending Israeli occupation of Palestine was once the ummahs grandest cause that cut through the Shia-Sunni divide. But now, Saudi Arabia is fast nearing rapprochement with Israel. Both countries see Iran as the greater enemy. After the failed Arab Spring, Sisis Egypt and the Gulfs monarchies fear Iran as an insurrectionary power and prefer to work with Israel. Palestine is unmentioned.

Where does this leave the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), whose job is to bring together and represent the ummah? Based in Saudi Arabia, it has 57 member states and calls itself the collective voice of the Muslim world. The OIC has had nothing to say about wars that have consumed Syria, Iraq, Libya or Yemen. Nor is it relevant to any other conflict between Muslim states or that within them. It has yet to give a single cent to desperate refugees who, instead, must rely on the West.

Pakistan bought into the OIC fantasy early on. But the euphoria of the 1974 Lahore meeting organised by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has gone with the wind. What is left is the magnificent flag-adorned building on Constitution Avenue in Islamabad that serves as the headquarters of Comstech, the highest scientific body of the OIC, for which Pakistan pays the lions share of its operating expenses. Comstech is charged with promoting science within the ummah. This is a futile and misplaced effort because science does not have a religion. Add to this the abysmal quality of science in Muslim countries (with Turkey and Iran only partly excluded).

It is time to give the OIC a decent burial and end the fantasy that Comstech can serve as the centre of Muslim science. Among the benefits, Comstechs staff could be put to good use promoting science in Pakistan.

If Muslim states have paid no attention to the ummah, non-state actors have paid even less. They have slaughtered tens of thousands of co-religionists. The Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban are like two wings of the same bird. One kills Afghan Muslims, the other kills Pakistani Muslims. One finds shelter in Pakistan, the other in Afghanistan. The militant Islamic State group seems to be everywhere and kills with even less concern.

There is a way for Muslim states and peoples to move forward. This will require creating strong democratic institutions based on equal rights for all citizens, encouraging the participation of women in public life, and respecting equally all Muslim sects as well as other religions, providing space and freedom to individuals and education for all based on science and reason.

By arrangement with Dawn
US spies overheard Russian envoy saying he discussed campaign matters with Sessions.

Washington: President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to complain about the special counsel investigating possible ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia while insisting that he, as President, has complete power to pardon.

Mr Trump, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in last years presidential election but continues to use her as a foil, questioned why his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and special counsel Robert Mueller were not investigating former FBI director James Comey or Clinton, for her email practices as secretary of state.

So many people are asking why isnt the A.G. or Special Counsel looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes. 33,000 emails deleted..., he wrote on Twitter.

My son Donald openly gave his e-mails to the media & the authorities whereas Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted (& acid washed) her 33,000 e-mails!

Meanwhile, Russias ambassador to Washington was overheard by US spy agencies telling his bosses that he had discussed campaign-related matters, including issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing current and former US officials.

A US official confirmed that ambassador Sergei Kislyaks accounts of two conversations with Mr Sessions were intercepted by US intelligence agencies.The official said there was nothing automatically inappropriate about Sessions, then a U.S. senator as well as a Mr Trump supporter, discussing policy matters.  Reuters
National security adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval will visit Beijing for a meeting of Brics NSAs next week.

The standoff in Doklam is seen as a part of the same tactic to change the status quo in the area. India has taken a strong stand against the unilateral action by China.

Washington: India and China should engage in direct dialogue free of any coercive aspects to reduce the tension over a military standoff in Doklam, the Pentagon has said.

India has taken a strong stand against Chinas move to claim Doklam area as part of its territory and Chinese and Indian soldiers have been locked in a face-off in Doklam area, also claimed by Indian ally Bhutan, for over a month after Indian troops stopped the Chinese Army from building a road in the disputed zone.

We encourage India and China to engage in direct dialogue aimed at reducing tensions and free of any coercive aspects, defence department spokesman Gary Ross said. Mr Ross, however, refused to take sides on the issue. We refer you to the governments of India and China for further information... We are not going to speculate on such matters, Mr Ross said, when asked if the Pentagon fears that tension may escalate between the neighbours.

The US state department has made similar statements earlier.

In recent years, almost all neighbours of China have accused Beijing of coercive tactics to settle border disputes.

The standoff in Doklam is seen as a part of the same tactic to change the status quo in the area. India has taken a strong stand against the unilateral action by China.

National security adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval will visit Beijing for a meeting of Brics NSAs next week. He is expected to discuss the border issue with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi.

Earlier this week, a top Pentagon commander told US lawmakers that China was exploiting its economic leverage as a way to further its regional political objectives.
Sessions has denied discussing campaign issues with Russian officials and has said he only met Kislyak in his role of US senator.

Washington: Russia's ambassador to Washington Sergei Kislyak, a key figure in ongoing US investigations into Moscow's meddling in the 2016 presidential election, ended his tenure on Saturday.

The Russian embassy in Washington said on its Twitter feed that Minister-Counseler and Deputy Chief of Mission Denis V. Gonchar would serve as Charge d'Affaires until Kislyak's successor arrived.

Kislyak, who held the post since 2008, is expected to be replaced by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Antonov.

Antonov's nomination for the post, which has yet to be approved by the Kremlin, comes at a time of intense scrutiny over Moscow-Washington relations following US allegations that Russia meddled in the US election last year.

Kislyak's name has emerged in relation to several of Trump's associates as a special counsel and congressional panels investigate Russian meddling and possible ties with the Trump campaign.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported Kislyak was overheard by US spy agencies telling his bosses he had discussed campaign-related matters, including issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race.

As Attorney General, Sessions recused himself in March from matters connected to an investigation by the FBI following his admission he had talked to the Russian envoy.

Sessions has denied discussing campaign issues with Russian officials and has said he only met Kislyak in his role of US senator.

Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign in February after it became known that he had failed to disclose the content of conversations he had with Kislyak and misled the vice president about their meetings.

Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner also failed to disclose contacts with Russia when seeking his security clearance, the New York Times reported in April.

The White House disclosed in March that Kushner met with Kislyak at Trump Tower in December 2016, in addition to seeing Kislyak when he attended an April 2016 campaign speech in Washington. The White House said the December meeting was to establish "a line of communication."

Kushner also had phone calls with Kislyak between April and November 2016, Reuters reported. Kushner's attorney has said that Kushner had "no recollection" of the calls as he had participated in "thousands of calls in this time period."

Moscow has denied any interference, and Trump has said his campaign did not collude with Russia.

The White House said this week Trump would nominate Jon Huntsman as his new ambassador to Russia.
The president has long criticised leaks of information about the investigation and has urged authorities to prosecute leakers.

The tweets were unusual in their breadth and scope, even for Trump, given the wide variety of topics he touched on as Saturday dawned. (Photo: AP)

Washington: Hours before he was to help commission a new aircraft carrier at a patriotic ceremony on the Virginia coast, President Donald Trump fired off a volley of early morning tweets that again showed how furious he remains over multiple investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The tweets were unusual in their breadth and scope, even for Trump, given the wide variety of topics he touched on as Saturday dawned. His 10 tweets, all sent within two hours starting before 6.30 am US time, ranged from the Russia investigation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to Hillary Clinton, the health care effort and his newly appointed White House communications director.

While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

The Washington Post recently reported that Trump has inquired about the authority he has as president to pardon aides, relatives or even himself in connection with the widening investigation into Russian interference in the election and whether any Trump associates were involved.

Read: Trump Jr to testify before US Senate panel over alleged links with Russia

The president has long criticised leaks of information about the investigation and has urged authorities to prosecute leakers.

Trump maintains that no crimes have been committed.

One of Trumps attorneys, Jay Sekulow, said the president has not discussed the issue of pardons with his outside legal team.

Read: Trump picks lawyer Ty Cobb to handle Russia probe

Next week, Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; his son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner; and Paul Manafort, a former campaign chairman, are scheduled to appear before Senate committees investigating Russian meddling.

Trump defended his son, saying he openly gave his e-mails to the media & authorities whereas Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted (& acid washed) her 33,000 e-mails! Trumps namesake has become a focus of the investigation after it was revealed that he, Kushner and Manafort met with Russian representatives at Trump Tower in June 2016. Trump Jr. later released email exchanges concerning the meeting on Twitter, after learning that The New York Times was about to publish them.

My son Donald openly gave his e-mails to the media & authorities whereas Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted (& acid washed) her 33,000 e-mails!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

The FBI investigated Clinton for using a private email server as secretary of state. She turned thousands of emails over to the government, but deleted thousands of others that she said were personal or unrelated to her work as the nations top diplomat.

Trump also complained on Saturday about a Washington Post report that the Russian ambassador to the US said he discussed election-related issues with Jeff Sessions when the men met during the 2016 presidential race. Sessions, now the attorney general, at the time was a US senator and foreign policy adviser to Trump.

A new INTELLIGENCE LEAK from the Amazon Washington Post,this time against A.G. Jeff Sessions.These illegal leaks, like Comey's, must stop!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

The Post on Friday cited anonymous US officials who described US intelligence intercepts of Ambassador Sergey Kislyaks descriptions of his meetings with Sessions.

The Justice Department said Sessions stands by his previous assertion that he never had conversations with Russian officials about any type of interference with the election.

Trump also said Republican Senators must step up to the plate and, after 7 years, vote to Repeal and Replace the Obama-era health care law. An effort to advance legislation collapsed in the Senate earlier this week after several Republicans said they wouldnt vote for the bill.

ObamaCare is dead and the Democrats are obstructionists, no ideas or votes, only obstruction. It is solely up to the 52 Republican Senators!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017
A 46-year-old man from rural Chippewa Falls was killed in a two-vehicle crash at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at County G and 170th Avenue in the town of Colburn, Chippewa County Sheriff James Kowalczyk said.

The deceased was identified Sunday as Jeremy L. Goodwin of 12123 CTH X, Chippewa Falls. His passengers, two juvenile siblings, were also injured. The girl is age 9 and the boy is age 15.

The driver of the other vehicle, Miranda Jo Miller, 18, of Curtis, was also injured. The juveniles, as well as the adult female, were air-lifted to area hospitals.

Kowalczyk said Goodwin, driving a 2002 F-350 Ford pickup, was southbound on County G. As he passed through the intersection of 170th Avenue, he was hit by a westbound vehicle, a 2000 Ford Taurus driven by Miller, on 170th Avenue. Miller either failed to yield at the posted stop sign at the intersection or did not stop for the stop sign, the sheriff said.

Both Miller and Goodwin were not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash. Both juvenile females were belted in at the time of the crash. Alcohol does not appear be a factor in the accident at this time.

The crash investigation is being done by the sheriffs office and the Wisconsin State Patrol.
Defence minister may be made interim PM

Islamabad: Amid rifts within the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), beleaguered Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has decided to appoint his younger brother Shehbaz Sharif  the incumbent Punjab chief minister  his successor if the Supreme Court disqualifies him in the Panama leaks scandal, sources said on Saturday.

Since Shehbaz Sharif is a member of Punjab Assembly, the PML-N will need someone to fill the Prime Ministers post for an interim period, till junior Sharif is elected as a National Assembly member to become eligible for the countrys top post. Reports said defence minister Khawaja Mohammed Asif is the top contender for this stop-gap arrangement.

Though legal experts say that the PMs disqualification is highly unlikely, in a series of meetings with close aides, Mr Sharif considered several options for his replacement.

Sources said the PML-N does not want to call early elections. The party is keen on completing all the ongoing mega-projects and use this as its main electoral plank to secure victory in the 2018 polls.

The second big motive behind completion of tenure is to acquire two-thirds majority in the Senate, a PML-N leader said.

The PMs legal team says it is highly unlikely that the SC would disqualify him. They say that the SC would forward the reference to National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, who would have to take a call within 30 days, failing which the case would come under the jurisdiction of the Election Commission of Pakistan.



Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan skipped the recent meetings as rumours of rift surged. Mr Khan has called a news conference today to air his grievances.



On Saturday, minister for petroleum and natural resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, federal minister for railways Khawaja Saad Rafique and another senior leaders reached Punjab House to placate the annoyed minister.



Mr Khan said that while he was bound by party discipline, and was not given to irresponsible behaviour or statements, he had the right to express himself.

The interior minister is strongly against party policy regarding the Panama case and the Joint Investigation Team (JIT). He is also opposed to the idea of defence minister Khawaja Asif or federal minister for planning and development Ahsan Iqbal becoming interim Prime Ministers if Nawaz Sharif were to leave office.

In case either of these two leaders are appointed premier, then Mr Khan will resign from his ministry, but will not quit PML-N and support the party as a Member National Assembly (MNA).



PM Sharif is likely to contact Mr Khan to address his concerns.
In a speech to one of Indonesia's political parties late on Friday, Widodo urged law enforcers to crackdown on drug dealers in Indonesia.

The Indonesian Narcotics Agency recorded there are 6 million drug users in the archipelago out of its 255 million people, a situation the president labelled drug emergency. (Photo: File)

Jakarta: Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has ordered the police to shoot drug traffickers who resist arrest in the latest effort to eradicate drug use in the country.

In a speech to one of Indonesia's political parties late on Friday, Widodo urged law enforcers to crackdown on drug dealers in Indonesia.

"Be firm. Especially to foreign drug dealers who enter the country. If they resist even the slightest, just shoot them," Widodo said.

The Indonesian Narcotics Agency recorded there are 6 million drug users in the archipelago out of its 255 million people, a situation the president labelled "drug emergency". But Widodo's remarks prompted criticism from human rights activists.

Andreas Harsono, Indonesia's researcher from Human Rights Watch condemned the order. "A president statement like that can seem like a green light to shoot without the correct procedure," Harsono said on Sunday, adding that law enforcers should be cautious and follow the law.

Indonesia imposes a tough punishment for drug trafficking, with smugglers who carry five or more grammes given the death penalty.

In the last two years, it has executed about 18 drug traffickers, including foreigners such as Australian Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, which sparked diplomatic outrage and a call to abolish the death penalty.

Widodo's comments came just a week after Indonesian police shot dead a suspected Taiwanese drug dealer who was caught with one tonne of crystal methamphetamine, but tried to escape.
The JIT said Sharif had hidden his employment with a UAE company.

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Sunday claimed that he had never hidden his job in a United Arab Emirates company and had declared it in the 2013 elections.

PMs lawyer Khawaja Harris submitted a reply in Supreme Court regarding the Premiers employment in a UAE company. The reply said that PM Nawaz Sharif obtained an iqama (work permit) in UAE and then attached it with the nomination papers of General Elections 2013.

Rejecting the Joint Investigation Teams finding that the PM had concealed his employment at an offshore company Capital FZE, Khawaja Harris said his client had annexed the iqama and employment document at the company with the passport copy submitted along the nomination papers.

As there was no special column for such information, the documents were not shown separately, he said.

The reply said that Nawaz Sharif did not hold the position of chief executive of Chaudhry Sugar Mills. According to the security and exchange commission of Pakistan (SECP) documents, the premier remained the shareholder of the mill till June 2016.

PM Sharifs lawyer had requested in the reply to dismiss Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insafs (PTI) petition in this regard.

The JIT, formed to investigate the Panama leaks scandal, submitted its report in the Supreme Court this month and found significant disparities in the Sharif familys known sources of income. The JIT said Mr Sharif had hidden his employment with a UAE company. The Supreme Court has reserved the verdict in this case.

Meanwhile on Sunday, former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said the Panama Papers case verdict should be announced as soon as possible so that normalcy can be restored.

Addressing a news conference in Multan, he said the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) will wait for the Supreme Courts decision. He was of the view that the incumbent government should complete its term and elections should be held in 2018.
Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible. (Photo: File)

Istanbul: Prolonging the crisis in the Gulf sparked by the isolation of Qatar is not in the interest of anyone, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday as he embarked on a key visit to the region.

"No-one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," said Erdogan before leaving Istanbul airport on the two-day trip that will take him to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and then Qatar. He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran.

Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

Over the last years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has sped up the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, with explicitly criticising the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said Friday he was ready for talks to resolve the crisis so long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.
Australia's Co-ParentMatch Is Desperate For Ginger Sperm Donors

Trending News: Sooo, Redhead Sperm Donors Are Now In Super High Demand #SaveGingers

Why Is This Important?

Forget winter  the gingers are coming!

Long Story Short

Australias Co-ParentMatch, "a social networking site for people who wish to meet either a co-parent, sperm donor or sperm recipient" (who knew such a thing existed?!) has posted a desperate "casting call" for ginger donors on Facebook because, apparently, their female members are all dreaming of having redhead babies.

Long Story

Despite recent failures from several celebrity gingers, including Ed Sheeran's catastrophic performance on Game of Thrones and Conor McGregor's lame AF jabs against Floyd Mayweather, Australian women seem to be obsessed with having redhead babies. So much so that a local sperm bank has had to reach out to the public to let ginger men across the nation know that they're needed. Desperately.

Taking to Facebook, Co-ParentMatch explained that only 2% of their donors have red hair, but their "female members are looking for ginger donors NOW!" which poses an obvious problem. (Please not the use of all caps  clearly, shit is getting real.) So if you have red hair, the company is begging you to help #SaveGingers and, while you're at it, you can "make a positive contribution to someones happiness" or "leave a legacy" or, you know, just make some extra cash.

How far we've come! In 2011, the worlds largest sperm bank, Cryos International, actually rejected ginger donors because there were simply "too many redheads in relation to demand." Except in Ireland where, according to Cryos' director, Ole Schou, sperm from ginger donors was selling like hotcakes". Well that's a mental image none of us needed. Anyway, it's clear that Schou was discriminating against gingers for nothing  all he had to do was look to Australia, which is ALL about the red hair.

Unfortunately for the Aussie moms-to-be, however, red hair is a recessive gene and "while having a ginger parent does increase your chances of sprouting ginger spawn, it's still not a guarantee unless both parents are red." Oh, ginger spawn, why you so cray?!

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Would you feel comfortable selling your body for cash?

Disrupt Your Feed

Calling all gingers: Australian women want your sperm NOW.

Drop This Fact

Less than 2% of the world's population has red hair, which amounts to about 140 million people.
This domain was recently registered at Namecheap.com. Please check back later!
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Half of the Rift Valley leaders have decamped from Jubilee to NASA. Turkana, Kajiado, Narok, Pokot, and Bomet are among the top counties with the highest numbers of leaders decamps.Lately, Chesumei Member of Parliament (MP), Elijah Lagat, and former Mosop Legislator, David Koech, have abandoned President Uhuru Kenyattas Jubilee Party and joined Raila Odingas National Super Alliance (NASA).Speaking on Tuesday, July 18 while launching NASA campaigns in Eldoret, the leaders led more than ten MPs in joining the opposition, accusing the Jubilee administration of failing to provide for the needs of local farmers since they took office in 2013.The Jubilee government has frustrated the farmers in this country. We have launched intensive campaigns for NASA in Rift Valley to vote out a failed government. We have looked at NASAs manifesto and felt that it suits us best, said Mr. Lagat.Former Emgwen MP, Stephen Tarrus, also accused Jubilee playing divisive politics by sidelining the Rift Valley region in terms of development projects.We, as people of Rift Valley, are fed up with fake Jubilee promises. Jubilee should not think that we have moved to NASA individually. We have moved with the masses, said Mr. Tarrus.On his part, former Marakwet West MP David Sudi exuded confidence that NASA flag bearer Raila Odinga will trounce President Kenyatta come August, insisting that Rift Valley residents too wanted to be part of the Mabadiliko wave that is sweeping Kenya.The NASA inroads to the Deputy president backyard has born fruits as the high living standards, poor governance affects them too.
The Kenyan poll companies are busy looking for percentages of who is leading and who is not. Ipsos Synovate is the leading poll company in Kenya. The results of the polls are contradicting from different poll companies.Less than half of Kenyans, 49 percent, feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction and blame President Kenyatta for the high cost of living, endemic corruption, and poor infrastructure.However, 47 percent of Kenyans believe the country is on the right path, noting the improved state of education, infrastructure, healthcare, and stability.The poll which was conducted in 31 counties and 100 constituencies shows that the two political coalitions Jubilee and NASA have equal popularity ratings at 45 percent each.According to the poll, NASA is the most popular political outfit in Nairobi County with 46 percent with the ruling Jubilee Party with 39 percent.The poll also suggests that 6 percent of the undecided voters, most of them from Western region, may determine whether the country will head to a runoff in August.The opinion poll was conducted from July 16 to July 20th this year and a total of 2,000 people were interviewed.The NASA flag bearer is leading in Nairobi of more than half percent. More than half of the people in Kenya are not satisfied with the government.
Justice Manickavasagar Illancheliyan, a prominent Sri Lankan Tamil high court judge, on Saturday reportedly escaped an assassination bid in Jaffna. Police reportedly said an unidentified man snatched the revolver of his personal protection officer and opened fire when the judges car was caught in a traffic block in Jaffnas Nallur junction. He was unhurt while the policeman suffered injuries. A police DIG was arrested and remanded last week by the judge.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox believes a trade deal post Brexit should be wrapped up by the next general election

The International Trade Secretary has insisted it is "not a huge deal" if transitional arrangements when Britain quits the European Union last up until 2022.

Liam Fox has previously said he would be happy with interim measures that lasted a "few months" but now believes it should be wrapped up by the next general election.

It comes after Environment Secretary Michael Gove said this week the Cabinet was "united" around a transitional Brexit deal to allow continued access to migrant labour and provide economic stability.

Mr Fox said the time it takes Britain to quit was "not a huge deal" but he believed people did not want it "dragging on".

He told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show: "Having waited for over 40 years to leave the European Union, 24 months would be a rounding error. It's not a huge deal and neither is it an ideological one.

"I think we would want to get it out of the way before the election, I don't think people would want to have it dragging on."

But the Federation of Germany industry, the BDI, warned that business would be hit without a long transitional deal.

Klaus Deutsch told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend: "We would favour a comprehensive agreement. But the most important thing is legal certainty in the period from A to B. If you don't have a transition period of many years then there will be a huge disruption to all sorts of businesses.

"The concern of business is unless you get a clear cut and legally safe agreement you can't sell pharmaceuticals, or cars or what have you, across the channel. You have to stop business, divest, change business models."

Mr Deutsch said it was "completely unlikely" that German Chancellor Angela Merkel would soften her stance.

"The importance of the European Union for German corporates is even higher than the importance of a bilateral relationship with the United Kingdom. So the priority of safeguarding the four freedoms and the unity of the European Union is much more important than one economic relationship. There are a lot of illusions, it won't happen."

Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, has been accused of parroting lies after he insisted the UK must quit the single market because it is leaving the European Union.

The Labour leader said he still did not have a clear position on whether Britain should remain part of the customs union but the UK must leave the single market as it is "inextricably" linked with EU membership.

Labour former frontbencher Chuka Umunna, who led a rebellion against the leadership over its position on the single market, pointed to countries outside the bloc that are part of the trading area and warned that most party members want Britain to remain in the market.

Liberal Democrats accused Mr Corbyn of parroting lies used by Brexiteers and claimed that Labour MPs were being "intimidated" into toeing the line on Brexit.

Mr Corbyn said Labour had made it clear it wanted tariff free trade with the EU but had not "jumped on either side" of the fence on customs union membership.

He told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show: "The single market is dependent on membership of the EU. What we have said all along is that we want a tariff free trade access to the European market and a partnership with Europe in the future.

"The two things are inextricably linked so the question then is the kind of trade relationship of the future and we have made it very clear we want a tariff free trade access with the European market.

"We haven't jumped on either side of that fence but, again, the customs union is part of the European Union."

Mr Umunna pointed out that non-EU countries Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway are part of the single market.

" The overwhelming majority of Labour members think we should be fighting to stay in the single market - let's do it," he said.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said he had been in talks with members of the shadow cabinet and Conservative backbenchers over the fight against Brexit and s aid Labour MPs were being "intimidated" and told to "toe the line or else".

The party's Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: "Jeremy Corbyn's failure to stand up for the single market is a betrayal of future generations who will suffer most from an extreme Brexit.

"He is parroting the lie used by leading Brexiteers that membership of the single market is the same as staying in the EU."
eDreams finding it easier to attract workers to Catalonia, where their HR headquarters are based

One of Europe's largest online travel agents says Brexit has helped attract skilled British workers to Spain as more Brits consider leaving the country for work opportunities following the referendum.

The chief executive of eDreams told the Press Association that his HR team has found it easier to lure British talent to its headquarters in Catalonia - where it employs over 1,200 workers - in the months following the referendum.

Dana Dunne said: "We run a global recruitment because we are trying to attract people to Barcelona.

"People here (in the UK) have been slightly more open to consider other job offers than they were pre-Brexit and so our recruiting teams - again I don't want to exaggerate it - are seeing slightly more success post-Brexit than pre-Brexit."

His comments come amid fears over a shortage of skilled workers in Britain and the potential of a brain drain following Brexit.

A recent study by the Confederation of British Industry showed that most UK-based firms expect to increase the number of highly skilled jobs in the next few years, but they fear there will be a lack of suitably qualified workers to fill them.

Out of the 322 businesses surveyed, over half highlighted a lack of candidates with appropriate qualifications.

Despite the higher rate of British recruitment, Mr Dunne says one of eDreams' biggest challenges continues to be attracting and developing talent.

"We are at heart a consumer-oriented technology company," he said, citing internal developments in mobile and search that are intended to keep eDreams on the "edge" of innovation among online travel agencies.

"There's a real - in a sense - war for talent."

However, Mr Dunne said he's not worried about Britain scrapping freedom of movement after Brexit, saying that it "would be a pity, mostly for UK citizens," who miss out on job opportunities abroad.

eDreams currently employs around 60 nationalities across its five brands, which include eDreams, Travellink and Liligo, as well as GoVoyages, Opodo which it acquired in 2011.

While the company does not break down its revenue streams by country, Mr Dunne said eDreams has managed to capture a larger chunk of the UK market in recent years, going from being the country's fourth online travel agent to number two behind Expedia.

Though the post-Brexit collapse of the pound did not go unnoticed, Mr Dunne said the firm's global spread helped cushion the blow.

He added: "Being a mostly euro based business, it had a slight impact upon our results for that. On a broader scale, because we're in 44 countries, it hasn't really materially impacted us."

eDreams earlier this year reported a drop in full-year net profit at 10.5 million euros (9.4 million), compared to 12.4 million euros (11 million) a year earlier, though revenue grew from 463.3 million euros (414.6 million) to 486.6 million euros (435.4 million).

It comes amid efforts to invest in new areas like mobile, but also reflects a slight impact following greater price transparency in countries like the UK amid concerns consumers were being misled.

Both the eDreams and Opodo sites updated the way prices were displayed on their websites last year following a Civil Aviation Authority investigation.

However Mr Dunne said he does not believe the company's reputation has been tarnished adding: "The brands are stronger than ever."
Love Island couple Montana Brown and Alex Beattie have ruled out marriage and kids, but said they definitely have a future together as they became the latest couple to leave the villa.

The pair narrowly missed out on a place in Monday nights final as they were voted off the show by the public.

They ended up in the bottom three alongside Marcel Somerville and Gabby Allen and the bookies former favourite duo Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt.

Expand Close Love Islands Montana and Alex (ITV) ITV / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Love Islands Montana and Alex (ITV)

Before finding out their fate, the shows host Caroline Flack announced that the two couples through to Monday nights final are Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies and Chris Hughes and Olivia Attwood.

Speaking after their elimination they both tipped Cetinay and Davies, or Hughes and Attwood to win.

Despite a rough patch for Hughes and Attwood, Beattie said they still had his backing to take home the title and 50,000 prize.

He said: Theyve been through so much together and they came out the other end of it and they are really, really strong. And they are super, super genuine and I love them both, individually and as a couple, and I think they will fly. Theyre wicked and I love them both so I hope they do (win).

The evicted couple also commented on their bedroom antics, following the revelation in tabloids by the shows last dumped couple, Sam Gowland and Georgia Harrison.

Responding to claims that their lovemaking was the loudest in the villa, Brown said: I tell you what, its funny, because Sam and Georgia are right next to us in the bedroom and we are right in the middle, so unfortunately, they do get front row seats, so I do feel for them.

Expand Close Love Islands Montana and Alex (ITV) ITV / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Love Islands Montana and Alex (ITV)

But its unfortunate for us as well being smack bang in the middle, but no, (Im) not embarrassed at all, at the end of the day its natural.

Following a previous challenge, which saw the girls each take lie detector tests individually with questions posed to them by their other halves, public support for Allen has been divided with some fans saying her feelings for former Blazin Squad star Somerville are not genuine.

Brown defended Allen, saying: Do you know what, I dont think that she is pretending at all.

They have their ups and downs like a normal couple and I genuinely think her feelings are very genuine. She adored Marcel and I think that lie detector test really knocked her, knocked her confidence in herself and it made her second guess her feelings but I think they are genuine.

During her time in the villa, Brown became emotional when Beattie told her he loved her, resulting in Brown opening up to him about her strained relationship with her father.

Expand Close Love Islands Montana and Alex (ITV) ITV / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Love Islands Montana and Alex (ITV)

Talking about it, she explained: Ive never really had a good relationship with my dad, and so that often kind of puts a barrier up with men in general.

Its just something I thought would be insightful for Alex to kind of get to know me and realise why I am a bit guarded when it comes to relationships.

He (my dad) just hasnt played a big part in my life in general, so for me like I havent had a father figure, so its just something I have to get used to and open up to in relationships.

The penultimate episode saw the couples meeting each others family members.

The Love Island final airs on Monday at 9pm on ITV2.
Erin has been missing over the weekend.

Police have issued an urgent missing person appeal for a Belfast woman.

Erin Watson (21) was last seen by her family on Friday.

They are concerned for her safety and well-being, saying her disappearance is "very out of character".

If you can help, police can be contacted on 101 quoting serial 1292 of July 21 2017.
The Northern Ireland Air Ambulance takes its first flight in Belfast on November 9th 2016 , Northern Ireland (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

The Northern Ireland Air Ambulance takes its first flight in Belfast on November 9th 2016 , Northern Ireland (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

The Northern Ireland Air Ambulance takes its first flight in Belfast on November 9th 2016 , Northern Ireland (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

The Northern Ireland Air Ambulance takes its first flight in Belfast on November 9th 2016 , Northern Ireland (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

The Northern Ireland Air Ambulance takes its first flight in Belfast on November 9th 2016 , Northern Ireland (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

The Northern Ireland Air Ambulance takes its first flight in Belfast on November 9th 2016 , Northern Ireland (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

The Northern Ireland Air Ambulance takes its first flight in Belfast on November 9th 2016, Northern Ireland (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Press Eye Belfast - Northern Ireland 9th November 2016 One of the two helicopters which will deliver Northern IrelandAos first ever Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) is in Northern Ireland for a three-day flying visit. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

Press Eye Belfast - Northern Ireland 9th November 2016 One of the two helicopters which will deliver Northern Irelands first ever Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) is in Northern Ireland for a three-day flying visit. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

Press Eye Belfast - Northern Ireland 9th November 2016 One of the two helicopters which will deliver Northern IrelandOs first ever Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) is in Northern Ireland for a three-day flying visit. Pictured with the Airbus helicopter is Air Ambulance Northern Ireland Chairman Ian Crowe. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

Press Eye Belfast - Northern Ireland 9th November 2016 One of the two helicopters which will deliver Northern IrelandOs first ever Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) is in Northern Ireland for a three-day flying visit. Pictured with the Airbus helicopter is Air Ambulance Northern Ireland Chairman Ian Crowe and Trustee Ray Foran. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

Press Eye Belfast - Northern Ireland 9th November 2016 One of the two helicopters which will deliver Northern IrelandAos first ever Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) is in Northern Ireland for a three-day flying visit. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

One of the two helicopters which will deliver Northern Ireland's first ever Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) was in Northern Ireland for a three-day flying visit last year. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

The Northern Ireland Air Ambulance was involved in its first call after a 11-year-old boy was seriously injured in a tractor accident.

It happened in Castlewellan on Saturday.

The helicopter, which is preparing to enter service in Northern Ireland next month, was on a test flight when it was required.

Given the seriousness of the boy's injuries, it was decided to bring it in for use.

It took the boy to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, where his condition is described as stable.

Glenn O'Rorke, for the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service, told the BBC: "Having a full doctor and paramedic team on board it was felt necessary to respond."
The burst water main has affected residents in Drogheda

Irish Water has warned that repairs to a burst main that has left thousands of people without water for several days are proving "challenging".

Water supplies to households and businesses in parts of the north east are not expected to be restored until Monday evening at the earliest, Irish Water and Louth County Council have said.

Large tankers have been transporting treated water to affected areas in Drogheda and temporary watering stations have been deployed.

The burst at the Staleen Water Treatment Plant occurred on Friday morning. Irish Water said that works to repair the water main have proved to be more difficult than first anticipated, due to the age and type of pipe.

The burst is located over four metres underground and requires a complex repair.

The plant supplies drinking water to Drogheda and surrounding areas, as well as parts of south Louth and east Meath, including Ashbourne and Ratoath.

Louth County Council said the burst on the Drogheda water main has resulted in a "significantly reduced supply to Drogheda town and environs".

The local authority said Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital has been prioritised and is still supplied with water.

In order to manage the remaining water a programme of rationing for the rest of the town has been initiated.

Irish Water and Louth County Council have supplemented the water supply coming in to Drogheda by using large tankers to bring treated water in from neighbouring areas.

Irish Water said the treated water is being delivered directly into the network to increase available water for the rotating roster.

The water roster and location of watering stations can be viewed on Louth County Council and Irish Water websites.
Scientists and fertility experts at Longleat Safari Park are attempting a world first IVF treatment to try to save a rhino subspecies with only three individuals left.

The three remaining northern white rhinos all live under armed guard in Kenya, and are too old to naturally reproduce.

So in a last ditch attempt to save the endangered subspecies, scientists have extracted eggs from three southern white rhinos, a more common breed, that are living at Longleat, to make the first test-tube rhinos.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

The nine eggs extracted from female southern rhinos earlier this week have been transferred to a laboratory in Italy to mature, before they are are fertilised with southern rhino sperm to hone the IVF process, before it is attempted in the rarer northern species.

Jon Merrington, head of safari at Longleat, told BBC Breakfast on Sunday that scientists working together on the project across Europe will soon know if the initial stage of the process has worked.

Rhinos are a two tonne animal, he said.

Even to extract the eggs is 1.5 metres inside the animal  its such a complicated procedure.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

If these eggs successfully mature, they will be mixed with rhino sperm and cryogenically stored, before female southern white rhinos, potentially those at Longleat, are given a course of hormones to prepare them for a 16 to 18 month pregnancy.

This is a groundbreaking procedure, Mr Merrington said, creating an embryo outside a rhino hasnt been done before.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

If all goes well, northern rhino sperm and eggs will be harvested from the remaining members of the species, but because there are limited amounts to extract from these animals, IVF in more common southern rhinos is being tested first.

And if they cannot make a pure bred test-tube northern white rhino, they will try to create hybrid animals from sperm and eggs of the two closely related species.

Mr Merrington said that without human interference driving them to the point of extinction, the two populations would have likely mixed anyway.

What were doing here probably isnt too far removed from what could have happened in the wild.
A five-year-old girl who hit the headlines after her homemade lemonade stand was shut down by the council has received dozens of offers to set up stalls at other events.

Andre Spicer, a business school professor, let his daughter set up a stand near their home to sell refreshments to people heading to the Lovebox music festival in Victoria Park, east London, last weekend.

But after half an hour four council officials told the pair to shut up shop and slapped Prof Spicer with a 150 fine as he held his sobbing daughter in his arms.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

Tower Hamlets Council has since cancelled the fine and hand-delivered a note to the familys home to apologise.

The family tweeted: We have been overwhelmed by the kind response from people across the world.

Dozens of festivals, markets and businesses have offered us the opportunity to set up a lemonade stand.

We hope they will extend this invitation to others whod love to make a stand.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

Among those extending the offers was Londons Borough market which tweeted the girls father: In all seriousness, would your daughter like to sell some lemonade at Borough Market? Wed love to make that happen for her.
Anti-government protesters raise candles and wave flags as they gather in front of the Supreme Court in Warsaw, Poland (AP)

Thousands of Poles have protested for the eighth day over new rules passed by the ruling party that would drastically limit the independence of the judiciary.

Protesters see moves by the populist governing Law and Justice party as an assault on the country's democratic foundations, accusing party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski of behaving in an authoritarian way to cement his power.

People waved flags of the European Union and Poland as they gathered on Sunday evening in front of the presidential palace in the capital Warsaw.

They called on President Andrzej Duda to veto contentious legislation that would put the Supreme Court and other areas of the judiciary under the party's control.

Polish media reported that other protests were taking place in other cities across Poland and Europe.

The legislation quickly passed both houses of parliament in recent days and now awaits Mr Duda's signature to take effect.

The moves to take control of the courts have also alarmed the European Union, with Frans Timmermans, the vice-president of the EU's executive, warning last week that Brussels is very close to stripping Poland of its voting rights in the bloc over rule of law violations.

Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas welcomed the possible EU sanctions against Poland, telling the weekly German paper Bild am Sonntag that "the independence of the judiciary is in danger in Poland".

"Somebody who gives so little respect to the rule of law has to accept that he isolates himself politically," Mr Maas said.

He added that "the EU cannot stand and watch inactively. Rule of law and democracy are the bedrock of the EU."

AP
ein Google-Unternehmen

Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben

Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen

Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. Mit den gewonnenen Informationen mochten wir verstehen, wie unsere Dienste verwendet werden, und die Qualitat dieser Dienste verbessern.

neue Dienste zu entwickeln und zu verbessern

Werbung auszuliefern und ihre Wirkung zu messen

personalisierte Inhalte anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen

personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen

Wenn Sie Alle ablehnen auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies nicht fur diese zusatzlichen Zwecke.

Nicht personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung werden u. a. von Inhalten, die Sie sich gerade ansehen, und Ihrem Standort beeinflusst (welche Werbung Sie sehen, basiert auf Ihrem ungefahren Standort). Personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung konnen auch Videoempfehlungen, eine individuelle YouTube-Startseite und individuelle Werbung enthalten, die auf fruheren Aktivitaten wie auf YouTube angesehenen Videos und Suchanfragen auf YouTube beruhen. Sofern relevant, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auerdem, um Inhalte und Werbung altersgerecht zu gestalten.

Wir verwenden Cookies und Daten, umWenn Sie Alle akzeptieren auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auch, umWahlen Sie Weitere Optionen aus, um sich zusatzliche Informationen anzusehen, einschlielich Details zum Verwalten Ihrer Datenschutzeinstellungen. Sie konnen auch jederzeit g.co/privacytools besuchen.
Folk singing and dance performances by multi-ethnic groups from West China have given Scotland a rare chance to explore the colorful cultural landscape of the region.

The weekend event at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre featured Cucurbit flute, peacock dancing and fashion shows of ethnic costumes in Yunnan province and Tibet autonomous region.

An exhibition, featuring 100 photographs and 18 cultural artifacts, themed Color of West China, was also displayed as part of the Cultural Exploration of West China tour, which kicked off in London and will visit Manchester, in north west England, and Dublin, in Ireland.

"The performances were stunning," said Liz Cameron, head of the Scottish Chamber of Commerce. "They portray a beautiful culture and the amazing dancing and singing projected China in a wonderful light."

Lu Guangjin, director-general of the State Council Information Office of China who co-organized the tour with the Chinese embassy in UK, said the events "showcase both the culture heritage that has been sustained by the ethnic groups in West China to this day and the latest changes and development in this region"

The program is part of the Experience China series, which has already toured Germany, Italy, the US and many other countries.

Pan Xinchun, the Chinese consul general in Edinburgh, said West China is an important cradle of Chinese civilization and is making a significant contribution in developing the Belt and Road Initiative. He said the events "will display the colorful culture of China and help develop the friendly relationship between China and Scotland".

Claire Tynte-Irvine, head of the International Division of the Scottish government, said: "We are lucky that the Chinese presence in Scotland is so strong and people-to-people exchanges are important part of this."

She said an increasing number of Scottish children are learning about China's language and culture through the Confucius Classroom hubs. Eighteen out of 19 Scottish higher education institutes have built academic and research links with Chinese institutions.

Scotland's flagship education award, the Saltire Scholarships, have been presented to more than 200 Chinese students since 2011. The country welcomes an increasing number of Chinese students and tourists and will host more Chinese performers at the world-famous Edinburgh festival in August.

"Chinese initiatives, such as the monumental Belt and Road (Initiative) offer new chances to build links with China's west regions," Tynte-Irvine said.
The ban was apparently due to the fact that a non-signatory to the NCA, the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army, or SSPP, had been invited. The Burmese brigadier-general said that the RCSS/SSA infringed Burmas election law and endangered the peace process by inviting the SSPP.

I have my doubts [about the Tatmadaws sincerity] when they accuse us of endangering the peace process, Gen Yawd Serk said today at a press conference in the northern Thai capital. If this is the case, they should contact our office.

The military attache says that the meeting was to include a non-NCA signatory group. This group is the SSPP. However, it should be noted that the SSPP regularly attends meetings within the UNFC [United Nationalities Federal Council, a coalition of ethnic armed groups who declined to sign the NCA with the government in October 2015].

So how can this be hindering the peace process if the UNFC regularly meets with the Tatmadaw and the government?

He added: Their accusation is unreasonable. We were not planning an underground meeting. It was announced officially. I just dont understand how this [ban] can happen.

This letter [ordering the ban on the meeting] was sent directly from the Burmese military. But when we asked the government, they said they didnt know anything about it.

The CSSU meeting was slated to be held on July 20-22 in Chiang Mai. Members were to review the recent round of the Union Peace Conference, dubbed the 21st Century Panglong Conference. The members said the meeting was intended to improve future peace talks by ensuring there was a common understanding of the five issues under discussion: political affairs; security matters; economic affairs; social issues; and land and natural resource management.

RCSS/SSA leader Yawd Serk said that the Burmese military attache has overstepped the terms and conditions of the NCA.

This act affects good will, said Gen Yawd Serk. We are sincere about establishing a peaceful union. Thats why we are working on the terms of the NCA.

On March 4, 2016, Shan Herald reported that a CSSU meeting in Yangon was also called off after intervention by local government officials.

The CSSU comprises: Shan political parties; Shan armed groups; and Shan community-based organizations, including the Shan State Joint Action Committee (SSJAC), which itself includes the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP), the SSPP, the RCSS, the Seng Kiao Peoples Militia, the New Generation Group (Shan State), Shan Youth Association, Shan Nationality Organization-Thailand.

Gen Yawd Serk is the current head of the CSSU.

Statement of the Committee for Shan State Unity (CSSU)

20 July, 2017

Members of the CSSU, which includes Shan political parties, armed organizations, and domestic and international civil society organizations, had planned to hold a meeting in Thailand on July 20, 2017. The intention was to review the proceedings of the recently held 3rd Union Peace Conference in order to improve results in future peace conferences by ensuring that there is a common understanding of the five issues under discussion  1. Political Affairs, 2. Security Matters, 3. Economic Affairs, 4. Social Issues, and 5. Land and Natural Resources Management

However, on July 19, 2017, the Thai 3rd Regional Army informed the organizers that the Myanmar Military Attache in Bangkok had requested the Thai Government to prevent the CSSU meeting from taking place. It was claimed that the CSSU was obstructing the Myanmar peace process and that the membership of the CSSU includes a non-signatory to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement.

Taking into consideration the interests of the Thai Government and the long-term interests of the peace process, the CSSU decided that:The CSSU meeting planned for 20-22 July 2017 will not take place;

In order to build peace, the Government (of Myanmar) needs to be broadminded, and if there are any doubts, clarification should be requested;

The planned CSSU meeting was going to discuss the five issues agreed in the NCA. Therefore the conference was not in any way obstructing the peace process;

The CSSU was established in 2013 to facilitate peacebuilding in order to establish a federal democratic union. We will continue to work to achieve our objective.Committee for Shan State UnityContacts:

Sao Borng Khur (+66 2896 0970)

Sai Nyunt Lwin (+95 7324 1587)

Sai Boe Aung (+95 4100 1654)

By Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN)
Page Content

Eleven opinions and two resolutions were on the agenda of this plenary session.

On the first day, Mr Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament, addressed the Plenary in the context of the "Reflecting on Europe" strategy. Mr Jyrki Katainen, Vice-President of the European Commission, exchanged views with CoR members.

On the second day, Ms Gudrun Mosler-T o rnstr om , President of the Congress of the Council of Europe, debated with members. Mr G unther H. Oettinger, Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources, spoke about the Draft Annual Budget 2018.

The list of opinions which were adopted during the May plenary session:

Resolution on the European Commission White Paper on the Future of Europe and a Resolution on the Draft Annual EU BUdget for 2018.



Two Resolutions were also on the agenda: aand a


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/07/2017 (1939 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the midst of another summer construction season, just about everyone will be inconvenienced at some point by the inevitable traffic delays and detours.

Its an annual reality businesses must account for, with those in Brandon located along a stretch of Victoria Avenue from 32nd Street a few blocks westward experiencing their share of traffic troubles beginning this week.

A few days after the intersection of 34th Street and Victoria Avenue was shut down for a rebuild, area business managers reported a significant drop in foot traffic, and therefore sales.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Construction on Victoria Avenue at 34th Street in Brandon has resulted in detours for motorists at the intersection.

Victoria Inn Hotel & Convention Centre general manager Brent Miller said on Thursday that their beer vendor and restaurant were both adversely affected by the traffic shutdown.

Still, like other affected business managers, Miller clarified that he supports the short-term pain for the long-term gain of better roadways. Its just tough.

Birchwood Nissan Brandon fixed operations manager Trevor Kussner said that foot traffic was down as a result of the roadwork, which he said has also created a logistical headache as it relates to the shipment of new vehicles, which for now have to be dropped and delivered.

We manage to get them here, but it took 45 minutes or a half-hour to get them here, he said, adding; Its something well have to deal with and well make the best of it.

Itll be worth it in the long run, he said  a sentiment Fowler Hyundai sales manager David Lee also shared, offering that the roadway has required work for some time.

The public asked for the repairs, and theyre now getting what they asked for, he said.

Surridges Music Centre has also seen traffic drop-off as a result of renovations. Even so, employee Keenan Eckstein said that a surprising number of people still come on through.

He added that their status as a destination business helps ensure people put up with traffic delays and detours to make it out to their space.

Among those impacted, area business managers expressed hope that this weeks intersection shutdown, which was expected to conclude yesterday, would be the worst of the months-long project.

As a whole, the project is expected to see Victoria Avenue reconstructed from 32nd Street to 38th Street by mid-October.

While the business managers contacted for this story expressed understanding and patience in relation to the project, not all motorists are treating the construction site with respect.

A staff member from Two Farm Kids who did not want their name used said that by the time customers finally make it through detours to the store, theyre frustrated, which has led to impatient and therefore dangerous driving.

The staff member said that theyd seen several motorists make illegal turns, as well as drive the wrong way down streets to get to their destination quicker.

Staff at Leons Furniture report similar activity, with people cutting across their parking lot to bypass the construction, manager Bob McElroy said.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Construction on Victoria Avenue at 34th Street in Brandon has resulted in detours for motorists at the intersection.

While it has created a more dangerous situation in the parking lot, he said that it hasnt negatively impacted their foot traffic.

Those contacted for this story reported that road crews had connected with them prior to breaking ground on the intersection, at which time they let them know what to expect.

Miller commended those who connected with him for keeping the area business community in the loop, adding that he hopes to see the lines of communication remain open throughout the months-long construction period, during which traffic conditions are expected to change multiple times.

A joint effort of the provincial and municipal governments, Manitoba Infrastructure representatives made the initial contact with affected business owners and management. Regional director Herb Mahood said that everyone has been provided the on-site project managers cell number.

Whereas this week saw an intersection entirely shut down, construction projects such as this typically see roadways remain open to as much through traffic as much as possible.

For the majority of the construction period, one lane of traffic will be maintained along Victoria Avenue in each direction, and where possible, one lane of traffic will remain open in each direction along 34th Street in each direction, a city spokesperson wrote in emailed correspondence, relaying a message shared at Mondays city council meeting.

Theres access to all of the businesses now, its indirect but once Victoria opens up again itll be fine, Mahood said. Everything we do is for the public good, and theres always an inconvenience.

In addition to expressing their understanding that the occasional stint of roadwork is going to impact their operations from time to time, business managers contacted for this story also wanted to clarify that theyd remain open for business.

While it make take more time to make it out to visit these businesses, theyre eager to welcome customers perhaps even more so than usual, depending on how greatly traffic is impeded.

 tclarke@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB
The crew of Ballycotton RNLI's all-weather lifeboat had a mammoth 14-hour callout yesterday to tow a vessel that was taking on water 60 miles off the Cork coast.

The lifeboat was launched at 9.28am on Saturday morning after a request from Falmouth coastguard in the UK who reported an emergency beacon had been activated by a 40ft yacht that needed immediate assistance.

Sennen Cove lifeboat and the Coast Guard helicopter from Newquay in England were also dispatched to the scene, but were stood down when the Ballycotton lifeboat and the Irish Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 117 arrived.

After they arrived, it was confirmed that the water in the yacht was receding, so Rescue 117 was stood down and the lifeboat towed the vessel safely to Crosshaven in Cork in what was described as "fresh" conditions.

It was 14 hours before the lifeboat crew returned home to Ballycotton.

Ballycotton RNLI Coxswain, Eolan Walsh, said: "This was one of the longest callouts for our lifeboat crew as they spent nearly a day at sea ensuring the safe passage of a yacht which was taking on water miles off the Cork coast.

"Many agencies and vessels played a part in the successful resolution of this and thankfully nobody was injured with both crew and yacht being brought safely to shore.

"I want to thank my volunteer lifeboat crew who despite the challenging conditions were focused on bringing everyone home safely."
Confidence in the Government has soared to a six-year high, according to the latest opinion poll.

The Kantar Millward Browne poll for today's Sunday Independent shows Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's popularity is also up.

According to today's poll, the Government has jumped 13 points to 40%, the highest level of support for a Fine Gael-led administration since the 2011 general election.

Satisfaction is highest among professional and working voters and those living in Dublin where the economy has improved faster than other parts of the country.

Meanwhile, public support for the two main parties is almost neck-and-neck with Fine Gael up five to 30% and Fianna Fail dropping four to 29%.

Leo Varadkar's personal satisfaction rating, measured for the first time today at 49%, is far higher than his predecessor Enda Kenny and four points above Michael Martin on 45%.

Those aged between 35 and 44 want to see more money in their pockets come Budget day - over spending - while people living in the capital are more in favour of tax cuts.
Charlie Gard's parents are considering their next steps ahead of the latest High Court hearing in a five-month legal battle over whether the terminally-ill baby should be treated by a specialist in America.

A judge had been scheduled to analyse evidence at a two-day trial starting at 10am on Monday. Mr Justice Francis had said he aimed to make a decision on Tuesday - and had questioned whether a two-day hearing would be long enough. But the hearing has now been re-listed and is scheduled to start at 2pm on Monday. Lawyers have given no explanation for the scheduling change.

On Friday a barrister representing Great Ormond Street Hospital doctors caring for the 11-month-old boy told Chris Gard and Connie Yates that a report on the latest scan made for "sad reading".

Ms Yates burst into tears when Katie Gollop QC broke the news at a preliminary hearing in the Family Division of the High Court on Friday. Mr Justice Francis asked Ms Gollop not to reveal full detail of the report - the judge indicated that Charlie's parents should be given time to consider it privately.

Last week the American specialist, Michio Hirano, a professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York, travelled to London to examine Charlie for the first time and discuss the case with Great Ormond Street doctors. Lawyers had told the judge that they would analyse reports from the gathering over the weekend.

Mr Justice Francis has considered the latest stage of the case at public hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

Mr Gard and Ms Yates have asked judges to rule that Charlie, who suffers from a rare genetic condition and has brain damage, should be allowed to undergo a therapy trial in New York.

Doctors at Great Ormond Street say the therapy is experimental and will not help.

They say life support treatment should stop.

Charlie's parents, who are in their 30s and come from Bedfont, west London, have already lost battles in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court in London.

They have also failed to persuade European Court of Human Rights judges to intervene.

But the couple say there is new evidence and had asked Mr Justice Francis, who in April ruled in favour of Great Ormond Street and said Charlie should be allowed to die with dignity, to change his mind.

Mr Justice Francis said he would not re-run the case but would consider any ''new material''.

Supporters of Charlie and his family gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Sunday.

The group, holding placards and banners, formed outside the gates of the building to show their solidarity with his parents.

PA
A Jordanian man has been shot to death and an Israeli man was wounded in a violent incident at the Israeli embassy in Amman, according to reports.

The Hala Akhbar news site, which is linked to Jordan's military, said the violent incident also included a stabbing.
A five-year-old girl who hit the headlines after her homemade lemonade stand in England was shut down by the council has received dozens of offers to set up stalls at other events.

Andre Spicer, a business school professor, let his daughter set up a stand near their home to sell refreshments to people heading to the Lovebox music festival in Victoria Park, east London, last weekend.

But after half an hour four council officials told the pair to shut up shop and slapped Prof. Spicer with a 150 fine as he held his sobbing daughter in his arms.

Tower Hamlets Council has since cancelled the fine and hand-delivered a note to the family's home to apologise.

The family tweeted: "We have been overwhelmed by the kind response from people across the world.

"Dozens of festivals, markets and businesses have offered us the opportunity to set up a lemonade stand.

"We hope they will extend this invitation to others who'd love to make a stand."

This summer, we want kids to make a stand. Our response to kind offers following lemonade fine. Spread the word! #MakeAStand pic.twitter.com/ItwyhNMHTn  Andre Spicer (@andre_spicer) July 22, 2017

Among those extending the offers was London's Borough market which tweeted the girl's father: "In all seriousness, would your daughter like to sell some lemonade at Borough Market? We'd love to make that happen for her."

We'd gladly give this young lady a stall to sell her lemonade. We  entrepreneurs of any age! https://t.co/6ATlyECa4O @andre_spicer  Borough Market (@boroughmarket) July 21, 2017

Lee Fest: Neverland has also invited the little girl to sell lemonade at its August festival in Kent.
The Republican-led House is to vote on a sweeping Russia sanctions package that defies the White House by demanding Donald Trump gets Congress's permission before lifting or easing penalties against Moscow.

Politicians are scheduled to consider the sanctions package as early as Tuesday, and the bill could be sent to Mr Trump before Congress breaks for the August recess.

The legislation is aimed at punishing Moscow for meddling in the presidential election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats announced on Saturday that they had settled lingering issues with the bill, which also includes stiff economic penalties against Iran and North Korea.

The sanctions targeting Russia, however, have drawn the most attention due to Mr Trump's push for warmer relations with President Vladimir Putin and ongoing investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign.

"North Korea, Iran and Russia have in different ways all threatened their neighbours and actively sought to undermine American interests," according to a joint statement by California Republicans Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, and Ed Royce of California, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman.

The bill the House will vote on, they said, "will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions".

But the bill's pending passage by the House and Senate puts Capitol Hill on possible collision course with Mr Trump.

The White House has objected to a key section of the bill that would mandate a congressional review if Mr Trump attempts to terminate the sanctions against Moscow.

Top administration officials have said the provisions infringe on the president's executive authority and may tie his hands as he explores avenues of cooperation between the two former Cold War foes.

If Mr Trump were to veto the bill, he risks sparking an outcry from Republicans and Democrats and having his decision overturned.

Indeed, the sanctions review was included in the bill because of wariness among lawmakers from both parties over Mr Trump's affinity for Mr Putin.

Eliot Engel of New York, the top ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Mr Trump has been unwilling to respond seriously to Russia's belligerence, "leaving Congress with the urgent responsibility to hold Vladimir Putin accountable".

Mr McCarthy had pushed to add the North Korea sanctions to the package. The House had overwhelmingly passed legislation in May to hit Pyongyang with additional economic penalties, but the Senate had yet to take up the bill.

The Senate last month passed sanctions legislation that targeted only Russia and Iran.

Congressional aides said Senate Republicans may resist adding the North Korea penalties, but it remained unclear whether those concerns would derail the legislation.

Although the legislations has widespread support, the bill stalled after clearing the Senate more than five weeks ago due to constitutional questions and bickering over technical details.

The House and Senate negotiators addressed concerns voiced by American oil and natural gas companies that sanctions specific to Russia's energy sector could backfire on them to Moscow's benefit. The bill raises the threshold for when US firms would be prohibited from being part of energy projects that also included Russian businesses.

Mr McCarthy and Mr Royce said other revisions resolved concerns that the sanctions could have unintentionally complicated the ability of America's European allies to maintain access to energy resources outside Russia.

PA
A van has crashed into the front doors of a police station in Scotland, causing extensive damage.

The white Vauxhall Combo van hit the entrance of Ayr Police Office, on King Street in the South Ayrshire town, just before 1am on Sunday.

The vehicle, which headed north towards the A77, was pursued by police and forcibly stopped near Tarbolton.

A 36-year-old man has been arrested in connection with alleged drink driving and road traffic offences, Police Scotland said.

The driver of the van was not injured.

A police spokeswoman said: "No officers were injured as a result of the incident, however, the front of Ayr Police Office was extensively damaged."

She added: "A 36-year-old man has been arrested and is presently detained in police custody in connection with alleged drink driving and road traffic offences."

He is due to appear at Ayr Sheriff Court on Monday.

The police station was expected to open to the public on Sunday once safety work had been completed.
Adelaide senator Nick Xenophon has warned ACT students to remove a joke Facebook page that pretends his party will fight for South Australian jobs in the upcoming Australian National University Student Association election.

The Nick Xenophon Team 4 ANUSA page, which purports to put South Australian jobs first, has been reprimanded by the Nick Xenophon Team for using the senator's name and likeness.

Nick Xenophon hopes he's not Greek. Or Cypriot. Credit:Andrew Meares

ANU student publication Woroni first reported that media adviser Frank Pangallo contacted the page's administration to request its removal.

In a post, Mr Pangallo was accused of trying to "tear down the only voice for South Australian students on campus" by someone insisting he or she was Nick Xenophon.
The Irish government is setting up a fund to manage the estimated 13 billion ($19.1 billion) it will collect from Apple in back taxes, nearly a year after the European Commission ruled the country had provided a sweetheart deal on tax to the US firm.

The government and Apple will jointly appoint a custodian to hold the money to be deposited by the iPhone maker, the finance ministry said. The funds will be held in escrow pending appeals by Apple and Ireland, which could take years. One or more investment managers will also be hired to manage the money.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook. Credit:AP

"Commencement of this procurement process represents a significant milestone and follows months of intensive discussions between Ireland, Apple and the European Commission on the recovery process," the finance ministry said.

The EU's Competition Commission ruled in August that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on corporation tax, breaking state-aid rules. That meant Apple would have to pay as much as 13 billion in back taxes.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has signalled support for Bill Shorten's plan to overhaul the federal electoral system with fixed four-year government terms and plans to meet with the opposition leader in a bid to forge a bipartisan consensus.

Mr Turnbull called Mr Shorten to discuss the proposal on Sunday, shortly after the Labor leader used a television interview to call for a new cross-party push towards a referendum to change the constitution.

Government sources denied Mr Turnbull offered Mr Shorten bipartisan backing for the proposal, noting there were a lot of "complicating issues" to sort out. However, a spokeswoman for Mr Turnbull confirmed the pair spoke about "several matters", including the four-year term proposal. "The two agreed to discuss the matter further when they next meet," she said.

Mr Shorten said the three-year electoral cycle of the federal system was "out of whack" with the states - which have mostly adopted fixed four-year terms - and too often led to short-term policy making.
Rest in peace? Fat chance if you happen to be the People's Princess.

As the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana's death approaches on August 31, the posthumous royal is as busy as ever, or at least her image is.

Princess Diana's photo shoots are a particularly hot commodity at the moment.

And nowhere is that more the case than in Australia.

Indeed we have already been bombarded by television specials, with the likes of 60 Minutes and rival Sunday Night trawling through the archives and re-interviewing a long conga-line of Diana's friends and associates, who have collectively exhumed ancient scandals to breath new life into one of the most photographed women who ever lived.
Vanity doesn't come cheap. There is hair to cut and colour, and hair to remove. There are eyebrows to tame and lashes to tint. There's make-up, skincare, manicures, pedicures, facials. There is skin to protect and cover in tan.

When it comes to looking good, it seems we Australians spare little expense.

Australians spend $22 billion a year on grooming such as pedicures. Credit:Jasmine Highfield

We spend $22 billion a year on appearance - including personal grooming but not including cosmetic surgery or gyms and fitness - according to research conducted in 2016 by the financial comparison site, Mozo.

If we measure vanity by dollars outlaid, Queenslanders are the most committed with an average per capita spend of $989 a year. Tasmanians are the least fussed, with just $451 forked out on average each year.
Federal government efforts to cut the public service's half-billion dollar annual travel bill appear grounded as new figures show spending has blown out by $75 million since the Coalition returned to government.

Despite 15,000 jobs being cut from government departments and agencies in four years, the centralised public service travel bill has grown from $502.9 million in 2013-14 to more than $575.7 million in 2015-16.

Public service travel costs have grown by $75 million in four years. Credit:Nic Walker

The most recent bill included $423 million in air travel, $19.9 million for car rentals and $132 million for hotels and other accommodation.

Domestic airfares cost taxpayers $198.9 million, compared with $111.9 million spent on overseas flights.
Police have charged an alleged car thief after the owner of the vehicle stolen from a Brisbane business accessed a tracking device hidden inside.

The ute was allegedly stolen from Corunna Street in Albion during the early hours of Sunday, after a man broke into its tool box and found a spare key inside.

Police said the accused was arrested with the stolen car's keys still in his pocket, after abandoning the ute. Credit:Glenn Hunt

The owner of the work vehicle accessed the internal tracking device, which led officers to a Collingwood Park address in Ipswich about 11am.

Police said when officers arrived at the Collins Street address, the alleged thief fled in the stolen ute, driving through a neighbouring front yard to avoid deployed stingers.
Car parking is set to become cheaper at Queensland hospitals, with the state government committing $7.5 million to provide additional free and discounted spaces at the state's public hospitals.

But there would be no immediate respite for parents and carers, who launched a public campaign against the "prohibitive" parking costs at the Lady Cilento Hospital, Health Minister Cameron Dick said on Sunday.

Parking at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital has come under fire for its 'prohibitive' cost. Credit:Michelle Smith

Almost 8000 people signed a petition asking Mr Dick and Mater Health Services to reduce parking costs at Queensland's only dedicated children's hospital.

Mr Dick said work would start immediately to prepare a business case for a solution at the South Brisbane facility, but warned there was no quick or easy fix.
Even with the NBN rollout Australia's fixed-line broadband can be unreliable, which means you need a mobile insurance policy if you can't afford to be offline.

A few months ago I reviewed Telstra's Frontier Gateway broadband modem, which has a built-in SIM card so your home can automatically switch across to Telstra's 4G LTE mobile broadband network if your Telstra fixed-line connection drops out. It would be a good fit for some homes but has limitations which might frustrate power users  which is where the Accelerated 6350-SR LTE comes in.

Accelerated's 6350-SR LTE can automatically switch your home/office across to mobile broadband if your fixed-line connection drops out.

To be fair the Accelerated 6350-SR LTE is aimed at business users and has a hefty $990 price tag, but that's not out of the question for small/home businesses or prosumer home users who need reliable broadband and don't want to be tied to Telstra. Offsetting the upfront price is the fact that ditching Telstra is likely to save you money on your monthly bill.

Run your eye down the spec sheet and the 6350-SR LTE ticks a lot of boxes. It features a Gigabit WAN port for connecting to any broadband modem, whether you're on DSL, cable or any flavour of NBN. There are also four Gigabit LAN ports for running Ethernet cables around your home.
Could a Jewish man who died in obscurity in Melbourne be the unsung creator of the Volkswagen?

Port Phillip council thinks so - in the next few months it will honour him in a plaque at Edgewater Towers, the St Kilda apartment block where automotive engineer Josef Ganz once lived.

Frozen in time: Resident and building archivist Russell Jessop in the 1960s-style lobby of Edgewater Towers apartment block, St Kilda. He will give tours here next Saturday for Open House Melbourne. Credit:Darrian Traynor

In Germany in the early 1930s, Ganz was an influential editor of car magazine Motor-Kritik, and a consultant engineer for Daimler-Benz and BMW.

In the race to build an affordable "people's car" or "volkswagen", he made prototypes similar to the future Volkswagen Beetle. They were lightweight with backbone-type frames, mid or rear mounted engines, independent wheel suspensions and swinging rear half-axles.
Melbourne Express: Monday, July 24, 2017

Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later.

Dismiss
Berlin: A German teenager who joined Islamic State is now being held in an Iraqi prison and says she regrets joining the jihadist group and just wants to come home to her family, media reported on Sunday.

Der Spiegel magazine reported on Saturday that four German women who joined Islamic State in recent years, including a 16-year-old girl from the small town of Pulsnitz near Dresden, are being held in an Iraqi prison and receiving consular assistance.

A German girl from PUlsnitz, who ran away from home shortly after converting to Islam, has been found in Iraq. Credit:DPA/AP

Lorenz Haase, senior public prosecutor in Dresden, said he could confirm the teenager, named by authorities only as Linda W., had been "located and identified in Iraq" and was receiving consular support but could not say anything on her exact circumstances.

"There is the possibility that Linda might be put on trial in Iraq," Haase said. "She could be handed over to Germany."
Israeli border police officers stand near security gates at the holy site. Credit:AP "We are managing this in a level-headed, determined and responsible way," Netanyahu said in televised remarks before his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday. However, his right-wing government is wary of being seen to yield to Palestinian pressure over the site, which Jews revere as the vestige of their two ancient temples and which was among areas of East Jerusalem that Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed as its capital in a move not recognised internationally. Violence has erupted in the Gaza Strip over the security measures in Jerusalem. Credit:AP "They [metal detectors] will remain. The murderers will never tell us how to search the murderers," Tzachi Hanegbi, Israeli minister for regional development, told Army Radio.

"If they [Palestinians] do not want to enter the mosque, then let them not enter the mosque." In a statement, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said: "Jerusalem is a red line that Muslims and Arabs cannot allow to be crossed ... and what is happening today is an attempt to impose a new reality on the Holy city". "The Israeli government is playing with fire and risking a major crisis with the Arab and Islamic world." Incensed at what they perceive as a violation of delicate decades-old access arrangements at Islam's third-holiest site, many Palestinians have refused to go through the metal detectors, holding street prayers and often violent protests. Israeli security forces shot three demonstrators dead on Friday, Palestinian medics said. Police said they were investigating the charge. A fourth Jerusalem-area Palestinian was killed on Saturday when an explosive device he was building went off prematurely, the Israeli military said. Palestinian medics said he died of shrapnel wounds to the chest and abdomen.

Abbas ultimatum In a sign unrest was spreading, a Palestinian stabbed three Israelis in the occupied West Bank. On Sunday, a rocket was launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip but hit an open area, causing no damage, Israel's military said. Gilad Erdan, Israel's public security minister, warned of potential "large-scale volatility"  a prospect made more likely in the West Bank by the absence of Abbas' help. "If Israel wants security coordination to be resumed they have to withdraw those measures," Abbas said in a speech on Sunday, referring to the metal detectors.

"They should know that they will eventually lose, because we have been making it our solemn duty to keep up security on our side here and on theirs." Erdan said Israel may eventually do away with metal-detector checks for Muslims entering the al-Aqsa compound under alternative arrangements under review. Such arrangements could include reinforcing Israeli police at the entrances and introducing CCTV cameras with facial-recognition technologies. "There are, after all, many worshippers whom the police know, regulars, and very elderly people and so on, and it recommended that we avoid putting all of these through metal detectors," Erdan told Army Radio, suggesting that only potential trouble-makers might be subjected to extra screening. Any such substitute arrangement was not ready, he added. However, the Muslim authorities that oversee al-Aqsa said they would continue to oppose any new Israeli-imposed measures.

"We stress our absolute rejection of ... all measures by the Occupation [Israel] that would change the historical and religious status in Jerusalem and its sacred sites," the Palestinian grand mufti, acting Palestinian chief justice and Jordanian-run Waqf religious trust said in a joint statement. Speakers at the packed funeral for three Israelis killed on Friday - Yosef Salomon, 70, his daughter Chaya Salomon, 46, and son Elad Salomon, 35 - urged the Israeli government to reject Palestinian claims to the West Bank. "It's time to cut down the hope of the Arabs for a state in the land of Israel and to impose sovereignty in all of Judea and Samaria," said Rafi Mendel, an in-law who referred to the occupied territory using biblical names. Others called on the government to step up settlement building as "revenge" for the killings, saying the young assailant, Omar Abed, should have been killed rather than taken to a hospital after he was shot by an off-duty soldier who heard the family's screams. Hours before the attack, Abed posted a farewell note on Facebook accusing Israel of "desecrating" Islamic holy sites and vowing to "answer the call of al-Aqsa" with a knife.
Canadian police brought in sniffer dogs and rescue teams from four districts over the weekend as the search for Australian woman Sophie Dowsley continues.

The 34-year-old Melbourne woman has been missing in Canada since July 8, when she went on a hiking trip with her partner, Greg Tiffin, 44.

Search and Rescue Teams from across the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada are involved in the search for Sophie Dowsley.

His body was found by a dive team at Statlu Lake on July 18, but Ms Dowsley's family still holds out hope that she will be found alive.

Corporal Mike Rail, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), said sniffer dogs, along with an emergency response team, are now helping local police with the search.
The director of a property investment consultancy linked with a jailed former Westpac loan manager has been arrested following an investigation by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC).Bradley Silver, former director of Gold Coast property development company Capital Growth, was arrested by the Australian Federal Police at Brisbane Airport on 20 July. He was brought before the Brisbane Magistrates Court on the same day, charged with seven counts of fraud to the value of $2.32m and six counts of dishonest use of his position as a director.Silver has been released on conditional bail and will appear in the Brisbane Magistrates Court on 25 August. Bail conditions included surrendering his passport and refraining from leaving Australia or approaching any point of departure.As well as being a director of Capital Growth, Silver was also associated with a company called All About Property Developments.Together, the firms jointly ran a Tasmanian property development scheme which was utilised by former Westpac home finance manager David St Pierre. St Pierre was jailed in February this year for encouraging 11 elderly customers to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars and invest in the scheme between 2008 and 2013.One woman, who was 98 years old, was signed up to a 30 year loan. St Pierre then submitted the loan applications to Westpac using false documents and received cash bonuses of up to $15,000.While at Westpac, he obtained over $2.5m from investors and placed it into the now failed property development scheme. St Pierre was banned by ASIC in 2014 from engaging in credit activities.Investors agreed to loans between $100,000 and $740,000 after being told that the scheme was a fixed investment with 15% return, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.One investor talking to the paper said he was approached in November 2010 and signed off on a $350,000 loan. He arrived at Silvers Capital Growth offices three months afterwards to find it was totally empty with no furniture or employees as there had been before.Both Capital Growth and All About Property Developments were placed into liquidation in February 2011, owing investors about $9m.
Over 1,200 mail-in votes added to Montco totals; Bucks still in limbo

Two of Montgomery County's three commissioners said they did not support disenfranchising more than 1,200 voters because of a handful of rule breakers
Teen visits South Jersey in 50-state Flowers and Flags tribute to vets

Preston Sharp of Calif. visits veterans graves in Cinnaminson cemetery in South Jersey on 50-state Flowers and Flags tribute to their sacrifices
Assyrian Man Kidnapped, Killed in Syria

Dr. Basil Isaac, an Assyrian from Tel Shamiram in Syria, was kidnapped and killed by unknown assailants. ( AINA) Hasaka, Syria (AINA) -- The body of an Assyrian man, Dr. Basil Isaac, was found two days ago in a village eight kilometers west of Hasaka, three days after he was kidnapped. He died from a gun shot to the head. He was buried in his home village of Tel Shamiram. Dr. Isaac was the former dean of the farming college and deputy dean of the school of education at Euphrates University in Syria.

No ransom was demanded by the kidnappers, whose identity is unknown.

Tel Shamiram is one of the 35 Assyrian villages on the Khabur river in the Hasaka province that was captured by ISIS in 2015 (AINA 2015-02-23). 253 Assyrians were kidnapped and ransomed out in the following year. ISIS was subsequently driven out of the villages.
WE CROSSED A BRIDGE AND IT TREMBLED

Voices From Syria

Wendy Pearlman

Custom House/HarperCollins Publishers

290 pages; $24.99

THE HOME THAT WAS OUR COUNTRY

A Memoir of Syria

Alia Malek

Nation Books

334 pages; $27.99

I lived in a country where dying was taught to us from childhood, the writer Svetlana Alexievich said in her 2015 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. We were taught death. Alexievich was speaking of Belarus, where she grew up and where, during World War II, 2.2 million people died  nearly one person in four. The scale of this suffering seems impossible to fathom, numbers so large that the mind snaps shut. Yet one neednt cast back in history for such figures. Since the war in Syria began six years ago, 6.5 million people  more than one in three Syrians  have been internally displaced, and another 470,000 are dead. Now, as the war grinds into its seventh horrifying year, literature written in English and borne out of the conflict is finally beginning to reach the rest of the world.

Alia Maleks memoir, The Home That Was Our Country, is one of the finest examples of this new testimonial writing. Born in Baltimore to Syrian-American parents, Malek is a journalist and attorney who landed a job in the civil rights division of the Justice Department less than a year before 9/11. She quit the US for the West Asia, where she travelled and taught human rights for the better part of a decade.

In April 2011, Malek moved to the Syrian capital of Damascus to report in secret for The Nation and The New York Times. The country was in the initial throes of what many hoped would become a democratic uprising born out of the Arab Spring. Yet there were already terrible signs that the regime of Bashar al-Assad wasnt going to give up without bloody reprisals. In an attempt to quell reports of dissent, the regime banned many foreign journalists. Malek went to work anyway. As a cover story, she tells her Syrian cousins that shes writing a book about her maternal grandmother, Salma, the daughter of a Christian businessman, Sheikh Abdeljawwad al-Mir, born in the Ottoman Empire in 1889.

Her cover story wasnt entirely false, as that book becomes this one, and Malek grounds her narrative throughout in her grandmothers story. Salma, a charismatic and embittered matriarch, grew up as the chain-smoking daughter in a family that prized only men, and after suffering a stroke, spends the last seven years of her life in her Damascus apartment, locked in her body, paralysed yet alert, able to communicate only with her eyes. When Salma dies, she leaves behind a chic flat for Maleks family, which, after decades of feuding with a hostile tenant, they succeed in reclaiming.

As Syria burns, it falls to Malek to renovate the flat  haggling for light fixtures from the Electricity Souk during a blackout, and keeping an eye on a corrupt contractor while the Assad regime gasses its own people, drops barrel bombs  oil drums loaded with shrapnel  from helicopters, and disappears thousands to be tortured in underground prisons.

Malek observes almost none of this firsthand. Instead, her war is largely made up of what she cant see. She lives day to day under the cloud of claustrophobia and menace that dominates the Syrian capital, where her presence poses a significant risk both to herself and to her Syrian family.

Although it becomes increasingly clear that her family would prefer that Malek leave Syria immediately, she stays on for two years, conducting clandestine interviews with ordinary Syrians undertaking extreme acts of courage  from those shuttling medical supplies to besieged areas to others launching ingenious and nonviolent protests against the regime. Some have survived unspeakable horrors in the basement of the nearby office of the security forces.

In her neighbourhood, as elsewhere, she realises, the proximity of the mukhabarat, as the security forces are called, has a double purpose. Their nearness terrifies local civilians into submission.

By contrast, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled chronicles Syrian lives that are anything but normal. In it, Wendy Pearlman, a professor of politics at Northwestern University, collects the accounts of refugees, most of whom have fled the brutality of the Assad regime. Many of these voices render themselves unforgettable. A doctor named Annas tells Pearlman during an interview in Turkey how he and others found unconventional ways to treat protesters gassed by the regime: People were choking on tear gas and wed pour cola on their faces, which counters the effect of gas. Their faces were sticky and glistening.

These oral histories arent dutiful case studies. Instead, Pearlman shapes her subjects narratives, winnowing interviews down to stirring illustrations of human adaptation. In a tent in Lebanons Bekaa Valley, Pearlman finds a woman named Bushra, a mother who has, five years into the war, raised her children largely on the move and out of doors by necessity. One day, she took her young daughter to a womans centre, which was in an actual building. After living in a tent, she was amazed by the real walls and real floors, Bushra tells Pearlman.

What makes Pearlmans and Maleks particularly necessary is their insistence on foregrounding the extraordinary heroism of ordinary Syrians  both those who remain trapped in the yoke of an oppressive regime, and those struggling to make new lives in unwelcoming places.



 2017 The New York Times News Service
The Delhi government told Philip Morris International Inc and other tobacco on Saturday to remove all advertisements from tobacco shops in the city, warning them of legal action if they do not comply.
State-owned Indian Bank said it has initiated cases at the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) against seven more accounts worth Rs 1,200 crore. Indian Bank is the sole lender in all these accounts, said Kishor Piraji Kharat, managing director and CEO of the bank.
is planning to add 8-10 projects to its portfolio in 2017-18 involving an investment of up to Rs 800 crore, a top company official said.

They will be a combination of greenfield and brownfield projects, Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Brotin Banerjee told PTI in Mumbai.

The implementation of Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act (Rera) and goods and services tax (GST) is likely to spur consolidation in the sector, which presents an opportunity for to expand its portfolio, he added.

"There is already a slowdown in the sector and now with the addition of new regulations of Rera and GST, those with access to very large land banks or projects and not in a position to sustain in future are looking at consolidating. We see this as an opportunity for expanding our portfolio," he said.

Banerjee said the company wants to expand its portfolio substantially and is looking at three routes  joint venture, joint development and outright buyout of assets.

When asked whether the valuations were attractive and the sellers ready to take a haircut, he said, "Sellers are far more reasonable now about valuations and land prices. This is one good thing that has happened due to the slowdown. Hopefully, rightly priced projects or land banks can be acquired and rightly priced inventory can be sold."



Out of these 8-10 projects, around 3-4 would be under its affordable housing division Tata Value Homes, he said.

"We are looking at 3-4 projects which are in the affordable segment. We are also waiting for the public-private partnership policy on affordable housing to be formulated, which is likely to come in the next couple of months," he said.

The company is looking at cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, among others, for expansion.

"At the moment, we are not looking at smaller, tier-II or tier-III Indian cities," Banerjee added.
The ongoing protest by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation's (DMRC) non-executive employees was called off on Sunday after all the issues raised by the agitating employees were amicably settled following many rounds of meetings and deliberations with Managing Director Mangu Singh and other senior officials.

Delhi Metro's non-executive staff's, including train operators and maintenance workers, protest was held over a demand for hike in their pay.

The Delhi Metro services will continue according to schedule on Monday onwards, Delhi Metro Spokesman Anuj Dayal said.

The issue was also deliberated in detail on Saturday in a high level meeting chaired by Ministry of Urban Development secretary D S Mishra and Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi's Chief Secretary Dr M M Kutty with Mangu Singh.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on Friday flagged critical shortage of ammunition in the Indian Army.

In its report that was tabled in Parliament, the CAG found deficiencies in the performance of the Ordinance Factory Board (OFB) and found no improvement in the functioning of its factories in comparison to what it was in 2013.

The report pointed out two critical shortages in the artillery and tank ammunition and blamed the OFB for failing to deliver as per the roadmap that was set in 2013.

"We observed no significant improvement in the availability of ammunition (September 2016)..availability of 55 per cent types of ammunitions was below MARL i.e. minimum inescapable requirement to be maintained for operational preparedness and 40 percent types of ammunitions were in critical level, having stock of less than 10 days," the CAG report noted

Former artillery officer Lieutenant General V. K. Chaturvedi (Retired) told ANI that the report highlights shortages in ammunitions, especially in the electronic fuses that are used for explosives and missiles.

"The issue is more to do with the critical scarcity in electronic fuses. Only ammunition required for small weapons don't use fuses or chargers. Thus the ammunitions used in artillery explosives, missiles, mortars are going to suffer due to this scarcity," he said.

Highlighting the situation, another expert (Retired) Major General D. K. Mehta said, "Deficiency across the board is alarming. We have to maintain war wastage reserve and also have to cater for the practice ammunition which is done annually. Thus the scarcity as projected by the CAG report further adds to the criticality."

A former officer also noted that the scarcity in ammunitions in war wastage reserve would severely hamper the training of army.

"Ammunition is critical piece of operational preparedness and therefore we must assure that the minimum acceptable level of ammunition is always available. And where there is a shortfall I am given to understand that government is making efforts to make it up," former Armored Corps officer Retired Lieutenant General A .K. Singh told ANI.

The report said there was a wasteful expenditure on procurement of 'incompatible' Outboard Motors that cost Rs 1.26 crore.

"Outboard Motors (OBM) costing Rs 1.26 crore, which were procured by invoking Army Commander Special Financial Powers to meet immediate requirement in Northern Command, could not be utilised. 46 out of 50 OBMs have been used for less than 10 hours in seven years," the report states.

(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.)
"I am a creation of this Parliament whose political outlook and persona has been shaped by this temple of democracy," said President Pranab Mukherjee while addressing the parliamentarians during his farewell ceremony on the eve of his demitting office as the 13th President of India.



ALSO READ: Full text of President Pranab Mukherjee's farewell speech


Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Shashi Tharoor on Sunday asserted that there should be no brouhaha over states having their own flags.

"So, as long as there are set rules for it I don't see any issue in states having their flags," Tharoor said in Bengaluru in an address.

"There should be clear rules that flag of states cannot be [a] substitute of a flag and it should be smaller and fly lower," he added.

The Karnataka government constituted a nine-member committee to submit a report on the possibility of designing a separate flag for the state.

Journalist-writer and president of Karnataka Vidyavardhaka Sangha, Dharward, Patil Puttappa and social worker Bheemappa Gundappa Gadada had submitted a representation to the government, following which the committee was constituted.

They had urged the government to design a separate flag for Kannada 'naadu' and accord statutory standing for that.

Earlier on Tuesday, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah defended the demand for a separate flag for the state, asking if there is any provision in the Constitution that prohibits the state from having its own flag.
The chairman of parliamentary panel on finance M Veerappa Moily on Sunday said he was for changing the financial year to January-December, but the government should not rush the process lest it disrupt the economy.
Concerned about new ports eating into the profitability and business of India's 12 major ports, a parliamentary panel has recommended that no new port be allowed in 100 km vicinity of top ports without a nod from a board.

The recommendation assumes significance in the wake of 12 major ports losing about 33 per cent market share to non-major and private ports.

"New ports are coming up in the vicinity of major ports affecting their business and profitability. The committee, therefore, recommends that no new ports be established in the 100 km vicinity of existing major ports without the permission of board..," Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport said in its latest report.

The 31-member committee, chaired by Mukul Roy has given its recommendations after examining the Major Port Authorities Bill, 2016, referred to it by the Rajya Sabha Chairman on January 12 this year.

The bill seeks to provide greater autonomy to the 12 ports in decision-making besides repealing of Major Port Trusts Act of 1963.

The committee said the need for restricting new ports was felt as there has been a paradigm shift with non-major ports and private ports accounting for more than 40 per cent of market share of the cargo handled.

"The major ports have lost around 33 per cent of their market share in the last two decades. Moreover, transshipment of containers is taking place in foreign ports such as Colombo, Singapore which causes great loss to Indian ports," it said.

India has 12 major ports under the Centre - Kandla, Mumbai, JNPT, Mormugao, New Mangalore, Cochin, Chennai, Ennore, V O Chidambaranar, Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata (including Haldia) which handle approximately 61 per cent of the country's total cargo traffic.

Besides, there are about 200 non-major ports and private ports in the country.

The 12 ports handled a record 647.43 million tonnes (MT) of cargo in 2016-17 registering an annual growth rate of 6.79 per cent against 4.32 per cent in 2015-16.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is worried about the failure of Republican governing reality to match Republican campaign rhetoric. Newt told Fox News, I would say the highest focus ought to be on getting the tax bill through because if we dont have economic growth next year, I think were in real danger of having Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Big time Texas donor Doug Deason has already told Curator of the Senate Mitch McConnell that his wallet is a dry hole until McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan produce results on health care and tax reform. And Deason isnt the only donor heading for the customer service window hoping someone is there to ask for a refund.

Sean Lansing, of the Koch brothers Americans for Prosperity, told Lifezette there should be consequences for repeated failure.

Now that legislative mastermind McConnell has failed to repeal and replace Obamacare followed by failure to just repeal, it looks like Deason is going to have a long-term increase in his disposable income.

Members of the base like you and I cant pressure the likes of McConnell and Ryan individually with our wallets, but we can pressure them with our votes in aggregate.

Thats why I propose conservative voters to join together and help make Newts fears come true: Lets Lose the House to Win the Future.

The corporate Republicans running the House and Senate view the conservative base, which loyally keeps them in office, in much the same way arrogant Victorian explorers viewed the natives in Africa: Dangerous savages who are useful for toting ballot boxes on their heads, but need to be house-broken before allowed into polite society.

Thats why the bubble-dwelling GOP establishment must be sent a message that will break through the impervious barrier of complacency and arrogance that surrounds their Capitol Hill offices. And Nancy Pelosi is just the person to deliver it.

This requires conservatives to change their voting behavior in November 2018. In the past conservatives held their nose and voted for RINO Republicans, because the thought of the Democrat alternative in office was too terrible to contemplate.

As a result the base was rewarded with accommodationist weaklings who preside over the Vichy government that currently rules us.

Now its time to embrace the alternative. Conservatives must refuse to vote for all Republican House incumbents  unless your representative is a member of the House Freedom Caucus. This doesnt mean you vote for the Democrat.

Instead I suggest all participants in my Lose the House to Win the Future campaign write in Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the genuinely conservative Freedom Caucus. Thousands of write-in votes for Meadows, spread across the country will be an obvious protest vote by conservatives that cannot be ignored by the Rep. Barney Fifes cowering in DC.

Meadows and the rest of the Freedom Caucus will be the framework around which a new conservative House leadership can be built  ready to resume power when conservatives vote for House Republicans in 2020.

Let me stress House votes are to be the only change for conservatives. Votes for Senate GOP candidates will remain unchanged, even if your only choice is a nose-holder like media parasite Lindsey Graham (R-MSNBC). It simply takes too long to regain control of the Senate. Besides, just the shock of the House loss may inspire Graham and his ilk to find those conservative campaign promises that have evidently slipped down between the sofa cushions.

Sure Democrat wild-eyed pistol takers in the House will pass gun confiscation bills, grant illegal aliens citizenship and demand Baptists dance at same-sex weddings, but it wont matter. The same McConnell-sclerosis that clogs the Senate will stop those bills, too.

My Lose the House to Win the Future is like the old joke about the farmer and the mule. Before every turn the farmer would jump down from the wagon seat and hit the mule with a 2X4. A passerby saw this and asked why hit the mule, since the wagon made all the turns?

The farmer replied, yes thats true, but first you have to get the mules attention.

Losing the House in 2018 will be the biggest attention-getter possible.

Michael Shannon is a commentator and a public relations consultant. He can be reached at mandate.mmpr@gmail.com.
Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.

Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.

Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.

Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.

26 years of website archives.
Over half of India currently faces sugar deficit despite existence of huge carryover stocks from the previous year and bumper output in some states including Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. Deficient monsoon rain so far has threatened recovery in sugar production this season, the second year in a row, pushing sugar prices to a three-month high in the past few weeks.
The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has agreed not to go ahead with the divestment of MSTC's arm Ferro Scrap Nigam (FSNL) as the entity has no tangible assets barring machinery, a top official said.

FSNL, under the administrative control of the Steel Ministry, undertakes disposal of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap arising from integrated steel plants under Steel Authority of India (SAIL), Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL), among others and disposal of scrap and surplus stores from other public sector units (PSUs) and government departments.

"We are removing FSNL  a subsidiary of MSTC  from disinvestment list because it does not have anything. No land. It just has [an] equipment," Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma told PTI.

MSTC is a metal scrap trading PSU. It also renders services to steel and petrochemical sectors for raw material support and provides e-commerce services.

"SAIL permits them to do the scrap sale or making its pellets as it is a PSU. So it does not make any sense for a buyer because SAIL cannot give it to a private person for conversion. So what will anybody do by taking scrap machinery," the Secretary said.

"In the last meeting that I had in PMO they all agreed that it should be removed," the Secretary said.

The Centre had earlier said that it intends to disinvest its equity, which is equivalent to 89.85 per cent of the total voting equity share capital in MSTC to a strategic investor along with management control of MSTC and its wholly owned subsidiary FSNL through a competitive bidding process.
Around 15 Conservative party MPs have agreed to sign a no-confidence motion against British Prime Minister Theresa May as part of a plot to oust her, according to a media report.

Although the letter of no confidence falls short of the 48 names required to trigger a leadership contest, the UK Parliament's summer break could prove critical for May's future as British prime minister, The Sunday Times reported.

"The numbers change from day to day depending on what's happened but there are about 15 who are fairly consistent in their desire for change. If she has a quiet summer and there are no crises and things are not mismanaged then she might be able to cling on beyond conference, but that is still a big if," a former minister was quoted as saying.

The reports come days after a summer party in the House of Commons last week where May pleaded with her MPs to "go away and have a proper break and come back ready for serious business".

"No backbiting, no carping. The choice is me or (Opposition Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn  and no one wants him," Conservative MPs who were present reported her as saying.

Meanwhile, a Conservative party survey indicates that some Tory grassroots MPs want May to quit by Christmas time this year.

The survey carried out by the Party Members' Project, comes as Parliament stands down for the summer but with bitter party infighting and behind-the-scenes plotting expected to continue over the recess.

It found 21 per cent of members backed Brexit minister David Davis, 17 per cent preferred foreign minister Boris Johnson, while the third choice was backbencher Jacob Rees- Mogg, who has something of a cult following, but was backed by just six per cent of those surveyed.

A quarter of respondents said they did not know or could not say who the next leader would be. However, most Conservatives are keen to avoid a leadership contest until the Brexit negotiations have concluded in 2019, and would prefer to let May finish the job  and carry the can  in the event of a poor deal with the European Union (EU).
The Irish government is setting up a fund to manage the estimated $13 billion ($15.2 billion) it will collect from Inc. in back taxes, nearly a year after the European Commission ruled the country had provided a sweetheart deal on tax to the US firm.
North Korea has warned South Korea for condemning their country's intercontinental ballistic missile test, saying that the latter would have to pay a harsh price for it.

Sputnik quoted media reports saying that the North Korean paper Rodong Sinmun stated that South Korea would pay a price in the harshest way for daring to challenge their loft system and self-defence measure.

On July 19, the South Korean National Assembly adopted a resolution criticising North Korea's Hwasong-14 missile test, saying that continued provocations by the latter could lead to the extinction of the country's leadership.

Earlier on July 4, North Korea conducted its first successful test of a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14, that it says can "reach anywhere in the world."

An Intercontinental Ballistic Missile reached a height of 2,802 kilometres (1741 miles).
Seventy Afghans were abducted from their village along the main highway in the south of the country, and at least seven were killed, police said, accusing the Taliban of the kidnappings.

Around 30 villagers have been released but at least 30 are missing, Abdul Raziq, the head of Kandahar provincial police told AFP, which was confirmed by officials at the Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar and Kabul.
A senior official in the Saudi-led alliance said Qatari officials must revise their policies before direct talks to resolve the crisis could begin. While dialog is important, it should be based on a Qatari review of actions, United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said on Twitter. Repeating the same positions deepens the crisis, he said late on Saturday.
Iran has rejected US President Trump's demand for release of detained Americans, describing it as an "interference and unacceptable stand", local media reported on Sunday.

"The meddlesome and threatening statements by the US would not affect the Iranian Judiciary's determination to prosecute and punish the violators of Iran's law and national security," Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Qasemi stressed the independence of Iranian Judiciary, adding that it is responsible to deal with the actions and moves that threaten the national security.

He also said that the US administration is pursuing an incorrect and illegal approach of threatening other countries and interfering in their internal affairs.

The spokesman asked Washington to immediately release the Iranian nationals who have been jailed in the US on "false" charges.

On Friday, Trump warned Iran of "new and serious consequences" if Iran did not release the imprisoned Americans.

"President Trump is prepared to impose new and serious consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens are released and returned," said the White House in a statement.

The US statement followed earlier remarks by an Iranian Judiciary official that an Iranian court has sentenced a US national to 10 years in prison over spying charges.

The person who holds dual nationality of the US and another country had snooped into Iran to gather documents and intelligence, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie, spokesman for Iranian Judiciary, told the reporters.

Iran has sentenced several such nationals, some of them hold US citizenship, over spying charges in the past few years.

The latest example dates back to September 2016, when Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced the arrest of an Iranian-American in the country's northeastern province of Golestan over charges of spying and breaching security.

In August 2016, Iran reportedly arrested another person, also with dual citizenships, accusing him of links to Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6.
Reiterating Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray's remark that Prime Minister Narendra Modi government's 'achhe din' is only on paper, the Congress on Sunday advised the former to walk out of alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Speaking to ANI here, Congress leader Priyank Kharge said, "It is a fact that Modi Government's "achhe din" is only on paper. Shiv Sena has raised a valid point and being a partner if they are really serious about it, they should walk out of alliance."

Kharge further added that there is a complete collapse in foreign diplomacy, adding that manufacturing is at its slowest because of the economic policies adopted by the Central Government.

The Shiv Sena has once again targeted ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) , asserting that the latter's good days are only limited to government advertisements whereas the truth is different.

Questioning the decision of Prime Minister Modi government regarding demonetisation drive and Goods and Services Tax (GST), Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray warned that despite being a Democratic Alliance (NDA)ally, he won't hesitate speaking against the things which are not right.

"Nearly 15 lakh people's have lost their jobs in the last four months and what is the arrangement made by the government for the ones who have lost their jobs?" Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna quoted Thackeray as saying.

He also attacked the Central Government stating that when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, he had provided Panchayati Raj to the lower level instead of running the government from Delhi.

"The achhe din are only in advertisements. Do we have true democracy in the country if all affairs are going to be run as per the wishes of the Prime Minister? He is centralizing power at the Centre, instead of decentralising it. He is taking away the independence of the states," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
   -     :        ,        
Batfleck fans, we have some good news for you. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ben Affleck has set the record straight about his future as Batman, saying he plans to remain part of the DC Extended Universe.

He said, "Let me be very clear. I am the luckiest guy in the world. Batman is the coolest part in the universe. I'm so thrilled to do it. It's fucking amazing."

He said that after two film appearances as Batman, he still can't believe he gets to play the part.

The 'Live by Night' star underlined that he has talked to Warners' heads Kevin Tsujihara, Sue Kroll and Toby Emmerich about the role.

"We want you to be the Batman' they told me, and I believe them," he said.

He then brought up Matt Reeves' movie in development and exclaimed, "I would be an ape on the ground for Matt Reeves!"

Later in the presentation, he reiterated that he loves "being in Hall H and being able to say, "I'm Batman."

Reeves is set to direct 'The Batman' and has eyes on making a trilogy with the character.

Reeves has dropped a script by Affleck and Geoff Johns, and Affleck once was attached to direct himself.

'The Batman' still does not have a release date.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday continued to put pressure on Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) case against Tejaswi Yadav and warned that they will not let the House function if an adequate response did not come from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo.

Talking to the media in Patna, senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said, "Nitish Kumar has no defence so he must immediately suspend Tejaswi Yadav. JD(U) (Janata Dal (United)) is asking for a response since there has been enough delay in the matter. There is a strong case against Lalu Yadav's son. He has to clarify on the anonymous assets."

The CBI has registered a corruption case against Lalu, his wife Rabri Devi, son Tejaswi and former Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) Managing Director P K Goyal, and the wife of Lalu's confidante Prem Chand Gupta, Sujata on allegations of awarding the tender for development, maintenance and operation of hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2006.

The CBI later questioned Rabri Devi and Tejaswi.

Lalu had earlier made it clear that his son Tejaswi Yadav, who is facing corruption charges, will not resign as Bihar Deputy Chief Minister saying 'politically motivated' CBI raids and filing of a first information report (FIR) can't be the ground for Tejaswi 's resignation.

"We are facing attacks from all sides. BJP is behind this. We will expose them in Bhajpa Hatao Desh Bachao rally on 27 August", Lalu added.

Tejaswi Yadav also remained defiant about not succumbing to the pressure or resigning, citing that the charges were a part of a political vendetta against him and his family.

"I can only say this is a political vendetta by the BJP. The main leaders attached to it are Amit Shah and Narendra Modi. They have always been scared of my father, but it seems they are scared of me too. Right from the beginning, they are trying to break the 'mahagathbandhan', and accuse us in all possible ways. Not just us, they are always ready to malign Bihar for all possible crime," he said.

Meanwhile, the BJP has stressed that Tejashwi has only two options now- tender resignation or get sacked.
After Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Murlidhar Patidar reportedly said that Below Poverty Line (BPL) card holders must rear at least one cow each and if they fail to do so, they should be barred from BPL facilities, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said that such things are meant to bolster the communal activities.

"This is a ridiculous proposition. To rear a cow is very expensive and if the family is in position to rear cows then they are not BPL. It is a clear cut communal propaganda. And it's meant only to bolster the communal activities which the Gau Rakshaks are doing. This clearly cannot be accepted," Yechury told ANI.

The proposal by the BJP MLA came as members of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, while discussing a 'non-government resolution', agreed that the stray cows were raiding agricultural land and proving to be a threat to the farmers.

According to reports, a resolution was moved by BJP MLA Shankarlal Tiwari, to seek an end to an old practice where farmers let go their cows post-harvest to allow them to graze, as according to him, such practices were adding to the number of stray cows.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced freezing of Palestine's contacts with Israel, the nation's campaign for Jerusalem has effectively begun.

Sputnik quoted media reports stating that campaign for Jerusalem has effectively begun and will not stop until a Palestinian victory and the release of the holy sites from Israeli occupation.

Palestine's ruling party Fatah praised the Palestinians, who protested in Jerusalem over metal detectors being installed by Israel at the entrances to the sacred Temple Mount compound.

Fatah even described Israel's move of metal detectors installation as "racist".

Abbas said that he would freeze all contacts with Israel until Jerusalem commits on canceling all the measures against Palestinian people in general and especially in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque.

The Palestinian President has been in touch with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, seeking their intervention in the Temple Mount conflict.

Earlier, Palestinian worshippers and Israeli Police clashed outside the Old City of Jerusalem amid tensions over the Israeli authorities' decision to bar male worshippers under 50 from entering the area for Friday prayers.

Clashes erupted near al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem's Old City.

The unrest occurred outside Herod's Gate as Israeli Police restricted younger men from entering the Old City of Jerusalem and Temple Mount, also known as the Noble Sanctuary, as tensions continue to rise over the installation of metal detectors outside the al Aqsa or Temple Mount compound for increasing security. The restrictions were imposed after a fatal shooting last week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday said the Centre is make all efforts to trace the 39 Indians held captive by terror group ISIS in Mosul since 2014.

"As Petroleum Minister, I know the intricacies of Iraq. The Central Government is trying its best to rescue Indian citizens. The government is very keen and is trying its best. The family should keep patience," Pradhan said.

"I was in Istanbul the day Mosul got free from the ISIS. There is a very challenging situation," he added.

Earlier in the day, the Iraq Embassy to India informed that search operations are underway to locate the 39 missing Indians, further assuring there is a high level coordination between concerned Iraqi and Indian authorities to locate them.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah had also defended External Affairs Minister (EAM) Sushma Swaraj and said that the search operation of 39 missing Indians in Iraq's Mosul was underway and the Centre was not misleading the nation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday arrived in the Saudi city of Jeddah on the first leg of his Gulf tour that will also include Kuwait and Qatar, aimed at defusing the stand-off between Qatar and its Arab neighbours.

Erdogan was greeted by a number of Saudi officials upon his arrival at Jeddah's King Abdulaziz International Airport.

During his two-day visit to the Gulf region, Erdogan will first meet Saudi leadership and then go to Kuwait and Qatar.

Speaking at the Istanbul Airport before his departure, Tayyip Erdogan said no one has any interest in prolonging this crisis anymore.

He expressed the hope that his visit will be beneficial for the region.

The Turkish leader separately met with Saudi King Salman and his Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Erdogan is being accompanied by a high-profile delegation that includes Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Berat Albayrak, Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli, Chief of Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar, and National Intelligence Organization (MIT) chief Hakan Fidan, the Anadolu News Agency reported.

The Middle East has been plunged into one of its worst diplomatic crises in decades after nine countries cut ties with Qatar, one of the richest states in the Middle East, calling into question the future of a powerful 36-year-old Gulf states union since June 5.

Arab countries had insisted that Doha should fulfill 13 precise demands including reducing diplomatic ties with Iran and supporting counter-terrorism or specify the deadline for them to comply.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Rashtriya Sawayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has urged the Jammu and Kashmir Government and the Government of India to fill the vacant seats in the state's Assembly and Council that have been allocated to the Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) constituency so that Islamabad's claim of the territory stands null and void.

"The PoK has been given 24 Assembly seats and six seats in the Council within Jammu and Kashmir. I urge everyone, from Farooq Abdullah to (Chief Minster) Mehbooba, to fill those seats. The fact that even after 70 years, these seats have been lying vacant means that the PoK does not belong to Pakistan," senior RSS pracharak and executive member Indresh Kumar told ANI.

He also hit out at Conference leader and former chief minister Farooq Abdullah for suggesting that Kashmir issue can be resolved if India approaches third party countries like America and China.

"Abdullah is a politician whom should not be considered seriously," he said.

Kumar said his statements stands in contradiction to Congress wherein former prime minister Indira Gandhi had ruled out third party intervention in Kashmir.

Adbullah on July 21 said India has so many allies across the globe, which can be approached for settling the Kashmir issue to act as a mediator between India and Pakistan.

"For how long are you going to wait? Sometimes, you have to pull the bull by its horns. The way is to have a dialogue. India has so many friends all across the world. They can ask them to act as a mediator. U.S. President Trump himself said that he wants to settle Kashmir problem. China also said that it wants to mediate in Kashmir. Somebody has to be approached," Abdullah said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid a potential "narcotics emergency" being faced by Indonesia, President Joko Widodo, has ordered law enforcement officers to shoot drug traffickers.

"Be firm, especially to foreign drug dealers who enter the country and resist arrest. Shoot them because we indeed are in a narcotics emergency position now," the Guardian quoted Widodo as saying.

His remarks have been compared to those of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, who about a year ago launched an anti-drug crackdown in which thousands of alleged drug dealers and drug users were killed.

The United Nations has joined the international community in condemning the current developments underway in Phillipines.

Widodo has previously been criticised for ordering the execution of convicted drug traffickers who were given a death penalty by the court.

Widodo's order came a week after the Indonesian police gunned down a Taiwanese man, who was part of a group trying to smuggle a tonne of crystal methamphetamine into the country. The police claim he was killed for resisting arrest.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iran announced the launch of its new missile production line Sayyad 3 missile, in the backdrop of tension between the United States (U.S.) and Tehran.

Quoting Iran's state-owned media, Sputnik reports that the country's new Sayyad 3 missile can travel up to 120 kilometers and reach an altitude of 27 kilometers.

Iranian Defence Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, during the inauguration ceremony of the missile launch said that Sayyad 3 has been designed based on the world's latest technologies.

Dehghan said that it can engage different types of threats, such as radar evasive fighter planes, unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise missiles, helicopters, as well as various types of modern aircraft of high maneuvering capabilities and speed within the sphere of its operation.

Last week, the U.S. slapped economic sanctions on Iran, by targeting 18 individuals and entities for supporting Iran's ballistic missile launch.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iraq Foreign Minister Dr. Ibrahim al-Jaafari will embark on a five day visit to India beginning July 24, at the invitation of Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

Dr. Ibrahim will land in the national capital on Monday, July 24 at around 2:30 a.m. at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Terminal- III.

He will meet Swaraj, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan to hold discussion on the entire gamut of bilateral relations between both the countries as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.

The visit is expected to add further impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement.

In the afternoon at around 3 p.m. he will hold a meeting with Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan at Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Shastri Bhawan.

Later in the day, at around 4:30 p.m. has will meet Vice President Hamid Ansari at 6, Maulana Azad Road.

On the second day of his visit, Dr. Ibrahim will attend a programme in New Delhi and on Wednesday, July 26, he will fly to Mumbai to attend a programme there.

On the fourth day of his visit, the Iraqi foreign minister will come back here to be a part of another programme and on Friday July 28, he will emplane to Iraq at around 4 a.m.

Dr. Ibrahim will be accompanied by a senior-level official delegation.

"India and Iraq have historically enjoyed close and friendly political, economic and cultural ties. Our robust bilateral trade amounted to nearly US$ 13 billion in 2016-17. Iraq contributes significantly to India's energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to us (over 37 MMT during 2016-17). Thousands of Indians visit Iraq annually for pilgrimage to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala," Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement.

Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh had visited Iraq this year to coordinate and facilitate the return of the Indians stuck in Iraq.

Earlier in August 2016, Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar visited Iraq.

Bilateral trade till August 2016 between India and Iraq was of USD 5077 Mn of which India's Exports accounted for USD 425 Mn and Imports for 4652 Mn.

Indian exports to Iraq consist of cereals, iron and steel, meat and meat products, pharmaceutical products, agro chemicals, cosmetics, rubber manufactured products, paints, gems and jewellery, ceramics, manufactures of metals, machine tools, electrical machinery and instruments, transport equipment, electronic goods, handicrafts, sugar, tea, garments.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
In a major success, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested four men after an encounter in Greater Noida today, in connection with the brutal Jewar gang-rape and murder case.

Addressing the media, Senior Superintendent of police, Love Kumar said one of the arrested persons suffered a bullet injury on his leg, while two accused managed to escape.

"The four arrested men were involved in gang rape of four women and murder of their male relative on May 25 off the Yamuna Express. One of them has received bullet injury in the leg and has been hospitalized. Three others have been taken for questioning," he said.

Confirming the arrest, SP Kumar said, "The four arrested men were involved in gang rape of four women and murder of their male relative on May 25 in Yamuna Express."

"The two men taking benefit of darkness fled from the spot after which we launched a combing operation. We are hopeful of arresting them soon," he added.

SP Kumar said they went after the suspects following a tip off about the presence of six criminals near Sabota village underpass.

The Police also informed that they managed to scuttle another similar crime the gang had planned and the arrested persons aged between 27 to 35.

Kumar further informed that three country-made pistols, along with cartridges, iron rod, and a car were recovered from the possession of the criminals.

He said the arrested have been identified as Raju, Rakesh, Jai Singh and Deepak.

In an attempt to get hold of the two accused who escaped taking benefit of darkness, Kumar said that the police has launched a combing operation in the area.

The criminals had allegedly abducted a family from the highway in Jewar and gangraped four women and murdered a male member on May 25.

The family was going to Bulandshahr.

The criminals intercepted their car and led them to a field adjacent to Jewar-Bulandshahr highway, where they gangraped four women of the same family. When a male member resisted, he was shot dead.

The Uttar Pradesh government had to face opposition's flak as the incident attracted outrage.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With Congress leader Shashi Tharoor saying he has no objection to states having their own flags, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday asked Congress President Sonia Gandhi to make her stand clear on the same.

"Sonia Gandhi must speak up her position on the issue. They (Congress) cannot take one position in Bengaluru and other [in] New Delhi. We will not allow them to pursue this hypocrisy," BJP leader G V L Narasimha Rao told ANI.

Rao said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has failed on all fronts of governance and having misgoverned for four and a half years, he is now diverting public attention from his misgovernance.

"His misgovernance is simply not going to go away despite his best effort. People of Karnataka will hand a resounding defeat to him at a time when elections are held," he said.

Earlier in the day, Tharoor asserted that there is no problem in having separate flags for states as long as there are set of rules for that.

"There should be clear rules that flag of state cannot be [a] substitute of [the] flag and it should be smaller and fly lower. So as long as there are set rules for it I don't see any issue in states having their flags," Tharoor said.

On July 18, the Karnataka government constituted a nine-member committee to submit a report to the state government on the possibility of designing a separate flag for the state.

The Committee was constituted after a representation was submitted to the state government by Journalist-writer and president of Karnataka Vidyavardhaka Sangha, Dharward, Patil Puttappa and social worker Bheemappa Gundappa Gadada.

They had urged the government to design a separate flag for Kannada 'naadu' and accord statutory standing for that.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has defended the demand for a separate flag for the state, asking if there is any provision in the Constitution that prohibits the state from having its own flag.

"Is there any provision in the Constitution that prohibits a state to have its own flag? Did BJP people come across any provision?" Siddaramaiah said.
A day after Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad Yadav was denied direct access to the Patna Airport tarmac, the Congress on Sunday said that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government's prime job is to trouble the leaders of the opposition parties.

Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed said that the Centre is leaving no stone unturned in targeting leaders of opposition parties, and is using various means in doing so.

"The only thing left for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government is to target opposition leaders. They have only one job which is to trouble opposition leaders by scrapping their facilities or targeting them with help of ED, CBI, and other investigative agencies. They are making all effort to disturb leaders of the opposition parties," said Ahmed.

However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP said that the withdrawal of tarmac access for Lalu Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi is a welcome sign as it gives out a message that there is no space for VVIP culture in a democracy.

BJP leader Gaurav Bhatia said that the step initiated by the civil aviation industry asserts that every individual in a democratic nation is important.

"It is a very welcomed step by the civil aviation ministry and it also sends out a strong message that every individual is important and there is no VVIP in a democracy. This principle needs to be followed," said Bhatia.

The Central Government yesterday scrapped Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi's direct access to Patna Airport tarmac.

Their 'privilege' has been scrapped by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. This move has been taken as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's aim to end the VVIP culture rampant among politicians.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Denying that his client had concealed his employment in Dubai based company, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's lawyer, Khawaja Harris has submitted a written reply in the Supreme Court on Saturday, stating that Prime Minister mentioned his Dubai job and Iqama in nomination papers of 2013.

The written reply has details of employment of Prime Minister Sharif at Capital FZE, Dubai-based company and had received an iqama (work permit) from the Gulf. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) had raised the question after unearthing an offshore company related to the Prime Minister during investigations into the money laundering allegations against the Sharif family during the Panamagate hearings, the Dawn reported.

A three-member bench of the Pakistan's Supreme Court on Friday concluded the entire hearings and reserved the judgment in the Panamagate case in which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family are accused of amassing offshore assets. The date of the judgment is yet to be announced and if convicted, Prime Minister Sharif can face disqualification from .

"The allegation that the employment with Capital FZE was concealed by the prime minister is totally false," reads the reply.

A copy of the premier's passport bearing the work permit was annexed to the 2013 nomination papers, along with a document of his employment at the company, according to the reply.

The documents were attached to the nomination forms as "there was no separate column in the forms for any such information to be provided," the reply says. Last week, Harris had conceded before the apex court that Nawaz Sharif's son Hassan Nawaz was the owner of Capital FZE.

He claimed that though the prime minister was the designated chairman of the board, he did not draw any salary.

The JIT, which was investigating allegations of money laundering against the Sharif family, submitted its report to the Supreme Court on July 10 and accused them of concealing the information from tax authorities that involves four apartments in Park Lane area of London and Nawaz Sharif's job as chairman of Capital FZE before running for the post of prime minister in 2013.
Hitting out at Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, Democratic Alliance (NDA) Vice-Presidential nominee M. Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday asked Islamabad to recall the 1971 war and said that aiding and abetting terror will not help them.

Addressing "Kargil Parakram Parade" here, Naidu said terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion and it has unfortunately become Pakistan's state policy.

"Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them, they should recall what happened in 1971 and should focus on their own country and maintain peace there..Terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion. Pakistan is mixing terrorism with religion. It has unfortunately become Pakistan's state policy," he added.

He further said that Kashmir is an integral part of India and not an "inch" of it will be allowed to be taken.

"We are a peace loving people, we never attacked any country and this is our specialty. We don't want war, we don't want confrontation, we don't want violence we want to have peace, we also want to have good relation with the neighbours but they should also reciprocate the same. They should remember that Kashmir is an integral part of India and not an inch of even PoK will be allowed to be taken by anybody," the Union Minister said.

He also squarely blamed Pakistan for funding terrorism and influencing the situation in Kashmir.

"Ours is a peace loving country. We never want war. But when this highly coveted peace is denied to us, our brave soldiers respond in a befitting manner..we are too strong to lose our focus to country's development and betterment of the country," he said.

The NDA nominee said that on this day we should recall the valor of our brave soldiers and their sacrifices which got us back the Kargil heights.

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was a military confrontation between India and Pakistan that occurred during the liberation war in East Pakistan, from 3 December 1971 to the fall of Dacca (Dhaka) on 16 December 1971.

The war began with preemptive aerial strikes on 11 Indian air stations that led to the commencement of hostilities with Pakistan and Indian entry into the war of independence in East Pakistan on the side of Bengali nationalist forces.

Lasting just 13 days, it is one of the shortest wars in history.
After Nitish Kumar met Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday amidst growing speculation of a rift between the two parties, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has denied all the allegations that there is an air of tension in the 'Grand Alliance'.

Speaking to ANI, RJD leader Manoj Jha said that the people in the alliance are together.

"Whatever is being said in the media is all speculation and we don't pay much attention to speculation," he said.

Further pointing a finger at the BJP for allegedly using the situation to their advantage, Jha accused the saffron party of trying to manipulate the recent mechanisms.

Recently, the tension between the 'Grand Alliance' of Congress and RJD had grown as the Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar was facing increasing pressure to oust Deputy Chief minister Tejashwi Yadav from the cabinet after charges of corruption were proved against him. The CBI registered a corruption case against Lalu Yadav, his wife Rabri Devi and son Tejaswi Yadav on allegations of awarding the tender for development, maintenance and operation of hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2006.

The RJD supremo, however, refuted the allegations against him and called it a political conspiracy hatched by the BJP.

The Congress are saying that the alliance will hold strong against these allegations and that the true perpetrator will be punished.

Meanwhile, the BJP are mounting pressure on Nitish Kumar to oust Tejashwi yadav from the party.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rashtriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJP-N) has decided to organise its first central committee meeting on August 5 in Kathmandu.

According to the Kathmandu Post, the central committee's meeting would follow the unified party's first office bearer meeting on August 2-4.

RJN-P leader Rajendra Mahato said that the venue for the central committee meeting was yet to be decided.

The presidium would be preparing a political document to be presented in the central committee meeting.

All the leaders of the party have agreed to let incumbent Chairman Mahantha Thakur lead the party until the upcoming national convention, but a formal decision on leadership is yet to be reached.

The long time agitating parties of Nepal got united under the name of RJP-N about three months ago, but its registration was delayed due to dispute over inclusion of founding leaders in the Preamble of the party statute.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior Indian analyst and a fellow of Observer's Research Foundation (ORF) Ashok Malik has been appointed as the Press Secretary to President by the Union Cabinet.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved his appointment on Friday for a period of two years.

A journalist for 20 years, Malik is a columnist for several leading Indian and international publications including Times of India, Hindustan Times and YaleGlobal Online. Previously, he served as a consulting editor to the Pioneer and Tehelka.

Malik joined the ORF in 2015 and presently heads its 'Neighbourhood Regional Studies Initiative', which focuses on Indian domestic politics and foreign/trade policy.

In 2011, Malik co-authored a paper, "India's New World: Civil Society in the Making of Foreign Policy," published by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Sydney. It showcased the influence of Indian business, news media and overseas communities on the Ministry of External Affairs.

In 2012, he published a book 'India: Spirit of Enterprise' which focuses on the growth of India's leading private sector industries since 1991, and its role in the Indian economy.

In the same year, he was a member on the bilateral Task Force on Perceptions commissioned by the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne, to assess and make recommendations on the relationship between Australia and India.

In June 2013, he was named to the Australia India Institute-ORF Chair for Indo-Pacific Studies. His work in this capacity focused on the bilateral relationship between the two countries as well as emergent challenges related to maritime and energy security, and new institutional architecture, in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Indian government awarded him Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, in 2016.

Meanwhile, former Hyderabad cadre IAS officer Sanjay Kothari, who is presently the chairman of the Public Enterprises Selection Board (PES), was appointed as Secretary to the President.

Bharat Lal, an Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer, was appointed as the Joint Secretary to the President.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ancient Africans may have engaged in a 'sexual rendezvous' with a 'ghost' species of archaic humans, according to a recent study.

In saliva, University at Buffalo scientists found hints that a "ghost" species of archaic humans may have contributed genetic material to ancestors of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa today.

The research added to a growing body of evidence suggesting that sexual rendezvous between different archaic human species may not have been unusual.

The new research is among more recent genetic analyses indicating that ancient Africans also had trysts with other early hominins.

"It seems that interbreeding between different early hominin species is not the exception - it's the norm," said lead researcher Omer Gokcumen.

"Our research traced the evolution of an important mucin protein called MUC7 that is found in saliva," he noted. "When we looked at the history of the gene that codes for the protein, we see the signature of archaic admixture in modern day Sub-Saharan African populations."

The scientists came upon their findings while researching the purpose and origins of the MUC7 protein, which helps give spit its slimy consistency and binds to microbes, potentially helping to rid the body of disease-causing bacteria.

The study concluded that MUC7 appears to influence the makeup of the oral microbiome, the collection of bacteria within the mouth. The evidence for this came from an analysis of biological samples from 130 people, which found that different versions of the MUC7 gene were strongly associated with different oral microbiome compositions.

"From what we know of MUC7, it makes sense that people with different versions of the MUC7 gene could have different oral microbiomes," lead researcher Stefan Ruhl said. "The MUC7 protein is thought to enhance the ability of saliva to bind to microbes, an important task that may help prevent disease by clearing unwanted bacteria or other pathogens from the mouth."

The research is published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
State run Chinese media has alleged Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj of lying in her country's parliament on the border standoff between India and China in Doklam.

In an editorial titled 'Military conflicts to escalate if India refuses to withdraw troops', the Global Times, citing Indian media reports, said that Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday informed her country's Parliament that "all countries are in India's support," and India is alert to the need to protect its security near "the border where the boundaries of China, India and Bhutan meet."

"She was lying to the parliament. First, India's invasion of Chinese territory is a plain fact. New Delhi's impetuous action stuns the international community. No other country will support India's aggression. Second, India's military strength is far behind that of China. If the conflict between China and India escalates to the intensity where their row has to be resolved through military means, India will surely lose," the editorial added.

Calling Doklam a Chinese territory, the daily suggested that India should "abandon the fantasy of a long-term standoff at Doklam".

The daily warned that China will by no means agree to the withdrawal of troops from both sides in order for talks to be held and it will not compromise on its stance.

The Global Times further said that withdrawal of Indian troops is must for precondition for talks between the two sides.

It said India's stance has subtly shifted and it has started referring to Doklam as a tri-junction area of China, India and Bhutan. "These changes show New Delhi's guilty conscience," it said.

"India should have heard about the news that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has deployed troops near the China-India border and transported materials and supplies to the area. The PLA is also reportedly conducting drills for mountain operations. These are certainly not for show. Now that the PLA has moved in on the China-India border, they will definitely not call back troops unless they recover the Chinese territory," it went on to say.

The editorial stressed China's military might and said that the country cannot afford to lose an inch of territory.

"The China-India border area may become a stage where China showcases the achievement of its long-term military development and reforms," it said.

The daily warned that China might get itself prepared for a military confrontation against India if Indian troops continue trespassing into China's territory and resolve the conflict through non-diplomatic means.

The editorial comes as Indian and Chinese troops continue to be locked in a standoff in Doklam.

Both sides have moved additional troops, ammunition and military equipment to the area. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China has beefed up its defence in a region south of the Kunlun Mountains under the pretext of conducting a military exercise near Tibet.

Hardware has been moved simultaneously by road and rail by China's western theatre command, which oversees the restive regions of Xinjiang and Tibet,and handles, among others, border issues with India, media reports have said.

This show of strength is being projected by Beijing as a warning to India by China to back off from its objection to China constructing a road at the Doklam tri-junction.

On Thursday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reiterated that differences between India and China should not and would not be allowed to become disputes, and added that communication between the two governments have never ceased, nor have been broken.

"The differences between India and China should not be allowed to become dispute. Every powerful player, power in the prefers peaceful resolution of matters that are in hand. The diplomatic channels and diplomatic communications have never been ceased, they have never broken," MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay told media.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj informed parliament that all countries, including Bhutan, are with India with regard to the Dokhlam Plateau stand-off.

"India wants that troops are removed from the tri-junction point to discuss the issue together. All countries, including Bhutan, are with us," Sushma told members of the Rajya Sabha.

"Over the years, China has been trying to get closer and closer to where the tri-junction point ends. It has done things like repair roads, re-tar them and things like that,"Swaraj added.

"If China unilaterally changes status-quo of tri-junction point between China-India and Bhutan, then it poses a challenge to our security. We have the law and right on our side," she said about India's position.

The issue of China's presence in the South China Sea was also countered by Swaraj, who said, "There is no threat to India from Beijing in terms of sea presence."

On the 'One Belt One Road' issue, Swaraj said India is opposed to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor's (CPEC) inclusion in the OBOR since the time it was proposed, as it was passing through territory that India claims as its own.

Bhutan recognises Doklam as its area, while China claims it as part of its Donglang region. Doka La is the Indian name for the region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
guy39 said:







HaIl KeK There was also several, actually the majority of companies on that list that was not. Nice try. You got caught cherry picking.HaIl KeK Click to expand...

Cherry picking? Really? Regarding which conclusion that could be formed from the data that was provided when you cited that article with that list of companies? Indeed, cherry picking of that dataset most certainly could not occur regarding your conclusion that "Billions so far not trillions" of "government money (is) being pissed away" since the monies listed in that dataset could not possibly be used to determine that "Billions so far not trillions" of "government money (is) being pissed away." In fact, that article that you cited quite clearly and accurately stated, "the amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered."So then, once again, how exactly did you conclude that "Billions so far not trillions" of "government money (is) being pissed away?"
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joseph Dunford, on Sunday, said the Syrian Government forces have not used chemical weapons since April.

The statement comes after the chemical attack on civilians by Assad in April came forward, when the United Nations carried out a Syrian military airbase near the city of Homs.

"I like to think that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad has received the message loud and clear that the use of chemical weapons in unacceptable and that there will be consequences for the use of chemical weapons against his own people. Time will tell. He hasn't used them since that day," Sputnik quoted Dunford saying at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Earlier on April 7, US had launched a total of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Ash Sha'irat airfield.

US President Donald Trump said that the attack was a response to the reported chemical weapon use in Idlib where Washington put the blame on Assad's government.

Joseph Dunford rejected the accusations and reminded everybody that all chemical weapons in Syria were destroyed under oversight of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) after the east Ghouta sarin gas incident in 2013.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka has been arrested by Erwadi Police from Tamil Nadu's Ramanathapuram district.

The Police have recovered Pakistani currency and four ID cards from his possession.

The 60-year old accused, identified as Kasimbai, was arrested from Jamrooth Mahal lodge here.

As per information, he was staying here from July 16.

Following his arrest, the police are now interrogating him to get to the bottom of the matter.

More details to follow.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Police arrested 12 persons suspected of belonging to the Islamic State terror organization and 13 imams of mosques in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, officials said.

Nineveh's police chief Wathiq al-Hamadani said on Saturday that the detainees included a prominent IS commander accused of killing several police officers. The commander was arrested in the eastern part of the northern city of Mosul.

Al-Hamadani added that most of the other 11 detainees were suspected IS militants accused of committing crimes against civilians in eastern Mosul, Efe news reported.

According to the police chief, some of the detainees admitted to killing government officials and police officers.

Abu Bakr Kanaan, head of Islamic affairs in the Iraqi province, said the security forces detained 13 mosque imams in the city of Mosul for not delivering unified sermons in their respective mosques.

Kanaan said that seven of the detained imams were released shortly afterward.

Iraqi forces expelled IS combatants from Mosul (which had been the extremists' main bastion in Iraq since June 2014) after more than eight months of fierce fighting.

--IANS

vgu/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A total of 13 militants have been confirmed killed an airstike at a Taliban hideout in Kunduz province of Afghanistan on Sunday, an army official said.

"Acting upon intelligence reports, the government forces aircraft attacked a Taliban gathering in Bandar-e-Shorab area in Khan Abad district, killing 13 rebels on the spot and injuring three others," army spokesman Abdul Khalil told Xinhua news agency.

Taliban militants, who have been mounting pressure to overrun Khan Abad district in Kunduz province. have suffered casualties and their attacks have been repulsed, he said.

At least 30 militants have been killed in fighting for control of Khan Abad district over the past two days, according to security officials.

Taliban militants, who are in control of parts of Kunduz province with Kunduz city as its capital, 250 km north of Kabul, have not commented on the government claim yet.

--IANS

pgh/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Defence Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday inaugurated the 315th Sainik Rest House of the Kendriya Sainik Board (KSB) here aimed to provide facilities for former servicemen.

The minister expressed hope that the rest house, built at Naraina tri-junction near Delhi Cantonment area in west Delhi at a cost of around Rs 8 crore, would be the beginning of an initiative.

"The KSB will be able to expand on these in the years to come so that such facilities become an integral part of facilities for ex-servicemen," Jaitley said.

He praised the armed forces for upkeep of the facilities. "The facilities which have been created are extremely hygienic and very liveable."

"The armed forces have a tradition of maintaining their properties and preserving them well. And I am sure that the kind of modest charges which have been fixed, will be of a great assistance and value to all ex-servicemen."

On the occasion, Jaitley also launched the new portal of the Sainik Rest House.

Developed in-house by the KSB, the portal lists out details, facilities, restrictions for use of the rest house and would soon provide facility for online payment, a Defence Ministry statement said.

Chief of the Army Staff General Bipin Rawat, Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, Secretary (Ex-Servicemen Welfare) Prabhu Dayal Meena, Secretary (KSB) Brigadier M.H. Rizvi, senior officials of armed forces and from the Ministry of Defence were present on the occasion.

--IANS

rak/him/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Around 47,000 Sudanese expatriates are expected to return home from Saudi Arabia within coming days, Sudanese Expatriates Organ has said.

"Around 33,000 Sudanese will return from Riyadh and 14,000 from Jeddah, 60 per cent of them workers and craftsmen, maximally by Monday," said Karar Al-Tuhami, Secretary General of the Sudanese Expatriates Organ, at a press conference on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Al-Tuhami added that the returnees would hold right to go back to Saudi Arabia in case they adjusted their status.

"We are working to avoid any economic impact for the return of this great number, where all the state's bodies and institutions are working harmoniously to reintegrate the returnees in the society," he said.

He further noted that Sudan's Embassy in Saudi Arabia has completed all procedures for the Sudanese returnees, saying that some of them will leave Khartoum for other states of Sudan.

Last March, the Saudi authorities launched a "Nation without Violator" campaign, availing illegal expatriates three months to adjust their status or leave the country if they fail to pay penalties.

The illegal expatriates who don't leave within the time frame will be forcibly deported or face punishment.

--IANS

pgh/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Eight persons were found dead in a trailer carrying illegal immigrants at a Walmart parking area in US state of Texas, authorities said.

The San Antonio Police Department said on Sunday that the victims include at least two children, adding that about 30 more people were found inside the truck and were transferred to local hospitals for treatment.

Police did not know the victims' country of origin, destination, or ages of the deceased or injured, Xinhua news agency quoted police as saying.

San Antonio is a US city close to the border area with Mexico. Border Patrol agents have reported an increase in smuggling attempts in tractor-trailers in recent weeks, starting with 44 people from Mexico and Guatemala discovered after police stopped an 18-wheeler on June 19 near one of the city's international bridges.

On July 7, the agents found 72 people from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador inside a locked trailer in the same part of town. The next day, they found 33 people from Mexico and Guatemala inside a trailer stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint.

In another incident last week, border patrol agents found 16 people inside a locked trailer.

--IANS

vgu/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The 96-year-old ailing chief of Hefazat-e-Islam, a pro-Islamist platform in Bangladesh, has been flown to the Indian capital for treatment after his health condition worsened, a media report said.

Shah Ahmed Shafi, who has been suffering from various old age complications, left for New Delhi on Saturday, the Dhaka Tribune reported.

Azizul Haque Islamabadi, central organising secretary of the Islamist platform, told the Dhaka Tribune that a flight carrying Shafi left Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 10 a.m. on Saturday.

"He [Shafi] has been suffering from various old age complications. He is now taking liquid food through a tube. His respiratory problem has also worsened. That's why he is going Delhi for better treatment. Delhi's Deoband Madrasa teacher Arshad Madani will look after him during the treatment session," Azizul said.

Shafi was undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Chittagong city after he fell sick on May 18.

He was flown to Dhaka on June 6 after his condition deteriorated. Doctors at Asgar Ali Hospital in Gendaria treated him for old age complications and released him from the hospital on July 10.

The controversial nonagenarian leader, who is known as Boro Hujur (the oldest cleric) among his followers, is strongly criticised by progressive people for his highly prejudicial views on various social issues and also for the radical Islamist platform's pledge of Islamising Bangladesh, the daily said.

Shafi is the rector of Al-Jamiatul Ahlia Darul Ulum Moinul Islam, also known as Hathazari Madrasa, and the chairman of Befaqul Madarisil Arabia Bangladesh, the largest Qawmi Madrasa board in Bangladesh.

The Islamist group was in the news earlier this year for demanding the removal of all 'idols' installed in the name of sculptures or statues across the country.

The Hefazat, which is an influential network of madrasas, had demanded the removal of the statue of 'Lady Justice' at the Supreme Court premises and staged countrywide protests demanding the removal of the statue.

In May, the statue was removed from the Supreme Court premises, which triggered widespread protests by Bangladeshis. The following day, May 27, the statue was reinstalled in the annexe building of the apex court.

--IANS

rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP President Amit Shah visited a Dalit party worker's house here on Sunday afternoon and was served home-cooked food in a traditional style.

During his visit to Ramesh Pachariya's house in Sushil Pura colony, Shah was accompanied by Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, state BJP President Ashok Parnami, and local Bharatiya Janata Party legislator and Cabinet Minister Arun Chaturvedi, among others.

Hundreds of curious onlookers and party workers gathered to watch the BJP leaders as they were accorded a traditional welcome at the house.

"He spent 25-30 minutes at the house and was served rice, lentils, chapatis, cooked ladies' fingers, Rajasthan's famous 'gatte ki sabzi', curd, and a sweet dish," a BJP functionary told IANS.

The BJP chief sat on a mat and was served food in a disposable plate and bowls made of dried leaves.

Ramesh, a booth level worker of the BJP, said his mother Bridhi cooked the food for the visiting leader.

Ramesh's family was visibly excited, with one of them saying: "We cooked homely food for him. We are happy he visited our house."

Shah's three-day visit to Jaipur ends on Sunday. His visit is aimed at strengthening the party at the grass-roots level in the state where the BJP is in power. The elections to the assembly in the desert state will likely be held in December 2018.

An onlooker said: "We had heard a lot about Shah ji... but it is the first time we have got an opportunity to see him."

After lunch, Shah waved to the crowd which had gathered around the house for a glimpse of the BJP leaders.

--IANS

as/tsb/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Citing non-availability of "sufficient evidence", the Canadian government has told India that there is no threat to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and has concluded its investigation into the matter.

In a communication to the Indian authorities, Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has stated that the investigation had been conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Sources in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi told IANS that the Canadian authorities, in the communication, has said that the RCMP investigation has determined that there is no evidence of direct physical threat made towards Amarinder Singh.

It further stated that there was "not sufficient evidence" to file criminal charges or proceed against anyone. The Canadian government said that in view of the findings, the investigation had been concluded.

The Indian High Commission in Canada had lodged a "formal complaint" to Global Affairs-Canada (Canada's foreign office) in April following a threat publicly issued to the Punjab Chief Minister by pro-Khalistan elements during a Vaisakhi Day event in British Columbia's Surrey city.

The threat was part of the hate speeches made by Sikh radicals operating out of Canada.

Videos of the Vaisakhi Parade in Surrey on April 22 were sent to the Canadian foreign ministry as proof.

Indian authorities had also objected to the public display of Khalistan floats with images of slain separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other terrorists, pictures of AK-47s and photographs of former and serving army and police officers who are on the hit-list of Sikh radicals.

MEA sources said that the Canadian authorities were cautioned about the "anti-India propaganda" of the Khalistani elements as India was anticipating trouble. The Canadian foreign ministry, responding to the early warning, said it would take "necessary action".

However, the Khalistani elements were allowed to have a free run and even issued threats on loudspeakers to Amarinder Singh in front of hundreds of people from the Indian community who participated in the April 22 parade. The Canadian provincial police and security agencies were present when all this happened, the sources told IANS.

Amarinder Singh on Friday again stressed the need for Canada to rein in the radical elements, who were "trying to use Canadian soil to spread strife and divisiveness in India".

The Chief Minister raised the issue with Jalandhar-born Canadian MP Rameshwar Singh Sangha, who met him in New Delhi on Friday.

"Such elements, including Khalistani supporters, could not have any impact on the Canadian political environment but they could influence the people of India and vitiate the atmosphere here," Amarinder Singh pointed out.

"The Canadian government should crack down on these forces and ensure that they do not have a free run on social media and other public platforms, the Chief Minister added.

The Amarinder Singh government had, in April, cold-shouldered visiting Canadian Defence Minister of Indian-origin Harjit Singh Sajjan as he travelled to various places in Punjab.

He had refused to meet Sajjan, the first Sikh to be the Defence Minister of a Western country, accusing him and other ministers of Punjab origin in the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of links to radical elements demanding a separate Sikh state of Khalistan.

No minister or senior officer of the Punjab government went to welcome Sajjan or even accompany him during the visit.

Amarinder Singh made it clear that he "would not meet any Khalistani sympathisers".

He was annoyed with the Canadian government since April last year when he was denied permission to visit that country, which has a sizeable Punjabi Diaspora, in the run-up to the Punjab assembly elections. A radical organisation, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), had complained to the Canadian government against the visit.

The Congress leader had to cancel his trip after being told by the Canadian authorities at the last minute that he could not be allowed to visit the country for holding political rallies and meetings. The visit was aimed at wooing influential Non-Resident Indian (NRI) groups in Canada.

(Jaideep Sarin can be contacted at jaideep.s@ians.in)

--IANS

js/vm/sac

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Google's parent company Alphabet and scientists in the United States (US) have teamed up to release 20 million machine-raised mosquitoes to shrink the numbers of the disease-carrying ones.

According to the plans, millions of sterile male mosquitoes will be released in Fresno county in California, which will then mate with wild female mosquitoes. The eggs the females lay won't hatch, a report in the Washington Post said.

The project, called Debug Fresno, is being undertaken by Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google's holding company.

Scientists said that the goal is to cut the numbers of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes  the species responsible for spreading zika, dengue and chikungunya.

For 20 weeks, the company plans to release a million of the sterile, non-biting male mosquitoes in two neighbourhoods in Fresno county.

The male mosquitoes are bred and infected with Wolbachia, a bacterium that is naturally found in at least 40 per cent of all insect species, the report said.

"Over time, we hope to see a steep decline in the presence of Aedes aegypti in these communities," Verily was quoted as saying.

In a phenomenon called cytoplasmic incompatibility, "matings between Wolbachia-infected males and uninfected females result in embryo lethality or low hatch rates", William Sullivan and Scott L O'Neill wrote in the journal Nature.

They said that the bacterium used to sterilise mosquitoes "is not known" to infect humans.

(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.)
In this Caribbean nation, where 44 percent of the population is of Indian origin, the new Miss Trinidad & Tobago has been advised to greet global audiences at the Miss World 2017 pageant in China in October with Hindu salutations like "Sita Ram, Namaste".

Chandini Chanka will be the person of Indian origin in 40 years to represent the multi-ethnic society at the international beauty contest in Sanya, China.

Surujdeo Mangaroo, Public Relations Officer of the National Council of Indian Culture (NCIC), the country's premier socio-cultural organisation, made the plea at a reception held in Chanka's honour at Divali Nagar, Chaguanas, earlier this week.

Chanka won the Miss World Trinidad and Tobago 2017 title last Sunday. She was crowned by the reigning queen Daniella Walcott after beating back some tough competitors.

"I want to remind Miss Chanka that as she makes her way on the international stage ... please do not forget or ignore the traditional Hindu form of greetings, Sita Ram, Namaste," Mungroo said.

He said that when Chanka won the annual Miss Divali Nagar Queen Contest in October 2015, she strode the walkaway "with dignity, poise, confidence and conviction that she was the winner all through, even before the results were announced".

"I hope these values would be applied at the Miss World Queen Pageant in China in October and to bring home that glory and international honour as a Hindu woman for Trinidad and Tobago," Mangaroo said.

Chanka is the only daughter of Debra and Krishendath Chanka of Aranguez, San Juan. She has a brother and holds a bachelor's degree in international relations and has been accepted to pursue a law degree at the University of the West Indies in September.

She has plans to become an attorney.

Trinidad and Tobago's Indian diaspora hails principally from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. People from these two states were brought to the country to enhance the agricultural capacity of the then colony between 1845 and 1917.

(Paras Ramoutar can be contacted at paras_ramoutar@yahoo.com)

--IANS

paras/soni/vm/tb

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Several rivers in some West Bengal districts were flowing above the danger level creating a flood-like situation, while a number of city roads saw waterlogging following incessant rains due to a cyclonic circulation on Sunday, officials said.

The met office predicted heavy monsoon rains for 24 hours in the city and other South Bengal districts after Sunday midnight, that could worsen the situation in various parts of the state.

"The situation in East Midnapore and West Midnapore districts, Bankura and Birbhum districts and parts of Burdwan could deteriorate," officials said.

In Birbhum, Labhour block was under water. Even outgoing President Pranab Mukehrjee's ancestral village Miriti was inundated.

River Dwarka was flowing above the danger level in the district.

In West Midnapore, river Shilabati was in spate, as was Darakeshwar in Bankura, officials said.

A number of areas under Arambag and Goghat blocks In Hooghly district, were inundated, affecting thousands of people.

Kolkata also received medium to heavy rainfall through Sunday, leading to waterlogging in areas like Bhowanipore, Park Circus, Amherst Street and Chittaranjan Avenue.

In view of the deteriorating situation, control rooms have been set up at the state secretariat Nabanna, and leaves of all officers and employees of the Irrigation Department cancelled till October 31.

An upper air cyclonic circulation has been created in the North Bay of Bengal and a monsoon trap exists from Gujarat to Bay of Bengal, triggering rains in several districts, the weather office said.

"The rainfall will increase after midnight. There will be very heavy rains between 12 midnisht and 3 am on Monday. There is rainfall warning in Kolkata and other south Bengal districts over the next 24 hours. However, the intensity of the rains may be somewhat reduced after 3 pm on Monday," met officials said.

--IANS

sspvd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Opening a new Japanese restaurant, drawing up a new menu for its Indian restaurant, not retrenching staff and offering guests more are the daring strategies being adopted at Hilton Chennai following the ban on serving liquor, the hotel's top chef said.

The Supreme Court has banned the serving of liquor in hotels located 500 metres from state and national highways. This has hit hard the revenues of hotels impacted by the order.

"The liquor ban is a litmus test for the Executive Chefs as they have to attract custom for their restaurants, retain their long-staying guests and attract short-stayers with their culinary skills," Achal Aggarwal, Executive Chef at Hilton Chennai, told IANS.

To this end, he has launched a new menu for the hotel's Indian restaurant Ayna and a new Japanese restaurant, Roppongi Hills.

"Following the liquor ban, the bar was empty and it was decided to put it to productive use by opening a Japanese restaurant which would also cater to the Japanese here," Aggarwal said.

Serving the soft, crispy Ayna vada (tofu added to traditional vada batter) Aggarwal said that some hotels have asked their Executive Chefs to quit as part of cost-cutting measures and are managing with the middle-level people in the kitchen.

Speaking about Ayna's new menu, Aggarwal said over 60 per cent of the dishes were new, while the balance was carried over from the previous menu.

Some of the starters will take you by surprise, like the tasty khasta crab which has the layers of crab meat with tandoori shrimp in a crispy filo sheet; or the tandoori salmon, which was orange flavoured.

The curry leaf grouper and the kozhi varuval (chicken with a twist of secret spices) were also tasty and different.

Vegetarians can opt for kathal ke kebab (pulled jackfruit stuffed in poppadum cone) or khasta khumb (layers of spiced mushroom in a crisp filo sheet).

"We have converted some of the main courses into starters, changing their form. There are lot of new varities of fish, including John Dory, for seafood lovers," Aggarwal said.

As for soups, there is the vazhaithandu chaaru (raw banana stem soup) or murgh badami shorba (chicken soup with almonds) for the asking.

"While offering more to our guests, we didn't retrench any staff. We sent our juniors to our group hotel in Singapore. Their salary was paid by that hotel even as they gained experience," Aggarwal said.

According to him, the tough times also enabled him to spot hidden culinary talents in the butchery and commissary departments.

"Normally they don't cook. But one Sunday they turned up and made a few fantastic dishes when I wanted to test their skills," Aggarwal said.

"On the whole, we are not making losses in our restaurants as we expected. We are doing the same number of covers," he added.

"There was also an additional focus on banquets to protect the overall revenue as well as cutting wastage, said Aggarwal who decided to increase the live counters in the buffet, offering more to the guests.

It was time for the main course, with Aggarwal serving Ayna butter chicken. The tasty twist here was the chicken meatballs made with minced chicken tikka.

There is also nattu kozhi kolumbu (country chicken curry) that goes well with rice, or the nalli rogan josh (a Kashmiri mutton delicacy).

Vegetarians can pick singada palak (leafy spinach, pickled water chestnuts and stuffed chili) or gucchi aur khumb (trio of stuffed morels, portobello and button mushrooms) with a choice of naans/paranthas/kulchas like olive naan or Lucknowi kulcha. Else, skip these and just go for subz tehari (baby potato and seasonal vegetables) with aromatic rice laced with fresh turmeric and served with kachumbar salad.

There were experiments on the dessert front too -- the apple halwa, baked Indian yoghurt with figs or butter milk ice cream.

FAQs:

What: New menu at Ayna Restaurant

Where: Hilton Chennai at J.N.Salai, Guindy

Timings: Lunch 12 noon to 3 p.m., Dinner 6.30 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Price: Meal for two would cost around Rs 4,000 without taxes

(Venkatachari Jagannathan's visit was at the invitation of the Hilton Chennai. He can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)

--IANS

vj/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India has launched its first petroleum Research & Development (R&D) facility for testing high-end BS-VI quality fuel emissions, according to an official here.

Operated by state-run Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the R&D facility is designed to test all types of fuel including petrol, diesel, ethanol-blended petrol, bio-diesel, CNG, LNG, hydrogen-CNG and 2G-ethanol blends to ensure they meet the superior BS-VI norms that are to be implemented across the country by April 2020, a Petroleum Ministry statement said.

This "first-of-its kind" facility was inaugurated by Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Faridabad in the National Capital Region (NCR) on Saturday.

"In addition to generating emission data, the facility will also evaluate the fuel blends for energy-efficiency and engine durability," it said.

On the occasion, Pradhan complimented the IOC scientists for developing a "nano-additised battery for use in e-rickshaws, with better efficiency and longer life than commercially available batteries."

"The minister also lauded the efforts of Indian Oil R&D in commercialising Indane Nanocut -- the industrial version of LPG for the metal-cutting industry."

Pradhan hoped IOC would take a "quantum leap" in alternative and renewable fuel research arenas in the next 3-4 years, the statement added.

--IANS

bc/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two Iranian naval vessels have set sail for Russia to take part in a Russian military games, media reported on Sunday.

Iran's Peykan-class frigates from the navy's Caspian flotilla will also make a port call at Azerbaijan's Baku as part of their itinerary before reaching Russia, Xinhua reported.

The overseas mission would last 25 days, Commander of the navy's Caspian flotilla Rear Admiral Ahmad Reza Baqeri said.

On July 15, Russian and Iranian navy forces attended a joint exercise in the Caspian Sea.

The Russian fleet had berthed at Iran's northern port city of Anzali as part of programmes intended to boost military cooperation between the two countries.

Iran's Rear Admiral Afshin Rezaei Haddad said that the navies of five Caspian littoral countries were cooperating to secure it as the sea for peace, mutual respect and good-neighbourliness.

Over the past few years, Iran has sent several fleets with the same mission from the country's northern and southern waters to the high seas.

--IANS

ahm/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Veteran actor Anupam Kher says it's a joy for him to be on the sets with filmmaker Neeraj Pandey, who is currently shooting for his film "Aiyaary" in London.

Pandey on Sunday took to Twitter to share a black and white photograph of himself along with Anupam and actor Sidharth Malhotra. In the image, Pandey is seen hugging Anupam, while Sidharth is seen sitting on a sofa.

Anupam re-tweeted the director's image and captioned: "Always a joy to be on the sets with you dearest Neeraj. Sidharth also seems to be happy about our reunion and warmth."

To that, Pandey replied: "Thank you Anupam Kher sir. Always a pleasure."

Anupam and Pandey have previously collaborated for films like "Special 26", "A Wednesday", "Baby" and "M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story".

"Aiyaary" features Sidharth as an army officer along with Manoj Bajpayee. It is based on a real life incident that revolves around two strong-minded army officers who have completely different views yet they are right in their own way.

The film, which also features veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah and Rakul Preet Singh, is slated for release on January 26, next year.

Anupam is in London to promote his upcoming film "Toilet: Ek Prem Katha", which stars Akshay Kumar and Bhumi Pednekar.

--IANS

dc/dg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday stressed that a legislation must be preceded by "scrutiny and adequate discussion".

Mukherjee, who is set to demit office on July 25, in his farewell speech to lawmakers, termed it "unfortunate" that parliament's time devoted to legislation has been declining.

"With heightened complexity of administration, legislation must be preceded by scrutiny and adequate discussion. Scrutiny in committees is no substitute to open discussion on the floor of the House," Mukherjee said while addressing parliamentarians in the Central Hall of Parliament.

He said that when Parliament fails to discharge its law making role, or enacts laws without discussion, it "breaches the trust reposed in it by the people".

--IANS

ps-mak/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Police in Maldives have warned that the opposition alliance will not be allowed to stage an anti-government demonstration in Male on Monday, days after the opposition parties launched a bid to seize control of Parliament through an attempt to impeach the Speaker.

"Everyone come to Male on July 24 to assure a system of government with separation of powers," tweeted former President Mohamed Nasheed, who has been living in exile in the United Kingdom since he was authorised medical leave from prison in January last year.

Briefing the press late Sunday afternoon, Superintendent Ahmed Shifan said opposition leaders from the four-party coalition would have to bear responsibility for any unlawful gathering, the Maldives Independent reported.

Since its bid to wrest control of the Parliament was foiled after four lawmakers were contentiously stripped of their seats, the opposition alliance has been urging supporters from across the country to converge on the capital and gather outside the Maldivian Democratic Party office at 9 a.m.

A no-confidence vote against Speaker Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed was due to take place on July 24, but the motion was thrown out after the disqualification of four ex-ruling party lawmakers deemed to have fallen foul of a new anti-defection rule imposed by the Supreme Court.

The Speaker has meanwhile decided that the next Majlis sitting will take place on July 31, citing security arrangements ahead of activities planned to mark Independence Day on July 26,

Parliament sittings have been suspended since the opposition submitted the second motion with 45 signatures from the 85-member house, prompting the Attorney General to seek the anti-defection ruling after the dramatic collapse of the pro-government majority.

The police have meanwhile cracked down on most opposition activities in Male during the past two years, including a weekly prayer congregations and gatherings in the opposition's meeting hall.

The last major gathering was a three-day protest by the MDP in November 2015.

On Friday, MP Ali Azim, Adhaalath Party spokesman Ali Zahir and two others were arrested after the police used pepper spray to disperse opposition supporters outside the MDP meeting hall.

Voting was taking place inside the premises for the MDP's youth wing leadership posts when police officers barged in and forced several people out. The riot police officers also cordoned off the area and blocked voters from entering the meeting hall.

The police later told local media that it was unaware of the internal election, the daily reported.

The Maldives Broadcasting Commission, which has imposed hefty fines on the opposition-aligned Raajje TV, has meanwhile warned that action will be taken against TV stations that telecast unlawful gatherings.

--IANS

rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Modern avionics and systems may make flying a fighter easier, but also lead to more complex tasks at hand, says the lead test pilot who flew the new generation Mig-35 fighter at MAKS Aerospace Exhibition here.

Flying in the public gaze for the first time, the Mig-35, a 4++ jet, performed complex manoeuvers, including loops and vertical climb, with seemingly consummate ease.

Asked about the aircraft, Lead Test Pilot Belyaev Mikhail, who has been awarded the Star of the Hero of Russia, the highest honorary title of the Russian Federation, said it's similar to the MiG-29 that the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy operate, but much more advanced.

"There is new electronic equipment and new weapon systems. It is equipped with a range of air-to-air, air-to-land and air-to-sea missiles," Mikhail told IANS on the sidelines of the airshow.

Comparing it to the MiG-29, he said: "It has a new airframe, fly-by-wire controls, a glass cockpit and night vision goggles. It is also capable of air-to-air refueling."

Asked if it was easier to fly the MiG-35 compared to the MiG-29, he said: "For a MiG 29 pilot, the basics are same, but it would take some time to adapt. Modern warfare is more complicated. As the fighter jets become more advanced, so do the tasks assigned."

"The new equipment makes it easier to fly, but then, more challenging combat tasks are given. New tasks arise from existence of this aircraft; more complex combat tasks can be achieved."

Towards this were some of the manoeuvres performed: A vertical climb soon after takeoff to demonstrate engine strength and a Nesterov loop, a barrel roll and a complex tail slide to demonstrate engine capability and high angle of attack, among the other strengths of the aircraft.

The aircraft is also equipped with a version of the Phazotron Zhuk AESA radar that is capable of simultaneously detecting and tracking up to 30 aerial targets at up to 160 km away. It is also capable to simultaneously engageing up to six aerial and four surface targets.

The MiG-35 also carries a forward-looking opto-electronic system. Equivalent in its performance to the systems installed on Western fifth-generation fighters, it supports operations during both day and night, including in beyond-visual-range scenarios.

(Anjali Ojha is in Moscow at the invitation of the MAKS Aerospace Exhibition organisers. She can be contacted at anjali.o@ians.in)

--IANS

ao/vm/sac

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Cuda is a 3-year-old pit bull who spent half her life at the Linn County Sheriff's Animal Control kennel. But on this day, at the kennel's fourth annual Dog Fest event, she's going home with Scott Perkins from Depoe Bay.

Cuda has the distinction of having spent the longest amount of time at the kennel, which sees between 700 and 800 dogs each year.

"Hold on to her; I need to get the mascara out of my eyes," said kennel manager Tammy Cook, tearing up after handing the dog over to Perkins.

Dog Fest is an opportunity for dog owners to get their animals vaccinated and microchipped at discounted prices, as well as to browse the many vendors, and to have Linn County Sheriff Bruce Riley grill a hot dog or two. The event is made possible through vendor contributions and donations, with no tax dollars involved.

The spirit of Dog Fest is to generate a positive atmosphere for dogs and their owners, and to showcase the kennel's mission, which is to be more than just a pound.

Cuda's story is emblematic of the kennel, which over the past few years has transformed from a run-of-the-mill dog pound to essentially a no-kill shelter. In fact, it has a 0.03-percent kill rate, which Riley said is the lowest in the state. Only one dog was put down this year, and that animal was elderly. No dogs were killed in 2016. Riley said the kennel has cultivated a network with other shelters and organizations to create more options.

"It's all about trying to find these dogs a home," he said.

Linn County Sheriff Lieutenant Steve Looney, who runs the kennel with Cook, said another positive outcome of Dog Fest and for the kennel is to help to reduce law enforcement dog-related calls for service.

"The more dogs with rabies shots the better," he said.

According to Looney, the festival issued 40 microchips and more than 100 licenses last year, and he expects to see between 100 and 200 dogs this year.

As for Perkins, he said he'd just lost his dog of 14 years on Monday, so finding Cuda was a happy thing for him as well.

"I wasn't myself when my dog died," he said. "And all my friends said I needed a new dog."

Perkins learned about the Dog Fest event through his friend, Tim Fassett, of Lebanon.

Some of the hardest dogs to place in a new home, said Riley, are the pit bulls. That fact makes Cuda's story even better.
Moscow negatively viewed a the newly released US draft bill on sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, media reports said.

"Extremely negatively", Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Sputnik news agency as saying on Saturday when asked about the Kremlin's take on the draft bill.

US Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on a bill that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday.

The bill reportedly allows sanctions against Russia for its alleged intervention in Ukraine and meddling in the US presidential election, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied in public, Xinhua news agency reported.

Seen as a follow-up to new US sanctions against Russia and Iran announced in June, the bill will be put to a vote at the US House of Representatives on Tuesday.

--IANS

vgu/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Naga students outfit in Arunachal Pradesh has urged Chief Minister Pema Khandu to come up with a surrender and rehabilitation policy for the youths who joined the outlawed forces, to enable them to return to mainstream.

With over 500 Naga youths in Arunachal Pradesh having joined the outlawed forces, the Arunachal Naga Student's Federation (ANSF) said the policy can be used by the cadres as a platform to return to civilian life.

ANSF, a powerful Naga youth outfit in Arunachal Pradesh, has also sought a paramedical college to be set up in one of the Naga inhabited districts like Tirap, Changlang and Longding, so that the youngsters can be engaged in professional courses and stay away from outlawed forces.

The ANSF has been demanding a surrender and rehabilitation policy on the lines of the one that exists in Assam since 1998. The main objective was to wean away the youths who have strayed into militancy and now find themselves trapped.

The scheme should also ensure that the militants who have surrendered do not stray back into insurgent groups, the ANSF said.

"Tirap, Changlang and Longding are all development deprived districts of Arunachal Pradesh. Youths, mostly out of frustration, join outlawed groups and find themselves trapped. This needs to be ended," said ANSF President Nokchai Boham.

"We want the state government to come up with a surrender and rehabilitation policy so that they can come back to civilian life," Boham said.

The ANSF leaders have said they would meet Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to press for their demands.

The organisation, which has also revived the demand for autonomous council for the three districts, has sought a Sainik school for the region so that teenagers from early age are motivated to join the Indian defence forces.

Alleging that the Arunachal Pradesh government was denying the Nagas their genuine demands, the community said they have waited for too long to see development in the districts where they reside, and felt the area could develop only under an autonomous council.

--IANS

rup/pgh/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba on Sunday embarked on an eight-day visit of Mozambique and Tanzania that is aimed at consolidating bilateral relations and exploring new avenues for defence cooperation.

Admiral Lanba, who heads the powerful Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC), will be visiting the two African nations till July 30.

Commencing his bilateral visit from Mozambique, Lanba is scheduled to hold bilateral discussions with National Defence Minister Atanasio Salvador M'tumuke, Chief of General Staff General Graca Tomas Chongo, besides chiefs of the army, navy and air force of the African nation.

"The visit aims to consolidate bilateral defence relations with Mozambique as well as with Tanzania, as also to explore new avenues for defence cooperation," the Defence Ministry said in a statement here.

During his stay in Mozambique till July 25, Admiral Lanba is scheduled to visit the Instituto Superior De Estudos De Defesa (ISEDEF), where he will interact with its commandant and faculty. He will also lay a wreath at the Hero's Square.

Admiral Lanba will begin his five-day visit to Tanzania on July 26, wherein he is scheduled to hold bilateral discussions with Tanzania President John Magafuli, Minister of Defence and National Service Dr Hussei Mwinyi, Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Augustine Mahiga, chief of defence forces General Venance S Mabeyo as also the three Tanzanian People's Defence Forces (TPDF) Service Chiefs.

The Admiral will visit the Command and Staff College, Arusha, where he will interact with its commandant and faculty.

Indian armed forces cooperate with the armed forces of Mozambique and Tanzanian on many fronts, including training and hydrography, besides participating in each other's defence events.

--IANS

rak/tsb

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said prolonging the Gulf crisis was not in the interest of anyone, local media reported.

Erdogan made the remarks at Istanbul airport while leaving here on a two-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, Xinhua reported.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

Qatar has been Turkey's key ally in the Middle East, with both countries sharing common stance on a number of regional issues.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah -- an indication that Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to resolving the crisis.

Qatar's emir said on Friday that he was ready for talks to resolve the crisis so long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.

--IANS

ahm/dg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
10 Rajaji Road, the new abode of outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee, is all ready to welcome its newest resident.

The eight-room, two-storey villa -- quite a change from the 340-room Rashtrapati Bhavan -- is no stranger to former Presidents, having previously hosted A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

The rooms of the villa -- spread over an expansive 11,776 sq feet -- have been spruced up and the walls repainted. The existing furniture has also been replaced and the entrance and exit gates await the nameplates of the new resident.

"It is not overcrowded with furniture. We are keeping it simple. Also, a large space has been created which is being turned into a library," a senior official from the Urban Development Ministry told IANS.

With Ram Nath Kovind elected as the 14th President of India, it is time for Pranab Mukherjee to bid adieu to Rashtrapati Bhavan and move to the new address as he goes into retirement.

Mukherjee will be moving out of the sprawling presidential palace atop Raisina Hill to his new home on July 25 after the incoming President is ceremonially welcomed to Rashtrapati Bhavan, an official told IANS. Kovind will then escort Mukherjee to his new home.

Mukherjee, 81, who was elected President in 2012, is a voracious reader and will be carrying all his personal books to his new address, which will be comparable to a residence allotted to a Union minister.

"He is also planning to pen a book based on his five years as the President although nothing is final yet," another official said.

As a former President, Mukherjee's pension will be Rs 75,000 per month (50 per cent of that while in office). There are some other perks, including two telephones, one mobile phone and a car for free. The President Emoluments Act also allows the former President to access secretarial staff, and office expenses of up to Rs 60,000.

This will be apart from free medical attendance and treatment as well as travel anywhere in India, accompanied by one person, in the highest class in any mode of travel.

According to the President Emoluments Act 1951, a retired president is entitled to facilities like rent-free Type VIII accommodation anywhere in India, free water and electricity, apart from the landline, mobile phones and medical amenities.

Mukherjee will have at his disposal five personal staffers, including a private secretary, a personal assistant and two peons. Responsibility for his security will be handed over to the Delhi Police.

The 10 Rajaji Marg bungalow was allotted to Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Mahesh Sharma in 2015 after Kalam's death. Sharma has been allotted another bungalow on the adjacent Akbar Road.

(Somrita Ghosh can be contacted at somrita.g@ians.in)

--IANS

som/ss/vm/vsc/tb

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Balochistan provincial government in Pakistan has received a Russian Mi-171E non-combat helicopter, Russian news agency Tass reported.

The Mi-171 is a civilian variant of the Mi-17 military cargo helicopter, which is already in service in the Pakistan Army.

The Mi-17 is widely used across the world due to its reliability and ability to operate in all climates, and could be used by the provincial government to transport cargo or passengers, or as an emergency response aircraft.

This is the second Mi-171E helicopter delivered to Pakistan this year.

Russian Helicopters made the helicopter supply contract with the government of Balochistan Province in December 2016.

The helicopter was built in the convertible option. The helicopter cabin can be converted from a freight one to a VIP cabin with 13 seats and a flight attendant at customer's option within the short period.

The Mi-171E can carry up to 27 passengers and up to four tonnes of cargo inside the cabin or on the external suspension in its transport version. Three points for direct deployment provide quick landing of paratroopers and rescuers when the helicopter is hovering.

In the case of a medical emergency, the chopper can be used as an ambulance as it has the capacity to carry 14 stretchers if seats are replaced.

"I am confident the convertible Mi-171E handed over to the customer will perform decently when accomplishing any missions, whether in passenger and freight carriage or in medical, search and rescue operations," Tass quoted Russian Helicopters Chief Executive Officer Andrei Boginsky as saying.

Russian Helicopters has sold Mi-171E helicopters to several countries, including China.

--IANS

rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Syrian army announced the cessation of hostilities in several areas of a rebel stronghold near the capital Damascus.

This announcement on Saturday coincided with an agreement reached between Russia and the opposition on a de-escalation zone mechanism in the same eastern Ghouta region, Efe news reported.

According to state-run SANA news agency, the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces said the ceasefire started Saturday afternoon.

The command added the army would respect the agreement but would respond in the event any party breached the ceasefire.

Early on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the signing of a deal to create a de-escalation zone in eastern Ghouta.

The agreement was signed by the command of the Russian military intervention in Syria and representatives from the moderate opposition, two days after at least 28 government troops were killed in an ambush set up by Islamist factions in eastern Ghouta, according to British war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In recent weeks, hostilities have intensified in eastern Ghouta, where government forces are trying to make progress against rebel and Islamist factions.

--IANS

vgu/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Taliban have kidnapped 70 Afghans over the past four days in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan and killed seven of them, Efe news reported on Sunday, quoting a source.

"All those kidnapped are residents of Shah Wali Khost district, seven of them were killed on Saturday by the insurgents," provincial governor's spokesperson Samim Khapalwak told Efe.

The spokesperson said that the Taliban held 33 hostages after freeing several persons.

The kidnappings occurred after the insurgents and the Afghan troops clashed on a road connecting Uruzgan and Kandahar, in which the Taliban suffered "many casualties".

Khapalwak, who did not provide a specific number of casualties suffered by the Taliban or the Afghan forces, said a rescue operation to free the hostages is underway.

Last week, insurgents killed seven people and kidnapped six others along a highway in Farah province in the western part of the country.

Afghanistan is going through one of its most violent periods since the end of NATO's combat mission in January 2015.

Since then, insurgents have been gaining ground in various parts of Afghanistan and currently control, influence, or are in dispute with the government over at least 43 percent of the territory, according to the US.

--IANS

him/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Police on Sunday arrested three overground workers (OWGs) of militants in summer capital Srinagar and recovered an AK-47 rifle from their possession.

Police sources said here on Sunday that three OWGs of militants were arrested in Tengpora (Batmaloo) area of Srinagar city.

"They were arrested while moving in a car. One AK-47 rifle has been recovered from the possession of these OWGs," sources said.

OWGs are described by the security forces as facilitators of militants who arrange hideouts, ferry weapons and keep an eye on movement of the security forces to alert militants during crackdowns and search operations.

--IANS

sq/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two civilians were killed and five others wounded after a mortar shell exploded in a shop in Taluqan, capital city of Afghanistan's Takhar province, police said.

"The blast occurred in a blacksmith shop at around midday. A man salvaging for scrap metals has brought the shell to the local bazaar for sale. But the device has exploded, causing the casualties," provincial police spokesman Khalil Asir told Xinhua on Saturday.

Among those killed was a teenage boy and the injured were shifted to a nearby hospital in the city, according to Asir.

Afghan civilians continue to bear the brunt of armed conflicts as more than 1,660 civilians were killed and over 3,580 others injured in conflict-related incidents across Afghanistan in the first half of the year, according to figures released by the UN mission in the country.

Land mines, unexploded ordnance and explosive remnants of war also frequently cause casualties in the country, Xinhua news agency reported.

On Friday, a teenage girl lost her legs in a land mine explosion in the eastern Nangarhar province, according to local officials.

--IANS

vgu/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON  "The Democrats," Vice President Pence said recently, "have already settled on their agenda, and it can be summed up in one word: resist."

He isn't the only one with that view of Democrats. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 37 percent of Americans think the Democratic Party "stands for something," while 52 percent say it "just stands against Trump."

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats' campaign arm, seemed to admit as much two weeks ago when it sent supporters an email with the proposed slogan: "Democrats 2018: Have you seen the other guys?"

Now Democrats are trying to fix that  and not a moment too soon.

On Monday, I am told, congressional Democrats  in the Senate and the House together  will roll out a legislative policy agenda, their de facto 2018 campaign platform. The details, after months of haggling and cat-herding, could yet disappoint, but the broad outlines as described to me are exactly what the doctor ordered.

As important as what's in it is what's not. Democrats jettisoned social and foreign policy issues for this exercise, eschewing the identity politics and box-checking that have plagued Democratic campaigns in the past, most recently Hillary Clinton's. This will be purely an economic message.

They also resisted invitations to steer the party toward the center (as pollster Mark Penn advised) or into a more progressive agenda. This is meant to be a populist manifesto that doesn't conform to the left/right debate but instead aims to align Democrats with ordinary, middle-class Americans fighting powerful special interests.

Titled "A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages," it is expected to have many Democratic staples  tax increases on the rich, affordable college, infrastructure spending, higher wages, job training, paid family leave and the like  and a few new ones.

Hashed out over several months by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan (N.M.), and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Cheri Bustos (Ill.) and David Cicilline (R.I.), it will be outlined Monday with a few sample proposals, to be followed in the coming weeks by more proposals, some to be introduced as legislation and some to be offered as Contract With America-style promises that a Democratic Congress would implement. Schumer told me in December that Democrats would have "five, six sharp-edged [policies] that can be described in five words," although it sounds as if the plan hasn't come out quite so lean.

The goal is to avoid repeating Clinton's problem in 2016. She had so many proposals, and she scratched the itches of so many Democratic constituencies, that she lacked a coherent economic message.

Democrats have been little but the anti-Trump party lately, successfully fighting his legislative agenda and raising a ruckus about the Russia scandal and Trump's other outrages. The danger is that an impression solidifies among voters that the party has nothing else to say.

As if to illustrate the point, 23 liberal House Democrats announced Wednesday morning that they were filing a "resolution of no confidence" in Trump. It contains no fewer than 88 "whereas" clauses (whereas "the embassy of Kuwait held its national day celebration at Trump International," and whereas "Trump referred to United States Senator Elizabeth Warren as 'Pocahontas' "). The idea might work  if Democrats had a majority and if the United States had a parliamentary system.

A reporter asked Rep. Steve Cohen (Tenn.), sponsor of the no-confidence resolution, if he was focusing too much on Trump over jobs. "Bubble-gum chew and walk at the same time," he recommended.

Except Democrats haven't been doing both. Some think they don't have to, because polls show that voters prefer a Democratic Congress. But as The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis and Emily Guskin point out, more Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65 percent) say they will definitely vote next year than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (57 percent). To boost Democratic turnout, the party needs to be more than just anti-Trump.

Even if it doesn't help their electoral prospects, Democrats need a clear agenda so they can govern if they do win. If they win without a sharp agenda, they would end up where congressional Republicans are now: in power but without a popular mandate for their agenda.

On Wednesday, I asked Rep. Linda Sanchez (Calif.), the No. 5 Democrat in the House, about the search for a unified agenda, and she bristled. "We're not searching for an agenda," she replied. "Democrats have always known what we stood for."

They just did a really good job of keeping it under wraps.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp is now on a hunt for a professional who can help the company monestise the instant messaging app.

According to a blog by a company executive, WhatsApp is seeking an exceptional individual to lead the product development for WhatsApp's monetisation efforts.

"If you are a leader who has demonstrated experience in building products, has an empathy for both consumers and businesses, has a strong bias for action, want to understand and unlock the potential of WhatsApp to serve millions of businesses, we would be excited to hear from you," the blog read.

"WhatsApp is a start-up environment where you'll be expected to roll up your sleeves and work collaboratively with engineers, designers and other cross-functional partners. You'll expect to push the boundaries of what's possible in a mobile app, while sharing in our healthy obsession for quality and attention to detail," it added.

The job description said it will be a full-time position based with the WhatsApp team at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and the prospective employee will report to WhatsApp's Director of Growth and Monetisation.

The company wants a person who can lead the ideation, technical development and launch of innovative product features. He/she should drive product development from small features to entirely new products.

"Work hands-on with designers and engineers to implement and build new features that meet our standards of simplicity and quality, maximise efficiency in a constantly evolving environment," the blog said about the job responsibilities.

The minimum qualification is 10-plus years of product management or product design experience, understanding of technical architecture of mobile applications, designing user interfaces and mobile products, among others.

More than a billion people in over 180 countries use WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends and family. It is a free app and the company does not make money out of it.

Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in early 2014.

--IANS

sku/tsb/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
If you are an Apple device user and want to dodge a potential hacking, you must download the new software update for iOS and MacOS that the Cupertino-based giant has released.

According to a report in Fortune, for users of iPhones, iPads and Mac computers, downloading the patch is critical to secure the devices.

The update fixes a key vulnerability called Broadpwn that allows hackers to "execute arbitrary code" -- or take over your device -- via WiFi chips embedded in the device's main processor.

Nitay Artenstein, a security researcher at US-based computer security service Exodus Intelligence, exposed the flaw and said a hacker can target these devices for as long as they are in range.

Apple users can follow these steps to avoid hacking.

For iPhone or iPad users, go to the Settings menu and select General. From there, you press Software Update option and install iOS 10.3.3.

If you are a Mac user, head to the App Store and select the Updates tab. A prompt for macOS Sierra 10.12.6 is available and you can download it.

The same issue was detected in Android devices as well. Google patched the bug for the platform earlier this month, the report pointed out.

--IANS

sku/pgh/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Janata Dal (United) had planned to hold a meeting of its national executive, ostensibly its highest decision-making body, in New Delhi on Sunday. However, the partys top leadership had a rethink and postponed the meeting to August. The party is headed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the conjecture is that he didnt want the focus of and in the executive to be on the longevity of his partys alliance with the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal. Prasad and his sons Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav and daughter Misa Bharti have been embroiled in a series of controversies since early this year.
As talks over consolidation of public sector undertaking (PSU) banks gather pace, a former banker narrated his experience back in 2010. A few days after taking charge of a bank, he got a call from the Department of Financial Services, seeking his views on the merger of certain banks with the one he was heading. The department wanted to know the pros and cons of such a move and he had to give his feedback in 30 minutes flat. On his way to the Department of Financial Services office at Patel Chowk in New Delhi, officials from his bank gave him all the details on an Excel sheet, which he passed on to the department officials. Seven years on, talks are still on, he pointed out.
Government and family pensioners have been getting updated pension while current employees are getting salaries, according to revised pay scales since January 1996.
The Rajasthan police have arrested 31 persons and claimed to have busted an inter-state syndicate that allegedly stole crude oil worth crores of rupees from Cairn India's oilfield in Barmer over the past several years.

"We have arrested 31 persons in connection with a crude oil stealing racket, including 7-8 persons working with Cairn India. Seventeen drivers involved in the syndicate have been arrested," SP, Barmer, Gagandeep Singla told PTI.

More arrests are likely, he said adding that the police were investigating the links of the syndicate outside the state.

We have been able to establish links of the racket in Uttar Pradesh and Kolkata so far, Singla said adding that the role of some top officials of the oil and gas giant was also being examined.

The Barmer police had yesterday arrested two accused with one tanker that was filled with 2,200 litres crude oil, police officials said.

The accused were arrested on the information that crude oil from the Cairn India field was being supplied to factories.

According to the police, operators were authorised for transporting water. However tankers were used to carry oil in two of the five compartments inside them while the rest would be filled with water.

Two of the accused Sata Ram and Dharma Ram were allegedly selling the crude to Gautam Singh and Bhoor Singh at a factory located about 12 km from the city, the police claimed.

Gautam Singh allegedly paid Rs 7.50 per litre to the tanker owner and sold the crude further, the police claimed.

The tanker owner kept Rs 4 for himself and distributed the rest Rs 3. 50 among the staff posted at production site, the surveyor, helpers and others, they said.

SP, Barmer, Singla said the tankers belonged to a Gujarat-based firm and a local construction company.

Based on the statement of the accused, the police claimed that theft of 15000-20,000 litres of crude oil worth Rs 3 lakh was taking place daily leading to loss of Rs 11 crore per annum to the company.

The lid was blown off the racket following a complaint lodged by Cairn India's legal officer on July 14 at Nagana police station of Barmer against tanker operators, Sata Ram and Dharma Ram, the police said.
Afghan police today launched a search and rescue operation two days after at least 70 villagers were kidnapped by suspected Taliban militants in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

At least 7 of the kidnapped villagers were found dead yesterday, along the highway that runs from Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan, to Tarinkot, capital of Uruzgan province, a poppy-growing area where the Taliban has a heavy presence.

The police blamed the Taliban for the deaths.

Around 30 people were released, while 30 others were still missing, Kandahar police spokesman Zia Durrani told AFP.

No groups has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, and it was also not clear why the villagers were seized, though some government officials have suggested the villagers might have been kidnapped on suspicion of cooperation with the Afghan government.

Civilians are increasingly caught in the crosshairs of Afghanistan's worsening conflict as the Taliban step up their annual spring offensive, launched in April against the Western-backed Kabul government.

Highways around Afghanistan passing through insurgency- prone areas have become exceedingly dangerous, with the Taliban and other armed groups frequently kidnapping or killing travellers.

In July, Taliban fighters closed a highway connecting Farah to Herat city, stopping a bus and forcing 16 passengers to leave it. They shot at least seven of them, while the remaining nine were taken hostage.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
No-frills airline Air India Express is preparing to bolster its brand visibility online, especially among the expatriates in West Asia and South East Asia, according to a tender document.

As it embarks on ambitious expansion plans, Air India Express has floated a tender soliciting interest from entities that can set up and manage "search engine marketing channels" for the airline.

The profitable carrier's tender also comes amid the government working on the final contours of strategic disinvestment of its parent Air India, which has been in the red for long.

Air India Express is looking to "develop a search engine marketing strategy" and ensure its effective implementation as part of "revenue optimisation strategy", as per the tender document.

Besides, the carrier wants to reduce the dependence on "traditional media and sales channels".

An airline official said the main idea is to increase the brand visibility of Air India Express through the online medium, especially as it prepares to increase frequency of flights as well as expand into newer markets.

Detailing its plans in terms of the digital space, the airline is looking to increase its visibility amongst all air travellers and online bookers through search engine marketing platforms.

The document said Air India Express is looking to "establish and maintain positive impact amongst stakeholders in general and the expatriate population in West Asia and South East Asia" by way of ensuring that it is consistently amongst the top in relevant search engine results.

The Kerala-headquartered airline plans to commence operations from Surat, Madurai and Kannur besides increasing frequencies of flights and adding new destinations.

Earlier this month, Air India Express CEO K Shyam Sundar said the airline is in the process of drawing up a long term plan that would focus on expanding the fleet as well as the overseas footprint.

Staying in the black for the second straight year, AI Express recorded a net profit of Rs 296.7 crore in 2016-17.

With a fleet of 23 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft, the carrier flew around 3.5 million passengers in 2016-17 and the number is expected to touch 4 million in the current fiscal.

Currently, Air India Express operates about 550 flights every week connecting 15 Indian cities and 14 international destinations in the Middle East and South East Asia. It flies to Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Bahrain, Dammam, Dhaka, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, Muscat, Ras Al Khaimah, and Singapore, among other places.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 17-year-old boy was detained for allegedly cheating and copying in the class 10 school examination, police said today.

The accused was caught copying yesterday while he was writing his Algebra paper 1. One of his friend allegedly helped him by sending him photos of the answers via Whatsapp, said Police Inspector VV Chavan of Naupada police station.

The accused's friend was also booked. Students were not permitted to carry their cell phones in the examination hall, said Chavan.

A case under section 66(D) of the Information Technology Act was registered, the officer said, adding a probe was on.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Well, all you Trumpsters, looks like your fair-haired boy sitting in the Oval Office doesn't really care about his constituents after all. He wants to repeal ACA without any kind of replacement plan and to add another two years of health insurance limbo for the middle class. He says to let "Obamacare fail"... but remember, folks, it wasn't my fault. (Is anything his fault? Of course not: he hasn't done anything yet).
Chinese police have caught 24 suspected thieves who targeted tourists viewing the daily flag-raising ceremony in Tian'anmen Square here.

Police received complaints from several tourists who claimed that their property was stolen while watching the flag-raising ceremony, a popular patriotic and tourist activity in China.

In one such case police caught 10 suspects using surveillance videos.

Hundreds of local and foreign tourists attend the flag raising ceremony both morning and evening at the square.

Police found that an over 20-member gang had worked together to steal various items from flag-raising ceremony viewers near the square since May, state-run Xinhua agency reported.

Each member had a specific role, such as brushing against the target in the crowd, stealing mobile phones or wallets, or transferring the stolen goods to another gang member.

After a month-long investigation, more than 100 plain clothes officers launched an operation and caught 24 suspects.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today began a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no one had an interest in prolonging the crisis.

Erdogan, whose country has come to Qatar's aid in the crisis, had talks in Jeddah Sunday with King Salman who hailed the Turkish leader's "efforts in the fight against terrorism and its financing," Saudi state agency SPA reported.

Erdogan is scheduled to fly to Kuwait later today before heading to Qatar tomorrow for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began.

"No one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," Erdogan said in Istanbul before leaving on the two-day trip.

He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying Doha had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran.

Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position, and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

In recent years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has expedited the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan was also to hold talks with Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Extroverts learning a new language may be better at speaking and reading, but introverts are better listeners, scientists have found.

Researchers including Shahcla Zarfar, assistant professor at the University of Central Punjab, examined whether extrovert-introvert tendencies affected English language proficiency among Chinese students in India, and how these traits influenced language learning.

In Chinese culture, students are expected to listen to their teachers attentively, as opposed to Western culture where class participation is encouraged.

Some studies have suggested that such introversion hinders Chinese students' ability to learn English as a second language.

However, it is unclear if a relationship exists between extroversion-introversion traits and English language proficiency for nonnative speakers.

Psychologists argue that introverts are less susceptible to distraction and have better long-term memory, while linguists claim that the extroverts' sociable and outgoing attitudes, as well as their high tolerance to risk, help with learning a foreign language.

Researchers analysed the data from 145 Chinese exchange students aged between 18 and 21 at VIT University in Vellore, Tamil Nadu.

The data comprised of English language test scores and two types of questionnaires - one asked about personality and linguistic information, and the other only about their personality.

They found the majority of the students were introverts (47 per cent), followed by extroverts (35 per cent), and 'no tendency towards the extroversion-introversion traits' (18 per cent).

The team confirmed a significant relationship between the two personality traits and English language proficiency, with higher scores in speaking, reading and overall language proficiency for extrovert students.

There was little difference in writing between the two groups.

However, researchers found introvert students were better listeners than extrovert students, contradicting some claims that academic excellence relies solely on the extrovert tendency.

They speculate that this may indicate introverts' ability to focus more effectively on listening than extroverts.

The researchers suggest that instructors should adjust their teaching strategies depending on different personality traits among students learning English as a second language.

The study was published in the Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde today demanded that the government stop the process of medical admissions until the issue of allowing non-domicile students to apply for medical seats in the state is resolved.

"The Medical Education Department should approach the Supreme Court against the Bombay High Court's decision to allow non-domicile students (those who are not residents of Maharashtra) to apply for medical seats in the state," Munde said here.

"Until the Supreme Court gives its decision the government should stop the admission process," the NCP leader said.

On July 7, the Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court relaxed domicile norms for medical and dental courses in Maharashtra.

Parents of some students from the state moved the SC against the decision last week, but the apex court asked them to file a review petition before the High Court itself.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Progress in beating back the AIDS epidemic risks being eroded by a funding shortfall set to grow under Donald Trump's proposed cuts to global health projects, experts and campaigners warned ahead of a major HIV conference.

If adopted by Congress, the 2018 Trump budget could deprive some 830,000 people, mostly in Africa, from life- saving anti-AIDS drugs, according to calculations by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a California-based health policy NGO.

"We will see lives needlessly being lost," said Linda- Gail Bekker, president of the International AIDS Society (IAS) hosting some 6,000 experts in Paris from Sunday to take stock of advances in HIV science.

"We're not talking about maybe a slowing down... If these (US) cuts come about we could very well see a real turnaround in terms of the progress that has been made," she told AFP.

A Trump budget could lead to nearly 200,000 new HIV infections, according to the KFF.

It could also leave as many as 25 million couples without access to sponsored contraceptives, which not only prevent pregnancy but also virus spread.

"I cannot tell you how anxious I feel... To have the funding carpet taken from under our feet just seems such an incredible travesty," said Bekker.

The United States has for years been the biggest contributor to the global fight against HIV infection, accounting for about two-thirds of funding by governments.

Last year, it contributed USD 4.9 billion (4.2 billion euros) to global HIV projects - 7.5 times the amount provided by second-placed donor Britain.

Trump's proposed budget, submitted in May, would reduce this amount by about $1 billion, according to Health Global Access Project, an activist group which crunched the numbers.

The US president put forward a blueprint which, in its own words, "reduces funding for several global health programmes, including HIV/AIDS, with the expectation that other donors can and should increase their commitments."



The draft spending plan proposes to "maintain current commitments and all current patient levels on HIV/AIDS treatment" under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, set up by George W Bush in 2003.

The programme provides anti-retroviral treatment (ART) to over 12 million people.

The goal of PEPFAR, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a US government research agency, "is to get more people who have been newly infected on therapy" - which means more money.

"If you don't increase it, you... Have more responsibilities that you are not able to meet."



Trump also proposed a 17-per cent cut of USD 222 million to the government's 2017 contribution of USD 1.13 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB & Malaria, which provides about 10 million people with ART.

"The future outlook of donor funding for HIV remains uncertain, given recently proposed cuts to HIV funding by the US, amidst other competing demands on donor budgets more generally," said the KFF report.

Since the epidemic erupted in the 1980s, 76.1 million people have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Some 35 million have died.

Last year, AIDS killed a million people and infected another 1.8 million, according to the UN.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Narayani Shastri has never shied away from talking about her personal life as the actress says all her past relationships have given her good memories in some form or the other.

Narayani, who is now married to Steven Graver (Tony), was previously in a long-term relationship with TV actor Gaurav Chopra, before calling it quits eight years ago.

But their break-up did not affect their friendship as Narayani says they are still very much in touch and even her husband and Gaurav share a great bond with each other.

"The good thing about Tony is that he's an easy person. I take my time to become friends. He understands what I need and where I stand with my fundas in life. He is more friends with my exes than I am.

"I talk to Gaurav once in a month but they talk a lot and also hang out with each other. I'm cool with that," Narayani told PTI.

After their split, Gaurav went on to date actress Mouni Roy. But the couple called time on their relationship in 2012.

Post the break-up, there were reports claiming that Narayani was responsible for it.

However, she says she doesn't understand why people don't realise that even actors are human beings and just like others, they also have a "personal life".

"You go in a relationship with someone because you like a few things about that person and that's why you take it ahead. I have made it a point to not forget those good things. And that's why I'm friends with all my ex-boyfriends.

"Me and Mouni are in touch still. I'm sure she's not in touch with Gaurav. But we (she and Mouni) are very good friends. I have known Mouni before Gaurav started dating her. I had told Gaurav about Mouni. People don't know this."



Narayani says although she feels sometimes people just cross their limit and talk whatever they want to believe, it does not bother her anymore.

"People don't understand that we're normal people. Two people may not get along for whatever reasons. But it doesn't bother me. I don't care."



Narayani is one of the few actresses who has never been afraid to speak her mind and she says her nature often lands her in trouble with people.

"I'm too idealistic. Sometimes my professionalism comes in the way. I'm one of those people who will not lie even if it hurts anyone. I'll just say the way it is. To become friends with a person me is difficult.

"But then I do have those core people who like me for being the person I am. They can come to me for a reality check. They tolerate me and they love me for who I am. And I'm very comfortable with that. I don't have to pretend to be someone else."



The actress will soon be seen on an upcoming show "Rishton Ka Chakravyuh" on Star Plus, in which she is playing Satrupa who comes from a royal family.

Set amidst the royal backdrop, the show focuses on a rich industrial family residing at the majestic Lal Mahal, which is home to many conspiracies. It depicts the story of Satrupa, an authoritative woman and her daughter Anami.

"Satrupa is completely different from what I have done before. She is sophisticated, elegant, well-sopken and at the same time very controlled. This is a love-hate story between a mother and a daughter and not a typical 'saas-bahu' show.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 600,000 people are expected to contract cholera in Yemen this year, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Sunday as the war-torn country's healthcare system faces collapse.

Separately, the United Nations warned that 10 million Yemeni civilians are in acute need of life-saving aid as the country teeters on the edge of famine.

One in every 45 Yemenis will contract cholera by December as "a direct consequence of a conflict that has devastated civilian infrastructure and brought the whole health system to its knees," the ICRC said in a statement.

More than 370,000 people have fallen ill and 1,800 have died since late April in Yemen's second cholera outbreak in less than a year, according to the ICRC and the World Health Organisation.

The UN said Sunday that over 20 million of the country's 27 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, including nearly 10 million in acute need of life-saving food, water and medicine.

A war between the Saudi-backed government and Iran-backed Huthi rebels has claimed the lives of thousands of Yemenis and displaced millions.

A string of vital ports along the country's Red Sea coastline are blockaded, leaving millions of people with limited access to food and medicine.

Less than half of the country's medical facilities are currently functional.

The war in Yemen, one of the world's most impoverished countries, has killed more than 8,000 people and wounded a further 44,500 since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the conflict in 2015.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
'Indu Sarkar', a film on Emergency to be released on Friday, will hurt sentiments of many Congressmen and that is what the "present prime minister wants", veteran Congress leader M Veerappa Moily said today.

Indu Sarkar, based on the 1975-77 Emergency period, has evoked strong criticism and protest from the Congress party.

The Congress' apprehensions are over the portrayal of its veterans like Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi and other senior leaders of the party in the film.

Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, however, had said he would include a disclaimer in 'Indu Sarkar', stating that the film is mostly fictional.

Talking to PTI, Moily said the upcoming film will hurt sentiments of Congressmen.

"It hurts the sentiments of many of the Congressmen and that is what the present prime minister wants. Ultimately, it will (hurt) him (Narendra Modi).

"All these ruinous activities help in exit of BJP. More and more they do it, more the exit door will be opened for BJP," he said.

The film, featuring Kirti Kulhari in lead, has also run into trouble with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which has demanded 14 cuts in the movie.

Bhandarkar has been given a security cover by the Maharashtra government in the wake of several protests against the film.

The former Union minister Moily further said a perception is being created that the Congress is not providing a strong opposition to the BJP.

"There is no exit door in politics. There is no exit door for Congress but there is always for BJP," said the strongman from Karnataka.

He claimed that Congress will again form the government in Karnataka under the leadership of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

The assembly election in the state is scheduled to take place next year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Israel installed new security cameras today at the entrance to a sensitive Jerusalem holy site, as officials began indicating it was considering "alternatives" to the metal detectors at the contested shrine that set off a weekend of violence and raised tensions in the region.

Israel set up the new security measures last week after Arab gunmen opened fire from the shrine, killing two Israeli policemen. It said they were a necessary measure to prevent more attacks and were deployed routinely at holy sites around the world.

But Muslims alleged Israel was trying to expand its control at the Muslim-administered site and have launched mass prayer protests.

Three Palestinians were killed in street clashes Friday in some of the worst street violence in years, and later a Palestinian stabbed to death three members of an Israeli family.

Major General Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Israeli defence body for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel was open to alternatives to lower the tensions.

"The only thing we want is to ensure no one can enter with weapons again and carry out another attack," he said. "We're willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors as long as the solution of alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack."



However, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, told the Voice of Palestine he demands a complete return to procedures that were in place before the initial attack at the shrine, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

In a statement today, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, of which he is a part, said they "affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation."



Disputes over the shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, have set off major rounds of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations in the past.

On Friday, several thousand Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in Jerusalem after noon prayers, the centrepiece of the Muslim religious week. Three Palestinians were killed and several dozen wounded.

Late on Friday evening, a 20-year-old Palestinian identified as Omar al-Abed jumped over the fence of the Halamish settlement and entered a home, surprising a family that was celebrating the birth of a new grandchild during their traditional Sabbath dinner.

He stabbed to death Yosef Salomon, 70, and his adult children, 46-year-old Chaya and 35-year-old Elad. A neighbour, an off-duty soldier, heard the screams, rushed to the home and opened fire, wounding the attacker. TV footage showed the floor tiles drenched in blood, and officials called it a "slaughter."



Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack as "an act of terror, carried out by a beast who was incited with unfathomable hatred."



Al-Abed said in a pre-attack Facebook post that he expected to be killed in the attack and his father said he was motivated by the violence at the Jerusalem shrine.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
He comes from a state where Internet bans and stone-pelting incidents have hogged headlines in the recent past.

But, against all odds, Prince Sumberia (21) of Jammu and Kashmir won an Asia-level digital skills competition in Singapore, edging out competitors from six other countries.

The 2nd year B.Tech student of a Jammu college was not even sure if he would be able to procure passport for visiting Singapore.

"A relative of mine went to Srinagar to get the passport at a time when stone-peltings were quite frequent. I was not very sure if I would be able to get it, until I actually got it," he told PTI.

Perhaps these challenges made him more determined as he overcame stiff competition from students from Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Bhutan and Vietnam in the finale on July 20.

"The situation in Jammu and Kashmir creates a lot of problems for us students. We don't know when the Internet will be banned, and when there will be a strike," he says.

The Asia Digital Skills Challenge, one of the biggest competitions of its kind on the continent, was organised by the non-profit International Computer Driving License Foundation and was open to students aged 18-25 years.

The competition was held in three tiers - college, national and Asia level. The students were tested on their core digital skills through tests including online collaboration, IT security and advanced spreadsheets.

Sumberia faced competition from his counterparts in various prominent institutes in the country before clinching the finale.

"We don't know when things will became stable, and so there is always uncertainty," Sumberia says.

Apart from Sumberia, Josuto Rudupra, a 2nd year B.Tech student from Nagaland, represented India at the competition.

Two finalists were chosen from each country for the grand finale which was a solo contest.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Pakistan army is resorting to intensified shelling across the Line of Control in Jamuu and Kashmir as part of its support to Lashkar-e-Taiba's "Year of Kashmir" campaign, said a senior Indian Army official today.

The month of July has seen greater ceasefire violations, which resulted in killings of 11 people, including nine soldiers and injuries to 16 others besides dislocation of thousands of people from the border areas of the state.

Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), which was known as Lashkar-e-Taiba earlier and which has now renamed itself as Tehreek Azadi Jammu and Kashmir (TAJK), had declared 2017 earlier as the "Year of Kashmir."



The campaign is aimed at making the LoC look "more active to highlight the Kashmir issue."



The security agencies attributed Pakistan army's support to JuD's campaign while pointing out the spurt of incidents of cross-LoC shelling and firing by them in July.

Amid one of the worst fatalities in recent times, the month also saw over 110 livestock falling prey to the incidents of shelling and firings by Pakistani army in which nearly 35 structures, including over two dozen houses were damaged along the LoC in Rajouri district alone.

In the wake of repeated firing and shelling by Pakistan, over 4,000 people from borders areas had to be shifted to safer places in the district.

"The month has seen greater ceasefire violations along LoC in the state. The aim was to engineer infiltrations and push in more and more militants in J&K," said a senior Army officer, alluding to Pakistan army support to "Year of Kashmir" campaign and adding that Indian forces too aptly retaliated to the shelling by Pakistani army.

On July 21, 28-year-old rifleman Jayadrath Singh was killed when Pakistan army resorted to firing at Indian Army posts in Sunderbandi sector of Rajouri district.

Singh belonged to village Bhagwanpur of Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Mamta Devi.

A juniour commissioned officer, Subedar Shashi Kumar, who was grievously injured in an unprovoked ceasefire breach by Pakistan in Naushera on July 18, died at Udhampur Command Hospital on July 19.

Subedar Kumar was a native of Galon village of Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Santosh Sharma and children.

The July 18 ceasefire violations by Pakistan also saw two Army jawans, Sepoy Jaspreet Singh, 24 and Rifleman Bimal Sinjali, 21 killed in Naushera and Nowgam sectors of Rajouri and Kupwara districts respectively.

Eight people including 5 jawans had suffered injuries that day.

"More than 110 livestock were reported dead and two dozen houses damaged.

A total of 35 structures including private houses, government buildings including schools, were damaged in recent mortar shelling in Nowshera," said Rajouri Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Choudhary.

On July 18, Pakistani troops also targeted school children, shelling their schools and trapping 217 of them in in 3 schools in Kadali and Seha areas of Rajouri near the LoC for 6 hours. The Army and state police, however, rescued and evacuated them to safer places in bullet-proof vehicles along with other people totalling 261.

Earlier on July 17, one Army jawan and a girl were killed when the Pakistan army violated ceasefire twice in two sectors and resorted to firing at Indian Army posts and civilian areas in Rajouri and Poonch districts.

The victims were identified as 37-year-old Naik Muddasar Ahmed of militancy-infested Tral belt of South Kashmir and 9- year-old girl Sajada.

On July 15, another jawan, Lance Naik Mohmmad Naseer, 35 was killed and yet another injured in Pak shelling along the LoC in Rajouri district.

Two other jawans, Lance Naik Ranjit Singh and Rifleman Satesh Bhagat, both of Jammu, were killed along LoC on July 12, in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of North Kashmir sector.

Four days earlier on July 8, jawan Mohmmad Showkat, who was on leave, was killed along with his wife, when his house was hit by a Pakistani army's mortar shell in Poonch sector.

Four people were injured.

The officials said there have been 23 incidents of ceasefire violations, one attack by Pakistan's notorious Border Action Team and two infiltration bids by Pakistan- backed militants in June in which 4 people,including 3 jawans were killed and 12 injured.

On June 29, two Indian Army jawans were injured when Pakistanitroops fired from small arms and shelled mortars on forward posts andcivilian areas along the LoC in Poonch district.

Even on the occasion of Eid-ul Fitr on June 26, the Pakistaniarmy had fired small arms and automatic weapons and shelled mortars along the LoC in Bhimbher Gali sector of Rajouri.

On June 22, in the third such attack this year, a team ofPakistani special forces sneaked 600 metres across the LoC into thePoonch sector and killed two Indian jawans, but lost one Border ActionTeam (BAT) member in retaliatory action.

It had carried out the attack at around 2 PM on an Army patrol party in the Gulpur belt of Poonch on 22 June under heavy cover fireby Pakistani troops.

In the firefight, two Indian soldiers, Naik Jadhav Sandip, 34, of Aurangabad and Sepoy Mane Savan Balku, 24, of Kolhapur were martyred.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The air of the JNU campus, which was at the centre of a controversy for alleged anti-India slogans last year, was today filled with a patriotic spirit as the varsity observed 'Kargil Vijay Diwas' to mark the sacrifices of Indian soldiers in the 1999 war.

It started with the JNU faculty and students along with the kin of Kargil martyrs and members of Veterans India, a body of ex-servicemen, holding a march with a 2,200-feet-long tricolour and paying tributes at the Wall of Heroes - located in JNU's convention centre where 21 portraits of Param Vir Chakra awardees are exhibited.

The programme also witnessed a performance by the army band. At the event, women family members of soldiers who died fighting in the Kargil war were felicitated.

JNU Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar termed the programme "historic" and said it was an important day to remember the sacrifices made by the Army and other security forces for the country.

Lauding the initiative taken by the university, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan, said JNU created history today by organising 'Tiranga March', setting up Wall of Heroes and by raising slogans of "Bharat Mata ki Jai" and "Vande Mataram".

He further said "In no other country, is the Army being questioned. As India is a democracy, some powers dare to show India in poor light. May God give sch people better sense".

Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh was also present at the event.

"The outside forces never succeeded with their powers. They became successful only when an insider helped them out. The Indian veterans have been trying to instill the spirit of unity in every Indian heart," the former Army chief said.

He added that Indian soldiers work with the feeling that the nation is above all and there is no division within the Army on the grounds of religion, caste and community.

He said the Indian Army is the best in terms of observing human rights.

Veterans India's Maj Gen G D Bakshi spoke of how Indian soldiers guard the nation's treacherous borders with Pakistan in extremely inhospitable weather conditions in Kashmir.

The V-C also said the varsity has asked both the union ministers to help them procure an army tank which can be put up on display in the campus so that students can be reminded of the sacrifices and valour of the soldiers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indian juggernaut in men's badminton continued to roll on with former Commonwealth Games gold medallist Parupalli Kashyap set up title date with HS Prannoy at the USD 120,000 US Open Grand Prix Gold here.

After limping out of the court with a calf injury in October in 2015, it was the first final for Kashyap in 21 months, while Prannoy, who has always been plagued by injuries,also reached his first summit clash after clinching the Swiss Open last year.

Kashyap eked out a hard-fought 15-21 21-15 21-16 win over Korean Kwang Hee Heo in the second semifinal which lasted an hour and six minutes.

Prannoy, on the other hand, notched up a 21-14 21-19 win over Vietnam's Tien Minh Nguyen in the first semi-final.

It will be the second time this season that two Indians will fight it out for the title at international badminton.

In April, K Srikanth and B Sai Praneeth had played in the finals of Singapore Open with the latter claiming his maiden Super Series title.

Men's doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy fought hard before going down 12-21 21-12 20-22 to top seeds Lu Ching Yao and Yang Po Han.

"It is good to reach a final after a long time. It was a tough match against the Korean. He had started really well and I took time to adjust to the conditions today as it was little slow. He was really patient and he was hitting hard smashes. But slowly I got a good rhythm and eventually I could pull off," Kashyap told PTI.

"I think it was a difficult tournament to start with as the opening round was also against a player I had always had close matches. I had played him 5-6 times and I was good to win in the first round. Also playing against Sameer was tough. He is a tricky player and it has always been close matches with him. Really looking forward to the final," he added.

It will be third Grand Prix Gold title for Indian men's shuttlers after Sameer and Praneeth clinched the Syed Modi International and Thailand Open respectively. Indian men also won three super series titles with Srikanth clinching the Indonesia and Australia Open and Praneeth winning at Singapore.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
: Thousands of people today performed 'Bali tharpanam' ritual and paid homage to their ancestors on the occasion of 'Karkkidaka Vavu' in Kerala.

Cutting across gender and age barriers, people belonging to Hindu community performed the traditional ritual on the banks of rivers and seashores across the state.

According to Hindu belief, departed souls attain "moksha" (liberation) if the ritual is performed on 'Karkidaka Vavu' day.

Temple authorities and police had made elaborate arrangements to enable people to offer 'Bali tharpanam' at important places such as Thiruvallam Parasurama Temple and Shangumugham Beach here, Varkala Papanasam Beach and on the banks of Periyar river in Aluva near Kochi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Incessant heavy rains in Gangetic West Bengal has led to inundation of several low lying areas, even as the Met department warned of similar weather till Tuesday.

"Heavy to very heavy rain occurred in several parts of Gangetic West Bengal since yesterday and is likely to continue till Tuesday," West Bengal Irrigation minister Rajiv Banerjee told PTI here today.

Stating that some rivers are flowing above danger level, the minister said the Irrigation department is monitoring embankments of rivers round the clock.

"Rivers Silabati in West Midnapore, Darakeswar in Bankura and Dwaraka in Birbhum are flowing above danger level, while some other rivers are also in spate owing to the heavy rains," Banerjee said.

The Met department has warned of heavy to very rains at isolated places over Gangetic West Bengal, with extremely heavy rain at isolated places over East Midnapore, South 24 Parganas, Bankura, Birbhum, Purulia and West Burdwan districts till Tuesday.

The Met department has warned of rough seas along the West Bengal coast and advised fishermen not to venture into the sea.

In sub-Himalayan West Bengal, heavy rain is likely to occur at isolated places over Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Malda, North and South Dinajpur districts for the next two days, the Met department said.

The metropolis, where some low-lying areas got waterlogged, recorded 60.5 mm rainfall in 24 hours till 8.30 AM today, the Met department said.

Bankura recorded the state's highest rainfall at 274 mm during the same period, while Digha recorded 104 mm and Burdwan received 72.6 mm of rains.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Showing a growing traction for mutual funds among investors, the number of folios has grown by over 93 lakh to an all time high of 5.82 crore at the end of June 2017, from the year-ago level, driven by strong participation from retail investors.

According to data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on total investor accounts with 42 active fund houses, the number of folios rose to a record 5,82,30,384 at the end of last month, from 4,89,24,391 in June end 2016, a gain of 93.06 lakh.

The number of investor accounts stood at 5.54 crore at the end of March quarter.

Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts, though one investor can have multiples.

"The increase in folios has come predominantly from the retail category as is evident by the strong double digit growth in folios in equity, balanced and debt categories," Vidya Bala, Head of MF Research at FundsIndia.Com said.

"Sharp rally in markets, together with low interest on deposits appear to be luring more investors into mutual funds. However, past data tells us that folios that get added in market peaks may not always stay if the market sees a correction," she added.

Notably, participation from retail investors, especially from small towns, has been growing.

Besides, steps taken by markets regulator Sebi such as giving extra incentives for fund houses expanding into smaller cities, coupled with increasing investor education programmes to increase penetration of mutual funds is paying dividend.

Retail investor accounts - defined by folios in equity, equity-linked saving schemes (ELSS) and balanced categories - grew by over 77 lakh to more than 4.7 crore during the period under review.

Overall, mutual funds have seen an infusion of Rs 93,400 crore, while equity and ELSS alone attracted an impressive inflow of over Rs 28,000 crore.

"From a long term perspective, mutual fund in India still has a lot of potential. Mutual fund's AUM/GDP in the US is around 90 per cent, 69 per cent in European Union, above 50 per cent in Brazil, while in India it is still around 13 per cent. The scope for growth is obviously very high.

"From a short term perspective, every day more investors are convinced by the advantages of mutual funds, especially Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs)," said Jean-Christophe Gougeon, Director Investment Solutions at Sharekhan.

A mutual fund pools the assets of its investors and invests the money on behalf of them. It provides diverse investment instruments like stocks and bonds without requiring investors to make separate purchases and trades.

(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.)
A Saudi border guard died today in a mine explosion near the country's border with Yemen, the interior ministry said.

The guard was on patrol in the southern Asir province when the mine exploded, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA agency.

Saudi Arabia heads an Arab military coalition which entered Yemen in March 2015 to prop up the government up against Iran-backed Huthi rebels.

Asir province is home to an airbase central to the coalition campaign.

The Huthis and their allies, troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, control much of northern Yemen and the Red Sea coast including the port of Hodeida.

Cross-border attacks by the rebels have killed 140 military personnel and civilians inside Saudi Arabia since March 2015.

The war in Yemen, one of the world's most impoverished countries, has killed more than 8,000 people and wounded a further 44,500 since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the conflict.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being on a "centralisation spree" as he criticised demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Thackeray, whose party is a constituent of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre and in Maharashtra, said reforms are a must, "but one should pause" to review their impact.

In an interview to Sena mouthpiece 'Saamna', he said that going by government advertisements, one would get a feeling that everything was hunky-dory, but one should check the ground reality.

Talking about the GST which was rolled out on July one and the Sena's reservations on it, he said, "Should we centralise or decentralise? Rajiv Gandhi had introduced autonomy through the Panchayati Raj when he was the prime minister. Narendra Modi has taken away the autonomy and is on a centralisation spree."



Thackeray said if governance depends "only on the will of whoever is the prime minister", then does India really have a democracy?



"Do people's views have any value?....Reforms are a must, but one should also pause from time-to-time and review their impact," he said.

"I read somewhere that 15 lakh people lost their jobs in the four months after demonetisation. It means 60 lakh families were affected. It happened only due to the notes ban (demonetisation). What happened to those who lost their jobs is the government's responsibility," he added.

Referring to the Centre's initiatives aimed at job creation such as 'Start-up India' and 'Make-in-India', Thackeray wondered how did one reconcile them with demonetisation and its effects.

He also said the Sena would not shy away from "exposing" the BJP-led Maharashtra government, if it failed to implement the loan waiver scheme in the state properly.

Claiming that the Sena was the first to raise the issue of farm loan waiver when Sharad Pawar was the Union agriculture minister, Thackeray said, "Maharashtra was at the top in farmer suicides and unfortunately, it is still there. This was not an area where we should have been at the top."



He said he had asked Sena workers to beat drums outside banks (as part of an agitation) and make them display the list of beneficiaries of farm loan waiver.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had, on June 24, announced a loan waiver to the tune of Rs 34,022 crore following a statewide agitation by farmers.

On July 9, Fadnavis had said the entire debt of around 36 lakh farmers in the state would be waived.

Thackeray said, "The state had said the entire loan of 36 lakh farmers would be waived, while 89 lakh farmers would benefit from the scheme. I want to see their names."



Reminding the state government of its proposal to give Rs 10,000 to every farmer till the loan waiver scheme was worked for buying seeds and fertilisers, he claimed that only around 2,500 people had received the payments, even though more than a month had passed since the announcement was made.

Thackeray asked, "If this is not chaos, then what is?"



He claimed that no bank had so far received clear instructions about how to grant waiver.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Cadet at the National Defence Academy (NDA) here allegedly committed suicide today.

The body of Alesh Jaiswal, a fifth-term Cadet, was found hanging from the ceiling fan in his room, a release from the NDA said.

"The Cadet was immediately rushed to the military hospital but could not be revived," it said.

Local Uttamnagar police said that it was suspected that he hanged himself, though no suicide note had been found so far and further probe was on.

Jaiswal's parents were informed about the incident and a court of inquiry had been ordered, the NDA authorities said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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!)
Union minister Prakash Javadekar has said question papers in vernacular languages for the all- India entrance examination for medical colleges, NEET, will be mere translation of the question papers in English.

The Human Resource Development minister was replying to a question about a recent complaint by West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee that students appearing for medical entrance examination in vernacular languages this year had faced tougher questions than the ones set in English and Hindi.

"The vernacular question papers for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) - all-India entrance examination for medical colleges - will just be translation of the question paper in English," he told reporters here yesterday.

Asked about 'one nation one test' policy for engineering courses, the Union minister said, "We are yet to take a call on this issue. It is in discussion stage.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bangladesh and India have already signed a memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to connect the North-East and West Bengal with Bangladesh through new waterways, Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said.

"The new waterways would enable transportation of people and goods by ships. The new waterways would be set up by using major rivers of Bangladesh, West Bengal and Brahmaputra in Assam.

"Dredging in the rivers would be required and the concerned countries would conduct the dredging works in the rivers in their countries," the Union Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping told reporters here last night.

The new project would be operational in the current year and boost the trade and passenger movement between the countries, he said.

The two countries share a 4095 km border of which 1116 km is through river.

Bangladesh as lower riparian state receives water from 54 rivers from India.

Mandaviya, who is also Union minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers yesterday met Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and Governor Tathagata Roy and discussed about implementation of Pradhanmantry Bharatiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojana with a target of providing quality medicine to the poor people.

He said the Narendra Modi government is giving a lot of importance to strengthen "Look East act East" policy by building more infrastructure and institutions in the region to catch up with the rest of the country.

Construction of highways was one of them, he said.

Mandaviya said at present there are six national highways having length of 854 km in Tripura and in addition to this four new roads covering 229 km have been approved by the ministry.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP national president Amit Shah is today holding meeting with party leaders, including Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, MPs and MLAs, on the last day of his visit to Rajasthan.

Shah is in Jaipur on a three-day visit to review preparations of the party for the state assembly elections, due next year, and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Raje, state BJP president Ashok Parnami and other senior party leaders are present at the BJP office, a party spokesperson said.

He will also meet BJP core committee members and vistaraks (full-time workers) later in the day to discuss ways to strengthen the organisation, the spokesperson said.

Shah will return to New Delhi this evening, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The chairman of parliamentary panel on finance, M Veerappa Moily, today said he was for changing the financial year to January-December, but the government should not rush the process lest it disrupt the economy.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday informed Parliament that the government was considering changing financial year to January-December from April-March.

The present financial year (April 1 to March 31) was adopted by the Government of India in 1867 principally to align the Indian financial year with that of the British government.

Prior to 1867, the financial year in India used to commence on May 1 of the current year to April 30 of the following calendar year.

Talking to PTI, Moily said the government could announce changing the financial year in Budget in February and accordingly the next Budget presentation date could be adjusted.

There are reports that government may advance the Budget presentation to November from February.

"The issue of changing financial year was examined by many



committees since pre-Independence days. It is not a new thinking.

"I am also for it, but don't hurry up. Take states opinion. Only three states, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have given opinion and that too unofficially," said Moily, the Chairman of Standing Committee on Finance and senior Congress leader.

Among others, the panel had looked into budgetary reforms including merger of railway budget with General Budget.

The former Union minister and chairman of 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission said that the change in financial year should be done because "April-March is not rooted in Indian culture and ethos. It is absolutely British".

Moily said several committees have gone into the issue, however the Administrative Reforms Commission headed by him refrained from getting into because earlier suggestions for change in fiscal year were never accepted by the government.

Giving rationale for aligning the fiscal year with calender year, he said: "We are in global economy. Many of the countries have adopted calender year. We should adopt but not arbitrarily".

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed desire to align the financial year with the calendar year, the government had last year appointed a committee to study the feasibility of shifting the financial year to January 1.

The panel headed by Shankar Acharya submitted its report to the Finance Minister in December.

"Let them (the government) announce in the budget the change in fiscal year to January-December and implement from next year," Moily said.

Moily sees that abrupt change in the accounting year may lead to disruption in the economy as tax laws will have to be amended and also accounting procedures.

He also said the Congress would support change in the year, but the government should do it methodologically and consult all states.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NCP president Sharad Pawar today expressed grief over the demise of party's Kerala unit chief Uzhavoor Vijayan.

Vijayan passed away this morning at a private hospital in Kochi, a hospital spokesman had said.

He was 60 and is survived by his wife and two daughters.

"Saddened by the demise of Uzhavoor Vijayan, President, Kerala NCP. It is an irrevocable loss to the party," tweeted Pawar.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The late Indira Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee shared an unspoken bond  not just metaphorically but literally.

The story goes that it was difficult, rather impossible, for any outsider to extract any information he did not want to reveal.

"Even Mrs Gandhi would say, 'No matter how hard one tries, they can never get a word out of Pranab. All they will see is the smoke coming out of his pipe'," laughed journalist and long-time friend Jayanta Ghoshal, who has known Mukherjee since 1985, as he remembered the immense faith between the prime minister and her finance minister.

As the 13th president of India leaves the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday, making way for his successor Ram Nath Kovind, old friends recalled with fondness the many anecdotes that marked his long career in .

Mukherjee is said to have had loved his pipes, even after he quit smoking years ago.

"He never smoked cigarettes, only the pipe. After he was asked to quit smoking for health issues, he wouldn't smoke but would keep the pipe in his mouth, without any nicotine, and chew the stem of pipe, just to get the feel of it," Ghoshal told PTI.

A proud owner of over 500 smoking pipes gifted to him by different heads of states and other foreign dignitaries, Mukherjee has donated the collection to the Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum.

His first pipe, Ghoshal said, was given to him by senior Congress leader Debkanta Barua from Assam.

The journalist first met Mukherjee in 1985, at the latter's south Calcutta residence in Southern Avenue, as a junior reporter in the Bengali daily Bartaman.

Young and enthusiastic, Ghoshal would accompany the politician on each of his trips to different districts in West Bengal, gaining political knowledge on the way.

"He was a very scholarly person. Even though I was only a junior reporter, he would explain things (political science) to me and I would listen to him like a student. He would also sometimes share anecdotes about Indira Gandhi. He used to miss her a lot," Ghoshal recalled, remembering the days after Gandhi's assassination when there was a leadership struggle in the party.

Senior Congress leader and former union minister Shivraj Patil describes his long-time colleague as a man who "knew the and economics of the country in the best possible manner".

"He was one of the senior most members in parliament and he knew very well in what manner a minister should conduct himself. He knew how the Constitution is to be protected without creating problems for the government."



"He was one of the best presidents of India," Patil added.

For fellow Bengali and Trinamool Congress member Saugato Roy, Mukherjee was a lover of "old political history" and an extremely affectionate and hard working man.

"Although it has been long since I split from the Congress, I continue to enjoy his affection. He loved to talk about old political history. I have known him for 30-35 years and he is an extremely hard working person. When he was the finance minister, I remember how he wouldn't ever leave without meeting the last visitor," Roy said.

Having held several ministerial portfolios in the Indian government, including defence, finance and external affairs, Mukherjee was, as Ghoshal noted, "perpetual Number 2".

"Becoming the President of India gave him the opportunity to become Number 1," he said.
The voting pattern in West Bengal and Tripura, two states high on the BJP's expansion plans, in the presidential poll has gladdened the party's strategists.

That the BJP-led NDA's candidate Ram Nath Kovind got the support of 11 MLAs against its strength of six in Bengal and seven from Tripura, where the BJP had not won a single seat in the last assembly polls, is being seen as a good omen by the party.

"West Bengal is undergoing a political change. Leaders from other parties also sense that the BJP has emerged as the main challenger to Mamata Banerjee and her party," West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh told PTI.

Interestingly, as many as 10 votes were declared invalid and the BJP sees it as an evidence of deliberate refusal by some MLAs of the parties supporting Meira Kumar to toe the official line.

In the 294-member state assembly, the BJP and its allies have six MLAs.

Under its national president Amit Shah, the saffron party has been making a concerted bid to replace the Left and the Congress as main opposition voices against the TMC.

There is a widespread attraction to the BJP and the coming elections will see a straight fight between it and the TMC, Ghosh claimed.

In Tripura, seven MLAs supported Kovind.

The BJP on paper has no MLA in the assembly but these Congress-turned-TMC MLAs have jumped onto the saffron bandwagon after Banerjee's outfit was seen to be warming up to the Left, which rules in the state, to take on the BJP at the national level.

BJP leaders believe that there is little doubt that their party has emerged as the main opposition in the state and will be the main challenger to end the 25-year-old Left rule in the state during the 2018 assembly polls.

However, if Bengal and Tripura have brought happy tidings to the party, it suffered disappointment in Kerala, another state high on its agenda of nation-wide political expansion.

Despite efforts, it was unable to lure any MLA from other parties and could garner only one vote, that of its lone lawmaker O Rajagopal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Reliance Industries is paying 6 per cent more price to buy coal-bed methane gas from its own block in Madhya Pradesh in the second quarter of current fiscal, the company said in an investor presentation.

RIL had in May become the first buyer of gas it produced from its own coal-bed methane (CBM) block after agreeing to pay the highest price for the fuel.

It paid $4.23 per million British thermal unit for the CBM produced during May-June.

"For 2Q (July-September) FY18 supplies discovered price is $4.50 per mmBtu," the company said in an investor presentation after announcing first quarter earnings. "RIL is the successful bidder."



RIL said it began CBM production from its Sohagpur blocks in Madhya Pradesh in March this year. "205 wells are flowing and production ramp up is in progress. Produced 8.6 million standard cubic meters of gas in 1Q FY18," it said.

Following the April decision of the government to give coal bed methane (CBM) producers freedom to discover market price, RIL invited bids from users of gas.

The price discovered in the process was $4.23 for May-June and $4.5 for July-September.

The rate is almost double the $2.48 per mmBtu price RIL gets for natural gas produced from its eastern offshore KG-D6 block.

RIL said average production of gas from KG-D6 was 6.4 million standard cubic meters per per day and oil and condensate at 2,791 barrels per day during April-June quarter.

This compares to 7.4 mmscmd of average gas production and 3,749 bdp of oil and condensate production during January- March.

"Production continues to decline due to natural decline in the fields," it said. "Currently eight wells in D1-D3 and three wells in MA field (in KG-D6 block) are under production."



RIL has invested about $500 million in CBM and laying a 300-km pipeline from Sohagpur to Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh to connect to the national gas grid.

Through the April 13 notification, the oil ministry had stated that a CBM producer has to call for open bids for sale of coal gas and seek price quotes to discover the market price.

The process prescribed was the same as the one RIL had run in 2012 to discover a price for CBM gas it is to produce in Madhya Pradesh. Back in 2012, it had sought bids for 3.5 mmscmd (as against 0.40 mmscmd put on offer this time) of coal gas from its Sohagpur CBM block in Madhya Pradesh at a benchmarked rate at 12.67 per cent of JCC, or Japan Customs- Cleared Crude, plus $0.26 per million British thermal unit.

The formula was the same at which Petronet LNG, a joint venture of public sector oil companies, whose chairman is the oil secretary, used to buy long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar.

At $100 per barrel oil price prevalent that year, CBM from RIL's Madhya Pradesh block was to cost $12.93 per mmBtu. At $55 a barrel rate currently, it would cost $7.2. That formula was, however, rejected by the ministry even though 59 valid bids seeking about 70 mmscmd of gas were received in the open tender.

This time, RIL sought bids in form of a deductible from Platts DES West India price of $7.659 per MMBtu.

(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.)
US-based apparel and footwear company Skechers is planning to add around 300 new stores to take the total count to 400 outlets in India over the next three to five years, a company official said.

As part of its expansion plans, the company is looking to focus on the tier II and III cities besides its existing metro markets and tap online segment by adopting omni channel approach.

Besides, the Manhattan Beach, California-based firm would also add products to its offerings into the apparel and accessories category.

"In the next three to five years, we are looking to add around 200 to 300 stores," Skechers Sarl Managing Partner Marvin Bernstein told PTI.

The company, which had last week opened its 90th store in Gurgaon, is expecting to close this fiscal with Rs 500 crore sales.

However, Bernstein did not share the investment involved in the expansion of sales network.

"I think we have just started in India... Our current and future expansion is across metro and tier II and III towns," he added.

The added products in the segment would include socks, bags, caps, shoecare, among others.

"In India the apparel section was launched last week... By next year, the other accessories should be launched," the company said.

Skechers has adopted a cautious approach in the online space here, as it did not support the discounted model of sale. It is adopting omni channel approach by integrating online and offline.

"In another 3-6 months' time, we are already going live with Skechers.In and it (stores) would be integrated with that," Bernstein added.

Presently, Skechers is importing its range here but is also open for domestic sourcing, when the need arises, he added.

Skechers is maintaining 50:50 ratio of company owned and franchise-based model presently and looks to retain the same business model.

"In the long run more franchise store would open and ratio would be higher, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Clashes between two Arab tribes in Sudan's war-torn state of East Darfur have killed up to 10 people, tribal leaders said today.

The fighting that began on Saturday comes as the United Nations and African Union prepare to downsize their peacekeeping mission in Darfur, saying that overall violence there has diminished.

The clashes between the Arab Maaliya and Rizeigat tribes came months after a similar clash left at least nine dead.

The two tribes have a history of violence over land ownership rights and allegations of cattle theft.

"A group of tribesmen from Maaliya were ambushed by members of Rizeigat when they tried to chase thieves who had stolen livestock belonging to Maaliya tribesmen," said Ahmed Nour, a Maaliya leader.

He said 10 people were killed and 18 wounded in the clashes 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of El-Daien, the capital of East Darfur.

The chief of the Rizeigat tribe, Mohamed Madibu, told AFP that the two groups also clashed on Sunday.

He said that three Rizeigat were killed in the initial clashes yesterday.

"A group of Maaliya attacked some Rizeigat villages yesterday. There are clashes even today, but we don't have details about casualties," Madibu said.

Khartoum limits international media access to Darfur so it was not possible to independently verify the toll, and Sudanese authorities could not be reached for comment.

Although Khartoum insists that the conflict in Darfur has ended, parts of the region have been destabilised by fighting between myriad ethnic and tribal groups.

The UN and African Union maintain that the Darfur conflict is winding down, and their peacekeeping mission -- among the costliest with a budget of more than $1 billion -- is being trimmed.

The Darfur conflict erupted in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against President Omar al-Bashir's Arab- dominated government, accusing it of marginalising the region.

Since then, more than 2.5 million people have been displaced and 300,000 killed, the UN says.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will hold extensive talks with her Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari tomorrow during which focus is expected to be on the issue of 39 Indians kidnapped by the ISIS three years back from Mosul city.

Al-Jaafari's visit from July 24 to July 28 to India comes two weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced liberation of Mosul, the second biggest city in his country, from the ISIS, which marked a major milestone for the Iraqi security forces.

In their talks, the two sides will to take stock of bilateral relations and explore ways to enhance cooperation in areas of energy and trade.

Iraq has been one of the major suppliers of crude oil to India.

On the visit by al-Jaafari, the external affairs ministry has said the two sides will discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.

"The visit is expected to add further impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement," the MEA had said on Friday.

As liberation of Mosul brightened chances of information about the kidnapped Indians, Swaraj, in a meeting with their relatives last week, had said that they might be languishing in a jail in Badush in northwest of Mosul where fighting was going on.

However, a media report from Badush yesterday said the jail now is an abandoned structure and has been unoccupied for weeks.

Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh was sent to Iraq days after the Iraqi PM announced victory in the fight to liberate Mosul.

Swaraj had told the family members that an Iraqi official quoting intelligence sources had told Singh that the kidnapped Indians were deployed at a hospital construction site and then shifted to a farm before they were put in a jail in Badush.

She had said al-Jaafari may bring fresh information about the kidnapped Indians, mostly from Punjab.

The volume of bilateral trade in 2016-17 was nearly USD 13 billion.

"Iraq contributes significantly to India's energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to us (over 37 MMT during 2016-17)," the MEA has said.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is also scheduled to meet the Iraqi foreign minister who will be accompanied by a senior-level official delegation.

Al-Jafaari will travel to Mumbai on July 26 and will be back in Delhi on July 27.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Unidentified assailants opened fire on three employees of a wine shop at Varet village in the district last night, police said.

The assailants -- five in number -- fled under the cover of darkness, said assistant sub-inspector M K Bhoir of Ganeshpuri police station.

The victims left the wine shop in Ambadi for their employer's house in Ambernath to hand over day's cash collection of Rs 7 lakh.

At around 10.15 pm, their vehicle was waylaid by a group of five men at Varet village who opened fire from pistols and then ran away, ASI Bhoir said.

The injured men -- Ashok Rangawani, Rajesh Ahuja and Vishal Manial -- were admitted to a hospital in Mulund.

Police have registered a case under section 397 (causing grievous hurt during robbery attempt) of IPC.

Additional Superintendent of Police, Thane Rural Prashant Kadam visited the crime spot today.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The ruling AIADMK today hit out at actor Kamal Haasan saying he does not understand that his utterances against the government will "affect" him later and opposition parties which support him now will "leave him in a lurch" in due course of time.

AIADMK's mouthpiece 'Namadhu Dr MGR' today said the Opposition parties including the DMK have begun voicing their support for the 'Viswaroopam' star who has spoken against the state government due to "over enthusiasm."



It may be recalled that the top actor has been targeting the state government on issues including alleged corruption and incidence of dengue.

"Due to this (support of parties), he is perceiving that the entire Tamil Nadu stands behind him and has been expressing opinions everyday against the government," the Tamil daily said in its front page write-up highlighted as a "box-item."



"Though his emotionally charged deeds and utterances will put him in limelight for now, he does not understand the extent to which it will affect him later."



The daily which headlined the article as "Kamal Haasan in Trishanku's heaven," said the Bigg Boss host "should realise that the parties that voice support for him will leave him in the lurch in due course of time."



Parties that were working against the government look at using the actor to their advantage, the daily said.

If the actor, without understanding it made a "miscalculation," that the entire Tamil Nadu and political parties were behind him, it is a "plain truth" that he will have to face the "consequences."



Following Haasan's recent outburst against the government, several ministers had spoken against him.

Chief Minister K Palaniswami had on July 19 said that the government will give him a reply if he joins politics.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Venezuela's opposition has called a fresh 48-hour general strike against embattled President Nicolas Maduro's plans to have the constitution rewritten giving him broader powers.

"We are calling out the entire (Venezuelan) people, all groups in society, for a 48-hour strike" Wednesday and Thursday lawmaker Simon Calzadilla said.

With anti-government marchers still clearing streets yesterday, Calzadilla said that the strike would be capped on Friday with a march demanding that Maduro officially scrap his planned Constituent Assembly vote. It is scheduled for July 30.

Earlier police on motorcycles fired tear gas to break up an opposition march on the Supreme Court to press demands that elected socialist Maduro leave office, as months of sometimes deadly anti-government demonstrations showed no signs of abating.

That rally was also meant as a show of support for a slate of 33 magistrates - a so-called shadow supreme court - whose names were put forward Friday by the opposition to replace Venezuela's current high court, which is closely allied with Maduro and frequently rules in his favour.

Emboldened by a nationwide strike on Thursday that paralysed parts of the capital Caracas and other Venezuelan cities, opposition leaders held a mock swearing-in ceremony Friday for the shadow court's new "judges."



Many of the actual court's justices were hastily appointed shortly before Maduro's ruling party lost its majority in congress.

The shadow court has strong support from the demonstrators, organisers said yesterday.

"Everyone has given their backing to the new Supreme Court," tweeted Freddy Guevara, a leader of the opposition-led congress.

"We support the new judges because they will restore independence to the Supreme Court," said 43-year-old demonstrator Luis Torrealba, marching with his wife and teenage son.

In yesterday's march, hundreds of people took to a key Caracas motorway to head downtown toward the court building. But uniformed National Guard troops riding motorcycles fired tear gas to disperse them.

Wuilly Arteaga, a violinist who has become a celebrity for playing at many opposition marches, was injured and taken to a clinic. The 23-year-old was seen with blood pouring from cuts on the left side of his face. He said later he had been struck with buckshot.

"They are not going to frighten me," Arteaga said in a video he posted on Twitter. He is seen in a hospital bed with bandages on his face and swollen lips. "We are going to keep fighting."



The Venezuelan intelligence service arrested one of the shadow judges, Angel Zerpa Aponte, the opposition-controlled National Assembly said on Twitter.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Roberto Samora

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A trading firm owned by Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi's family has been the biggest winner from Brazil's corn subsidies this year, underscoring the tensions between the billionaire farm magnate's political responsibilities and his investments.

Since the launch of corn subsidies in May, the Maggi family's trading company, Amaggi Exportacao e Importacao Ltda, has made 70 percent of the purchases under the so-called PEP program, according to a analysis of data from Brazilian crop authority Conab.

Subsidies are assigned via competitive auctions and there is no evidence of Maggi steering them to his company. However, the results highlight an unusual situation in Brazil, where the country's top agriculture official is also a major player in the market.

The subsidies are ultimately aimed at supporting Brazilian farmers and ensuring their harvest reaches markets.

Traders say Brazil's centre-right government raised eyebrows with a decision to start offering the so-called PEP subsidy this year only in Mato Grosso, Maggi's home state and the base of operations for Grupo Amaggi, whose growth since the 1990s earned him the nickname "Soy King."

One result of the decision was that Amaggi was in a prime position to ship the subsidized harvest, while rivals Cargill Inc and Archer Daniels Midland Co bought just 2 percent and 1 percent of the PEP corn, respectively.

In 2010, when Brazil last offered the same corn subsidy but in a much broader swath of the country, Bunge Ltd made 27 percent of subsidized purchases, Cargill took 14 percent and Louis Dreyfus Corp took 10 percent. Amaggi took about 4 percent.

The trading companies declined to comment on the contrast.

The Agriculture Ministry said decisions about crop subsidies were made by a body grouping its own officials as well as representatives from the Finance Ministry and the office of the president, "based on purely technical criteria," according to a written statement.

The decision to start corn subsidies this year in Mato Grosso was triggered by unusually low corn prices there, the ministry added. The program was expanded this week to other states due to falling prices.

The results of an auction held on Thursday were not yet publicly available.

"Amaggi vehemently refutes any hypothesis that it received any prior information about the auctions," the company said in a written statement. "The conditions for participating are uniform, objective and pre-established, applying equally to all market participants."

Amaggi said the minister, while still a shareholder of its holding company, had separated himself from any function in the group since beginning his political career. Maggi was governor of Mato Grosso from 2003 to 2010 and senator from 2011 until he took over the Agriculture Ministry in May 2016.

GLOBAL GLUT

Brazil's PEP subsidies for corn totaled 51 million reais ($16 million) this year through July 13 - a small sum beside Amaggi's $3.44 billion in revenue last year.

Still, subsidies in the program can reach a fifth or more of the price paid by traders. Corn prices have been hit this year by a glut in global supplies, although dry weather in the United States that damaged crops prompted a mild recovery this week. [nL3N1KC1DN]

Amaggi's trading desk shipped about 1.5 million tonnes of Brazilian corn last year, compared with a total crop of 66.5 million tonnes in the 2015/16 season, according to Conab.

Mato Grosso, Brazil's top-producing state, harvested 15.3 million tonnes of corn last season, the data showed.

Conab raised its 2016/17 forecast for Brazilian corn output this month to a record 96 million tonnes due to a bumper second crop planted in January after the soybean harvest. [nL1N1K20BH]

The PEP crop support program has run almost weekly reverse auctions in which trading firms bid the lowest subsidy they will accept to ship corn they buy at a minimum government-set price.

Another form of subsidy for Brazilian corn, known as PEPRO, allows farmers to receive compensation for selling their corn below the government's minimum price.

Subsidies in that program this year totaled 177 million reais through last week, but payments have been far less concentrated due to large numbers of small producers.

The agriculture minister's family participated in that program through farming unit Agropecuaria Maggi Ltda, which sold 3 percent of the corn in those subsidized operations - the second-largest total of all participants. Conab does not report the trading firms involved in PEPRO-subsidized transactions.

($1 = 3.13 reais)

(Reporting by Roberto Samora; Writing by Brad Haynes; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Andrew Hay)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A search panel headed by the Cabinet Secretary is scheduled to interview candidates on July 29 to find a successor for RBI Deputy Governor S S Mundra, who is completing his three-year term this month-end.

The Financial Sector Regulatory Appointment Search Committee (FSRASC) has shortlisted about 10 names who have been called for interview on July 29, sources said.

Some of the bankers who have been shortlisted include Canara Bank Managing Director Rakesh Sharma, Andhra Bank Managing Director Suresh N Patel, Vijaya Bank Managing Director Kishore Sansi.

Besides, former managing directors of Union Bank of India and Oriental Bank of Commerce Arun Tiwari and Animesh Chauhan, respectively are also in the fray for the position reserved for a banker.

A few names from the private sector have also been shortlisted, sources said.

The central bank has four deputy governors -? two from within the ranks and one commercial banker and another an economist to head the monetary policy department.

The members search committee includes RBI Governor, Financial Services Secretary and three independent members.

Independent members of the committee are Rajiv Kumar, senior fellow Centre for Policy Research; Manoj Panda, director, Institute of Economic Growth; and Bimal Patel, director, CEPT.

According to the notice put up on the RBIs website, applicants should have extensive experience as a full-time director or board member and possess understanding, at a very senior level, of supervision and compliance in the financial sector.

Strong competencies working with financial performance data, including interpreting, summarising and communicating high-level output and strong and clear communication skills on matters of public policy are also listed as criteria for sending application, it said.

Last date for filing applications was June 21 and those applying for the post should not exceed 60 years of age as on July 31 2017.

Following this about 90 applications had come and after scrutiny, about 10 were shortlisted.

The appointment will be made for a period of three years and the person will be eligible for re-appointment. The post will have a fixed salary of Rs 2.25 lakh per month plus allowances. PTI DP CS MKJ ABM
I suppose every family has an Uncle Bert hidden away in the dark recesses of family ancestry. I never realized our family had an Uncle Bert until my research into our family tree revealed he even existed. Certainly, none of the old family members I grew up with ever mentioned his name or even hinted that such a person existed. At first, I could not understand why no one had ever talked about anyone named Bert Cassinelli. I would have thought that the brother of my Great Grandfather, Pietro Cassinelli, would have been mentioned at some time or another during my lifetime.

I know from newspaper accounts that Pietro suspected Bert and cousin Vitoria of setting his house, haystack and barn on fire in February 1896, but this was never proven to be true. The case was taken all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court. The final award was for the plaintiff, Vitoria, in the amount of $305. This was hardly worth the time and effort, not to mention the bad blood it stirred up within the family.

I do remember several times asking the older family members about the old days when the family started out in Dayton in the late 1800s. For some reason unknown to me at the time, they were reluctant to talk to me at all about the old family or the things that happened back in those days more than 100 years ago. I have since dug up enough information to form some opinions on why no one was willing to talk to me about the early days in Dayton.

Bert (or Bartholomeo) Cassinelli was born in Tuscany, Italy, in 1870. At age 18, he moved to the United States. Bert and his brother, Pietro (my great grandfather), along with two cousins, worked their way west across the United States from the East Coast. They worked for a time driving cattle along the Chisholm Trail from Texas to Kansas and eventually found their way to Dayton Nevada during the waning days of the Comstock boom. They worked on a ranch in Dayton which Pietro was able to secure ownership. The family grew hay, garlic, onions, potatoes, livestock and vegetable crops, which they sold in Virginia City and other mining towns around the region. The following are some interesting newspaper accounts I found of things Bert did during the time he spent in Dayton:

ARRESTED FOR FIGHTING: B. Cassinelli, of this place, got into a fight in Carson, with a Swiss, and pulled his gun to shoot. The Authorities in Carson tried to arrest him but he got away from them and came to Dayton where he was arrested Wednesday by the deputy Sheriff of Ormsby county, and taken back to Carson (Lyon County Times, Oct. 8, 1893).

AN ITALIAN INSTANCE: Bert Cassinelli and his cousin had a row with his brother and his wife last Thursday morning at the Fish Ranch across the river, and gave the man and woman a severe drubbing. Cassinelli, the abused party, had his brother and cousin arrested a few hours after and lodged in jail. They were taken to Silver City yesterday morning for trial before Justice Walker, Justice Hawkins of this place, being absent from town. The men were discharged at the hearing, the testimony showing that Bert Cassinelli asked for some money coming to him, and Pietro, his brother, then attacked him, and he only took his own part (Lyon County Times, Nov. 25, 1893).

FALL FIGHTS: Bert Cassinelli and A. Scanavino had a row last Thursday evening. Scanavino got hit on the head with a chair but afterwards got Cassinelli down and was putting a fine finish on him when he was interrupted by outside parties. No arrests (Lyon County Times, Jan. 1, 1898).

THE CORPSE DISAPPEARED: Thursday morning Butch Baglin found what he supposed was a corpse in the stable back of the butcher shop. A pair of feet were sticking out from between two piles of baled hay and Butch could not arouse the individual they belonged to. He therefore summoned the Coroner, Sheriff and a crowd to go to the stable, but upon arrival there the corpse was gone. It was discovered afterwards that Bert Cassinelli had only been taking a morning snooze (Lyon County Times, Dec. 16, 1899).

A CONSIDERABLY CHEWED THUMB: About six weeks ago Otto Schroeder, a saloon keeper, and Bert Cassinelli got into a fight at Dayton, during which the latter got the formers finger and thumb in his mouth and chewed them considerably before Schroeder could get away. Schroeder did not pay much attention to the injured members at the time and dressed them himself; but in a few days his injured hand caused him much pain. He came to this city and Friday, Dr. Pickard amputated the thumb. The trouble was caused by Cassinelli calling upon his wife, from whom he was divorced a short time ago, and who went to live in a house owned by Schroeder. The latter ordered Cassinelli from the premises and a fight ensued. (Daily Independent, Jan. 16, 1902. Originally reported in the Virginia City Enterprise).

The moral of the story is this: If you shake your family tree hard enough, some rotten apples are sure to fall out. Despite a few rascals, our family has endured and is proud to have so many members who contributed to the settlement of the Wild West. Times were tough in those days. It took tough men and women to cope with the conditions of the time.
Sunday, July 16, 2017 at 9:01PM

Google Maps isnt just going to alert you about traffic in your area. This time, a new update coming to Android will let you know when the best time to leave for your destination will be. A bar graph shows up when you input directions and it shows you everything from the relative time itll take you to get to your destination. Itll show you estimates of how long itll have taken a half hour earlier and how long itll take in the next few hours. The bar graph will either be highlighted in green, yellow, or red to show traffic conditions. As mentioned, the feature is coming to Android but no word yet when itll hit iOS devices.

Source: The Verge
Saturday, July 22, 2017 at 8:33PM

One of the newest issues Google had to address with Android Auto is a core feature people would use the car platform for: being able to read and reply to messages. The bigger problem, though, was being able to reply to messages. When users tried to reply to a message from any app using Android Auto, the system would say that I dont know how to do that yet or Im sorry, I cant help you with that right now. And it wasnt a problem isolated to a device or car model or even Android/Google/Android Auto app versions. Thankfully, the issue has finally been resolved. Google advises to update the Google app but there was also a fix in a server-side update.

Source: Android Police
If you asked me to pick a handgun cartridge that seems to be suffering from a Napoleonic complex, I would, without hesitation, shout out, the 9mm Luger! Brain-child of the famous Austrian gun and cartridge designer, Georg Johann Luger, his 9mm namesake  first released in 1902  has gone on to become the most prolific handgun and submachine gun cartridge on the planet. In fact, in terms of popularity, the 9mm Luger has essentially supplanted all other pistol caliber cartridges in use by law enforcement, military and civilians alike around the world.

Ill cover the many reasons for the 9mms runaway popularity in a moment, but for now, lets take a look at some of the fascinating nomenclature surrounding this Teutonic upstart.

Since its introduction at the dawn of the 20th century, the cartridge has been known by many names: most simply as the nine mil (9mil), but also as the nine millimeter (9mm), the 9x19mm, the 9mm Luger, of course, the 9P, and the 9mm Parabellum. For the modern military, it is the 9mm NATO, due to its adoption in the early 80s as the primary handgun cartridge fielded by the U.S. and her sister signatories of the NATO Alliance. It continues in that martial role  relatively uncontested  to this day. Likewise, many non-NATO countries have for decades also chosen to equip their armed forces and police with the potent round.

Like their American counterparts, many European cartridges are named for their designers or manufacturers. This is obviously the case with the 9mm Luger, the 8mm Mauser, and the 7mm Brenneke in faraway Europe. On our own shore we have the .30-30 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield, and .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) to name but a few.

As a general practice, Europeans will also name many of their cartridges by their metric bore and case length dimensions. For example, the 9x19 designation is derived from the Lugers bore diameter of nine millimeters and its case length of nineteen millimeters. On the continent, the famous 8mm Mauser of WWI and WWII fame is best known as the 7.92x57mm Mauser.

The designation, 9mm Parabellum, provides us with a fascinating departure from this traditional naming practice. Like many others, I always believed that the term Parabellum referred to the toggle-like firing mechanism of the Luger pistol for which Georgs 9mm was originally chambered. Boy was I off the mark! It turns out that the German munitions giant DWM (Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken) that originally manufactured both the semi-automatic Luger pistol and its proprietary ammunition used the term Parabellum as its company motto. They proudly printed this logo on all of their product containers. In time, the 9mm Luger pistol and its proprietary ammunition came to be known, by many, as the 9mm Parabellum. Interestingly, the term Parabellum is derived from the Latin expression, Si vis pacem, para bellem. Translation: If you seek peace, prepare for war.

OK, lets get down to brass tacks by considering this question: What are the unique dimensional and ballistic characteristics that have made the 9mm Luger the most popular handgun and submachine gun cartridge on Earth since its introduction way back in 1902; a full year before the Wright brothers made their first successful flight with a heavier than air machine? In my mind, the 9mm Luger can be thought of as the proverbial Goldilocks cartridge: its not too small, and its not too large. In fact, t is just the right size and possesses just the right ballistic properties for most real-world applications.

As a military, law enforcement, and self-defense round, the 9x19 has proven itself to be an adequate man-stopper for well over a century. Its abbreviated length (19mm) and rimless case are ideal for the narrow high capacity magazines used to feed todays ubiquitous wonder nine semi-auto pistols, submachine guns, and pistol-caliber AR-style carbines.

This little tempest in a teacup is also very user-friendly. The cartridge case houses enough propellant to launch its bullets at robust velocities. At these speeds, the .35 caliber slugs produce excellent penetration and expansion (stopping power), more than acceptable accuracy at close ranges, and a decently flat trajectory should you have to fire upon targets at extended ranges. And as a bonus, you get all of these excellent ballistic properties from a cartridge that wont kick you into next week. Whats not to love?

On the home front, the FBI recently returned to the 9mm as their standard cartridge after a brief flirtation with the .40 S&W. In their official report they stated the new powders and more advanced bullet designs used in current 9mm defensive loads allowed the caliber to deliver similar performance to other larger calibers, like the .45 ACP and .40 S&W. Lower recoil, reduced weapon wear, and high magazine capacities were also cited as reasons for the federal agencys move to the smaller cartridge. Many U.S. law enforcement agencies have similarly made the move back to the nine.

As many of you know, the U.S. Army recently awarded their big fat combat handgun contract to the New Hampshire-based firm, Sig Sauer. Sigs high capacity P320 will replace their Beretta M9s which have been in their armories since the Gulf Wars  but, guess what? Theyre still sticking with the 9!

As a bonus for you and I, the runaway popularity of the 9mm Luger has made 9mm handguns, ammunition, and reloading components available everywhere and often at bargain prices. If you dont already own one or two 9mms now, can you give me two good reasons why not?
Lyrebirds: Australia has two species of lyrebird  the alberts lyrebird (Menura alberti) found only in a small patch of south-east Queensland and the superb lyrebird ((Menura novaehollandiae) which is found up and down many parts of the Great Dividing Range (and Tasmania), including around Canberra. One of the more easily accessible places to see (and hear!) them is at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Located on the Tidbinbilla/Paddy's River Road, approximately 40 minutes' drive from the city. Entry fees apply. Open 7:30am - 6pm.
In response, the ANU argued it could terminate a lease at any time for "higher priority use" of the site and that Mr Min had been aware of redevelopment plans, which had been on foreshadowed since 2014.
We need to sell more rhino horns, quickly.

That may be the only way to save rhinos from extinction. Today, rhinos vanish because poachers kill them for their horns. Businesses turn their horns into ornaments or quack health potions.

Some horns sell for $300,000. No wonder poachers risk their lives for one. How do you fight an incentive that strong?

Flood the market!

Thats a solution suggested by Matthew Markus.

Markuss biotech company can make artificial rhino horn in a laboratory thats virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

Put enough of that lab-grown horn on the market and supply and demand will bring the price way down.

Then poachers wont risk getting killed trying to steal real rhino horn.

One way to devalue something is to create a lot of it, said Markus. When things are abundant, people dont kill.

South Africa tried a mild version of this solution once. For 20 years, they made it legal to own rhinos and sell their horns.

Poaching dropped because legal rhino farming took away the poachers incentive. Rhino farmers bred rhinos and protected them. Once in a while, theyd put rhinos to sleep with tranquilizer darts and saw off their horns. The horns grow back. The rhino population quadrupled.

Win-win.

But animal welfare activists are never happy with any solution that involves profiting from nature. South Africa banned sales of rhino horn again. Poaching rose 9,000 percent from 2007 to 2014, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Now South Africa is considering legalization again, but they will have to fight the NGOs.

Some, like Humane Society International, even oppose sale of that artificial horn. They asked the U.S. government to block a shipment of a sample of rhino DNA that might have created better artificial horn.

I confronted the Humane Societys spokeswoman about that. Our interview will be one of the first videos for my new project: Stossel on Reason. I will post videos weekly on Facebook, Twitter and Reason TV. We start this week.

In this first story, the Humane Societys Masha Kalinina passionately argues against re-legalizing rhino farming and the sale of artificial horn.

This is dangerous! Absolutely dangerous for rhinos and their survival, she says. This is greenwashing an illegal activity. ... The problem is that people still see animals as commodities, natural resources for their use!

Yes. And why is that a problem? I eat eggs and chicken, and I drink milk. More chickens and cows are alive because people like me pay for them or what they produce.

Kalinina replied: Are we really going to farm every single animal on this planet so we can continue endlessly supplying this bloodlust and thirst of people to consume wildlife products?

Give me a break. Farming isnt bloodlust.

South African farmer John Hume says each of his 1,500 rhinos has 12 acres of land in which to run around. Every two years he trims their horns. That procedure is painless enough that even environmental groups perform it on wild rhinos to discourage poachers.

The Humane Society claims legalization wont stop poaching. Kalinina points out that elephant ivory trading was once made partly legal, and it started up a new carving industry in China. Demand increased when supply increased, she said.

But that was hardly real legalization. Just a few one-off sales were allowed. To really bring down the price, youd need a consistent supply of cheap horns. Artificial horn could provide that.

The Humane Society rejects that solution. Instead, they run ads that say rhino horn is not good medicine.

Its fine to try to educate people, but legal rhino farming and artificial horn are much better ideas. People respond faster to price signals than lectures from the Humane Society or regulations that impoverished African nations barely enforce.

The NGOs solution has failed. Hunting bans dont stop poaching. In fact, bans create more crime, just as governments attempts to prohibit alcohol sales did. Poachers have killed a thousand park rangers.

If we stick to the Humane Society and other NGOs ways of doing things, the rhino and other endangered animals will disappear.

Market-hating environmentalists will love endangered animals to death.
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
An official employment notification has Bharat Electronics Limited, Ministry of Defence calling out for applications from candidates to apply for the post of Contract Engineer.

Vacancy Availability

Out of the total number of vacancies available, 31 are for electronics discipline and 19 for mechanical.

Eligibility

Educational requirement

Candidates must have done either of the following degree courses:

BE/B.Tech (Electronics / Electronics and Communication/ Electronics and Telecommunications/ Telecommunication/ Communication/ Mechanical Engineering).

Note:

For candidates belonging to general category, first class in the qualifying degree is must for applying and for SC, ST and PWD candidates a pass class is required. The official notification is available at bel-india.com. 'Candidates belonging to any other branch of Engineering apart from those mentioned above will not be considered.'

Age criteria

Maximum 25 years (relaxation benefits for reserved categories, as per the norms)

How to apply for BEL recruitment?

In order to apply for BEL recruitment, candidates shall have to submit their application online through the official website. Candidates belonging to OBC/SC/ST are required to upload scanned copy of caste certificate in prescribed format in PDF/JPEG file only.

Selection Process

BEL will select candidates on the basis of their performance in written test and interview.

Deadline

The last date for submission of application is 2 August 2017

Also Read: DSSSB Recruitment: Apply for Various Posts from August
Police in Chicago say dealerships leaving keys in unattended vehicles has contributed to the widely-reported spate of car thefts across the city.



This year, dozens of vehicles have been stolen from various Chicago dealerships, and Sgt. Keith Blaire from the Chicago Police Departments major auto theft unit says it is a big problem.

The biggest key with the vehicle thefts currently is having keys accessible. At dealerships, what theyre doing is theyre burglarizing the dealership, theyre entering, finding cars with keys in them and exiting the property with the vehicles they can get easiest with keys, Blaire said at a City Council Public Safety Committee hearing.

The Chicago Tribune reports that many of the stolen vehicles are then used in crimes across the city, including armed robberies, shootings [and] homicides.

Following these findings, the City Council is considering requirements to ensure both dealerships and rental companies lock up car keys before closing each night.

VIDEO
Just a couple of months after troubled automotive startup Elio Motors said it needed $376 million to bring its three-wheeler to life, the state of Louisiana has fined the company $545,000 for not having a license to accept non-refundable deposits.



Elio has been given 60 days to obtain the appropriate license, but in a statement to Jalopnik, said it intends on appealing the decision.

During a meet last week with the Louisiana Motor Vehicle Commission, it emerged that Elio has accepted approximately 65,000 non-refundable deposits of $1,000 for the three-wheeler. In the meeting, lawyers for Elio Motors asserted the practice did not violate state law as the reservations were for a spot in the line and didnt guarantee actual sales. However, the commissions attorney said Elios use of the words buy, sell and own on its website and marketing material suggested it had intent to sell.

Even more worrying is the fact that, when the commission chairman asked where the $27.8 million in reservations was, attorneys for the company couldnt say.

In a statement, Elio Motors said: We do not believe the findings were in harmony with Louisiana motor vehicle laws nor in the best interest of the people of Louisiana or Elio Motors, and plan to appeal the decision.

PHOTO GALLERY
Porsche will decide on whether to stop offering diesel powertrains at the end of the decade according to CEO Oliver Blume, making it the first time a German car maker speaks publicly about ditching diesel engines.



After all, Group VWs Dieselgate emissions scandal has affected Porsche as well, which now is considering their options.

Of course we are looking into this issue, CEO Blume said in an interview with Reuters. We have not made a decision on it.

Blume also said that Porsche would offer a mix of combustion engines, plug-in hybrids and purely electric models over the next 10 to 15 years and would decide by the end of the decade whether to continue offering diesel engines or not.

The next-generation Cayenne, which is expected to be launched in September, will still offer a diesel powertrain as confirmed by Blume, just like the Panamera does. For the generations that will follow there are different scenarios, he said.

Sources indicate that Porsche might even back out of diesel altogether. But the company is still relying on diesel-powered models, which account for around 15 percent of its global sales, to help it bring down its CO2 emissions.

Blume is expecting all-electric models to account for a quarter of Porsches sales by 2025, give or take 5 to 10 percentage points. Blume also confirmed that the company is working together with Audi for a new shared EV-specific platform code-named PPE, which will underpin the Mission E thats expected by 2019.

Porsches boss also said that if theres enough demand, the company may spawn another all-electric model off the Mission Es platform. We expect the metropolises in China and Asia will switch to pure electric mobility very fast, the CEO said. I believe there will be few pure combustion engines to be seen in the large cities there in five years time. The development in rural areas will, however, proceed much more slowly.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Contributed

For Canadas 150th birthday this year, Castanet is featuring an Okanagan wine each week, celebrating the bottles of our Valley and the diversity of the Canadian wine industry, including suggested food pairings and Canadian music artist to listen to while enjoying a glass. For current availability, consult the winery.

Wine: 2016 Two Bench White (blend)

Winery: Tinhorn Creek, Oliver

Why drink it? Blends are always interesting, lending themselves to discussion amongst wine lovers as to what, exactly, is in them. This Oldfield Reserve is a melange of almost 50 percent sauvignon blanc, with touches of semillon, viognier, chardonnay and a hint of muscat for just a bit of floral lift on the nose. Sauv blanc translates into a refreshing wine on its own, but with its partners in this bottle there is some body and weight, and enough complexity to create pleasant chatter on the patio. Tropical fruit, honeydew melon, vanilla, and a fresh finish. Chill well and keep the bottle on ice.

Price: $20

Pair with: A true patio wine for summer, keep a bottle in the fridge for unexpected visitors, next to a few lighter cheeses (Boursin shallot and chive, Havarti, gouda). Throw together a homemade chefs salad cradled in butter lettuce with a side of Grannys coleslaw, and youre good.

Classic cancon music pairing: Surely, Colin James

Have a wine you'd like to suggest? Contact us at [email protected], and we will put you in touch with our wine writer.
Photo: Twitter - @HighAltitude101 Evacuees near Princeton and in 100 Mile House can now return home.

UPDATE: 2:30 p.m.

Residents of 100 Mile House are going home, after the evacuation order covering the north end of Lac La Hache south to the entire District of 100 Mile House was lifted Saturday afternoon.

The lifted order comes on the same day hundreds of people who were evacuated north of Princeton were allowed back home as well.

The Cariboo Regional District says the reduced fire risk in the area has allowed the 100 Mile House evacuation order to be reduced to an alert, but those returning must still be cautious and prepared.

"Residents are returning to an area that was profoundly affected by wildfire," said Kim Hayhurst, public information for the CRD. "Services that residents are used to or rely on, such as grocery and heath care, may be limited for some time.

"Anyone choosing to return to the area should ensure that they have a full tank of gas as well as basic necessities including food and prescriptions for up to seven days."

While the risk of fire has been reduced, air quality in the area remains poor due to smoke.

For those who are south of 100 Mile, Highway 97 is open. Those who have been staying north of Williams Lake must take Highway 16 to Highway 5, followed by Highway 24, as Highway 97 closures north of Williams Lake remain in effect.

ORIGINAL: 12:20 p.m.

Officials say several hundred properties near Princeton in the south Okanagan and a rural area in the Cariboo region north of Williams Lake are safe to return to.

Approximately 43,000 people remain displaced and federal officials visiting affected communities today are expected to give an update on the state of the response.

Members of a federal ad hoc committee leading the government's fire response, including Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, were set to meet with provincial officials in Prince George and Kamloops.

Some areas received rain earlier in the week, but officials are concerned warm weather and strong winds in the forecast this weekend could reinvigorate the fires.

Cariboo Regional District Chairman Al Richmond says officials are continuing to prepare for evacuees from Williams Lake and 100 Mile House to return home with plans to get emergency medical facilities running and to stock up grocery stores.

- with files from The Canadian Press
Photo: Contributed The body of Greg Tiffin was found in Statlu Lake Tuesday, while Sophie Dowsley remains missing.

The search for a missing woman near Agassiz continues.

Search and rescue teams from across the Fraser Valley are working with RCMP as they search Statlu Lake for Sophie Dowsley.

We all remain concerned for Sophies wellbeing, says Cpl. Mike Rail. RCMP are in close contact with her family.

Search and rescue crews discovered the body of Dowsley's boyfriend, 44-year-old Greg Tiffin in Statlu Lake Tuesday.

The pair set out for a day hike on July 8, but a search for them didn't begin until four days later, when their truck was discovered near a trailhead by Harrison Hot Springs.

Dowsley's sunglasses were found on a rock at the top of Statlu Falls and items belonging to Tiffin were found below the waterfall.
Photo: CTV

A small dog has been attacked and killed by a group of coyotes while out with its owner outside of Squamish.

According to the Conservation Officer Service with the District of Squamish, a woman was with her three dogs Friday afternoon near the water tower in Brackendale, not far from Alice Lake, when a coyote snatched her smaller dog.

Officials say there were at least three coyotes involved in the attack, which resulted in the dog's death.

There have been several interactions between dogs, wolves and coyotes between Alice Lake and the Brackendale Airport this summer and last.

In July 2016, coyotes injured two dogs that were off-leash along the Wonderland Trail.

In spring 2017, there were incidents of a grey wolf stalking several dogs in the area.

Aggressive coyote sightings can be reported to the Conservation Officer Service at 1 877 952 7277.

-With files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: BC Wildfire Service Wind is the big worry for B.C. firefighters today.

UPDATE: 12:20 p.m.

The public once again has access to lakes in the Cariboo region, including Watson Lake, Lac La Hache, Williams Lake and Horse Lake. People are still reminded to be cautious near aircraft getting water to fight wildfires.

The move to reopen access to the lakes follows an evacuation order lifted yesterday for a large portion of 100 Mile House.

The BC Wildfire Service is asking the public to be mindful of aircrafts in and around lakes which may need access to water. If an aircraft is spotted by people on a lake, they are asked to safely make their way to the shore so as not to impede firefighting efforts.

When firefighting aircraft, such as air tankers or helicopters, are working on an active wildfire and picking up water from nearby lakes, they need plenty of room to manoeuvre to do their job safely, says a press release. The BC Wildfire Service will closely monitor this situation and if the need arises, will reinstate area restriction orders to the necessary areas.

A number of evacuation orders and alerts remain in place.

To report a wildfire or open burning violation, please call 1 800 663-5555 or *5555 on a cellphone.

For up-to-date information on current wildfire activity, burning restrictions, road closures and air quality advisories, call 1 888 3-FOREST (1 888 336-7378) or visit: www.bcwildfire.ca

ORIGINAL STORY: 6 a.m.

Officials are concerned strong winds today will spread wildfires that crews in British Columbia are struggling to contain.

Environment Canada says wind gusts of about 50 kilometres per hour can be expected across the southern parts of the province including Williams Lake, Castlegar and Princeton.

Fire information officer Navi Saini says officials are closely monitoring the conditions and winds could definitely make matters worse.

Despite the concerns, evacuation orders were lifted for 100 Mile House and Princeton on Saturday, giving thousands of people the option to return home.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale was in Kamloops Saturday to announce the federal government will be adding to funds managed by the Canadian Red Cross to help the 44,000 people displaced due to the crisis.

He says the province is only in the beginning of the fire season and has already been facing a very dangerous and difficult situation.

More than 735 fires have burned through 361,000 hectares this season, costing the province $122 million in suppression efforts alone.

with files from The Canadian Press
Photo: The Canadian Press Judge to rule Monday in case of two former leaders of B.C. fundamentalist church charged with polygamy.

A verdict is expected Monday in a trial of two former leaders of a fundamentalist church who are charged with polygamy.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Sheri Ann Donegan has been presiding over the trial of Winston Blackmore and James Oler, who are accused of having multiple wives.

Both men were at one time bishops of separate sects in the isolated community of Bountiful in southeastern B.C.

The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is based in Utah, officially renounced polygamy in the late 19th century and disputes the fundamentalist group's connection to Mormonism.

Blackmore is accused of having two dozen wives, while Oler is alleged to have married five women. Each man is charged with one count of polygamy.

The legal fight dates back to the early 1990s when police first investigated allegations that residents of an isolated religious community were practising the "celestial'' marriages.

A lack of clarity around Canada's polygamy laws led to failed attempts at prosecuting Blackmore, followed by several efforts to clarify the legislation, including a constitutional reference question to the B.C. Supreme Court.

The court ruled in 2011 that laws banning polygamy were valid and did not violate religious freedoms guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Blair Suffredine, Blackmore's lawyer, says he will apply for a stay of the decision because of its reliance on evidence that was gathered while there was confusion around the legality of Canada's polygamy laws.

Oler was appointed to lead community members in Bountiful following Blackmore's excommunication from the sect in 2002 by Warren Jeffs, head prophet of the U.S.-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Jeffs is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexually assaulting two of his child brides.

Much of the evidence in the 12-day trial came from marriage and personal records seized in 2008 by law enforcement officials from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, an FLDS church compound in Texas.
Photo: Parks Canada Inbound traffic has been halted into Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park.

An active wildfire in Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park has led BC Parks officials to halt all inbound traffic.

The order is effective immediately and is an effort to protect public safety, according to the BC Wildfire Service's information office in Castlegar.

Firefighters and equipment are battling a 4,126 hecatre wildfire burning in in the park which sits just west of the B.C.-Alberta border and about 48 km southwest of Banff.

"Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park is a high-alpine backcountry park accessible only by hiking trails, which would make an evacuation of the area difficult if it were needed," said a press release. "This proactive measure will enable a safe and orderly exit of the public from the area."

On July 20th, the Verdant Creek wildfire forced the evacuation of Sunshine Village. The fire has spread into Kootenay and Mount Assiniboine provincial parks.

To report a wildfire or open burning violation, call *5555 on a cellphone or 1-800-663-5555 toll-free.
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
photo by Ted Wells photo by Ted Wells photo by Ted Wells photo by Ted Wells photo by Ted Wells photo by Ted Wells Previous Next

Me and my sometime fishing companion Michelle took a little time off last week to attend a wedding down near Cancun, Mexico, and, as I had about used up my welcome at the pool and had probably annoyed the staff at most of the other establishments at our resort, I decided to do a little bit of offshore fishing on the last full day, and kind of get away. The cost was nearly nothing compared to what I have paid on the left coast, not to mention the right one.

I gathered together a rather sorry group of five, and we left our un-airconditioned (except for our room) resort on Playa Del Carmen at a very irreverent 0730 on Thursday July 20th. I had been told the trip included tackle, bait, crew of three, beer (not enough to become a problem for the Captain), and snacks at the end at the marina (frijoles and chips). We gathered in the lobby and, remarkably, everyone showed up. Right on time, the little man in a sky-blue tie showed up and called my name, and we were on our way.

Apparently, in Mexico, having an open container of beer is less of a concern than around here, as there was plenty of Cerveza Frias for sale in the van at two for $5. We arrived at the marina in an unexpectedly quick 15 minutes, and were shown to another (full) bar. None of our hung-over group was into drinking that early, and we sat down and listened to the speech by some guy with some authority. Basically, there were three options if you catch a fish: 1) release it, 2) have the marina prepare it and eat it at their restaurant or take it to your hotel and have their chef do it (Michelle checked and no fish caught was allowed on the property), or 3) give it to the crew. On our boat there was apparently another option, which is to kill them and toss them back into the water.

There was no visible safety equipment, and the boat was a real piece of junk (and I mean this kindly, but when I tried to grab a piece of boat above the cabin it came off in my hand. However, those guys knew where the fish were, and we were within sight of the marina as well as Cozumel. We would at least probably be found if something went wrong after the sharks finished up with us. It did have a radio. After leaving the dock, the crew started deploying the six lines we trawled with, and wahoo was the bait. Not 15 minutes had elapsed when the mate came in announcing Fish on, and we let our token deck wench, Brittany, reel it in, a nice sized but vicious Great Barracuda. Hers was probably in the average range, which I later found out was 28"-38 long.

Not 10 minutes later, Lance Romance brought in a nice Yellow Snapper (later found out it was mighty tasty). I was enjoying the action, and as usual I did not care if I brought one in or not, as I just like being there, and it was fun to go with people I knew. Before I knew it, I was shoved into the fighting chair and told to reel and reel, no pull! I reeled and reeled and reeled, and this fish did not want on board our boat. Thankfully, it finally arrived at the transom, and more thankfully, the mate dealt with it and all its teeth. I could tell it was a bit larger, but thought nothing of it. They put the fish in a box by the transom (no ice). Shortly thereafter Jonathan brought in a rather rowdy Red Snapper that must have weighed 30 pounds. It was a beautiful fish, (and made a beautiful lunch for five hungry people a little later). In the last hour, the captain asked me whether to continue to trawl or to bottom fish. I responded that I would like him to do whatever he believed would bring in the most fish. He and the two crew howled and whistled for the fish, and we brought in another Great Barracuda (I forgot who), a little shark (Brittany), a small Grouper (Jonathan), and a strange black fish the crew would not touch (Lance Romance).

On the way back, the mate came in the cabin where I was probably nodding off, and announced that my Great Barracuda had exceeded the marina record in length. He asked if I wanted it mounted, and having always wanted to have fish on the wall in my office, I said, Yes, I am a fool, and I will do it!

I have checked and it appears I may have indeed exceeded the length record in that part of Mexico. Who knows, really? Sometime in the next three or so months, and after a lot of money goes South, it should arrive. I probably would have sprung for the mounting anyway without the record, but it might be real, and thats cool. It is almost four feet long.

The marina fried the two Snappers and the little Grouper for us for nothing! Holy crap that was a good bunch of food. Maybe the best we had on the whole trip except the night of the wedding. Five hungry people could not eat it all. Jonathan and I took ample boxes of it back to our wives, and still there were pounds of good fish left. That was definitely a good feed.

The van ride back to the sweaty resort took longer because we stopped at a couple of legit, air-conditioned resorts on the way back. The resort is kind of cool, but there is not air conditioning anywhere on it except in the sleeping rooms. We found out the staff are paid to scare off animals at the beginning of every shift. I noticed the birds eating off the buffet. After five days we have become a little bit acclimatized to the temperature, which has not happened since the 90s in Lagos, Nigeria, when I lost 37 pounds, and could not handle air conditioning at all after six months. There were other things I could not handle also, but I have gotten off the subject again

Overall, the trip was a good one for me, especially because I now hold the record for The Great Barracuda in Quintana Roo, Mexico, at least at that Marina. I expect congratulatory correspondence from El Presidende of Mexico soon, as well as Melania. It also didnt hurt that those nice people in red coats at Delta Air Lines (who were speaking rapidly in Spanish at the gate at CancunI just smiled like I knew what they were saying) had the wisdom and discernment to allow me and my wife into First Class, along with some famous guy from wrestling that Lance Romance knew about called Diamond Dave.

If Delta reads this, Michelle really appreciated it and we really tried not to enjoy too much as all the other wedding guests adjourned to kennel class where your knees touch the seat in front of you. Sorry.. I applaud Deltas judgement in putting us in First Class where we truly belong. Reminded me of the 80s and 90s, when people were talking about how travelling was better in the 50s and 60s. It doubtlessly really was. It certainly %$# now.

Until next time, on whatever seas,

Tight lines.
Wi-Fi connects you to your home internet  which you'd think would be plenty fast. So, why does your Wi-Fi get slow sometimes, anyway? (Gryphon)

Randall Munroe, creator of the popular webcomic XKCD, is just like the rest of us: He struggles with internet reliability. In a new strip, Munroe explains how weird it is that to get faster downloads sometimes, he has to turn off his phone's Wi-Fi connection and switch over to his cellphone carrier's mobile data instead.

For some, that might sound counterintuitive. After all, Wi-Fi connects you to your home internet  which you'd think would be plenty fast. So, why does your Wi-Fi get slow sometimes, anyway?

His strip offers a wonderful opportunity to talk about the details of a technology we all take for granted  Wi-Fi  and what kinds of policies we could put in place to make things better.

It all boils down to the airwaves carrying information to your electronic device. You can think of these airwaves as lanes on a highway. In many home Wi-Fi routers today, you'll find two lanes. One whose waves operate at a frequency of 2.4 GHz and one that operates at 5 GHz. Data travels from the outside world into your home and through the router, at which point it's beamed wirelessly through the air and onto your device over these specific lanes.

There are a couple major things that can slow the lanes down, even if you're standing relatively close to your router. One is outside interference, and the other is congestion. The first is pretty tightly controlled by regulators, who test wireless devices and impose restrictions to make sure that all wireless devices stay in the correct lane  whether that's Wi-Fi routers, cellphones or satellites.

The second is more difficult, because billions of people are constantly switching on new wireless devices and demanding more access to the information highways. Think about the typical American home, where over time, PCs were joined by laptops, then smartphones, then tablets, then smartwatches and wearable fitness trackers, then intelligent thermostats and on and on. Not long ago, many of these gadgets were a rarity; even today, there are only about 1.5 mobile devices for every American, according to the networking company Cisco. By 2020, that figure is going to double: For every American, there will be three mobile devices.

Many of these devices are, at one point or another, funneling data through Wi-Fi connections. Last year, two-thirds of all information coming and going from mobile devices reached the internet via Wi-Fi. By 2020, it'll be 70 percent. Leading much of this future growth will be the proliferation of connected appliances and smart devices, otherwise known as the Internet of Things.

With all these wireless devices clogging the Wi-Fi lanes, it's no wonder that things might feel a little sluggish.

(Munroe's flavor text jokingly complains that his Wi-Fi speeds are the fault of his cable company, but just to be clear, bottlenecks between your computer and your Wi-Fi router have more to do with what else is gobbling up capacity on your local network. Bottlenecks on your actual connection to the rest of the internet are something else, and might indeed have to do with your provider depending on the situation.)

Just like the highway for cars, one of the most obvious solutions for a congested Wi-Fi highway is to widen it  or switch paths altogether, which is what you're doing when you turn off your Wi-Fi connection and hop on your wireless carrier's airwaves.

Your cellphone carrier's highway is like a private toll road. Unlike with Wi-Fi, on cellular plans you pay your provider a certain amount every month for the ability to use its exclusive network. Your provider's airwaves operate on different frequencies than Wi-Fi, and in some places there might be more unused bandwidth, which may speed up your downloads.

Cellphone carriers upgrade their networks to be faster and wider by building more cell towers, by upgrading the big, fat pipes that carry data from the towers to the rest of the internet and by adding more airwaves to the mix to widen the toll road.

But nobody controls Wi-Fi. It's a public good  meaning anybody can send and receive data over it, free of charge. That's why so many start-ups and new devices start out communicating with the internet over these "unlicensed" airwaves. And it's why many policy advocates have urged federal regulators to designate more parts of the radio spectrum for unlicensed use.

As part of a recently concluded auction of airwaves, the Federal Communications Commission, the nation's top telecom regulator, has set aside a big chunk of spectrum for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed applications. And the agency's chairman, Ajit Pai, told a Senate committee Wednesday that he hopes to explore other opportunities in the area.

"If we give these unlicensed innovators wide swaths of spectrum  low-, mid- and high-band  there's no telling what kind of innovations they may be able to pioneer," Pai said.
Police work the scene of a crash involving an unmarked police car near the intersection of West Roosevelt Road and South Union Avenue on Saturday, July 22, 2017, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Three people were injured, including a Chicago police officer, in a two-vehicle crash when officers recognized a vehicle used in a shooting.

About 11:30 p.m. Saturday, near the intersection of Roosevelt Road and Union Avenue in the University Village/Little Italy neighborhood, an unmarked dark-colored police vehicle was involved in a crash with another sedan at the intersection, according to police.

Advertisement

When 11th District officers saw the vehicle from the shooting, "the officers attempted to curb the vehicle, which fled," police said in a statement.

Officials said the department member's vehicle crashed at the intersection, "resulting in the member being injured along with two civilians," but did not explain how the crash happened.

Advertisement

The officer was taken to Rush University Medical Center, where he was treated and released. Two people from the second vehicle were taken to an area hospital where they also were treated and released.

Later, officers from the 6th District found the vehicle used in the shooting and were able to successfully stop it; the vehicle is being held for investigation, officials said.
Hundreds of people from nearby towns and areas unaffected by flooding volunteered to fill sandbags at the Algonquin Village Public Works building and help homeowners set up sandbag walls as the Fox River rose to record levels July 22, 2017. (Alexandra Wimley / Chicago Tribune) (Alexandra Wimley / Chicago Tribune)

ALGONQUIN  It doesn't matter which road you take into Algonquin, you'll see the sign.

Right there under the city's population, "Founders Days," it will tell you, is the village's annual event, drawing thousands of visitors each summer. It's large enough to have its own hotline and board of directors and operate as a corporation. But Saturday proved it's not all about the bottom line: As a direct result of the flooding of the Fox River, the 57th annual installment of Founders' Days will be canceled, or at the very least postponed.

Advertisement

Visit algonquinfoundersdays.com and you'll be met with huge, red, capital letters in a hostile-looking font declaring the festival's cancellation. But click on the "official statement" meant to explain the committee's decision and you'll be greeted with this message:

"Founders' Days has never been canceled in 57 years. Now more than ever, we rely on our community for support and now your community needs you. Although not having a festival will financially hurt Algonquin Founders' Days Inc., it pales in comparison with what our residents are going through and the devastating personal losses they will incur. While you would support Founders' financially by coming out to the festival, we're asking that you instead turn your support to the community and offer your time until this dire situation is rectified.

This affects us all, whether we are on the river or not. There is no valid reason the suffering of a few shouldn't be met with support from the many, especially in a large community like ours. ... Eventually Founders' will recoup losses from not holding the festival this year, but for others...they are losing everything: homes, possessions, memories. ... As Founders' could not take any more resources away from the Village for our festival, we ask that you join us and do the same in helping where help is needed."

Advertisement

Residents of the village and surrounding communities shouldn't be surprised to learn their neighbors didn't require any such reminder. By 11 a.m., more than 300 volunteers showed up at the Algonquin public works facility. They came from surrounding communities as well as from Wisconsin, Naperville and Rockford, and they were ready to help.

So many good Samaritans came, in waves reminiscent of the floodwaters themselves, that by noon the city declared it couldn't take any more volunteers.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 9 Nicole Orlowski, right, carries a sandbag while helping protect a house near the Fox River on Oceola Drive in Algonquin on July 22, 2017. (Alexandra Wimley / Chicago Tribune)

Visiting his grandparents in Lake in the Hills from Florida this summer, 12-year-old Colin Colbert probably didn't expect to be shoveling sand into plastic bags and building fortresses in downtown Algonquin to help strangers save their homes from rising river waters. But Saturday morning, that's exactly what he was doing.

"These people are in a lot of trouble," Colin  wiping sweat from his brow  said as he took a break on a flooded street near the Fox River, where pumps and generators could be heard humming as residents worked tirelessly.

The young Floridian knows a thing or two about natural disasters, having lived through his share of hurricanes. He said, "It's just devastating what nature can do, and people need help sometimes," adding, "You could be in this position."

Colin was one of hundreds who have showed up to volunteer since unrelenting storms flooded area rivers and lakes. Residents like Meghan and David Roggenbuck said they are comforted by the volunteers, who have provided not only manpower but also food, water and ice.

"There have been people randomly walking up to help," David Roggenbuck said.

The Roggenbucks have lived in their home for about 12 years, and this is not their first flood, but, they said, it is the worst.

Advertisement

While their home typically sits about 200 feet from the river's edge, on Saturday the river was just outside their back door, wrapping around to their front yard.

Their basement has taken in some water, but hundreds of sandbags under a layer of white plastic, along with pumps running continuously, have kept that to a minimum.

"It is a love/hate relationship," Meghan Roggenbuck said of living on the river. She said her husband grew up on the river just a bit north of Algonquin, and she recalls spending time there with him.

"So we wanted to live on the water," she said, adding that she and her neighbors seem to be taking it all in stride. "Nobody wants this to happen, but (we are) not that upset."

The couple expects several days of cleanup ahead and thousands of dollars in expenses, but still, they appreciate waterfront living.

David Roggenbuck said in times of such calamity, "you control the things you can control." His wife chimed in, "And don't sweat the rest."

Advertisement

Just down the street, Courtney Stone of Crystal Lake, along with friends, family members and strangers, worked to save her childhood home from rising floodwaters.

Her father, who has been working in Colorado since the flooding began, has owned the home for 40 years. As eight pumps droned on from all around the home, which was surrounded by about 5,000 sandbags, Stone recalled many floods over the years.

"This is the worst it's ever been," she said, looking at the soggy backyard, and noting how bad the 2013 flood was. "(But) this is far worse than that."

Like the Roggenbucks, Stone and others had taken shifts throughout the night to ensure the pumps stayed fueled and working properly and didn't get clogged.

And though she was exhausted  saying Friday night was the worst because in addition to the relentless storm overnight, water from the neighbor's yard began pouring into her father's  she still appreciates having a family home on the river.

"Life on the water is awesome, it's beautiful," she said. "But you think, somebody could figure out how to prevent this."

Advertisement

Bill Ross of Algonquin was one of those who arrived by 11 a.m. with his own work gloves, asking where he was needed inside the facility, where hundreds of all ages filled sandbags and piled them up to be loaded onto trucks to go out to the river.

Ross, who does not live on the river, said he wanted to help simply because he loves "the river town ... it's why I moved here."

Those volunteers who weren't turned away got their hands dirty stuffing more than 40,000 sand bags, using about 1,600 tons of sand.

Algonquin's immediate area of concern is about 1 mile long, from Blackhawk Trail to Kane County. Algonquin Village Manager Jerry Kautz said Friday's volunteer turnout was good, but Saturday's was overwhelming.

"It's been great to see the volunteers and how they have come together," he said.

He acknowledged the resilience of those who continue to live along the river, even when times can be trying.

Advertisement

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

"People along the river love living along the river. They are very tolerant, that's a tough group," he said. "They just go with the flow."

Algonquin Public Works Director Robert Mitchard said that as of Saturday afternoon the flooding was "stable" at 13.1 feet and was showing a "slow decline." He said it was predicted to be down to 12 feet by Wednesday, which is considered "moderate" flooding. The river is normally about 9 1/2 feet, he said.

"So it looks like we are gonna get some relief," he said, adding that the village is no longer in need of volunteers. "We think we are in pretty good shape right now. I cannot say enough about this community."

The next equation will be to figure out the cost to the village.

"What we saved in snow (removal), we spent here," Mitchard said with a laugh.

Amanda Marrazzo is a freelance writer.

Advertisement

kdouglas@chicagotribune.com
Paramedics treat a man who was shot in the ankle near West 87th Street and South Eggleston Avenue early on July 24, 2017, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Updated July 25, 2017 11:15 a.m.  Two people were killed and five others wounded in Chicago shootings between Sunday and Monday mornings, police said.

In the most recent homicide, an 18-year-old man died after he was shot in both legs in the 5400 block of South Damen Avenue in the Back of the Yards neighborhood about 9 p.m. A private vehicle took him to Holy Cross Hospital in critical condition, and he was later pronounced dead. Officers were investigating in an alley, and the circumstances leading up to the shooting were unknown. The victim was identified as Damijwan Bonds of the 5400 block of South Honore in the Englewood neighborhood, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Advertisement

Earlier, a man was killed and a 15-year-old boy was wounded in a Sunday afternoon shooting in the Park Manor neighborhood on the South Side.

About 12:15 p.m., police were called to the area of East 70th Street and South Vernon Avenue for a report that two people had been shot, according to police.

Advertisement

Anthony White, 18, was shot and later pronounced dead at St. Bernard Hospital, according to a police media notification and the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The man went in a private vehicle to the hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds to the back and neck. He had lived in the 7000 block of South King Drive, the medical examiner said.

A 15-year-old boy who the man had been with suffered a graze wound to the foot and was taken to Comer Children's Hospital. He was in good condition, officials said.

Police said the two were outside in the 7000 block of South Vernon Avenue when someone came up to them on foot and fired shots, correcting earlier information that they might have been wounded in a drive-by shooting.

No one had been arrested in the homicide, and Area Central detectives were investigating.

In other shootings:
A 45-year-old man died after he was hit by a van while he was trying to cross the street just before 11:30 p.m. Saturday in the Little Village neighborhood, according to police.

The man was in the 3900 block of West 28th Street when he tried to cross the street between two vehicles. A cargo van hit him, according to Chicago police.

Advertisement

He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:59 p.m.

He was identified as Carlos Hernandez, 45, of the 1600 block of South 50th Avenue in Cicero, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Advertisement

The driver of the van, Soriano Marco, 49, of the 2700 block of South Keeler Avenue, was cited for not having a valid driver's license, negligent driving and failure to yield to a pedestrian, according to Chicago police.

No one else was reported injured.

Two parked vehicles, a Chevrolet Malibu and a Mercedes-Benz, were damaged in the crash.

The crash remains under investigation.
Sheryl Eakin acts as a liaison between Naperville police and drug users who seek treatment through the Police Department. We keep touch with that person all the way through the process, she said. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune )

Two years have passed since the Police Department of Dixon, Ill., began a bold experiment in the face of a spiraling heroin epidemic: Instead of arresting drug users, it would usher them into treatment.

Since then, the program known as Safe Passage has expanded into surrounding counties and placed 170 people into rehab. Police Chief Danny Langloss said an informal review of their progress showed that more than half had success in treatment  with the rest of the community benefiting, too.

Advertisement

"In 2016, the number of misdemeanor and felony drug arrests dropped by 39 percent," he said. "I think that the program plays a big factor in that. Our aggressiveness in pursuing drug offenders hasn't changed; it's that we've helped so many get into treatment, and we know a lot of them are doing well."

Seventy miles away in Elgin, a different picture emerges.

Advertisement

The city's police have offered a similar service since January, advertising it through social and traditional media. But despite a population that is seven times larger than Dixon's, only three people have expressed interest in getting into treatment. None actually ended up there.

"I think overall we have pretty good community relations, so it's kind of mind-boggling to us," said Lt. Frank Trost. "I can only assume word is not out far enough, or to the right people."

Such are the varying results of Safe Passage-like programs that have proliferated since Dixon began its version. Modeled after a pioneering initiative in Gloucester, Mass., the programs seek to change the relationship between police and drug users.

Users walk into a police station, surrender whatever drugs and paraphernalia they have and ask for help (people caught while committing a crime aren't eligible). In return, police dispose of the narcotics without pressing charges and fast-track the users into rehab.

That means building ties with multiple treatment centers so users don't have to wait for a slot. Gateway Foundation, which has facilities across the state, has been a popular choice: It has served more than 125 patients, most of them from Lake County.

Karen Wolownik Albert, executive director of Gateway's Lake County services, said the rehab has been able to handle the influx, even though most of those referred from police departments have Medicaid or no insurance at all. But she said the state's treatment centers might be hard-pressed to keep up as the initiatives continue to multiply.

"I do think as the popularity and acceptance of these programs advance, it's going to further tax our treatment capacity," she said.

One program that has seen a steady flow of participants is Lake County's "A Way Out," in which police departments from Lake Forest to Round Lake Beach band together to offer participants a path into treatment. Since it launched a year ago, a dozen people a month have sought help through the police.

Advertisement

Mundelein Police Chief Eric Guenther, one of the program's architects, said officers help anyone who asks, regardless of where they live: One person, he said, was driven up from Tennessee by his mother.

After figuring out where a treatment slot is available, he said, an officer will drive the person there and make a "warm handoff" to clinic staff. In some cases, pending criminal charges can be temporarily set aside.

Guenther said a man who recently sought help from police turned out to have a warrant for his arrest after missing a court hearing. A judge agreed to waive the warrant as long as the man entered treatment.

"We do everything in our power not to turn anyone away," Guenther said.

Naperville police put their own twist on the Safe Passage idea, dubbing their version Connect for Life. They team treatment-seekers with social workers and "recovery liaisons"  former drug users who know how to navigate the challenges of staying sober once rehab is finished.

"They can relate to this person," said Deputy Chief Jason Arres. "They've been there. We want to help, but we can't offer the same kind of help."

Advertisement

One of those liaisons is Sheryl Eakin. She has been in recovery from a drug habit for more than 20 years and formed a foundation to offer the benefit of her experience to people on the same path.

She volunteers her services to the Naperville police, transporting participants to rehab, sobriety homes and job interviews while using her connections to find them opportunities in treatment and beyond.

"We keep touch with that person all the way through the process," Eakin said. "It's not that we just get them into treatment and then turn our backs on them."

She has worked with one young woman for almost a year after the woman's mother took her to the police station seeking help. Eakin helped coax the woman into a treatment facility, and once she was released, stayed with her for several weeks until a bed became available at a halfway house.

The woman, now 21, has since thrived, her mother said; she's living at a sober home, holding down a job and paying her own bills.

"If we hadn't found Sheryl, I don't think our daughter would be doing very well," the mother said.

Advertisement

Though police-initiated recovery programs are expanding rapidly, their effectiveness remains uncertain. One study that looked at Gloucester focused on how efficiently police got people into treatment, rather than how participants fared once they arrived.

Illinois researchers have begun to tackle that question. Jessica Reichert, manager of the state's Center for Justice Research and Evaluation, has launched a study on Safe Passage that will compare people who sought treatment via the police with those who were sent there by court order.

"My hypothesis is that Safe Passage clients might do as well if not better because they had to be motivated enough to actually go into a police department," she said. "That's what I heard (from people who work with the program)  they're probably a bit more ready because they're taking that step themselves."

Meanwhile, David Kosson of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago is examining Lake County's program. One of his goals is to identify the factors that help patients achieve success.

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

"If we find the programs work for some people but not others, that can give ideas on how to improve the programs and make them more effective," he said.

Both researchers said they hope to have results in about a year.

Advertisement

Back in Dixon, Langloss has seen enough to transfer the ideas behind Safe Passage to a new arena. His department has teamed with hospitals, prosecutors and the local sheriff's department to establish relationships with people who have severe psychiatric illnesses: When their mental states begin to deteriorate, police can help them get immediate access to treatment.

Langloss said the program, which has helped about 20 people since it began early this year, is a response to the downsizing of state mental hospitals. Just like Safe Passage, it's meant to have law enforcement take action on a social issue instead of waiting for someone else to deal with it.

"We really have to look at community collaboration," Langloss said. "How do we solve these problems locally?"

jkeilman@tribpub.com

Twitter @JohnKeilman
Sisters Kary Jimenez and Fatima Jimenez went missing in the 4900 block of West George Street in the Cragin neighborhood on July 22, 2017. (Chicago police)

Police reported Saturday night that two sisters reported missing from the city's Northwest Side have been located.

Police were seeking the public's help in finding two girls who had been reported missing from the Cragin neighborhood.

Advertisement

The siblings, Kary Jimenez and Fatima Jimenez, are juveniles who went missing from the 4900 block of West George Street, police said.

Late Saturday, police reported that the sisters had been located.
San Antonio police officers investigate the scene on July 23, 2017, where eight people were found dead in a tractor-trailer loaded with at least 30 others outside a Walmart store in stifling summer heat in what police are calling a horrific human trafficking case in San Antonio. (Eric Gay / AP)

SAN ANTONIO  At least nine people died after being crammed into a sweltering tractor-trailer found parked outside a Walmart in the midsummer Texas heat, victims of what authorities said on Sunday was an immigrant-smuggling attempt gone wrong.

The driver was arrested, and nearly 20 others rescued from the rig were hospitalized in dire condition, many with extreme dehydration and heatstroke, officials said.

Advertisement

"We're looking at a human-trafficking crime," said San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, calling it "a horrific tragedy."

One U.S. official said Sunday evening that 17 of those rescued were being treated for injuries that were considered life-threatening. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the information has not been publicly released.

Advertisement

Authorities were called to the San Antonio parking lot late Saturday or early Sunday and found eight people dead inside the truck. A ninth victim died at the hospital, said Liz Johnson, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The victims "were very hot to the touch. So these people were in this trailer without any signs of any type of water," San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said.

Authorities would not say whether the trailer was locked when they arrived, but they said it had no working air conditioning.

It was just the latest smuggling-by-truck operation to end in tragedy. In one of the worst cases on record in the U.S., 19 immigrants locked inside a stifling rig died in Victoria, Texas, in 2003.

Based on initial interviews with survivors of the San Antonio tragedy, more than 100 people may have been packed into the back of the 18-wheeler at one point in its journey, ICE acting Director Thomas Homan said. Officials said 39 people were inside when rescuers arrived, and the rest were believed to have escaped or hitched rides to their next destination.

Some of the survivors told authorities they were from Mexico, and four appeared to be between 10 and 17 years old, Homan said. Investigators gave no details on where the rig began its journey or where it was headed.

But Homan said it was unlikely the truck was used to carry the immigrants across the border into the United States. He said people from Latin America who rely on smuggling networks typically cross the border on foot and are then picked up by a driver.

"Even though they have the driver in custody, I can guarantee you there's going to be many more people we're looking for to prosecute," Homan said.

Advertisement

Mexican Consul General in San Antonio Reyna Torres said Mexican nationals were among the survivors and those who died on the rig. The consulate has been in contact with family members both in Mexico and the U.S., Torres said.

The Mexican government also released a statement Sunday evening expressing its condolences to the relatives of those who died and called for an "exhaustive investigation"

Guatemala's foreign ministry added that at least two Guatemalans were on the abandoned tractor-trailer.

Tekandi Paniagua, communications director for the foreign ministry, said the two male survivors told consulate officials they crossed the border by foot at Laredo and boarded the rig. They told officials their final destination was Houston.

Federal prosecutors said James Mathew Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Fla., was taken into custody and would be charged Monday. The local U.S. Attorney's Office wouldn't say whether Bradley was the alleged driver of the truck who was arrested. It was not immediately known whether Bradley had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department stepped in to take the lead in the investigation from San Antonio police. Department Secretary John Kelly said the incident demonstrates the brutality of smuggling organizations that "have no regard for human life and seek only profits."

Advertisement

The truck had an Iowa license plate and was registered to Pyle Transportation Inc. of Schaller, Iowa. A company official did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.

San Antonio is about a 150-mile drive from the Mexican border. The temperature in San Antonio reached 101 degrees on Saturday and didn't dip below 90 degrees until after 10 p.m.

The tragedy came to light after a person from the truck approached a Walmart employee in the parking lot and asked for water late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, said McManus, the local police chief.

The employee gave the person water and then called police, who found the dead and the desperate inside the rig. Some of those in the truck ran into the woods, McManus said.

Investigators checked store surveillance video, which showed vehicles arriving and picking up people from the truck, authorities said. Walmart released a brief statement Sunday saying it was doing what it could to help investigators.

On Sunday evening, about 100 people gathered at a San Antonio church for a vigil to mourn those killed.

Advertisement

In the May 2003 case, the immigrants were being taken from South Texas to Houston. Prosecutors said the driver heard them begging and screaming for their lives but refused to free them. The driver was sentenced to nearly 34 years in prison.

"It's sad that 14 years later people are still being smuggled in tractor-trailers, there still isn't water, there still isn't ventilation," Homan said. "These criminal organizations, they're all about making money. They have no regard for human life."

The Border Patrol has reported at least four truck seizures this month in and around Laredo, Texas. On July 7, agents found 72 people crammed into a truck with no means of escape, the agency said. They were from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Authorities in Mexico have also made a number of such discoveries over the years.

Last December, they found 110 migrants trapped and suffocating inside a truck after it crashed while speeding in the state of Veracruz. Most were from Central America, and 48 were minors. Some were injured in the crash.

Last October, also in Veracruz state, four migrants suffocated in a truck carrying 55 people.
Led by Steve Ciprani, center left, and Pavithra Nagarajan, right, hundreds of activists march toward the Education Department building in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. (Bill O'Leary / The Washington Post)

WASHINGTON  Nolan, his 10-year-old son, had bragged to his friends when his mom attended the Women's March after President Donald Trump's inauguration, and then he had asked his dad when he could go to a march, too.

So the family of four drove down Friday night to join those seeking to be heard at the "March for Public Education," a rally and protest against the Trump administration's efforts to cut federal education funding and expand private-school vouchers.

Advertisement

"I love a good road tip, but this one's special," said Maxwell, who was sporting a "Schoolhouse Rock!" T-shirt while standing next to his wife, Melissa Maxwell, 41, who was wearing a "Nasty scientist" T-shirt, and their two sons Nolan and Garrett, 7.

Teachers, current and retired, parents, students and their families began converging about 10 a.m. near the Washington Monument to march in support of public education. Similar marches took place in 11 cities nationwide, including Detroit, Austin, Miami and Lincoln, Nebraska, according to the march's website.

Advertisement

Organizers say they are marching for equity in education funding, college affordability, and against the nearly 14 percent cuts to education that Trump has proposed. Hundreds of people joined the march in Washington despite temperatures climbing into the 90s and a heat advisory from the National Weather Service.

During a morning rally, protesters heard from students and national education advocates before marching to the Education Department offices at about noon. Saturday's protest was planned to coincide with a national meeting in the District of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation's second-largest teachers union.

"It's a march for educational justice," said march co-chair Pavithra Nagarajan, a former teacher now studying for a doctorate at Columbia University's Teachers College.

Nagarajan and co-chair Steve Ciprani, a high school social studies and Latin teacher in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said that in addition to advocating for policy change and encouraging attendees to reach out to their elected representatives, they hope students and young children not yet in school become "little activists in training."

"Creating socially conscious young people are at the heart of this march," Nagarajan said.

Patrice Kelly, 37, is not a teacher, but she brought her 10-year-old daughter Niya Harrod along to the march in hopes that she would see that the policies she overhears her mother complaining about affect others, too.

"If she's going to believe in something, I want her to be active and be an activist," Kelly said of her daughter, who stood next to her in front of the Education Department building holding a sign that said "Make America Smart Again."

As protesters marched along Independence Avenue from the Mall to the Education Department, calling education a "human right" and chanting that Education Secretary "Betsy DeVos has got to go," vehicles honked in approval and buses of tourists cheered in support.

Advertisement

DeVos has long been assailed by some teachers and parents for her support of school vouchers and charter schools, which they see as taking away resources from public schools. DeVos has pushed back, saying she supports public schools but wants parents to have more choices in the schools their children attend.

Rebecca Cokley said its depressing to see the unraveling of the progress she helped make while working in various roles at the Education and Health and Human Services departments and the White House under President Barack Obama.

Cokley told the crowd that she has watched the Trump administration "pry the teeth out of civil rights statutes one by one like a demented sort of dentist."

"I adamantly protest the idea that vouchers and choice are good for disabled students. Vouchers and choice are segregation," Cokley, the former executive director of the National Council on Disability, said to cheers.

Organizers said earlier that they hoped the march would send a message that public education is essential to democracy. But 10th-grade teacher Laura Brown was thinking about how the divisiveness of the democratic process during the presidential campaign had seeped into her classroom in ways unexpected.

The social studies teacher from Liverpool, New York, had come to the march with her 8-year-old daughter Ruby. She recalled how one of her students had turned to a classmate of Indian descent and said he wished he could tell foreigners to get out.

Advertisement

"They were surrounded by all this inappropriate language and they didn't know how to handle it," Brown, 44, said. "It was our job to help them figure out how to navigate this brave new world."

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Sanaa Abrar said she was bullied in middle school for being Muslim and Pakistani. One day, she finally cracked and cried to her mom about never wanting to speak to those students again. When the 25-year-old master's student studying at American University took the stage Saturday, she remembered what her mom had asked her that day: If you don't talk to them, how are they going to learn?

So Abrar, who is a senior policy fellow for the immigrant advocacy group United We Dream, stood in front of the microphone and told the crowd, "I am proud to be an immigrant and no matter what Donald Trump or the extremists have to say, I am here to say."

The crown then joined her in chanting, "Here to stay."
John Heard rehearses for the play "Love-Lies-Bleeding" in Chicago in 2006. Heard, best known for playing the father in the "Home Alone" movie series, has died at 71. (Brian Kersey / Associated Press)

Reporting from new york  Actor John Heard, whose many roles included the father in the "Home Alone" series and a corrupt detective in "The Sopranos," has died. He was 71 .

Heard was found dead Friday at a Palo Alto hotel, the Santa Clara County medical examiner's office said Saturday.

Advertisement

An investigation, which includes a toxicology test, is underway to determine the cause of his death, but there is so far no evidence of foul play, the office said.

TMZ reported that a representative for Heard said he was staying in the hotel while he recovered from back surgery at Stanford University Medical Center.

Advertisement

Heard played Peter McCallister, the father of Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, in "Home Alone" and "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York." He said in later interviews that he sought a movie with kids in it so his son, age 5 at the time, could come to the set and have someone to play with.

After it became a big hit, he was reluctant to revisit the role, but his agent convinced him the money was too good to pass up.

"I didn't want to be the 'Home Alone' dad for the rest of my life," he told Yahoo News in 2013.

He was born March 7, 1946, in Washington, D.C., and grew up performing in local theater. One of his memorable early roles was as a disabled Vietnam War veteran in the 1981 film "Cutter's Way."

He was active in film for the next decade, playing Tom Hanks' rival in "Big," actress Geraldine Page's son in "The Trip to Bountiful" and in the movies "The Pelican Brief," ''Beaches," ''Gladiator," ''Rambling Rose" and "After Hours."

He earned an Emmy nomination for a guest role as a corrupt police detective in "The Sopranos." Heard said in a 2015 interview with The A.V. Club that he got the part after running into series star James Gandolfini in a gym. His time on the show ended like it did for many other actors  with his character's death.

Heard said he approached series creator David Chase and said, " 'Why me? I'm a detective! You can use me forever!' And he told me, 'John, there's a rule in television. Somebody has to die that the audience likes.' I said, 'They like me? How do you know they like me?' He said, 'Well, they like you. So we're gonna kill you.'

"My mother said, 'Why do you have to die in everything?' I said, 'You're telling me? I could've made a fortune!' "

Advertisement

Other television roles also kept Heard busy. He acted in "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," ''Elementary," ''Prison Break," ''Modern Family" and "Entourage." One of his favorite jobs came in the original "Sharknado" television movie in 2013.

"I knew it was going to be a cult classic," he told the Baltimore Media Blog last year. "It's just ridiculous. I thought it would replace people calling me the 'Home Alone' dad."

Fellow actor Michael McKean paid tribute to Heard Saturday on Twitter: "RIP John Heard. Never not good."

Heard was married and divorced three times, including briefly to actress Margot Kidder. He had three children.

ALSO

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

Chester Bennington of Linkin Park dies at 41

Advertisement

George A. Romero, 'Night of the Living Dead' creator, dies at 77

Oscar-winner Martin Landau, who starred in 'Ed Wood,' 'North By Northwest' and 'Entourage,' dies at 89

UPDATES:

6:35 p.m.: This article was updated with details from the medical examiner's office and a quote from a 2015 interview with Heard.

10:15 a.m. This article was updated with details of Heard's other acting roles.

This article was originally published at 8:55 a.m.
The political machine also co-opted any genuine political leadership in these areas by incorporating potential leaders into the greasy machine. Why would aldermen opt for the hard work of reform that might bring investment to their wards when they personally are doing quite well?

The racist language in the recent Chicago water department emails shows that the machine is still alive in some parts of the city bureaucracy. People get hired because they know people, not because of their merit. And the politicians are content to keep the system alive because it gives them so much clout and money.

 David Vognar, Oak Lawn
It's long past time for some new blood in Springfield and in Chicago. We keep getting more of the same short-sighted, cynical, tax-raising tactics paired with dire warnings to justify ever-increasing promises for politicians favored beneficiaries, while performance and efficiency are steadily declining and more and more people and businesses are driven away to states that treat them with respect.

Thus, we get Madigan's 32 percent income tax hike on top of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's penny-per-ounce tax increase on sweetened beverages on top of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's 7-cent bag tax and rising property taxes. And for what? Debt service and court-mandated payments are already eating up any revenue.

Enough frogs are already noticing the scalding water and getting out; before long, there will be a mass exodus.

 Jonathon Luers, Chicago

Related articles:

Why I'm moving my family out of Illinois
What to expect next in the Frisch vs. Boebert CD-3 race

Final results in the race won't be known until Friday, Nov. 18, after clerks in all 27 counties upload final counts. So what happens between now and then?
Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (centre), President of the Cambodian Senate Samdech Say Chhum and Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Minister of the Royal Palace Samdech Kong Som Ol cut the ribbon to inaugurate a Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship Monument in Preah Sihanouk province.



This is part of the Vietnamese Party chiefs State visit to Cambodia from July 20th-22nd at the invitation of Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni.

Addressing the inauguration ceremony, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said the construction of the monument reflects the tribute paid by the Parties, States, people and armies of the two countries to Vietnamese volunteers soldiers as well as officers and soldiers of the Cambodian Royal Army who laid down their lives for Cambodias independence and freedom.

Highlighting the good neighbourliness, traditional friendship, comprehensive cooperation and long-term sustainability between Vietnam and Cambodia, he said despite changes in the regional and global situation, Vietnam always attaches importance to and will make every effort, together with Cambodia, to make the relationship green and sustainable forever, meeting the aspirations and interests of the two countries people, and for peace, stability, cooperation and development in Southeast Asia and the world at large.

The leader said he firmly believed that with the determination and efforts of both countries, no force can break the close-knit relationship between Vietnam and Cambodia.

Senate President Samdech Say Chhum, who is also Vice President of the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP), said the two countries have cooperated in building Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship Monuments in Phnom Penh and 16 provinces, including Preah Sihanouk, across Cambodia since the 1980s to pay homage to their soldiers who sacrificed their lives during the struggle against the Pol Pot genocidal regime.

The bilateral relationship is thriving in various areas, ranging from politics to economy, social affairs, tourism, culture and science-technology, he said, citing two-way burgeoning trade and progresses made in the settlement of border issues between the two countries, especially land border.

The same day, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong visited the Preah Sihanouk International Seaport, the only deep-water port of Cambodia.

Beginning operation in 1960 after four years of construction, the 150ha seaport is an important entrepot of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the world as well, with the volume of cargoes and containers handled at the port increasing 10-15 percent annually.

Up to 73 percent of Cambodias imports and exports are transported through the port, which has contributed USD65 million to the countrys State budget in recent years.

Impressed by the ports rapid and comprehensive development, Party General Secretary Trong hoped that it will become a modern port of the region and the world.

He also spoke highly of cooperation and mutual support between the Preah Sihanouk International Seaport and Vietnams ports, including those in Hai Phong and Ho Chi Minh City, suggesting the two sides advance their collaboration to practically contribute to economic, trade and investment development in each nation.

Also on July 22nd, the Party chief met with officials of the Vietnamese Consulate General in Preah Sihanouk province.

On July 21st evening, CPP President and Prime Minister of Cambodia Samdech Hun Sen hosted a banquet in honour of Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and his encourage.

PM Hun Sen said the CPP and Cambodian people will do their utmost to consolidate and develop the solidarity, traditional friendship and comprehensive cooperation between the two Parties, Governments and people, for the sake of both nations, and for peace, stability and development in the region and the world as well.

He voiced his belief that Party General Secretary Trongs visit would help strengthen the relationship for prosperity of both Vietnam and Cambodia, as neighbouring countries and ASEAN members.

Sharing PM Hun Sens view, the Vietnamese leader believed that under the sound leadership of the two Parties and Governments, the bilateral relationship would certainly develop to a new high in a more practical and effective manner, meeting the aspirations of their people and for peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and the world./.
China's insurance regulator has urged the industry to show greater "self-discipline" and serve the real economy, in a nod to the central government's focus on fighting financial risks.

In a speech published on the China Insurance Regulatory Commission's (CIRC) website on Saturday, vice-chairman Liang Tao said the insurance industry should "return to its origins" and work to "reduce tremors" in the economy and society.

The comments follow a turbulent few months in the insurance sector and a call last week from President Xi Jinping for the banking, insurance and securities regulators to show more accountability.

China's insurance regulator has been moving aggressively since the start of the year, issuing new regulations and fines against companies to plug loopholes and tighten supervision.

CIRC has been particularly focused on the widespread issuance of higher yielding, short-term products by some insurers, and the potential systemic risk stemming from their use.

In recent years, some insurers have been deeply involved in the stock market, using massive fund from issuance of high-yield, short-term universal life insurance and other investment products.

The CIRC's top post has been vacant since April, when former chairman Xiang Junbo was put under investigation for suspected "serious disciplinary violations".
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is widely seen as the next frontier of innovation and growth, expected to be the biggest driving force in human history in the next 30 to 50 years with China assuming world leadership. [Xinhua]

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is widely seen as the next frontier of innovation and growth, expected to be the biggest driving force in human history in the next 30 to 50 years with China assuming world leadership.

With its considerable strength in AI research and development, it has become a powerhouse of innovation in deep learning, sensors, predictive maintenance, medical imaging and intelligent robotics.

According to the Wuzhen Institute in Hangzhou, China was the worlds second biggest investor in AI enterprises last year, injecting US$2.6 billion into the sector compared to Americas US$17.9 billion. That still leaves a big gap, but China is rapidly catching up.

According to a report by the China Internet Network Center in late January, as of December 2016, China had 731 million Internet users, equal to the population of the European Union, with an Internet penetration rate of 53.2 percent.

Chinese internet users are highly responsive to new technologies. This creates a clear edge in artificial intelligence no other country can rival. Indeed, in recent years, the country has been playing an important role in innovation and growth.

According to a report of the consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, AI will contribute US$15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030 and China will be among the biggest beneficiaries, with a 26 percent boost in its GDP by then.

The Chinese government attaches great importance to Artificial Intelligence 2.0. The 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020), and the Made in China 2025 program, Robotics Industry Development Plan, and Three-year Guidance for Internet Plus Artificial Intelligence Plan (2016-2018) are all contributing to boosting research and development.

During the opening meeting of the fifth session of China's 12th National People's Congress (NPC) on March 5, Premier Li Keqiang announced in his Government Work Report Chinas strong determination to support AI growth.

"We will accelerate R&D on and commercialization of new materials, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, bio-pharmacy, 5G mobile communications, and other technologies, and develop industrial clusters in these fields." This was a clear message China intends to assume worldwide leadership in technology.

As part of the "Made in China 2025" plan, the government has pinpointed AI as a key area for advancement. During the first World Intelligence Congress in Tianjin, north China, on June 29, 2017, Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang revealed the intention to roll out a slate of important artificial intelligence projects and step up efforts to cultivate AI talents to gain a lead in the cutting-edge technology.

The National Development and Reform Commission launched its first national engineering laboratory for big data distribution and exchange technologies on March 11. It is formed by Chinas biggest online search engine, Baidu, in partnership with the elite Tsinghua and Beihang universities, working together to boost the countrys digital economy to compete in the global market.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, China plans to expand its artificial intelligence products market to over US$15 billion by 2018 by speeding up the manufacturing of products like robots, home appliances and mobile phones as part of efforts to develop new technologies to upgrade the structure and performance of the real economy.

Chinese technology companies have already created AI systems in their core businesses with measurable impact on human lives and are not lagging behind in artificial intelligence applications offered by American high-tech giants.

Undoubtedly, Chinas top three Internet companies, Baidu, Tencent Holding and Alibaba Group, are playing an important role in advancing artificial intelligence, from facial recognition to more futuristic incarnations like self-driving vehicles.

The Baidu online search engine is investing billions of dollars annually in AI technology. Baidu has an advantage especially in voice and image recognition, with recognition rates just below 100 percent. Its AI Baidu Brain beat top human contestants in voice and image recognition last January 6.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has launched City Brain, an artificial intelligence hub using big data to help build smart cities. In September 2015, Tencent stunned the media world with its robot journalist, called "Dreamwriter." According to media reports, the robot produces a 1,000-word news report in one minute. Tencent achieved a record face recognition rate of 99.65 percent in LFW (Labeled Faces in the Wild) Database last June.

However, AI technology may lead the world in the fields of transportation system, education, medical care etc, but with it comes the responsibility towards humankind, as Chinese President Xi Jinping warned in his speech at the 12th G20 Hamburg Summit on July 7, 2017.

He said: According to the projections of the World Economic Forum, artificial intelligence will wipe out more than five million jobs in the world by 2020, requiring adherence to the principle AI for the people, by the people.

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.
You are here: Home

 Flash

A Chinese naval fleet reached Russia's Baltic city of Kaliningrad Friday, ready for a joint drill with Russia scheduled in the Baltic Sea in late July.

The Chinese fleet consists of one destroyer, one frigate, one supply ship, ship-borne helicopters and marines. The Russian side includes one frigate, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and marines.

The two sides plan to conduct air-defense, maritime search and rescue, underway replenishment and other exercises.

Chinese and Russian navies will conduct a variety of joint drills and attend the parade in St. Petersburg on the occasion of Russia's Navy Day to deepen friendly and practical cooperation between the two militaries, and consolidate China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, said Tian Zhong, deputy commander of the Chinese Navy and the Chinese director of the joint drill.

The drill, code-named "Joint Sea 2017," aims to jointly carry out rescue missions and protect the safety of economic activities at sea.
 Flash

Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Xi received the highest Palestinian medal from Abbas.[Wu Zhiyi / China Daily]

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has concluded his state visit to China, during which President Xi Jinping put forward a new four-point proposal on the Palestine issue.

Analysts said that Abbas paid his visit to China, from July 17-20, at a time when the Palestine-Israel peace talks remain stalled, US President Donald Trump's policies towards Palestine and Israel remain elusive, and China is pushing the Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East.

Currently, the Palestine issue seems to have been marginalized as frequent conflicts have been popping up in the Middle East in recent years after the last round of peace talks between Israel and Palestine stalled in 2014.

Palestine wishes the world would pay attention once again to its issue and provide assistance.

During the talks with Abbas on Tuesday, Xi made a new four-point proposal that had more content than the previous version, which Xi made in May 2013 during Abbas's visit to China.

In the new proposal, Xi not only reiterated that China supports a two-state solution to the Palestine issue and supports Palestine in building an independent, fully sovereign state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, but also introduced new initiatives.

These initiatives include China's concrete measures to back Palestine's economic development, such as supporting Chinese companies to invest in Palestine and build industrial parks and solar power plants together with the Palestinian side.

Meanwhile, as Palestine's border, customs and infrastructure facilities are currently under Israel's control, China has proposed ways to ensure the implementation of these measures, such as a tripartite dialogue mechanism among China, Palestine and Israel to promote major projects to assist the Palestinian side.

Under the proposal, China will host a symposium on peace between Palestine and Israel later this year.

Chen Shuangqing, a Middle East expert from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said that promoting contacts and communications between Palestine and Israel through non-governmental channels might help re-start the Palestine-Israel political dialogue.

During Abbas's visit to China, China's new thinking on the Middle East issue - promoting peace through development - was clearly reflected in China's new moves on the Palestine-Israel issue, said Wu Sike, China's former special envoy to the Middle East.

President Xi mentioned the new thinking for the first time in a speech delivered at the headquarters of the Arab League in Egypt in January 2016, Wu said, adding Abbas's just-concluded visit made this new thinking clearer.

On the Palestine-Israel issue, China has its own advantages as it maintains good ties with both Palestine and Israel and is able to mediate between them, Chen said.

China is expected to play a bigger role in the Middle East in the future, especially as the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative advances in the region, said Wu Yihong, a Chinese expert on the Middle East.
 Flash

Moscow negatively viewed a the newly released U.S. draft bill on sanctions against Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Russian media reported on Saturday, citing the Kremlin.

"Extremely negatively," Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Sputnik news agency as saying when asked about the Kremlin's take on the draft bill.

U.S. Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on a bill that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and the DPRK, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday.

The bill reportedly allows sanctions against Russia for its alleged intervention in Ukraine and meddling in the U.S. presidential election, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied in public.

Seen as a follow-up to new U.S. sanctions against Russia and Iran announced in June, the bill will be put to a vote at the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.
 Flash

A Chinese naval fleet reaches Russia's Baltic city of Kaliningrad on July 21, 2017, ready for a joint drill with Russia scheduled in the Baltic Sea in late July. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

China and Russia have started their large-scale naval drills dubbed "Joint Sea 2017" in the Baltic Sea. The exercises will involve jets, helicopters and vessels.

The Chinese Navy is represented by one of its most advanced missile destroyers, the Hefei, as well as missile frigate Yuncheng and the Luomahu supply ship. CGTN's Daria Bondarchuk reported the two countries want to increase cooperation and efficiency in protecting security at sea.

An opening ceremony of China-Russia naval exercise is held in Russia's Baltic city, on July 22, 2017. [Photo: China Plus/Sun Juan]

According to the report, the naval forces of the Chinese People's Liberation Army arrived in Russia on Friday. A welcoming ceremony was held in Baltiysk in northern Russia. The Chinese and the Russian navies are set to hold a series of drills as part of the "Joint Sea 2017" exercise program. A dozen vessels of different classes, as well as some 10 aircraft and helicopters from both sides are scheduled to take part in the first leg of the drills throughout next week.

The Joint Sea naval exercises were held for the first time in 2012. This year they will stretch into autumn. In September the second phase of the navy drills will begin in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan.
The trespassing in Chinese territory by Indian troops has now dragged into a second month. The longer they remain on the Chinese side of the long-demarcated and mutually recognized Sikkim section of the border, the less room there will be for peacefully ending the crisis.

Considering that both sides have reportedly sent more troops into the Donglang area, the face-off between Indian and Chinese troops, if not properly handled, could easily be the fuse that ignites a military clash between the two countries.

Especially as some Indian officials and media are bellicosely proclaiming that India today is different from the India of 1962, implying the country's military muscles have grown since then.

They should be aware that the same applies to China, if not more so.

China has so far exercised the utmost restraint and is still trying to defuse the situation in a peaceful manner. However, this should not be misinterpreted by India as a sign of weakness, as that would likely lead to it making a dangerous miscalculation. It should be aware that China has both the necessary means and the will to safeguard its territorial integrity.

Since the Indian troops have not been withdrawn from the Chinese territory, despite China's repeated urgings, their trespassing bears every emblem of being an incursion. If China's appeals for India to see sense and respect the demarcated border continue to fall on deaf ears then a military response may become inevitable.

This would not only disrupt the good momentum in ties that had seemed to be on the cards after recent bilateral high-level meetings, but also the peaceful environment the two economies need for their development.

Despite their disputes over other parts of the border, the Sikkim section of the China-India boundary has been delimited by treaty, and the Indian government has repeatedly confirmed in writing that it recognizes this part of the boundary. Yet Indian troops entered Chinese territory to obstruct the construction of a road.

Indian claims that the area where China is constructing the road is disputed by Bhutan and it is helping it as obligated by their friendship treaty. However, this is dissembling its real reasons, which stem from its own unfounded sense of insecurity and fear that it is losing out to China in regional influence.

Reports from India, suggest its troops in the Donglang are preparing to stay for the long haul. However, that will not be allowed. It is high time India corrected its wrongdoing and respected the demarcated boundary by withdrawing its troops from Chinese territory.
WASHINGTON  The just-concluded inaugural China-US Comprehensive Economic Dialogue (CED) has charted the right course for economic cooperation between the world's two largest economies as the two sides eye a one-year plan to deepen pragmatic cooperation and resolve outstanding problems.

Chart course for economic cooperation

"The two sides shared the view that the most important outcome of this round of dialogue is that it has charted the course for China-US economic cooperation," the Chinese delegation attending the one-day dialogue said in a statement after the conclusion of the talks Wednesday.

The two sides agreed to take "win-win cooperation" as the basic principle for developing bilateral economic relations, "dialogue and consultation" as the basis means to tackle differences, and "regular communication on major economic policies" as the basic way of dialogue and cooperation, the statement said.

Although the high-level talks, co-chaired by Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, ended with no joint statements, Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao described the talks as "very candid, very friendly and very constructive" with positive outcomes.

Both sides "spoke highly" of the significant and balanced outcomes achieved under the 100-day economic cooperation plan, an important consensus reached by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump during the Mar-a-Lago meeting in April, Zhu said at a press briefing on Wednesday.

Major outcomes of the 100-day plan includes US beef returned to the Chinese market after 14 years of suspensions, and policy restrictions on US liquefied natural gas exports to China began to be loosened.

After the US presidential election last year, many fretted that China-US trade relations would "enter a stormy season of winter and even run the risk of a trade war," Wang recalled Tuesday at a luncheon to the Chinese and US business communities.

But the recent fruitful cooperation between the world's largest two economies has proven that China-US economic cooperation is sailing on the right course, he said.

The CED is one of the four major dialogues the two sides established in April. The first round of the dialogue allows the two sides to focus not only on concrete economic and trade issues, but also on long-term and strategic policies that are important to bilateral economic relations.

One-year cooperation plan

China and the United States discussed a one-year plan of economic cooperation in areas such as macro economy, trade, investment, and global economic governance during the dialogue, Zhu introduced.

Both teams would take follow-up actions to identify issues of the one-year plan, and look forward to determining the substance of an early harvest as soon as possible, he said.

"I don't think there's been enough negotiation to have a lot of concrete results," David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former official with the US Treasury Department, told Xinhua, expecting the two sides to develop specific plans within the year.

He also noted that a high-quality US-China bilateral investment treaty would help US export its services to China and build a foundation for a better bilateral trading relationship. "The US primarily exports services. It's hard to export services if you cannot invest," he said.

China has agreed to further open up its service sector and expand bilateral trade in services with the United States, as the country is shifting its economy toward a growth model powered by consumption, services and innovation.

"Despite a huge deficit in services trade with the United States, China nevertheless believed that trade in services between China and the United States is mutually beneficial," said the statement from the Chinese delegation.

Given the differences between China and the United States in the size and structure of their services industry, it remains possible for both sides to exploit their own comparative advantages and complement each other, the statement said, adding that "expanding bilateral trade in services can also promote balanced trading relations between the two sides."

In order to address trade imbalance, a top priority of the Trump administration, China has also urged the United States to remove its outdated regulations on export control and increase the exports of high-tech products to China, said Zhu, stressing that China will push for this demand in the one-year plan.

If the United States were to liberalize its export barriers against China to the same level as those applicable to Brazil or France, the US trade deficit with China would narrow by up to 24 percent and 34 percent respectively, according to a research from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Steel excess capacity

Talks on steel excess capacity between China and the United States are watched closely by the international community as the Trump administration is about to release a report on the national security implications of steel imports in the coming weeks.

China shared the same view with the United States that steel overcapacity is a global issue, which requires a global collective response, Zhu said, adding China also emphasizes that the excess steel capacity has been a result of sluggish global economic recovery.

Meanwhile, the Chinese delegation told the US side that China has actively taken measures to cut steel overcapacity, Zhu said, citing China's plans to reduce steel capacity by 100 million to 150 million metric tons from 2016 to 2020.

In defense of the US steel industry, the Trump administration in April invoked a decades-old, rarely used trade tool, known as a Section 232 investigation under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, to look into all foreign steel imports.

If the investigation concludes that steel imports would undermine US national security, the trade law would allow the US government to impose tariffs, quotas, or other measures to restrict the imports.

"I think an honest assessment of the national security issue would conclude that there is no national security issue because we mostly produce steel ourselves or we get it from Canada and Mexico, which are close allies of the United States," said Dollar.

In his view, it won't have much effect on China if the Trump administration imposes new tariffs on imported steel, as the United States only imports "a tiny percentage of" steel from China.

As the world's two largest economies and co-chairs of the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity, China and the United States have maintained policy dialogue and communication regarding the steel glut, according to Zhu.

At the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany earlier this month, G20 leaders called on the forum to fulfill their commitments on enhancing information sharing and cooperation by August, and to rapidly develop concrete policy solutions that reduce steel excess capacity, he added.
The Yangzte river in Central China's Hubei province, July 7, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - The Chinese government has released an environmental protection plan covering the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the latest move to protect the country's longest river from pollution.

The plan was jointly released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Water Resources.

It places an upper limit on the usage of water resources along the belt, said Zhao Yingmin, vice-minister of environmental protection.

An ecological "red line" will be put in place to protect and restore the environment of key areas, Zhao said.

This is in line with government guidelines issued earlier this year on a nationwide ecological "red line" strategy that will place certain regions under mandatory and rigorous protection.

Water quality management will be based on a "bottom line" system to strengthen controls on pollution along the belt, especially at drinking water sources, according to Zhao.

The plan also demands improved responses to environmental emergencies and closer regional coordination, he said.

Stretching from Southwest China's Yunnan province to Shanghai, the Yangtze River Economic Belt covers nine provinces and two municipalities in an area of 2.05 million square kilometers.

In 2014, China made developing the economic belt a national strategy. The move was expected to boost development in riverside regions and provide new growth stimuli for China's slowing economy.
China and Russia kicked off their annual joint naval exercises in the Baltic Sea on Saturday, the first of their kind for the Chinese Navy in Europe.

The Chinese ships arrived at the Russian seaport of Baltiysk on Friday. This year's exercise, dubbed Joint Sea 2017, will focus on strengthening Sino-Russia naval combat and coordination capabilities, as well as practicing maritime anti-piracy and emergency rescue operations.

These regular drills, which began in 2012 in the Yellow Sea, are not targeting against any other states, defense ministries from both countries said.

The first phase of the exercise is taking place in waters off the Russian cities of Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg from Monday to Friday. The second phase will be in the Russian Far East, the Sea of Japan and Okhotsk in September, according to the Russian defense ministry.

The drill is a practical step in strengthening the Sino-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, as well as bolstering exchanges and cooperation between the two militaries, especially the navies, Vice-Admiral Tian Zhong, the deputy commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army Navy, said at the drill's opening ceremony on Saturday.

Russian Navy Deputy Commander-in-Chief Vice-Admiral Alexander Fedotenkov said the Joint Sea exercises have become more professional and comprehensive since 2012.

This year's exercise will feature China's most advanced military vessels, including the Type 052D guided missile destroyer Changsha, Type 054A guided missile frigate Yuncheng and the Type 903A supply ship Luomahu.

These ships belong to the South Sea Fleet responsible for operations in the South China Sea. They set off from their home port in Sanya, Hainan province, on June 18, and conducted live-fire drills in the Mediterranean on July 10 en route to the Baltic Sea, according to China's Defense Ministry.

The Russian Navy will deploy the latest class corvettes  Steregushchiy and Boiky. In addition, nearly a dozen aircraft and helicopters from both sides, such as Ka-27 helicopters and Su-24 fighter-bombers, will take part.

Since its debut, the annual Sino-Russian naval exercise has been closely monitored by the West. This year, British, Dutch and Danish ships trailed the Chinese flotilla as it passed into the Baltic Sea.

Li Xing, a professor of international relations at Beijing Normal University, said it is understandable for Western countries to closely follow this year's drill because this is the first time the Chinese navy is conducting exercises at NATO's doorstep.

Russia has also been moving its most powerful ships, including its nuclear-powered Kirov-class battle cruiser and the Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine  the largest submarine ever built  into the Baltic Sea for the upcoming naval parade at St. Petersburg on July 30.

"The Chinese navy will learn much from this year's exercises, especially on improving far sea operations in unfamiliar waters. Such capabilities are crucial benchmarks for a strong navy, and the Chinese navy will have more in the future," he said.

The Chinese navy will learn much ... especially on improving far sea operation in -unfamiliar waters."
A clay figurine made by a folk artist is displayed during the rural tourism culture festival in Yanqing district, Beijing, July 21, 2017. [Photo by Bi Nan/chinadaily.com.cn]

The 2017 Yanqing Rural Tourism Culture Festival opened in Beijing's Yanqing district on Friday, with various activities staged to showcase its abundant cultural and tourism resources.

A grand opening ceremony was held at the Beijing Longwan International Camping Park in Jiuxian county in Yanqing. The festival featured many activities, such as a fair where local handicrafts and agricultural products were on display and for sale, a feast spread on tables measuring a total of 100 meters long, a folk dance performance and a homestay hotel experience.

On display were Yanqing crafts, such as pottery making, paper-cuts, leather carving and pyrography, and visitors could taste local watermelon, tea and snacks. An intangible cultural heritage show, the "Land Boat" (a model boat used as a stage prop in folk dances) performance, was also staged. The 100-meter long table feast showcased 30 kinds of food from Yanqing, arousing visitors' appetites.

A conference on homestay hotels also was held for the first time on Friday afternoon, with representatives from the homestay hotel industry and the homestay hotel association attending. In the last three years Yanqing has built up a batch of homestay hotels with distinctive characteristics and more boutique hotels, highlighting local culture, are under construction.

Yanqing, located in the northwestern outskirts of Beijing, is noted for its natural tourism resources and landscapes, and has summer resorts such as Longqing Gorge, Yudu Mountain and Badaling National Forest Park.
China proposes peace through development in Middle East during Abbas's visit 2017-07-23 08:06:53 Xinhua Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has concluded his state visit to China, during which President Xi Jinping put forward a new four-point proposal on the Palestine issue.

President Xi Jinping welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Xi received the highest Palestinian medal from Abbas.Wu Zhiyi / China Daily

BEIJING - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has concluded his state visit to China, during which President Xi Jinping put forward a new four-point proposal on the Palestine issue.

Analysts said that Abbas paid his visit to China, from July 17-20, at a time when the Palestine-Israel peace talks remain stalled, US President Donald Trump's policies towards Palestine and Israel remain elusive, and China is pushing the Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East.

Currently, the Palestine issue seems to have been marginalized as frequent conflicts have been popping up in the Middle East in recent years after the last round of peace talks between Israel and Palestine stalled in 2014.

Palestine wishes the world would pay attention once again to its issue and provide assistance.

During the talks with Abbas on Tuesday, Xi made a new four-point proposal that had more content than the previous version, which Xi made in May 2013 during Abbas's visit to China.

In the new proposal, Xi not only reiterated that China supports a two-state solution to the Palestine issue and supports Palestine in building an independent, fully sovereign state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, but also introduced new initiatives.

These initiatives include China's concrete measures to back Palestine's economic development, such as supporting Chinese companies to invest in Palestine and build industrial parks and solar power plants together with the Palestinian side.

Meanwhile, as Palestine's border, customs and infrastructure facilities are currently under Israel's control, China has proposed ways to ensure the implementation of these measures, such as a tripartite dialogue mechanism among China, Palestine and Israel to promote major projects to assist the Palestinian side.

Under the proposal, China will host a symposium on peace between Palestine and Israel later this year.

Chen Shuangqing, a Middle East expert from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said that promoting contacts and communications between Palestine and Israel through non-governmental channels might help re-start the Palestine-Israel political dialogue.

During Abbas's visit to China, China's new thinking on the Middle East issue - promoting peace through development - was clearly reflected in China's new moves on the Palestine-Israel issue, said Wu Sike, China's former special envoy to the Middle East.

President Xi mentioned the new thinking for the first time in a speech delivered at the headquarters of the Arab League in Egypt in January 2016, Wu said, adding Abbas's just-concluded visit made this new thinking clearer.

On the Palestine-Israel issue, China has its own advantages as it maintains good ties with both Palestine and Israel and is able to mediate between them, Chen said.

China is expected to play a bigger role in the Middle East in the future, especially as the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative advances in the region, said Wu Yihong, a Chinese expert on the Middle East.
Withdrawal of its troops is India's best recourse 2017-07-23 20:30:02 chinadaily.com.cn The trespassing in Chinese territory by Indian troops has now dragged into a second month. The longer they remain on the Chinese side of the long-demarcated and mutually recognized Sikkim section of the border, the less room there will be for peacefully ending the crisis.

The trespassing in Chinese territory by Indian troops has now dragged into a second month. The longer they remain on the Chinese side of the long-demarcated and mutually recognized Sikkim section of the border, the less room there will be for peacefully ending the crisis.

Considering that both sides have reportedly sent more troops into the Donglang area, the face-off between Indian and Chinese troops, if not properly handled, could easily be the fuse that ignites a military clash between the two countries.

Especially as some Indian officials and media are bellicosely proclaiming that India today is different from the India of 1962, implying the country's military muscles have grown since then.

They should be aware that the same applies to China, if not more so.

China has so far exercised the utmost restraint and is still trying to defuse the situation in a peaceful manner. However, this should not be misinterpreted by India as a sign of weakness, as that would likely lead to it making a dangerous miscalculation. It should be aware that China has both the necessary means and the will to safeguard its territorial integrity.

Since the Indian troops have not been withdrawn from the Chinese territory, despite China's repeated urgings, their trespassing bears every emblem of being an incursion. If China's appeals for India to see sense and respect the demarcated border continue to fall on deaf ears then a military response may become inevitable.

This would not only disrupt the good momentum in ties that had seemed to be on the cards after recent bilateral high-level meetings, but also the peaceful environment the two economies need for their development.

Despite their disputes over other parts of the border, the Sikkim section of the China-India boundary has been delimited by treaty, and the Indian government has repeatedly confirmed in writing that it recognizes this part of the boundary. Yet Indian troops entered Chinese territory to obstruct the construction of a road.

Indian claims that the area where China is constructing the road is disputed by Bhutan and it is helping it as obligated by their friendship treaty. However, this is dissembling its real reasons, which stem from its own unfounded sense of insecurity and fear that it is losing out to China in regional influence.

Reports from India, suggest its troops in the Donglang are preparing to stay for the long haul. However, that will not be allowed. It is high time India corrected its wrongdoing and respected the demarcated boundary by withdrawing its troops from Chinese territory.
Li: Boost welfare of Palestine

By Zhang Yue | China Daily | Updated: 2017-07-20 07:07

China and Palestine should enhance cooperation in areas like trade, infrastructure, human resources and capacity building to help boost Palestine's economic development and improve its livelihood, Premier Li Keqiang said on Wednesday.

Li spoke as he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Peace and development serve as the premise of each other, Li said, and China is ready to deepen cooperation with the State of Palestine to achieve mutual benefits and win-win results from fully implementing existing cooperation in key areas through bilateral and multilateral dialogue and coordination.

Abbas is making a state visit to China from Monday to Thursday, and was received by President Xi Jinping on Tuesday.

Li said China, sharing deep friendship with Palestine, has been paying close attention to the Middle East peace process. He said China firmly supports the just cause of the Palestinian people and their pursuit of restoring their legitimate national rights. Li said China is ready to continue to play an active role in international efforts in promoting negotiations toward a peaceful settlement.

Abbas expressed his gratitude and said Palestine is willing to keep high-level exchanges with China, and enhance cooperation in areas including industrial parks, clean energy and human resource training.

zhangyue@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/20/2017 page3)
President Xi Jinping welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Xi received the highest Palestinian medal from Abbas.Wu Zhiyi / China Daily

BEIJING - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has concluded his state visit to China, during which President Xi Jinping put forward a new four-point proposal on the Palestine issue.

Analysts said that Abbas paid his visit to China, from July 17-20, at a time when the Palestine-Israel peace talks remain stalled, US President Donald Trump's policies towards Palestine and Israel remain elusive, and China is pushing the Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East.

Currently, the Palestine issue seems to have been marginalized as frequent conflicts have been popping up in the Middle East in recent years after the last round of peace talks between Israel and Palestine stalled in 2014.

Palestine wishes the world would pay attention once again to its issue and provide assistance.

During the talks with Abbas on Tuesday, Xi made a new four-point proposal that had more content than the previous version, which Xi made in May 2013 during Abbas's visit to China.

In the new proposal, Xi not only reiterated that China supports a two-state solution to the Palestine issue and supports Palestine in building an independent, fully sovereign state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, but also introduced new initiatives.

These initiatives include China's concrete measures to back Palestine's economic development, such as supporting Chinese companies to invest in Palestine and build industrial parks and solar power plants together with the Palestinian side.

Meanwhile, as Palestine's border, customs and infrastructure facilities are currently under Israel's control, China has proposed ways to ensure the implementation of these measures, such as a tripartite dialogue mechanism among China, Palestine and Israel to promote major projects to assist the Palestinian side.

Under the proposal, China will host a symposium on peace between Palestine and Israel later this year.

Chen Shuangqing, a Middle East expert from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said that promoting contacts and communications between Palestine and Israel through non-governmental channels might help re-start the Palestine-Israel political dialogue.

During Abbas's visit to China, China's new thinking on the Middle East issue - promoting peace through development - was clearly reflected in China's new moves on the Palestine-Israel issue, said Wu Sike, China's former special envoy to the Middle East.

President Xi mentioned the new thinking for the first time in a speech delivered at the headquarters of the Arab League in Egypt in January 2016, Wu said, adding Abbas's just-concluded visit made this new thinking clearer.

On the Palestine-Israel issue, China has its own advantages as it maintains good ties with both Palestine and Israel and is able to mediate between them, Chen said.

China is expected to play a bigger role in the Middle East in the future, especially as the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative advances in the region, said Wu Yihong, a Chinese expert on the Middle East.
Travelers wait in line at Los Angeles International Airport, the United States, June 30, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

WASHINGTON - The US State Department said on Friday that American citizens will soon be banned from travelling to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The ban on all US citizens' use of a passport to travel to, through or in the DPRK resulted from "mounting concerns over the serious risk of arrest and long-term detention" of Americans there, said State Department spokesman Heather Nauert in a statement to Xinhua.

According to Nauert, the ban was expected to be formally declared next week and would take effect 30 days after the formal declaration.

For Americans seeking to travel to the DPRK for "certain limited humanitarian or other purposes," they may apply to the State Department for a special validation passport, Nauert added.

Before the introduction of the travel ban, the State Department had for long strongly warned Americans against travelling to the DPRK.
Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, speaks during the YouthConnekt Africa Summit in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, on July 21, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

KIGALI - Chinese billionaire entrepreneur Jack Ma on Friday announced four projects to support African entrepreneurs, African young people and efforts of conservation in Africa.

"I will work with UNCTAD to support 200 African entrepreneurs in the next five years," said Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Ma, also special advisor of UNCTAD also announced that he will work with universities and governments to develop training program for African young people on e-commerce and cloud computing.

The third project is to set up a conservation award for conservation rangers. Every year, the award will be used to recognize 50 African wildlife conservation rangers who has been guarding natural heritages, said Ma.

"We plan to have the program lasting for 10 years to initiate a closer link in the conservation world between China and Africa," he said.

According to him, the award will be contributed by Alibaba Foundation and Paradise Foundation, a China-based conservation organization.

"I'm going to personally donate $10 million to establish a young entrepreneurs development fund, to support young people like you! To support hope today, and it becomes prosperity for tomorrow," he said.

Ma made the announcement at the YouthConnekt Africa Summit being held in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. The three-day summit is organized by the government of Rwanda, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and UNDP. The summit from July 19 to 21 is dubbed: "Realizing Africa's Youth Potential."
Last week Ivanka Trump shared images from her daughter Arabella Rose Kushner's sixth birthday. One photo that caught everybody's attention: hot dogs on a stick topped by marshmallows.

Across this country there was a collective: "Wha....!?!"

Turns out we've been doing hot dogs wrong this entire time and we never even knew. Who did know? The Philippines.

MADE IN AMERICA WEEK?: Many Trump products made overseas

Pinoy street food is a tradition that's wide, varied and certainly eclectic. A "handa" is an easy to pick up, pre-prepared snack that anyone can easily enjoy as they shop or at a party. The United States hasn't cornered the market on food on a stick.

Hot dogs and marshmallows is a combination that's been enjoyed in the Philippines for decades. The Filipino Times explains that though rare, it is served at children's parties. Noodles are also served because it's believed doing so will give you a long life. However, the publication explains that hot dogs in the Philippines taste a bit different than those generally served here. They're saltier, and much redder. When combined with the marshmallows it gives a "salty-sweet dynamic."

Where Trump picked up on this cuisine is anyone's guess, but the family has shown a particular interest in Asian culture. All three of Ivanka and Jared Kushner's children are learning Mandarin. Earlier this year Arabella charmed Chinese President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng by performing a traditional Chinese song.

Houston, with all of its cultural diversity, has some incredible taste combinations to enjoy. Scroll through the slideshow above for a look at the most authentic restaurants in town from all over the world.
A man accused of kidnapping and assaulting a grieving mother at a Magnolia cemetery was indicted Tuesday.

Charles Michael Glaze, 53, is facing first-degree felony aggravated robbery and first-degree felony aggravated kidnapping charges for the June 16 incident. The attack happened at the Klein Memorial Park Cemetery in the 32500 block of Texas 249.

A woman told investigators that she had been attacked as she was visiting her son's grave when Glaze allegedly used a stun gun on her and pointed a gun at her head before she was bound and gagged with zip ties and a men's necktie.

She was eventually able to escape after the suspect became too tired from her fighting, detectives said. She ran to nearby Magnolia Volunteer Fire Department Station 184 on Decker Prairie Road and got help.

Although Glaze was arrested days later, he has since bonded out of the Montgomery County Jail, records show. He is facing up to life in prison if convicted.

Montgomery County grand jury indictments for JuLY 18 & 20:

Wilfredo C Jaramillo, possession of marijuana (x2)

Lora Annette Harbour, DWI  third or more

Chelsea Fay-Elaine Sulak, possession of controlled substance (x2)

Michael Allen St. Clair, evading arrest detention with vehicle

Jason Lamar Green, DWI  third or more

Cole Brady Leonard, assault causing bodily injury family enhanced

Edward Dewayne Taylor, burglary of habitation

Nathan Ryan Wells, possession with intent to deliver/manufacture controlled substance

Tamara Renee Bridges, possession of controlled substance

Kimberly Karleen Hampton, possession of controlled substance

John Bouden Marz, online solicitation of a minor

Derik Jasper Trotter, possession or promotion of child pornography (x5)

Jonathan William West, online solicitation of a minor

Joseph Richard Reyes, online solicitation of a minor

Walter Lyons, forgery

Andrew Colton Anderson, possession of controlled substance (x2)

Tiffany April Wisnewski, DWI  with a child

Dan Edward Gilmore Jr., assault public servant

Tarrell Donald Nowlin, robbery

Joel Gasper Cruz, continuous sexual abuse of child

Daniel Douglas Kane, repeated violation of court order/condition

Dustin Wayne Tragesser, possession of controlled substance

Tracey Bryant, credit card abuse

Calvin Franklin, fraudulent possession of identifying items

Daniel Terry Holland, aggravated sexual assault of a child

Alberto Melendez, criminal attempted aggravated sexual assault of a child

Brittany June Rhoades, possession of controlled substance

Mary Elizabeth McNeal, DWI  with a child

Bennie Lavelle Doyle, DWI  third or more

Rachel Marie Linthicum, possession of marijuana

Stephen Roger Edwards, unauthorized use of motor vehicle

Cheyenne Lynne Ursrey, delivery of controlled substance

Will Landon Wells, possession of controlled substance

Matthew Uzzell, possession of controlled substance
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The Express Children's Theatre entertained children at the Austin Memorial Library for the Summer Reading program on July 19. Express Children's Theatre productions are geared for children and often involve breaking the fourth wall, allowing children to interact with the world performers create on stage.

This year's performance for Austin Memorial Library is "Sinbad the Sailor," inspired by the "Seven Voyages of Sinbad."

The premise revolves around a young girl named Sierra, portrayed by Sundi Lee, who dreams of sailing on a ship. However, her father Captain Juan, played by David Caldwell, does not believe girls can be sailors.

Sierra's chance to sail the ocean arrives when Captain Juan's first mate decides to pursue his dream of being a dancer, prompting Sierra to disguise herself as a boy named Sinbad to try out for the position.

Captain Juan and his new first mate decide to hunt a monster for Queen Reina Helena known as Gusano Grande.

"They say Gusano Grande is huge with a long tentacle that will drag you underwater," said Sierra to the crowd.

Sierra and her father are opposed by Pirata Carlotta, portrayed by Beatriz Gonzalez, for the task of hunting down Gusano Grande. Carlotta is revealed to be Captain Juan's mortal enemy and happens to taunt him at every turn.

Carlotta's antics do not deter Captain Juan or Sierra, who set sail to find Gusano Grande. Sierra interacts with the children, who warn her of what appears to be the tentacle of Gusano Grande attempting to grab her.

The tentacle turns out to be a prank by Carlotta. However, the pirate's antics end up revealing Sierra's true identity to her father. Carlotta and Captain Juan argue over whether or not if a girl can be a sailor before getting attacked and captured by the real Gusano Grande portrayed by Daniel Edwards.

The argument continued in Gusano Grande's lair as a child in the audience chastised Carlotta for putting the blame on Captain Juan. Caldwell showed his acting talent in the vein of Express Children's Theatre's methods of involving the audience by agreeing with the child.

"You're right," he said. "You're [Carlotta] the one who started the fight with me."

The group settle their differences with Carlotta admitting she is antagonistic because she is insecure while Juan admits his persona is based on a need to appear manly and macho.

Captain Juan comforts Sierra, who feels she is somewhat at fault in the situation.

"The two most important qualities of being a sailor are bravery and teamwork," he said.

The trio soon discover that Gusano Grande is not quite as frightening as they were led to believe after stumbling upon him dancing to music. Gusano Grande admits he wants to be a dance instructor instead of going into the family business of being a sea serpent.

The group encourages Gusano Grande to follow his dreams, which are made possible by Carlotta as she happens to own the Bailar Ballroom dance studio. Captain Juan also takes on Sierra as his first mate, with the latter encouraging the audience to follow their own dreams.

"Dreaming is believing now it's time to take your turn," she said.

The next summer reading program will be held July 26, 2-4 p.m. The Houston Museum of Natural History will come with an exhibit called "Build a Better World" for program participants to explore. This is the final summer reading program for 2017. All age groups are welcome to attend.

For more information, call Miss Wendy at 281-592-3920 x17 or send email to dthorp@clevelandtexas.com.
With everything happening at Comic-Con it can be hard to keep up with all the reveals, secrets and sneak peeks.

Like the "Avengers" (for Marvel fans) or the "Justice League" (for DC fans), we are here to save the day. We've compiled the top headlines you can't miss from Comic-Con 2017, take a look at what's happening in San Diego:

Ben Affleck addresses rumors that he's out as Batman

Lately, rumors have been circulating that the actor was leaving his role as the Dark Knight before "The Batman," a film set to debut in 2018. However, while he did cede his directing responsibilities, Affleck assured thousands of fans that he is "the luckiest guy in the world. Batman is the coolest part in any universe, DC or Marvel," and he is very much committed to the character.

Harrison Ford admits plan to reboot all his hit movies

While on a panel at Comic-Con on Saturday, July 22 promoting the sequel to his 1982 hit movie "Blade Runner," the "Star Wars" actor revealed his "plan" to keep replaying his most iconic character. Ford has been confirmed for a fifth "Indiana Jone" movie set to debut in 2020. When asked if it was his goal to reboot all his best films, the actor emphatically replied, "you bet you a** it is."

Steven Spielberg debuts action-packed 'Ready Player One' footage

Despite believing the movie would need a young director, Spielberg took on the challenge of adapting the 2011 dystopian novel set in 2044 where people use a virtual reality game to escape their decaying world. The renown director got a standing ovation from a crown of over 6,000 people after debuting the trailer for the film, which is set to premier in 2018.

*SPOLIERS* Marvel Surprises fans with 'The Defenders' debut episode

The television head on Marvel and the cast of "The Defenders" shocked fans on Friday, July 21 with the showing of the debut episode of the Nexflix miniseries set to air on Aug. 18. The "martial arts heavy cold open" features none other than the Iron Fist himself (Danny Rand), who also announced the renewal of his solo show.

Halle Berry downs a half pint of whiskey at Comic-Con panel

Halle Berry proved she can hold her liquor after she downed the half-pint of whisky her "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" co-star Channing Tatum poured for her in one gulp. Both Tatum and Berry are new addition to the action-comedy franchise about a group of well-dressed, British super spies. Fans also got the privilege of seeing a few clips from the film set to hit theaters in September.

Take a look through the gallery above to see other scenes and fun things happening at Comic-Con 2017.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A dreary Sunday could bring localized street flooding in parts of the greater Houston area, according to the National Weather Service.

Though the morning got a dry start, scattered storms are expected to move in from the east as the day progresses.

"Right now, most of the rain is kind of pushing into Louisiana," NWS meteorologist Sean Luchs said early Sunday morning. "That has kept us a little drier this morning but in the afternoon that will start to fill in and areas mainly east of I-45 will see some scattered showers and storms."

There's a possibility for localized street flooding if a storm sticks in one place for a little while. On Saturday night, similar predictions led to a severe thunderstorm warning and sparked a small house fire in northwest Houston.

FLAMES: Lightning sparks house fire in NW Houston

Although some spots may not see any rain Sunday, others could see see an inch or two in a short time, Luchs said.

The downpours should taper off by mid-evening.

But on Monday the weekend's rainstorms will move out, to be replaced by hot summer weather with heat indexes over 100 degrees.

"Right now the reason we're having this precipitation is because of an upper level low pressure system," said Nikki Hathaway a meteorologist with the NWS. "Behind it on Tuesday is an area of high pressure with drier and warmer conditions."

That could mean daytime highs in the upper 90s, with heat indexes in the low 100s.

"Our heat index criteria for heat advisory is 108, so whenever we flirt with those numbers we like to stress heat safety," Hathaway said.
A tanker crew rescued five people from the ocean after their boat capsized Saturday 12 miles off the coast of Galveston, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Overseas Texas City crew alerted the Coast Guard to the overturned boat around 12:45 p.m., then launched its own rescue craft and pulled the stranded boaters to safety. Afterward, the Coast Guard picked up the rescued mariners and brought them ashore.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The gruesome discovery of eight dead immigrants in a trailer in San Antonio is the latest addition to a growing list of human trafficking deaths in a state plagued by such tragedies.

Although another victim died later at the hospital, Sunday's first eight victims are believed to have died of asphyxiation in the trailer parked outside a Walmart. But in years past, chases and car wrecks have also accounted for some of the Lone Star State's trafficking and smuggling disasters.

"Each case is shocking - and this is just devastating, to think of the families of the victims that died, the families of the victims in critical conditions, the victims themselves," San Antonio-based human trafficking consultant Dottie Laster said Sunday.

"Anytime you treat humans like property or cargo it's barbaric."

One of the region's most infamous trafficking tragedies bears eerie similarities to Saturday's incident. In 2003, 19 people died after a truck driver abandoned a milk trailer full of dozens of immigrants outside a truck stop near Victoria.

The victims - including small children - suffocated after the driver ignored their frantic banging in a catastrophe described in the New York Times as "the nation's deadliest human trafficking case."

DEATH TOLL: 8 found dead in trailer at San Antonio Walmart

Three years later, a federal jury found the truck's driver, Tyrone Williams, guilty on 58 charges relating to the crime. In 2011, a judge resentenced him to nearly 34 years behind bars.

In 2012, an extended cab pickup truck carrying 23 people crashed along U.S. 59, leaving at least 14 people dead near the South Texas town of Goliad. Afterward, authorities struggled to identify the victims, believed to be from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.

The men, women and children packed in the truck and its cab were carrying toothbrushes and underwear but no identification.

The crash - less than an hour from the site of the Victoria wreck nine years earlier - came after the driver's Ford F-250 veered off the highway and rammed into trees about 150 miles northeast of the border.

Three months earlier, nine Mexican immigrants died near the border after their van crashed as they fled pursuing Border Patrol agents. The minivan was crammed with 18 people in a shocking example of a common tactic smugglers use to ramp up profit margins with dangerously crowded vehicles.

TRAGEDY: Survivors of immigrant truck crash were escaping poverty, priest says

In 2013, another deadly pursuit left at least seven immigrants dead after a pickup truck carrying 15 people crashed into a security barrier at the Naval Air Station in Kingsville. Emergency crews had to use hydraulic rescue tools to extricate victims from the mangled wreckage.

Two years later, six died after a police chase on U.S. 59 ended in a horrific crash in the tiny town of Edna. Two injured survivors among the 14 crammed into the speeding Ford Explorer tried to flee the wreckage but were soon captured by authorities.

U.S. 59 - along with U.S. 281 and U.S. 77 - are major human smuggling routes, according to a Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area report. For many, the final destination is Houston.

"Once they get to Houston, they are pretty much home free," Dan Webb, a retired Texas Department of Public Safety lieutenant who specialized in smuggling cases, said after the Edna crash. "They love 59 for going north, and they love Interstate 10. You'd think it would be San Antonio, but it is not."

But smuggling efforts aren't just limited to roadways, Laster pointed out.

"I've seen victims come in by airplane, boat, land, different vehicles - big trucks to vans - anyway one can move people," she said, adding that the ongoing demand for cheap labor ensures that these clandestine efforts continue.

"I've done this for 14 years and it still astonishes me that we're still dealing with this problem," she said.

"I commend the Walmart employee. It's something not solved just by the government, but by us - by saying that here in the U.S. we have human rights and we won't tolerate this activity."
Exactly one month from today, a total solar eclipse will sweep across America, casting millions of people into temporary darkness. It will be the biggest astronomical event America has seen in years, watched by millions of people from within the path of totality and tens of millions more who are outside it. One astronomer has said it will be the "most photographed, most shared, most tweeted event in human history."

Some eclipse enthusiasts have spent years preparing for this solar spectacle, the first eclipse to cross the entire continental United States in almost a century. But even if you are just finding out about the eclipse, it's not too late to plan for the big event. Here's what you need to know:

(Story continues below.)

Now Playing: Millions of people across the U.S. gear up for the one-time solar event known as the Great American Eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017. Video: San Antonio Express-News

Q: What is happening?

A: A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, blocking our view of the sun. If you are standing in the moon's shadow on Earth, you will see the sky darken and feel the temperature drop. The place where the sun should be will look like a black circle in the sky. You will be able to view the sun's atmosphere, called the corona - a halo of exceedingly hot gas that's invisible under normal circumstances. Mike Kentrianakis, the solar eclipse project manager for the American Astronomical Society, calls it "the most gorgeous natural wonder you will ever see."

"If it strikes you hard enough," he promises, "you will never be the same."

Q: When and where is it happening?

A: The eclipse will occur across the continental United States on Aug. 21. The moon's shadow first hits land north of Newport, Ore., at 10:15 a.m. Pacific time. It will then make its way southeast through Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The shadow will leave the continental United States close to Charleston, S.C., at about 2:49 p.m. Eastern time.

MISSOURI GETS READY: Hundreds of thousands of visitors expected

Q: What is "the path of totality"?

A: The 70-mile-wide, 3,000-mile-long swath that lies directly in the shadow of the moon is called "the path of totality." For this eclipse, it will start off the coast of Oregon and sweep across the country to South Carolina. Because the moon orbits around Earth so quickly (at a pace of 2,100 miles per hour), each spot on the path will experience only about two minutes of totality. There is no way to chase the shadow around the country - the moon will cross the entire United States in about 90 minutes, faster than the speediest jetliner.

Q: What will I see if I am not inside the path of totality?

A: The shadow of the moon, known as the "umbra," will cross a relatively small swath of land. But the moon also casts a lighter shadow, called the "penumbra." People in this region, which will cover all of North America, will experience a partial eclipse. They will see the sun partly covered by the moon - like a cookie with a bite taken out of it. The degree to which the sun is covered depends on your proximity to the path of totality - the closer you are, the less of the sun you will see. People in the Washington area can expect to see about 80 percent coverage of the sun. If you are watching a partial eclipse, you must wear protective glasses for the entire event, or you will risk severe eye damage. (More on that below.)

Veteran eclipse chasers say that a partial eclipse isn't nearly as beautiful as totality. "It's a completely different phenomenon," said Kentrianakis, of AAS. "It shouldn't even be called an eclipse. It should be called something else." He recommends that everyone who is interested in the eclipse make their way to the path of totality for the big event.

Q: What about clouds?

A: Clouds would be a bummer. If the sky is overcast during totality, it will still get dark, but you will not be able to see the moon cover the sun or the glow of the corona. Eclipse experts recommend checking the weather forecast for your area in the days before Aug. 21 to ensure that you watch the event from a spot where skies will be clear.

Q: Why is this a big deal?

A: This is the first total solar eclipse to occur solely in the United States since the country was founded. For most Americans, this is the best chance to see a solar eclipse we will have in our lifetimes. An estimated 12 million people live in the path of totality, and as many as 7 million more will migrate to the path for the big event. It's likely to be a tremendous astronomical experience, and you don't want to miss it.

This eclipse is also a huge opportunity for scientists. The corona, which becomes visible when the moon covers up the sun, is the object of intense scientific interest - it emits sprays of hot, ionized particles that can damage electrical grids and satellites and harm astronauts in space. Because this eclipse will move across thousands of miles of mostly inhabited landscapes, rather than hard-to-reach wilderness or open seas, it will be within sight of scientists for almost the duration of totality. That means that researchers positioned at various locations along the path of totality can film the event and piece their clips together to create an unprecedented 90-minute video of the corona in action.

Q: Where should I go to watch the eclipse?

A: Anyone within the path of totality will be able to see the moon cover up the sun. But several cities along the path are putting on a special show for the occasion. Here's a look at some of the festivals taking place across the country on the big day. It's also worth considering where you are least likely to experience clouds.

Q: Do I need any special equipment?

A: Yes! Except during the brief phase of totality, you must wear eclipse-watching glasses the entire time you are looking at the sun. This is also true if you are watching the eclipse from outside the path of totality. If you attempt to look at the eclipse without protective lenses, you risk severe damage to your eyes. Ultraviolet rays from the sun can literally give your eyeballs a sunburn.

Only specially designed solar filters will do the trick. Regular sunglasses are not good enough! NASA has identified several manufacturers of eclipse glasses and solar filters that meet international safety standards. Eclipse glasses are also available at many libraries.

To recap: If you are outside the path of totality, you must wear glasses the entire duration of the eclipse. If you are within the path of totality, wear your glasses until the moon completely blocks the sun. Then you can take your glasses off to see the spectacle and the sun's corona. But before totality ends (after about 2 minutes, depending on your location), put your glasses back on to watch the rest of the event.

We are not trying to scaremonger, but c'mon, guys. Be smart, wear your glasses. Your optometrist will thank you.

Q: When is the next one?

A: The next total solar eclipse visible from planet Earth will occur in July 2019 over Argentina and Chile. And the United States is set to see another total eclipse on April 8, 2024, when the moon will cast a shadow across Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Canada and Maine.

Q: Why don't eclipses happen every month?

A: We experience total solar eclipses because of the cosmic coincidence that the moon is 400 times closer than the sun and 1/400th of its size. This means that when Earth, the moon and the sun line up perfectly, the moon neatly blocks out the light of our star. But the orbit of the moon is slightly tilted relative to the plane in which Earth orbits the sun, so most of the time it passes below or above the sun from our line of sight. The moon's orbit takes it directly in between Earth and the sun every 18 months or so, resulting in a total solar eclipse.

In addition to being tilted, the moon's orbit is not perfectly circular. Sometimes, the moon is farther away when it passes between us and the sun. In these cases, it appears slightly smaller than the sun, so a ring of the sun's light is still visible during the eclipse. This phenomenon is known as an annular eclipse, and it also occurs roughly every year and a half.

But Earth won't experience eclipses forever. The moon is drifting away from our planet at a rate of about an inch and a half per year. In approximately 650 million years, the moon will be so distant that it can no longer completely block out the sun. Humans will have seen their last eclipse - if we manage to make it that long.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

April Ernst scanned rows of plastic shoes hardly larger than a fingernail, searching for a shock of hot pink in a sea of pastels.

She sought a pair with pointy toes and low heels, the sort Barbie might have worn with a pink vest, a yellow blouse and a plaid skirt circa 1966. It's a common problem for collectors: Cute clothes, no footwear.

"When you buy a vintage outfit, not all of them have shoes," Ernst said. "Most of them got sucked up in the vacuum by Mom."

Barbie dolls and accessories that survived cleaning sprees, childhood tantrums and playroom purges covered the bottom floor of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Houston Saturday, the last day of the National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention.

More than 700 attendees from around the world convened at the four-day event to discover rare Barbies, design tiny outfits and discuss the history of one of America's most iconic dolls.

On Saturday, collectors gathered to indulge a childhood-pastime-turned-grown-up-obsession: Buying new Barbies and dressing them up. They delighted in adding limited editions to their collections, some of which include thousands of dolls.

"When I say I have 1,600 dolls, people think that's a lot," said organizer Dawn Arney Moore. "Then you walk in this room."

Joe Blitman, a longtime Barbie dealer from Los Angeles, had boxes full of outfits for sale, organized by era. He gazed fondly at a black vintage gown, a sparkly mermaid silhouette complete with long gloves and a microphone that reminded him of his father's job in the nightclub business.

He also had for sale what every collector aspires to own: A first-edition Barbie, one of about 375,000 released by Mattel in 1959. The curly-haired blonde in a black-and-white striped swimsuit sold for $3 that year, and now, each one fetches between $6,000 and $11,000.

"The number that's still around has been greatly reduced," Blitman said.

Barbie collectors are a niche group with a singular focus. Many played with her at the very beginning, when she debuted as a prim, mid-century fashionista of questionable proportions.

Since then, Barbie has become a more dynamic model with cultural and feminist inclinations. Mattel now sells newer dolls, such as Wonder Woman and Misty Copeland, alongside the classics.

Terry Fisher committed to Barbie as a fashion-focused 9-year-old in 1977 and has since amassed a rotating collection of more than 400 dolls. Their outfits span the decades, satiating his love of 20th century style.

"They are beautiful, 3-D representations of American fashion," he said.

He scoured the displays on Saturday to find several dolls that broke the white, blonde mold, including a 1980 Oriental Barbie and a 1988 Mexican Barbie. An Italian Barbie, a rarity released in 1979, still eludes him.

Other vendors offered one-of-a-kind Barbies, painstakingly retouched and outfitted in handmade clothing.

Francesco Catalano traveled from Italy with a collection of extravagant witches, fairies and dancers, each of which took at least a week to make. He spends the most time enhancing their eyes with fresh paint and lashes and dusting their slim cheeks with blush.

"We can never stop working," he said. "People are always asking us to make new dolls."

The originals, though, generated the most excitement even among the most seasoned collectors.

Joni Holland, a Dallas-area collector with thousands of Barbies, left the show with a valuable gift from a friend, one of the first brunette dolls ever released.

"I'm so lucky," she said. "I feel so special to have gotten that."
Houston's City Council plans to vote Tuesday on whether to give $85,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that a police officer used excessive force when he shot a man who turned out to be unarmed during a narcotics raid in 2013.

George Ralph Benard, 43, was shot once in the abdomen when he ran to another room of his parents' house during a police raid. A federal judge dismissed his claims against the city and the police department but allowed his lawsuit against Officer Ferdinand Rodriguez Jr. to continue, leading the city to seek a settlement.

The award could be the second in a month for Houston Police Department shootings, though such cash payments generally are rare. A few weeks ago, City Council approved a $260,000 payment to the family of Kenny Releford, an unarmed 38-year-old U.S. Navy veteran fatally shot in 2012 by another HPD officer.

That award was the largest settlement in at least seven years in a case involving an unarmed man shot or killed by HPD officers. In more than 150 cases from 2010-2015, HPD found all of those shootings to be "justified"  which Releford's argued showed a custom of accepting the use of lethal force against even unarmed civilians.

As part of the Releford case, previously secret reports on controversial shootings were released, including documents that contradicted an officer's account of the death of wheelchair-bound double amputee Brian Claunch; a report on the shooting of Rufino Lara, who was killed after his friend called police for help; and information about the shooting of two brothers by an off-duty officer who was legally drunk.

In Benard's case, HPD officers were acting on a tip that the wounded man's brother had drugs in the house, according to a federal magistrate judge's summary of the case. George Benard has convictions for a few drug offenses and one misdemeanor assault on his criminal record in Harris County; his brother, Dominick, has several drug convictions.

Officers found 122 grams of PCP and 1 gram of marijuana in the house along with a shotgun and a semi-automatic handgun, the judge wrote.

However, police and the Benard family agreed that George Benard was not holding a weapon when he was shot.

Rodriguez, an HPD officer since 1992, wrote in a report cited in court documents that he fired because Benard ran into another room and seemed to be reaching for a weapon: "As I moved forward, the suspect then quickly came back out into my view turning towards me which was to his left as if he was going to engage me. He started to move his hands from his waistband in a very fast movement as if pulling a weapon."

In a statement the day after the incident on March 19, 2013, HPD wrote that Benard was shot ignored repeated verbal commands to show his hands.

However, Benard testified that he was already walking toward the family's kitchen when the officers used a battering ram on the door and entered.

"When they said 'freeze,' I threw my hands up and that's when I got shot," Benard said, according to court documents. "Soon as I turned around, they said 'freeze,' I turned around and I threw my hands up and they shot me."

In March, U.S. District Judge Gray H. Miller dismissed Benard's claims except for the excessive force complaint against Rodriguez.

The parties filed documents that suggested the case would go to trial until the judge ordered mediation, which led to a settlement agreement. On July 12, Judge Miller dismissed the case because of the out-of-court settlement.

The mayor's communications director, Alan Bernstein, declined comment. Other city officials did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Benard's lawyer, Chareka Gadson, did not return phone messages.

This article was updated Monday, July 24, to reflect efforts to seek comment from city officials and the family's lawyer.
A controversial and mostly conservative agenda continued to steamroll through part of the Texas Legislature on Saturday.

In an unusual early Saturday morning series of meetings, three committees of the Senate passed out nearly a dozen bills aimed at fulfilling Gov. Greg Abbott's 20-item wish list that the called the Texas Legislature back into session.

More restrictions on abortions, a bill blocking city tree ordinances and clamps on the amount cities and counties can raise property taxes were among the slew of bills that cleared their only committee stops Saturday. That follows a busy Friday, where other abortion restrictions and a new version of the bathroom bill also passed out.

But while the bills continue their sprint through the Senate, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has vowed to be Abbott's "wing man," the House led by Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, hasn't committed to passing any of the bills and has already called most of the agenda "manure."

The most important issue to Abbott - property tax reform - was one of the items that took center stage Saturday.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, presented his new legislation that would bar cities and counties from raising the effective property tax rate more than 4 percent without triggering a voter referendum. Now, cities and counties - which vehemently oppose Bettencourt's proposal - can raise that rate 8 percent before being subject to a possible rollback election.

Bettencourt bristled when critics called the 4-percent limit a cap. He said it is not a cap and still gives the cities and counties a chance to go higher if they can convince the voters.

"Here's the key thing, you got a case, take it to the public," Bettencourt said.

Bettencourt said cities and counties - because of increasing home values - have seen a surge in extra revenue. Yet, that hasn't stopped them from continuing to raise tax rates to collect even more money from homeowners and businesses. He said if cities and counties were being fair to taxpayers, they would have been cutting tax rates. He singled out cities like Houston and San Antonio. He showed charts that indicated Houston city tax revenues grew nearly 27 percent from 2013 to 2016 and in San Antonio it went up 35 percent. During that same time, the city tax bills on average grew 24 percent in San Antonio and nearly 25 percent in Houston.

"The bottom line, property taxes grew 2.3 times faster than median incomes," Bettencourt said.

Bettencourt said if the bill becomes law he estimated that the average homeowners would get a $30 to $100 decrease on their tax bills each compared to what it would have gone up by if the Legislature does nothing.

But city and county governments say Bettencourt's numbers are cherry picked and overstate the savings if his bill does become law. Because of the way the bill is crafted, Bill Longley of the Texas Municipal League told the Senate's government reform committee that only people living in 35 for Texas' 1,200 cities will see any real impact. And even in those affected cities, the tax decrease won't be noticeable to taxpayers because of other tax increases like from school districts. Yet, he said those cities that are affected will be hurt in their battle to provide serviced in growing communities.

"We take exception to the notion that this will provide meaningful property tax relief," Longley said.

Longley accused the state senate of trying to override local control.

His testimony triggered an angry response from Sen. Van Taylor, R-Plano, who called Longley's logic "staggering" because he was arguing it would have little impact on property tax bills, yet would devastate cities.

"I'm amazed that you're able to spin it that way," Taylor said.

Longley also triggered ire from Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, gave Longley and the Texas Municipal League a 2-minute tongue lashing for its political tactics in fighting the rollback rate legislation. Bettencourt joined in later, bristling at Longley calling the rollback rate limit a "cap" on cities.

Longley was far from the only person on the losing end of debates in the Capitol on Saturday. Dozens of people argued futily against a bill to require health insurance plans from government exchanges, via Obamacare, tofutily not include abortion procedure coverage. Groups that help low-income women pay for abortions said the legislation will create new financial hardships on the people they serve.

"This would just make it even harder for people to be able to afford their abortion," said Nan Kirkpatrick for the Texas Equal Access Fund.

Houston resident Laila Khalili, who works with the non-profit Lilith Fund, which also provides financial assistance for women who seek an abortion, also testified. She said she knows there was almost no chance of stopping the legislation but felt compelled to testify anyhow to send a message.

"We won't lay down without a fight," Khalili said. "We're here not just to take a stand for ourselves but for our clients."

But Texas Right to Life and other supporters of the abortion language said the legislation is critical to helping make sure people who oppose abortion are not paying for them through tax dollars that support government exchanges.

"I, as a citizen and a taxpayer and an insurance consumer, don't want to pay for the abortion of others," said Elizabeth Graham, Director of Texas Right to Life.

In another hearing to block cities from imposing tree ordinances on private property owners, Austin resident Ryan Rosshirt called that hearing and others over the weekend unnecessary.

"This is a waste of time of the time of the citizens of Texas," Rosshirt said.

But supporters of the restraints like Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, said ordinances that make people pay the government a fee to cut down a tree are in their nature a kind of government taking and should be regulated by the state. If a city wants a tree removed for the good of the community, the government should be compensating the homeowner he argued.

Later, the Senate Finance Committee easily approved a plan to provide bonuses for school teachers a plan to offset health care costs for retired teachers. Senate Bill 19 would provide nearly $200 million for teacher bonuses - another Abbott priority - starting September 2018. It also puts another $121 million into a health insurance program for retired teachers.

The stage is set for another busy day in the Capitol on Sunday when three different Senate committees will meet to debate alleged voter fraud related to mail-in ballots, restrictions on how union dues are collected and set regulations on cities related to annexations.
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.
(Xinhua) 09:14, July 23, 2017

"It's important to tell people what happened in Nanjing and to pass on the historical truth to younger generations so as to prevent war tragedies from happening again," said Toshio Yamamoto, son of a Japanese veteran who had participated in Japan's invasive war against China in the 1930s and 1940s.

Yamamoto made the remarks on Saturday as he told Hiroshima citizens about his father's war experiences at the "Sealed Memories: No More Nanjing" exhibition held in Hiroshima through Sunday.

Yamamoto's father Takeshi Yamamoto was sent to China in November 1937 as a soldier of the invading Imperial Japanese Army.

Takeshi Yamamoto kept a diary of his experiences during the war, in which he depicted the atrocities committed by the Japanese troops and how himself was turned from an ordinary man to a killing machine by the war.

"(We) brought the eight people we captured ... we kept stabbing them, and they were soon turned to eight bodies. I felt great. Back in Japan, I dared not even kill a snake. But these were human beings, just like us, living human beings ..." he wrote.

He also wrote in details in the diary what he had heard about the massacre in Nanjing, including how the Japanese troops brutally killed tens of thousands of Chinese civilians and captives, burned their bodies and dumped a large amount of bodies into the Yangtze River.

Takeshi Yamamoto returned to Japan as a farmer after the war, but the war-time atrocities kept haunting him. To pass on the memories to future generations, he wrote a memoir based on his diary and showed it to his children and grandchildren.

Toshio Yamamoto and his brothers published their father's diary. "It was also my father's wish to publish the diary and it's necessary to pass on the true history to the younger generations so as to prevent the war tragdies from happening again," he said.

He also said that it's particularly significant to tell the truth about Nanjing Massacre in Hiroshima, a city that also suffered the bombing of an atomic bomb in 1945 because of Japan's invasive war against its neighbors.

"The Japanese government should reflect on the war and let the younger generations know about the truth about war," he said, adding that he was opposed to the Abe administration's attempts to revise the pacifist Constitution and other moves that could bring Japan to war again.

Eiji Yoshiki, member of the Hiroshima Japan-China Friendship Association and one of the organizers of the exhibition, said Hiroshima had served as a base for the Japanese army during Japan's invasion of China and the city would not have suffered atomic-bombing if Japan did not wage invasive wars.

He said the Japanese people shall not forget that this year marks the 80th anniversary of Nanjing Massacre, and Japan shall pass on the historical truth to younger generations and promote friendship with China while reflecting on the war.

"Sealed Memories: No More Nanjing" exhibition was held in Hiroshima on July 15-23. The exhibition, jointly organized by groups from Nanjing, China and Hiroshima, Japan, displays photos and evidences that show the various atrocities that Japanese invaders committed in China.

The invading Japanese military brutally killed some 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers following the capture of Nanjing in 1937. Japan has been trying to downplay its atrocities by claiming that the number of killed was not as many as 300,000.
We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message.
A child attends the drinking competition in a shopping mall in Taiyuan, north China's Shanxi Province, July 22, 2017. The shopping mall held a drinking competition to bring people coolness in this hot summer. (Xinhua/Cao Yang)
The Georgia Institute of Technology campus in Atlanta, Georgia. Philip Mccollum | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A few years ago, Raghupathy Sivakumar, an engineering professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, realized he had a problem. An undergraduate student had just won a prestigious invention competition, but the student had no idea how to advance his idea from concept to product, a major roadblock for most undergraduates. So, in 2014, Sivakumar was tapped to start CREATE-X, an umbrella of entrepreneurial support programs catered specifically to Georgia Tech undergraduates. Part of the program's objective was to tap into a previously ignored segment of the population: The undergraduates who form the lion's share of the school's more than 26,000-strong enrollment. Sivakumar's experience is part of a trend in which schools are crafting entrepreneurial programs with an eye toward undergrads. As colleges look to keep pace with a competitive job market being shaped by automation and globalization, many are opening entrepreneur centers designed to entice millennials. "The reality is most of the people at a university are generally the undergraduates," said Keith McGreggor, the director of Georgia Tech's VentureLab, another entrepreneurship hub at the school. "New ideas could really come from anywhere," he told CNBC recently. "So to ignore the largest population of people on your campus is kind of a nutty idea, but we certainly did for a long time."

They are very interested and understand it's more likely they'll create their own job than have a job from someone else for a long period of time. Christy Wyskiel, head of Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures

Science, technology, engineering and math otherwise known as STEM educationis becoming increasingly coveted by potential employers and students alike. It's prompted academia to adjust its offerings in a way that prepares graduates for the challenges of the modern workforce. "We have students who come in and have been programming and coding for years," said Troy D'Ambrosio, executive director of the University of Utah's Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, the school's hub for student innovation. "It's very different than even five years ago. They grew up with a smartphone in their hands."

'Tipping the scales'

The benefits work both ways. For instance, universities can use these centers as a way to reach beyond the campus walls and connect with local startup communities, said Tejus Kothari, principal at the Boston Consulting Group's education division. A shiny, new, multi-million dollar facility dedicated to innovation can also be a selling point for recruiting students in the hotly competitive arms race among colleges for top students. "There is a significant segment [of students] looking at what type of support will [they] have as a hypothetical entrepreneur?" Kothari told CNBC. "Will I be out there on my own? Or can I tap into the resources and infrastructure the university has. For a segment of the students, that can tip the scales one way or another."

Hinterhaus Productions | Getty Images
Workers are frequently told robots are coming for their jobs, while fast food employees are already starting to see automation creep into their places of employment. Along with kiosks popping up at McDonald's, diners in Japan have been treated to a sushi-making robot, while in California a robot flips burgers.

So with machines on the rise in restaurants, how has it impacted the consumer dining experience? Recently, CNBC tested a sit-down restaurant in Hong Kong where automation has taken over most of the tasks usually performed by servers. The goal was to see if a meal could be consumed with no human interaction.

Genki Sushi, a Japanese sushi chain expanding throughout Asia, is known for its conveyer belt style of food service, where customers can grab a roll passing by their table. That's nothing entirely new.

Yet lately, however, it's rolled out restaurants in which customers order customized dishes on a tablet. The food is delivered by an automated train which comes straight to your seat or booth.
Ivanka Trump or her trust received at least $12.6 million since early 2016 from her various business ventures and has an arrangement to guarantee her at least $1.5 million a year even as she serves in a top White House position, according to her first ethics disclosure made public late Friday.

The report was released alongside an updated filing by her husband, Jared Kushner, who is also serving as a top adviser to President Trump. It shows that the couple benefit from an active business empire worth as much as $761 million to them, an arrangement that ethics experts warn poses potentials for conflicts of interest as the couple have been given a wide-ranging portfolio of government responsibilities.

Ms. Trump, who resigned from nearly 300 leadership positions at various entities within the family real estate businesses and at her fashion brand, has continued to receive millions of dollars from both streams, including more than $2.4 million from her stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington and more than $2.5 million in salary and severance from the Trump Organization.

Ms. Trump received about $1.7 million in payments from T International Realty, the family's luxury brokerage agency, as well as two other real estate companies for various management, consulting and licensing work, the documents show. Those payments, for work done in 2016, were based on the companies' performance.

More from NYT:

As self-driving cars near, Washington plays catch-up

A drug maker spends big in Washington to make itself heard

Scaramucci has a showman's knack for self-promotion rivaling Trump's

But going forward, she will receive fixed payments  a change that her advisers say was developed in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics to minimize her potential conflicts by removing her interest in how well her family's business performs.

In total, Ms. Trump will receive $1.5 million in fixed payments from the same three real estate entities. She stands to earn additional income from her stake in the hotel in Washington.

The disclosures provided less specific figures for Ms. Trump's earnings from her fashion brand, which were reported in ranges. From the beginning of last year to May 31 of this year, she or her trust earned at least $6 million from sales of her clothes, shoes and other accessories. Ms. Trump rolled her brand into the trust, which is overseen by Joshua Kushner and Nicole Meyer, her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, in March.

The income reported by Ms. Trump does not reflect expenses associated with the underlying businesses.

Those payments will keep coming, albeit into the trust. Ms. Trump also receives regular reports on the performance of her brand, which is overseen by its president, Abigail Klem.

Although the documents show Ms. Trump's personal assets, income and liabilities, they do not disclose her brand's fashion licensing partners, for example, or real estate clients. Such information is not required, demonstrating the limits of such disclosures for government officials with vast business interests.

"There still may be financial ties that we don't know about," said Lawrence M. Noble, a former general counsel and chief ethics officer of the Federal Election Commission. "These really weren't meant to deal with a situation where somebody's going to keep a major business interest."

Mr. Kushner divested his interests in some assets owned by his family's real estate firm, Kushner Companies, but he remains heavily invested in the bulk of the businesses. The disclosures provide another clue into how active the multibillion-dollar Kushner family real estate business remains. Since March, companies in which he remains invested have closed several real estate deals across the country, including the sale of properties in Toledo, Ohio, for $5 million to $25 million and a purchase in Brooklyn also worth as much as $25 million to him.

Mr. Kushner disclosed the scope of his business in his first ethics report in March. In the new, amended filing released on Friday, he disclosed the existence of dozens of subsidiaries he did not report previously, generally connected to entities he revealed in that first report. In that report, he stated that the couples' holdings were worth about $736 million, about $25 million less than in the updated report.

The documents also offered tidbits about less significant sources of Ms. Trump's income. She received $50,000 for helping to oversee a trust belonging to children of Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox , and his former wife Wendi Deng, her close friend. Ms. Trump resigned as a trustee last year.

She also received $787,500 as an advance for her book "Women Who Work," although it is not clear what portion of her total advance that represents.

In total, the couple reported as much as $212 million in income since early 2016, according to new and previous filings. The bulk of that number comes from Mr. Kushner's holdings.

Ethics experts say the extensive holdings of the two pose potential conflicts of interest. Unlike Mr. Trump, who is exempt from federal ethics laws, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump are prohibited by those laws from taking any government action that might benefit their financial holdings.

Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump both "walk a very fine line in having to step aside and recuse themselves from certain discussions and give advice if it would benefit them and their business personally," said Scott H. Amey, the general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization.

"And we won't know if they are taking necessary steps to recuse themselves because, unfortunately, the ethics process requires a lot of self-policing," he said.

Jamie Gorelick, a partner at WilmerHale who is advising the couple on complying with government ethics requirements, said in a statement: "Jared and Ivanka have followed each of the required steps in their transition from private citizens to federal officials. The Office of Government Ethics has certified Jared's financial disclosure, reflecting its determination that his approach complies with federal ethics laws. Ivanka's financial disclosure form is still in the pre-certification stage, as she began the process later, but discussions with O.G.E. are proceeding in the ordinary course."

In just the first few months of the administration, the couple's business connections have already raised questions. In February, the presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on live television and urged viewers to buy fashion products marketed by Ms. Trump. And in May, Mr. Kushner's sister cited his White House connections when she visited China to solicit potential investors through a "visa for sale" program run by the federal government for a development project in New Jersey to be built by the family's real estate firm.

The hotel in Washington is a particular point of consternation. There are concerns that businesses or foreign leaders might try to curry favor with the administration by spending money at the hotel. At least one lawsuit claims that Mr. Trump's ownership violates the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars federal officials, including the president, from accepting payments from foreign governments.
ADS ADS

One of the things that sets Urban Jurgensen apart from other watch brands, in addition to its 240 years of uninterrupted watchmaking history, is that it still puts the work of the craftsmans hand at the centre of its thinking. As the brand moves into a new headquarters on the Route de Boujean in Bienne to allow for its future growth, things should be kept in perspective. Urban Jurgensen watches have always been, and will always be, very rare. Relying on age-old techniques such as hand bluing their watch hands and traditional engine turning of their dials, human resource requirements alone place severe restrictions on the volume of timepieces that the company can produce.



Moving into a new headquarters was more a question of necessity, Sren Jenry Petersen, CEO of Urban Jurgensen, explains. The previous headquarters were entirely unsuited to the growth that Urban Jurgensen is currently experiencing. Our new home will provide not only our much cherished atelier, but also the additional space we need to accommodate production of our watches  all made with a level of handcrafted details found nowhere else in a single watch today.





Entering the new headquarters of Urban Jurgensen, which WorldTempus had the chance to visit shortly after the renovation work was finished, is a bit like walking back through time. The large meeting room next to the entrance is filled with one of the most amazing watchmakers workbenches I have ever seen, made out of solid wood with small individual recesses where the watchmakers would work over a century ago. The building exudes history and heritage, with solid oak floors and stucco ceilings, and has been renovated with the same level of care and attention to detail with which an Urban Jurgensen timepiece is produced. All the original wood surfaces have been washed with a solution of baking soda to bring out their original light finish. The original stone stove at the entrance, which provided heat to all four floors via fireplaces on each floor, has been restored and kept at the entrance to offer visitors a genuinely warm welcome.

The new surroundings are also a chance for the brand to remind us of its joint Danish-Swiss roots and history, from original medals and awards decorating the walls, to designer Danish furniture complementing the solid-wood environment. But the move is also a chance to bring together under the same roof the different traditional crafts used by Urban Jurgensen, which will become vitally important as the company rolls out its innovative concierge service, which we will come back to soon in a separate article.
The National Weather Service estimates damage from U.S. natural disasters cost upwards of $18 billion last year. Now more than ever, companies big and small are looking to weather forecasts for business help.

Yet forecasting itself has become a $3 billion business, with information becoming increasingly accurate and local. Forecasters sell their information to businesses, which in turn use it to determine what to stock, staffing levels, and even specifically targeted social media posts.

Paul Walsh, a business weather analyst and meteorologist told CNBC's "On The Money" recently that "weather is something...investors [and businesses] have been... talking about and complaining about for a lot of years."

In fact, investment analysts frequently use the term "The Weather Excuse," for companies that blame missed earnings expectations on the weather. However, Walsh and his team at IBM Business Solutions use data and technology to overcome that excuse  and even turn a negative into potential positive for retailers.

While still far from an exact science forecasters often miss calls on the weatherthey do have a "better ability to measure the effect of the weather on all of us, not just in terms of where we are going, but what we're buying even how we are feeling and predict those insights," Walsh said.

Smaller businesses "will have a really good sense for what a particular weather condition or a forecast means," he said, adding that retailers are becoming much more nimble.

A store like Home Depot, for example, could move shovels to stores in the path of a blizzard, or if no snow is expected, use the space for something else. Walsh said.

"We are able to ingest different types of data, weather data, historical point of sale data, social media data and also looking at local events and get a much finer grasp in terms of how the external environment is going to be shaping what people will be needing," the analyst added.

As a 20-year veteran in the weather industry, Walsh told CNBC companies can leverage the effect of weather on their businesses better than they ever have. Yet consumers also benefit by finding what they want and need on the shelves, shopping in stores that are adequately staffed, and finding appropriate markdowns.

Walsh is already looking ahead to the holiday shopping season. He's predicting colder weather around the key shopping periods of late November into December.

That's good news for clothing retailers: People are more likely to buy things like sweaters and warm coats. But when asked by CNBC if the chilly forecast included potential for increased snow, Walsh was less committalperhaps mindful of the aftermath of this year's Winter Storm Stella, where initial dire snow forecasts for the New York area were ultimately overblown.

"I can't make that exact prediction," Walsh said. "I'm not that brave to do that."

He says to expect the weather to be "more seasonal" than we've seen in recent years.

On the Money airs on CNBC Saturday at 5:30 am ET, or check listings for air times in local markets.
The White House said on Sunday that President Donald Trump was open to signing legislation toughening sanctions on Russia after Senate and House leaders reached agreement on a bill late last week. Congressional Democrats said on Saturday they had agreed with Republicans on a deal allowing new sanctions targeting Russia, Iran and North Korea in a bill that would limit any potential effort by Trump to try to lift sanctions against Moscow.

In this photo provided by the German Government Press Office (BPA), Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin during the G20 Summit on July 7, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. BPA | Getty Images

"We support where the legislation is now and will continue working with the House and Senate to put those tough sanctions in place on Russia until the situation in Ukraine is fully resolved and it certainly isn't right now," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" program. A White House official said the administration's view of the legislation evolved after changes were made, including the addition of sanctions on North Korea. The official said the administration "supports the direction the bill is headed, but won't weigh in conclusively until there is a final piece of legislation and no more changes are being made." Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's new communications director, said Trump had not yet decided whether he would sign the bill. "My guess is ... that he's going to make that decision shortly," Scaramucci told CNN's "State of the Union." Trump has faced resistance from Republican and Democratic lawmakers for his pledge to pursue warmer relations with Moscow. His administration has been bogged down by investigations of possible ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia. Trump has said his campaign did not collude with Russia. With the bill, Republicans and Democrats are seeking to punish Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and for meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied any interference in the U.S. democratic process last year.

Vote expected on Tuesday
WhatsApp, the standalone messaging app that Facebook bought for $19 billion back in early 2014, doesn't make any money.

That's about to change  apparently soon  as WhatsApp is hiring for a number of key monetization roles, including a product manager position to "lead product development on our monetization efforts."

WhatsApp, which has more than 200 employees, recently posted three job openings related to business products it doesn't currently offer. There's the product manager role mentioned above; a product marketing manager position, a role focused on selling and marketing that product to actual customers, including helping the "go-to-market plans"; and a business communications position, someone who can help explain WhatsApp's business to the press.

Under the "preferred qualifications" section of the PM and PMM postings, WhatsApp says it's also looking for people with "prior experience in local, search and payments." A source familiar with WhatsApp's strategy said the company is particularly focused on creating something for emerging markets, like Brazil or India, where the app is very popular. In fact, all three job postings mention a desire for experience in international or emerging markets.

More from Recode:

WhatsApp doesn't say much publicly, period, and it has said even less about its business plans, other than to say, repeatedly, that it doesn't like advertisments.

But earlier this year, WhatsApp hired its first COO, a business exec from parent company Facebook, and started testing a product that would let businesses actually communicate with customers via the messaging app. In April, reports surfaced that WhatsApp was working on a payments feature to launch in India.

Another source described WhatsApp's plan as similar to Apple's recently announced Business Chat, which lets customers communicate with businesses to "get answers to questions, resolve issues, and complete transactions." Facebook's other messaging app, Messenger, is trying to do something similar.

Here's how WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum has described it in the past:

"That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today  through text messages and phone calls  so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam."

It's unknown how close WhatsApp is to actually unveiling a business product like this, but usually you don't bring in the comms professional or the product marketing person until you have an idea that you'd like to start talking about.

A WhatsApp spokesperson declined to comment.

WhatsApp has 1.2 billion users worldwide and is incredibly popular in emerging markets outside of the United States. Many businesses in countries like India and Brazil already use WhatsApp to send messages to customers. WhatsApp just doesn't offer custom tools or dashboards to help with that.

Facebook has said that growth for its core moneymaker, News Feed, is going to slow down, and the company is looking for other business options inside many of its other apps. Messenger, the company's other standalone messaging app, is also trying to connect businesses with their customers, though it is more popular in the U.S.

By Kurt Wagner, Re/code.net.

CNBC's parent NBCUniversal is an investor in Recode's parent Vox, and the companies have a content-sharing arrangement.
July 20, 2017

 A cloth bag used to protect the first-ever moon rocks collected by an astronaut on the lunar surface 48 years ago Thursday (Jul 20) has made history again  this time by selling at auction for more than any other U.S. space program artifact to date.



The sale fell short, however, of commanding the most ever paid for a space artifact overall, closing at a lower hammer price than its pre-auction estimate of $2 to $4 million.



The moon dust-stained "lunar sample return" pouch, which Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong used to store a small "contingency" cache of material from Tranquility Base, sold for $1,812,500 million at Sotheby's New York on Thursday (July 20), the 48th anniversary of the Apollo 11 first moon landing. The bag's sale was part of Sotheby's first auction to focus on artifacts from NASA's space missions.



"Here it is, to my right, up front, at $1.5 million," announced auctioneer Joe Dunning, before striking down the hammer, completing the sale to an unidentified bidder on the phone. (The $1.8 million includes Sotheby's buyer's premium.)







Sotheby's auctioneer Joe Dunning leads the bidding on the Apollo 11 lunar sample return bag at the firm's gallery in New York. (cS)

The bag, and the lunar sample it once held, is testament to NASA's planning if something were to have gone wrong on the Apollo 11 mission requiring a quick departure after the moon landing. Following his "small step," Armstrong took a few more steps to scoop up a contingency sample of rocks and soil so if the moonwalk had to be ended unexpectedly, the mission would still come back with a lunar sample.



Of course as history records, there was no emergency and the contingency sample became just a small bit of the 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of rock and soil that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin gathered during their two and a half hour exploration of the lunar surface. When they lifted off as scheduled and reunited with their crewmate Michael Collins on board the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia, Armstrong invited Collins to look inside the "decontamination bag" to see the contingency lunar sample bag inside.



"If you want to have a look at what the moon looks like, you can open that up," said Armstrong to Collins, referring to the same bag that sold at Sotheby's, now 48 years later.



Once back on Earth, everything  the command module, the moon rock collection bags and even the astronauts  entered quarantine to protect against the chance of "moon germs." The lunar samples were transferred to a specially-prepared laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where most are still held today (the crew was cleared after 18 days to return to their homes).



At some point, the no-longer-needed decontamination bag ended up with the artifacts held by a co-founder of a space museum in Kansas (when and how that happened is not clear). In the intervening years, an inventory error merged the Apollo 11 bag with another similar bag flown on Apollo 17, such that the provenance of the Apollo 11 bag became muddled.



In 2006, the same curator was convicted of stealing and selling space artifacts from the museum, which resulted in part in his forfeiting his collection  including what is now known to be the Apollo 11 contingency lunar sample return bag  to underwrite paying restitution. The U.S. Marshals Service consigned the items, including the moon rock bag, to a Texas auction house, describing it simply as flown.



After failing to attract a single bid three times when offered at $42,500, the bag finally sold on Feb. 17, 2015, for $995 to Nancy Lee Carlson, an attorney from Inverness, Illinois. Six months later, Carlson sent the bag to NASA in Houston to be tested for the presence of moon dust.







The Apollo 11 lunar sample return bag, as seen prior to its sale for $1.8 million at Sotheby's in New York. (collectSPACE)

NASA found traces of the lunar material and was able to identify the bag as having flown on Apollo 11, but it could not find record of ever having released it from its property. So instead of returning it to Carlson, as she requested, the space agency sought to compensate her for her expenses and retain the bag. Carlson rejected that offer.



The dispute became the subject of court cases in Kansas and Texas. In late 2016, a District Court in Kansas ordered that the lunar sample bag belonged to Carlson, citing that the government had not provided sufficient justification to overturn the U.S. Marshals' sale. A Texas judge followed suit, instructing NASA to turn over the Apollo 11 moon rock bag to Carlson.



Carlson subsequently consigned the bag to Sotheby's.



Sotheby's first entered the space memorabilia market with a pair of high profile Russian artifact auctions in 1993 and 1996. Its now U.S. record-setting sale of the Apollo 11 bag fell short of its 2011 auction of a Soviet Vostok 3KA space capsule for $2.9 million.



Previously, the most paid for a U.S. space artifact was the $1.625 million for a Bulova chronograph worn by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott on the moon in 1971. The 2015 sale was held by RR Auction of Boston.



After the lunar sample return bag, the next highest amount commanded by the 173 lots Sotheby's auctioned Thursday was $275,000 for the flown flight plan used by the crew on the 1970 Apollo 13 mission.







The Apollo 13 flown flight plan, with original caricatures and crew notations, sold for $275,000 at Sotheby's. (collectSPACE)
Egypt, Sweden and France have called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss ways to address one of the deadliest outbreaks of Israeli-Palestinian violence in two years left five Palestinians killed and tens injured, Egyptian and Swedish diplomats said on Saturday.

"Sweden, France and Egypt request UNSC to urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported," Carl Skau, Sweden's ambassador to the Security Council, said on Twitter.

Egyptian diplomats told Egypt's state-run news agency MENA on Saturday that the meeting is intended to discuss "calls for de-escalation amid ongoing clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters in East Jerusalem."

However, it said the date of the hoped-for meeting had not yet been set.

Media reports, meanwhile, quoted diplomats as saying the meeting would take place on Monday.

On Friday, Egypt, which currently holds the Arab seat on the Security Council, called on Israel to stop violence against Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa Mosque site and in Jerusalem.

On Saturday, two Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli forces as Israeli troops moved to prepare for the demolition of the home of a Palestinian who they say stabbed three Israeli settlers to death on Friday in the town of Kobar in the occupied West Bank.

Three Palestinians were killed and dozens injured on Friday during clashes with Israeli security forces prompted by Israel's installation of metal detectors at the entrances to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, in occupied east Jerusalem.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egyptian police killed eight Hasm members in a shootout during a raid on their training camp south of Cairo, the interior ministry said on Sunday.

The National Security Agency was able to discover a hideout used by the group in a desert area in Fayoum, to train "new youths elements" on the use of arms, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said they shot at police as they attempted to apprehend them.

According to the statement, two other Hasm hideouts located in Giza and Sharqiya governorates were raided, and five members of the group arrested. Police found documents detailing upcoming terrorist operations at the two Hasm hideouts.

Sunday's announcement comes only two days after the police said they had shot dead two Hasm leaders during a raid on their hiding place, also in Fayoum, which is around 100km south of Cairo.

Hasm has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against Egyptian security personnel in recent months, mostly targeting police checkpoints.

Egyptian security forces have arrested and killed dozens of suspected Hasm members in the past few months.

Egyptian officials have maintained that that the group is linked to the banned Muslim Brotherhood group.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser
Egyptian Foreign Minster Sameh Shoukry received a phone call on Sunday from his Turkish counterpart in which the pair discussed the recent outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in occupied east Jerusalem, Egypt's foreign ministry said.

The call from Turkey's Mevlut Cavusoglu aimed to discuss "the deteriorating situation in occupied Jerusalem and the Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians," foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said in a statement.

The discussions come as part of Turkey's efforts to address the matter as the current chair of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Ties between Turkey and Egypt have been strained since the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, with whom Turkey built close ties.

On Saturday, two Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli forces as Israeli troops moved to demolish the home of a Palestinian who they say stabbed three Israeli settlers to death on Friday in the town of Kobar in the occupied West Bank.

Three Palestinians were killed and dozens injured a day earlier during clashes with Israeli security forces prompted by Israel's installation of metal detectors at the entrances to Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, in occupied east Jerusalem.

Egypt, Sweden and France have called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss ways to address the outbreak of violence.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is set to head to Brussels to participate in the seventh EU-Egypt Association Council on Monday, which is being held for the first time since April 2010.

In a statement, the Egypt foreign ministry spokesman said that the meeting will be headed by European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, and participants will discuss all aspects of Egyptian-European relations.

The meeting aims to deepen the partnership between Egypt and Europe in accordance with the association agreement signed between both parties, which details the cooperation priorities between Egypt and the EU for the coming three years.

The association agreement includes the facilitation of trade between the two markets through the establishment of a free trade area.

By May 2017, EU financial assistance to Egypt amounted to over 1.3 billion euros in grants, with 45 percent of the figure targeting economic and social development, according to the European Commission.

Shoukry is also set to fly to Paris on Tuesday for a visit that aims to bolster Egyptian-French relations, with both sides keen on deepening cooperation.

He is expected to meet his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, as well as the chief of the Senates committee on foreign affairs, defence, and the armed forces, Christian Cambon, to discuss cooperation in the economic, military, and cultural fields and regional issues.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The Egyptian navy has rescued 10 people from a boat in distress near the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Hurghada, the armed forces announced on Sunday.

According to a statement released by the army spokesman, naval units received an SOS from a tourist boat, Freedom, that had broken down eight miles off the coast.

Naval units managed to evacuate the 10 people on board, including three crew members. They also transported the boat to Hurghada port.

Hurghada is located in Red Sea governorate.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Four more Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank on Saturday, according to the Palestinian ministry of health.

On Saturday evening, two Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops in Kobar in the occupied West Bank as the Israeli army moved into the village to demolish the family home of a Palestinian man they accuse of stabbing to death three Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Friday.

Another Palestinian, 17-year-old Oday Nawajaa, was killed by Israeli live-fire at Al-Azariya.

The health ministry said a fourth Palestinian was killed by Israelis in clashes, but the identity of the victim is yet to be announced.

The four deaths bring the Paletinian death toll in clashes with Israeli forces to six in the past 72 hours.

On Friday, three Palestinians aged between 17 and 20 were killed and more than 200 were injured when occupation forces attacked worshippers outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem following Friday prayers.

Hours following the Israeli attacks at the mosque on Friday, a 19-year-old Palestinian man, Omar Al-Abd, reportedly broke into a home in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and stabbed four Israelis, killing three. He was shot by a neighbour and taken to hospital.

Later, Israeli soldiers raided Al-Abd's home village of Kobar in the West Bank overnight and arrested his brother, the army said.

On Saturday, Palestinian youths hurled stones and petrol bombs as the army used a bulldozer to close off Kobar and prepare Al-Abd's home for demolition.

Israel routinely punishes the families of those accused of attacking Israelis, razing or sealing their homes in an act of collective punishment, which is deemed criminal under international law.

Israel's recent closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to Palestinians for Friday prayers was the first such move since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967.

The closure of Al-Aqsa compound, as well as Israel's installation of metal detectors at its entrances earlier last week, triggered clashes in East Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank as Palestinians continue to protest against Israeli efforts to Judaize the city they want as a capital for a future state.

At the Qalandiya checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem, at least eight Palestinians were wounded in clashes on Saturday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The UN Security Council is expected to hold closed-door talks on Monday about the spiralling violence after Egypt, France and Sweden sought a meeting to "urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced late on Friday that he was freezing contacts with Israel.

On Friday, Egypt called on Israel to put an immediate stop to violence. He also demanded an end to escalated security measures against Palestinians in Jerusalem and in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa mosque, expressing "deep concern".

The United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- the so-called Middle East Quartet -- urged all sides to "demonstrate maximum restraint".

The Quartet members "strongly condemn acts of terror, express their regret for all loss of innocent life caused by the violence."

On Saturday, the metal detectors remained at the entrance to Jerusalem's walled Old City.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


When a Kansas Department of Commerce data system was breached back in March, a hacker accessed more than 5,561,803 Social Security numbers from 10 states, as well as personally identifiable information (PII) from another 805,664 user accounts without SSNs. In total, 6,367,467 users information was exposed to the hacker. Those numbers were obtained by the Kansas News Service via an open records request.

Have you ever looked for a job via the online portal America's Job Link Alliance (AJLA)? You might better recognize it under other names; Kansasworks.com is just one example. Workforce services in various states had contracts with the Kansas database contractor AJLA-TS (America's Job Link Alliance Technical Support). Did you know AJLA says it retains the PII of job seekers unless specifically asked for it to be deleted? If you found a job via AJLA, then it might be wise to ask for your data to be deleted.

AJLA-TS admitted in a press release in March that a malicious third-party hacker exploited a vulnerability in the AJL code and was able to access millions of users information.

The actual hack occurred in February, but it wasnt discovered until March. AJLA admitted, On February 20, 2017, a hacker created a job seeker account in an Americas JobLink (AJL) system. The hacker then exploited a misconfiguration in the application code to gain unauthorized access to certain information of other job seekers. The code misconfiguration had been hanging around since October 2016.

The suspicious activity was discovered on March 12 and eliminated on March 14; the FBI was contacted on March 15.

The PII exposed included users names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and so forth. Kansas was managing the data for 16 states at the time of the hack, but it claimed the following 10 states were affected: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont.

The numbers of victims SSNs first reported to be affected by the AJLA-TS hack dont match up exactly with affected users SSNs that were obtained by the Kansas News Service. The real numbers of affected individuals are slightly lower:

Alabama: 1,393,109 SSNs exposed

Arkansas: 597,374 SSNs exposed

Arizona: 896,370 SSNs exposed

Delaware: 236,134 SSNs exposed

Idaho: 170,517 SSNs exposed

Illinois: 807,450 SSNs exposed

Kansas: 563,568 SSNs exposed

Maine: 283,449 SSNs exposed

Oklahoma: 430,679 SSNs exposed

Vermont: 183,153 SSNs exposed

Across these 10 states, another 805,664 user accounts without SSNs were also affected.

Although AJLA is required to ask users for SSNs, not everyone provides it. Most likely enter it because they believe it is required.

In May, Kansas Department of Commerce sent about 260,000 emails to Kansas 563,568 victims. KCUR said the rest were not contacted because the department claimed it didnt have email addresses for all affected users and it is not required by law to call or send snail mail to victims.

Kansas agreed to pay for a year of credit monitoring services for affected victims in nine states; users in Delaware are eligible for three years of credit monitoring services.

You dont have long to take advantage of the offer as KCUR reported, The call center for victims, which can be reached at (844) 469-3939, will remain open through the end of this month.

That leaves affected users about a week to take action.
BRIDGEPORT  A car full of blood was left without occupants near the entrance of the Bridgeport Hospital after one person was shot Saturday evening somewhere in the area of Myrtle Avenue, dispatch reports indicated.

One unidentified male victim suffered a gunshot wound to the hand and another to the upper torso, dispatch reports indicated.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WASHINGTON - With a mailbag slung across his small frame and a wide-brim hat perched atop his head, Mason Wade stepped up to the catwalk. Clasping his aide's hand for support, he sashayed across the gym, a sprawling red carpet under his feet.

For the 6-year-old dressed as a mail carrier, his favorite community helper, the end-of-year fashion show at St. Coletta Special Education Public Charter School in Southeast Washington was a chance to strut his stuff. For the school-based therapists looking on, it was a moment years in the making.

Mason, who has a developmental delay, used a wheelchair when he started at St. Coletta in 2015. Hundreds of physical therapy sessions and oodles of enthusiasm later, Mason is walking, able to traverse the school's black-and-white-tiled hallway with the support of an adult.

At St. Coletta, where all students have special needs, tiny pieces of progress can add up to life-changing trajectories. The school relies on funding from Medicaid to employ a cadre of therapists. But with each twist in the health-care debate on Capitol Hill, staff members wonder whether their Medicaid dollars could be at risk.

Pride for student achievement is shadowed by anxiety over the unknown.

"We would not rest easy if we knew we couldn't provide the appropriate services for our kids," said Loni Licuanan, who directs the school's therapeutic services.

The federal government allows public schools to receive Medicaid reimbursement for school-based health services required through students' special education plans. Although federal law mandates that schools provide these services, Congress has never authorized the amount of funding it pledged when the law was passed decades ago. To make up that budget gap, schools have turned to Medicaid.

The District of Columbia, which expanded Medicaid coverage in 2010 under the Affordable Care Act, received more than $40 million in Medicaid reimbursements for special-education services during the last fiscal year, according to the Office of the State Superintendent.

Cuts to Medicaid would affect schools across the District, but St. Coletta would be especially hard-hit. Each of the school's 250 students is intellectually disabled, and most require multiple types of therapy.

During fiscal 2016, St. Coletta provided more than $1 million in special-education services to Medicaid-eligible students. The school was reimbursed for 70 percent of the cost through Medicaid, which helps pay the salaries and benefits of 35 service providers, including physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists.

Overall, Medicaid reimbursements account for only 5 percent of St. Coletta's annual budget, but the school says those funds - more than $750,000 annually - make it possible to provide services not available at other public schools in the city.

In addition to weekly one-on-one sessions, St. Coletta students have therapy as part of their daily routines. Bathroom breaks are used as skill-building opportunities, from support walking across the hall to guidance in using a toilet independently. At lunchtime, where feeding and swallowing can be arduous for some students, therapists assist.

Antoinette Davis of Southwest Washington said school-based therapy has given her daughter, Kamille, the confidence to make new friends and to climb the spiral stairs in the family's duplex.

Kamille, 6, has Smith-Magenis syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that can cause delayed speech. As a toddler, she was nonverbal. Unable to express herself, she resorted to self-harm, scratching her arms and banging her head, Davis said.

"She would get mad and frustrated because we didn't know what she wanted," she said.

Since enrolling at St. Coletta two years ago, Kamille has learned to use a specialized tablet to communicate her needs and to show what she's learned.

"She knows her colors, the alphabet, how to spell her name," Davis said. "I can see the difference in her."

Located across from the D.C. Armory, St. Coletta educates students until they turn 22. Because of the severity of students' disabilities, there are no grade levels. Students are separated by age.

Brandon Walker, 20, is a member of the school's oldest group. A student at the school for more than a decade, he is unable to walk or speak. It took a team of therapists years to find a communication system that worked for him, said Katherine Short, the school's therapy coordinator.

Walker uses eye-tracking technology to communicate. A camera inside a tablet-like device mounted to his wheelchair monitors his eye movements back and forth, as one might a cursor moving across a computer screen. When his eyes dwell on an image for one-sixth of a second, the machine says the chosen word for him.

Using the device, Walker can tell his teacher when he's hungry, tired or in the mood to listen to his favorite jazz music. And, for the first time, he can engage socially.

The technology, purchased by his family through Medicaid, "gives him access to his world, access he never had before," said Short, a speech language pathologist.

According to a report from the Office of the D.C. Auditor, the District would lose $563 million in federal funds for Medicaid in the first year and up to $1 billion annually by 2028 if Congress were to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

If the federal government reduces its share of Medicaid spending, schools might have to compete with other medical providers, including hospitals and nursing homes, for limited resources, said John Hill, executive director for the National Alliance for Medicaid in Education.

"There's going be losers, and it will be up to the states to decide who those losers are going to be," he said.

For Sharon Raimo, St. Coletta's chief executive, that prospect can be maddening.

Raimo, who helped found the school in 2006, said any threat to her students' safety net is worrisome. Medicaid cuts, in particular, would be shortsighted, she said.

"When these kids attain these goals, it makes them easier to take care of at home, rather than being placed outside of the home, which is much more expensive," she said.

St. Coletta already fundraises for many of its needs and would seek additional support from donors if necessary.

"These are the people who make my heart beat faster," she said. "Everybody here who does this work, we do it because we care about them and we really think they have potential."
Im not sure how long she had been dead.

But when the ambulance sits in front of a house for a couple hours, along with a cop car and vehicles youve never seen before, you can figure a medical examiner is involved. And thats never good.

It was another overdose. But it wasnt one of those theoretical ODs: the 917 faceless dead who made the medical examiners Accidental Drug Intoxication Deaths roll call last year from virtually every town and city, from Greenwich to Bridgeport, New Haven, Middletown, the Naugatuck Valley to Danbury, Litchfield, Torrington, you name it.

Our 35-year-old neighbor had fallen victim to the heroin scourge. Shed only been on the block  narrow lots, tight parking, multi-family houses with mostly absentee landlords  for a few months.

Im certainly no psychologist and I dont understand the point of ingesting something that you know absolutely nothing about. A few years ago, the prescription opioids, after surgery, made me sit in a chair with a blanket over my head. Soon it seemed stupid, so I threw them in the trash. But to make a blind purchase of something someone purports to be ... anything, seems exceedingly sketchy, if not entirely misguided.

But addiction is a disease and as this public-health crisis continues  five years ago there were 357 drug-related fatalities  I figured it was time to at least explore what I could do, on the odd chance that if I saw someone zonked out in a park, in a bar, on the street, or who-knows-where.

If not me, I thought, then who?

In recent years, the General Assembly has made it easier for civilians to buy naloxone, the miracle opioid antidote, including a law that holds good Samaritans harmless from any legal ramifications.

In its nasal-spray form, Narcan, responders can pull someone out from deaths snatches just by squirting this stuff up their nose. Simply, it blocks the effects of the narcotics and wakes people from what could be their eternal nap. Then, its up to them. They can deal with their weaknesses or they can continue playing chicken with death.

So I set out to buy a dose of Narcan. First I called the state Department of Health, who informed me that there are open-access programs that dispense Narcan, the simplest, least-expensive and easiest form for administering naloxone, to people in the front lines of New Haven, Bridgeport, Meriden, New London, Waterbury and Hartford.

Then I called the state Department of Consumer Protection, which has a website with a map of pharmacies that supposedly stock Narcan.

I think in order to start to have an impact on the opioid crisis, it is important to engage everyone in our communities, certainly good Samaritans, said Margherita Giuliano, executive vice president of the Connecticut Pharmacists Association. We have friends who are addicted, or know someone who is addicted and as a community response, its helpful to try to get everyone involved in the issue.

She admitted there are gray areas in the supply chain. Doctors can prescribe Narcan and people can claim it on insurance. But its not as if I wanted my insurer to know I was buying the stuff. And I certainly didnt need a prescription.

It turns out that pharmacists have to be certified in teaching people how to use the stuff. I struck out at the local Stop & Shop, which did not have Narcan, but the sympathetic pharmacist printed out some information for me.

Walgreens had the Narcan, but in a flawed twist, they had no pharmacists on hand who were certified to give me the stuff. The CVS had both the pharmacists and the Narcan. Two took some time, and first eyed me as a potential drug abuser. Theyre trained to talk with people and refer them to possible treatment services.

The pharmacists were more at ease when I gave them a business card and informed them of my quest for a good-Samaritan dose.

They recommended carrying it around in the bag I take to work. Its too hot to leave the spray in the car. Call 911 immediately, even before you bust out the Narcan. Signs of an overdose: dilated pupils, slowed breathing, bluish extremities that are cold to the touch. One of the many good things about Narcan is that if it turns out the unconscious person is only dead drunk, the dose wont do anything to them.

Squeeze a dose up their nose and give them a couple of minutes. They might vomit. They might be angry that you woke them up and harshed their buzz. If they dont respond, give them the second dose up the other nostril. By then, hopefully, the EMTs will be there to take the victim to the emergency room.

I paid $90 for the Narcan and thanked the pharmacists. I walked out of the CVS wondering: Whats a life worth?

Ken Dixon can be reached in the Capitol at 860-549-4670 or at kdixon@ctpost.com. See twitter.com/KenDixonCT. His Facebook address is kendixonct.hearst. Dixons Connecticut Blog-o-rama is at blog.ctnews.com/dixon/
A day after news came out about Sen. John McCain's, R-Ariz., brain cancer diagnosis, his one-time political opponent urged the ailing senator to think about his political future sooner rather than later - and expressed interest in the possibility of her taking over his Senate seat.

"I hope Sen. McCain is going to look long and hard at this, that his family and his advisers are going to look at this, and they're going to advise him to step away as quickly as possible, so that the business of the country and the business of Arizona being represented at the federal level can move forward," Kelli Ward, who lost to McCain in last year's Republican primary and is now running to unseat Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Thursday during an interview with an Indiana radio station.

In a statement posted later on her website, Ward said McCain's cancer is "both devastating and debilitating" and he "owes it to the people of Arizona to step aside" when he's no longer able to perform his duties.

McCain's office announced Wednesday that he'd been diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer. The diagnosis, which followed a surgery to remove a blood clot above the left eye, raised questions about when and if he will go back to the Senate.

McCain isn't up for reelection until 2022. He also had not indicated that he will relinquish his seat because of his health, even assuring in a recent tweet that he'll be "back soon."

Still, the possibility of him leaving was raised in Ward's interview. Host Pat Miller asked Ward, a family physician and a former Arizona state senator, about whether she believes McCain will be able to return to Washington.

"I would never presume to say what someone's prognosis is without having examined them. As a Christian, I know there can always be miracles. But the likelihood that John McCain is going to be able to come back to the Senate and be at full force for the people of our state and the people of the United States is low," said Ward.

Ward went on to talk about what Arizona law requires in the event that McCain does leave office. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, R, will have to appoint someone from the same party to fill the vacancy until the 2018 general election.

Asked if her name is getting "thrown in the hat" as a possible replacement, Ward said: "Well, you know, I certainly hope so. Because, you know, I have a proven track record from years in the state Senate of being extremely effective and of listening to the voice of the people that I represent."

Ward added that she proved to be a worthy challenger against McCain last year. (She came in second, with 39.2 percent of the primary vote.)

"We can't wait until the 2018 election waiting around to accomplish the Trump agenda, to secure the border and stop illegal immigration and repeal Obamacare and fix the economy and fix the veterans administration," she said. "All those things need to be done, and we can't be at a standstill while we wait for John McCain to determine what he's going to do."

Ward was immediately slammed by critics, who viewed her comments as insensitive, self-serving and opportunistic. She dismissed the criticisms as fake news perpetuated by liberals.

In a combative interview Friday with Arizona radio hosts Mac Watson and Larry Gaydos, Ward maintained that should McCain become debilitated, "of course he should step aside."

"I got to tell you, Dr. Ward. Have you no shame? I mean, I think this is low class. I think you're kicking the man when he's down, the week he's diagnosed with brain cancer, with really what I believe is a despicable comment," one of the hosts told Ward.

One of the hosts said Ward is already "dancing" on McCain's grave, called her a "vulture" and told her she's "desperate for attention."

Ward shot back, saying the hosts are putting words in her mouth and unfairly attacking her character.

"I am a caring, compassionate physician. I am a competent, qualified political candidate, and I look forward to getting to Washington, D.C. You all have made this about John McCain and Kelli Ward," she said, adding that she's "laser-focused" on her race against Flake.

Ward's supporters have rallied behind her in comments to her Facebook post about McCain. Some wrote that while they sympathize with McCain's illness, they agree with Ward's statements.

Ward's recent interviews aren't the first time she urged McCain to leave public office.

She caused a stir last year when she suggested in a Politico interview that McCain, who was then 79, is too old and is likely to die while in office.

"I'm a doctor. The life expectancy of the American male is not 86. It's less," Ward said in the August 2016 interview, adding later: "He's become pretty sour. A pretty sour old guy."

In another interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd that same day, Ward suggested that McCain should retire and said she knows "what happens to the body and the mind at the end of life."

Taken aback, Todd asked Ward whether she feels comfortable diagnosing McCain without personally examining him.

"Diagnosing him as an 80-year-old man, yes, I do," she said.

McCain has been recovering in his Arizona home. His daughter, Meghan, tweeted Saturday that she and her father went on a hike.

"Amazing hike with Dad @SenJohnMcCain this morning. Thank you all for your best wishes! pic.twitter.com/P9RR2v91HB"

- Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) July 22, 2017
NORWALK  A Bridgeport man with a long list of prior convictions is back in police radar after he threatened to kill his ex-wife and child, police said.

In 2009, Raymond Selvyn, 37, was sentenced to five years in jail for an incident in which he reportedly attacked his then wife, police said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday began a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no one had an interest in prolonging the crisis.

Erdogan, whose country has come to Qatar's aid in the crisis, had talks in Jeddah Sunday with King Salman who hailed the Turkish leader's "efforts in the fight against terrorism and its financing," Saudi state news agency SPA reported.

Erdogan is scheduled to fly to Kuwait later Sunday before heading to Qatar on Monday for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began.

"No one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," Erdogan said in Istanbul before leaving on the two-day trip.

He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying Doha had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran.

Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position, and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

In recent years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has expedited the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan was also to hold talks with Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

The Qatari emir said Friday he was ready for talks to resolve the row as long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.

His call received a cold reception from the UAE's state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, who said he hoped the emir had pledged to reconsider Qatar's position.

"Dialogue is necessary, but it should be based on a revision" of Qatar's stance, he tweeted.

Erdogan is likely to get a warm welcome in Doha where Turkey has been loudly applauded for sending in food, including fruit, dairy and poultry products by ship and by plane to help Doha beat an embargo.

Turkey has also benefited, with its exports to Qatar doubling in the past month to more than $50 million. According to the economy ministry, Ankara has sent around 200 cargo planes filled with aid since the crisis began.

Erdogan's tour coincides with a visit to Kuwait by the EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, who held talks Sunday with Kuwaiti officials.

A statement said Mogherini paid tribute to Kuwait's "relentless mediation efforts" in the dispute and called for a resolution "through dialogue and without delay".

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Who comes out better in Governor Malloys contract agreement with the state employee unions? The margin by which union members approved the deal says it all: 5 to 1.

Union leader Lori Pelletier says state employees approved the agreement out of civic virtue. Thats a lovely bedtime story but if the agreement really struck them as terribly disadvantageous  that is, if the agreement was a victory for taxpayers  union members would have rejected it.

The agreement may achieve the most savings that could be arranged within the Democratic Party, to which the governor and the unions both belong. It reduces pension costs for state governments new hires, and of course pension expenses have been exploding because of state governments long failure to put enough money in the pension fund. But most of the savings promised by the agreement are not really savings at all but just the suspension of pay raises, money not yet being spent.

In exchange, state employee benefits would be locked in for another 10 years and layoffs would be prohibited for four. There is no benefit to the public in tying the governments hands for that long. Indeed, there is no public interest in giving state governments own employees such priority within government in the first place. No services to the public, not even services to the most innocent and helpless needy, come with such guarantees. Services are always discretionary.

Thats why, with state government at the breaking point, the General Assembly should defeat the governors deal with the unions, as the unusually large Republican minorities in the General Assembly maintain, and make structural changes in state government, including the direct legislation of the costs and terms of government employment, achieving far greater savings. The governors deal with the unions signifies only continued subordination of the government to a mere special interest, subordination in which the people of Connecticut must ask the unions for permission even to have a government.

Announcing their approval of the deal last week, the unions seemed to understand that this bigger issue  the publics sovereignty  is in danger of being recognized. For union officials carried signs reading Collective bargaining works for Connecticut.

But collective bargaining within the government itself only impairs democracy, only removes governments control over its costs, which is exactly the objective. If the governors deal with the unions takes effect, democracy in Connecticut will be impaired for at least another 10 years.

Hailing his members for their supposed civic virtue last week, union leader Salvatore Luciano said they are suffering concessions fatigue. Yet despite the supposed concessions state employees have made, their total cost keeps rising.

Meanwhile the rest of Connecticut is suffering tax fatigue, the current state administration having imposed in the last six years the states two biggest tax increases in history.

Even now state government is without a budget because Democratic legislators and the governor disagree on how to raise taxes again, the governor seeking to force municipalities to raise property taxes to help finance teacher pensions, the legislators seeking to raise the sales tax and give the revenue to the towns so they can pay their new pension costs with that.

Enough already. The governors deal with the unions is defended as the best we can do but its not. The best we can do is to restore democracy to Connecticut. It can be done if just a few Democratic legislators dare to join the Republicans in rejecting the union deal.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
MIRIAM KATAWAZIThe Globe and MailJuly 21, 2017When she signed up for Miss World Canada 2015, Anastasia Lin never thought she would receive international attention for her criticism of human rights abuses in China, or that the Chinese government would block her from representing Canada in the Miss World pageant there. Now, as her pageant career comes to a close, not even her exit is going as she planned.Part of me cant wait to give the crown away because its such a huge responsibility, but I feel that it needs to end right and let everyone see that there is nothing wrong with doing what I did for the past two years, there is nothing wrong in speaking the truth, Ms. Lin said in an interview, adding that young girls see her as a role model for her commitment to speaking out.She had expected that, in keeping with tradition, she would crown her successor at the Miss World Canada 2017 ceremony on Saturday, but because of a change in ownership of the pageant, she will have to say goodbye to the world of pageants from afar.She said she is puzzled about why she was not invited to this years crowning ceremony on July 22. But Miss World Canada says the decision is purely logistical.The pageant now is under new direction, headed by director Michelle Weswaldi, who is the former Miss World Canada 1996. She will be crowning the recipient. She did not crown her successor in 1997 as the organization switched hands in that year as well, a spokesperson for Miss World Canada said.Ms. Lin has been a part of the pageant world for years, placing third in Miss World Canada in 2013 and going on to win it in 2015.During the contest, Ms. Lin spoke about the plight of Falun Gong practitioners in China. When she attempted to travel to Hainan for the Miss World pageant, Chinese authorities formally barred her from entering.Miss World organizers allowed Ms. Lin to represent Canada in 2016 in Washington. However, she said she was told at the competition, which is largely sponsored by Chinese companies, that she could speak to media only with the approval of pageant officials.She has continued her activism on the Falun Gong issue, and says she is still unable to enter China, as are some members of her family. Despite the pain of not being able to go to the country of her birth, where her grandparents and father reside, Ms. Lin said she does not regret her pageant experience because it gave her the platform to speak on behalf of those who seek her help.Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that emerged in China in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International had published reports of a crackdown on the group by the Chinese Communist Party, and that thousands of practitioners had been tortured in prison.The whole experience gave me courage, I dont think there is anything I cant do right now, she said. I saw how scared the Chinese government is of a single persons voice. I realized the government, as the Chinese say, is a paper tiger, with nothing to back them up.Ms. Lin said she will continue her acting career and her activism  something she had never expected to do when she first entered the pageant.I always tell myself that this is the last time Im going to do this, this is the last time Im going to speak up about anything to do with China or human rights because its not my job, Im an actress, Ms. Lin said, adding that, despite the difficulties, she cannot abandon the victims who come to seek her help.Ms. Lin is advocating on behalf of a Canadian woman, Sun Qian, who is a Falun Gong practitioner and has been behind bars in China since February. Ms. Lin spoke about the case at the United Nations Human Rights Council in June and has launched a petition calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to do everything in his power to secure her safe release.I never thought one individual would have the chance to stand on the international stage and talk about things that even the mainstream media sometimes doesnt cover, she said. It means a lot to the people of China. People on the street and at T&T [Supermarket] approach me and tell me they support my work because if no one speaks, then everyone will suffer.
Wirapol Sukphol

KANKANIT WIRIYASAJJA

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

July 19, 2017



BANGKOK (AP)  A former monk known for a jet-setting lifestyle was back in Thailand on Thursday after he was extradited from the United States, where he fled to escape charges including statutory rape and fraud.



Wirapol Sukphol, 37, appeared on a YouTube video showing the orange-robed monk aboard a private jet. He wore aviator sunglasses and had a Louis Vuitton carry-on bag, sparking an outcry over his behavior.



Soon after the video surfaced in 2013, Wirapol was defrocked amid accusations of multiple sexual relationships with women  a cardinal sin for monks.



He was also alleged to have had sex with a 14-year-old girl. The statute of limitations has expired in that case, but he still faces fraud, money laundering and other charges.



He was arrested in California last year.



Wirapol returned to Bangkok late Wednesday under an extradition agreement with the United States. According to Paisit Wongmuang, director-general of Thailands Department of Special Investigation, Wirapol wanted to come back to Thailand and was ready to enter the justice system.



Critics say Wirapol is an extreme example of a wider crisis in Thai Buddhism, which has become marginalized by a shortage of monks and an increasingly secular society.



Born in the poor northeastern province of Ubon Ratchathani, Wirapol entered the monkhood as a teenager and gained local renown for claims of supernatural powers. Gradually, he cultivated wealthy followers to help fund expensive projects in the name of Buddhism, including erecting an 18-meter (59-foot) -high Buddha statue.



Thailands Anti-Money Laundering Office has discovered 41 bank accounts linked to Wirapol. Several of the accounts kept about 200 million baht ($5.9 million) in constant circulation, raising suspicion of money laundering, the office said.



According to the Department of Special Investigation, Wirapol at one point had accumulated assets of an estimated 1 billion baht ($32 million). During a shopping spree from 2009 to 2011, Wirapol bought 22 Mercedes cars worth 95 million baht ($2.8 million), the department said.



https://apnews.com/dcdcb2ff8b054849a1a790950e1d6260/'Jet-set-monk'-is-back-in-Thailand-after-extradition-from-US
Great Allegheny Passage improvements coming

The bids were opened Nov. 1 and Adam Eidemiller's was the lower of two bids received. The project will take two weeks starting within the next week.
The Israeli military says it has carried out a wave of arrests in the West Bank following a deadly stabbing attack against three Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The military says Sunday that forces arrested 29 people, including nine members of the Hamas militant group.

A 20-year-old Palestinian assailant infiltrated the illegal settlement of Halamish late Friday and stabbed four settlers, killing three, hours after Israel attacked Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, killing three and injuring more than 200.

Israel has arrested tens of Palestinians since Friday.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israel since Friday's clashes stands at six.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The Arab League's chief says the Israeli government is 'playing with fire' by imposing new measures near Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem

The Arab League will hold an emergency ministerial meeting on Wednesday to discuss recent Israeli escalations against Palestinians, according to an Arab League statement on Sunday.

"At the request of the Kingdom of Jordan, supported by a number of the member states, it was decided to hold an emergency meeting of the Council of the League of Arab States Foreign Ministers on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the latest attacks and Israeli actions in the city of Jerusalem and on the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque," the Arab League spokesman said in a statement reported by state-run news agency MENA.

On Friday, Israel closed the Al-Aqsa compound for Friday prayers after it installed metal detectors at its entrances, citing security concerns.

The Israeli closure of Al-Aqsa for Friday prayers, the first such move since Israel occupied east Jerusalem in 1967, triggered clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops.

Israeli forces killed six Palestinians and injured tens in the past 72 hours, while a Palestinian man stabbed three Israeli settlers to death on Friday night.

Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said the Israeli government is "playing with fire and causing a major crisis with the Arab and Islamic world."

Jerusalem is a "red line" and Arabs and Muslims would not accept such violations by Israeli occupation forces, the pan-Arab organisation chief said in a separate statement Sunday.

Aboul-Gheit added that the current measures "have nothing to do with security."

"Security considerations are not the real motive behind the recent Israeli actions in Jerusalem's Old City and the vicinity of Al-Aqsa," he said.

"What is happening today, unfortunately, is the completion of the project to Judaicise the Holy City and take over the old town," he said.

On Saturday, two Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli forces as Israeli troops moved to prepare for the demolition of the home of the Palestinian who they say stabbed the three Israeli settlers to death on Friday in the town of Kobar in the occupied West Bank.

On Friday, Egypt called on Israel to immediately stop its violent actions and cancel its escalated security measures against Palestinians in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque area, expressing "deep concern".

The UN Security Council is expected to hold closed-door talks on Monday about the spiralling violence, after Egypt, France and Sweden sought a meeting to "urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported."

Search Keywords:

Short link:


As Jeremy Corbyns aide Seumas Milne hopes that the marital dust is finally settling over pictures of him embracing a blonde friend, here is Jezza posing for a selfie with an admirer of his own: soft-porn star Misha Mayfair.

Dog presumes that Corbyn was unaware of Ms Mayfairs canon of work, which includes the film Gagged Girls  and selfies of an altogether more risque nature.

Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn, pictured left, poses for a selfie with UK-based porn star, and likely Corbyn fan, Misha Mayfair, pictured right, perhaps unaware of the young lady's occupation

Anyone who thought Boris Johnson and Michael Gove had buried the hatchet after Gove knifed the Foreign Secretary in last years Tory leadership contest should have seen them in a near-empty Commons corridor last week. The Cabinet colleagues studiously avoided each others gaze and passed by each other in the deathliest of silences.

Theresa Mays Election campaign got off to a fittingly farcical start when bearded aide Nick Timothy collided with a traffic bollard in Whitehall within hours of the PM firing the starting gun. The bizarre incident left him with a fractured arm in a sling, forcing him to write the doomed manifesto while in pain. Timothy has told friends it was all in the name of romance: he was rushing to the aide of new girlfriend Georgia Berry after she tumbled from her bike in Whitehall. Love hurts.

Hand-pecked Phil Hammond ... the sitting MP

Chancellor Philip Hammond will be knotting his hankie on the beaches of the South of France  at the insistence of his wife Susan.

It is down to ministerial spouse diktat, says Phil. Mrs Hammond is clearly no fan of Theresa Mays penchant for hiking hols. We dont do walking holidays  only sitting ones, he said.

Tory Chief Whip Gavin Williamson was scathingly dismissive when a Tory MP tried to reject his overtures to join his team of dark-arts purveyors. The MP pleaded: Ive only got a small majority so I think I would be better off building up my constituency profile by making more speeches in the Commons. Williamson shot back: I disagree. Ive heard your speeches. It wont help.

Baz, the beardy sex bomb

Labour MP Barry Gardiner has emerged as an unlikely sex symbol in Jeremy Corbyns frontbench team. Gardiner, 60, who shot to infamy when the MoS pictured him in his trunks on a beach freebie to Mexico, is bombarded with fan mail from women. They seem to get turned on by his neatly trimmed beard, sharp suits and calming voice, said a jealous Labour mole.

Forced to close down his Twitter account after vile anti-Semitic abuse from trolls, Brigg and Goole Tory MP Andrew Percy is surprisingly relaxed about a fake Andrew Percy MP Twitter site that has replaced it. Whoever it is is wittier than me and the photo of me is the best one I have ever seen, he says. I just feel sorry for trolls who think they are insulting the real me.
For the millions who, 20 years on, still mourn the Princess of Wales, tonight's ITV documentary will make for bittersweet viewing. At a preview screening I attended at Kensington Palace, Prince William introduced the film.

'Twenty years on, Harry and I felt it was an appropriate time to open up about our mother,' he explained. 'We feel hopefully this film will provide the other side  from close family friends, from those who knew her best and from those who want to protect her memory and want to remind people of the person she was.'

He spoke about wanting people to see 'the warmth, the humour and what she was like as a mother', and of the brothers' desire to see her legacy 'live on in our work'.

Prince William, pictured here with his mother Princess Diana and his brother Prince Harry, spoke warmly about his mother at an advance screening on a documentary on her life

The film is a love letter from two little boys to the mother they lost 20 years ago

'You have to remember,' he concluded, 'that there are people who don't even know about her; there are 25-year-olds who probably have just heard the odd snippet about her, so this is introducing her to a new audience as well.'

Even without the benefit of William's insight, it will be clear to viewers from the very first moments that this film is that most heartbreaking of things: a love letter from two little boys to the mother they lost.

There is a vulnerability to the princes' recollections of Diana, an aching sadness that  for all the happiness they might find in their lives  will never truly leave them.

But there is also, simmering just beneath the surface, beneath Harry's self-deprecating squaddie humour and William's more thoughtful demeanour, a white-hot rage, an intense feeling of injustice coupled with a very Diana-esque desire for retribution, to lash out in defence of their beloved mother's memory.

William and Harry may be grown men, but the princes we see here are just two small boys, mummy's brave little soldiers, intent on standing up for her, on defending her memory against a husband who never wanted her, a press that hounded her, the critics who scorned her.

The film is a loving tribute to an adored mother, but it is an implicit rejection of their father Charles and his wife, Camilla

There is something so inherently human, so moving, about their need to protect the mother who, in their short time together, gave them so much love.

And yet at the same time their actions will inevitably raise questions about the motivations behind such an overtly one-sided narrative of Diana's life  and its potential fallout.

Because while this film is a loving tribute to an adored mother, some will inevitably see it as something else: an implicit rejection of their father, Charles, and of the royal identity he has sought to establish with Camilla, Diana's nemesis.

For nowhere in this happy family portrait is there a place for Charles. Whether consciously or otherwise, William and Harry have excised him from this account of their childhood. Not once is he spoken about directly, save for in the context of Diana's unhappiness and their parents' subsequent divorce.

Not a single fond anecdote, nothing to redeem him. The Queen is there, with her heartfelt concerns for her struggling daughter-in-law; but of Charles, nary a whiff.

It is almost  to my mind anyway  as if the boys are punishing him. For not giving up Camilla, for failing to love their mother and for ultimately, unwittingly contributing to her death.

We all know, of course, that the reality of Charles and Diana's marriage was never black and white. Charles behaved badly  but so did Diana. Multiple sources tell of her petulance, her moods, of the fact that she came to the marriage with her own demons in tow.

And while it is true that Diana was by far the more skilled of the two when it came to publicising her caring side, Charles has been no less dedicated to doing good through his own charity endeavours.

The documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy is on ITV at 9pm

One thing has emerged from the documentary: William and Harry have an unbreakable bond

As for love, Diana, did not have a monopoly on that, either. Charles might not wear his heart on his sleeve as she did, but there is no question that he has one. His dedication to Camilla proves that. And there can be no doubt that he loves his sons deeply.

So my hunch is he will be very bruised by this film  by the way it silently blames him, by the way it implicitly paints him as a neglectful husband and father, while she is held up as a saint. And by the way Diana, even in death, continues to shape perceptions of him as a royal and as a husband, and of how the destructive side of Diana howls after him down the years, haunting the present and exacting revenge in the cruellest way possible: through their sons.

Of course, Charles must bear some responsibility for this. His one great weakness as a royal is that, unlike his mother, he put his heart before his duty.

He may have sought to legitimise his actions constitutionally by marrying Camilla, but this film makes clear that no one could ever supplant their mother in the hearts of these two boys.

Watching this film, for the first time I realised what a task the Duchess of Cambridge has in claiming a place alongside her dead mother-in-law in William's heart. And how hard it will be for whoever marries Harry.

One thing stands out: William and Harry have an unbreakable bond. Forged through their shared suffering, they clearly draw strength and succour from each other.

You can just imagine the two little princes clinging to each other on their own little emotional raft, as the violent storm of their mother's death washed over them.

As their mother  the one who 'would just engulf you and squeeze you as tight as possible', who used to drive her children down old country lanes in her Audi, top down, Enya on the stereo, who would smuggle sweets into school in their socks and send them silly postcards  was suddenly, in the blink of an eye, gone forever.

That sense of that light going out is perhaps the most moving moment of this documentary, where the brothers recall the final conversations they had with Diana.

You see a lifetime of pain in William's eyes as he recalls her final words to him.

Watching this film, so much about William and Harry falls into place. It also gives us a window into the future, of the kind of monarch William intends to be when he finally inherits the throne.

In Kensington Palace, where an exhibition of Diana's dresses draws daily crowds, and where her sons have just recreated her private writing desk  a kind of mini shrine complete with family photographs and her favourite pop music albums  William and Harry have created their own little royal compound  a youthful, informal, golden Eden.

This is where William, Kate, George and Charlotte will be living when the young family move back to London this autumn.

Here Prince Harry's glamorous girlfriend Meghan Markle visits him in his bachelor pad, Nottingham Cottage, and cooks up a storm with ingredients from nearby Whole Foods.

It stands as a stark contrast to the more static atmosphere of Clarence House on the other side of Hyde Park  the official home of Charles and Camilla  or the grandeur of Highgrove.

It is almost as if the House of Windsor now stands divided, with two clear alternative visions forming of the future of monarchy beyond the reign of Elizabeth II.

One based on the principles of yesteryear; the other fashioned on the image of a woman who, 20 years after her death, is still making waves.
He's known to the world as 'Prince George' but the young royal will have to adopt an official surname when he starts school in September - and royal pundits are debating which one he'll opt for.

The third-in-line to the throne, who celebrated his fourth birthday yesterday, will need a surname for the school register and there's two possible monikers: Cambridge or Mountbatten-Windsor.

Technically, because his great-grandmother is the Queen, he has the title of 'His Royal Highness' so he doesn't actually need a surname at all.

Prince George is getting set to start school in September and pundits say he could employ 'Mountbatten-Windsor' instead of 'Cambridge' when he joins Thomas's in Battersea

But according to The Royal Familys website, if any members of the royal family need an official surname, they can use 'Mountbatten-Windsor'.

It reads: 'For the most part, members of the Royal Family who are entitled to the style and dignity of HRH Prince or Princess do not need a surname, but if at any time any of them do need a surname (such as upon marriage), that surname is Mountbatten-Windsor.

The surname came to fruition when Princess Elizabeth (George V's granddaughter) married Philip Mountbatten in 1947. Princess Anne used it on her marriage certificate in 1973.

Prince George could also follow in the footsteps of his father and use 'Cambridge' as his surname. Both Princes William and Harry used 'Wales' as their surname during their time at school and in the military in an ode to their father, the Prince of Wales.

MailOnline has contacted Kensington Palace and is awaiting a response.

According to The Royal Familys website, if any members of the royal family need an official surname, they can use 'Mountbatten-Windsor'

Prince William, Prince George, the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte arrived in Warsaw, Poland, this week for a tour

Prince George, who last week joined his parents and little sister Princess Charlotte for the royal tour of Poland and Germany, will join Thomas's in Battersea in September.

Since Kensington Palace announced the news, housing enquiries in the area have soared.

Estate agent Knight Frank revealed there's been a 'resurgence' in interest in the south west London area, as parents rush to buy a home in the royal-approved district, where the average house costs 1,605,632.

Estate agents have reported a 60 per cent surge in people looking to buy a house in Battersea next to the royal's new school - despite the average house price being 1.6m

Sales manager Kris Ericsson told Harper's Bazaar: 'Since the announcement that Prince George is due to attend Thomas's school in Battersea from September, we have seen a resurgence in interest in the Battersea Park area amongst buyers.

'We have seen an increase of up to 60 per cent in enquiries for houses of 4m and above and quite a few have explicitly cited the added draw of the royal connection that the area will now enjoy.'

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have chosen Thomas's, one of four family-run schools in London - and not even its Kensington branch, a stone's throw from their royal residence

Its website describes it as a 'busy, thriving purposeful school' which has 540 boys and girls between the ages of four and 13

The royal couple have chosen the co-educational Thomas's outpost in well-to-do Battersea, south west London, the heart of what is dubbed locally as 'nappy valley'.

Controversially, the 6,000-a-term school is said to 'ban' best friends.

Headmaster Ben Thomas said schoolchildren should have 'lots of good friends' to stop people from having their feelings hurt, according to the Daily Telegraph.

It is a very middle class, aspirational area of London full of bankers, journalists and City types  not the traditional Eton-style feeder school royals have been sent to in the past.

The school said in a statement at the time of the announcement: 'This is clearly a significant moment for their family and most certainly for Thomas's. Like so many parents, the Duke and Duchess have put a great deal of thought into the choice of their eldest child's first 'big school'.

'We are honoured that the aims and values of Thomas's reflect those that Their Royal Highnesses would like for Prince George's education. We are deeply conscious of the trust that they, like all Thomas's parents, are placing in us and we hope very much to live up to their expectations.

'The Duke and Duchess have made it clear that they do not wish Prince George's attendance at Thomas's to change its aims, values or ethos in any way. They would like, as far as is possible, for him to enjoy the same education that all of our pupils receive and for them to join the school community as all of our new parents do.'

THOMAS'S BATTERSEA Location: Battersea High Street SW11 (20-minute drive from Kensington Palace) Fees: 6,000 a term (18,000 a year) Headmaster: Ben Thomas Age: 4-12 Pupils: 540 boys and girls It's motto is 'Be kind' and there is great emphasis on kindness, confidence and humility, as well as academic results While it might not boast the royal pedigree of Wetherby School, Thomas's does count some A-listers among its alumni. Florence Welch, the lead singer of the indie group Florence and the Machine, attended before leaving for Alleyn's School, in south east London. Model Cara Delevingne and upcoming actress Celine Buckens are also reported to be among their former pupils. The Tatler Schools Guide states: 'It's a balance to Thomas's high-achieving, competitive side: exits to Bryanston, Marlborough and Bradfield last year; the school is feared on central London's sporting circuit; the drama productions are impressive. Entrance at 4+ is selective, with 60 places up for grabs (they close the list at 180 registrations). Lots of Chelsea and South Ken families here, who get very stuck into the community.' Art, ballet, drama, ICT, French, music and physical education are all taught by specialist teachers from a child's first day in school, according to a welcoming note from Mr Thomas. Advertisement

Established by David and Joanna Thomas 40 years ago, the school described itself as being 'happy, dynamic and vibrant' and one that prides itself on its 'excellent academic results'.

Its website describes it as a 'busy, thriving purposeful school' which has 540 boys and girls between the ages of four and 13.

It's motto is 'Be kind' and there is great emphasis on kindness, confidence and humility, as well as academic results.
The Royal Standard has been lowered at Buckingham Palace after her Majesty the Queen begins her annual Scottish holiday at Balmoral.

The monarch was spotted today making her way to Crathie Church for Sunday service, within spitting distance of her Balmoral Castle on Royal Deeside.

The 91-year-old royal could be seen travelling to the chapel alongside a female companion this morning.

The Queen was pictured arriving at Crathie Church today marking her first Sunday of her annual break to Balmoral

Her Majesty looked resplendent in a white ensemble of a coat and matching hat with pink accents.

The great-grandmother added a string of pearls to her outfit during her first Sunday of her summer break.

Her companion looked equally smart in an aqua dress coat with a complementary sea green hat.

But while the Queen was eager to get to church the Duke of Edinburgh was noticeably absent from the service this morning.

Her Majesty was accompanied by a female companion as well as several staff members

Today is the Queen's first Sunday of her annual summer break to Balmoral but it seems that she may be looking for alternative accommodation to her usual refuge of the castle.

Her Majesty normally arrives in August after Balmoral castle is closed to visitors and full security checks are carried out on the grounds.

However, according to the Balmoral visiting calendar, the building is still open to the public until 31st July.

Balmoral (pictured), which was bought by Prince Albert for 32,000 in 1852, is said to be the Queen's favourite home

In this case previously the Queen has stayed at Craigowan Lodge, about a mile away, until the castle's closure to the public.

Craigowan Lodge has been well-used by the Royal Family in the past. Prince Charles stayed there with Diana after their 1981 wedding, as did Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson after their marriage.

The Queen famously enjoys a more low-key existence while staying at the Scottish retreat - with her former royal protection officer Richard Griffin recently revealing that she had a conversation with unsuspecting American tourists visiting the estate while dressed in tweeds and a scarf.

Balmoral, which was bought by Prince Albert for 32,000 in 1852, is said to be the Queen's favourite home.

During her stay at the castle, she relaxes by going for walks on the Aberdeenshire estate, eating picnics and cooking barbecues.

Princess Eugenie has previously said of Balmoral: Its the most beautiful place on earth. I think Granny is the most happy there.

I think she really, really loves the Highlands.
Over the past five years there has been an explosion in the use of cosmetic lasers.

The dental industry reports that the demand for laser teeth whitening is increasing by 40 per cent a year, and thats before you get to the lasers for skin plumping, sun damage, hair and spider vein removal. In short, when life drags you down, fight back with a beam of photons.

Now theres a new laser in town, and its not for the faint-hearted: please welcome the intravenous laser.

Yes, you heard that right. This is a laser fired into a vein through a cannula and  Im promised  is particularly good for hard-to-deal with aches and pains. The kind of thing we put up with, down another painkiller for and chalk up to middle age.

Anna Pursglove (pictured) tries a new treatment that sees a laser fired into vein through a cannula. It is said to be particularly good for hard-to-deal with aches and pains

I have a niggling shoulder injury which Im keen to pit against the IV laser. Sustained a couple of years ago during an enthusiastic flirtation with high-intensity interval fitness training, it means I cant reach back for things behind me easily, nor lie on my right-hand side for too long without pain radiating down my arm and up my neck.

Ive tried physiotherapy and osteopathy. Ive experimented with targeted exercises and complete rest. According to various experts the problem is bicep tendonitis. Its tricky to treat and requires a long resting period. Could a laser be the answer?

Im at the Elixir Clinic in Central London to find out. Cannula already inserted (big needle, I feel duty-bound to warn you) Im waiting to be hooked up to the laser and have time to mull over my 11-year-old sons prediction: Its gonna be sooo cool, mum. I reckon your eyes will light up like Zuul from Ghostbusters!

Mahi Aramideh, Elixirs director and co-founder, and member of the Royal College of Nursing and the Nursing and Midwifery Council, laughs a tinkling laugh. Yes, she says.

I shoot up in the chair, then lie down quickly as I remember Im attached to a laser. How much? Are we talking faint phosphorescence or full Christmas tree?

Mahi assures me that only a portion of the vein will light up and explains that she will be using two different lasers, both of which will deliver light straight into my bloodstream.

The red light is used to strengthen the immune system, increase cell activity and regenerate damaged tissues, while the blue light has anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial effects

The first will be red light, the primary benefits of which are to strengthen the immune system, increase cell activity and regenerate damaged tissues.

The red laser is also good, Mahi says, for boosting circulation, a key factor in healing tissue damage.

Next is blue light, with anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial effects. It is good for pain relief and accelerates wound healing, too. It also, coincidentally, has anti-ageing effects, as it encourages the growth of mitochondria which power cells.

All good with me. If I lose the shoulder pain and a few wrinkles to boot, I wont complain.

Mahi adds that many clients like to mix the laser with one of Elixirs IV vitamin infusions, as the effect of the laser magnifies the benefits of the infusion. Its such a pronounced effect that I wouldnt even give you our most potent infusion with a laser, she adds. Youd be bouncing off the walls. You wouldnt sleep.

Im so busy pondering the potential for a less painful shoulder and a smoother face that I dont notice the laser being turned on. I look down to see my arm glowing gently crimson.

Following the treatment, Anna finds for the first time in two years she is able to extend her arm back without a shooting pain in her shoulder

While faintly disconcerting, it is not painful. Mahi explains that this is because it is a low-level or soft laser. Developed in Germany and approved for use there since 2005, low-level laser therapy (LLLT) is all about regeneration. While surgical lasers damage tissue (hence the pain), soft lasers are pain-free.

There are green and yellow lasers, too (but not at Elixir). Green, apparently, is credited with improving oxygen uptake and yellow can have antidepressant effects by enhancing serotonin production.

Research is also being done on the use of IV lasers to help with conditions including fibromyalgia, rheumatism, MS, tinnitus and Lyme disease.

After being red-lasered for 20 minutes, Mahi switches to the blue one. For some reason, the blue light travels through my skin much more dramatically and my arm lights up above the elbow. I look like a nightclub.

Mahi closes the blinds  partly so the photographer and I can marvel at my glowing limb, but also so I can relax. I even momentarily fall asleep.

Forty minutes later the treatment is done. Mahi says I may feel a benefit after a few days, and the treatment can be performed up to twice a week (but with a price tag of 250 a treatment, that may be tricky).

It is the middle of the following week when I realise there is something different about my right shoulder. It is still weak from two years of under-use, but while helping my eight-year-old into her school uniform I have absent-mindedly reached behind me for a hair brush.

This is not an action I could have performed ten days earlier without turning my whole body round. I tentatively try one of the stretches my physio prescribed to increase the flexibility of my shoulder tendon.

Standing next to a wall, I slide my hand out behind me so that my palm is flat on the wall and my shoulder joint is touching the wall, too. It doesnt hurt!

This is the first time in two years Ive been able to extend my arm back without a shooting pain in my shoulder.

As for wrinkles around my eyes and mouth, I cant detect much improvement, but three or four nights of pain-free sleep may knock off a few of my 44 years.

Theres nothing more anti-ageing than the spring in my step that comes with knowing my shoulder is on the mend.

The 11-year-old, meanwhile, says that if I see Mahi again, hes coming with me. Its OK mum, I know the password to your phone so I looked at the photographs, he says (well need to discuss the sanctity of passwords at some point). He tells me reassuringly, I was wrong  you didnt look like Zuul from Ghostbusters. You looked like the Tardis. Cool!
A man who was left with a debilitating facial disfigurement after a cut at a barbershop led to huge keloid scars has had the surgery he needed to treat the condition thanks to donations from strangers.

It was almost 13 years ago that Keith Crowell of Milwaukee was accidentally cut during a routine hot shave in an incident that led to years of struggling with massive keloid scarring.

Keloids are tough, heaped-up scar tissue that rises quite abruptly above the rest of the skin.

Quite a change: Keith Crowell, of Milwaukee, has had life-changing surgery to remove keloid scars thanks to the donations of strangers

A hard time: Keith developed keloids on his skin about 12 years ago after he was cut on both sides of the neck during a hot shave. Instead of healing, the cuts developed scar tissue

The scars led to masses of extra flesh growing on either side of his face, which at one point added up to more than 40 lbs. He had surgery to help with the keloids, but initially the procedures just saw the masses return with even more force.

WHAT ARE KELOIDS? Keloids are smooth, hard, benign growths that form when scar tissue grows excessively instead of healing. Risk factors include being of African, Asian, or Latino heritage, being pregnant, and being younger than 30 years old. Treatments for keloid scarring are not always effective because of the toughness of the skin. Source : Healthline Advertisement

Then, a third surgery was refused by his insurance provider after they claimed to consider it a cosmetic issue, which led to Keith being profiled on WHNT News in Milwaukee late last year.

'I feel it's not cosmetic. This is my livelihood. This is my life right here,' he said at the time.

Keith, 56, has not named the barber he visited those 12 years ago or his insurance provider.

Back then, the scars appeared like giant tumors, affecting his hearing because they covered his ears, as well as causing him difficulty sleeping and even swallowing.

Keith had then started a crowdfunding campaign in an attempt to raise enough money to travel to New York and undergo plastic surgery from a specialist.

Struggling: This is a photo taken of Keith after he developed the keloids, but before they were worsened by an operation to have them removed

The mass: Keloids are smooth, hard, benign growths that form when scar tissue grows excessively instead of healing

Partway done: After a TV appearance where he talked about being refused surgery by his insurance company, a GoFundMe page for Keith raised more than $25,000

The last step: Keith is seen after completing his last surgery to have the growths removed

The story struck a chord with viewers, and let to thousands worth of donations from complete strangers touched by Keith's plight.

The campaign ended up raising more than $25,000, enough for him to make two visits to New York and have all the troublesome keloids removed.

'I feel a lot lighter. Its a lot of weight off my shoulders. Im energetic. I feel more of myself. I feel more alive,' Keith told WHNT News after the surgery.

He also said that his self-confidence has returned and helped him day-to-day in his job as a security guard at a casino.

Startling change: Over two trips to New York City, doctors have removed all of Keith's keloids

On his way: He is left with some scaring that will heal, and his doctor says that there is a 96 percent chance the keloids will never return

Living life: Keith (pictured at work as a security guard) says that the surgery has returned him to a happy life

'I just feel good about it. I'm more comical. I meet and greet the customers a little more. I'm more of a people person than I was before,' he said.

While the healing process is not yet over, Keith's doctors say that there is a 96 percent chance the keloids will never return.

And though Keith is incredibly grateful to the doctors who freed him from the burden of the scars, he is even more thankful to those who cared when his insurance provider did not.
It is a fact men dont quibble with if they have any sense  nothing compares to the pain of childbirth.

But now medics who dared to question the assumption have found it isnt actually true.

They discovered that, when objectively assessed, having kidney stones is more painful than being in labour.

Medics have discovered that having kidney stones is more painful than being in labour

Mothers who had experienced both childbirth and kidney stones, often rated the latter as the more painful of the two experiences, the research team found.

Most men who had suffered kidney stones said they imagined what they had been through wasnt nearly as bad as having a baby.

Study author Saiful Miah, clinical lecturer in urology at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, said: We asked 19 women who had experienced both kidney stones and childbirth which was more painful. The majority thought their kidney stone pain was a lot worse than childbirth.

But when we asked men whod experienced kidney stones what they imagined was worse, most imagined childbirth was worse.

Mr Miah said he worked with a consultant urologist early in his career who would ask women to assess how bad their pain was when trying to diagnose their problem.

This was because in those days, there was only occasional access to the type of scanner now used to help diagnose kidney stones accurately. He added: This consultant would often ask women who had been through childbirth, whats more painful: what you are experiencing now, or giving birth?

If the woman said, actually this is more painful, the consultant would say, theres your diagnosis  its kidney stones. 

The results of the study have just been published in the Journal of Pain Research. Of the 19 women questioned, 12 said kidney stones were more painful and another three felt that the intensity of pain was similar. Four said childbirth was more painful.

Patients are given painkillers but otherwise told to go away, grin and bear it

Mr Miah went on: Whats interesting is that when a woman goes into labour, she will rapidly get all sorts of painkillers and attention.

But with kidney stones, a lot of people just have to suffer.

Kidney stones are small, hard masses that form in the kidneys, consisting of minerals such as calcium. The pain is felt when they pass down the ureters from the kidneys to the bladder.

One option for dealing with them is so-called conservative treatment, where nature is left to take its course.

Patients are given painkillers but otherwise told to go away, grin and bear it.

Mr Miah said: They can take two to four weeks to pass. Its the most painful way, but it does mean you dont have to be operated on.

Other methods include surgical removal or blasting them with high-frequency shock waves, to shatter them into tiny fragments. The method chosen often depends on how big the stones are and where they are positioned.
Clashes between two Arab tribes in Sudan's war-torn state of East Darfur have killed up to 10 people, tribal leaders told AFP on Sunday.

The fighting that began on Saturday comes as the United Nations and African Union prepare to downsize their peacekeeping mission in Darfur, saying that overall violence there has diminished.

The clashes between the Arab Maaliya and Rizeigat tribes came months after a similar clash left at least nine dead.

The two tribes have a history of violence over land ownership rights and allegations of cattle theft.

"A group of tribesmen from Maaliya were ambushed by members of Rizeigat when they tried to chase thieves who had stolen livestock belonging to Maaliya tribesmen," said Ahmed Nour, a Maaliya leader.

He said 10 people were killed and 18 wounded in the clashes 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of El-Daien, the capital of East Darfur.

The chief of the Rizeigat tribe, Mohamed Madibu, told AFP that the two groups also clashed on Sunday.

He said that three Rizeigat were killed in the initial clashes on Saturday.

"A group of Maaliya attacked some Rizeigat villages yesterday. There are clashes even today, but we don't have details about casualties," Madibu said.

Khartoum limits international media access to Darfur so it was not possible to independently verify the toll, and Sudanese authorities could not be reached for comment.

Although Khartoum insists that the conflict in Darfur has ended, parts of the region have been destabilised by fighting between myriad ethnic and tribal groups.

The UN and African Union maintain that the Darfur conflict is winding down, and their peacekeeping mission -- among the costliest with a budget of more than $1 billion -- is being trimmed.

The Darfur conflict erupted in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against President Omar al-Bashir's Arab-dominated government, accusing it of marginalising the region.

Since then, more than 2.5 million people have been displaced and 300,000 killed, the UN says.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Cystic fibrosis sufferers have been given hope by a radical new treatment that could save thousands of people from an early death.

Scientists have found that combining three drugs has a major positive impact on the lung condition.

Researchers had earlier achieved success in combining two agents, which helped slow down lung damage in 40 per cent of cystic fibrosis patients.

Cystic fibrosis sufferers have been given hope by a radical new treatment that could save thousands of people from an early death (file photo)

Now they have shown that adding a third element produces similar benefits in up to 90 per cent of patients.

Drugs company Vertex, behind the research, said the results were clear and compelling, indicating significant potential benefit.

Cystic fibrosis affects 10,000 people in the UK  among them former PM Gordon Browns son, Fraser, 11. Sufferers lungs produce too much mucus, leading to scarring, and they often require transplants.

Scientists have found that combining three drugs has a major positive impact on the lung condition (file photo)

Life expectancy has been growing, but half die before the age of 41.

Professor Jane Davies, honorary consultant in paediatric medicine at Londons Royal Brompton Hospital, said if the very, very early results held up in further trials, and the method proved to be safe, the triple-therapies could be used in between 70 and 90 per cent of patients globally.
At The Mail on Sunday we take great pride in the quality of our journalism. All our journalists are required to observe the Editors Code of Practice and The Mail on Sunday is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the new regulatory body for the Press set up in response to the Leveson Inquiry. We aim to correct any errors as promptly as possible.

Articles last year stated that KYA Global, the trading company of Lord Patel, who was said to be a friend of Commonwealth Secretary General, Baroness Scotland, had been awarded two contracts worth a total of 415,000 to review and reform operations of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

In fact the total was 180,000. We would also like to make clear that Lord Patel was hired to review the Secretariat, not the baronesss own performance as may have been suggested by an article on July 31.

An article last Sunday said Prince Harry will one day become Duke of Edinburgh. In fact it is more commonly anticipated that Prince Edward will eventually be granted the title.

If you wish to report an inaccuracy, please email corrections@ mailonsunday.co.uk.

To make a formal complaint under IPSO rules please go to www.mailonsunday.co.uk/readerseditor where you will find an easy-to-use complaints form.

You can also write to Readers Editor, The Mail on Sunday, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT.
Britain's budget airline boom has prompted an upstart airport to start using mobile phone data.

London Southend Airport in Essex is using mobile phone technology to monitor where locals are flying as it embarks on an ambitious strategy to reach 2.5m customers by 2018.

It can map where they are flying and set up new routes as a way to pinch customers from rivals such as Gatwick and Stansted.

Destination unknown: The Essex airport is using mobile phone technology to monitor where locals are flying

Airports are braced for a fierce war to win customers, with existing terminals rammed to capacity. Yesterday was the busiest day for UK air space with 8,800 flights taking off and landing.

The Government is holding a consultation in a bid to find ways to increase airport capacity.

And with Gatwick and Heathrow locked in war over who should build a new runway, smaller airports are desperately trying to expand.

This week Stansted said it plans to offer budget flights to New York with a little known Icelandic airline, Primera Air.

Southend, which is owned by logistics company Stobart Group, is the first known to be monitoring travel patterns in a bid to ramp up the number of flights it offers.

The phone tracking technology has seen the airport launch routes with EasyJet to Malta and Murcia in Spain, and with Flybe to Manchester, Dublin and Glasgow. It is also in talks with four different airlines to offer routes to Rome, Naples and Croatia.

Glyn Jones, chief executive, said: What I can say to EasyJet is, for example, 100,000 people in a year in our catchment area are flying to Rome.

But what I can also say to them is, of the 100,000 people, 70,000 live closer to London Southend than anywhere else. Therefore there is a rational offer  its easier for them to choose.

Jones, 58, added that the company doesnt know the individual names of the customers that are travelling, but simply has access to big bundles of data which tell them where groups of customers are going.

Southend Airport is forecast to break 1m passengers this year, and has even built its own train station so commuters from London can get to the airport.

NATS, the UKs leading provider of air traffic control services, said the UK aviation network will handle 777,000 flights this summer  the highest number in its history at 40,000 more flights than last year.

Also, 500,000 passengers are expected to pass through Heathrow this weekend, 335,000 through Gatwick, 136,000 through Stansted and 85,000 through Luton. London City Airport said it had deployed additional staff in its security, baggage handling and customer services in order to cope with the surge.

The Department of Transport has also proposed a mechanism that will allow travellers to dump their bags at a depot in advance and pick up boarding cards before making their own way to the airport at their leisure, or have suitcases collected from their homes.
Swatch has ticked back into growth as it fights back against Apples smart watches.

The worlds biggest watchmaker saw sales of its watches and jewellery grow 2.9 per cent over the latest half year, with income for the Swiss group up 6.8 per cent to 227m.

It marks a comeback for the Omega and Longines owner, whose profits fell 47 per cent to 480m during 2016.

Fighting back: Swatch saw sales of its watches and jewellery grow 2.9 per cent over the latest half year

Swiss watchmakers have been hurt by declining sales in Hong Kong amid a crackdown on gift giving and corruption.

Sales have also slowed in London while there is increased competition from products such as Apples smart watch. But yesterday Swatch said demand in China and Europe was improving, with Hong Kong sales stabilising.

Bosses said sales for the whole group had grown 1.2 per cent over the latest half year, with growth in all brands, in particular prestige and luxury.

Jon Cox, luxury goods analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, told Reuters: Most people expect the watch market to improve in the second half of the year, but they dont expect any fireworks.
A budget champagne sorbet looks to have landed Aldi with a nasty five-year hangover.

The German discounter has incurred the wrath of Frances champagne region for taking the name of champagne in vain.

It landed the group in a five-year legal dispute that only now looks to be coming to a head.

Punch drunk: Aldi has incurred the wrath of Frances champagne region for taking the name of champagne in vain

The Champagner sorbet dessert contained 12 per cent bubbly and featured a picture of a champagne bottle and flute.

As a result the French appealed to EU judges to protect it, and have accused the German group of demeaning their fiercely protected product. The battle has made it all the way to Germanys Federal Court. Now EU Court of Justice advocate-general Manuel Campos Sanchez-Bordona says Aldi may have been trying to hijack the drinks good name.

Champagne is made only from grapes grown and harvested in the Champagne area of France.

Sanchez-Bordona said: By their use and the name Champagner Sorbet the producer and the distributor wants to bring to the consumers mind the quality and the prestige associated with this protected label, and extend it to the sorbet.
Beverley Priestley was just 21 when she married the only man she would ever love and moved to his farm in the tough, drought-prone county of NSW's far north to start a family and build a life.

That life has been shattered by a bitter family feud that has driven a wedge between her children and now the 77-year-old grandmother faces losing the only home she has known for more than 50 years to her own son.

The Priestley family's tale reads like a Shakesparean tragedy of love lost and regained, betrayal and family loyalties tested and - ultimately - tragedy.

Beverley Priestley, pictured with her eldest son Duncan, who is now 55 and is threatening to kick her off the family property, leaving her devastated

The NSW Court of Appeal on June 27 reached its verdict in the long-running battle over Salt Glen, the 8,500-hectare cattle and crops property that has been in the Priestley family since 1908.

It handed the $3 million property at Carinda, 650km northwest of Sydney, to Mrs Priestley's eldest son, Duncan, as the sole owner despite evidence it was against the dying wishes of the family's pastoralist patriarch and her ex-husband, Gordon.

Duncan Priestley, who claims he is the only family member to have worked the farm as his father would have wanted, has vowed to kick his mother and siblings off the property because of the acrimonious family quarrel.

'I don't know if I will ever be able to face him again - what he's done here - I am so worried I can't sleep and can't think about anything but losing Salt Glen,' Mrs Priestley told Daily Mail Australia.

Mrs Priestley was left the Salt Glen property when her ex-husband died, but now one of her children has been awarded the property and she needs financial help to fight him

The 8,500 acre property, highlighted on this map with previous family titles, has been the woman's home for over 55 years

She is devastated her son would want to 'ruin' her after she did her best to 'give him everything', and is now taking antidepressants.

Duncan Priestley did not respond to Daily Mail Australia's request to tell his side of the Salt Glen property dispute.

The dispute has been raging for years in the NSW Supreme Court and Family Court of Australia.

Mrs Priestly and her two other children fear that the latest ruling will be the last straw, unless they can raise $35,000 their lawyers said is needed to launch a bid to take the case to the High Court.

Gordon Priestly came to own Salt Glen after his family won the property in a land ballot in 1908. Beverley moved in when the couple married.

The family troubles peaked in 2004 and ended in the couple splitting and the family lands being split between their children. In 2012 Gordon died and the dispute flared up again.

Duncan Priestley, 55, took his mother, as executor of his fathers estate, to court for unpaid costs for years he spent working on Salt Glen, and a share in the property's water licence after the property was left solely to Mrs Priestley.

Duncan claims his father told him in 1986: 'One day all of this will all be yours' - meaning he would pass ownership of the property to him exclusively, according to court documents.

Duncan says he quit his well-paid job as a surveyor and helped his father with jobs on the farm because he believed it would be given to him when his father died, and he would not have to share it with his mother, his brother Christopher, 53, or his sister Claire, 48.

Mrs Priestley says she needs $35,000 to be able to lodge an appeal of the NSW Supreme Court's decision to give the property to her son

Mrs Priestley's daughter Claire, pictured here with Gordon Priestley, is willing to fight for her mum and to preserve her father's final wishes

Duncan, pictured with his daughter Catherine, was given two properties debt-free before his father died, including Caramba, which was bought for him when he was 18

Timeline of the Priestley family feud 1908 - Priestley family won Salt Glen in local ballot 1961 - Beverley and Gordon Priestley were married and moved to Salt Glen 1962- Son Duncan was born 1964- Second son Christopher was born 1965 - Daughter Claire was born 1986- Caramba bought for Duncan 1988 - Riverlands bought for Christopher 2004 - Mr and Mrs Priestley divorce and children are split in their support 2004 - Mr Priestley changes his will to leave the property to Duncan 2007 - Mr Priestley reconciles with ex-wife and children, changes will to four equal parts 2012 - Mr Priestley changes will again leaving everything to his ex-wife 2012 - Mr Priestley dies 2017 - Duncan Priestley wins appeal over estate and is awarded the family property Salt Glen by the court Advertisement

So when his father Gordon called him to his death bed in February 2012 and told him the farm was to be shared and he was to 'look after' his family, he was furious.

In an affidavit tendered to the court, Duncan Priestley reveals a heated argument he had with his father after finding out the property would be shared.

'We have already paid them out once,' Duncan said to his dying father.

'I've kicked them off (the land) once and I'll kick them off again,' he said.

'No you wouldn't,' Gordon said.

But his son was adamant: 'Bloody oath I will.'

'You look after them,' the dying father said.

'Bulls**t,' Duncan replied, and left.

Gordon and Beverley Priestley divorced in 2004 after the heat of te family feud became too much. Mrs Priestley had sided against her husband and son Duncan and with her two younger children which ultimately ended her marriage.

As part of the settlement, the greater Salt Glen lands were split into three.

Duncan supported his father throughout the proceedings, paying his legal fees and other expenses.

Claire, Christopher and their mother took on the family irrigation lands while Duncan and his father ran Salt Glen and the adjoining property, Caramba.

Claire believes she and her brothers, Chris pictured, were given a great childhood

Brothers Chris, left, and Duncan, right, with their father Gordon Priestley, centre, on the family farm Salt Glen in happier times

Mrs Priestley with her 'pet' kangaroo Benny

Claire told Daily Mail Australia Caramba was bought for Duncan in the early 1980s when he was 18 and May Glen in Gilgandra was bought for him around 2000.

'The farm was divided. Chris and I got the good irrigation country but had to take on the family debt, which was $2.3million, and Duncan and dad ran the rest,' Claire said.

'That's when dad changed his will and told Duncan he would get Salt Glen.'

'He was in dad's ear all the time telling him how we were doing everything wrong,' Claire said.

A photograph of the Priestley sons helping their father in the yard - Claire said the whole family pitched in with farm work - not just her eldest brother

Gordon went to his lawyer's office to have the irrigation lands signed over to Christopher and to give Duncan full control of Caramba, according to court papers.

The lawyer, Roger Butler, phoned Duncan to let him know the changes had been made, the conversation was tendered in an affidavit to the court.

'Duncan, it's Roger Butler here. Your father and I have just settled all the land transactions and transferred the rest of Caramba to you. He has also changed his will so that everything goes to you. Apart from the land swap with Christopher, everything is wrapped up.'

Mr and Mrs Priestley in happier times, pictured with middle child Chris

Gordon and Beverly Priestley remained friendly after their divorce, and by 2007 he had reconciled with Claire, Chris and his ex-wife. He then changed his will into four even parts.

But he didn't tell Duncan.

'He always acted like he was an only child,' Mrs Priestley said of her eldest son Duncan, pictured

Mrs Priestley says that before her ex-husband died he asked her if she would be buried with him as husband and wife.

'He is the only man I ever loved,' Mrs Priestley said.

'When he asked me if I would be with him I said yes, so they dug his hole deep enough for me to go in there too.

'I had to get a helicopter out to his funeral because I was flooded in  but I went,' she said.

Mrs Priestley is living with her son Chris, pictured, and daughter Claire in the family home they grew up in, pictured behind

The dispute with her eldest child has left Mrs Priestley devastated.

'After all this it is too late to reconcile with Duncan. For years I have tried. I have called him on his birthday and other things but he doesn't pick up the phone.

'Now he has taken my home, and we can't come back from this,' she said.

Chris Priestley standing with his Landcruiser says he is willing to sell to help his mother's legal battle

Family friend Sharyn Greenaway set up a GoFundMe to help Mrs Priestley raise the funds to try to go to the High Court to fight the latest ruling in favor of Duncan.

'It was the straw that broke the camel's back - after suffering through drought, flood and the banks foreclosing on some of their property - this was too much,' she said.

'Gordon would be irate at what Duncan is trying to do to his family,' said Mrs Greenaway, who has known the family for 30 years.

Gordon Priestley in the cattle yards before his death

Claire and her father, pictured here long after the family feud of 2004 was forgotten by most members of the family

Mr and Mrs Priestley are to be buried together - after reconciling and admitting their love for each other before Gordon's death

Claire Priestley standing in front of the property she wants to save for her mother

Mr Priestley, pictured, wanted to leave a will with four equal shares, but after his youngest two children ran into problems with the bank it was decided it would be safer going to Beverley

Claire said the family was always close when the children were growing up.

'Mum and dad worked hard and lived s**t so we could go to private schools, Duncan went to SHORE (Sydney Church of England Grammar School),'she said.

'When we were kids we all got along we had a wonderful childhood thanks to our parents.'

'But since he was 19 or 20 he has had this opinion that he deserved everything, that Chris and I didn't do enough to have any land.'

The grandmother, pictured here in yellow, had to fly in to her ex-husband's funeral when the lands around Salt Glen flooded in 2012

Mrs Priestley pictured with a family friend at Gordon's funeral

The coffin was placed on a land cruiser because of the flooding

Mrs Priestley's two youngest children have begun selling farming equipment and personal items to try to raise the money for an appeal.

'We will sell everything, our cars, the motorbike, we just need to fix this for mum,' Claire said. 'In the end it doesn't matter about me and Chris we could fend for ourselves but mum needs to stay here it is her home.'

The family's former irrigation lands pictured in 2012

Duncan supplied a list of costs to the court which showed he charged from $50 an hour for doing jobs for his father.

'He tried arguing that we did nothing,' Claire said. 'We just didn't write it down and expect our parents to pay.'

Mrs Priestley has until July 25 to give notice of appeal. Their legal representatives are asking for $35,000 to be put aside before they begin.

The ruling that has landed Duncan Priestley with the $3million property came after he appealed an earlier court ruling that Beverley should pay him $293,071.98, plus interest, for back pay and a share in the family water licence.

'I just don't understand how one judge can find he is owed $300,000 and then in an appeal he is given the farm which is worth millions,' Claire said.

'Or how the judges can overlook mum who has lived here for most of her life and will have nowhere to go.'
He stole bananas from elephants, slept in the roof cavity of a manager's hut and used coin-fed barbecues to cook himself meals.

When his food supply was cut off he tore the head off a Galapagos tortoise and ate its insides.

The real story of fugitive double killer Malcolm Naden's months hiding out in a zoo in central western New South Wales can be told for the first time with the publication of a new book.

Naden, who was one of Australia's most wanted men while on the run from June 2005 to March 2012, was spotted several times camping out at Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo.

Scroll down for video

Fugitive killer Malcolm Naden upon his capture in 2012 after almost seven years on the run

Malcolm Naden is escorted by police at Manning Base Hospital on the mid-north NSW coast

CCTV footage of Malcolm Naden captured while he was on the run, wanted for two murders

Malcolm Naden after his capture near Gloucester, north of Newcastle, on March 22, 2012

But just how the former abattoir worker survived among the zoo's 1,000-odd animals during those weeks in late 2005 has remained largely unknown.

Now a security expert who came close to catching the fugitive has described hunting Naden through the zoo's 300 hectares armed with a pump-action shotgun, and confronting him face-to-face.

Daily Mail Australia can reveal how Naden was found hiding in the zoo, recounted for the first time in an exclusive extract from The Contractor, 'six true tales of counter terrorism', to be published on Tuesday.

The contractor of the title is 'Mike', a Melbourne builder who once worked for foreign and domestic intelligence organisations and now does occasional private security contracting jobs.

One of those freelance jobs, described in The Contractor, was to investigate a 'homeless person' believed to be living in the Western Plains Zoo in November 2005.

The job came through the logistics and security person at another zoo who is called Roger in the book. Roger told Mike there had been a series of 'strange incidents' at the zoo over the previous month.

The Contractor tells the story of the hunt for Malcolm Naden in Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo

Double killer and sex offender Malcolm Naden was on the run for almost seven years

Fugitive murderer Malcolm Naden camped out for weeks in Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo

Steak, sausages and eggs found outside the cabin where Malcolm Naden was captured in 2012

An intruder had been stealing feed, particularly bananas, from the elephant house. Uneaten and out-of-date food, including chicken rolls, was being taken from a dumpster behind the zoo's restaurant.

Coin-fed barbecues on the grounds were found still hot at 5am. Whoever was doing the stealing, cooking and camping seemed to be familiar with staff rosters too.

Feed bags from the elephant house were found behind the rhino enclosure, forming a bed. Chocolate milk containers and pie wrappers were found around the bedding.

Most alarmingly, Roger believed the intruder had been in his house, which was also on zoo grounds. Milk disappeared from a jug. Bread and Vegemite went missing.

Roger told Mike he had heard what sounded like a possum in the roof.

Mike learnt from Roger's cleaner Carole she had recently encountered a man in Roger's bedroom. He had just got out of the shower and asked her for a towel.

Double killer Malcolm John Naden was wanted by police from June 2005 to March 2012

Heavily-armed police hunt for fugitive killer Malcolm Naden during his seven years on the run

A Galapagos tortoise and hatchlings pictured at Dubbo's Taronga Western Plains Zoo

Killer Malcolm Naden is escorted under heavy police guard from Manning Base Hospital

Fugitive Malcolm Naden was found hiding in Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo in December 2005

The man told Carole: 'Oh I'm David, Roger's mate from Sydney - I'm staying with him for a few days.'

Roger had not seen David for almost a year. But he had been talking to him on the phone in his house.

The next morning Carole described 'David' to Mike. 'Medium height, quite muscly,' she said. 'Oh, and he's a black-fella - but I guess you know that?'

Armed with Carole's description of the brazen intruder and after making inquiries with Sydney police, Mike soon believed he was hunting Malcolm Naden.

Naden, a 32-year-old loner, was wanted over the June 2005 murder of his cousin's girlfriend Kristy Scholes and the disappearance six months earlier of his cousin Lateesha Nolan.

He was also wanted over the aggravated indecent assault of a 15-year-old girl. All the crimes had been committed in and around Dubbo, Naden's home town.

The hut at Rawdon Vale, near Gloucester, where Malcolm Naden was captured in 2012

Malcolm Naden murdered his cousin Lateesha Nolan, 24, at Sandy Beach near Dubbo

Malcolm Naden murdered Kristy Scholes, the girlfriend of his cousin, at a West Dubbo house

Malcolm Naden was sentenced to life for murdering Lateesha Nolan and Kristy Scholes

Mike began camping in the zoo grounds, armed with a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun and dressed in a camouflage ghillie suit.

From his observations it appeared the intruder had been splitting the sites where he cooked, ate and slept so if one were found it would not blow his whole cover.

Mike patrolled perimeter fences, followed footpads and left a can of Coke near a culvert he believed Naden was using as an access route. The next morning the can was opened and half full.

Ten days into the hunt staff found bacon and sausage cooking on a barbecue hotplate about 5am, along with a toasting bread bun. Next to the barbecue was a half-drunk can of Coke.

That afternoon, Mike and Roger were confronted at Dubbo's Commercial Hotel by a group of Aboriginal men who accused them of harassing their relative 'Mal'.

Mike is a 190cm tall (6' 3") 125kg (275 pound) former rugby league front-rower and bouncer who can handle himself. The threat did not last long.

The following exclusive extract from The Contractor picks up the story the next day.

This photograph of Malcolm Naden was used to identify him at Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo

EXTRACT: I spent all the next day at the zoo, first having the culvert beside the main entrance welded shut so no one could get through it. Then we laid fishing line across some of the main footpads - it wouldn't trap him, but I'd know if he'd been using that trail. By evening Roger and I were bushed. And hungry. So at around 10.40pm we left the zoo and headed for Dubbo KFC. We were almost there when Roger got an alarm alert on his mobile phone.

We U-turned fast and zipped back to the zoo, where the alert was telling us the breach was in the admin building, right at the main entrance. I told Roger what I was thinking as we drove: the zoo would be black, so he was to let me out in the darkness before he drove the extra 150 metres to the building with the alarm. We got to the main gate, where he slowed and let the Commodore roll just inside the gateway. I got out and it was a still, warm night, and I stalked to my left, along a cycle track, through some trees and past the hire centre where visitors can hire bikes for the day. I crossed the main car park in pitch-blackness. It was dark and quiet and very still. Roger continued motoring to the admin building, and as he slowed to a stop, he hit his high beams. Right in front of me, beside a large LPG tank against the admin building, a man stood up.

It was him.

I was unarmed, and so stunned that all I could do was say, 'Malcolm, it's me.'

Killer Malcom Naden captured on CCTV while on the run between June 2005 and March 2012

He was looking away from me at the time, at the car, but he quickly turned back. I don't know who was more scared - him or me. But we were three metres from one another and the way our eyes locked was primordial. The look we shared was one of mutual homicide - I was ready to kill him, because those eyes told me that was the only way he would allow himself to be caught.

My heart was in my throat, and he was out of there. I mean, this guy was quick. He ran straight into the bushes, and although I didn't have my shotgun with me, I gave chase into the bush. I had my two-way radio with me, and as I went further into the darkness I decided I should let Roger know where I was. I triggered the radio but I was panting so hard into it that Roger couldn't hear me.

'Get, here, now,' was the eventual command that he heard, as I gasped it out. Have I said that adrenaline hits me really hard?

He joined me in the bush and we gave chase through the parkland and came out in a large picnic and eating area where there were scores of tables and chairs and folded-down umbrellas in the middle of them. We had to check each one. We ran further along the entrance road, and then Roger said, 'There,' and I followed his finger, and there was a shape of a running man, now on the other side of the lake, disappearing into the bushes.

Fugitive Malcolm Naden, pictured after his capture in 2012, spent seven years on the run

Roger called the Dubbo police and the desk sergeant sent out a patrol. Two young female constables turned up and when they'd heard our story they told us that everything was under control and there was no evidence that Malcolm Naden was in the zoo. Roger argued with the more senior of the two, and she phoned her sergeant and told him we'd just seen Naden, and so the commander in charge of the night shift came on, demanding to speak to Roger. He proceeded to give my buddy a total bollocking. So I was standing there, watching where Malcolm Naden had run, hearing this police officer's voice bellow out of Roger's phone, telling him that Naden wasn't in the zoo.

But he was. I had now seen Malcolm Naden, face to face, in the zoo. To say I felt frustrated was an understatement.

We spent most of the night cruising the property, looking at the usual spots. I was ropeable, and I decided on a way to cut through the police attitude.

The following morning I swooped by the cafe and asked Carole if she could help me out at the zoo for half an hour. She said yes, and then I rang Dubbo Local Area Command and managed to get put through to the Dubbo detective handling homicides. I stated who I was and the male detective asked me if I was a police officer.

Malcolm Naden, pictured upon his capture, spent weeks hiding in Dubbo's zoo in late 2005

'No,' I said, and I introduced myself and continued, 'I want to report a sighting of a man wanted for questioning over the murder of Kristy Scholes - Malcolm Naden.'

He was sceptical until I told him I had two people who could identify Naden.

He came out with his offsider, and when he saw the picture I had of Naden, he wanted to know where I'd got it from. I told him it came from a fax machine. Then I turned to Carole, showed her the picture and asked her again to rank the image - on a scale of one to ten - in terms of likeness to the person she'd interrupted while cleaning Roger's house.

She said, 'Ten,' and now the detective asked her a few more questions, and got his notebook going.

I put up my hand too, and said, 'This man,' stabbing at the picture, 'was standing right there, beside that LPG tank, at 10.45pm last night. I was three metres from him, I called his name and he looked at me. That is the man.'

Now the detective, who knew all about Naden, wanted to dust Roger's house and get a fingerprint ID. He wanted proof. I asked him if the forensics person could come out in plain clothes. 'I believe Naden has that house under surveillance,' I said.

Fugitive Malcolm Naden slept near the rhinoceros enclosure at Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo

The forensics guy arrived in a plain car and in plain clothes, in the afternoon, after the detective had left. I called Roger and he came over from the admin block. The forensics man took a full set of Roger's prints. He scanned them into his laptop, and now they had a record of what Roger's prints looked like.

Next, we stood back and he dusted the surfaces around the house: kitchen, bathroom, living area and bedrooms. And when he switched on the blue light that illuminates the prints, we saw there were fresh prints all over the house! The forensics man showed me where Roger's prints were. But the majority were fresh and unknown.

I stood staring and the forensics man asked if I was all right. Roger was pale with shock. I remember him mouthing, What the f***, over and over, as he moved around this house he'd lived in for the last eight months. He was not in a good way.

They input the unknown prints into their system and there was a match: Malcolm Naden.

Naden's prints were all over the toilet seat and the cistern and the flush. They were around the bathroom sink, and yes, on the stand where the toothbrush and toothpaste was stored  I s*** you not, this creep had been using Roger's toothbrush!

Kristy Scholes, 24, was murdered by her boyfriend's cousin Malcolm Naden in June 2005

Naden's prints were all over the shower stall and on the towel rail.

But the worst of it was back where we'd started. In the kitchen.

Roger, the forensics guy, and I - we stood and looked at the fridge and pantry door. They were covered in hundreds of this person's pawprints. But what we were looking at was fingerprints around the pantry door handles, which was to be expected, but also fingerprints on the top of the pantry. I was confused, but then the forensics guy said, 'Look at this,' and opened the pantry doors. The Naden fingerprints led up each of the pantry's shelves, all the way to the ceiling. He'd been using the pantry as a ladder. But a ladder to where? We all looked up and saw fingerprints all over the trapdoor that led to the attic. We gawped, jaws to the floor.

This f***er was in the ceiling? Seriously?!

I struggled to get my head around what kind of psychosis or mental illness we were dealing with here. But as sick and weird as I felt, I didn't want to take one more step on this gig without a firearm in my hands.

Police hunting fugitive killer Malcolm Naden through bushland during his years on the run

I ducked out in the heat and pulled the shotgun from the boot of my Vitara, which I'd parked just outside the front door. I usually relied on a handgun in these situations, but I had to side with my American law enforcement friends on this point: if you don't know who you're dealing with, but you suspect they are off the charts of your comprehension, there is nothing more effective than a load of double-aught shot into the gap between you and the bad guy.

I pointed the shottie at the manhole and gestured for Roger to grab something. He came back with a broom, and the forensics guy brought through two chairs. I stood on one chair, just under the manhole, and Roger stood on the other, holding up the pointy end of the broom.

I nodded, and Roger pushed the cover upwards, and I leaned into the widening gap, muzzle-first.

My heart was beating up in my mouth and sweat ran down my back. We were all stressed out and ready for anything. I couldn't see Naden in that hole, so I whispered to Roger, 'Push it back,' and he gave the manhole cover a heave and flipped it back. Now there was some light in the attic.

'Come out, Malcolm, we're armed and the place is surrounded,' I said. 'If you want this to be peaceful, give me two knocks on the wood.'

There was silence, except for our panting. I thought Roger was going to have an infarction. His breath was rasping.

Malcolm Naden is escorted from Taree Local Court after his capture on March 22, 2012

I slid the reload slide back and forth, which makes a distinctive sound. 'I'm serious - you knock twice on wood or I start shooting, Malcolm.'

Slowly, I put my foot on the kitchen bench and stood up, raising my head higher into the attic. The Remington 870 had a tactical flashlight clipped on the underside of the barrel, giving me good light in that dark space. I looked around 360 degrees and no one was up there. But in the middle of the attic the flashlight picked up a sheet of plywood covered with a doona, a pillow and some empty water bottles. And as if to confirm we were dealing with a cheeky bastard, some magazines.

I pulled my head down and told the others it was clear. I didn't know what to say to Roger, so I avoided his eyes as I stepped down to the kitchen floor. All of us in that room were gasping for breath, and a little wide-eyed.

Roger took my place in the manhole, and we listened to a muffled roar. 'The c*** took my Men's Health magazine?' he yelled. 'Who is this f***er?'

Indeed. The Naden legend was just beginning.

Fugitive Malcolm Naden hid out in Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo among about 1000 animals

In the days following the discovery of Naden's fingerprints in Roger's house heavily-armed police descended on Dubbo and regular patrols of the zoo began.

As Naden's food supply was reduced he resorted to desperate measures. On December 21 a veterinarian saw the fugitive running from the Galapagos tortoise enclosure.

Naden had torn off the head of a tortoise and sucked out its guts. 'He had this place wired, and now - to show us how annoyed he was with the food being cut off - he was killing and eating animals,' Mike says in the book.

Two days later the zoo was closed as heavily-armed police went in to sweep the grounds. Naden was not found.

For some weeks, staff continued reported clothing going missing. The elephant house was still being raided for food.

Eventually, Naden moved on. There were sightings at Lightning Ridge in far north-west NSW and at Kempsey on the mid-north coast. In December 2011 he shot a police officer at Nowendoc, on the Northern Tablelands.

Naden was finally captured in a cabin at Rawdon Vale, about 30km west of Gloucester, north of Newcastle, on March 22, 2012.

The following year Naden pleaded guilty to offences including the murders of Lateesha Nolan and Kristy Scholes. He was sentenced to life in jail.

The Contractor, as told to Mark Abernethy, is published on July 25 by Macmillan Australia RRP $29.99
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he will never visit the United States while he is in office, and adds that he has 'seen America and it's lousy.'

Duterte delivered his latest verbal attack on the United States after he was asked in a news conference Friday to react to a threat by a U.S. congressman, Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, to lead a protest if Duterte accepts President Donald Trump's invitation to visit the White House.

'There will never be a time that I will go to America during my term, or even thereafter,' Duterte said to reporters on Friday.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he will never visit the United States while he is in office, and adds that he has 'seen America and it's lousy'

'So what makes that guy think I'll go to America? I've seen America, and it's lousy.'

McGovern held a hearing in Congress on Thursday criticizing Duterte's drug war that has resulted in a mass killing of more than 7,000 suspected addicts and dealers in the Philippines.

The death have been carried out by both the Philippine National Police and unknown vigilantes.

Many human right groups have criticized the leader's tendency to target poor areas and lack of due process.

Duterte delivered his latest verbal attack on the United States after he was asked in a news conference Friday to react to a threat by a U.S. congressman, Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern (right), to lead a protest if Duterte accepts President Donald Trump's invitation to visit the White House

Back in April, United States president Donald Trump invited Duterte to the country for a visit

In his opening remarks, McGovern said: 'We should be clear what an extrajudicial killing or execution is: It is the purposeful killing of a person by governmental authorities without the sanction of any judicial proceeding.

'No arrest. No warrant. No judge. No jury. Simply, murder.'

McGovern was most pressed to bring up the Filipino president's human rights violations.

He added: 'If he comes, I will lead the protest. We ought to be on the side of advocating for human rights, not explaining them away.'

Duterte retorted that he too could investigate the United States. 'You're investigating me and the internal affairs of my country? I'm investigating you, and I will investigate you, and I will expose it to the world what you did to the Filipino, especially to the Moro Filipino,' Duterte said

Duterte retorted that he too could investigate the United States.

'You're investigating me and the internal affairs of my country? I'm investigating you, and I will investigate you, and I will expose it to the world what you did to the Filipino, especially to the Moro Filipino,' Duterte said.

He was most likely referring to the Battle of Bud Dajo in 1906 in the island of Jolo where American troops killed more than 600 Moro people.

Duterte's remark's indicate he may not be accepting the invitation from President Trump.
An Al-Qaeda suspect linked to a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist has been brought to Philadelphia from Spain to face terrorism charges in federal court, despite President Donald Trump's promises to send terror suspects to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Ali Charaf Damache, 52, of Algeria, appeared in court Friday and will be arraigned next month on charges that he conspired with two American women and a high school honors student from Maryland, court officials said.

A 2011 indictment accused him of aiding terrorism, including the plan to kill Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who depicted the prophet Muhammad as a dog.

The plot never materialized.

The Trump administration's decision to bring him to the United States marks a break from Attorney General Jeff Sessions' oft-stated belief that Guantanamo Bay is the best place for 'these kinds of dangerous criminals.'

An Al-Qaeda suspect linked to a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist has been brought to Philadelphia from Spain to face terrorism charges in federal court. The suspect, Ali Charaf Damache, is seen the above March 13, 2010 file photo

In a surprise move, Damache was extradited to the US despite President Donald Trump's promises to send terror suspects to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay

Damache, 52, of Algeria, appeared in court Friday and will be arraigned next month on charges that he conspired with two American women and a high school honors student from Maryland

A 2011 indictment accused him of aiding terrorism, including the plan to kill Swedish artist Lars Vilks (right), who depicted the prophet Muhammad as a dog

During the presidential campaign, Trump said he not only wanted to keep the detention center in Cuba open after the Obama administration had long fought to close it, but promised to 'load it up with some bad dudes.'

Obama's Justice Department maintained the US civilian court system was the most legally sound forum in which to prosecute terror suspects captured in the US and overseas and cited hundreds of convictions in New York and other cities as proof.

Yet Sessions and other Republicans have often expressed concern that civilian courts afford legal protections to which suspected terrorists are not entitled.

He has warned valuable intelligence can be lost if a detainee is advised of his or her right to remain silent and to have a lawyer.

President Donald Trump's (left) administration's decision to bring him to the United States marks a break from Attorney General Jeff Sessions' (right) oft-stated belief that Guantanamo Bay is the best place for 'these kinds of dangerous criminals'

The Justice Department did not say what led officials to send Damache to federal court or whether it signals a shift in Sessions' views.

The attorney general made no mention of the case during a Friday speech in Philadelphia on sanctuary cities and fighting violent crime.

'The individual involved in this case was indicted in 2011 in federal district court,' the department said in a statement.

'The United States has consistently used the extradition process to obtain indicted fugitives who are overseas, so that they can stand trial in our federal courts.'

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who long defended the prosecution of terrorism suspects in civilian court, said Friday that the Trump administration's tough rhetoric on Guantanamo was 'political and counterproductive.'

'It's good to see that the president and the Attorney General now seem to share my belief in the effectiveness of the world's greatest judicial system and its ability to keep the American people safe,' he said.

Damache married a Colorado woman the day she traveled to Ireland to meet him in 2009.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez eventually helped the FBI investigate the terror cell, which included a Pennsylvania woman who called herself 'Jihad Jane' online.

Damache, known as 'Black Flag' had been fighting extradition after his 2015 arrest in Spain.

Lawyer Joseph Mancano, appointed Friday to represent him, said he did not have any immediate comment.

Colleen LaRose, a 53-year-old Pennsylvania woman, admitted conspiring to kill Vilks in 2011. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison in January 2014

Raped as a child, LaRose ran away from home to become a prostitute at 13 and fell into militant Islam for a 'sense of belonging'

LaRose became radicalized after converting to Islam in 2007 and posted under the name Jihad Jane on militant Islamic websites

Officials said that Damache joined co-defendants Mohammad Hassan Khalid, Colleen 'Jihad Jane' LaRose and Paulin-Ramirez in forming a cell that recruited men online to wage jihad in South Asia and Europe, and to recruit women with western passports to travel through Europe in support of the cause.

LaRose is serving a 10-year prison term and Paulin-Ramirez eight years after pleading guilty to providing material aid to terrorism while Khalid, whose family had immigrated from Pakistan, was sentenced to five years.

Paulin-Ramirez took her 6-year-old son with her to Waterford, where he was taught to be a warrior and hate non-Muslims.

Damache married a Colorado woman the day she traveled to Ireland to meet him in 2009. Jamie Paulin-Ramirez (above) eventually helped the FBI investigate the terror cell, which included LaRose

Paulin-Ramirez is now serving eight years in prison after pleading guilty to providing material aid to terrorism

The boy also endured physical abuse during the four-month stay, according to prosecutors who showed a video at her 2014 sentencing of him reciting inflammatory verses and thrusting a toy weapon as his mother laughed.

She told the judge she hoped the boy would forget what she put him through.

A defense expert testified that she had a twisted view of the religion, culled from extremist postings.

Damache's arraignment was scheduled for August 28.

It's unclear what the case could mean for future terror cases or for the future of Guantanamo Bay.

Sessions, his deputy Rod Rosenstein and other administration officials visited the prison earlier this month to get a look at current operations.

Support for it now would represent a reversal of eight years of efforts to close the detention center, which opened on the base in January 2002 to hold and interrogate suspected enemy combatants.

The Obama administration sent no new detainees there, and though it didn't fulfill a promise to shut it down, whittled the population from 242 to 41.

That includes seven currently facing charges by military commissions.

All are in the pretrial stage, including the five men charged with planning and aiding in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
A New Jersey home that has been vacant since the FBI arrested a family of undercover Russian spies living there is heading for sale.

Vladimir and Lydia Guryev lived in the home in Montclair, New Jersey, under the names Richard and Cynthia Murphy before they were arrested in 2010 along with eight other spies accused of leading double lives, complete with false passports, secret code words, fake names, invisible ink and encrypted radio.

Investor Jeremy MacDonald is planning to renovate and then try to sell the home. He says he hopes it will sell for about $700,000 after doing about $200,000 in renovations, including repairing its yellow, chipped paint and dealing with overgrown bushes.

Vladimir and Lydia Guryev lived in the home in Montclair under the names Richard and Cynthia Murphy before they were arrested in 2010. Investor Jeremy MacDonald is planning to renovate and then try to sell the home

'I didn't even know it used to be a Russian spy house,' MacDonald said.

'The realtor I'm currently working with showed me all the news articles about its history.'

The parents of two young daughters had pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country and were deported to Russia in exchange for four people convicted of betraying Moscow to the West being let out of prison there.

Their story partially inspired the FX drama 'The Americans`,' about two undercover Russian spies that live in the U.S. with two young children.

Lydia Guryev worked as an accountant in New York and was accused of using her financial contacts to pass information to Moscow.

Their story partially inspired the FX drama 'The Americans,' about two undercover Russian spies that live in the U.S. with two young children

The parents of two young daughters had pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country and were deported to Russia in exchange for four people convicted of betraying Moscow to the West being let out of prison there.

MacDonald said that he doesn't expect the Russian spy connection to help or hurt the sale

MacDonald said that he doesn't expect the Russian spy connection to help or hurt the sale.

'It's out of the FBI's hands and it's not foreclosed. This has been an ongoing story for the past seven years, but now its coming to an end,' he said to NJ.com.

Neighbors said that they are happy that the house will be fixed up after sitting empty for so long. One called it an 'eyesore.'

'Montclair is excited that this house will be renovated soon and lived in again, bringing a new family to the neighborhood,' said Brian Wilde, Montclair's head of code enforcement.
A former Al-Qaeda affiliate took control of the northern Syrian city of Idlib on Sunday two days after agreeing to end fighting with a rebel group, a monitor said.

"Ahrar al-Sham (the rebel group) withdrew from the city of Idlib which is now under the control of (the jihadist) Hayat Tahrir al-Sham," Rami Abdel Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.

This week saw fierce clashes between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham across much of Idlib province, including at the key Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, before a truce was announced late Friday.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


It was the ultimate humiliation. The 60-strong garrison of highly trained Royal Marines were frogmarched with their hands up through Port Stanley and forced to lie face-down on a road with the Argentinian conquerors of the Falkland Islands strutting victoriously over them.

Press photographs of their capitulation were flashed around the world and were printed here under banner headlines such as 'Surrender' and 'Shame' alongside reports that the Marines had run up the white flag with barely a shot fired.

Even the official history of the conflict, written by Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, suggests that their resistance was little more than token  with an Argentinian commando killed and several more wounded before the order to surrender was given.

It was the ultimate humiliation. The 60-strong garrison of highly trained Royal Marines were frogmarched with their hands up through Port Stanley

But now, 35 years after the triumphant end of the Falklands War, a new book dramatically rewrites the fall of Stanley as a modern version of the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879  where 150 troops held off more than 4,000 Zulu warriors in South Africa.

Military historian Ricky Phillips has interviewed soldiers and officers from both sides of the conflict, pored over diaries and previously unseen documents and spoken to Falkland Islanders.

His remarkable conclusion is that the small party of Royal Marines mounted a brave and fierce rearguard action that, he estimates, cost the lives of up to 100 Argentinian invaders without a single British casualty.

According to Phillips's book, The First Casualty, the battle for Port Stanley raged for three hours until Governor Sir Rex Hunt ordered the Marines to lay down their weapons to prevent civilian loss of life. He believes the Argentinians wanted to hush up their casualties for propaganda purposes and even suggests the British, keen to gain international support, colluded in the cover-up. Indeed, it was never reported that they had fired 6,462 rounds of ammunition and 12 anti-tank missiles.

Phillips writes that the garrison's first inkling of the forthcoming invasion came at 3.30pm on April 1, 1982, when Hunt read a telegram from the Foreign Office in London.

Heroic return: Royal Marines march to retake Port Stanley in June

He summoned his two commanding officers, outgoing Major Gary Noott and his relief, the incoming Major Norman, with typical understatement: 'We have apparently reliable evidence that an Argentine task force will gather off Cape Pembroke early tomorrow morning, April 2. You will wish to make your dispositions accordingly.'

Quickly, the Marines, officially known as Naval Party 8901, gathered in the bar of their ramshackle barracks at Moody Brook. Initially, they dismissed it as an April Fools' Day joke. Marine Stephen Brown recalled: 'Every April 1, the new section gets told the Argentines are going to invade. I was convinced they would all start laughing in seconds they didn't.'

Maj Norman encouraged his men, telling them they would be facing a conscript army. 'You are the Green Berets,' he told them stiffly. 'That means you are going to knock seven shades of s*** out of them.'

A cheer went up. 'Let's get 'em,' roared the defenders. But Corporal Nick Williams had reservations. 'I realised we didn't stand a chance. I thought we were all going to die in the morning,' he said. 'We could have walked away, but it was what we had all signed on for. Now it was a case of getting out there and waiting for it. That's what courage is about.'

There have been rumours for some years that the Royal Marines put up a spirited defence. Now the author has pieced together the chain of events from eyewitness accounts. First the Marines deployed into six-man sections. The battle plan was to meet the enemy with brutal and sustained violence to cause maximum casualties. Then the defenders would fall back section by section to Government House, where they would fight until they were overrun.

Major Gary Noott recalled: 'It was obvious the opposition could, and would, come with sufficiently large forces to preclude prolonged, organised resistance. In other words, any thought of winning was impractical; it was merely a question of how long we could resist before being overwhelmed. Quite how long that would be remained variable but the outcome was in little doubt.'

The battle began at about 6am when a contingent of 84 Argentine commandos attacked the Moody Brook barracks in the hope of killing the British garrison in their beds. The Marines had long since left.

Former Marine Jim Fairfield, who had left the corps, married a local girl and settled in Stanley, was baking bread when news of the impending invasion reached him.

Immediately he pulled out his old green beret and re-enlisted to defend his new home and family. 'The early morning sky lit up with tracer rounds and phosphorous grenades as well as heavy machine-gun and small-arms fire,' he said. 'It only lasted ten minutes but it seemed much longer.'

Argentinian forces during the fierce battle in April 1982

A few minutes later, in the murky dawn, the Marines watched the Argentine armada steam into view. The bow doors of the giant landing ship Cabo San Antonio opened and a swarm of 21 amtrac troop carriers emerged, each carrying 28 men. A landing craft with another 40 enemy on board headed up a narrow strip of water which led into the heart of Stanley.

On the outskirts of the town, a Marine anti-tank section had dug in and used their rockets to take out the lead amtrac vehicle.

Marine Stephen Brown recalled: 'I said, 'Let's get it' and fired and hit it. There was a flash and then the smoke started to come out as she brewed up.'

The landing craft was also hit. A hole was punched just below the water line sending the boat plunging to the bottom. Local fireman Neville Bennett wrote in his diary: 'What the hell was that? The governor had said (on the radio) a boat had come in through the narrows and was firing on Government House. No it wasn't. Something had blown up in the narrows. It was a big explosion magnified by the stillness of the morning.'

As the sections fell back to Government House as planned, fire from the black-clad Argentine commandos began to rip into the timber and glass building and stun grenades were thrown at the Marines in an effort to disable them.

Shortly after 6.30am, Argentinian snatch squads ran into the grounds, four abreast, making easy pickings for the defenders. Marine Andy Macdonald recounted: 'I fired about 30 rounds at targets from 30ft to 260ft. I know I took down two or three guys at least.'

Fairfield said: 'I was amazed at how calm I was. I went into autopilot: quick aimed fire and movement. Two rounds, change position; acquire new target, two or three more rounds. A great weight of fire went down in a short space of time and I saw the enemy take several casualties. The words 'turkey shoot' flashed through my mind. There were lots of targets and I'm a good shot.'

The Argentines fell back to the rocky ridge where they were silhouetted against the morning sky, easy prey for sniper Geordie Gill who singled out a section leader.

He explained: 'On my third shot I saw the guy go down. He slid over a rock, falling in full view. His mate stuck his head out and I got him, too. Then Corporal Terry Pares said he could see a radio operator and fired off ten rounds and I saw the guy fall and lay writhing on his back.'

British artillery on the Falklands Island during the war in 1982

A heavy machine gun opened up on the Marines, but it, too, was silenced. Marine Graham Evans recalled the snipers' success. He said: 'At one stage we had wounded 11 and killed five. We were hitting them hard.'

Sir Rex Hunt knew the Marines would fight to the death but also knew the civilian islanders' lives were at risk. At about 8am he agreed to talk to the Argentine commander, Admiral Busser. He ordered his men to lay down their arms at 9.15am. He said: 'I didn't use the word surrender as I knew it was not in their vocabulary.'

The defeated Marines, humiliatingly made to lie face-down in the road, feared they were going to be executed by their conquerors.

Sergeant Mark Gibbs, from Portsmouth, who was just 22 and had been on the island for only two days, said: 'I was quite surprised we weren't neck-shot. I honestly believed we were going to be bumped off.'

Instead, they were taken off the island, handed over to the Uruguayans in Montevideo then returned home to Brize Norton. By then, the headlines had passed into history and most of the garrison returned to take back the islands as part of the Falklands Task Force.

Sgt Gibbs added: 'What we did that day was swept under the carpet. It was as if it never happened. I've never been an emotional person but it's nice to know the truth is finally coming out.

'I want Joe Public to see it and not write us off as a bunch of cowards without knowing what we had done. That made me feel pretty sick at the time. We fought a bloody good action that day and we know it.'

I honestly believed we were going to be bumped off.

Phillips says the real story of the Marines' fierce resistance was deliberately suppressed by both sides. Keen for a propaganda victory, the Argentinian invaders were ordered to burn their dead. Meanwhile, Mrs Thatcher's Government wanted to galvanise international opinion  and did not want the story of a blood-soaked firefight to complicate its narrative of unprovoked Argentinian aggression. Ultimately it suited Britain to portray itself as having been taken by surprise by a military junta.

So effective was the cover-up that commanding officer Major Mike Norman saw his official report locked in a cupboard and conveniently forgotten. Norman nominated five of his detachment for military medals and 12 others for mentions in his dispatches. None was granted. A later bid by the Falkland Islanders to award their own medals to the Marine defenders was shelved  and the myth was perpetuated.

Jim Fairfield, the retired Marine who 're-enlisted' for the morning, was subsequently awarded the British Empire Medal  as a civilian  for his actions. When Sir Rex Hunt presented the award, Jim said that he hoped the other Marines would in time receive their own medals. 'They bloody should do,' Hunt whispered quietly.

Sir Rex, who died in 2012, later wrote in his memoirs: 'It is important to me personally this story gets told as it happened, since I suspect there are those who would rather it wasn't.'

Tony Pollard, a professor of conflict history at Glasgow University and an expert on the Falklands, said: 'This book succeeds in being an important work as it tells for the first time the full story of the fight to defend the islands.

'There are numerous books on the Falklands War, but most reduce this vital episode down to a few paragraphs before moving on to the better-known battles following the landing of the British task force.'

Phillips agrees. 'You're talking about dead men, burned bodies and effectively a cover-up so it's bound to cause some upset. But this was this country's second Rorke's Drift, in my opinion.

'The men who were there that day, Marines, Argentine commandos and Falkland Islanders, have told me my book is an accurate version of what really happened.

'When a brave man stands up and tells you with tears in his eyes that you have given him and his comrades their dignity back, you know you've done the right thing.'
Former Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush slammed his party on Saturday for failing to criticize President Donald Trump amid revelations about Russia's meddling in US politics.

Speaking at a cultural festival in New York's Central Park, Bush said that the GOP was hypocritical for its soft treatment of Trump even though it pilloried Barack Obama for not punishing Russia hard enough for interfering in the 2016 election.

'If your opponent does things that  your head explodes on  then when your guy does the same thing, have the same passion to be critical,' Bush told attendees at Ozy Fest.

Bush's remarks at the event, which is hosted by the digital news magazine Ozy, were reported by the New York Post.

Former Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush (seen above in New York on Saturday) slammed his party on Saturday for failing to criticize President Donald Trump amid revelations about Russia's meddling in US politics

Bush appeared on a panel with comedienne Samantha Bee (center), billionaire businessman Mark Cuban (second from left), and Carlos Watson (far right) at Ozy Fest 2017 in New York's Central Park on Saturday

In December, then-President Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russians over what he said was their involvement in hacking last year's US presidential election, allegations Moscow flatly denies.

The US authorities seized two Russian diplomatic compounds, one in Maryland and another on Long Island, at the same time.

Moscow did not retaliate, saying it would wait to see if relations improved under the incoming president, Trump.

Last month, it was reported in The Washington Post that Trump was moving to return the compounds to Moscow.

Bush said that the GOP was hypocritical for its soft treatment of Trump even though it pilloried Barack Obama (seen above in Baden-Baden, Germany, on May 25) for not punishing Russia hard enough for meddling in the 2016 election

The Kremlin is now demanding that it hand back those compounds while threatening US diplomatic property in Moscow, the daily Kommersant newspaper reported on Friday.

At the time, Republicans slammed Obama's response as insufficient.

The Obama administration formally accused Russia in October of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

Obama also ordered the seizure of two Russian diplomatic compounds, one in Maryland (above) and another on Long Island, at the same time

The other compound in Long Island is seen above. The Kremlin is now demanding that it hand back those compounds while threatening US diplomatic property in Moscow

In December, Obama ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention in the election and to deliver a report before he left office on Jan. 20.

Following a Washington Post report last month about the Obama administration's responses to the Russian matter, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, criticized the Obama administration for not taking earlier and tougher action against Russia.

Bush, who appeared on a panel with comedienne Samantha Bee and billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, also lamented the lack of civility in modern-day politics.

'Now, strength is measured by how you insult people,' Bush, who ended his 2016 presidential campaign after poor finishes in early primaries, told the crowd.

'Reject it, because we're never going to solve problems that way.'
Police are halfway through building a steel fortress around Sydney's main police buildings in response to terror threats.

The Parramatta headquarters, Sydney Police Centre in Surry Hills and the Goulburn police academy are in the midst of the $25 million security upgrade, The Daily Telegraph reported.

It is in direct response to the 2015 murder of police accountant Curtis Cheng outside the Parramatta headquarters, as well as a spike in global terror attacks and homegrown terror threats.

Pictures have emerged of new concrete barriers being installed in central Sydney just outside the scene of a deadly terrorist attack

A total of twelve concrete barriers now line the busy pedestrian plaza after concerns it may be susceptible to a vehicle-ramming terror attack

A fortified foyer is being constructed in the Surry Hills building to protect against weapon attacks

The Parramatta headquarters will get new secure control areas, a new guardhouse and a revamped foyer, and weapons and control room.

A fortified foyer is being constructed in the Surry Hills building to protect against weapon attacks and a ring of 60 stainless steel bollards will shield its Goulburn St entrance to prevent a vehicle-ramming terror attack, similar to those in London, Stockholm and Nice.

Heavily-armed special constables and metal detectors will be positioned at the building's entrance during construction.

NSW Deputy Commissioner Jeff Loy said it was 'disheartening' that such measures had to be taken.

'The security upgrades in relation to those three major locations is in essence because of the threat, in particular that police and members in the military have been identified globally as a terrorist target,' he told News Corp.

'It is a shame that we have to do this. It is disheartening that society has this inflicted upon it - the extra burden of terrorism activity.'

The Parramatta headquarters will get new secure control areas, a new guardhouse and a revamped foyer, and weapons and control room

Parramatta shooting victim Curtis Cheng (left) with family. Mr Cheng was shot outside NSW Police Headquarters in Parramatta in 2015

A memorial plaque to fallen NSW Police employee Curtis Cheng is seen at NSW Police headquarters in Sydney

The Surry Hills building will get a ring of 60 stainless steel bollards to shield its Goulburn St entrance to prevent a vehicle-ramming terror attack

The academy in Goulburn now features a perimeter fence with security gates, extra security personnel and a guard house.

The Australian Federal Police will also install 53 stainless steel bollards, at a cost of $130,000, out the front of their NSW headquarters on Goulburn St. They will be spaced 1.2m apart.

Local police stations around Sydney and some regional buildings will get more CCTV and new safety barriers on station counters, as part of a general upgrade of police security in Sydney.

It comes after new concrete barriers were installed in Martin Place next to the Lindt Cafe on Friday afternoon, the scene of a deadly terrorist attack in 2014.

A total of twelve concrete barriers now line the busy pedestrian plaza after concerns it may be susceptible to a vehicle-ramming terror attack.

Their installation comes just as 140 concrete blocks were placed across Melbourne's city centre in a bid to prevent future terrorist attacks.

They were installed on busy streets overnight five months after a car was allegedly driven into crowds in the Bourke Street Mall, killing six people.

Police told Daily Mail Australia the barriers were installed as a measure to ensure people's safety while in a public area

Newly installed anti terror bollards are seen in Martin Place in Sydney

Their installation comes just as 140 concrete blocks were placed across Melbourne's city centre in a bid to prevent future terrorist attacks

The square concrete blocks have been placed around Melbourne's busiest streets

Pedestrians walk along the Yarra at the boat sheds between concrete blocks in Melbourne

Artwork is seen on many concrete blocks acting as bollards in Melbourne's CBD
Dozens of illegal firms suspected of drumming up bogus holiday sickness compensation claims have been hit with tough sanctions in a crackdown by the Government.

Ministry of Justice officers swooped on the premises of cowboy companies and found 34 unlicensed firms fuelling a surge in the number of fake claims being made by British tourists.

The industry watchdog issued six warnings, launched two investigations, and removed the websites of six claims management companies.

The body also found evidence of solicitors carrying out malpractice and has shared its findings with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

This newspaper has previously exposed firms which encourage holidaymakers to say they fell ill on holiday. No-win no-fee shark Brian Cromby (pictured) was secretly filmed at the boxing match telling undercover Mail on Sunday reporters he could get them 2,000

The crackdown comes as new figures obtained by The Mail on Sunday from a leading tour operator reveal that Britons submitted 35 times as many compensation claims for illness on holiday compared with their German counterparts

More than 40 other firms offering no-win, no-fee services were also issued with compliance advice.

The crackdown comes as new figures obtained by The Mail on Sunday from a leading tour operator reveal that Britons submitted 35 times as many compensation claims for illness on holiday compared with their German counterparts.

The Association of British Travel Agents has questioned whether unscrupulous claims management company owners will simply be allowed to carry on operating as before.

ABTA director of public affairs Alan Wardle said: While its great this action has been taken, we need to make sure the owners of these companies cannot simply set up shop again and carry on as before.

The MoJ launched its investigation into alleged fraudulent and criminal activity after a 500 per cent increase in claims by Britons in the past 18 months.

New figures reveal that last summer UK holidaymakers submitted almost 4,000 sickness claims compared with just 114 from Germans.

The figures are based on 750,000 British holidaymakers and 800,000 Germans. Scandinavians submitted 39 claims for 375,000 holidaymakers.

This newspaper has previously exposed firms which encourage holidaymakers to say they fell ill on holiday.

The average payout is about 1,500 and in many cases the only evidence required is a receipt from a pharmacist.

The cases are being fuelled by claims management companies which have moved into the travel market after rules were tightened to curb whiplash claims from car accidents.

Last month, ABTA said the rise in sickness claims was costing the Spanish hotel industry alone more than 50 million a year in payouts and legal fees.

Experts warn the practice will ultimately force up package holiday costs.

Theresa May has told the MoS she plans to cap the legal costs that can be paid to claims firms.

This month Justice Secretary David Lidington said: Our message to those who make false holiday sickness claims is clear  your actions are damaging and will not be tolerated.

We are addressing this issue, and will continue to explore further steps. This Government is determined to tackle the compensation culture which has penalised the honest majority for too long.
Australian troops will potentially be deployed to the Philippines to help with the fight against Islamic State with fears IS fighters are gathering on one of the islands.

Australian soldiers could be sent to Marawi City to help train Filipino anti-terrorist fighters after IS-backed rebels have been fighting in the city for the last three months, News Corp reports.

ISIS-linked militants took over the city in the country's south in May, killing at least 550 people including 420 terrorists.

Australian troops could be sent to Philippines to combat IS in Marawi City (pictured)

Marawi City (pictured) has been fighting IS-linked militants since May, hundreds dead

Australian soldiers (pictured) could be training the Filipino soldiers to help with fight on terror

It is suspected IS fighters are gathering in on Mindanao island with plans to announce a new caliphate.

It is believed no official request for training has been received but the Defence Department and Australian Defence Force expect an approach, the publication reports.

Australia's Defence Minister Marise Payne condemned the IS-inspired attacks in Marawi, telling Daily Telegraph the country was ready for more.

'The siege of Marawi City by Daesh (IS) affiliates poses a threat to Australia's interests and regional security,' Ms Payne said.

For about $50, Filipino families are being recruited to support IS with promises of more money if they recruit others, the publication suspects.

In late June, about 300,000 residents were reported to be displaced.

News Corp suspects Filipino families in Marawi (pictured) are being bought by IS for $50 after hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced since May

It is believed no official request for training was received but Defence Department expect it

More than 500 people have died including more than 400 terrorists since the conflict in Marawi began in May (pictured)

'The message from Syria is that if it is getting too difficult to cross over, so if you can't get to Syria, go to the Philippines,' Institute of Policy Analysis of Conflict director Sidney Jones told ABC News.

Members of the Maute Islamist group overran Marawi in May leading to hours of pitched gun battles in the streets.

A police chief was been beheaded, 21 people killed and a Catholic priest taken hostage when more than 100 fighters stormed the city.
Former bouncer Fady Taiba is suing Bar 333 and Prime Group Australia for negligence after he was coward punched by a rejected patron

Almost four years after a one-punch attack left a Sydney bouncer in a coma for 19 days, the man is suing the bar he was working at for negligence.

Fady 'Fred' Taiba was working as a bouncer at Bar 333 when he was coward punched by bank worker James Ian Longworth in September 2013.

During criminal proceedings, the court heard Mr Taiba had spent 19 days unconscious, had part of his skull removed and was taking up to 140 pills a day to help his frequent seizures and other medical problems.

Court documents submitted on behalf of Mr Taiba claim the bar had a history of violence and he was left exposed, as he was working on his own at the front door of the venue, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Scroll down for video

After the attack, Mr Taiba spent 19 days in a coma and surgeons were forced to remove part of his skull

He is now suing Bar 333 (pictured in 2013) for negligence, along with Prime Group Australia

Court documents claim Mr Taiba was 'more frequently exposed to dealing with hostile, aggressive and violent persons attempting to enter the hotel', and as a result the man was 'exposed to a foreseeably greater risk of harm than other security personnel at the hotel'.

During Longworth's trial, Mr Taiba told the court he had a scar 'from the front of my forehead to the back of my neck', which would 'be with me until the day I die'.

'My once normal life has been destroyed by one person's actions - I'm not the person my wife married,' he said in his victim impact statement.

'I have lost my way.'

In an emotional victim impact statement Mr Taiba said his 'once normal life has been destroyed by one person's actions' (pictured with wife Danielle)

James Ian Longworth (left) was seen in confronting CCTV footage being rejected from the venue before turning around and punching Mr Taiba to the ground

Mr Taiba's wife, Danielle (right), said her husband had changed personality 'in a split second'

Mr Taiba's wife, Danielle, said her husband had changed personality 'in a split second'.

Confronting CCTV footage from the incident shows Mr Taiba standing on his own at the front door to the venue, and falling straight to the ground after he is hit by Longworth.

The former bouncer is suing the bar operator, Ryan Brothers Liquor Sales, as well as security company Prime Group Australia, for legal costs, damages based on his injuries and their lasting effects, and interest.

Prime Group have declined to accept responsibility for Mr Taiba's injuries, claiming they 'cannot be held legally responsible for the criminal conduct of James Ian Longworth'.

Longworth was sentenced to four years and 10 months behind bars and will be eligible for parole in February 2019.

Mr Taiba's Supreme Court case begins next month.
The father of 13-year-old Dylan Redwine, who went missing in 2012, was arrested in Washington state Saturday morning in connection with his son's death as authorities reveal the boy was killed after seeing 'compromising images' of his dad.

Dylan went missing after he was last seen on November 18, 2012. He was on a court-ordered visit with his father, Mark Redwine, in Colorado at the time.

The child's remains were found seven months later scattered in southwestern Colorado by wild animals.

A grand jury indicted Redwine on Wednesday second-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death after the four-and-a-half-year investigation, according to 9 News.

Redwine has constantly denied playing a role in his son's death and at one point appeared on Dr Phil to blame his ex-wife for the child's death.

Mark Redwine (right), the father of Dylan Redwine (left), 13, who went missing in 2012, was arrested in Washington on Saturday in connection with his son's death. Redwine has denied any wrongdoing in his son's death

In the grand jury indictment, investigators said blood was found in multiple locations in Redwine's living room, including his couch. Cadaver dog's even found the scent of a dead body in various locations in the home (pictured), according to the indictment

But investigators say they've considered him a person of interest for years; however, it's still unclear why it took so long for them to arrest Redwine.

According to 9 News, Redwine was in Washington state on Saturday because of his job as a truck driver.

In the grand jury indictment, investigators said blood was found in multiple locations in Redwine's living room, including his couch.

Cadaver dog's even found the scent of a dead body in various locations in the home and on the clothes Redwine wore the night Dylan disappeared, the indictment alleges.

In 2014, the cadaver dog also picked up the scent of a body in the bed of Redwine's pickup truck, according to the indictment.

But a year before that, investigators said Dylan's half-brother told them that Redwine had mentioned Dylan died of blunt-force injuries.

Authorities also said Redwine had mentioned how investigators would have to find his son's skull before they determined how the teen died.

Dylan lived north of Colorado Springs with his mother, Elaine Redwine, but went to his father's home near Vallecito Reservoir northeast of Durango for a court-ordered visit in November 2012.

His dad said he returned home from doing errands to find his son had gone. The two parents subsequently blamed each other for their son's disappearance.

But in June 2013, Dylan's partial remains were found on Middle Mountain.

Hikers found his skull 1.5 miles away on November 1, 2015, according to 9 News.

Investigators said Dylan's skull was found in difficult terrain that was easily accessible by a road that Mark Redwine was very familiar with.

Blamed: Dylan's parents (pictured) made headlines after blaming each other in their son's death and even made appearances on national television shows such as Dr Phil in 2013 (pictured)

Search: A massive seven months long search ensued after Dylan's disappearance. Nothing turned up until June 2013, when bones from his foot were found scattered in the rugged mountains

Hikers found his skull 1.5 miles away on November 1, 2015. Investigators said Dylan's skull was found in difficult terrain that was easily accessible by a road that Mark Redwine was very familiar with. The skull had injuries consistent with blunt force trauma

Months after the child's remains were found in 2013, Mrs Redwine (right) said she believed her ex-husband killed Dylan (left)

The skull had injuries consistent with blunt force trauma and two small markings that appeared to be tool marks from a knife, the indictment alleges.

Months after the child's remains were found in 2013, Mrs Redwine said she believed her ex-husband killed Dylan.

'I always have from day one, when he was missing,' she told The Pine River Times at the time.

Mrs Redwine told police that her ex-husband had told her if he ever had to get rid of a body, it would be in the mountains, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, Dylan had not been getting along with his father prior to his disappearance as he watched his two parents in the midst of a bitter divorce and custody battle.

Mrs Redwine told authorities that her ex-husband told her he would 'kill the kids before he let her have them', the indictment alleges.

In another incident Dylan's mother and father argued outside of his home.

According to the indictment, the argument stemmed from 'compromising photos' of Redwine that Dylan had seen. The nature of those photos was not discussed.

In 2015, Mrs Redwine filed a wrongful death suit against Redwine in which she alleged 'the death of Dylan Redwine was the proximate and direct result of the negligence of the defendant'.

Redwine is being held in Bellingham, Washington on a $1 million bond and is facing extradition to Colorado.
Anthony Scaramucci, whose hiring Friday as the new White House communications director reportedly prompted Sean Spicer to resign as press secretary, derisively referred to him as Melissa McCarthy, sources claimed on Saturday.

McCarthy is the actress whose satirical impersonations of Spicer on Saturday Night Live generated great fanfare earlier this year.

In conversations with his new colleagues, Scaramucci and others at the White House would often invoke McCarthy when speaking about Spicer, officials told The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal also reported that the SNL skits lampooning Spicer were used against him by other top advisers to President Donald Trump.

After the first McCarthy appearance on the February 4 episode of the hit NBC show, Trump himself was said to be bothered by the fact that Spicers portrayal by a woman made him look weak.

Anthony Scaramucci, whose hiring as White House communications director reportedly prompted Sean Spicer (seen above with his dog, Billy, near his home in Alexandria, Virginia, onSaturday) to resign as press secretary, derisively referred to him as Melissa McCarthy

In conversations with his new colleagues, Scaramucci (seen above Friday during his introductory press conference in the White House briefing room) and others at the White House would often invoke McCarthy when speaking about Spicer

Since then, Spicer reportedly had a difficult time regaining the trust of his boss, particularly given the importance the president places in a job that entails frequent appearances on television.

Spicer told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Friday that he thought SNL went 'over the line' with McCarthys satirization of him.

'It wasnt funny, Spicer told Hannity of his views on McCarthys Spicey impression.

It was stupid, or silly, or malicious.

Some of the memes you have to crack up about. But sometimes it goes from funny to mean.

Spicer said on Friday that he resigned from his post as Trumps chief spokesperson because he felt there were too many cooks in the kitchen

McCarthy is the actress whose satirical impersonations of Spicer (above) on Saturday Night Live generated great fanfare earlier this year

Spicer said that he resigned from his post as Trumps chief spokesperson because he felt there were too many cooks in the kitchen.

I just thought it was in the best interest of our communications department, of our press organization, to not have too many cooks in the kitchen, Spicer said.

Spicers six months as press secretary have been difficult ones. He has been criticized for his testy exchanges with reporters as well as other gaffes.

Spicers statement about too many cooks in the kitchen appeared to confirm earlier reports that his decision to quit was prompted by Trumps decision to hire Scaramuci, a New York financier, as his new communications director.

When Trump informed Spicer that he would be reporting to Scaramucci, the press secretary voiced his objections, according to The New York Times.

Spicer told Trump that Scaramuccis hiring would only compound the chaos that has come to characterize a reportedly fractured White House, the Times reported.

The press secretary, who will stay on until next month, informed Trump that he would quit.

Spicer told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Friday that he thought SNL went 'over the line' with McCarthys satirization of him

'Sean Spicer is a wonderful person who took tremendous abuse from the Fake News Media - but his future is bright!' Trump tweeted on Friday.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has stepped in for Spicer on occasion at the podium of the White House briefing room, will assume the press secretarys job full time.

[The president] wanted to bring some new folks in to help rev up the communications operation, and after reflection, my decision was to recommend to the president that I give Anthony and Sarah a clean slate to start from, Spicer told Hannity.

Spicer was hired by Trump at the insistence of the presidents chief of staff, Reince Priebus.

Priebus also appeared on Fox News with Hannity and tried to put a positive spin on his friends departure.

Sean leaving doesnt mean that Sean isnt going to be out there supporting President Trump and it doesnt mean that President Trump isnt going to be out there supporting Sean Spicer, Priebus said.

'Ive seen how the world around the president works and its very healthy and he cares about his people.'
He was one of Queen Victorias most trusted confidants, but Abdul Karims remarkable role was all but expunged from history by jealous members of the Royal Family following her death.

Hundreds of letters sent to Abdul by Victoria over a 13-year period  and signed variously as Your dearest friend and Your dearest mother  were destroyed. The former Royal servant and his family were also kicked out of their home within the grounds of Windsor Castle and unceremoniously deported.

In an exclusive article for todays Event magazine today, author Shrabani Basu reveals fascinating details about her painstaking research for her book, which has now been turned into a film, Victoria And Abdul, starring Dame Judi Dench and Ali Fazal.

Judi Dench as Queen Victoria with Ali Fazal as Abdul Karim in the forthcoming film, Victoria & Abdul

Abdul was brought to England as a servant in 1887, but within a year Victoria had promoted him to Munshi, or teacher.

Basu says: The burning of letters is never a good starting point for a researcher, but over the next four years I managed to piece together the story.

The author got access to journals Victoria wrote in Hindustani, having been taught the language by Abdul. Few knew that the elderly Queen had learnt the language and kept a diary for 13 years, said Basu. These had never been translated. They brought the relationship alive before my eyes.

However, their close friendship provoked envy within Royal circles. Just hours after Victorias funeral, a party led by Edward VIIs wife, Queen Alexandra, and Victorias daughter Beatrice confiscated Abduls letters.

Abdul was banished and died eight years later, a broken man.

She was the Queen of the British Empire. He was a young servant from India. Here, the author of the book behind a remarkable new film starring Judi Dench reveals the truth about a relationship that scandalised the Royal Household... and ended in lonely ignominy

Barely hours after Queen Victorias funeral at Windsor Castle in February 1901, a small group of people could be seen making their way through the dawn mist to a house in the grounds. They were Queen Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII; Princess Beatrice, Queen Victorias youngest daughter; and several tough-looking guards. The Royal party was heading for Frogmore Cottage, the home of Abdul Karim, the Queens Munshi, or teacher. They were on a mission.

For 13 years Queen Victoria had taken the young Indian to heart, giving him land, houses, titles and her unquestioning love. Now was their chance to get back at him. They banged loudly on Abduls door, waking up the sleeping family.

Within moments they had stormed into his house, violating his space. His wife ran in panic to put on her burka as the guards entered. The Queen demanded that all the letters Victoria had written to Karim be handed over. As he pleaded with them, they tore open the drawers in his study, removing letters and correspondence. They ordered his terrified 12-year-old nephew to find more letters, piled them up outside the cottage and lit a bonfire.

As the Dear Abdul letters burnt in the cold February air, the guards went back for more. Postcards and notes were seized and thrown into the blazing fire. Abduls distraught wife wept as the black-lined notepaper, covered with the late Queens handwriting, crackled in the flames. She begged them to stop. Abdul stood near the fire, fighting back his tears, watching as the flames curled around Victorias signature and turned it to ash.

Victoria used to write to Abdul several times a day, signing her letters variously as your dearest friend, your true friend, and even, your dearest mother. She would put little crosses after her signature. Sometimes, she would sign in Urdu, at other times it was just her initials: VRI. There were letters written to him from Windsor, Balmoral, Osborne House  her holiday home on the Isle of Wight  the Royal yacht Victoria & Albert and hotels across Europe. Soon, everything was consumed in the flames.

The next day, King Edward asked Karim to pack his bags and return to India; he wanted Karim erased from history. The fairy tale that had begun 13 years earlier was over.

Abdul Karim had intrigued me ever since Id seen his portrait in the Indian corridor of Osborne House. I knew that Victoria enjoyed curries and that she had some Indian servants who cooked for her. The portrait, painted by the Austrian artist Rudolf Swoboda, showed a handsome young man in a reflective mood, holding a book in his hand. He looked more like a nawab (nobleman) than a servant.

In Victorias dressing room at Osborne were framed photographs of John Brown, her Scottish gillie, and Karim hanging one below the other. The guide told me they had always been there, placed by the Queen herself. It was gradually becoming clear to me that Karim was someone as special to the Queen as Brown had been. The elaborately carved Durbar Room at Osborne showed Victorias love of India.

Queen Victorias Indian servants Abdul Karim and Mohammed Buksh

The burning of letters is never a good starting point for a researcher, but over the next four years I managed to piece together the story. I read Victorias journals in Windsor Castle and pored through her Hindustani Journals. Few people knew that the elderly Queen had learnt to read and write in Urdu from Abdul and kept a diary for 13 years. These had never been translated.

They brought the relationship alive before my eyes. A few letters written by Victoria to Abdul had miraculously survived the bonfire and were kept at the Royal Archives. I read the personal diaries of her physician, Sir James Reid, the letters of members of the Royal Household, the Viceroys of India and the letters of Queen Victoria to all her officials. It was clear that Karim was causing considerable tension in court. I felt I needed to know more about him. I needed to go to his home city, Agra.

No one had heard of Karim when I visited Agra in the winter of 2006. Yet he had once been an important person. I was sure he would have a large gravestone. With the help of a local journalist, we found the grave after three days. It was in a neglected burial ground, overrun with stray dogs and bramble, with an elderly caretaker in charge.

Once it had been grand and embedded with precious stones. Over the years, these had all been looted. Carved on the headstone were words of praise for the man who had become the Queens Munshi (teacher). All the honours and titles bestowed on him were listed. The place was desolate, forgotten by time. More than ever, I felt I had to tell his story.

I found the house built on the land that Victoria had given Karim in a prime area of Agra. A Hindu family was living there. I was told that Karims family had left India after Partition and independence in 1947 and gone to Pakistan. Karim had no children and the trail had gone cold.

Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim in 1893

Undaunted, I published my book about him, Victoria & Abdul: The True Story Of the Queens Closest Confidant, in 2010, knowing that someone would contact me once the story was out. Within a month I received a call. It was from the grand-nephew of Karim, who lived in India. He told me that Abduls diary was with the family in Karachi. I took the next flight to Pakistan and could barely breathe as the family handed me the journal filled with Karims familiar handwriting. At last, I had his voice. His remarkable story could now finally be told.

Working Title, the team behind Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill, has now turned this story into a film, and this September sees Dame Judi Dench starring in the role of Queen Victoria alongside Eddie Izzard and Michael Gambon, with Bollywood actor Ali Fazal playing Abdul Karim.

The film begins  much as the book does  in 1887, when Queen Victoria was celebrating her Golden Jubilee, the longest-reigning monarch of her time. The Empire was at its height, stretching across nearly one-fifth of the globe. The British authorities thought it would be a good idea to invite some Indian princes to the celebrations. At her party the Empire would be on display before the world. The Queen expressed the wish that she would like some Indian servants as well. And so it was that two Indians, Abdul Karim and Mohammed Buksh, were sent to the Queen as Jubilee presents. Their job was to stand behind her, waiting at table.

Strikingly dressed in a scarlet tunic and white turban, the young and handsome Karim made an immediate impression on the Queen as he kissed her feet and presented her with a gold mohur (Mughal coin). The 24-year-old had arrived from Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal, the worlds most beautiful monument to love. The Queen wanted to know more. She gave instructions that Karim should have extra English lessons so she could have longer conversations with him.

Karim told the Queen that he had been a clerk in an Agra jail and had never done menial jobs. He wrote to the Queen that he wanted to return to Agra, but she begged him to stay, saying she so enjoyed his company.

The youth from Agra gradually started telling Victoria about his country, the customs and festivals, and his wife and family. Soon he was helping her with her letters. The Queen wanted to learn Hindustani and asked Karim to teach her. He gave her a pocket-sized phrase book in Hindustani, which she carried around all the time. She began filling the first of the 13 volumes of her Hindustani Journals.

One day Karim carried his spice box to the royal kitchen and cooked the Queen a curry. She was instantly won over. Victoria pronounced the curry to be excellent and ordered that curries were to be cooked every day and served for lunch. Victorias favourites were chicken curry and dal.

As Karim spoke to her in his soft voice, describing Agra and the beauty of the Taj Mahal, Victoria was entranced. Karims tales were as sad as they were beautiful and the Queen travelled with him in this Mughal wonderland experiencing India like she had never done before.

Within a year of Karims arrival at court, the Queen decided to promote him. She made him her teacher and Indian secretary and gave him the title of Munshi. All photos of Karim waiting at table were destroyed and the household was instructed to address him formally as the Munshi. She had his portraits painted by the Austrian court artists, Rudolph Swoboda and Heinrich von Angeli, and missed him terribly when he went on leave to India.

The Queen gave him houses in Windsor and Osborne and built a cottage for him in Balmoral, named Karim Cottage. On the Royal train, the Munshi was given a private carriage next to the Queen. She took him away to the remote cottage in Glassalt Shiel on Loch Muick in Scotland, a place she had often visited with John Brown, and where she had sworn she would never go after his death, fuelling gossip in the household.

The Queen sensed that her family and household would come down heavily on Karim after her death and she wanted to provide for him. She wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, asking him to give a large grant of land to Karim. When Karim asked for a pension for his father, who had served the British loyally for nearly 40 years, the Queen immediately wrote to the Viceroy about it. Karims father was invited to England, taken on a tour of the hospitals of Edinburgh, and was the only person allowed to smoke a hookah (water-pipe) in Windsor.

The incensed Royal Household began to plot against Karim. A whispering campaign was started that implied he was a spy, and when Karim travelled to India, he was followed by intelligence officers.

BRINGING THE MUNSHI TO THE BIG SCREEN Shrabani Basus remarkable story of Queen Victorias scandalous friendship with Abdul will be brought to life on the big screen by the BBC and Working Title, the award-winning British production team behind Billy Elliot and Bridget Joness Diary. Judi Dench reprises her role as Queen Victoria, who she famously portrayed in the 1997 film Mrs Brown, with Ali Fazal as Abdul, and a whos who of big British stars. Director Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons and High Fidelity), who was Oscarnominated for his 2006 film The Queen, about our current reigning monarch, was able to film in some of the storys original settings, including Durbar Hall and the Indian Corridor in Queen Victorias holiday home on the Isle of Wight, Osborne House. The dining hall at Windsor Castle was recreated at Greenwichs Royal Naval College. The producers also filmed in the Indian city of Agra, using a local college to stand in as the central jail, and a team of 40 tailors used images from the British library to ensure the period designs were accurate, right down to the last gold thread. Victoria & Abdul is released on September 15 Advertisement

The plotting came to a head in 1897, the Queens Diamond Jubilee. Members of the household had learnt that Karim was being treated for venereal disease and they were determined that he would not travel with the Queen when she went on her holiday to the South of France. They decided that if the Queen took the Munshi with her, they would collectively resign. The chief lady-in-waiting, Harriet Phipps, was chosen to take a clear message to the Queen, who flew into a rage and angrily swept all the contents of her writing table onto the floor. A tearful Phipps ran from the room, but the Queen won the argument. The household did not resign and Victoria and the Munshi went on holiday.

The Prince of Wales threatened to step in, declare his mother insane and take her place. But the Queen was not to be bullied. She stood firmly by her Munshi and sent a stern memo to her household and family chastising them for their behaviour and accusing them of racism and class snobbery. They were all instructed to be courteous to the Munshi. She even considered giving him a knighthood, but stopped short and gave him an MVO (Member of the Victorian Order) instead.

As the Queen crossed her 80th year, the household began to realise they were losing the fight against Karim. Victoria was slowly becoming frail but her spirit continued. Not for a day would she take a break from her Hindustani lessons.

After Victorias death in 1901, Karim was the last person to see her before the coffin was shut. At her funeral he walked with the household and the family behind the coffin.

But it was all to end very swiftly for him. Edward VII had his revenge, the letters were destroyed and Karim was unceremoniously deported. All the Indian servants were asked to leave. There were no more colourful turbans in the court and no curries from the kitchens. The Edwardian era had begun.

Karim returned to Agra in 1901 and lived a quiet life, but he was a broken man. After years of service to the Queen, he had been treated like a common criminal. Eight years later, he died in his home city of Agra aged 46. The man who had been Victorias closest companion was forgotten by history and now lies in a derelict graveyard in Agra. In the violence of Partition and the riots following Indias independence, his descendants left for Pakistan, leaving behind the house and acres of land that the Queen had given him. The presents given to Karim by the Queen were lost in the looting. The Munshis wife died on the boat to Karachi.

Edward VII had attempted to erase Karim from history. But his diary survived. With the film being released in September, the unusual story of Victoria and Abdul will receive a worldwide audience. For me, it all began with a portrait and a lonely grave.

Victoria & Abdul by Shrabani Basu is published by History Press, priced at 9.99. Offer price 7.49 until August 6. Order at www.mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640, p&p is free on orders over 15
The newly installed White House communications director has been hurriedly deleting embarrassing tweets in which he insulted his new boss Donald Trump.

Within hours of his appointment on Friday, Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci was removing posts from 2012 in which he had described the President as an odd guy.

In another tweet that year, he called Mr Trumps Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton incredibly competent.

Within hours of his appointment on Friday, Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci was removing posts from 2012

Mr Scaramucci ramped up his attacks in 2015 and tweeted a picture of a wall, writing: Walls dont work. Never have never will. The Berlin Wall 1961-1989, dont fall for it. And in a TV interview with Fox, also in 2015, he described Mr Trump as a hack politician whose rhetoric is anti-American.

Mr Scaramucci, 53, is the Italian-American son of a construction worker from Port Washington in Long Island, New York.

He went to Harvard Law School and worked for Goldman Sachs before founding SkyBridge, which is now worth $12 billion.

His appointment has reportedly caused deep divisions within the White House and was followed by the resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer.
The US Congress is poised to approve tough new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea this week after reaching a compromise deal, which the White House indicated Sunday it could support.

In mid-June, the Senate overwhelmingly passed tough sanctions on Moscow and Tehran, but the text stalled in the House of Representatives, until agreement was reached on Saturday.

The House is now set to vote Tuesday on a bill that targets Russia -- for its alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election and its annexation of Crimea -- as well as Iran and North Korea, for its recent ballistic missile tests.

Initially, Trump resisted the legislation, which would prevent him from unilaterally easing penalties against Moscow in the future -- effectively placing him under Congress's watch.

But faced with near-total consensus among Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the White House blinked.

"We support where the legislation is now, and will continue to work with the House and Senate to put those tough sanctions in place on Russia until the situation in Ukraine is fully resolved," new White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC's "This Week" news program.

"The original piece of legislation was poorly written," she added.

Her boss, communications director Anthony Scaramucci, said it was still up to Trump whether or not to sign the measure into law.

"My guess is that he's going to make that decision shortly," Scaramucci told CNN, introducing a bit more doubt as to Trump's intentions.

Even if Trump were to oppose the measure, Congress could overturn it with a two-thirds majority of both houses.

"If he vetoes the bill, we will override his veto," Democratic Senator Ben Cardin told Fox News Sunday.

Once the House approves the compromise bill, the Senate will vote again, likely before the summer recess begins in August.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


One of the world's most livable cities could be facing an acute water shortage problem in the next ten to 15 years time no thanks to climate change and population growth.

Water supply in Melbourne may fall and reach a crisis point if no precautionary methods are taken to contain the problem from today, reports The Age.

The publication says demand for water in the state is expected to exceed the supply by 2028.

Taps in Melbourne might soon run dry if the state is not careful with its water resources

According to projections made by City West Water, Yarra Valley Water and South East Water demand for water is projected to surge to about 75 percent in the next 40 years, the publication reports.

Some water corporation produced the probable scenario for the state's water supply, Environment Victoria's acting chief executive, Nicholas Aberle told Daily Mail Australia.

Mr Aberle said there was a bunch of things that Melbournians can do to address the situation by incorporating several water saving habits.

He said people should learn ways on saving storm water and turning that into a valuable water resource.

Melbourne may be facing an acute water problem in ten to 15 years time, water experts say

'During the drought (1997 to 2009) people were managing water efficiency by only using 155 litres a day.

'People should have a behavioural change and use 100 litres of water a day and handle the water resources efficiently,' he said.

Melbourne Water spokesman Joseph Keller told the publication that people living in the state were 'encouraged to limit their consumption to 155 litres per person per day.'

At present Melbourne Water reports that residents in the state use 162 litres of water per person per day in 2016-17.
A nine-year-old girl has been found dead in a bathtub in what police are calling a tragic incident.

Her body was discovered by a family member at her home in south Auckland just before 8am on Sunday.

Police say emergency services were called to the home on Bacardi Place, Conifer Grove but were unable to save the girl.

Scroll down for video

Police (pictured) said a nine-year-old girl drowned in the bath at her south Auckland home on Sunday morning

The girl was deceased when the ambulance arrived and although CPR was attempted she was pronounced dead at the scene, the NZ Herald reported.

Police Senior Sergeant John Yearbury said the cause of death would be determined by the coroner.

'It's an absolutely tragic event for the family, and for the emergency services, most of whom have children themselves,' he said.

The family are being supported by members of their church, Plymouth Brethren Church, who are offering assistance along with neighbours.

'Just genuine heartbreak,' said one man.
Hitler's spies secretly compiled information about English housewives and the UK's 'homes of misery' years before they planned to invade Britain.

German Military Intelligence were horrified by the 'catastrophic' condition of cities where their invading forces would set up garrisons.

They also criticised how the British lived - describing neighbourhoods as 'homes of misery' in a secret dossier.

'Hardly any of the old industrial towns have been spared the "slum problem"', they wrote.

Hitler's spies were horrified by the 'catastrophic' condition of cities where their invading forces would set up garrisons

'They inhabit slums with poor sanitary conditions, filth, and at times morbid forms of social existence, in a state of poor health and in some cases long-term malnutrition.'

Only a small number were left when the allies reached Berlin in the final days of the war

And even the humble British housewife could not escape the sharp tongues of German spooks - who they described as lacking the hygiene standards of a German hausfrau.

The intelligence dossier, of which there were 7,000 printed, was designed to prepare Germany for invading the British Isles.

However, only a small number were left when the allies reached Berlin in the final days of the war.

But one of the last-surviving copies has now been translated into English by Oxford University's Bodleian Library.

It also goes into detail on how the Nazis viewed the Welsh.

'Unlike the bright English they are dark and small in stature.

'Even though they have largely abandoned their language, they have still retained a reasonably strong awareness of their distinctive heritage and culture,' the document adds.

The intelligence dossier, of which there were 7,000 printed, was designed to prepare Germany for invading the British Isles
A 21-year-old man claims he was tied to a chair, beaten and covered in accelerant before managing to escape.

The man was allegedly invited into a home in Queensland by someone he knew before he was robbed of his possessions and attacked.

Police claim two men took the 21-year-old into a home in Deception Bay about 9.30am on Saturday, bound him to a chair and then hit him in the head with a metal object.

One man then poured accelerant onto him and choked him.

A 21-year-old man was invited into a home in Lockyer Parade, Deception Bay (pictured) by a man he knew before he was allegedly tied to a chair, beaten and covered in accelerant

At about 3pm the man was allegedly taken out of the home on Lockyer Parade in Deception Bay, and told to get into the boot of a car.

He managed to escape his accused captors and sought help from a neighbour.

Emergency services treated the man for injuries to his face and hands, and police spoke with him before arresting a 29-year-old man.

He has been charged with one count of armed robbery, deprivation of liberty and torture.

The man is due to appear in the Redcliffe Magistrates Court on Monday.
Todd Desper, 47, of Beckley, West Virginia, is accused of trying to sell two oil paintings he didn't have access to which were stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in March 1990

A West Virginia was charged after he tried to fetch millions of dollars for two oil paintings he did not have access to that were stolen in the largest art heist in US history, the FBI said.

Todd Desper, of Beckley, West Virginia, was indicted by a Boston federal jury on Thursday on wire fraud charges.

He appeared first in a federal court in West Virginia before facing the charges in Boston, Massachusetts, last month. His attorney could not be reached on Saturday.

A federal investigation found that Desper 'had no access to, nor information about, the stolen paintings, but was instead engaged in a multi-million dollar fraud scheme targeting foreign art buyers,' prosecutors said.

FBI Agent Geoffrey Kelly said in an affidavit that Desper, 47, solicited buyers on Craigslist for two of the most valuable paintings stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in March 1990: Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt van Rign and The Concert by Johannes Vermeer.

Desper used a digital image that was a purported close-up of one of the paintings, Kelly said.

The actual paintings were among 13 stolen in the still-unsolved heist, during which two suspects who masqueraded as police officers robed the museum of paintings worth more than $500million. The FBI says the suspects are deceased.

Desper sought $50million for The Concert and $5million for Storm on the Sea of Galilee, authorities said.

Authorities were notified by individuals seeking to help recover the artwork and those seeking the $5million reward offered by the museum.

The two paintings Desper was trying to sell were: Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt van Rign (left) and The Concert by Johannes Vermeer (right)

A security guard stands outside the Dutch Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in March 1990. Two men disguised as police officers entered the museum and stole 13 works of art worth hundreds of millions of dollars

The museum still displays empty frames where the paintings once hung. Here is where Storm on the Sea used to hang. The Gardner Museum is offering a $10million reward for the paintings' return.

Authorities said Anthony Amore, the security director for the Gardner Museum, worked with federal authorities to determine whether Desper actually had access to the paintings.

Federal prosecutors said the investigation ultimately found that Desper had no access to or information about the paintings and was engaged in a multi-million dollar fraud scheme targeting foreign art buyers.

Desper denied having knowledge of the museum theft when questioned, according to the affidavit.

The Gardner Museum has upped their reward to $10million for the paintings' return.
A man was stabbed during a brawl outside a pub in Sydney's northwest overnight.

The 31-year-old was stabbed in the lower back at Kellyville Ridge just after 1am on Sunday morning during an altercation with another man at Ettamogah Hotel, police said.

He was rushed to Westmead Hospital for treatment and remains in a serious condition.

Scroll down for video

A man was stabbed during a brawl outside the Ettamogah pub in Sydney's northwest overnight

The 31-year-old was stabbed in the lower back at Kellyville Ridge just after 1am on Sunday morning during an altercation with another man

He was rushed to Westmead Hospital for treatment and remains in a serious condition

Police were told the injured man was in an altercation with another man before he was stabbed.

The armed man fled the scene in a white sedan.

Investigations continue.

The armed man fled the scene in a white sedan
Disney star Jake Paul who was accused of terrorizing his West Hollywood neighborhood was dropped by the network, but the Millennial 'influencer' insisted that he's 'outgrown' the channel.

The 20-year-old made the announcement Saturday evening on Twitter. He said he'll be parting ways with Disney just days after the accusations made headlines.

Paul has portrayed Dirk on Disney Channel's Bizaardvark for the last two years.

'My team, Disney Channel, and I have come to the agreement it's finally time for me to move from the Disney family and Bizaardvark,' Paul said in the statement posted to his Twitter.

The YouTube star, who is famed for his 'crazy' pranks which have included throwing a Harley Davidson in his backyard pool and setting furniture on fire, said that 'being a part of the Disney family for the past two years was incredible and a dream come true'.

The network also released a statement thanking Paul for his work.

'We've mutually agreed that Jake Paul will leave his role on the Disney Channel series 'Bizaardvark.' the statement read.

Disney star Jake Paul (right) who was accused of terrorizing his West Hollywood neighborhood was dropped by the network, but the Millennial 'influencer' insisted that he's 'outgrown' the channel. Paul made the announcement (left) on Twitter Saturday evening

Paul (pictured) has portrayed Dirk on Disney Channel's Bizaardvark for the last two years. 'My team, Disney Channel, and I have come to the agreement it's finally time for me to move from the Disney family and Bizaardvark,' Paul said in the statement

Earlier this week, Paul clambered up on top of a KTLA van while he was being interviewed on Tuesday. He made headlines when families in the LA neighborhood accused him of turning their lives into a 'living hell'

'We thank Jake for his good work on the TV series for the past 18 months and extend our best wishes to him,' the statement added.

Paul wrote that he loves his cast mates and will continue to support Disney, but 'I have outgrown the channel and feel it's time to move forward in my career'.

The star made headlines when families in his LA neighborhood accused him of turning their lives into a 'living hell'.

And while his 8.5 million young followers may be impressed with his antics, his neighbors are not.

Paul and his 'squad' love to throw rowdy parties, while he often publicizes his address which allows hoards of his young fans - he calls 'Paulers' to show up outside his home.

'It used to be a really nice, quiet street and now [it's] just this, like, war zone,' Maytal Dahan told KTLA. 'We're families here and we're more than happy to have them live here if they're respectful of their neighbors, but they're not.'

Neighbors are even considering banding together to file a class-action public nuisance lawsuit against Paul and the homeowner. They say not only is Paul annoying but he's dangerous.

His fire stunt, when he set ablaze furniture in his pool, saw flames reach the height of the home.

Meanwhile, Paul seemed amused by the misery he is imposing on those around him.

'The neighbors hate me,' he told KTLA, laughing.

Neighbors are considering banding together to file a class-action public nuisance lawsuit against Paul and the homeowner after this fire stunt, when he set ablaze furniture in his pool, saw flames reach the height of the home

Paul and his 'squad' love to throw rowdy parties, while he often publicizes his address (pictured is his home) which allows hoards of his young fans - he calls 'Paulers' to show up outside his home

Maytal Dahan said their once 'nice, quiet street' had been turned into a 'war zone'

When a reporter told him that locals fear he has turned the neighborhood into a 'circus' with his non-stop parties and dangerous stunts, the millennial replied: 'But, I mean, people like going to circuses.'

Paul was then seen running and skipping through the streets before climbing on top of the KTLA van - ignoring the pleas of staffers to stop.

Eventually, Paul, who appeared to be challenged in the attention span department, returned to the interview, where he was able to compose himself for a second to say: 'It's terrible, it's a bad situation and I feel bad for them, but there's nothing we can do.

'Jake Paulers are the strongest army out there.'

'Dab,' he added, pulling the 2016 cliched dance move, before pointing at the reporter's shoes, and screeching, 'What are those?' and then running away with his friends.

Earlier this year, Paul landed himself in trouble after he hid in the bathroom of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building after attending a Social Media Event at the White House (left in July at a charity basketball game). He is also the brother of internet star Logan Paul (right)

He also released 'rap' song, 'It's Everyday Bro,' which became the tenth most disliked video in YouTube history

He has since taken to taunting his neighbors on Twitter, posting footage of his KTLA interview with a laughing emoji, and the caption: 'I'm dead.'

In Paul's YouTube bio, he described himself as living 'a crazy life' 'making comedy vids, acting, doing action sports, & going on crazy adventures' with his squad 'Team 10'.

He also released a laughably bad 'rap' song, It's Everyday Bro,' which became the tenth most disliked video in YouTube history.

Earlier this year, Paul landed himself in trouble after he filmed himself hiding in the bathroom of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building after attending a Social Media Event at the White House.

Logan shut down a New York City street on July 15 when fans rushed to see him at a pop up shop he'd set up for the day. He thanked the NYPD afterwards for 'keeping them safe'

Although he claimed he spent several hours there before leaving in the early morning, sources confirm the video was fake and actually just filmed during the event.

After he posted footage of the stunt on his blog, he was visited by the Secret Service at home.

In June, Paul was accused of emotionally abusing his ex-girlfriend Alissa Violet who also claimed he used his agency Team 10 to take advantage of women. He has denied the claims.

His older brother, 22-year-old Logan Paul, is also a YouTube star. Logan caused his own commotion in Manhattan on July 15 when his fans shut down an entire street.

They had rushed to the area after he set up a pop-up shop for the day. He took to Twitter afterwards to thank the NYPD for 'keeping my fans safe'.
A fourth man has been arrested and charged in the robbery and sex attack of a woman heading home from her New York City church.

Isaiah Shorter, 20, of Jamaica, Queens, is the most recent man to be arrested, according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted, and is being held on $500,000 bail.

Justin Williams, 17; Julisses Ginel, 19; and Brandon Walker, 20, were previously arrested on Thursday. Bail is also set at $500,000 for each of them and they are due in court on July 28.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Isaiah Shorter, 20, of Jamaica, in Queens, New York (left), is the most recent man to be arrested for the robbery and sex attack of a woman heading home from her New York City church. Brandon, Walker, 20 (right), was arrested on Thursday

Also arrested on Thursday were Julisses Ginel, 19 (left), and Justin Williams, 17 (right). Bail is set at $500,000 for all four of them and they are due in court on July 28

Brown said on Saturday that the men had a 'pack-like mentality' when they attacked the 50-year-old woman on July 11 at gunpoint.

Authorities say the mother-of-two was only half a block away frrom the Celestial Church of Christ in Jamaica when she was robbed and forced to perform sex acts at about 10.30pm.

Surveillance video shows the unidentified woman was walking along 150th Street with two bags in her hands before the alleged sexual assault occurred.

The four men appear in the video walking along the other side of the street.

The suspects walk in line together before one separates from the group after spotting the helpless victim leaving a church prayer service.

The men allegedly robbed the woman prior to the sexual assault and threatened her with two fake guns. She gave them her cell phone, headset, Metro Card and cash.

Williams reportedly told investigators that he and Brandon took turns engaging in oral sex from her.

Shorter then allegedly put a condom on and had her perform oral sex.

Authorities say the unidentified mother-of-two (pictured) was only half a block away from the Celestial Church of Christ in Jamaica when she was robbed and forced to perform sex acts at about 10.30pm.

Surveillance video shows the suspects walking in line together (pictured) before one separates from the group after spotting the helpless victim leaving a church prayer service

The victim returned to the Celestial Church of Christ following the attack where Pastor Kehinde Oyetunde (in white, outside church) alerted the police

Ginel admitted to police that he was the 'lookout' so no one interrupted the attack.

The victim returned to the Celestial Church of Christ following the attack where Pastor Kehinde Oyetunde alerted the police.

The woman, an immigrant from Liberia, told the New York Daily News she tried to scare them away by saying she was HIV-positive - which she is not - but that didn't even frighten them.

The victim, who lives in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, said she is nervous about returning to the Queens church she has attended four days a week for the past decade.

'I'm very worried,' she said. 'I don't know if I can go back there.'
A mother and daughter were lucky to escape without serious injury after a 10kg projectile allegedly hurled by teen thugs smashed their windscreen.

The pair were leaving the Stockland Shopping Centre at Wetherill Park when their car was struck by a rubber 'vehicle stopper' thrown from the rooftop.

Police searched the complex and found two 13-year-old boys who were allegedly captured on CCTV at the scene.

The passengers escaped serious injury when a 10kg 'vehicle stopper' was thrown from the rooftop and hit the windscreen (pictured, stock image) of their car

The shocking incident occurred at the Stockland Shopping Centre (pictured) at Wetherill Park

The mother, 48, and her daughter were left covered in broken glass after the black rubber rectangular object hit their Nissan.

The 'vehicle-stopper,' which may have been torn from a parking spot, weighs approximately 10 kilograms.

Neither passenger was hurt as a result of the incident.

Police arrested the youths and took them into custody at Fairfield Police Station.

One was later charged with intentionally throw object at vehicle and vessel risk safety.

He will appear at a Childrens Court on 16 August 2017 and was granted conditional bail.

The other was released without charge.
A Texas man was shot dead in front of his horrified girlfriend in a vicious road rage attack on Wednesday.

Kristina Huggins, 19, and her boyfriend Dylan Spaid were preparing to merge onto Interstate 20 in Arlington when Spaid and a driver of a dark sedan got into a brief altercation.

Huggins told WFAA the driver tried to cut them off and moments later, the car pulled up to their truck on the driver's side, rolled down their passenger-side window and shot into their vehicle.

'Then I turned around, and I heard a shot,' Huggins said. The bullet had struck 19-year-old Spaid in the head.

Dylan Spaid (left and right), 19, was shot dead in front of his horrified girlfriend, Kristina Huggins (left), 19, in a vicious road rage attack in Texas. The bullet struck Spaid in the head and he later died at a local hospital

Huggins (right) said Spaid (left) and a driver of a dark sedan got into a brief altercation as they merged onto the interstate

Huggins said the driver tried to cut them off and moments later, the car pulled up next to Spaid on the driver's side and shot into their truck (pictured)

'The last thing I remember, I looked at him and we were still driving, I tried to figure out where his foot was,' Huggins told the station.

Spaid's truck was still in motion as Huggins was forced to grab the wheel.

Just minutes later, Huggins crashed the truck into a NTB Tire sign.

Spaid died of the gunshot wound at the hospital and Huggins suffered a gash across her forehead.

'I just cannot believe people are that evil,' Huggins told WFAA.

'It's like a bad dream, a horrible dream,' Huggins said. 'I can't even imagine. I don't even know how that person sleeps at night.'

Huggins said right before the tragic incident, she and Spaid recorded a silly Snapchat video.

'He said I was the love of his life,' Huggins told the station. 'And in a few years, he would love to propose, and he would want to be with me the rest of his life,' she said holding back tears.

Spaid's truck was still in motion as Huggins was forced to grab the wheel. Just minutes later, Huggins crashed the truck into a NTB Tire sign. Huggins (pictured) suffered a gash across her forehead

Huggins and Spaid had just merged onto I-20 in Arlington when the road rage incident took place. Pictured is the vehicle of interest as it drives toward the victim's white truck (right)

Authorities have not arrested a suspect in the incident but Arlington police are searching for a black Mercedes or BMW four-door vehicle with tinted windows and silver rims

Authorities have not arrested a suspect in the incident but Arlington police are searching for a black Mercedes or BMW four-door vehicle with tinted windows and silver rims.

Huggins said she hopes someone with information about the fatal shooting steps forward.

A GoFundMe page was created to help Spaid's family with funeral expenses. As of Saturday night, it has raised more than $10,000.

Spaid's shooting was the first of three road rage shootings this week in Texas, according to WFAA.

The second incident took place in Mesquite and the third was in North Richland Hills, and both victims survived.
Authorities called to a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio overnight found eight people dead and 20 others in dire condition in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer, in what police are calling a horrific case of immigrant smuggling.

The truck's driver was arrested and all 30 survivors were taken to hospitals, where 20 were in extremely critical or serious condition, with many suffering from extreme dehydration and heat stroke, authorities said. Others had lesser injuries. Their nationalities weren't yet known.

Temperatures in San Antonio reached 101 degrees (38 Celsius) on Saturday and didn't dip below 90 degrees (32 C) until after 10 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. The truck's trailer also didn't have a working air conditioner system, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said in a news briefing.

"They were very hot to the touch. So these people were in this trailer without any signs of any type of water," he said. "It was a mass casualty situation for us."

A person from the truck initially approached a Walmart employee in the parking lot and asked for water late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, police Chief William McManus said. The employee gave the person the water and then called police, who found the dead and desperate inside the truck.

McManus said the driver was arrested, but he didn't release the driver's name. He also said some of those in the truck ran into nearby woods, leading to a search. A helicopter could be seen hovering over the area after daybreak.

Investigators checked store surveillance video, which showed vehicles arriving and picking up people from the truck, authorities said. They didn't say whether the trailer was locked when they arrived, whether they think the truck was used to smuggle the occupants into the country or whether it planned to make other stops.

"We're looking at a human trafficking crime this evening," McManus said, adding many of those inside the truck appeared to be adults in their 20s and 30s but that there were also what appears to be two school-age children, as well. He called the case "a horrific tragedy."

The police department later said the Department of Homeland Security's investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, was taking the lead in the case and would be issuing all further updates.

Investigators could be seen gathering evidence from the truck on Saturday, hours after those who were inside  living and dead  were taken away. The trailer had an Iowa license plate but no other markings. The truck was parked on the side of the Walmart and the investigation didn't appear to be interfering with commerce, as customers could be seen coming and going from the store.

The have been deadlier immigrant smuggling cases in the U.S., including one in May 2003 in which 19 immigrants who were being transported from South Texas to Houston inside a sweltering tractor-trailer died.

Prosecutors said the driver in the 2003 case heard the immigrants begging and screaming for their lives as they were succumbing to the stifling heat inside his truck but he refused to free them. The driver was resentenced in 2011 to nearly 34 years in prison after a federal appeals court overturned the multiple life sentences he had received.

The Border Patrol has reported at least four truck seizures this month in and around Laredo, a U.S. border city about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio. On July 7, agents found 72 people crammed into a single truck "with no means of escape," the agency said. They were from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Authorities in Mexico have also made a number of discoveries of large numbers of people being trafficked in such vehicles in dangerous conditions over the years.

Last December, Mexican immigration officials found 110 migrants trapped and suffocating inside a truck after it crashed while speeding in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, which is a main migration corridor for Central Americans heading to the U.S. Most of the migrants were from Central America, and 48 of them were minors. Some were injured in the crash, but there were no fatalities.

Last October, also in Veracruz state, four migrants suffocated in a truck that was carrying 55 people, most of whom were from Guatemala. Many of the survivors were found to be severely dehydrated and had not had food or water for several days.

The migrants were locked in the back of a truck that was made to look as if it belonged to the Mexican mail service, according to immigration officials, who added that the migrants had paid about $930 apiece to be smuggled from Guatemala to the U.S. border.

Sometimes traffickers use vehicles that are smaller but still dangerously crowded.

In August 2016 a speeding van carrying 26 migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala turned over in the northern Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon, killing five of the occupants.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


A conservative Republican from Arizona vying for a US Senate seat was blasted Saturday for calling on party colleague John McCain to resign due to his recent cancer diagnosis.

Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, took to Twitter and criticized Kelli Ward, who plans on challenging McCains colleague, Jeff Flake, for his Senate seat next year.

In all the ways I measure good Senate colleagues (honor, class, integrity) Kelli Ward falls short. [People] like her aren't welcome in the US Sen,' Manchin said.

People like Kelli Ward are what's wrong with politics today. The people of AZ deserve representatives with dignity & decency.

Senator Joe Manchin (left), a Democrat from West Virginia, criticized a conservative Republican and ally of President Donald Trump for urging his colleague, Senator John McCain, to resign due to his cancer diagnosis

Republican Kelli Ward, a medical doctor who ran a primary campaign against McCain in the 2016 election, called upon the ailing senator to resign in a Friday statement

Ward, an ally of President Donald Trump and a top political rival to McCain and Flake, ignited controversy on Friday when she called upon the 80-year-old McCain to resign following his diagnosis with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Ward, a medical doctor who ran a primary campaign against McCain in the 2016 election, said in a Friday statement that 'the medical reality of his diagnosis is grim.'

'As a doctor, Ive counseled people in similar situations and these end-of-life choices are never easy,' Ward said.

'I usually advise terminal patients to reduce stress, relax, and spend time laughing with loved ones.'

'When the time comes that Senator McCain can no longer perform his duties in the Senate at full capacity, he owes it to the people of Arizona to step aside,' Ward's statement said.

Reaction on Twitter to Ward's remarks was also scathing.

'It's hard to stand out these days for having no class, but Kelli Ward did it,' tweeted one observer.

'Kelli Ward needs to apologize [sic] to John McCain and withdraw from politics. Permanently,' tweeted another Twitter user.

'Who calls for the resignation of a man the week we learn he has brain cancer?' tweeted Emily R Johnson.

'That's callous and tacky #KellyWard and not diplomatic.'

McCain, 80, has signaled that he has no intention to step down, taking to Twitter on Thursday to vow his speedy return.

'I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support - unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I'll be back soon, so stand-by!' tweeted the six-term Republican senator, who ran for president in 2008.

McCain was recently diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, according to doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, who had removed a blood clot above his left eye last Friday.

He and his family are weighing his treatment, including radiation and chemotherapy.

The 80-year-old John McCain was recently diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, according to doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix

McCain, 80, has signaled that he has no intention to step down, taking to Twitter on Thursday to vow his speedy return

Ward plans on challenging McCains colleague, Jeff Flake (seen above Thursday on Capitol Hill), for his Senate seat next year

Ward met with White House officials regarding her campaign in June, a signal that Trump may throw support to Ward in ousting Flake in the primary.

Flake blasted Ward's remarks in a statement to CBS News, calling McCain a hero and saying he hoped to see he colleague return soon to the Senate.

'I'm dumbstruck by Kelli Ward's comments,' Flake said.

Congress has a longstanding tradition in which no one questions ailing lawmakers taking time to recover.

Julie Tarallo, McCain's spokeswoman, said Friday that 'further consultations with Senator McCain's Mayo Clinic care team will indicate when he will return to the United States Senate.'

Ward in her statement said that her prayers were with McCain's family, adding: 'I hope and pray that Senator McCain will be comfortable as he battles this terrible disease.'
The picturesque vistas of Yosemite Valley have been hidden behind a cloud of thick smoke due to the raging Detwiler fire.

Several classic areas, including the Tunnel View overlook on Highway 41 and the El Capitan and Half Dome formations, were hardly visible behind a gray curtain at the section of Yosemite National Park in California.

Approximately 50,000 visitors flock each summer weekend to Yosemite Valley, which remains open - not deterring tourists from seeing the large granite structures.

Scroll down for video

The picturesque vistas of Yosemite Valley have been hidden behind a cloud of smoke (pictured) due to the raging Detwiler fire

Several classic areas including the Tunnel View overlook on Highway 41, and the El Capitan (pictured) and Half Dome formations were hardly visible behind a gray shroud at the section of Yosemite National Park in California

The Detwiler Fire has scorched more than 75,000 acres and destroyed 125 structures - 61 of them homes - since it erupted on July 16, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Pictured, formations at Yosemite Valley are hidden by smoke)

 Slide me 

One such visitor, Ken Walsh, 60, from New Zealand, told the Los Angeles Times he was expecting to be 'blown away by a Technicolor dream' at the Tunnel View vista.

However, upon arrival, he said: 'It leaves a lot to the imagination, doesn't it?'

Gabrielle Stacey, 43, of Bristol, England, said she saw 'a lot of potential' during her visit.

'I'll make sure to check the California fire situation before I book another trip to Yosemite,' she added.

The Detwiler Fire has scorched more than 75,000 acres and destroyed 125 structures - 61 of them homes - since it erupted on July 16, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Officials say the fire has reached 40 percent containment and that full containment is expected by August 5.

Officials say the fire has reached 40 percent containment and that full containment is expected by August 5 (Pictured, smoke over Yosemite Valley)

Some visitors, however, found ways to appreciate the smoke, saying that it provided for a nice backdrop for photos (Pictured, a couple sits looking out on a smoke-covered Yosemite Valley)

Some visitors, however, found ways to appreciate the smoke.

'It's awesome,' said Jacky Liang, 24, of Santa Cruz, California, as he photographed his girlfriend at Tunnel View.

'The smoke adds an edgy ambience to the shadows cast by the formations, almost as though they're cloaked in mist.'
Advertisement

Protest erupted at a Brooklyn bar on Saturday amid anger at the owner's decision to make a feature of a 'bullet damaged' wall on the property, sell wine in 40 ounce bottles and suggest she might wrap beverages in paper bags.

Dozens met up outside Summerhill, a 'boozy sandwich shop' in Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York to speak out against the 'bar's commodification of stereotypes that only serve to hurt the community.'

The area has been rapidly gentrifying in recent years and the owner - Canadian former corporate lawyer Becca Brennan - has been accused of racism for trading on the neighborhood's African American roots.

Protesters gathered outside Summerhill in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to protest against its 'racist' use of symbols of the area's troubled past to brand itself. One such feature was a fake 'bullet riddled wall'

User Ang Low said: '#whitepeople move to hood, make fun of our struggle.. #ImDone @ALSHARPTON_REV @EaterNY @Gothamist "fake gun holes" #summerhill ..Smh #bk.' The supposed bullet-riddled wall is pictured in his post

The area has been rapidly gentrifying in recent years before Canadian former corporate lawyer Becca Brennan opened the bar

One protester address the crowd outside the bar which was opened by a Canadian former corporate tax lawyer

Ms Brennan, wasn't in attendance for the protest but did release a statement admitting that some of her ideas are 'insensitive.'

As part of the bar's opening publicity, Summerhill issued a press release on Monday featuring a mixed drink next to a damaged wall described as 'bullet hole-ridden' and was supposedly part of a 'rumored backroom illegal gun shop' in the past.

'Yes, that bullet hole-ridden wall was originally there and, yes, we're keeping it,' it read.

The 'bullet-hole ridden wall' is actually a fake. It was originally damaged and Ms Brennan decided to make a feature out of it - a decision she later admitted was 'cheeky'.

Another of the bar's gimmicks is to sell rose wine in 40 ounce bottles, which Ms Brennan even suggested could come in paper bags.

However such features have not gone down well with many of the local population.

One protester told the Daily News on Saturday: 'People from my culture used to sit on the corner and drink, and theyre trying to profitize that. And that is their marketing. Its not cheeky. Its offensive.'

Customers are pictured on the bar's Instagram with a bottle of the Forty Ounce Rose . The owner even suggested the bottles could come in paper bags

The owner posted an Instagram photo of the 40 ounce wine bottle on the bicycle of one of her barmaids

Gothamist asked for clarification on the symbolism, to which Brennan said in an email: 'I'm not an authority so don't feel comfortable commenting on anything other than my businessa new bar and restaurant that locals (/my neighbors) seem to really enjoy and appreciate.'

Brennan hails from Toronto, Canada, and attended New York University and worked as corporate tax attorney for Bristol-Myers Squibb before moving to Crown Heights two years ago.

Natherlene Bolden, a founding member of the Crown Heights Tenants Union and resident of the neighborhood since 1978, voiced her criticism of the establishment.

'Actions speak louder than words,' said the 55-year-old.

'You are making money off of... negative aspects in our community which, you know, you're happy when these things go on because you can make money off of it.'

'And it's like you're not thinking about the black people or the long-term residents in the community. Or maybe you are thinking about them but they don't matter.'

Brennan released a statement to the initial backlash on Wednesday saying that she planned to 'talk to (her) neighbors about positive ways we can more involved, including with other local small businesses, artist and charities.'

It said: 'I deeply apologize for any offense that my recent comments might have caused.

'I did not intend to be insensitive to anyone in the neighborhood, and I am sorry that my words caused pain. I made light of serious issues and that was wrong.'

Owner Becca Brennan posted a statement justifying to the Instagram account and insist that she will do more to listen to the local community

Protest gathered outside the bar on Saturday after posting signs that read 'This is what gentrification looks like'

Outside the bar, police were said to have threatened to shut protest down if too many people convened in the area and weren't peaceful

Hundreds of people gathered at the protest on Saturday afternoon after news articles about the bar angered many people

But the sentiment was already cosigned by people on social media who also voiced their disdain with the restaurant's publicity stunt.

User Ang Low said: '#whitepeople move to hood, make fun of our struggle.. #ImDone @ALSHARPTON_REV @EaterNY @Gothamist "fake gun holes" #summerhill ..Smh #bk.'

'Boycott Summerhill BK. Blatant racism. Trash. Go write a 1 star Yelp review,' added Joanna Reynolds, posting a link to the shop's yelp page.

On Instagram, Shanaya Amoy commented: 'Get out. We don't want you in our community. You are a culture vulture and you are not welcomed here. Your business will fail because you have disrespected the entire community. No one wants you here and we will not stop protecting until you shut down and go back to wherever you came from.'

'This was even more of an insult by not seeing the wrongs in what you have done . No apology no nothing . You and anyone else who dares to support this place is disgusting,' added another user.

One commented on Brennan's absence from the protest and said: 'YOU COULDNT EVEN SHOW YOUR FACE TODAY THATS WEAKNESS. WE WILL BE BACK.'

Summerhill also took a hit on Yelp, with many leaving one star reviews along with messages for the owner.

Thersea S said: 'Awful. The owner should be ashamed of exploiting the past violence of this area. Can't wait to see this business close.'

Another user called out the establishment in the last 24 hours.

'Good luck serving tourists that's not going to pay the rent. This neighborhood is built out of so much history you played yourself,' he added.

Another user posted: 'Trying to make money by mocking the economic hardships of longtime residents. This place should not have the right to exist. I can't wait to see it's doors shuttered.'

Brennan hasn't made a comment regarding today's protest.

Joanna Reynolds posted the link to the bar's Yelp reviews and told people to boycott Summerhill for 'blatant racism'

On Instagram, Shanaya Amoy commented: 'Get out. We don't want you in our community. You are a culture vulture and you are not welcomed here. Your business will fail because you have disrespected the entire community. No one wants you here and we will not stop protecting until you shut down and go back to wherever you came from'

'This was even more of an insult by not seeing the wrongs in what you have done . No apology no nothing . You and anyone else who dares to support this place is disgusting,' added another user
A 21-year-old fitness instructor has had a stroke of incredible luck, with a forgotten investment of $2000 now worth more than a million dollars.

Despite his luck, the Melbourne man is unwilling to re-invest his newfound fortune in anything traditional, such as a house, and says he will start a business and travel instead.

Jordan Travers, who lives in Melbourne, purchased $2000 of internet currency Ethereum four years ago.

He promptly forgot about his risky investment until the currency made headlines, he told the Herald Sun.

Jordan Travers, 21, purchased $2000 worth of Ethereum four years ago and forgot about it, but a news article alerted him to the face he had been sitting on a fortune

Ethereum was worth $US50 when Mr Travers first checked in on his money, but jumped to more than $300 over the next month

'The article said the price was $US50 so I figured my original investment might be worth $20,000 or something,' he said.

Upon logging on to check on his money, he discovered he had been sitting on a small fortune. As the owner of more than 5000 Ethereum, with a share price of $US50, he now had nearly $US260,000.

He sat on the money for a short while longer, and watched the price jump again and again.

It was at this point that he cashed out 75 per cent of his investment - which earned him a cool $719,000.

'I just sat there looking at the screen, I was literally dumbfounded,' he said.

Perhaps as a result of his unconventional success, Mr Travers does not intend to buy a home with his riches, or anything material for that matter.

'I'm going to travel. I'd like to do some more study. And ultimately I'd like to start my own business,' he told the newspaper.

'And with the rest I'll be taking the Barefoot Investor approach and investing in good-quality, dividend-paying shares.'
The Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Australian woman graduated from the city's accelerated police cadet program.

Officer Mohamed Noor graduated in 2015 after the seven month training program, which is a quicker, nontraditional route to policing aimed at helping those who already have a college degree enter law enforcement, The Star Tribune reported.

Mr Noor shot dead bride-to-be Justine Damond on July 15 as she stood outside her Minneapolis home in pajamas.

Officer Mohamed Noor graduated in 2015 after the seven month training program, which is a quicker, nontraditional route to policing aimed at helping those who already have a college degree enter law enforcement

Mr Noor shot dead bride-to-be Justine Damond (pictured) on July 15 as she stood outside her Minneapolis home in pajamas

Ms Damond's dad John Ruszczyk (pictured) is seen at a vigil held for his daughter on Sydney's northern beaches on Wednesday

The 31-year-old police officer was fast tracked into his role through the city's accelerated cadet program.

The seven-month training program is designed for applicants already with a college degree, with recipients receiving tuition for Hennepin Technical College to complete their studies.

Cadets are also given a US$20 per hour salary plus benefits during the course.

Former Minneapolis Police boss Janee Harteau defended the program and Mr Noor's training.

'We have a very robust training and hiring process. This officer completed that training very well, just like every officer. He was very suited to be on the street,' she said.

'Justine didn't have to die. This should not have happened.'

Ms Harteau resigned from her position on Friday.

The 31-year-old police officer was fast tracked into his role through the city's accelerated cadet program

A vigil was held for Justin Damond at Freshwater Beach in Sydney on Wednesday

James Densley, a university professor in criminal justice, told the Star Tribune he believes the training scheme is satisfactory but flawed.

'The cadet program is rigorous, no doubt, but it is also an immersive paramilitary experience, taught by practitioner faculty without advanced degrees, and I suspect it leaves students with a limited view of the profession,' Mr Densley said.

Ms Damond was killed after calling 911 to report a possible sexual assault near her home in south Minneapolis.

Former Police Chief Harteau, who resigned Friday, said Noor's race and ethnicity had nothing to do with the July 15 killing of the 40-year-old Damond, who was shot after she called 911 to report a possible rape.
A woman has welcomed back her Navy partner with a very public and cheeky display.

The HMAS Arunta had been deployed for nine months in the Middle East, the longest service of an Australian ship in the region since the first Gulf War.

Hundreds of people attended the Fleet Base West in Western Australia on Sunday to greet the servicemen and women, with one woman particularly excited.

The awaiting lover was grinning from ear to ear while brandishing a pink sign that reads 'D.Baber report for booty.'

A woman has welcomed back her Navy partner with a very public and cheeky display. She can be seen grinning from ear to ear brandishing a pink sign that reads 'D.Baber report for booty'

An unidentified navy officer hugs his loved one after returning from deployment on Sunday

HMAS Arunta ship sailed to the port of Fleet Base West in Rockingham, Western Australia, after completing the longest Middle Eastern deployment of an Australian Navy vessel since the first Gulf War.

Senator for Western Australia, Linda Reynolds; Commander Australian Fleet, Rear Admiral Stuart Mayer; and family and friends of the ship's company welcomed the Anzac class frigate home after her nine-month deployment to Operation MANITOU.

During her deployment, Arunta intercepted more than 1310 kilograms of illegal narcotics with a street value of more than $186 million according to Australian Crime Commission figures, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Commanding Officer, Commander Cameron Steil, said the commitment and professionalism of the 191 crew were the keys to the success of the mission.

'Our training prepared us well, but it was the attitude and work ethic of this great team that saw us achieve so much as part of the Combined Maritime Forces,' Commander Steil said.

'We are proud of our contribution to global security and stability. We covered a lot of ocean and we are pleased to be home.

A bird eye's view of the navy officers who returned to Australia after a long deployment

Commanding Officer, Commander Cameron Steil, (pictured) talks to the media in WA

'Since departing in November last year, we have travelled more than 49,000 nautical miles, equivalent to 2.5 times around the world.

'In that time, Arunta worked as part of the Combined Maritime Forces to interrupt the illegal drug trade that funds terrorism.'

The Commander Australian Fleet said Arunta continued Australia's record of illicit trade network disruption by working effectively with our international partners across the region.

'Australia has had a constant presence in the Middle East for decades, and the men and women of the Royal Australian Navy have regularly seized drugs and other illegal cargoes from the high seas,' Rear Admiral Mayer said.

'Arunta has maintained Australia's high standing in the Combined Maritime Forces and proven our ability to continue to perform at the highest level while committing ships to the region for longer periods,' he said.
Charlie Gard's parents revealed today how they have faced a backlash after it was revealed doctors treating their terminally-ill baby have received death threats.

Supporters of 11-month-old Charlie held a rally outside the High Court today as his parents consider their next steps ahead of tomorrow's hearing to decide his fate.

The protesters want the baby to receive an experimental medical treatment before legal proceedings resume in London with new medical evidence expected.

But it came as officials at Great Ormond Street Hospital in the capital said emotions are running so high in the high-profile case that they have received death threats.

Eleven-month-old Charlie Gard has a rare genetic condition and suffers from brain damage

Reverend Patrick Mahoney from Washington DC speaks outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London this afternoon as he joins other supporters of Charlie Gard

Charlie has a rare genetic condition and suffers from brain damage, with his parents Chris Gard and Connie Yates fighting to get him more medical care.

And Ms Yates said: 'We are extremely upset by the backlash we have received after Great Ormond Street Hospital put out their statement last night.

'We do not and have not ever condoned any threatening or abusive remarks towards any staff member at Gosh.

'We too have suffered from the most hurtful comments from the public and Gosh is aware of this too.

'We would have appreciated it if when they put out their statement they had asked the public not to say anything hurtful to us as well as their doctors and other members of staff.

Rev. Mahoney speaks to the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice during today's protest

Charlie's parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard are fighting to get him more medical care

'Chris and I are just ordinary parents with a very sick baby and we simply have his best interests at heart.

'Despite conflicting issues, we have always had the utmost respect for all the staff who work tirelessly at Great Ormond St hospital and the very difficult jobs they do every day.

Hospital officials say the experimental treatment won't work on Charlie and will just cause the 11-month-old more suffering

'Like them we have been shocked by some of the public response to this case and agree with them that it is disgraceful that doctors have received death threats.

Her partner Mr Gard added: 'We say it again - we are very grateful to the staff for the care of our son. Without the excellent care of the doctors at Gosh our son would not even be alive and not a day goes by when we don't remember that.

'We also know what a devastating place this can be for upset and anxious parents and we are constantly mindful that they have enough on their plate without hearing about our problems too.'

Their official spokesperson Alison Smith-Squire, who has supported the family since they first contacted her for help in November 2016, said: 'Chris and Connie are sweet, loving parents who've found themselves in a nightmare and who have worked tirelessly with doctors at Gosh to try to mediate for a resolution.

'People might not agree with them but as Charlie's parents they have simply been doing the best they can for their son. Charlie is their first and only child whom they love so dearly.

Charlie's parents, who are in their 30s and come from Bedfont, West London, have already lost battles in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court in London

'As well as being forced to fight through the courts for their son's life, Charlie's desperate parents have come in for shameful, disgraceful and hurtful criticism from some who have left the most shocking comments on stories, accusing them of 'enjoying the publicity', not being loving parents because they do not want their child to die and for not facing up to the 'truth' of his diagnosis.

'The truth is Charlie could be your son or grandson. Charlie also has an extended loving family of grandparents, aunts and uncles - all of whom have been terribly upset by some unnecessary and spiteful comments about Connie and Chris.

'At the same time Gosh is undoubtedly a remarkable establishment and we are all proud of its world-renowned reputation. It is one of our finest hospitals and equally does not deserve any abuse for doing what it feels is in the best interests of a patient.

'Of course people have differing opinions and this heartbreaking case provokes strong views. But it is time everyone refrains from making threats and nasty remarks to either the family or the hospital.'

Hospital officials say the experimental treatment on Charlie won't work and will just cause the terminally-ill 11-month-old more suffering.

The couple say there is new evidence and had asked Mr Justice Francis - who in April ruled in favour the hospital, and said Charlie should be allowed to die with dignity - to change his mind

They also argue that his life support should be turned off and he should receive palliative care.

Hospital chairwoman Mary MacLeod said police have been contacted because of numerous threats received by the hospital's employees in the case.

'Staff have received abuse both in the street and online,' she said.

'Thousands of abusive messages have been sent to doctors and nurses whose life's work is to care for sick children. Many of these messages are menacing, including death threats.'

Ms MacLeod said families visiting other ill children have also been 'harassed and discomforted' on the grounds of the renowned hospital in London.

Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital say the therapy is experimental and will not help

Last week the American specialist, Michio Hirano, a professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York, travelled to London to examine Charlie for the first time and discuss the case with Great Ormond Street doctors.

Lawyers had told the judge that they would analyse reports from the gathering over the weekend.

Mr Justice Francis has considered the latest stage of the case at public hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

Mr Gard and Ms Yates have asked judges to rule that Charlie, who suffers from a rare genetic condition and has brain damage, should be allowed to undergo a therapy trial in New York.

Doctors at Great Ormond Street say the therapy is experimental and will not help. They say life support treatment should stop.

Charlie's parents, who are in their 30s and come from Bedfont, West London, have already lost battles in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court in London.

They have also failed to persuade European Court of Human Rights judges to intervene.

The loss seemed final  but both Pope Francis and U.S. President Donald Trump expressed an interest in Charlie's fate, and the hospital asked for a new court hearing because of what the family claimed was new medical evidence.

In addition, the couple say there is new evidence and had asked Mr Justice Francis - who in April ruled in favour of Great Ormond Street and said Charlie should be allowed to die with dignity - to change his mind.

Mr Justice Francis said he would not re-run the case but would consider any 'new material'.

A spokesperson for Great Ormond Street Hospital said: 'We are grateful for what Charlie's parents have said, and agree wholeheartedly that any abuse of anybody involved in this case is unacceptable.

'This is a heart-breaking time for Charlie's loving parents when they should be given every support.'
More than 70 per cent of Tory members want Theresa May to stay on as leader and Prime Minster despite the unofficial race to replace her, new polling showed today.

A survey of grassroots members has put David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, at the front of the chasing pack.

But as Mrs May prepares to fly out of Britain for a three week summer holiday the Tory faithful are clear she should be allowed to return and get on with her job.

The Prime Minister clung to power after the election disaster and continues to face questions about whether she can survive. The poll emerged today as senior activists claimed Mrs May should quit by Christmas.

Were she to fall, more than a fifth of members back the Brexit Secretary to take over.

Theresa May (pictured today in Maidenhead) flies out of Britain for a three week holiday tomorrow after scrambling to the summer recess in the aftermath of her election disaster

The poll of party members, revealed today by the Observer, reveals Mr Davis as the leading contender backed by 21 per cent.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson remains a contender with the support of 17 per cent of people asked by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Significantly, more than a quarter of people backed no candidate at all in an indication of the desire for a new candidate to emerge.

The research comes as the Sunday Telegraph reveals senior activists want Mrs May out by Christmas.

The paper said a meeting of the Conservative Party Board last month was dominated by a presentation delivering the concerns of the party's grassroots.

Rob Semple, who represents party volunteers on the board, said a report of members' views slammed 'every aspect of the campaign' run by Mrs May.

David Davis (pictured in Brussels this week) leads the unofficial race to replace Theresa May as Tory leader and Prime Minister a new poll of party members reveals today

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (pictured in Tokyo on Friday) remains a contender with the support of 17 per cent of people asked by the Economic and Social Research Council

Ed Costelloe, chairman of the Grassroots Conservatives activist group, told the paper: 'After the election can she actually recover? It would need something huge and I can't see it happening frankly.

'She is effectively crippled. She herself must know that she will not be a long-term prime minister.

'Everything she does, in the back of her mind is 'what happens and how do I go'? It weighs down on everything and is a burden.

'She should consider going before Christmas if it is in the interests of the party and the country. There should be a leadership switch without a contest.'

Tom Tugendhat (left) and Jacob Rees-Mogg (right) are among the names being discussed in Westminster as future leadership contenders

Many Tory MPs are opposed to an early leadership contest, fearing the prospect of triggering another general election that could hand No 10 to Jeremy Corbyn.

The preferred choice of many is for Mrs May to see out the Brexit negotiations until March 2019 and then seek to hand over.

Tory grandee Ken Clarke today declared Mrs May's critics should come to terms with her staying on.

He told Radio 5's Pienaar's Politics: 'For people who do not like Theresa May, which is not me, they're doomed to be led by Theresa May for the next two or three years and they'll get even more disasters, the Conservative party, if the two or three years are not reasonably successful.

'We need to go back to economic growth, we need to concentrate on the key problems.'

Names circulating in Westminster as potential future leaders include Tom Tugendhat, the new chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, James Cleverly and Johnny Mercer.

Senior Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has become a social media sensation after joining Twitter and Instagram and is seen as an unorthodox choice from the party's traditional wing.
A British schoolteacher working in Cambodia was behind bars last on Sunday night after being arrested for alleged sex offences against a young female student.

Mark Andrew Smith, named by police as a 39-year-old British national and Vice Principal of the Golden Bridge International School in Phnom Penh, joins a long list of alleged child abusers in the South East Asian country.

Police said that Smith was arrested while leaving the school after the five-year-old girl's parents made a complaint.

The parents allegedly complained that Smith had taken their daughter to his home and molested her.

Mark Andrew Smith, named by police as a 39-year-old British national and Vice Principal of the Golden Bridge International School in Phnom Penh, joins a long list of alleged child abusers in the South East Asian country. Police said that Smith was arrested while leaving the school after the five-year-old girl's parents made a complaint

Expatriate websites reported that while the parents had not gone to the police themselves, they had made the complaint to the school principal.

Investigations by police are understood to be looking into more than one incident.

Smith has been identified in his own social media profiles as coming from Gorleston in Norfolk and moved to Siem Reap, Cambodia in 2007, where he started working at Smart Kids International School.

In August 2014 he moved to Phnom Penh to work at the Golden Bridge School as its Vice Principal, a title he was still holding at the time of his arrest late last week.

A video posted on the internet by a local woman understood to be familiar with the alleged case said the parents, suspicious that something had happened to their daughter, had been told following a medical check that there was evidence of sexual activity.

The Cambodian woman who posted the complaint alleged: 'This is rape, sexual infringement with intention by a foreigner.

Investigations by police are understood to be looking into more than one incident. Smith has been identified in his own social media profiles as coming from Gorleston in Norfolk and moved to Siem Reap, Cambodia in 2007, where he started working at Smart Kids International School

'The mother and father are not bold/brave enough to press charges because of the possible implications on the child, so they go and meet the Khmer director of the schoola modern, international, expensive school.

'One year, $1800 for kindergarten. Most people can't afford this. People who do, they presume schools are safe.

'Less than a year ago they arrested another foreigner. When they went to his residence it was full of children's shoes. It's not just little girls they rape. Little boys, too.'

The reference to another foreigner having children's shoes at his house is understood to be related to the arrest of British doctor Clive Cressy 69, from Hove East Sussex, who was actually arrested in May this year on child sex abuse charges.

Smith, who is seen in photos with a number of young children believed to be from his school, has not made any public comment since his arrest.

But if the charges proceed, he is expected to appear in court in Phnom Penh soon.

Another Briton, former hairdresser David Fletcher, 71, is serving a long jail sentence in Cambodia after being convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl in 2008.
Officials are set to axe plans to allow single-faith state schools in Britain amid fears they could cause divisions.

The Tories had promised to scrap a 50% admissions cap which forces oversubscribed faith institutions to take half of their pupils from other religions.

But now the Government is reportedly set to axe that manifesto pledge which could lead to a new education crisis.

Faith groups are thought to have been planning dozens of new free schools - some of which were being opened to cope with the influx of Catholic families from eastern Europe.

But the Church said it would not open new state schools if half of the places had to be reserved for children who practice other religions.

The Tories had promised to scrap a 50% admissions cap which forces oversubscribed faith institutions to take half of their pupils from other religions (stock photo)

It comes after Sir Nick Weller, the chief executive of Dixons Academies in Bradford, said legislation is needed to stop communities segregating themselves at school level.

He warned of the 'unhealthy' situation in Bradford, where Muslim and white communities 'live separate lives' and send their children to different schools.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, chief inspector of schools Amanda Spielman said: 'Admission 100% on faith leads to increased levels of segregation within communities.

'I am uncomfortable with anything that leads to increased segregation.'

According to official figures released by Ofsted more than 500 of England's schools are either 100% white or ethnic minority.

Sir Nick Weller, pictured, the chief executive of Dixons Academies in Bradford, said legislation is needed to stop communities segregating themselves at school level

A Catholic Education Service spokesman told The Sunday Times: 'We cannot open any free schools if the 50% admission cap remains.

'We have not opened any since 2010 even though there is huge demand for Catholic education in some regions.'

Sir Nick's comments come more than 30 years after another headmaster, Ray Honeyford, was branded racist for raising concerns about community cohesion in the multicultural city.

He later lost his job  but many said he was at least partially vindicated when a government-commissioned report into the 2001 Bradford riots blamed 'shockingly' divided communities.

Sir Nick, who runs eight academies in the city, told Radio 4's Today programme earlier this week that diversity in schools is vital to helping communities interact.

Sir Nick, who runs eight academies in the city, including Dixons Trinity Academy, pictured, said legislation is needed to stop communities segregating themselves at school level

He said: 'I think it's unhealthy in a city like Bradford for two communities to live separate lives, which by and large they do. You could say Bradford is almost two communities  the Muslim community and the white community.

'Families will ignore the school that is nearest them because it is predominantly of one  the 'wrong'  ethnic group and they will send them a little bit further down the road to a school where they feel more comfortable.'

He said there was a 'tipping point' and that once a school has '70 to 80 per cent' of pupils from one community, other families are put off sending their child there.
An unidentified person has recorded footage of themselves catching a ride on the back of a Melbourne train.

A video of the stunt was uploaded to YouTube on Friday showing a male youth climbing onto the end of a Metro carriage at West Footscray station.

The train heads off and begins to gain speed as it moves along the Sunbury line.

A daredevil has recorded themselves hanging off the back of a Melbourne train

In a video uploaded to YouTube the male jumps on at West Footscray station

In the footage the risk-taker's legs can be seen dangling off the edge of the train as he makes a peace sign to the camera.

As the train pulls up at Tottenham station the careless journey comes to an end, 9 News reports.

A Victoria Police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia authorities don't condone the behaviour at all.

The train heads off and begins to gain speed as it moves along the Sunbury line

'Train surfing is highly dangerous and from time to time ends in tragedy,' he said.

Metro Trains told 9 News they are now looking into the 'dangerous and unlawful' incident.

Daily Mail Australia has approached the railway operator for further comment.
Driving for more than two hours a day negatively affects IQ levels, scientists have warned.

In what might come as unwelcome news for middle-aged commuters, a recent study found that long periods behind the wheel could speed up the effects of age on the brain.

The researchers that the results could be explained by the fact that the mind is less active on long car journeys.

A study has found more than two hours a day behind the wheel could speed up negative effects on brainpower

The mammoth project saw more than half a million Britons aged 37-73 studied over a period of five years.

Out of these some 93,000 of them drove more than two or three hours a day.

Researchers found that not only did this proportion of subjects typically have lower brainpower to begin with but their IQ score declined more rapidly over the course of the study than those who did little or no driving.

Kishan Bakrania, a medical epidemiologist at the University of Leicester, told The Sunday Times: 'We know that regularly driving for more than two or three hours a day is bad for your heart.

'This research suggests it is bad for your brain too, perhaps because your mind is less active in those hours.'

Some 93,000 people in the study of more than half a million spent long periods behind the wheel every day

Previous studies have found that long periods of inactivity have a detrimental affect on brainpower and Dr Bakrania's research shows similar results for those who watched more than two hours of television a day.

But the study also found using computers actually boosted people's cognitive stills, leading the scientist to propose another potential factor for driving's negative effects.

'Driving causes strees and fatigue, with studies showing the links between them and cognitive decline.'
Minister for Women and Equalities Justine Greening said she wanted to cut the stigma faced by transpeople

Adults will be able to choose their sex legally without the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria under government plans.

Men will be able to identify themselves as women - and women as men - and have their birth certificates change to record their new gender.

Minister for Women and Equalities Justine Greening said she wanted to cut the stigma faced by transpeople.

At present they have to provide evidence that they have been in transition for at least two years before they can apply to legally change their gender.

Reforms to help transgender people choose their legal sex, which include speeding up the bureaucratic process, will go out to consultation in the autumn.

It comes after Prime Minister Theresa May earlier this week suggested she was preparing to reform the Gender Recognition Act, saying that 'when it comes to rights and protections for trans people, there is still a long way to go'.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said May would have his support if she allowed transpeople to 'self-identify' their gender.

He said legislation could be passed with Labour's backing, despite the prime minster's deal with the socially conservative DUP.

However critics warned it could lead to legal cases over access to women-only hospital wards, prisons and rape crisis centres.

Stephanie Davies-Arai of Transgender Trend, a parents' group, told the Sunday Times: 'This has huge implications for women. There will be legal cases. The most worrying thing is if any man can identify as a woman with no tests and gain access to spaces where women might be getting undressed or feel vulnerable  like women's hospital wards, refuges and rape crisis centres  women will just stop going to these facilities.'

Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute said: 'It is worrying when the leaders of the main political parties are so out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people.

'We need to inject a dose of reality into these discussions about transgenderism before the current political fashion runs away with us altogether.

'Allowing men to self-identify as female without any medical diagnosis allows them to invade the privacy of women and girls. Where this policy has been tried in the US, women and young girls have experienced the fear and humiliation of finding themselves sharing toilet and changing facilities with men.

'Transgender people aren't the only people with rights. Women have rights too.

'If politicians believe we can redefine our own gender at will, it's no wonder others are following this to its logical conclusion and advocating transracialism and even transageism. It's time for a reality check. Some things can't be changed.'

Prime Minister Theresa May earlier this week suggested she was preparing to reform the Gender Recognition Act

Ms Greening, who is in a relationship with a woman, said the Government was building on the progress on tackling prejudice made in the 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality.

The Sexual Offences Act 1967 made private homosexual acts between men over the age of 21 legal.

The current need to be assessed and diagnosed by clinicians is seen as an intrusive requirement by the trans community.

Ms Greening said: 'This government is committed to building an inclusive society that works for everyone, no matter what their gender or sexuality and today we're taking the next step forward.

'We will build on the significant progress we have made over the past 50 years, tackling some of the historic prejudices that still persist in our laws and giving LGBT people a real say on the issues affecting them.'

Suzanna Hopwood, a member of the Stonewall Trans Advisory Group, said: 'I am really pleased that the Government is making good on its commitment to review the Gender Recognition Act. Reform is one of the key priorities in our vision for removing the huge inequalities that trans people face in the UK.

'The current system is demeaning and broken. It's vital that this reform removes the requirements for medical evidence and an intrusive interview panel, and finally allows all trans people to have their gender legally recognised through a simple administrative process. That's what we'll be calling for during this consultation, and I'm looking forward to seeing the law change soon after.'

The current need to be assessed and diagnosed by clinicians is seen as an intrusive requirement by the trans community

Ruth Hunt, Chief Executive of Stonewall said: 'We're pleased the Government recognises there is still more to be done to ensure all lesbian, gay, bi and trans people are accepted without exception, and welcome the announcement of new measures to tackle some of the remaining inequalities.

'We need a simple process which isn't medicalised, intrusive or demeaning. We would urge the Government to ensure that all trans communities are consulted and to act quickly on their concerns.'

Ben Wilson, Equality and Human Rights Commission executive director, said: 'There's still so much more to do to ensure trans people can live as they choose without fear of discrimination or hostility.

'We welcome that the Government is prioritising this and seeking views from trans people themselves.

'We'll feed in information about a wide range of issues raised with us from school and work to other areas of life.'

The consultation will also address whether those whose gender is 'non-binary' should be able to define themselves as 'X' on their birth certificates.

A separate consultation in Scotland goes even further and proposes a cut in the age at which people can change their gender from 18 to 16.

The Government has also announced the deferral blood donation period for men who have sexual contact with other men, will be reduced from 12 months to three months increasing the supply of donor blood available for life-saving operations.

Fears over infections led to a ban on gay men giving blood at the height of the Aids epidemic, but in 2011 that was changed to allow men to donate blood a year after having sex.

This will be reduced again in 2018 due to medical advances under plans for the NHS in England.

Ethan Spibey, Founder, FreedomToDonate said: 'Today's announcement from the Government marks a world-leading blood donation policy for gay and bisexual men and the other groups previously restricted.

'I'm so proud that the work of FreedomToDonate and our supporters will help ensure more people than ever before are allowed to safely donate blood. I began this campaign because I wanted to repay the donor who saved my granddad's life after a major operation and this announcement means I'm closer than ever to doing that.'
Sex workers and gay men are to be allowed to donate blood in Britain and Scotland after experts advised government that tests are now accurate enough to ensure safe samples.

Sex workers were previously barred from donating but they will now be allowed to give blood three months after they last had sex.

Men who have sex with men were only allowed to give blood 12 months after their last sexual activity but that will now be reduced to three months.

Scientists now say that a virus or infection will be picked up in blood tests within three months of infection, leading to the new rule that relaxes blood donor restrictions for 'at risk' groups.

The rule changes will come into force at blood donation centres in Scotland in November, and in early 2018 in England.

The move has been praised by experts as a triumph for science over prejudice and stigmatization.

Fears over infections being passed on through donations from gay men led to an outright ban at the height of the Aids epidemic which sparked complaints about prejudice as testing accuracy has improved for all donor blood samples.

Sex workers were barred and gay men had to wait 12 months after their last sexual activity before donating but now both groups can donate blood three months after last having sex

All blood that is donated in the UK undergoes a mandatory test for HIV, Hepatitis B and C, and some other viruses.

The rule change will allow more people to donate blood without compromising blood supply safety, experts say.

The Government accepted the recommendations of the advisory committee on the safety of blood, tissues and organs (SaBTO) and are introducing the changes under equalities reforms.

Groups affected by the rule change Men who have sex with other men Commercial sex workers. People who have sex with high-risk partners - including those who have been in areas where HIV is common. These groups will be allowed to donate blood after abstaining from sex for three months. The rule change takes effect in come into force in Scotland in November, and in Britain in in early 2018. Advertisement

Equalities and Education Secretary Justine Greening said the Government was building on the progress on tackling prejudice made in the 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality.

She also announced that reforms to make it easier for transgender people to chose their sex legally by removing the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and speeding up the bureaucratic process will go out to consultation in the autumn.

'This Government is committed to building an inclusive society that works for everyone, no matter what their gender or sexuality,' she said.

Ethan Spibey, founder of the FreedomToDonate group who has campaigned for reform, said: 'The announcement marks a world-leading blood donation policy for gay and bisexual men and the other groups previously restricted.

'I began this campaign because I wanted to repay the donor who saved my granddad's life after a major operation and this announcement means I'm closer than ever to doing that.'

Alex Phillips, blood donations policy lead at the Terrence Higgins Trust, told the BBC that the changes were a 'victory for science over stigmatising assumptions', adding: 'The evidence suggests three months is the right amount of time.'

She told BBC One's Breakfast that the lifetime donation ban for sex industry workers was based on 'preconceptions rather than evidence'.

NHS Blood and Transplant said there was not currently a shortage of blood in the UK but 200,000 new donors were needed every year to replenish supplies.

It said there was a particular need for more people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities to give blood.

NHS said there was a need for more people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities to give blood and 200,000 new donors were needed annually to replenish supplies

Changes have also been proposed for people who have undergone acupuncture, piercing, tattooing and endoscopy, and for those with a history of non-prescribed injecting drug use but this would require changes to UK legislation.

In Scotland, the change was ordered by Public Health Minister Aileen Campbell and will be implemented by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) and also follows recommendations from the UK's SaBTO.

Prof James Neuberger, from the SaBTO advisory committee, told the BBC: 'Technologies to pick up the presence of the virus have greatly improved, so we can now pick up viruses at a much earlier stage in the infection, and therefore it's much easier to tell if a blood donor has the virus.'
A 16-year-old German girl who ran away to join ISIS had a baby with her when she was found in the ruins of Mosul last week, it has been revealed.

Linda Wenzel surrendered to Iraqi forces last weekend after she was found hurt and screaming for help in a bombed out house in Mosul, a year after she vanished from her home near Dresden, Eastern Germany.

The malnourished baby boy she was with was taken to an Army clinic for medical attention before he and Linda were transferred to Baghdad.

It was previously reported that Linda was married to a Chechen Islamic State fighter and had 'admitted' to killing Iraqi troops.

Linda is thought to have left eastern Germany last July after the breakdown of her parents' marriage. By the time her mother noticed she was missing, Linda (pictured left after she was found and right before leaving Germany) had already flown to Turkey and vanished

Linda (pictured, after she was captured) was among 20 ISIS followers seized after Mosul fell following a ten month battle which left 25,000 Jihadists dead. She had a malnourished baby boy with her at the time she was found by Iraqi forces

An Iraqi special operations forces soldier who met the girl on the night of her arrest said that it was unclear if the child was Linda's, though she is producing breast milk.

'I don't know for sure that it is her baby, but she keeps him with her always,' the soldier told The Times.

The soldier said that the teenager was uncooperative with Iraqi soldiers.

'I don't think she regretted joining Isis because she looked angry and she refused any help that we provide,' he told The Times, suggesting that Linda was 'brainwashed'.

German prosecutors say that Linda ran away from her family home in Pulsnitz in eastern Germany last summer.

It's unclear if she will return to Germany, as she could face trial in Iraq.

Linda is now being held in an Iraqi prison facility, where she will be held during an investigation.

The German embassy in Baghdad is believed to be liaising with Iraqi officials.

Earlier this week, an officer in Iraq's elite counter terrorism unit told The Telegraph said she was a sniper for ISIS.

Linda was found injured and screaming as Iraqi soldiers made their way through the bombed out houses of Mosul, Iraq's war-torn second city, according to Iraqi Mohammed Shuraf, (circled) who used an alias when describing the moment they found the 16-year-old

Speaking anonymously, he said: 'We found her with a gun in her hand next to her Chechen husband, who was then killed by Iraqi forces in a firefight. She said she had killed a number of our men in the battle.'

'She was a Daesh sniper, but maybe her husband pressured her into it. She looked scared.'

The Telegraph said it is thought Linda and the fighter formed a relationship after meeting in a chat room, where he convinced her to join ISIS.

Iraqi MP Vian Dakhil backed up the claims, adding that she was found with explosives and was 'ready to attack the advancing troops.'

An Iraqi soldier told Germany's Bild newspaper that he and his comrades mistook her at first for a sex slave of Islamic State terrorists.

Talking under the alias Mohammed Shuraf for protection, the soldier told the newspaper he and his comrades thought at first she was a Yazidi sex slave.

IS warriors routinely kidnapped and abused women of the minority sect.

Linda (pixilated, before fleeing to Syria) was unhappy at home and turned to Islam and soon began engaging with ISIS followers in the Middle East on Internet chat rooms

Describing the moment they found her, he said: 'We entered a shattered house, which was previously under fire. There we heard someone screaming for help. It was the girl, she was alone, injured on the left arm and chest, lying on the floor. '

He said her clothes were filthy and around her neck she wore a thick scarf which she could also use as a headscarf.

She was found alongside members of the terror group's fearsome all-female police force, some of whom were wearing suicide vests.

Linda (pictured before fleeing to Syria) used the counterfeit bank authorisation and her mother's forged identification papers to buy a plane ticket to Istanbul

The teenager, described as 'a brilliant student' is said to have become 'lonely and withdrawn' after her parents' marriage broke down and her mother Katharina began a new relationship with a caretaker at a local school.

She is thought to have met a Muslim man online who enticed her to join ISIS after the breakdown of her parents' marriage.

She fled the country using her mother's passport and flew from Berlin to Turkey before making her way to Syria.

Last week her neighbours in the village of Pulsnitz, near Dreseden, south-east Germany, told of their shock and anger that the promising youngster left home to join the extremist group.

School friends have described the quiet teenager as becoming increasingly withdrawn.

In 2015 she was confirmed into the local church. Female priest Maria Gruener said: 'She was a very placid girl who did not want to take part in confirmation instruction.'

But unbeknownst to her, Linda was falsely adopting the faith of the Christian church while secretly giving her heart to Islam.

As she attended the church, her parents' marriage broke down and she moved with her mother to Pulsnitz.

Iraqi security forces recently ended three years of ISIS rule in the Iraqi city of Mosul (pictured) and the terror group is under growing pressure in Raqqa

Around 900,000 people fled the fighting in Mosul, with more than a third sheltered in camps outside Iraq's second largest city

There, Katharina moved in with Thomas Weiss. Unhappy and insecure, Linda suddenly found herself with a new stepfather - and an older stepsister called Dana.

In May last year the troubled teenager made contact on the internet with an Islamist preacher in Hamburg who sent her a copy of the Koran.

'It seemed to offer her answers in a confused life,' said Christina, 16, a fellow pupil at the town's Ernst-Rierscher-Comprehensive school.

'Last summer, shortly before we broke up, she began leaving home with a small bag in which she had an Islamic headscarf and long flowing robes which she donned to cover up all her skin. There were some arguments with staff.'

She stole her mother's credit card and secretly bought an airline ticket to Istanbul. Until six months before she fled she had never even travelled by train alone, it has been reported.

But on Friday July 1 last year she told her mother and father she was going to spend the weekend with a friend called Caroline and would be back in Sunday.

She never came home - and was never at her friend's.

Instead she travelled to Frankfurt and caught a plane to Istanbul before being smuggled into Syria.

Eventually, she ended up in Mosul where she changed her name to Umm Mariam, and was taken as a 'jihadist bride'.

Behind her she left baffled friends and parents as well as teachers who said she was in course for impressive A level results.

Speaking from the schoolgirl's hometown last July, her mother said she was devastated.
Two British tourists were marched naked along a Thai beach and arrested after being allegedly caught 'having sex' in the sea.

The couple were spotted together in chest-high water in front of beachgoers on Sunday morning at 2.30am in Pattaya, a resort south of Bangkok.

Shocked onlookers reported that the pair were allegedly having sex to police and officers soon arrived, forcing them to get out of the water.

They are then filmed stumbling along the sand while two unimpressed officers look on - even as the man drunkenly runs back into the sea.

The naked man and woman, who was wearing just a bra, eventually got dressed and packed away their beach hammock.

But the woman protested, saying: 'We're not going to the police station, we're going this way yeah.'

Officers then walked them to Pattaya City Police Station where they were charged with public indecency and each fined 1000 Thai baht (23 pounds).

They were later released after they had apologised and sobered up.

The couple, fully naked, were unceremoniously ordered out of the water in Pattaya, Thailand

Police identified the man as Liam Whitbread, 26, from Grimsby, but have not yet released the name of the girl.

Lt. Col. Sombat Kaewmuang, Deputy Inspector of Investigations, said: 'Police received a report at 2.30am on July 23 that one male and one female tourist were naked together on Pattaya beach. Reports were they were having sex.

'Both Thai and foreign tourists had gathered around them. Police checked and both the man and woman were intoxicated.

Two police officers escorted the drunken couple down the beach in front of shocked onlookers

'They walked naked out of the sea and staff made them wear clothes.

'Reports were that they were having sex but they both denied this and it is not possible to prove it.

'Thy were both naked in the sea playing together and they guilty of breaking Thailand's law on indecent conduct in public, obscenity and drunken behaviour.

'They were both British. They were detained and interrogated and both were fined. They have apologised.'

Lt. Col. Kaewmuang said there were currently no plans to hold a conference to force the couple to publicly say sorry.

They were taken to a local police station where they were each fined 1000 baht, or around twenty-three pounds

This year Thai police launched a crackdown on, Pattaya, the so-called sex capital of the world, with raids on nightclubs and illegal brothels.

Authorities have also started demanding tourists show that they have at least 230 in cash per person before entering Thailand to show that they aren't 'begpackers'.

A record-breaking 32 million foreign visitors traveled to the country in 2016, with even more expected this year.
A prominent Muslim psychologist with a practice in Sydney's west says opponents of Sharia law are bigots.

Hanan Dover has told her 10,898 Facebook followers Australia needed to allow special laws for Muslims.

'Religious groups can engage the laws and negotiate change in Australia whatever your religious schtick,' she said.

'But, only one of those religious laws creates political and media hysteria because it suits political fear-mongering and that's pretty obvious - Islam.'

Muslim psychologist Hanan Dover says Islamic law should be allowed in Australia

Hanan Dover (pictured with author John Safran) says it's hysterical to oppose Islamic law

Ms Dover compared the idea of allowing Islamic law for Muslims with Aboriginal customary laws in the criminal justice system.

'The fact that there is only one single law for Australians is BS,' she said.

'Australia's liberal democracy prides itself being accommodating to different codes of law for different groups: halacha law for Jews, canon law for Catholics, tribal law for the Aboriginal communities, Islamic law for Muslims.'

The clinical psychologist described as bigots anyone who opposed special laws for Muslims, after a judge stopped the administrators of a Sydney synagogue from sacking a rabbi.

Hanan Dover (pictured with academic Susan Carland) says Australian law accommodates the rules of different religions

The Supreme Court verdict in June was hailed by Benzion Milecki, the chief rabbi of the South Head synagogue, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

'Imagine if a Muslim stated similar to this after an approved court verdict about Shariah/Islamic law,' Ms Dover said.

'These are where the double standards we have to face from politicians/media commentators and bigots.'

Under Section 116 of the Australian Constitution, the federal government is banned from stopping the 'free exercise of any religion'.

The psychologist told her Facebook followers 'bigots' were opposed to Australian Islamic laws

That makes banning Sharia law, an Islamic legal system, a contentious issue.

In Indonesia's Aceh province, where Sharia law is practised, adulterers are caned 100 times.

Homosexual acts incur the death penalty in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Mauritania and Nigeria, where Sharia law is applied.

Sharia law has also been applied in the United Kingdom for divorce, however these ruling can be overridden by a regular court.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was recently described as a 'bigoted, Islamophobic, offensive moron' for describing terrorism as a 'disease within Islam itself'

Not all Muslims in the West embrace Sharia law, with secular followers of Islam content with Australia's existing laws on religious practice.

Ms Dover occasionally uses the hashtag '#creepingsharia' on her Facebook page and has recently described Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as a 'bigoted, Islamophobic, offensive moron' for describing terrorism as a 'disease within Islam itself'.

In 2015, Ms Dover told a conference that young Muslim men charged with terrorism had been treated unfairly, describing it as how 'young teenagers act out'.

In 2002, she likened homosexuals to 'thieves, murderers, liars, hypocrites, criminals' at a forum at the University of Western Sydney, but last year voiced support for gay marriage and distanced herself from those remarks made 15 years ago.

This year, several of her tongue-in-cheek Facebook posts called for Muslims to breed.
Liam Fox today warned Britain's transition out of the European Union must be over by the time of the next election.

In line with other Brexit supporters in the Cabinet, Dr Fox has conceded the need for a phased exit from the European Union.

But amid fears the transition could extend for years Britain's association with the trading bloc, Dr Fox said the next election was a hard deadline.

He insisted today on the Andrew Marr Show that he was more convinced than ever of the merits of Brexit, citing the robust economy since the referendum vote.

Dr Fox's intervention today comes after angry Cabinet rows burst into public view amid splits over how to deliver Brexit.

In a separate development, it emerged today Dr Fox has asked BBC Director General Tony Hall for a meeting about the broadcaster's coverage. He has repeatedly complained in recent weeks about news reports using the phrase 'despite Brexit'.

Liam Fox (pictured today on the Marr show) today warned Britain's transition out of the European Union must be over by the time of the next election

Prime Minister Theresa May (pictured today in Maidenhead) is set to negotiate a phased exit for Britain from the EU

The International Trade Secretary today insisted there was no 'ideological' block on a transition deal after Britain's EU membership ceases on March 29, 2019.

But he warned: 'Frankly having waited for over 40 years to leave the European Union, 24 months would be a rounding error - whether it's 23 or 25 is not a huge deal, nor is it an ideological one.

'It's about the practical issues we would face about, for example, getting a new immigration system into place, getting any new customs systems into place.

'I think we would want to get it out of the way before the election, I don't think people would want it dragging on.'

Pressed on the election timetable, Dr Fox said: 'I think we have to be very clear it was time limited, and it was limited in it scope, we knew exactly what it was going to mean.

'For example, would we be able to negotiate our own trade agreements during that period. If we were not, we would not be able to take full advantage of the freedoms it would mean.

'I don't think there is any ideological block on a transition, or an implementation period as I would put it.'

Dr Fox said it was 'imperative' Brexit itself happens first followed by the time-limited transition deal.

In an interview from Washington DC, Dr Fox insisted today on the Andrew Marr Show that he was more convinced than ever of the merits of Brexit, citing the robust economy since the referendum vote

Labour's splits over Europe were exposed again as leader Jeremy Corbyn repeated his endorsement for quitting the single market. He said Labour had not decided yet whether Britain should remain in the customs union.

He told Marr: 'The single market is dependent on membership of the EU. What we have said all along is that we want a tariff free trade access to the European market and a partnership with Europe in the future.

'The two things are inextricably linked so the question then is the kind of trade relationship of the future and we have made it very clear we want a tariff free trade access with the European market.

'We haven't jumped on either side of that fence but, again, the customs union is part of the European Union.'

Labour former frontbencher Chuka Umunna, who led a rebellion against the leadership over its position on the single market, pointed to countries outside the bloc that are part of the trading area and warned that most party members want Britain to remain in the market.

Liberal Democrats accused Mr Corbyn of parroting lies used by Brexiteers and claimed that Labour MPs were being 'intimidated' into toeing the line on Brexit.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn meanwhile, said Labour had not decided yet whether Britain should remain in the customs union

In other developments, it emerged today Dr Fox has written to the BBC Director General to highlight his concerns about the broadcaster's Brexit coverage.

DAVIS LEADS RACE TO REPLACE MAY David Davis leads the unofficial race to replace Theresa May as Tory leader and Prime Minister a new poll of party members reveals today. More than a fifth of the Tory faithful back the Brexit Secretary to take over if Mrs May bows to post-election pressure to fall on her sword and quit. The poll came as senior activists claimed Mrs May should quit by Christmas to stem the damage being done to the Conservative brand. Mrs May flies out of Britain for a three week holiday tomorrow after scrambling to the summer recess in the aftermath of her election disaster. The poll of party members, revealed today by the Observer, reveals Mr Davis as the leading contender backed by 21 per cent. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson remains a contender with the support of 17 per cent of people asked by the Economic and Social Research Council. Significantly, more than a quarter of people backed no candidate at all in an indication of the desire for a new candidate to emerge. Advertisement

The letter comes a fortnight after Dr Fox publicly condemned BBC News in the House of Commons for refusing to report economic news without the caveat 'despite Brexit'.

Lib Dem Alastair Carmichael condemned the demand. He said: 'This is a blatant attempt at intimidating the BBC and undermining the independence of our media.

'Liam Fox is acting like a tinpot dictator. He can't blame the media for his inability to deliver on all the trade deals promised by the Brexiteers.'

It emerged on Friday that the Remainers in the Cabinet had won a battle to secure agreement for a transitional deal that could last until 2022 - three full years after Brexit officially takes place and five from the start of the Article 50 process.

In return, the leading Brexiteers have won the argument for a full exit from the EU single market and customs union.

But Ukip said Brexit was being betrayed by the plans, which have been given the blessing of the Cabinet despite bitter infighting over how to deliver Brexit.

In a signal Tory Brexiteers are signed up to the plan, leave-backing Conservative MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan said that Britain would have to overcome its skills gap before cutting immigration.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Numbers will start to reduce as we fix our skills gap and we work out with businesses what it is they need.

'Nobody wants to see a system where, if you can't find agricultural workers to pick your strawberries, you allow that business to fail. That is not the solution.'

Other were less content. Some Brexit-backing Tory MPs expressed concerns about the possibility of free movement continuing beyond the date of separation from the EU.

Peter Bone told BBC Radio 4's World At One: 'There's a complete difference between minor technical things that need to go on and major things like free movement.

'Free movement has to end no later than March 31 2019, and I think most Conservative MPs would say that, the country would say that and, absolutely the most important thing, I think Mrs May would say that.'
Jason Boon, 45, pictured, came across the car plant by chance after he became stranded in the middle of nowhere following a night out

A brazen thief who stole a 200,000 Aston Martin from the car giant's HQ has walked free from court - after telling a judge the James Bond-style motor was 'heaven'.

Jason Boon, 45, came across the car plant by chance after he became stranded in the middle of nowhere following a night out with friends.

He tried walking home but stopped when he saw the light of the Aston Martin factory in Gaydon, Warwickshire, and found himself in '100 per cent heaven'.

Incredibly, no-one challenged him as he casually walked around the offices before finding a stash of keys and fobs to the brand new motors.

He found the keys to a 200,000 Aston Martin DB11 and drove it straight out of the front gates and back to his home five miles away in Southam.

Boon was handed a ten-month sentence, suspended for two years after he admitted burglary, aggravated vehicle taking and having no insurance.

Sentencing him at Warwick Crown Court on Friday, Recorder Alastair Smith said: 'The facts of this case are highly unusual.

'Having been left by some friends following an argument, you walked towards some buildings.

'These, it transpired, were the Aston Martin factory where, due to an error in their security system, the doors were opening independently.

'You were able to go inside to an area where cars were being given final adjustments before sale.

'There was no-one around, and the keys were readily accessible.

'You drove one of the vehicles around, and the doors of the warehouse opened, allowing you to drive out of the factory and out of the compound.

He found the keys to a 200,000 Aston Martin DB11 and drove it straight out of the front gates and back to his home five miles away (stock photo)

'They were left-hand-drive models, which caused you little difficulty because you had lived in the United States.

'Damage was caused. It was the kind of damage which on some vehicles could have been described as limited.

'But because of the status of the vehicle, the result of your actions is that this 200,000 vehicle has been written off.

'Had I come to the view that this was a targeted operation to steal a valuable vehicle, you would have been facing a substantial custodial sentence.

'But your actions were impulsive in a unique set of circumstances.'

Jobless Boon was also banned from driving for 12 months and ordered to pay 200 costs.

The court heard that Boon stole the supercar in the early hours of May 5.

Prosecutor Ian Windridge said: 'At shortly before 5.40am the police were alerted to a situation where an Aston Martin was being driven up and down Mill Crescent in Southam.

At Warwick Crown Court, Boon was handed a ten-month sentence, suspended for two years after he admitted burglary, aggravated vehicle taking and having no insurance

'They went there and found the car, which had no registration number, and a police dog tracked Mr Boon to a nearby house.

'He had the key to that car, some Aston Martin paperwork, and a key fob relating to another Aston Martin.

'It would seem that, by an unfortunate coincidence, Aston Martin had some difficulties that night with its security system which kept cutting out, with doors opening randomly - and at the time he was driving round, the system failed and the door opened.'

The DB11 Boon took had suffered scuff marks and wheel rim damage by the time it was recovered - which meant it was a write-off.

Paul O'Keeffe, defending, said: 'He was out with friends, and they had a disagreement, and he was kicked out of the car.

'He didn't know where he was, so walked to higher ground to get his bearings.

'He saw lights in the distance and walked towards them, and it happened to be the Aston Martin factory.

'He tried one of the cars, and it started up. He drove round the factory and then found the gate open, and he drove out. He drove to a friend's home and then drove round.

'He was feeling in a very low place at the time. Once he found himself in the Aston Martin factory with no-one about, it was, as he put it, '100 per cent heaven.'
Jeremy Corbyn has admitted he had no idea how much it would cost when he told students he would 'deal with' their existing debts.

The Labour leader told students on the eve of the election he would find a way to slash their debt burden.

But after the June 8 poll Labour admitted wiping out the student loan book would cost 100billion.

Mr Corbyn today insisted he never intended to make a 'commitment' on clearing debts as he scrambled to defuse Tory claims he had betrayed his core supporters.

Jeremy Corbyn (pictured today on the Andrew Marr show) has admitted he had no idea how much it would cost when he told students he would 'deal with' their existing debts

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr: 'I pointed out we had written the manifesto in a short space of time because there was a surprise election but that we would look at ways of reducing that debt burden, recognising that a lot of it is never going to be collected anyway and try and reduce that burden.'

'We never said we would completely abolish it because we were unaware of the size of it at the time,' he added.

Mr Corbyn said his shadow chancellor John McDonnell had a working group on the idea and that a policy announcement would be made soon.

In an interview with NME just days before polling day, Mr Corbyn said: 'And I don't see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the 9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after.

'I will deal with it.'

The Labour leader told students on the eve of the election he would find a way to slash their debt burden but told Marr today the promise had been a 'commitment'

Universities minister Jo Johnson today said: 'Jeremy Corbyn and his top team made a welter of outlandish promises to young people during the election - including the abolition of student debt - that they are now shamelessly abandoning.

'The Labour party's policy platform for students is disintegrating before our eyes. It is becoming ever clearer that Jeremy Corbyn is looking to walk away from a host of undeliverable pre-election promises to students, making this the most blatant example of switch and bait in recent political history.

'Only the Conservatives have a clear plan to tackle our debts while investing in our future so that we can deliver economic security and high quality jobs for hard-working people across the country.'

On Wednesday, Theresa May called on Mr Corbyn to apologise for misleading young voters, some of whom may have supported him on the debt issue alone.

During Prime Minister's Questions she said: 'The leader of the Opposition vowed to deal with student debt, Labour were going to abolish student debt, now they say it wasn't a promise at all.

'Students know Labour can't be trusted on student fees.'

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner was challenged to say sorry for ditching an Election pledge to wipe out graduate debt

Labour pledged in their manifesto to abolish university tuition fees, and the following month Mr Corbyn went further by suggesting all graduate debt could also be wiped.

Last night the party was placed under renewed pressure over its student debt 'U-turn' last night after the Tories demanded an immediate apology from the party's schools supremo.

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner was challenged to say sorry for ditching an Election pledge to wipe out graduate debt.

In the Commons last week, Ms Rayner sparked outrage among Conservatives by appearing to abandon the promise by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during the campaign to 'deal' with existing student debt and reduce it.

The promise  along with a pledge to scrap tuition fees  was seen as a huge vote-winner for Labour among younger voters.

Ms Greening also challenged the Labour spokesman to say what steps her party took during the Election campaign to 'rectify' the false impression given by Mr Corbyn to young voters

But Ms Rayner, seen as a potential future party leader by Labour colleagues, said, 'We have no plans to write off existing student debt', and claimed 'we never promised to do so'.

In a letter to her yesterday, Education Secretary Justine Greening called on her to apologise for abandoning a 'clear commitment to reduce the debts of millions of people'.

She wrote: 'In pretending that the Labour Party never intended to clear student debt, you are further misleading those who put their faith in you.'

Ms Greening also challenged the Labour spokesman to say what steps her party took during the Election campaign to 'rectify' the false impression given by Mr Corbyn to young voters.

The Education Secretary concluded: 'Given your party leader has campaigned under the banner of 'straight-talking honest politics', I look forward to your imminent apology and clarification.'

Labour hit back last night by insisting Mr Corbyn had never pledged to write off debts for students who had already graduated.
A group of British treasure hunters have found a chest that could contain up to 100million in Nazi gold in the wreck of a German cargo ship off the coast of Iceland.

UK-based Advanced Marine Services found a box containing up to four tons of valuable metal, believed to be gold from South American banks, in the post room of the SS Minden, which sunk in 1939.

The gold was believed to be on board the ship and headed to Germany when the boat sank 120 miles southeast of Iceland on September 24, 1939, shortly after World War II began.

UK-based Advanced Marine Services found a box containing up to four tons of valuable metal, believed to be gold from South American banks, in the post room of the SS Minden. The Minden's sister ship, SS Porta, which it likely looked similar to, is pictured above

The SS Minden was scuttled - or purposefully sunken - approximately 120 miles southeast of Iceland in September 1939

Advanced Marine Services has applied to the Icelandic government in hopes of gaining permission to cut a hole in the ship to remove the box.

The treasure hunters, who believe the haul belongs to the finder of the box, want to bring the contents back to Britain, according to The Sun.

Earlier this year, the group was accused of looking for the wreckage of the German cargo ship without proper licensing.

Authorities became aware of the firm after a stationary Norwegian research boat Seabed Constructor, rented by the firm, was spotted in Icelandic waters.

According to Iceland Monitor, when the coastguard asked the crew why they were there, they gave 'vague and different explanations', prompting the coastguard to instruct them to dock at a pier Reykjavik before sending in police to question the crew.

Georg Larusson, director of the Icelandic Coastguard, told the website they did not have a permit to search in Icelandic waters.

Earlier this year, the treasure hunters were accused of looking for the wreckage of the German cargo ship without proper licensing. Authorities became aware of the firm after a stationary Norwegian research boat Seabed Constructor (pictured) was spotted in Icelandic waters

When the Minden was spotted by British cruisers HMS Calypso (pictured) and HMS Dunedin, Adolf Hitler ordered Minden's captain to scuttle - or deliberately sink - the ship so the Royal Navy wouldn't seize the cargo.

He added: 'The first answers we got were that they were looking at an 'interesting target' from the WW II, but couldn't explain it any further.'

The SS Minden set sail from Brazil on September 6, 1939 after officials from Banco Germanico, a subsidiary of German Dresdner bank helped load the ship's cargo.

When the ship was spotted by British cruisers HMS Calypso and HMS Dunedin, Adolf Hitler ordered Minden's captain to scuttle - or deliberately sink - the ship so the Royal Navy wouldn't seize the cargo.

The Minden crew was rescued by the HMS Dunedin and brought to Scapa Flow naval base in the Orkneys.

Historians have claimed records say the cargo on board was worthless, but due to how expensive it is to rent a research vessel, rumours are now circulating that the materials are valuable, with some saying that gold was on board.
Eight people have been found dead after they were locked inside a boiling truck without air conditioning or water in what police believe could be a human trafficking incident.

A total of 38 were found in the truck, and one was found in the woods, which didn't have a working air conditioning system despite blistering temperatures topping 100 degrees in San Antonio.

Two of those found inside were children. All were rushed to nearby hospitals, with 20 in an 'extremely critical or very serious condition'.

One died at the hospital bringing the death toll up to nine.

The driver of the truck, believed to be James Mathew Bradley Jr, a 60-year-old from Clearwater, Florida, has been arrested.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus (left) and Fire Chief Charles Hood address reporters at the scene after a total of 38 people were found in the back of tractor truck

Eight people, including two children, were founded dead. Police are investigating the incident as a 'human trafficking' case (Pictured, police officers near a white truck in the parking lot)

All remaining 30 were rushed to nearby hospitals, with 20 in an 'extremely critical or very serious condition' (Pictured, police officers work on a crime scene after eight people believed to be illegal immigrants were found dead on Sunday morning)

It was first discovered that something was amiss when one person approached a Walmart worker in the store parking lot (pictured) and asked for some water

The people inside the tractor-trailer were found in the early hours of Sunday morning after one of them approached a Walmart worker in the store parking lot and asked for some water.

The employee gave the person the water and then called police, and when officers arrived they found the eight people - all men - dead in the back of the trailer, police Chief William McManus said.

Investigators checked store surveillance video, which showed vehicles had arrived and picked up other people from the tractor-trailer, police said.

'We're looking at a human trafficking crime this evening,' McManus said.

He called the case 'a horrific tragedy'.

The police chief added that the Department of Homeland Security has joined an investigation to figure out what happened with the truck.

ICE also released a statement about the incident on Sunday afternoon, saying the deaths are a: 'stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished'.

'These networks have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for those they smuggle, as last nights case demonstrates.

'The men and women of ICE are proud to stand alongside our law enforcement partners, including locally and at the U.S. Department of Justice, to combat these smuggling networks and protect the public and those who would fall victim to their dangerous practices that focus solely on their illicit profits.'

The employee gave the person the water and then called police, and when officers arrived they found the eight people - all men - dead in the back of the trailer, police Chief McManus said (Pictured, a police officer is seen shining a light into the back of the truck where eight people were found dead)

The truck didn't have a working air conditioning system despite blistering temperatures topping 100 degrees in San Antonio (Pictured, a crew of police officers are seen gathered near the truck in San Antonio containing eight dead bodies and 30 other people)

The city's fire chief, Charles Hood, said rescuers swiftly got patients out of the back of the truck.

He added: 'We had another 20 patients that were either in extremely critical condition or very serious condition and they have been transported to a number of hospitals.

'They were very hot to the touch. So these people were in this trailer without any signs of any type of water.'

Police said Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been notified.

Authorities will file a criminal complaint against the arrested Bradley in federal court in San Antonio on Monday morning, the Department of Homeland Security and the US District Attorney's office said in a joint statement.

'At this time, investigators are making efforts to identify the victims and will seek to notify family and next of kin. Officials will not release the identities or alienage of victims until relatives can be notified,' the statement read in part.

San Antonio police officers investigate the scene where eight people were found dead in a tractor-trailer on Sunday morning

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the eight deaths show why human-trafficking rings must be shut down (Pictured, a hearse sits in the parking lot of San Antonio Walmart)

The driver of the truck, believed to be James Mathew Bradley Jr, a 60-year-old from Clearwater, Florida, has been arrested (Pictured, a San Antonio police officer clears crime scene barrier tape after officials towed the truck away)

The National Weather Services local office said the temperature in San Antonio hit 101 degrees just before 5pm on Saturday and did not fall back below 90 until after 10pm.

Other cases of human trafficking in the United States have led to more deaths.

In May 2003, 19 people being transported from South Texas to Houston died inside a sweltering tractor-trailer.

Prosecutors said the driver in the 2003 case heard the people begging and screaming for their lives as they were succumbing to the stifling heat inside his truck but refused to free them.

The driver was resentenced in 2011 to nearly 34 years in prison after a federal appeals court overturned the multiple life sentences he had received.
Australians could be forced to wait four years to vote out a prime minister if Labor and Liberal politicians get their way.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has received support from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after he voiced support for extending federal parliamentary terms from three to four years.

'I, for one, would be happy to see four-year terms,' Mr Shorten told the ABC's Insiders program on Sunday.

Scroll down for video

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten wants both sides of politics to co-operate on four-year terms

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has spoken to Bill Shorten about the idea of four-year terms

'We need both Labor and Liberal to co-operate on four-year terms.

'That it is not about Labor or Liberal, it's about the nation.'

A spokeswoman for Mr Turnbull told Fairfax Media the prime minister had spoken to Mr Shorten about four-year parliamentary terms on Sunday after his television appearance.

Later on Sunday, Turnbull's Trade Minister Steven Ciobo expressed his support for extending the life of parliament beyond the existing three-year term.

'Four-year terms certainly have some advantages, as I believe, and I actually think the Australian public would probably be broadly supportive of it,' he told Sky News.

Every state and territory now has four-year terms, after voters in Queensland last year backed a referendum proposal to extend parliamentary terms.

Trade Minister Steven Ciobo (right) told Patricia Karvelas he backed four-year federal terms

Queensland (Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk pictured) is introducing four-year electoral terms

Four-year terms in the federal parliament would only become law if a referendum proposal passed with the support of the majority of voters in a majority of states.

A referendum on fixed, four-year terms failed in September 1988, with only one in three voters in favour of the idea.

Four-year terms for federal elections would also see Senate terms increased from six to eight years.

Mr Shorten, whose Labor Party is the clear frontrunner to win the next election, criticised the existing system where the sitting prime minister can call an election less than three years after being elected.

'What this country needs is long-term policy making,' he said.

'Over the cycle of polls and 2.5 year cycles.'

The Labor leader called for whoever won the next election to put forward another referendum on fixed, four-year terms.
Ruth Davidson has warned Theresa May must 'lead' or face defeat in a rallying cry to the Tory party

Ruth Davidson has warned Theresa May must 'lead' or face defeat in a rallying cry to the Tory party.

The Scottish Conservative leader has staked her claim as one of the party's leading thinkers in a hard-hitting article on the state of the economy.

Ms Davidson, the leader of the opposition in Holyrood, said capitalism must be reformed to stop modern commercial giants like Amazon riding roughshod.

She said planning laws must be overhauled and homes made more affordable for the young in what many will see as a manifesto for a future leadership challenge.

It also draws parallels with how Boris Johnson used being Mayor of London to strike out ahead of the party in Westminster.

Scottish Tory sources told the Sunday Times the article, written on a new website founded by Tory commentator Tim Montgomerie called UnHerd, was aimed squarely at the Prime Minister.

They said: 'Ruth is appalled at the defensive crouch that the government in London has got into.

'Losing a majority doesn't mean that you don't make the case. It means you make it twice as hard.

'Stop fighting among yourselves, get your finger out and start banging the drum for Conservatism because if we don't, we lose.

'Ruth is frustrated that it might seem as if Tory ministers are more concerned with briefing against each other than tackling the briefs they have been given.'

Scottish Tory sources have said Ms Davidson's hard-hitting article was aimed squarely at the Prime Minister (pictured today in Maidenhead)

Ms Davidson (pictured campaigning with Mrs May in June) said capitalism must be reformed to stop modern commercial giants like Amazon riding roughshod

In the article, Ms Davidson said the Government must 'press the case for fairer markets' both at home and abroad.

She demanded: 'It is not enough for government to facilitate a discussion about where next for Britain, it has to actually lead.

'The short-term, election cycle nimbyism of prohibitive planning laws needs to cease and there is no room for one-of-the-in-crowd Davos sycophancy either.'

The Scottish Tory leader insisted 'capitalism needs a reboot' to ensure it can continue to function and lift more people out of poverty.

She said: 'Business and commerce have enriched the world. We live longer, stay healthier, consume more and enjoy greater comfort than at any time in history.

'But corporate behemoths have forgotten about operating with consent.

'It is not enough simply for an Amazon to bring down the cost for consumers, the public expect it to pay a fair share of taxation and grant workers a decent wage as well.'
A young Australian woman was holidaying in Sri Lanka with her father when doctors discovered she was suffering from a life-threatening blood clot.

The 21-year-old daughter of Labor MP Julian Hill, Elanor, began to feel a sharp pain coming from her leg, which had been growing worse over two weeks.

The fit and healthy medical receptionist was able to self-diagnose what was happening and sought help from doctors who confirmed she had a 64 centimetre deep vein thrombosis.

Elanor was holidaying in Sri Lanka with her father, Labor MP Julian Hill, when doctors discovered she was suffering from a life-threatening blood clot

The 21-year-old daughter of Labor MP Julian Hill, Elanor, began to feel a sharp pain coming from her leg, which had been growing worse over two weeks

Her father is now calling for tougher regulations around the hormone pills, which can be used as a treatment for acne or as a contraceptive, 7 News reported.

'Elanor's DVT was almost certainly caused by Diane 35 triggered by a long distance flight,' Mr Hill said in documents sent to the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

'I am now firmly of the view that stronger action is needed by the TGA and medical professional bodies to reduce the risk of these serious events happening to other Australian women,' he said, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Mr Hill said what his daughter had to go through was horrific, and he doesn't want other Australian women to have to go through the same thing.

'I am now firmly of the view that stronger action is needed by the TGA and medical professional bodies to reduce the risk of these serious events happening to other Australian women.'

Mr Hill is now calling for tougher regulations around the hormone pills, which can be used as a treatment for acne or as a contraceptive

Elanor now must take blood thinners, six months later, and will have to wear a full compression sock for two years

The TGA has received 92 reports of complications following use of the drug over the last five years.

Last year the regulatory body for therapeutic goods said women using the drug faced higher risk of a blood clot, but noted cases were not common.

It was their recommendation to pharmaceutical stockists and doctors that more information is shared about the pills.

Elanor now must take blood thinners, six months later, and will have to wear a full compression sock for two years.

She is also not able to take the contraceptive remedy.

The student of psychology said had she known the risks, there's isn't a chance she would have taken the pill or looked at other precautions.
A woman is suing the US police officer who shot dead Australian woman Justine Damond.

Teresa Graham filed a lawsuit against Minneapolis cop Mohamed Noor just a day before he killed Ms Damond outside her home as she stood in her pyjamas.

Ms Graham is suing officer Noor for false imprisonment, assault, battery and negligence, Nine News reported.

Scroll down for video

Minneapolis woman Teresa Graham (pictured) is suing police officer Mohamed Noor after he was called to her home when she phoned 911 on May 25

Ms Graham is suing officer Noor (pictured) for false imprisonment, assault, battery and negligence

Australian woman Justine Damond (pictured) was shot dead by officer Noor outside her Minneapolis home on July 15

The legal action comes after officer Noor was called to Ms Graham's Minneapolis home only two kilometres from where Ms Damond died.

The retired social worker had dialled 911 on May 25 to report a man was outside the back of her house smoking marijuana.

Ms Graham has claimed officer Noor and two other cops who arrived at her house had forced their way into her home, court documents say.

Officer Noor, Ms Graham has claimed, took away her mobile phone and took hold of her wrist and arm.

It is alleged she was told she would be taken to hospital because she had been deemed to be in a 'mental health crisis'.

Neighbour Doris Phillips said of Ms Graham's claims: 'You need to take it with a grain of salt and not tar and feather him before we figure out what really happened'.

Teresa Graham (pictured) has claimed officer Noor had forced his way into her home, along with two other officers

Don Damond, the fiance of Justine Damond (pictured) has created the 'Justine Damond Memorial Fund' on a fundraising website

Ms Damond, a 40-year-old former Sydneysider was gunned down on July 15 after calling police concerned a woman was being raped in an alley behind her house.

The bride-to-be had reportedly called her fiance Don Damond before contacting 911, who then urged her to ring police.

Mr Damond has created the 'Justine Damond Memorial Fund' on the fundraising website Generosity seeking to raise $100,000.

'This fund is to help support a memorial fund for Justine and charitable causes supporting social justice that were important in her heart,' the fundraising page reads.
Khuram Butt was shot after leading a massacre at London Bridge last month. He has been buried in secret in east London

A terrorist behind the London Bridge massacre last month has been buried in secret with no ceremony and no mourners after 'cemeteries refused to accept his body.'

Khuram Butt's own mother was not present when a relative drove his body to a graveyard near the family home in East London.

They held no ceremony and invited no mourners to avoid any attention.

A source told the Mirror: 'The family are distraught with what he did but he is still their son and brother.

'His mother is not in a good way health-wise after what has happened so it was decided she should not attend.'

130 Imans refused to perform funeral prayers for him, the Express reports.

The deceased 27-year-old drove a van into pedestrians with two accomplices Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, before stabbing people to death in central London.

They murdered seven people and injured dozens more.

Butt and the two other terrorists were shot dead.

Scroll down for video.

Police and members of the emergency services attend to victims of the terror attack on London Bridge in central London on June 3 in which armed police opened fire during

London muslims lay flowers and show support for victims near the scene of the terrorist attack

Butt became radicalised after watching hate preachers on YouTube before becoming linked to al-Muhajiroun, the banned extremist group whose leader, Anjem Choudary, is in jail.

It is believed that he moved to the UK from Pakistan when he was a child.

Butt first came to public attention on a Channel 4 programme called The Jihadis Next Door in January last year when he made his extremist views clear.

Chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, Mohammed Shafiq, told the Express: 'Many of us in the British Muslim community have been demanding action against these extremists to no avail.

'I am not surprised that Khuram Butt carried out the terrorist attack and there are serious questions for the authorities.'
USA Today writer Brian Truitt hit out at the lack of diversity in Dunkirk which revolves around the British Expeditionary Force

A film critic has been ridiculed after claiming that there were not enough women and 'actors of colour' in World War II movie Dunkirk.

USA Today writer Brian Truitt hit out at the lack of diversity in the movie which revolves around the British Expeditionary Force - an army which did not have females among its ranks.

Despite his historical blunder, the critic generally gave the film by director Christopher Nolan a glowing review - going as far as praising the 'real-life heroism' of the famous evacuation in 1940.

He added: 'Nolan's ambitious story revolves around three tales unfolding at different times over land, sea, and air, only coming together at the end.'

But Truitt lamented the film's lack of diversity claiming 'the fact that there are only a couple of women and no lead actors of colour may rub some the wrong way'.

He has now been criticised on Twitter with one user joking: 'Historical accuracy... how dare they!'

Editor of National Review Online Charles W Cooke jokingly tweeted: 'It was highly problematic that the British Expeditionary Force and the French army stranded such a monochrome crew.'

Washington Free Beacon's Alex Grisworld added: USA Todays Dunkirk review is officially as absurd as conservative parodies of the social justice crowd.'

Dunkirk - which stars James D'Arcy and Kenneth Branagh, both pictured above - opens in 1940 with hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops hemmed in by the German army on the beaches of northern France

Christopher Nolan's wartime film Dunkirk, based on the heart-wrenching story of soldiers being evacuated from the beaches during the Second War War, has been universally praised in reviews.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw commended the 'architectural expression of doomed homeward yearning', while The Telegraph's Robbie Collin has hailed the acclaimed director at the 'peak of his power' - both granting the movie a full five stars amongst others.

Nick De Demlyen from Empire referenced the 'incredible' bleak undertones to satisfy the audience's cinematic experience and commended Harry Styles for an 'impressive debut', while Todd McCarthy from The Hollywood Reporter deemed it an 'impressionist masterpiece.'

Christopher Nolan's wartime film Dunkirk has been universally praised in reviews

Dunkirk - which stars Kenneth Branagh, Harry Styles and Tom Hardy - opens in 1940 with hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops hemmed in by the German army on the beaches of northern France.

The British launched Operation Dynamo to save them between May 7 and June 4 with 338,000 arriving safely in England.
A mother has been left with a beard of angry red scars after a clinic put too much acid in a chemical face peel.

Mary Hope, 42, was left with scars similar to victims of acid attacks after she went for a facial at a Birmingham beauty parlour.

The mother-of-four has been awarded 130,000 compensation after suffering three years of bullying for the permanent damage caused to her following the treatment.

Distraught Mary Hope, 42, had no idea staff at her local beauty clinic had never carried out an Obagi chemical peel before they applied the lotion to her face. Pictured above, Mrs Hope three years on

Instead of eradicating her acne scars the mum-of-four was left looking like an 'acid attack victim' from the 1,200 peel with permanent scars over her cheeks and chin

The distraught mother-of-four said she had no idea the beautician had never carried out an Obagi chemical peel before.

But instead of eradicating her acne scars, she was left with permanent damage to her cheeks and chin.

Mrs Hope - who had been an outgoing fun-loving woman - endured 18 months of wearing a plastic compression mask almost 24 hours a day to limit the damage.

She found herself cruelly taunted in public and barely left her house for years.

When she bravely returned to work as a primary school teacher she had to reassure her shocked young pupils 'don't be scared, it's only me'.

Three years on, Mrs Hope was awarded 130,000 compensation - but had to promise she wouldn't reveal the name of the company responsible.

It now has dozens of branches across the UK and the clinic she visited still carries out the treatment.

And while the number of patients going under the knife in Britain is declining, cheaper non-invasive procedures like peels are more popular than ever.

Mrs Hope said: 'I think I was used as a guinea pig as they didn't know what they were talking about'

The treatment is described on the Obagi website as an 'in-office facial chemical peel performed by professionally trained specialists'

In the final three months of last year, there was a 91 per cent increase non-surgical facelifts such as chemical peels.

With celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Kim Kardashian rumoured to have turned to peels, they are expected to be the most popular non-invasive treatment of 2017.

But brave Mrs Hope wants to speaking out about the risks of the Ogabi peel not being carried out properly.

The mother, from Birmingham, said facing her burns gave her the strength to tackle breast cancer - and she's kept her compression mask as reminder of how far she has come.

She said: 'Obviously not all beauty clinics are the same but when I see their name it makes me feel sick.

Things hit a low on a visit to the Imperial War Museum with her family when Mary was taunted by a group of school children who started screaming

Desperately seeking a way to reduce the scarring and redness, Mrs Hope eventually found a maxillofacial surgeon who could help her and fitted a specialist mask, in December 2009. Now three years later, she feels more of herself again

Mrs Hope said: 'I think I was used as a guinea pig as they didn't know what they were talking about.

'I saw it on TV and thought I'd get it done. At the time I didn't know they were inexperienced. I thought they knew what they were talking about.

'You just can't trust appearances - just because the clinic looks nice and is expensive doesn't mean anything.

She said: 'You have to take your knowledge into your own hands. I have had friends talk about cosmetic surgery like boob jobs and I just think 'you look beautiful, you really don't need to'.

She said: 'At the time with the scarring I was devastated but it didn't kill me. As the years went by it did make me stronger, and I realised I didn't die from it.

'Sometimes I do wonder if the scars on my face were a precursor to make me strong when my breast cancer diagnosis came.

She said she decided to try the Obagi Blue Peel treatment when she saw it on TV programme 10 Years Younger.

Unhappy with acne scars from her teens, she booked an appointment at a clinic near her home with her mum paying the 1,200 fee, in February 2009.

Pregnant Mary Hope had to have her baby Evie, pictured above, delivered early following her cancer diagnosis

She had seen the well-known high street clinic advertised on TV and felt she was in safe hands when she met the male surgeon and woman assistant.

The treatment is described on the Obagi website as an 'in-office facial chemical peel performed by professionally trained specialists'.

It is designed to 'reveal younger, healthier-looking skin one layer at a time'.

But her treatment was 'agonising' - something she thought was 'normal' at the time - and she returned home to find her face was red and swollen.

Over the next 48 hours her skin exploded with bloody pus, she claims, but an emergency number at the clinic went unanswered over the weekend.

She was 'fobbed off' when she finally got through on Monday but a few days later turned up at the clinic.

They gave her some medicine and sent her away, but she claims the scars developed over the following months.

She launched a complaint and claims the clinical director of the clinic company even cried at meeting at their head office when he saw her face.

He confessed neither the surgeon nor healthcare assistant had performed the procedure before and he suspected too much acid was used, she claims.

She added: 'I had a meeting with him a couple of months after I realised that the scarring was going to be permanent, and asked what the clinic was going to do about it.

'He cried when he saw my face.'

Having lost confidence in the clinic, she started trying to find help elsewhere.

Mrs Hope launched a complaint and claims the clinical director of the clinic company even cried at meeting at their head office when he saw her face

Desperately seeking a way to reduce the scarring and redness, Mrs Hope eventually found a maxillofacial surgeon who could help her and fitted a specialist mask, in December 2009.

For 18 months Mary wore a compression mask to help her skin heal, but the burns left her severely depressed.

Prescription antibiotics and steroids had little impact and she spent nearly 5,000 on specialist treatment, including laser surgery treatment to reduce the redness.

'I used to wake up in the morning and think 'I can't believe I have to walk around like this,' she said.

'The burns were exactly like an acid attack victim - I had veins that were matted, it was bright red and I had scars forming. I'm a party girl - hair, make up, clothes.

'I was married with children but I was still going out with my friends all the time, but after the burns I had four years of not going out.'

Things hit a low on a visit to the Imperial War Museum with her family when Mary was taunted by a group of school children who started screaming.

Celebrities such as Kylie Jenner have confessed to using non-surgical cosmetic procedures, sparking a soar in popularity.

But worryingly, the procedures are not regulated, according to Ashton Collins of camapaign group Save Face Ltd which provides advice to people like Mary.

I used to wake up in the morning and think, "I can't believe I have to walk around like this"

Ashton said: 'Lip fillers for example soared in popularity when Kylie Jenner admitted to getting hers done.

'The issue with that is, as the popularity of procedures increases, sadly, also does the number or complications and procedures gone wrong.

'We receive around five to ten patient enquiries every week seeking advice where something has gone wrong.

'These procedures are not regulated - frighteningly, they can be administered by anyone regardless of their training or experience.'

For Mrs Hope, the consequences effected all aspects of her life.

She took legal action against the clinic and won the six-figure payout as part of a deal which means that the clinic cannot be identified, in 2012.

And even her solicitor who fought for an out-of-court settlement told her: 'No amount of money can ever truly compensate you for what you have been through and are still going through.'

Mrs Hope found the courage to face the world again without the plastic she had come to loathe, on the day her mother died.

She said: 'My mum paid for the treatment and she felt dreadful. The last time I wore the mask was the day my mum died. It fell on the floor and broke.'

Mrs Hope found the courage to face the world again without the plastic she had come to loathe, on the day her mother died

Mrs Hope said: 'My mum paid for the treatment and she felt dreadful. The last time I wore the mask was the day my mum died. It fell on the floor and broke'

Instead of throwing the mask away Mrs Hope saved it as a reminder of what she had overcome.

Mrs Hope has vowed she will never try to alter her looks again and has warned her friends off having cosmetic treatments - including chemical peels or Botox.

Although the scars will stay with her for life and restrict how much Mary can move her mouth, she disguises them with make up.

'It is fine - I go out, I still talk to people, I still have fun,' she said. 'I don't think about my scars.'

Obagi said only fully qualified nurses, dentists or doctors who had undergone thorough training and passed their qualifications were allowed to treat using their products.

The CEO of the company, John Curran, said that they had even invented the blue peel procedure using dye so experienced staff can look at the colour and determine when to remove it from the patient.

He said: 'We are shocked and our heartfelt sympathies go out to this patient. We know that any medical procedure can encounter problems.

'However, Obagi has to date no awareness of a patient encountering problems using the Obagi Blue Peel System.

'We strongly advise patients to check that the practitioner they have chosen is certified to use the products they have selected.'

Celebrity cosmetic specialist Dr Nyla Raja of The Medispa in Wilmslow, Cheshire, said: 'As a clinic which uses Obagi, I can attest to the rigorous training the company provides. In the hands of a trained practitioner, this procedure is extremely safe.

'However, this case does unfortunately highlight a wider issue regarding a lack of regulation in the industry.'
It must have been a Jedi mind trick.

A neurology expert has revealed they were able to convince a trio of medical journals to publish their Star Wars-themed 'fake' manuscript, despite it being packed full of references to George Lucas' iconic series.

The author, who writes online under the name Neuroskeptic, said their paper titled 'Mitochondria: Structure, Function and Clinical Relevance' was poorly written and 'an absurd mess of factual errors, plagiarism and movie quotes'.

'I wanted to test whether 'predatory' journals would publish an obviously absurd paper,' the hoax's author wrote for Discover Magazine.

Scroll down for video

This is the front page of one of the published versions of the phony paper, showing it was written by 'Lucas McGeorge' and 'Annette Kin'

'So I created a spoof manuscript about "midi-chlorians" - the fictional entities which live inside cells and give Jedi their powers in Star Wars.

'I filled it with other references to the galaxy far, far away, and submitted it to nine journals under the names of Dr Lucas McGeorge and Dr Annette Kin.'

The name of the authors given in the fake piece are thinly-veiled references to Lucas - Star Wars' creator - and Anakin Skywalker.

Neuroskeptic went on in their blog post to explain the paper was picked up by four different journals - the American Journal of Medical and Biological Research, the International Journal of Molecular Biology: Open Access, the Austin Journal of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and American Research Journal of Biosciences.

The pretend paper was said to be written by 'Dr Lucas McGeorge and Dr Annette Kin'. Pictured are George Lucas and Anakin Skywalker, otherwise known as Darth Vader

This passage from the fake scientific paper includes direct quotes from Episode III, in which the film's villain, Palpatine, tells a pre-Darth Anakin about Darth Plagueis - a historical figure so powerful he gained the power to bring people back from the dead

The AJMBR did not publish the paper but did request a $360 fee in order to do so.

Versions of the manuscript in other journals mentioned can be found online.

'So what did they publish? A travesty, which they should have rejected within about 5 minutes  or 2 minutes if the reviewer was familiar with Star Wars,' Neuroskeptic wrote for Discover Magazine.

The paper frequently discussed the 'midi-chlorians' (pictured) - the fictional entities which live inside cells and give Jedi their powers in Star Wars

The writer then went into detail on a few of the most-egregious lines worked into the paper, including an entire section about the above-mentioned 'midi-chlorians'.

'Some highlights: "Beyond supplying cellular energy, midichloria perform functions such as Force sensitivity", "Involved in ATP production is the citric acid cycle, also referred to as the KyloRen cycle after its discoverer", "Midi-chlorians are microscopic life-forms that reside in all living cells  without the midi-chlorians, life couldnt exist, and wed have no knowledge of the force. Midichlorial disorders often erupt as brain diseases, such as autism",' Neuroskeptic's manuscript read.

The paper then included an entire passage that was almost lifted entirely from Star Wars Episode III, in which the film's villain, Palpatine, tells a pre-Darth Anakin about Darth Plagueis - a historical figure so powerful he gained the power to bring people back from the dead.

The paper directly quoted the villain of the first six episodes, Palpatine, during a discussion in Star Wars Episode III. Palpatine is pictured with Anakin Skywalker during the movie

'Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? I thought not,' the passage reads, reciting a direct quote from the film.

'It is not a story the Jedi would tell you. It was a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichloria [17] to create life.

'This process increases the number of reducing equivalents available to the midichloria electron transport chains, and thus generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) [14,15].

'He had such knowledge [18] of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying [20]. The dark side of the Forces a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.'

Neuroskeptic continued in his blog post to explain the dodgy paper, before saying that some of the journals he sent it to were quick to shoot the work down.

The author then wrapped up the rant by explaining why they put together the paper, and what it means for journals going forward.

'So does this sting prove that scientific publishing is hopelessly broken? No, not really. It's just a reminder that at some "peer reviewed" journals, there really is no meaningful peer review at all,' Neuroskeptic said.

'All I did, as Lucas McGeorge, was test the quality of the products being advertised.'
World's End serial killer Angus Sinclair only has months to live after a series of strokes - and now he's being urged to confess to a string of unsolved murders before he dies.

The 72-year-old' has become 'skeletal' as he struggles to eat and now spends most of his time in bed or in a prison wheelchair.

Prison insiders have said that Sinclair, who was convicted of killing four girls, won't see the end of the year as his only nutrition is liquids taken through a baby cup.

Sinclair was jailed for life and told to serve a minimum of 37 years after a jury in 2014 found him guilty of killing Christine Eadie and Helen Scott. He was previously found guilty of killing Mary Gallacher in Glasgow.

The murderer was already behind bars for killing eight-year-old Catherine Reehill in Glasgow when he was sentenced to life.

World's End serial killer Angus Sinclair (left in recent years and right in 1977), 72, has become 'skeletal', struggles to eat and now spends most of his time in bed or in a prison wheelchair, it has been revealed. Prison insiders have said that Sinclair, who was convicted of killing four girls, won't see the end of the year as his only nutrition is liquids taken through a baby cup

It is the longest sentence ever imposed by a Scottish court.

Retired detective Joe Jackson, who arrested Sinclair, is now urging the killer to confess to unsolved killings before he dies.

'If he has any humanity, he'll confess to the terrible things he's done,' he told the Daily Record.

Sinclair, who has been in jail continually since 1982, almost confessed to a series of sexual assaults and admitted to several crimes while being interrogated in Glasgow, Jackson said.

'I've done so many, I can't remember them all. I could've done 50, I just don't know,' he said at the time. 'If you can find out where and when, I'll tell you whether I did them or not.'

Jackson, who retired from his role as the head of Strathclyde Serious Crime Squad and Govan CID in Glasgow 25 years ago, said that Sinclair should bring closure to the families of victims before he dies.

Sinclair was jailed for life and told to serve a minimum of 37 years after a jury in 2014 found him guilty of killing Christine Eadie and Helen Scott

An undated photo shows Miss Scott (left) and Miss Eadie (right) enjoying a drink with a friend

Eadie and Scott were targeted by Sinclair and his brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton, who died in 1996, on a night-out at Edinburgh's World's End pub on October 15, 1977

Sinclair was als found guilty of killing Mary Gallacher (left) in Glasgow. The murderer was already behind bars for killing eight-year-old Catherine Reehill (right) in Glasgow when he was sentenced to life

'There are other unsolved crimes out there which he has been linked to and now's the time for him to talk,' he told The Record.

Jackson added: 'He committed his first murder at 16 and it's difficult to believe he didn't go on to commit more than he's been convicted of. This could be the last chance for him to do the right thing.'

Eadie and Scott were targeted by Sinclair and his brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton, who died in 1996, on a night-out at Edinburgh's World's End pub on October 15, 1977.

Their bodies were discovered the following day, having been dumped in remote locations in East Lothian. They had been raped, strangled and bound with their underwear.

Sinclair was convicted in November 2014 following a five-week trial at the High Court in Livingston.

During sentencing, trial judge Lord Matthews said the words 'evil' and 'monster' were inadequate for Sinclair, who he branded a 'dangerous sexual predator'.

Police search the fields in the mist near the spot where Miss Eadie was found on October 16 1977

The bodies of Miss Scott (left) and Miss Eadie (right) were found six miles apart in East Lothian. They had been raped, strangled and bound with their underwear

Jurors, who took less than two-and-a-half hours to find Sinclair guilty of both murder and rape, were unaware the violent offender had already spent more than half of his life in prison.

He was just 16 when he strangled seven-year-old Catherine Reehill in Glasgow in 1961 and in 1982 he was convicted of a string of sex attacks on young girls, including rape.

While still in prison, he was given a life sentence in 2001 for the murder of 17-year-old Mary Gallacher, who was raped and stabbed in Glasgow in 1978.

Since the 2014 sentencing, Sinclair has suffered a series of strokes and has been under constant medical watch at Glenochil prison, Clackmannanshire.

His health has been deteriorating rapidly in recent months, and he has nurse visits three times a day.

A prison source told the Daily Record that Sinclair would be 'lucky to see the end of the year'.

'Sinclair is now skin and bones. He can't walk from his bed to the toilet unaided,' the prison source said. 'He knows when he's being spoken to, and it's believed he knows what's being asked of him, but that's about it  he's incapable of doing most things.'
Advertisement

The mercury will plummet even further in parts of Britain today as the UK braces for a lengthy spate of damp and dreary weather.

While longed-for sunshine will break through in sporadic bursts throughout the rest of the month, forecasters are expecting a largely miserable summer holiday period.

'Today there will be a bit of an east-west split. Eastern areas will be cool and damp,' Met Office forecaster Steven Keates told Metro.

'Places further west, though, will have a quite nice day with sunshine and temperatures up - and a bit of sunshine over the weekend.'

Festivalgoers refused to let today's downpours dampen their spirits at South Shields Tyneside Festival. Britain is set for more erratic weather in the coming weeks

Meanwhile, on Hollingworth Lake in Greater Manchester, a more idyllic scene played out as a rower enjoys the relatively stable weather in comparison to South Shields'

The great British summer...dull, grey and with a chill in the air. But this woman hasn't allowed the dreary weather to put her off enjoying a relaxing day at the beach

Holiday makers pictured at West Bay on The Dorset coast today. The forecast remains 'changeable' across the country this week although temperatures are set to rise in some areas

While Glasgow will bask in a comfortable 68F (20C), further south, in Lincolnshire and as far as Cambridge, it will be much cooler - at around 59F (15C).

Eastern areas will largely shrouded in cloud and can expect outbreaks of showery rain and a brisk northerly wind.

Showers become patchier by the afternoon with some brighter spells before the day should become mostly dry later on.

The erratic weather will dominate most of next week, but Britons can expect a mild respite on Tuesday when temperatures will edge upwards again, between 66F (19C) and 71.6F (22C)

The erratic weather will dominate most of the week, but Britons can expect a mild respite on Tuesday when temperatures will edge upwards again, between 66F (19C) and 71.6F (22C).

Depressingly, persistent rain will return on Wednesday, spreading slowly eastwards.

The wet weather will then move across the northern half of the UK while there will be some showers further south.

On Saturday, the Met Office cautioned that the unsettled weather could last up to 10 weeks.

Clouds blanketed the skies above West Bay, Dorset. The overcast scene is likely to be played out across the UK over the coming few weeks

But if people are already grumbling about the recent rain, they can be thankful that it is drier than 10 years ago, which was the wettest summer on record. Walkers are pictured enjoying a blustery day out at West Bay, Dorset

Castles in the sodden sand: Dorset was shrouded by the same overcast conditions that descended on the rest of the country this weekend but people still made it to the beach

The start of next weekend on Friday could see some sunshine breaking through, however the Met Office predict Britain's weather will remain 'a mixed back' over coming weeks

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

The start of next weekend on Friday could see some sunshine breaking through, however the Met Office predict Britain's weather will remain 'a mixed back' over coming weeks.

Temperatures should remain within a comfortable range of between 66F (19C) and 69.8F (21C).

The weather for the week ahead has been labelled as 'changeable' by BBC forecasters.

But if people are already grumbling about the recent rain, they can be thankful that it is drier than 10 years ago, which was the wettest summer on record.

This striking image was taken in the Kent countryside near Gravesend. The gloomy sight could be among the first of many to come over the coming weeks

Beautiful in its own way...the gorgeous countryside is literally overshadowed by the dark and foreboding clouds

This unbelievable snaps shows a rainbow emerging out of the darkness in the Kent countryside

The great British summer, everybody...while the weather is going to be a 'mixed bag' over coming weeks, the Met Office's forecasters are still confident we will get glimpses of sunshine

The juxtaposition of the rainbow and the gloomy clouds really is a sight to behold. Wet weather is set to move across the northern half of the UK on Wednesday while there will be some showers further south
A tourist has been attacked by a 6ft shark on a crowded Mallorca beach in the third sighting this summer.

Swimmers were ordered to leave the waters of the Estanys beach in Colonia de Sant Jordi after the man was grazed on the arm by the female shark yesterday afternoon.

A shark sighting alert was relayed to nearby beaches and a red warning flag was raised.

Swimmers were ordered to leave the waters of the Estanys beach in Colonia de Sant Jordi after the man was attacked by the female shark yesterday afternoon

The shark is thought to have come close to the shore due to the hot weather and tides, or become sick and disorientated.

This is the third time a shark has been seen in the waters of Mallorca in the last few weeks.

The other two sightings were in Cala Major and Playa de Palma.

The man injured by the shark has not been named but is known to be a foreign tourist.

Tourists fled the waters around Cala Major last month as this blue shark was seen swimming close to shore before being captured

At one stage, lifeguards tried to tempt the shark back into the deep sea by using an aqua scooter and it is reported to have 'disappeared towards a cove'.

The Civil Guard was immediately called in to search for the shark, together with a ship from the Maritime Service of the Armed Institute.

Experts from the Palma Aquarium were also alerted in case biologists needed to go to the scene.

The incident happened on Saturday afternoon when the beach, near the popular hotel Marques and one of the best known in the area, was packed.

On June 25 another 6ft long shark which had caused panic on the beaches of Calvia and Palma was found by experts but it died due to serious injuries.

Videos showed the shark thrashing in the sand as it struggled to return to open water.

The second sighting was on July 9 when a tourist spotted a 'pretty big' shark in the water off the beach of Cala Major.
The wife of a mobster who murdered a police chief 37 years ago tells has told he FBI she had to dig him a shallow grave in her backyard after he died while hiding out in a secret room at her home.

Donald Eugene Webb, a known mob associate, was on the run for almost a decade after he shot dead Saxonburg police chief Greg Adams in 1980.

The cop killer was seriously injured in the fight with Adams who had almost bitten off the mobster's lip and broke his leg.

Webb would spend a month in hospital under an assumed name, before he moved into a rented room for a year, moving again to hide in his wife's garage in her house in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Lillian Webb, the wife of mobster Donald (pictured together) who murdered a police chief 37 years ago tells the FBI she had to dig him a shallow grave in her backyard after he died while hiding out in a secret room at her home

Police believe Donald Eugene Webb (left) shot Saxonburg Police Chief Greg Adams (right) during a traffic stop 37 years ago in Pennsylvania

In 1997, she bought her current house in North Dartmouth where he moved into a secret hidden room. But by this time, Webb's health was in rapid decline.

'Donald was ill. He couldn't get around real well. She wasn't forthcoming about the hidden room. We think she didn't want to tell us who built it, maybe. She was adamant no one knew Donald was there,' Cpl. Birckbichler told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

In 1999, Webb suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed. His wife realized that her husband was dying.

Presumably, not wanting to admit she had been harboring a criminal all those years, she began digging a shallow grave.

'She said she started working on it in the nights, a little at a time. It was winter and she said it was hard to dig through the frozen soil, but it was a shallow grave, about three feet deep,' Birckbichler said.

On Dec. 30, 1999, Webb died, his wife told investigators. She put his body into a plastic tub, pushed it down three steps, dragged it into the backyard 'and dumped his body into the hole.'

Last week, the decades-long search for Webb, who was on the FBI's 'Ten Most Wanted Fugitives' list from 1981 to 2007, finally came to an end when she led the authorities to his remains.

The move came after authorities discovered the hidden room at her house, and Adam's widow threatened to sue Lillian and her adult son unless they revealed Donald's location.

Lillian Webb agreed to show police where her ex-husband was buried Thursday, after she told the cops she had hidden him for almost ten years until his death

Officials are seen walking on Webb's ex-wife's property during Thursday's search, where they found the fugitive's remains

Police were led to Webb's body Thursday by his ex-wife, Lillian Webb, who showed them where he was buried in her back yard in Dartmouth, Massachusetts

Webb disappeared after the killing, but his car was found two weeks later in a parking lot in Warwick, Rhode Island.

Within weeks, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Webb after he was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and charged in Pennsylvania with first-degree murder.

The FBI has offered $100,000 for information leading to Webb's capture or his remains. Webb would be in his 80s now, if he is still alive, WJAR reports.

FBI agents said Webb may have hidden out in a secret room in Lillian Webb's home

Last month, lawyer Thomas King III filed a notice in court saying the police chief's widow, Mary Ann Jones planned to sue Lillian Webb and her adult son for civil conspiracy claims.

The move came after FBI agents said Webb may have hidden out in a secret room in Lillian Webb's home during short stints in the 1990s. A cane was found in the room.

King said Friday that Jones agreed to drop her claims after Lillian Webb agreed to tell authorities where her ex-husband was buried.

On Thursday, she led police to her ex-husband's remains, which were buried in her back yard in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

The FBI said investigators believe Webb died about 17 years ago.

Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the Bristol County District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts said Webb's cause of death has not yet been determined, but it 'does not appear his death was the result of a violent act.'

Investigators believe Webb was trying to case a jewelry store in 1980 when Adams pulled him over (the chief's cruiser above)

The police chief's widow, Mary Ann Jones, (the couple pictured above with their two kids) said she is livid that Lillian Webb kept her ex-husband's whereabouts hidden for years

The police chief's widow, Mary Ann Jones, said she is livid that Lillian Webb kept her ex-husband's whereabouts hidden for years, as Jones and her two sons struggled with their loss and the thought that the killer was still at large.

'I guess I'm angry at her at this point because she could do that to my family - hide him for years and then bury him so we never know,' Jones said. 'Why hide him? Why not allow us closure?'

However, Jones says she was heartened to hear about some of the pain her husband had inflicted on Webb before he was killed.

Lillian had told the cops that when her husband had turned up after the struggle, he was in a bad way.

'His leg was broken, the bone was protruding through the skin and it was bleeding. His lip was real bad. It was almost torn through, nearly bitten off,' Cpl. Birckbichler said.

'When [the police told me] Greg gave him a compound fracture and just about bit off his lip, I was glad. I was glad to hear he fought as hard as he did. That the only way Webb was going to stop [Greg] was to shoot him dead. That's the man I remember marrying,' she said.

Lillian Webb could not be reached for comment Friday. A message was left at her home.

Adams was 31 when he was killed, leaving his wife to raise two young sons. She eventually remarried.

Police at the time released these images as they desperately attempted to find the suspected killer

'The biggest question in the history of Saxonburg has been answered,' Joseph Beachem, the current police chief of Saxonburg, said

Joseph Beachem, the current police chief of Saxonburg, praised the FBI and police in both states for never giving up on finding Webb.

'The biggest question in the history of Saxonburg has been answered,' Beachem said.

'Our thoughts are with the family and we hope this eases their minds, if even only slightly. While the hurt will continue, at least doubt about what happened that day has been eliminated.'

State police detectives assigned to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey's office obtained a search warrant for Lillian Webb's property as part of a separate investigation into an illegal gambling operation that led to the discovery of Webb's body.

The application for the search warrant said police were looking for Webb's body and evidence of him living in the house before his death.

The FBI offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to Webb or his remains, but said Friday that the reward will not be paid because Webb's remains were found as part of the investigation.
Newly-christened White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday that President Trump would support a Russian sanctions bill making its way through Congress.

Speaking to ABC's This Week host George Stephanopoulos, Huckabee Sanders explained that the original piece of legislation was 'poorly written,' but administration officials worked with lawmakers and now the White House is 'happy' with the changes.

'And we support where the legislation is now, and will continue to work with the House and Senate to put those tough sanction in place on Russia until the situation in Ukraine is fully resolved,' Huckabee Sanders said. 'But it certainly isn't right now.'

New Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday that President Trump would support a Russian sanctions bill, which is currently coming through Congress

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was interviewed Sunday morning by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, who got her to say that the White House now supported a Russian sanctions bill it previously fought back against

Previously, the administration had tried to halt the measure, which has strong bipartisan support in Congress and is expected to pass the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

The bill smacks back at Russia for meddling in the 2016 presidential election. It also punishes the country for being aggressive toward its neighbors.

Huckabee Sanders mentioned Russia's attitude toward Ukraine as the reason for the White House's support, not the election meddling.

'So the president will sign that bill,' Stephanopoulos marveled. 'That's a little news right there.'

Had the White House not followed Congress' lead, the president would have found himself in yet another Russian-related public relations mess.

If Trump had used his veto power  for the first time in his still-young administration  he'd likely be called a 'puppet' of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Over the past week, Trump took heat for speaking with Putin at a dinner at the G20 for an additional hour, with only Putin's Russian translator listening in.

The session was previously undisclosed and no readout of their discussion was released to the press.

The White House swiftly pushed back and said Trump was simply carrying out the duties of his job.

President Trump was spared more Russia grief as the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee are allowing his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, to talk to lawmakers and aides behind closed door, as opposed to a public hearing.

Donald Trump Jr and Manafort, along with the president's son-in-law and aide Jared Kushner, attended a meeting with a Russian attorney, a Russian-American lobbyist with Soviet military intelligence ties, and others, which has ignited suspicion as the individual who planned it, a music publicist friend of the Trumps, billed it as a way for the Trump campaign to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has asked the White House to preserve all documents associated with the meeting.

Mueller took over the FBI's probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election and is looking into whether any of the president's associates colluded with the Russians.

Now, with the White House on board the Russia sanctions bill  which also puts new sanctions on North Korea and Iran, and makes it difficult for the president to unilaterally undo the Congressional wrist-slap  the president can point to it as evidence that he's taking a harder line against Russia.

'Look, the administration is supportive of being tough on Russia, particularly in putting these sanctions in place,' Huckabee Sanders argued on Sunday.
A rapist paedophile has been jailed for life for repeatedly abusing a four-year-old girl soon after he was released from prison for attacking another child.

David Stevenson, 53, was jailed for nine years back in 2006, for three rapes and an indecent assault on a 'vulnerable' girl aged under 16.

But Carlisle Crown Court heard after being freed in 2011 he started to hunt for fresh child victims - and repeatedly sexually assaulted a four year-old girl.

On Friday, Stevenson, of Carlisle, Cumbria, was convicted of three counts of sexually assaulting the young girl and breaching a sexual harm prevention order.

A woman - who cannot be named - was convicted of aiding and abetting Stevenson and jailed for 11 years.

David Stevenson, 53, from Carlisle, Cumbria, was jailed for nine years in 2006, for raping a 'vulnerable' girl and after his release in 2011, he preyed on a four-year-old girl

Disgusted Judge Peter Davies also revealed that in the mid-1990s, Stevenson had also groomed a 13-year-old girl - before repeatedly having sex with her.

Jailing him for life, Judge Davies described Stevenson's latest offences as 'sordid, perverse, and corrupt'.

He said: 'When she described what happened to her, the jury were visibly moved.

'There is no way that a four-year-old girl could manufacture that evidence, as you have claimed in your pre-sentence report.

'I am satisfied that you found a young girl who was defenceless.'

As a result of the abuse, the victim - described as 'charming and sweet' - had exhibited sexualised behaviour but those now caring for her were working hard to undo the damage.

Jailing him for life, Judge Davies described Stevenson's latest offences as 'sordid, perverse, and corrupt' at the case at Carlisle Crown Court on Friday

Judge Davies imposed a life sentence, stressing that Stevenson must serve at least eight years before he can be considered for release.

Prosecutor Tim Evans said that at times other men were involved in the abuse - but there was insufficient evidence to take them to court.

Mr Evans described how, when asked about how often she was abused, the girl said: 'Loads and loads.'

Gerard Doran, counsel for Stevenson, suggested that serious though the latest abuse was it was not serious enough to warrant a life sentence.

Mark Shepherd, barrister for the woman, said the turning point in her life was when she suffered a close personal bereavement.

But she did not accept that she had done wrong, said Mr Shepherd.

'She was extremely emotional during her interview,' he said.

Both Stevenson and the woman will have their names on the Sex Offenders' Register indefinitely.

Judge Davies also commended the work of investigator officers, detective constables Mark Singleton and Lindsey Priestley.

Outside court, DC Priestley said: 'The risk to this child was identified by Children's Services who deserve recognition for this.

'What the victim has gone through is one of the most harrowing cases I have ever come across.

'Stevenson is a cruel predator who abused the victim and told them it was part of a game.'

Isla Chilton, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'Stevenson preyed on a vulnerable young child who he manipulated into thinking the abuse was part of an innocent game.

'We worked closely with the police from the outset to strengthen the evidence against Stevenson.

'We applied for bad character evidence to be presented to the jury during the trial which showed how Stevenson had a previous conviction for sexually abusing a teenage girl.'

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said the perpetrators have been 'brought to justice'.

The NSPCC added: 'Stevenson is clearly a danger to children and his sentence should reflect the seriousness of his crimes.

'It's important that treatment forms a part of that sentence, so he no longer poses a risk to children when he is released.

'Stevenson's victim's incredible courage in speaking out about her ordeal has ensured he has been brought to justice.'
A British man has been shot on a Philippine island just days before his wedding.

Tarek Naggar, 44, is in a critical condition after being targeted by three men outside a bar in Cebu City.

The joiner, who had recently been working in Sweden, was due to get married this weekend to his fiancee Angie, who is from the Philippines.

Tarek Naggar, 44, is in a critical condition after being targeted by three men outside a bar in Cebu City

Mr Naggar, from Milngavie in East Dunbartonshire, was sitting outside a bar in the capital, Cebu City, in the early hours of Thursday with his fiancee and best man Chris McLaughlin, when three men on a scooter demanded he hand over his wallet.

When he refused, one then pulled out a pistol and shot him in the chest.

They also reportedly made off with the wallet, credit cards and the local money he was carrying, equivalent to less than 10.

Mr McLaughlin, 40, from Bearsden, East Dunbartonshire, said Mr Naggar received surgery and was put on a life-support machine after the bullet lodged in his lung.

He said an ambulance was called but failed to show up and they had to travel to hospital in a rickshaw.

He told BBC Scotland: 'Tarek's fiancee was trying to call taxis but there was none stopping. I was on the floor with Tarek. He was conscious. After about 10 minutes or so a guy stopped in a rickshaw.'

Mr Naggar was treated at a nearby emergency room, then transferred to a larger hospital for surgery.

The 44-year-old was shot dead while sitting outside a bar with his fiancee Angie

His best man added: 'The surgeon said the bullet went in the right side but ricocheted and travelled over to the left lung. Miraculously it didn't go through his heart, it actually went behind his heart.

'He seems to be recovering well. He's conscious and awake - and has been talking the last couple of days. He's out of the ICU and has been moved to a recovery room.'

Mr McLaughlin said he did not believe Mr Naggar had any health insurance, and the family have already had to make payments for his treatment.

Another friend has begun a crowdfunding appeal to raise money for his medical costs.

The Foreign and Commonweath Office (FCO) has been in touch with his next of kin and various authorities in the area.

An FCO spokeswoman said: 'We are assisting a British national who was shot during a robbery in Cebu, Philippines, and are in touch with local authorities.'
An Islamist extremist group has accused the Australian government of exaggerating the terror threat so police are given the power to kill Muslims.

Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Hamzah Qureshi has made an inflammatory social media post to protest against plans to create a Home Affairs super portfolio combining key security agencies.

'All of these ridiculous measures to confront a 'threat' of terrorism that is exaggerated beyond all reason,' he told his Facebook followers.

'Police with shoot to kill powers. No real threat, but police can shoot and kill Muslims.

Scroll down for video

Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Hamzah Qureshi says the government wants cops to kill Muslims

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton will be in a charge of the Home Affairs super department

'Just let that sink in.'

Hizb ut-Tahrir has a global constitution calling for the death of ex-Muslims.

The fundamentalist group, campaigning for a global caliphate based on Sharia law, is banned in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, along with other Islamic countries including Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Mr Qureshi has accused the Australian government of having a conspiracy against Muslims, even though it has declined to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Hamzah Qureshi says the Australian government has an agenda in oppressing Muslims

'Perpetuate the atmosphere of social fear and anxiety towards Islam and Muslims so that it paves the way for more and more oppression and silencing of us,' he said.

He took aim at Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who is expected to head a new U.K.-style Home Affairs portfolio combining the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Federal Police and Border Force.

'This means that ASIO, the AFP and Australian Border Force will all work under and report to one minister - Peter Dutton, the guy who linked the migration of Lebanese Muslims in the 70s to terrorism and when confronted about it, said he was just being 'honest',' Mr Qureshi said of the conservative Liberal MP's criticism of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser.

Five people have been killed in a terrorist attack in Australia in the past two-and-a-half years.

Hamzah Qureshi's inflammatory Facebook post accusing the government of a conspiracy

Despite that, Mr Qureshi misleadingly claimed that four people had been victims of 'terrorism' during the past 20 years.

'Now a massive security shake up too, and for what?,' he said.

'Keep showing people that you need to be on your toes, that you need to remember that Muslims are lurking in the shadows waiting to strike.'

Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson were killed in Sydney's Lindt cafe siege in December 2014, after being taken hostage by Man Monis.

Less than a year later, in October 2015, accountant Curtis Cheng was killed outside police headquarters at Parramatta, in Sydney's west, by 15-year-old Farhad Jabar.

In June, Somali-born Yacqub Khayre killed a Chinese-born man in a Melbourne serviced apartment complex and took a sex worker hostage, which ISIS claimed responsibility for.
A mother has been left terrified after a carjacking gang stole her car while she and her baby were still inside.

Police are hunting a gang of men described as Asian after the woman was stopped by the group when they pulled up to a set of traffic lights in Solihull, Birmingham on Saturday evening.

The men demanded she got out of her car but she refused, telling them her baby was in the backseat. As she went to check on her child, one of the men jumped into the driver's seat and sped off.

Police are hunting a gang of men described as Asian after the woman was stopped by the group when they pulled up to a set of traffic lights in Solihull, Birmingham on Saturday evening. Above, stock image of Seven Star Road in Solihull

They raced off down Seven Star Road towards Warwick Road with the mother and baby still inside.

They pulled into a side road where the woman managed to escape with her baby before the thieves drove off.

Police said one of the suspects is described as being around 5ft 10ins, of stocky build with facial stubble and wearing a navy blue tracksuit.

The car they were originally in is described as having blacked-out windows.

In a statement Detective Sergeant Stew Lewis said: 'There were a lot of people in the area when the robbery took place and I would ask them to get in touch if they haven't done so already.

'Luckily the woman and her baby were not hurt but the woman is very shaken by what happened.'

More to follow
Cassie Sainsbury will have to reveal the names of drug syndicate members who allegedly supplied her with the cocaine found in her suitcase or risk languishing in a Colombian jail for 30 years.

The 22-year-old Australian woman will need to hand over the vital details to authorities under a mooted prosecution plea deal which would cut short any jail sentence she may receive.

But the move will also mean Sainsbury would have to go into hiding under witness protection for her own safety, The Advertiser reported.

Scroll down for video

Cassie Sainsbury will have to dob in members of a drug syndicate who allegedly supplied her with the cocaine found in her suitcase in April under a mooted prosecution deal

The 22-year-old Australian woman has been holed-up in Bogota's El Buen Pastor women's prison since her arrest in April at Bogota airport as she prepared to fly back to Australia

Colombian authorities are desperate to know how and why the drugs came to be in her possession and will not budge on a plea bargain without the information.

They are also keen to find out just who was the mystery person who purchased a plane ticket on Sainsbury's behalf from China to Colombia.

Sainsbury, who has continued to maintain her innocence, is due to face court this week for the second of four hearings prior to a trial.

She could face just four years in jail if she pleads guilty and a plea bargain is granted.

Sainsbury has continued to maintain her innocence after police allegedly found 5.8kg of cocaine in her suitcase at Bogota airport

Sainsbury (pictured here with her fiance Scott Broadbridge) is due to the face the second of four court hearings this week

Sainsbury has been holed-up in Bogota's El Buen Pastor women's prison after she was arrested by Colombian authorities on April 11.

Police allegedly found 5.8kg of cocaine stuffed inside headphone cases which were being carried in her suitcase.

She was at Bogota airport ready to fly back to Australia, via London, when she was intercepted.
A couple have admitted to giving their newborn daughter prescription narcotics within hours of her birth, to mask the effects of heroin withdrawal, police say

Colby Glen Wilde, 29, and Lacey Dawn Christenson, 26, face a slew of drug and child endangerment charges after a weeks-long investigation into the couple by police in Elk Ridge, Utah.

Police say that the infant daughter tested positive for methamphetamine, heroin, and morphine, and was given withdrawal medication Suboxone at birth to hide the symptoms.

'It makes me sick to my stomach, for a number of reasons,' said Utah County Sheriff's Sergeant Spencer Cannon, KUTV reported.

Scroll down for video

Colby Glen Wilde, 29, and Lacey Dawn Christenson, 26, face a slew of drug and child endangerment charges after a weeks-long investigation into the couple by police in Utah

Christenson is seen pregnant with one of her older children in 2012. The mom is now accused of giving Suboxone to her infant daughter in April to mask the baby's heroin withdrawal

Wilde is seen with his infant son in 2012. He was charged with child abuse last month after police said he dropped his daughter repeatedly during a bungled Walmart shoplifting

'You've got an infant who cannot do anything for herself, and the people who should be providing her nurture, and love, and care, are the ones who are harming their child,' said Cannon.

The sad family saga first came to light on June 26, at a Walmart in Spanish Fork.

Wilde and Christenson were in the store with the baby daughter and three older sons, ages two, four and eight, when police were called around 3pm for a theft in progress.

Wilde, holding the infant girl in a car seat, had taken several items off the store's shelves and taken them to the front as returned merchandise, police say.

After completing the return and getting a cash card, Wilde was approached by store security officers and made a break for it, banging into the exit doors and dropping the car seat with his daughter in it.

As Wilde tried to flee through another door, he banged into a pillar and dropped the car seat again, causing bystanders to intervene to stop the out-of-control man.

Wilde responded by foisting his daughter into the hands of one of the bystanders, a stranger, and sprinting away.

Christenson (left) Wilde are seen together (right) with their two oldest sons in 2013. They were first arrested on June 26 in a Utah shoplifing case, leading to further charges

Wilde is seen in 2012. Police say he tried to flee the Walmart when approached by security and handed his infant daughter to a stranger after dropping her repeatedly

A sheriff's deputy spotted him in the parking lot as he tried to drive away and stopped him, arresting him on suspicion of DUI, child abuse, possession of heroin and methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia, and driving without insurance.

Christenson, his common-law wife, was found inside the store with the three young sons and arrested on an outstanding warrant stemming from a traffic violation.

Wilde and Christenson were initially released on bond, but were re-arrested on July 18 after a subsequent search of their home found a trove of narcotics and caught Christensen in the act of smoking heroin, police say.

Investigators questioned the pair and learned the horrific story of the young daughter, who was born on April 9.

That very day, in the hospital where she was born, the parents rubbed crushed-up Suboxone on the newborns gums while nurses were distracted, in order to hide the heroin addiction the baby had been born with, according to police.

Wilde and Christenson are seen in 2013. They have each been charged with distribution of a controlled substance in a drug free zone, a first-degree felony

Wilde (seen in 2013) is the father of Christenson's three youngest children, officials said

Family services found that the girl and the two youngest boys also tested positive from methamphetamine, possibly from second-hand smoke.

When police contacted the oldest boy's father, who is not Wilde, he quickly agreed to take custody.

But the father said that he didn't want to split the children up, and was granted temporary custody of all four children.

Wilde is the father of Christenson's three younger children, officials said.

Because they admitted to administering narcotics to their daughter in a hospital, they were each charged with distribution of a controlled substance in a drug free zone, a first-degree felony.

The pair also face charges of possession of use of heroin and methamphetamine, endangerment of a child, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Wilde and Christenson are each being held pending $10,000 cash bail.
A mother has shared her harrowing four-decade ordeal married to a church pastor who raped her 'six or seven' times per day.

Joy Harris was married to radical Pastor Larry Harris who preached that women must submit to each of her husband's demands.

'He thought the more times a day he had it the more of a man he was. it got up to six or seven times a day,' Ms Harris told 60 Minutes.

Her son, Jason, left the church after learning of his father's atrocities.

'We didn't realise it at the time, but she was a sex slave,' he said.

Joy Harris (pictured) was married to radical Pastor Larry Harris who preached that women must submit to each of her husband's demands. 'He thought the more times a day he had it the more of a man he was. it got up to six or seven times a day,' Ms Harris said

Larry and Joy Harris moved to Australia from the United States in 1994 as missionaries on behalf of Valley Forge Baptist Church which has been likened by former members to a 'cult'

Pastor Larry Harris (right) is currently serving five years in prison for two counts of rape against his wife

Larry and Joy Harris moved to Australia from the United States in 1994 as missionaries on behalf of Valley Forge Baptist Church which has been likened by former members to a 'cult.'

Pastor Harris and his church exploit a Bible verse to justify their abhorrent and systematic abuse of women.

Ephesians 5:24 reads: 'Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.'

Scott Wendell, the senior Pastor at Valley Forge, astonishingly said he was not surprised when he discovered Pastor Harris' rape allegations.

'If he returned to that road (committing rape) that would be a possibility, and it happened, yes,' Pastor Wendell said.

When asked why he thought it was appropriate to counsel Pastor Harris on his crimes upon learning of the allegations, Pastor Wendell said: 'You can't arrest someone who hasn't committed a crime.'

Scott Wendell (pictured) the senior Pastor at Valley Forge, astonishingly said he was not surprised when he discovered Pastor Harris' rape allegations. 'If he returned to that road (committing rape) that would be a possibility, and it happened, yes,' Pastor Wendell said

Pastor Larry Harris (right) is currently serving five years in prison for two counts of rape against his wife

Larry and Joy's son Kevin, also a Pastor for a radical Independent Baptist Church, has cut all ties from his mother who he believes has failed to show repentance for the situation.

He thinks I'm just as guilty as a rapist, my rapist. I'm wrong; I'm displeasing God,' Joy said of Kevin.

When asked if he believes his convicted rapist father had been unjustly treated, Kevin said he does, and that there was 'disobedience to the lord on both parts.'

'A lot of that was not proven, there was just an admission of guilty for one aspect, other things were brought into it.'

When asked if he believes his convicted rapist father had been unjustly treated, Kevin said he does, and that there was 'disobedience to the lord on both parts'

The interview became increasingly tense, as Kevin refused to identify how his mother was at fault for being repeatedly raped by his father

When asked about how his extreme views had damaged relationships, Kevin stood up and left the room, angrily questioning producers about the angle of the interview

Kevin repeatedly refused to denounce the crimes of his father, saying instead he has offered repentance.

The interview became increasingly tense, as Kevin refused to identify how his mother was at fault for being repeatedly raped by his father.

When asked about how his extreme views had damaged relationships, Kevin stood up and left the room, angrily questioning producers about the angle of the interview.

Pastor Larry Harris is currently serving five years in prison for two counts of rape against his wife.

Jason Harris is now supporting his mother's ambition to have Pastor Harris arrested in New South Wales following his sentence, the state where she alleges several other rapes took place.

'You can't tell a woman that was raped it was her fault. It's evil, it's evil,' Jason said.
President Trump's colorful new communications director, financier Anthony Scaramucci, said he'd like to see White House press briefings go back on-camera now that he and Sarah Huckabee Sanders are in new roles.

'If you're asking me for my personal opinion  and maybe the president will be upset for giving my personal  we should put the cameras on,' Scaramucci told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday morning on State of the Union.

Scaramucci then bantered with the newsman about the state of their makeup, complimenting the makeup artist who did up his face Friday, for his White House podium debut, and remarking that Tapper was wearing so much bronzer that he looked 'tan and refreshed.'

Scroll down for video

Incoming White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said Sunday he'd like for the White House press briefings to go back to being on-camera

Anthony Scaramucci (right) also informed CNN's Jake Tapper (left) that the newsman looked 'tan and refreshed' as the two discussed television makeup artists

Anthony Scaramucci dashed off this tweet, in response to some people suggesting he was giving just Sarah Huckabee Sanders makeup advice

On Friday, President Trump upended his communications staff Friday, naming Scaramucci communications director, a move that prompted the resignation of his embattled press secretary, Sean Spicer.

From there, Trump promoted Huckabee Sanders, Spicer's deputy, to the role of press secretary.

While Huckabee Sanders spoke exclusively to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Scaramucci made the other Sunday show rounds, appearing alongside Tapper, Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace and Face the Nation's John Dickerson.

On each, Scaramucci talked candidly about the reorganization.

Scaramucci said he both wanted to 'soften' the White House's relationship with the press, but also be 'tough' on them.

He showed off that style by occasionally ribbing the hosts.

'He's going to win again, Jake. He's going to win again. I will bring a box of Kleenex over here to CNN in 2020,' Scaramucci boasted on CNN of Trump's re-election prospects.

On Sunday, Anthony Scaramucci (right) complimented the makeup artist who did up his face and the face of Sarah Huckabee Sanders (left) for the debut Friday as White House communications director and press secretary, respectively

'We don't, we don't need Kleenex, we don't need any Kleenex,' Tapper shot back.

On Face the Nation, he talked about his plans to plug up leaks.

The White House has been plagued by unflattering stories coming out in the media, with journalists quoting a number of Trump aides without using their names.

Leakers, he told Dickerson, were going to get fired.

'I'm going to make it very, very clear, OK?' Scaramucci said.

'Tomorrow I'm going to have a staff meeting. And it's going to be a very binary thing. I'm not going to make any prejudgments about anybody on that staff. If they want to stay on, they're going to stop leaking.'

'If the leaks continue, we are strong as our weakest link. And I'll say it a little differently in a pun. We're strong as our weakest leak,' Scaramucci said. 'So if you guys want to keep leaking, why don't you guys all get together and make a decision as a team that you're going to stop leaking?'

He also talked at length about how he wanted to make Huckabee Sanders successful in her new role.

'I think Sarah does a great job. She's an incredibly warm person. She's incredibly authentic,' Scaramucci told Tapper.

'And what I told Sarah on Friday, you get the big office. I will take the small communications office. You deserve the big office because you're taking the hits from the press,' the incoming communications director added.

Scaramucci then suggested that he and Huckabee Sanders looked especially good on Friday in the briefing room, when the duo officially made their debut.

'The only thing I ask Sarah  Sarah, if you're watching, I loved the hair and make up person that we had on Friday, so I would like to continue to use the hair and makeup person,' Scaramucci said.

When some interpreted the remark to be a dig at Huckabee Sanders' looks, he took to Twitter to correct the record.

'For the record, I was referring to my hair and make up and the fact that I like the make up artist. I need all the help I can get! #humor' Scaramucci said.

Tapper had suggested that Scaramucci could 'swing by CNN' if he ever needed good makeup.

'We have hair and makeup here if you ever need,' Tapper said.

Scaramucci responded by telling the host: 'You, you got a lot on today. And you look very tan, Jake.'

'Very tan and refreshed,' the new Trump aide said.
A Texas father-of-four has lost a staggering 230 pounds to fulfill his dream of joining the US Army.

William Guinn Jr. had always dreamed of enlisting in the armed forces, but weighing in at 456lbs last year, he was well over the Army's weight limit.

So in February 2016, Guinn took a look at himself in the mirror and decided something had to change.

William Guinn Jr. weighed 456lbs last year (left) but has since dropped half his weight (right) to join the Army

Going from couch potato to gym bunny wasn't easy, but over the next 14 months Guinn dedicated himself to getting in shape.

Working with nutrition specialists and trainers, Guinn hit the gym six days a week, and would sometimes even go for an hour-long run after a two-hour workout session.

Through his sheer hard work and determination, Guinn lost half his body weight, dropping to 230lbs.

Working with nutrition specialists and trainers, Guinn hit the gym six days a week, and would sometimes even go for an hour-long run after a two-hour workout session

Going from couch potato to gym bunny wasn't easy, but over the next 14 months Guinn (pictured last year, left and right) dedicated himself to getting in shape

Today, Guinn is fighting fit and on Thursday, he was officially sworn in to the Army during a ceremony in Dallas

He has also been able to maintain that weight for the past two months.

And on Thursday, he was officially sworn in to the Army during a ceremony in Dallas.

Guinn, who posted a before and after picture of Facebook, said he wanted to share his story as an inspiration for others.

'It can be done,' he wrote, adding that the motivation of joining the military meant he pushed himself 'harder than ever before.'
Advertisement

Conservationists have made a last-ditch attempt to save a critically endangered species of rhino from extinction.

Scientists and fertility experts at Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire are attempting a world-first IVF treatment to try to save the northern white rhino which has been reduced from thousands to just three after decades of poaching.

The three remaining northern white rhinos all live under armed guard in Kenya, and are too old to naturally reproduce.

There were more than 2,000 in existence in the 1960s but they have been wiped out by poachers for their ivory which can sell for tens of thousands of pounds a kilogram.

So in an effort to save the endangered subspecies scientists have extracted eggs from three southern white rhinos, a more common breed, to make the first test-tube rhinos.

Scroll down for video

Razima the southern white rhino can be seen here having her eggs taken out as a team of experts monitor her at Longleat Safari Zoo

Scientists at the safari park in Wiltshire are attempting this world-first IVF treatment (seen here on Razima), to try to save the northern white rhino, which has been reduced to just three after decades of poaching

Scientist Cesare Galli working at a laboratory in Italy where the southern rhino's eggs are being matured, before they are are fertilised with southern rhino sperm to hone the IVF process before it is attempted in the rarer northern species

Razima, having her eggs taken out: The female rhinos are acting as IVF mothers, with embryos partly derived from northern white male sperm. If the procedure works the hope would be that southern white females would carry the developing embryos for up to 18 months before giving birth

The nine eggs extracted from female southern rhinos earlier this week have been transferred to a laboratory in Italy to mature before they are are fertilised with southern rhino sperm to hone the IVF process, before it is attempted in the rarer northern species.

The last remaining northern white male, Sudan, is 43-years-old and reaching the end of his life. Both surviving females have medical problems which prevent them from conceiving naturally.

Jon Merrington, head of safari at Longleat, told BBC Breakfast on Sunday that scientists working together on the project across Europe will soon know if the initial stage of the process has worked.

'Rhinos are a two tonne animal,' he said. 'Even to extract the eggs is 1.5 metres inside the animal - it's such a complicated procedure.'

If these eggs successfully mature they will be mixed with rhino sperm and cryogenically stored before female southern white rhinos, potentially those at Longleat, are given a course of hormones to prepare them for a 16 to 18 month pregnancy.

'This is a groundbreaking procedure,' Mr Merrington said, 'creating an embryo outside a rhino hasn't been done before.'

If all goes well northern rhino sperm and eggs will be harvested from the remaining members of the species but because there are limited amounts to extract from these animals, IVF in more common southern rhinos is being tested first.

And if they cannot make a pure bred test-tube northern white rhino, they will try to create hybrid animals from sperm and eggs of the two closely related species.

Mr Merrington said that without human interference driving them to the point of extinction, the two populations would have likely mixed anyway.

'What we're doing here probably isn't too far removed from what could have happened in the wild.'

Keeper Zachary Mutai with Sudan the rhinoceros. The last remaining northern white male, Sudan is 43-years-old and reaching the end of his life. Both surviving females have medical problems which prevent them from conceiving naturally

Experts have harvested nine eggs from Longleat zoos three female southern white rhinos (pictured). Dr Robert Hermes, a rhino reproductive expert, said: 'On any other animal this treatment would be pretty straight forward but with the rhino being so large and long it needs special equipment that makes the whole process very, very difficult'

Experts hope to use this method to eventually harvest eggs from the two living female northern white rhinos in Kenya in order to produce a pure northern white rhino embryo to preserve the endangered species

Sudan, the last remaining male northern white rhino. The three remaining northern white rhinos are owned by the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic but live under armed guard at the conservancy in Kenya to protect them from poachers

Cell division has been achieved in early embryos, which have been cryogenically frozen and stored, although none have yet been implanted back into a a rhino

NORTHERN WHITE RHINOS The three remaining northern white rhinos are owned by the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic but live under armed guard at the conservancy in Kenya to protect them from poachers. The owners of the Czech zoo are working with a team of experts led by the Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin on the project. Although closely related, southern and northern white rhinos are two distinct sub-species which are thought to have begun diverging around a million years ago. Southern white rhino populations are concentrated in the south of Africa where their wild numbers are estimated at around 20,000. Northern white rhinos once roamed in Uganda, Chad, across pre-partition Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rhinos across Africa first went into decline during colonial-era mass hunting and habitat loss as land was turned over for agriculture, livestock, plantations and urban developments. As the poaching crisis took hold in the 70s and 80s, fuelled by demand for Traditional Chinese Medicine and Yemeni dagger handles, Northern white rhinos and black rhinos became extinct in Uganda under Idi Amins reign, and Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan and Chad. Source: SavetheRhino Advertisement

Darren Beasley, head of animal operations at Longleat Safari Park, added: 'We have been working with two fertility experts and prior to their visit our female rhinos were given hormone injections to bring them into egg production.

'They were sedated and aspirated (their ovaries were flushed out) to get their eggs. Remarkably, they got eight eggs from the first rhino and one from the other two.

'The eggs were cryogenically frozen in an incubator and flown to a laboratory in Italy. The eggs will be fertilised with northern white rhino and southern white rhino semen and encouraged to grow and develop into embryos.

'Eventually the embryos will be implanted into southern white rhinos and hopefully produce healthy babies.

'Effectively the female rhinos act as IVF mothers, with embryos partly derived from northern white male sperm.

'If the procedure works the hope would be that southern white females would carry the developing embryos for up to 18 months before giving birth.

'This IVF and embryo transfer programme truly is the last best hope to save them from extinction.

'We are really lucky to be involved in this project to save a species which is on the brink of extinction because of humans' poaching.'

Initial tests at Avantea, an Italian laboratory specialising in assisted reproduction of large animals, using eggs from southern white rhinos fertilised by southern white rhino sperm has produced encouraging results.

If the treatment proves successful it is hoped it could be used alongside conservation programmes to help boost numbers of other highly endangered species.

However experts admit this last-ditch attempt to save the northern white rhino could end in 'failure' because of the complexity of using IVF treatment on a two tonne animal.

Dr Robert Hermes, a rhino reproductive expert, said: 'On any other animal this treatment would be pretty straight forward but with the rhino being so large and long it needs special equipment that makes the whole process very, very difficult.'

Experts admit this last-ditch attempt to save the northern white rhino could end in 'failure' because of the complexity of using IVF treatment on a two tonne animal

If the treatment proves successful it is hoped it could be used alongside conservation programmes to help boost numbers of other highly endangered species

Najin the Northern White Rhino is one of only two females left in the wild. Northern white rhinos once roamed in Uganda, Chad, across pre-partition Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo

Rhinos across Africa first went into decline during colonial-era mass hunting and habitat loss as land was turned over for agriculture, livestock, plantations and urban developments, before the poaching crisis took hold in the 70s and 80s

Jan Stejska, coordinator of the efforts to save the northern white rhino from Dvur Kralove Zoo, said: 'If the procedures in Europe are successful, we hope to attempt harvesting eggs from the last living females in Kenya before the end of this year.

'This would allow us to produce a pure northern white rhino embryo.

'Humans have proved they have the power to destroy the rhino. Now we need to see if we have the power to save them.

'But we must accept this might end in failure. The northern white rhino is just one symbol of what humans are doing to the natural world.

'There are many other species disappearing which we can't see as clearly as what has happened to the northern white rhino.'
A man and a 12-year-old boy he was trying to rescue from a lake have both drowned.

Kam Sivilai, 60, and the boy died on Saturday around 6.40pm in Oklahoma's Fort Cobb Lake at Avery Landing, a popular campground on the lake about 55 miles west from Oklahoma City.

The boy has not yet been publicly identified, and his relationship to Sivilai is unknown at this time.

Kam Sivilai, 60, and the boy drowned on Saturday around 6.40pm in Fort Cobb Lake, seen in this file photo, about 55 miles west of Oklahoma City

According to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, the boy was swimming in about three feet of water when he slipped off a ledge into waters roughly seven feet deep.

The boy resurfaced once and then slipped back under the water, police said.

Seeing him struggle, Sivilai jumped into the lake and swam out to help him.

Both victims went underwater and did not resurface, according to police.

A massive search and rescue operation was launched, stunning the many weekend vacationers who didn't know what had spurred the police activity.

Avery Landing is seen in this satellite image. The popular campground was the site of a double drowning on Saturday

'Anybody know why all the cops are on the water at Fort Cobb Lake?' Harlon Curry wrote on Facebook before the sad news had broken.

Police recovered the boy's body around 10.30pm, after nearly four hours of searching.

Sivilai was found dead later that night, at 12.35am on Sunday.
A construction worker has been found dead in the elevator shaft of a luxury Manhattan high-rise.

Cops and paramedics responded to a call about an unresponsive person in the Hell's Kitchen building around 7.15am on Sunday, and discovered 53-year-old Steven Simpson dead.

The worker's body was discovered on the fifth floor of the 56-story apartment building between the elevator and shaft wall, Pix11 reported.

Cops and paramedics responded to a call about an unresponsive person in the Hell's Kitchen building around 7.15am on Sunday, and discovered the 53-year-old worker dead

The body was found on the fifth floor of the 56-story luxury high rise, in an elevator shaft

The medical examiner will determine the cause of death and an NYPD investigation is ongoing.

The building, located at 555 10th Avenue, is currently unoccupied and remains under construction on the interior.

City records show that the building's elevators last passed a routine inspection on June 8.

Apartments in the building (pictured left) are still available, with monthly rents ranging from $3,985 for a one-bedroom to $9,940 for a three-bedroom

But an ambulance was called to the construction site last month after a pile of sheet rock fell and struck a worker, those records also show.

There are four open Environmental Control Board complaints tied to the construction site: illegal use of a device as a construction elevator, failure to provide safety equipment, work without a permit, and failure to have site safety plan.

Apartments in the building are still available, with monthly rents ranging from $3,985 for a one-bedroom to $9,940 for a three-bedroom, according to the developer's website.
A Kansas makeup artist says she won a national contest sponsored by Kat Von D Beauty but was later disqualified because of an Instagram post supporting Donald Trump's presidential candidacy.

Screenshots taken by Gypsy Freeman show she was declared the winner last month of an Instagram 'Saint + Sinner Contest' sponsored by the makeup line, which was founded by tattoo artist and former reality show star Kat Von D.

Freeman's entry was an Instagram image of an angelic figure beside a girl in an all-black outfit and thick mascara, the Wichita Eagle reported.

The winner and a guest were to be flown to Los Angeles to attend the launch party for a new Von D makeup line, with a $500 gift card to Sephora thrown in.

But curious Instagram users found Freeman's pro-Trump post from November.

Gypsy Freeman (above), a Kansas makeup artist, says she won a national contest sponsored by Kat Von D Beauty but was later disqualified because of an Instagram post supporting Donald Trump's presidential candidacy

Screenshots taken by Freeman's Instagram page allegedly show she was declared the winner last month of an Instagram 'Saint + Sinner Contest' sponsored by the makeup line, which was founded by tattoo artist and former reality show star Kat Von D

But curious Instagram users found Freeman's pro-Trump post (above) from November and Von D later allegedly messaged Freeman on Instagram saying she had 'drawn a personal line in the sand between myself and anyone who supports that man'

Von D, who starred in the tattoo-themed TLC reality show 'LA Ink,' later allegedly messaged Freeman on Instagram to say she had 'drawn a personal line in the sand between myself and anyone who supports that man,' according to screenshots of the conversation.

'My launch party (and my brand) celebrates many things that Trump is against,' Von D added, according to the screenshots obtained by the Wichita Eagle.

'And I just need you to know that I personally have a hard time with inviting anyone who would support such an anti-feminist, anti-homosexual/LGBT, anti-immigrant, and anti-climate change fascist such as Trump.'

According to the screenshots, Freeman replied: 'I won't be upset with you if you can't have us there for these reasons, and I wish you the best.

'We would love to be there, of course, but I sincerely do understand if you decide to replace us with someone who supports the candidate you support.'

Von D (above in June) allegedly wrote: 'And I just need you to know that I personally have a hard time with inviting anyone who would support such an anti-feminist, anti-homosexual/LGBT, anti-immigrant, and anti-climate change fascist such as Trump'

All evidence of the contest's existence has since been deleted from the brand's Instagram account and website, though the contest rules are available in a cached version of the site (above)

According to the screenshots obtained by the newspaper, Von D responded: 'It's not about inviting people based on their political stance  it's just extremely difficult (borderline impossible) for me to be friends with or associate with anyone who would support a man who goes against everything I stand for.

Freeman (above) said she thinks it's unfortunate that politics was brought into the contest

'I would feel the same way towards people who supported Hitler, or any other fascist.'

Kat Von D Beauty's parent company, Kendo Holdings, didn't reply to the newspaper's messages seeking comment. DailyMail.com also tried to contact Kendo Holdings for comment, but the phone number listed on the site went unanswered.

Freeman, who splits her time between Wichita and Florida, said she thinks it's unfortunate that politics was brought into the contest.

'Part of the great thing about this country is having freedom of speech,' she said.

'It's definitely bigotry - it's everything that they're calling us, they're doing,' Freeman added. 'It's a huge case of hypocrisy.'

Jenn Bischof, the Florida photographer who took the photos for Freeman's entry, was invited - and attended - the launch party.
Almost 100 commuters missed their early morning train today after bungling rail operators forgot to open the station doors to let them in.

Exasperated travellers watched in disbelief as their train pulled out of Oxford railway station without picking up any passengers.

Later staff apologised for the blunder, suggesting that the rail worker who was supposed to open up the station in time for the 7.43 service to London had overslept.

Dozens of passengers missed their train to London this morning after a member of staff failed to open Oxford Rail Station on time after they slept in

Passengers arriving at Oxford Railway Station this morning were appalled to discover the doors were locked as a member of staff with the keys had not shown up in time, file photograph

Passengers missed the first Chiltern Railways service to London this morning, file photo

Rail users took to twitter to demand answers about the locked station this morning

Up to 100 people were reportedly left queueing outside the main entrance of the normally busy station for the first Chiltern Railways service to London which passed by the station oblivious of the hordes of passengers stuck behind the locked door.

Commuters took to social media to blast Great Western Railway which operate the station. Robert Atkins, said on Twitter: 'How is Oxford station still not open? The first train has already left but all doors are closed. No communication. Over 50 people missed their train. There was zero communication.. What gives?'

Another, Kerry Bowler, asked: 'Why does only one person have a set of keys?'

Francis Barr told said: 'Staff forgot to unlock the doors to the Oxford main station this morning. Over 100 people were waiting for the first Chiltern service to London, but could not get in to catch the train.

'No way to run a railway.'

He added: 'My wife was on the way to London to catch the Eurostar to Paris for work.

'It looks like someone forgot the Chiltern Railways service to Marylebone was still running, despite the construction and track works at the station. The first 7:43am Chiltern service to London left without the passengers.

'One of the people waiting called the customer services and someone was then sent to open the station.

'The station doors were then unlocked about 8am so my wife took the next Chiltern train to London. Another passenger said this was not the first time he had experienced the problem.'

Later the rail operator blamed its own staff for the mix-up.

A spokesman said: 'Staff arrived later than they should have and this incident is being looked into.'
An eccentric hotelier dubbed the female 'Basil Fawlty' for her epic rants at guests has been questioned by police after a fire in her 1.5million seaside guest house.

Former barrister Shirley Bothroyd came to public attention when one of her guests told TripAdvisor: 'Basil Fawlty is the perfect host compared to this place'.

She has now been quizzed after a blaze at her Bay Hotel in Teignmouth, Devon.

Former barrister Shirley Bothroyd came to public attention when one of her guests told TripAdvisor: 'Basil Fawlty is the perfect host compared to this place'.

A 58-year-old woman and a 44-year-old man were arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life, reports the Daily Mirror.

The TripAdvisor reviewer, only identified as Michael W of Torquay, said he booked in for a Valentine and wedding anniversary weekend.

He said when he went down for dinner, a woman who had earlier been in the bar 'intoxicated, loud and swearing like a trooper', was also in the restaurant with a man they assumed was her partner.

He continued: 'While waiting for our meal the very drunk lady staggered over and tried to communicate to us that the lighting was too dark and should be brighter, She turned a lamp on, almost falling into my wife's lap and in the process knocking a picture off the wall.

She has now been quizzed after a blaze her Bay Hotel in Teignmouth, Devon

'So while we were eating our meal, which was really good, we were 'entertained' by our fellow diner dropping things on the floor, shouting at her partner and generally becoming annoying.

'After a short while she grew tired of waiting for her meal,so she went downstairs to the kitchen and promptly began a barrage of foulmouthed abuse. After a few minutes of very industrial language she left thebuilding, the very embarrassed waiter / manager came in to apologise for herbehaviour and said that unfortunately it was not unusual as she was the owner.

'Well I didn't see that coming. However, she was gone fromthe building and we finished our lovely meal in peace.'

The reviewer continued that they were kept awake by loudmusic from the bar during the night, and he had to go down at 2.30am to ask forit to be turned off.

During breakfast, the owner was in the bar 'looking betterthan I was feeling'. They left for another hotel after refusing to pay for thedinner, claiming their anniversary weekend had been ruined. He did praise thestaff saying they 'deserved a medal.'

Shown the review, Ms Bothroyd, responded she had 'nospecific recollection' of everything said to have occurred, but pointed outthat her 'partner' was in fact her 24 year-old son, on a visit from China wherehe lives.

Shown the review, Ms Bothroyd, responded she had 'no specific recollection' of everything said to have occurred

John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, Bernard Cribbens as Mr Hutchinson, Gilly Flower as Miss Tibbs and Hotel Inspectors

'Of course I had a few drinks - I was excited to see him andwe had a great time. I can be a bit raucous, but I was not drunk.

'I did have strong words with the kitchen because we werewaiting too long for our dinner, and I told them in no uncertain terms that itwas not good enough.

'I do know that some former staff who left have beenspreading all sorts of nasty rumours about me and the hotel, claiming that weare closing, that I've had a nervous breakdown and staff are walking out. Thereis no truth in any of it.

'I take is as a compliment to be compared to Basil Fawlty -he had a great sense of humour, just like me, and it seemed a fun place tostay,' she quipped.

'I am nicknamed the 'rottweiller with lip gloss' in thecourts, and I do like a drink and keeping my guests entertained. I'm also knownas 'Marmite' - you either love me or hate me.

'This review could be the work of a disgruntled formermember of staff being malicious. I never read these online things.'

She said she has lost 2,000 in cancelled bookings since the scathing review - which she calls 'The Valentine's Day Massacre'.

Ms Bothroyd, who spent 30 years at the top of her professionhandling many high profile cases, bought the Bay for about 1.5million from a2million nest egg she built up as a lawyer.

She said: 'I looked at 37 hotels in Devon and Cornwall, because Iwanted something to do in my retirement and the money was earning very littlein interest.'
Police and protesters are violently clashing during anti-fracking demonstrations that have so far seen 160 people arrested in just six months at one site.

Demonstrators at a site near Blackpool, Lancashire, have been attempting to disrupt the work of energy firm Cuadrilla, but tempers have become increasingly flared.

Earlier this month, police announced they were beefing up security with 24-hour patrols at the site due to an increase in protests.

Footage emerged this week showing a disabled demonstrator falling out of his wheelchair as police tried to pull him out of the way of a 40-tonne lorry during a protest at the same site.

Anti-fracking protests near Blackpool, Lancashire, are turning violent - but both sides are blaming each other for the unruly scenes

Demonstrators at one site near Blackpool, Lancashire, have been attempting to disrupt the work of energy firm Cuadrilla

Those arrested have been suspected of a variety of crimes, from assault to carrying a knife, but the protesters insist it is heavy-handed security guards who are to blame.

Danni, who helps run at a makeshift camp set up for those opposed to the shale gas extraction, told Sky News: 'We're not here to cause damage to people, we're here to disrupt Cuadrilla and their operations.

'I think a lot of the escalating violence is coming from the police and security, and we've got to do our best to push back against that and say "this is our legal right to protest."'

The government gave the green light for fracking in January after Lancashire County Council refused Cuadrilla's application to frack the site.

More than 150 people have been arrested there in the last six months for a range of offences, from assault to carrying a knife

Earlier this month, police announced they were beefing up security with 24-hour patrols at the site due to an increase in protests

Drilling is expected to begin at the site by the end of August.

But with more protests planned for between that date, there is little expectation that the situation will get more peaceful.

However, Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan said it was 'ridiculous' to suggest the protesters were acting inside the law, citing the volume of arrests.

He told Sky News: 'We've had 160 arrests in the last six months at that site. We've already had 23 convictions, including for carrying a knife, for abuse and for assault, and we have many more cases to come before the magistrates.

'To give the impression that this is peaceful or lawful protests is, frankly, ridiculous.'

Opinions were also divided over the footage of the wheelchair-bound man's run-in with officers.

Fellow protesters claim Nick Sheldrick, 36, was knocked out of his chair by officers outside Cuadrilla's controversial shale gas exploration site near Preston, Lancashire.

But police say he fell as officers moved him out of the carriageway, to prevent him blocking a lorry they were escorting into the site.
Advertisement

Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer isn't letting his life go to the dogs after his stunning resignation.

Instead, the man who was once chiefly charged with spinning Donald Trump's message, was spotted taking his pooch out for a walk on Sunday morning.

The 45-year-old was wearing a navy blue t-shirt with what appeared to be the White House seal on the front, as well as some black shorts and blue trainers while taking his rescue dog, Billy, for a stroll around his Alexandria neighborhood.

Spicer also received a special delivery, with a flower man spotted carrying a basket of goods to the front door. It was not entirely clear what was inside the care package, but it appeared someone had sent Spicey some chocolates and wine to help cope - or celebrate - his newfound unemployment.

The 45-year-old abruptly resigned Friday after his former boss hired Anthony Scaramucci to serve as the new White House communications director.

Spicer denounced what he considered Scaramucci's lack of qualifications, according to people familiar with the situation.

However, he was full of praise for Sarah Huckabee Sanders - who was promoted to become the new White House Press Secretary. 'I could not have asked for a better deputy that @SHSanders45 - she will be fantastic @PressSec and serve @POTUS & @WhiteHouse very well,' he tweeted after his shock resignation.

Sean Spicer is pictured taking his dog, Billy, out for a walk near his home in Washington DC on Sunday morning

Spicer made headlines by resigning from his role as White House Press Secretary on Friday in DC

Spicer is pictured stepping off the curb as he took his beloved pooch, Billy, out for a walk on Sunday morning near his DC home

The 45-year-old was wearing a navy blue t-shirt with what appeared to be the White House seal on the front, as well as some black shorts and blue trainers

The former White House press secretary is seen strolling up a hill with Billy during their venture out together on Sunday morning

Soicer is pictured returning to his home in Washington DC on Sunday morning as Billy the rescue dog follows along behind

Spicer is seen pushing open the door to his property in DC as he heads back inside after taking Billy for a walk on Sunday

A delivery man arrived at Spicer's home on Sunday morning with what appeared to be a care package in his hands

The deliveryman from a flower store on Spicer's doorstep was carrying a basket that appeared to have chocolates and a bottle of some sort inside

Sean Spicer walks outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington after resigning his position on July 21
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday that the Congressional Democrats plan to roll out a much bolder agenda, which will be 'quite different than the Democratic Party you heard in the past,' the Senate's top Democrat promised.

'We were too cautious, we were too namby-pamby,' Schumer suggested. 'This is sharp, bold and will appeal to both the old Obama coalition, let's say the young lady's who's just getting out of college, and the Democratic voters who deserted us for Trump, the blue collar workers.'

Schumer, along with his counterpart in the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will debut the agenda tomorrow, which is entitled, 'A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages.'

On ABC's This Week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., previewed an agenda Capitol Hill Democrats will unveil tomorrow

Sen. Chuck Schumer (left) told George Stephanopoulos (right) that Democrats were 'too cautious, we were too namby-pamby' and that helped cost them the election

George Stephanopoulos (pictured) pointed to polling that suggested 52 percent of Americans believed Democrats only stood against Donald Trump, and not for something

'It has three components,' Schumer explained. 'We're going to raise people's wages and create better paying jobs. We're going to cut down on their everyday expenses they have to pay. And we're going to give them the tools they need to compete in the 21st century.'

'So simply put, what do Democrats stand for?' Schumer said trying to explain the plan more simply. 'A better deal for working families  higher wages, less costs, tools for the 21st century.'

Stephanopoulos had brought up polling data that said 52 percent of Americans believed that Democrats only stood for being against President Trump.

'The number one thing that we did wrong is we didn't have  we didn't tell people what we stood for,' Schumer relented.

For the agenda, which will be rolled out Monday and then in chunks, Democrats decided to leave out social and foreign policy issues, according to the Washington Post's Dana Milbank.

Instead it will be a straight-up economic message.

Schumer and Pelosi, along with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., and David Cicilline, D-R.I., spent the last few months devising the plan, which will pitch tax hikes on the rich, more affordable college, higher wages, better job training, paid family leave and infrastructure spending, according to the Post.

President Trump, too, has said he wants to do a big infrastructure package, though hasn't made much progress, as he tried to tackle health care reform first.

'Trump, I don't know where he is on infrastructure but we're willing to work with him on that,' Schumer added.

The minority leader also said that the Democrats would be willing to work with Republicans on health care, as long as GOP lawmakers let the Obamacare repeal and repeal and replacement bills die.

Schumer also said that Democrats advocating for a 'single payer' health care system, a far more liberal position, is on the table.

'We've talked so much about health care that we are not going to address that in this agenda,' Schumer said.

The Democrat from New York argued that sticking with a strictly economic message will reunite blue collar, working Democrats with the groups that propelled Obama to the presidency  women, people of color, millennials, LGBT people and the college educated.

And their economic messaging will sound like another prominent voice in politics, someone currently occupying the Oval Office.

'You know, Donald Trump campaigned sort of on this message. He was a populist. He campaigned against the establishment,' Schumer said.

'As soon as he got into office, he embraced the Koch brother, hard right and abandoned his plans to clean up Wall Street, to drain the swamp, to be tough on trade,' Schumer continued.

'We are going to fill that gap in a way that's really going to resonate with the American people,' the Democrat offered.
His is a story of incredibly selfless courage.

As the pier-master on the beaches of Dunkirk, Commander James Campbell Clouston organised the evacuation of more than 200,000 soldiers  only to be killed when his own boat was hit by German bombers.

Now, although the Royal Navy officer's bravery has finally been recognised in the new acclaimed film about the 1940 battle, the pier-master in the movie does not use his real name  leaving his family bitterly disappointed.

Kenneth Branagh, pictured, played the fictional character Commander Bolton during the evacuation of Dundalk, although the role was based on the real-life hero Commander James Campbell Clouston who was killed in action when a German bomber sank his motor launch

Members of Commander Clouston's family were angered by the failure of the film's makers to reference the real-life character, right, who received a Mention in Despatches posthumously

Instead, the character, played by Sir Kenneth Branagh, has the fictional name Commander Bolton.

Commander Clouston's son Dane, 78, whose father died when he was just a baby, contacted the producers of the film Dunkirk in January asking if they could at least name him in the credits, but they said this could not happen as they could not honour every hero.

Mr Clouston, who is a former navy officer himself, said: 'I was quite upset he is not referred to by his proper name.

'I understand it would be impossible to use everybody's names correctly in a film, but he was the one pier-master, there was no other person in that role. Obviously we are very proud of what he was able to do, and disappointed he was not given recognition.'

In a letter to British producer Emma Thomas, the father-of-three had written: 'How would you feel if it were your father, whom you had never known?

'And what would he have thought about it? I do hope you can agree to at least mention that it was he who was the one and only pier-master for that terrible week.'

Clouston succeeded in evacuating almost 340,000 troops from Dunkirk despite the danger posed by German attackers who sunk many ships including the French destroyer Bourrasque which hit a mine after leaving the port with 1,200 men aboard

Miss Thomas, who is married to the film's director Christopher Nolan, said all characters were fictionalised 'out of respect to the real-life heroes', explaining: 'Due to the constraints of making a film that addresses the events from multiple perspectives, we felt we wouldn't be able to do justice to each individual without telling their stories in their entirety.

'We are not changing that fictional name due to the fact that our character was inspired by the stories of several different men.'

Nolan told USA Today: 'Clouston has an incredible story we could not do justice to in the film.

'I am hopeful it will inspire people who are interested to look into the stories of the real people who were actually there.'

Almost 340,000 Allied troops in total were evacuated from Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4, 1940, by 800 boats of all sizes.

Commander Clouston organised the evacuation from the eastern jetty for five days and nights with barely a break. He returned to Dover on June 1 before volunteering to go back to Dunkirk for the final night of the evacuation.

His motor launch was bombed and sank. The officer, who was 39, posthumously received a Mention in Despatches, where acts of heroism are described in official reports for high command.

He left behind another son, Moray, and his wife Gwyneth, who died in 2003 aged 96.

Commander Clouston was born in Montreal, Canada, but had trained at the Royal Navy College in Dartmouth and served in the Royal Navy. The film, which has received rave reviews, was released in the UK on Friday.
Charlie Gard's heartbroken parents have decided to let their 'warrior' son die before his first birthday next week - but accused British doctors of denying him his 'chance of getting better' in the US.

His mother Connie Yates sobbed as she told the High Court today: 'Mummy and Daddy love you so much Charlie, we always have and we always will and we are so sorry that we couldn't save you. Sweet dreams baby. Sleep tight our beautiful little boy'.

Charlie, whose first birthday is on Friday August 4, will have his life support switched off within days after his family and loved-ones say their goodbyes.

It is not known if he will be allowed to leave the hospital - but his parents have repeatedly said it is their 'final wish' to take their son home to 'slip away' and 'be with the angels'.

Connie Yates said today Great Ormond Street Hospital should have 'trusted' them with the decision to take him to America for nucleoside treatment on his brain and said: 'We only wanted to give him a chance of life'.

Charlie's heartbroken parents Chris Gard and Connie Yates pay tribute to their son outside the High Court after they decided to let him die

Chris Gard announced they must now 'do the hardest thing that we'll ever have to do which is to let our beautiful little Charlie go'

The world's media gathers outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London as Chris Gard makes a statement on behalf of baby Charlie's family

The little boy's mother and father said his British doctors had cost him his chance of survival by denying him treatment

Chris Gard mops his eyes as his partner Connie Yates reads her moving statement in the witness box at the High Court as Mr Justice Francis listens on

The High Court had been due to decide the fate of the 11-month-old, and whether he should be allowed to try experimental therapy or 'die with dignity' at Great Ormond Street Hospital - but his parents have now made the decision themselves

In a tearful statement also read by his father Chris Gard outside court, she added: 'Charlie had a real chance of getting better.

'It's now unfortunately too late for him. We are now going to spend our last precious moments with our son Charlie, who unfortunately won't make his first birthday'.

The couple said he had the chance to be a 'normal boy' but was 'left to just lie in hospital for months without any treatment whilst lengthy court battles have been fought' and 'left with his illness to deteriorate, sadly, to the point of no return'.

Great Ormond Street has praised the 'bravery' of the decision to end his life but said treatment 'could not have assisted Charlie' and added it was 'concerned' that New York neurologist Dr Michio Hirano had a 'financial interest' in some drugs he wanted Charlie to take.

The judge Mr Justice Francis said lawyers had represented Charlie for free and that his parents should have been entitled to legal aid to fight their case.

He added: 'I can think of few more profound cases than ones where a trust is applying to the court for a declaration that a life-support machine should be switched off in respect of a child.

'Our hero': Charlie's parents pay tribute to their baby and lawyers The parents of Charlie Gard spoke of their 'hero' baby as they addressed the world's media outside the Royal Courts of Justice today. A statement was read out by Charlie Gard's father Chris Gard, alongside his partner Connie Yates, as they ended their legal battle to send him to the US. He said: 'Firstly I would like to thank our legal team who have worked tirelessly on our behalf for free and to nurses and staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital who have cared for Charlie and kept him comfortable and stable for so long. 'We would also like to thank everybody who has supported us, including all the people here about us today. 'This is one of the hardest things we will ever have to say and we are about to do the hardest thing we will ever have to do which is to let our beautiful little Charlie go. 'Put simply, this is about a sweet, gorgeous, innocent little boy who was born with a rare disease who had a real, genuine chance at life and a family who loved him so very dearly - and that's why we fought so hard for him. Ms Yates thanked her lawyers, who had worked for free and 'won't even let us buy them a coffee'. She also thanked everybody who has supported them 'throughout this journey in this country and thousands of people worldwide'. Ms Yates added: 'We also would like to thank the staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital who have looked after Charlie and kept him comfortable and stable for so long. 'The care he has received from the nurses who've cared for him has been second to none.' She went on: 'Most of all, we would like to thank Charlie for the joy he has brought to our lives. 'The love we have for you is too much for words and we love you so very much.' Ms Yates ended her statement by saying: 'Sweet dreams baby. Sleep tight our beautiful little boy. Charlie Matthew William Gard. Our hero!' Advertisement

'Mercifully, Mr Gard and Ms Yates have secured the services of highly qualified and experienced legal team whose lawyers have been willing to give their services pro bono.

'I am aware that there are many parents around the country in similar positions where their cases have been less public and where they have had to struggle to represent themselves.

'I cannot imagine that anyone ever intended parents to be in this position'.

Miss Yates and Mr Gard arrived for the hearing in tears as they ended a campaign to save his life that has touched millions around the world because he had 'run out of time'.

His bereft parents had fought with Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) since January for their beloved 11-month-old son to be flown to the US for pioneering drugs to treat his rare strain of mitochondrial disease.

Outside the court members of 'Charlie's Army' broke down as they heard the news that the little boy's life support will be withdrawn, chanting: 'Shame on GOSH. Charlie's Army never sleeps. You won't get away with this. We won't rest until we get justice for Charlie.'

Ms Yates said the last 11 months had been the 'best' and the 'worst' of times.

'The last 11 nearly 12 months have been the best, the worst and ultimately life changing months of our lives but Charlie is Charlie and we wouldn't change him for the world,' she said.

'All our efforts have been for him.

'This is one of the hardest things that we will ever have to say and we are about to do the hardest thing that we'll ever have to do which is to let our beautiful little Charlie go.'

She added: 'Put simply, this is about a sweet, gorgeous, innocent little boy who was born with a rare disease, who had a real, genuine chance at life and a family who love him so very dearly and that's why we fought so hard for him.'

Ms Yates said a new scan had forced a change of heart.

'We are truly devastated to say that following the most recent MRI scan of Charlie's muscles ... as Charlie's devoted and loving parents we have decided that it's no longer in Charlie's best interests to pursue treatment and we will let our son go and be with the angels.'

Grant Armstrong, for the parents, told High Court judge Mr Justice Francis: 'Poor Charlie. It is too late. The damage has been done. Sadly time has run out. The window of opportunity no longer exists. The parents have taken an extremely hard decision.'

The judge who had been due to decide his fate praised the parents and the 'loving care they have given at all times to their wonderful boy Charlie', adding: 'No parents could have done more for their child.'

The judge said the couple now had to face reality and would suffer many more 'dark days'.

He praised Great Ormond Street medics who had worked 'tirelessly' and added said it was a 'disgrace' that staff had been subjected to abuse and threats.

The couple have fought his doctors through the courts in Britain and Europe since April because they were convinced he could become a 'normal boy'.

Charlie's campaign has garnered worldwide support including interventions from Pope Francis and Donald Trump who demanded he was treated in New York.

But after agonising, the couple have decided it is best for Charlie to withdraw their opposition to Great Ormond Street's court application. It means doctors will remove Charlie's breathing ventilator, allowing him to 'slip away'.

Great Ormond Street Hospital say US doctor couldn't have helped and raises 'concerns' about his 'financial interest' in drugs offered to Charlie Great Ormond Street Hospital said 'the agony, desolation and bravery' of the Gard's decision 'command GOSH's utmost respect and humble all who work there'. But they also insisted that US doctor Dr Michio Hirano (pictured) could not have helped him. They also raised the issue of his financial links to the drug he was offering Charlie. In a damning assessment of his claims the hospital said: 'On July 13 he stated that not only had he not visited the hospital to examine Charlie but in addition, he had not read Charlie's contemporaneous medical records or viewed Charlie's brain imaging or read all of the second opinions about Charlie's condition. 'Further, GOSH was concerned to hear the Professor state, for the first time, whilst in the witness box, that he retains a financial interest in some of the compounds he proposed prescribing for Charlie. 'Devastatingly, the information obtained since 13 July gives no cause for optimism. Rather, it confirms that whilst NBT may well assist others in the future, it cannot and could not have assisted Charlie'. The hospital said Charlie's parents had 'fought long and hard for what they have been led to believe was a treatment that would give him a chance to be the Charlie he was before the effects of his illness became evident'. In a statement, it said: 'Over the weekend, they communicated their desire to spend all the time they can with Charlie whilst working with the hospital to formulate the best possible plan for his end of life care. 'The agony, desolation and bravery of their decision command GOSH's utmost respect and humble all who work there.' The comments came in a 'position' statement prepared by the hospital's QC Katie Gollop. It said: 'Whilst GOSH has striven to work with them throughout, Charlie's needs have taken priority. 'It is greatly hoped that in the days ahead it will be possible to extend to his parents the same quality of care with which Charlie has been provided and to concentrate on the family as a whole.' Advertisement

Charlie's parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard arrived at the High Court in tears today before it was revealed their much-loved little boy will be allowed to die

Dr Michio Hirano, who is a world expert on the nucleoside treatment being denied to Charlie, from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, tried to convince the hospital that the little boy should get his chance. GOSH were 'concerned' by his advice

Charlie has had three scans in the past eight days, as doctors try to decide whether there is a chance of improving his rare type of mitochondrial disease

Charlie's parents are furious with Gosh for not letting Charlie try the therapy in December or January, when he was 'a relatively normal boy'

Charlie Gard's parents said: This is one of the hardest things that we will ever have to say' as they said his life will now end

A brain scan last week dashed the family's hopes and bolstered Great Ormond Street's argument that it not fair on Charlie to keep him alive.

The court hearing into Charlie Gard started with the judge informed that Connie and Chris have made the decision to allow their son to die.

LITTLE BOY'S YEAR OF TORMENT August 4, 2016 Charlie born 8lb 3oz to Connie Yates and Chris Gard. October 2016 Tests reveal mitochondrial depletion syndrome. Believed to be only 16th sufferer in the world of rare strain. Autumn 2016 Miss Yates finds specialist in US testing nucleoside therapy, but it has never been tried on Charlie's rare type. January Gosh doctors say drug would be futile because of irreversible brain damage. Parents contact US doctor. March Gosh asks High Court to let Charlie die. Mr Justice Francis gives parents a month to make case for treatment. Daily Mail readers help raise 197,000 in days to help fly Charlie to US. April Doctors say he is likely to be in pain. Judge rules Gosh should let him die. May Court of Appeal upholds ruling. Parents appeal to Supreme Court. June Supreme Court rejects appeal. On June 27, European judges back decision. Gosh gives parents more time with Charlie. Pope Francis intervenes, followed by Donald Trump on July 3. July 7 Seven scientists hand Gosh fresh evidence showing higher survival chances. July 10 Mr Justice Francis gives parents 48 hours to produce new evidence in case. July 13 US specialist Dr Michio Hirano invited to London by High Court July 17 Dr Hirano examines Charlie. July 21 Court told scan results 'very sad'. Today High Court due to rule on the case, ten days before Charlie's birthday - but his parents end their legal battle. Advertisement

US medic Dr Michio Hirano flew to London last week to examine 11-month-old Charlie but failed to convince Great Ormond Street that experimental nucleoside treatment would improve his condition.

The 11-month-old also had two MRI scans in the past week - one on his brain and another on his body - but these made 'for very sad reading', GOSH's Katie Gollop QC, told Mr Justice Francis on Friday.

There was a hint of today's decision as Miss Yates and Mr Gard looked bereft on arriving for the day's proceedings.

As news of Charlie Gard's fate broke outside the High Court, a group of 'Charlie's Army' supporters burst into tears and started screeching angrily through megaphones.

They severely criticised Great Ormond Street Hospital, claiming they had 'failed' the infant and 'denied' him a life-giving opportunity.

Breaking down and hugging each other, they demanded 'justice' and chanted 'Shame on GOSH. Shame. Shame. Shame ... Charlie's Army never sleeps.'

One visibly distressed woman fell to the ground and shouted: 'He had a chance and you took it away.' Meanwhile, one girl sang through a megaphone while fighting back tears.

Dorit Ronen, 49, said: 'I'm shocked, I really don't understand how this could happen. How could they not give him one chance?'

Around 20 supporters of the terminally ill infant had gathered outside the High Court with megaphones, blue balloons and banners.

The group, of mainly women and children, are part of the 'Charlie's Army' movement. They chanted slogans and cheered when passing cars beeped their support.

David Gillespie, 45, from St Andrews, flew from Scotland on Monday morning to be there. He said: 'This boy has to have one chance. That's it.

'He's not had one in life. I had one with a heart attack. He's not even had one at anything.'

Charlie's parents ended their legal fight after it was confirmed damage to the infant's muscle and tissue was irreversible.

The couple felt that continuing their fight would cause Charlie pain, he said, adding they hope to set up a foundation as part of their son's legacy.

Heartbroken supporters sobbed and screamed outside the High Court when the news filtered out of the court

As news of Charlie Gard's fate broke outside the High Court, a group of 'Charlie's Army' supporters burst into tears and became very angry

Supporters were upset with and some demanded 'justice' and chanted 'Shame on GOSH. Shame. Shame. Shame ... Charlie's Army never sleeps.'

The judge said last week that the hearings would start early and finish late, and added that he was worried two days might not be long enough.

But yesterday a judiciary spokesman unexpectedly announced that the hearing would be shorter, beginning at 2pm instead of 10am. Neither the family, the hospital nor the judiciary offered an explanation for the sudden change.

1.3m raised for Charlie will help other children so 'his spirit will live on' His mother Connie Yates sobbed as she told the High Court today: 'Mummy and Daddy love you so much Charlie, Charlie Gard's parents have said they hope to set up a foundation as part of their son's legacy. Connie Yates, right today, and Chris Gard want their son's spirit to 'live on' after his death. More than 1.3million was raised from donations that will now never be spent on his treatment. His parents said in a statement: 'Charlie had a real chance of getting better. It's now unfortunately too late for him but it's not too late for others with this horrible disease and other diseases. We will continue to help and support families of ill children and try and make Charlie live on in the lives of others. We owe it to him to not let his life be in vain'. Previously Miss Yates spoke about what would happen should the worst happen to their son. She said: 'We have thought long and hard about it and we would set up a charity for mitochondrial depletion syndrome's (there are others that are more common than Charlie's specific gene). 'We'd like to save other babies and children because these medications have been proven to work and we honestly have so much belief in them. 'We would like some of it to go to research at the specific hospital that are willing to treat Charlie and the rest will be available to help other families to get the medication that their children desperately need. 'We hope that you can all support us in making treatments available so that nobody else ever has to go through what we have.' Advertisement

Charlie has had three scans in the past eight days, as doctors try to decide whether there is a chance of improving his rare type of mitochondrial disease.

Last Friday, the High Court was informed his latest scan report made for 'very sad reading'  prompting Miss Yates to shriek in anguish because the parents had not yet read the report themselves.

Mr Gard shouted that the hospital's QC was 'evil'.

The parents, of south-west London, are furious with Gosh for not letting Charlie try the therapy in December or January, when he was 'a relatively normal boy'.

Previously, Mr Justice Francis has urged the two sides to come to an agreement on the best course for Charlie.

He said if there was agreement, he was 'bound to agree' too.

The judge ruled 'with the heaviest of hearts' in April that it would be kinder to let Charlie die, as his British doctors said he was brain damaged and beyond hope.

The case was reopened after US specialist Dr Michio Hirano and six other experts brought 'new' evidence.

Pope Francis and Donald Trump tweeted support and a radical US pastor and fellow pro-life campaigners arrived, sparking protests.

On Saturday Gosh chief Mary MacLeod said in a statement the hospital had called in police as medics were being abused online, in the street and in the hospital. Charlie's parents yesterday said they too were victims of abuse.

Miss Yates, 31, said: 'We are extremely upset by the backlash we have received after Gosh put out their statement.

'We do not and have not ever condoned any threatening or abusive remarks  We would have appreciated it if  they had asked the public not to say anything hurtful to us, as well as their doctors.'

She said they had 'utmost respect' for Gosh staff, adding: 'Chris and I are just ordinary parents with a very sick baby and we simply have his best interests at heart.'

Mr Gard, 32, said: 'Without the excellent care of the doctors at Gosh, our son would not even be alive and not a day goes by when we don't remember that.'

The parents' official spokesman said they had faced 'shameful, disgraceful and hurtful criticism'.

'Our son is an absolute warrior and we will miss him terribly': Charlie's parents speak out as they make the heartbreaking decision to let him 'slip away'

Here is the statement from Connie Yates which she read to the High Court today:

The last 11 nearly 12 months have been the best, the worst and ultimately life changing months of our lives but Charlie is Charlie and we wouldn't change him for the world. All our efforts have been for him.

This is one of the hardest things that we will ever have to say and we are about to do the hardest thing that we'll ever have to do which is to let our beautiful little Charlie go.

Connie Yates and Chris Gard leave the High Court after making their heartbreaking decision to let Charlie pass away

Put simply, this is about a sweet, gorgeous, innocent little boy who was born with a rare disease, who had a real, genuine chance at life and a family who love him so very dearly and that's why we fought so hard for him.

We are truly devastated to say that following the most recent MRI scan of Charlie's muscles, as requested in the recent MDT meeting by Dr Hirano; as Charlie's devoted and loving parents we have decided that it's no longer in Charlie's best interests to pursue treatment and we will let our son go and be with the angels.

The American and Italian team were still willing to treat Charlie after seeing both his recent brain MRI and EEG performed last week. He's not brain dead (and never has been). He still responds to us, even now, but after reviewing the recent muscle MRI it was considered that Charlie's muscles have deteriorated to the extent that it is largely irreversible and, were treatment to work, his quality of life would now not be one which we would want for our precious little boy. They both agreed that treatment should have been started sooner.

There is one simple reason for Charlie's muscles deteriorating to the extent they are in now - TIME. A whole lot of wasted time. Had Charlie been given the treatment sooner he would have had the potential to be a normal, healthy little boy. His muscles were in pretty good shape in January, although obviously weaker than a child of similar age, and his brain scan was that of a relatively normal child of his age. He may well have had some disabilities later on in life but his quality of life could have been improved greatly. The reason that treatment was not commenced in January or April this year was that Charlie was found to have 'irreversible brain damage' and treatment was considered as 'futile'. Dr Hirano, together with other internationally renowned paediatric neurologists have now reviewed Charlie's MRI's and EEG's which were performed in January and April respectively and they have confirmed that these MRI's and EEG's showed NO actual evidence of irreversible brain damage. Unfortunately Professor Hirano did not have access to the raw data and he based what he said in April on reports. We did not have access to these second opinions before the initial trial, hence why we are where we are today. Had we had the opportunity to have raw data of the MRIs and EEGs independently reviewed, we areconvinced Charlie would be on treatment now and improving all the time.

Charlie's bereft mother Connie arrives at court as his family said their worst fears had now been realised

However, we are now in July and our poor boy has been left to just lie in hospital for months without any treatment whilst lengthy court battles have been fought. We have been told time and time again that Charlie has a 'progressive disease' but rather than allow treatment for him with a medication that was widely accepted to have no side effects, Charlie has been left with his illness to deteriorate, sadly, to the point of no return.

We would like to say a few words in the hope that Charlie's life will not be in vain. We have always acted in our son's best interests from the very beginning. We were told back in November that all his organs would fail and it was likely that we only had days left with him but to this day aside from Charlie's need for ventilation not one organ has 'failed'. We have always been led by Charlie. I promise every single one of you that we would not have fought this hard for our son if we thought that he was in pain or suffering. There has never been any proof that he was and we still don't think that he's in pain or suffering to this day. Having said that, we have decided to let our son go and that's for one reason and one reason only. It is because the prospect of improvement is unfortunately now too low for Charlie. Our doctors in America and Italy were still willing to treat Charlie after reviewing the MRI head scan from July 2017 as they still felt that there was a chance of meaningful improvement in Charlie's brain. However, due to the deterioration in his muscles, there is now no way back for Charlie. Time that has been wasted. It is time that has sadly gone against him.

We now have 7 experts supporting therapy for Charlie's condition which I think is proof that it was more than reasonable to try it. Nucleosides are simply a powder that would've gone into Charlie's milk and are compounds which all of us in this room produce naturally. Unfortunately, Charlie can't produce these due to his disease, which is why he is the way he is. We want people to realise that we have been speaking to parents whosechildren were just like Charlie before starting treatment and now some of them are walking around like normal children. We wanted Charlie to have that chance too.

Our son has an extremely rare disease for which there is no accepted cure but that does not mean that this treatment would not have worked, and it certainly does not mean that this shouldn't have been tried. We have only been asking for a 3 month trial of treatment to see if there was any improvement. We have been asking for this short trial for the past 8 months. Charlie did have a real chance of getting better if only therapy was started sooner. It was never false hope as confirmed by many experts. Now we will never know what would have happened if he got treatment but it's not about us. It's never been about us. It's about what's best for Charlie now. At the point in time when it has become too late for Charlie we have made the agonising decision to let him go.

This has also never been about 'parents know best'. We have continuously listened to experts in this field and it has raised fundamental issues, ethically, legally and medically - this is why the story of one little boy from two normal everyday people has raised such conflicting opinions and ferocious arguments worldwide.

All we wanted to do was take Charlie from one world renowned hospital to another world renowned hospital in the attempt to save his life and to be treated by the world leader in mitochondrial disease. We feel that we should have been trusted as parents to do so but we will always know in our hearts that we did the very best for Charlie and I hope that he is proud of us for fighting his corner.

We will have to live with the 'what if's' which will haunt us for the rest of our lives but we're thinking about what's best for our son. We have always believed that Charlie deserved a chance at life and we knew that his brain was not as bad it was made out to be and that's why we continued.

We completely understand that everyone is entitled to their opinion and this was always going to be a matter which would cause a huge debate in who's right and who's wrong. In truth, there are no winners here. One thing is for sure though. We know deep within our hearts that we have always had Charlie's best interests in the forefront of our minds and despite what some people think of us, we will try to walk away from this with our heads held high. As I said, we know the truth, and in our hearts we know that we have done all of this for our darling little Charlie. We have never done this for selfish reasons. We didn't keep him alive just because we couldn't bear to lose him.

Charlie had a real chance of getting better. It's now unfortunately too late for him but it's not too late for others with this horrible disease and other diseases. We will continue to help and support families of ill children and try and make Charlie live on in the lives of others. We owe it to him to not let his life be in vain.

We would like to thank our current legal team who have worked tirelessly to try and save Charlie's life and they have not asked for a single penny. They won't even let us buy them a coffee. They have done it out of the kindness of their hearts because they believed in us and they certainly believed in Charlie. We would like to thank everybody who has supported us throughout this journey in this country and thousands of people worldwide and we also would like to thank the staff at GOSH who have looked after Charlie and kept him comfortable and stable for so long. The care he has received from the nurses who've cared for him has been second to none. But most of all, we would like to thank Charlie for the joy he has brought to our lives. The love we have for you is too much for words and we love you so very much.

Despite the way that our beautiful son has been spoken about sometimes, as if he not worthy of a chance at life, our son is an absolute WARRIOR and we could not be prouder of him and we will miss him terribly. One little boy has brought the world together and whatever people's opinions are, no one can deny the impact our beautiful son has had on the world and his legacy will never ever die. Charlie has had a greater impact on and touched more people in this world in his 11 months than many people do in a life time. We could not have more love and pride for our beautiful boy. His body, heart and soul may soon be gone, but his spirit will live on for eternity and he will make a difference to people's lives for years to come. As his mum and dad, we will make sure of that. We owe that to our boy. We will do our utmost to ensure that no parents have to go through what we have been through and the next Charlie that comes along WILL get this medicine before it's too late and Charlie will save many more lives in the future, no doubt about that.

The couple have decided it is best for Charlie to withdraw their opposition to Great Ormond Street's court application. It means doctors will remove Charlie's breathing ventilator allowing him to 'slip away'

We are struggling to find any comfort or peace with all this, but one thing that does give us the slightest bit of comfort, is that we truly believe that Charlie may have been too special for this cruel world.

We truly believe that any parent would have wanted the same thing if they knew what we knew.

We are now going to spend our last precious moments with our son Charlie, who unfortunately won't make his 1st birthday in just under 2 weeks' time, and we would ask that our privacy is respected at this very difficult time.

Mummy and Daddy love you so much Charlie, we always have and we always will and we are so sorry that we couldn't save you. We had the chance but we weren't allowed to give you that chance.

Sweet dreams baby. Sleep tight our beautiful little boy.

Charlie Matthew William Gard

Our hero!
A TV producer behind Sir David Attenborough's acclaimed documentaries told a family 'I want you to die' as he tried to place them under citizen's arrest in an extraordinary road rage tirade.

Wildlife producer and director Fergus Beeley shocked a family on Saturday when he got out of his car on the M27 in Hampshire and launched into an explosive rant.

Simon Gale, 33, who was driving the other car involved, said Mr Beeley flew into a 'raving state' after both cars were forced to pull over at the side of the motorway.

Mr Beeley was heard calling the family 'w******' and 's****' and telling them to 'get back in the car before you die'.

Police were called to the row close to Southampton Airport but said two men involved - believed to be Mr Beeley and Mr Gale - made allegations of assault against eachother but both decided not to pursue a complaint.

The award-winning film maker has worked for the BBC since 1989 and helped produce some of Sir David Attenborough's most memorable natural history programmes for the BBC including Life of Birds and Planet Earth: The Future.

Wildlife producer and director Fergus Beeley shocked a family on Saturday when he got out of his car on the M27 near Portsmouth, Hampshire (pictured)

Mr Beeley appears to place his hands around another motorists neck during the extraordinary exchange

Beeley was heard calling the family 'w******' and 's****' and telling them to 'get back in the car before you die'

His LinkedIn profile shows that he was a series producer on the BBC's Natural History Unit.

Mr Gale claims Mr Beeley grabbed hold of him around the throat and 'raised his fist in a threatening manner' during the furious row.

The father, of Salisbury, Wiltshire, says he also attempted to push his mother-in-law towards oncoming traffic on the motorway.

He said: 'It was quite a scary thing. He flew into an absolute raving state. When he got out the car he demanded, 'Do you know who I am?', and when I said I didn't he grabbed me and pushed me against the car.'

Mr Gale added that it wasn't until after police had shown up to mediate the incident, and insurance details had been exchanged, that the family saw Beeley's name and realised who he was.

The bizarre flare-up happened at 11.30am on the M27, as Mr Gale was driving down to Portsmouth with his wife, Louise, their 14-year-old son, and his mother-in-law.

Mr Gale said the family were driving on motorway when a car from the inside lane attempted to pull into the middle lane - and ended up colliding with their car.

He said: 'This car pulled across into our lane and hit our car - our whole car moved and we almost got knocked into the outside lane.

'We pulled over to the side of the road and my wife got out of the car to exchange insurance details with this woman - I didn't really think anything of it at the time.

'Then Fergus Beeley pulled up behind us in a different car and started screaming and shouting at us.'

The bizarre flare-up happened at 11.30am on the M27, as Mr Gale was driving down to Portsmouth with his wife, Louise, their 14-year-old son, and his mother-in-law

Simon Gale, Louise Gale, Joshua Gale (left to right) who were involved in a road rage incident with Fergus Beeley

Video footage of the incident, shot by Mr Gale's mother-in-law, shows Beeley repeatedly screaming at the family that they are under citizen's arrest - after reportedly telling them he was an off-duty policeman.

Mr Gale said: 'My son was so scared by it that he actually ended up sleeping in our room last night. He's very shaken.

Mr Beeley's neighbours said his meltdown was out of character

'Luckily none of us are harmed in any way - but we're still quite shaken by it. We're definitely going to be a bit more cautious from now on.'

Mr Beeley has been contacted for comment by MailOnline.

The BBC also refused to comment - but a source said he had not worked for or with the corporation for more than a decade.

But his neighbours today described his behaviour as 'out of character'.

Residents of the picturesque village where Fergus Beeley lives with his wife and two children said he was 'friendly' but worked abroad a lot.

Mr Beeley was not seen at the large detached house in the grounds of stately home the Badminton Estate in Gloucestershire. A woman who answered the door refused to comment.

Hanging baskets decorated the front of the house and a grey Skoda estate car was parked in the drive beside an old fashioned red Ford Fiesta.

Sue Bird, 73, lives nearby on the estate and said: 'He's a very nice chap, and so are his wife and two children.

'He's away most of the time, but he wouldn't go to people's houses and chat, but if you met him out and about he will say hello.'

Mrs Bird thought the family had lived in the grounds of the Duke if Beaufort's home for about seven years.

The village, Badminton, South Glos, is famous for its horse trials and the Duke, David Somerset, keeps three packs of hounds in kennels close to Mr Beeley's home.

Another neighbour, who asked not to be named, has watched the footage and was shocked.

He said: 'it's very out of character. He's usually very friendly.'

Hampshire Police have shed light on the incident, which started after a crash on the M27 and then continued in a supermarket car park.

A spokesman said: 'We were called to a non-injury road traffic collision on the M27 between junctions 5 and 7 at 11.30am on July 22.

'The incident involved a Mazda 3, a Peugeot 107 and a Skoda Octavia. When officers attended all parties had moved to the Sainsbury's car park in Hedge End.

'A 32-year-old man from Southampton and a 54-year-old from Gloucestershire each made an allegation of common assault but neither party wanted to pursue the complaint.

'As a result, advice was given to both parties and they were told that two assaults will be recorded and filed'.
A Brooklyn man who claims he was attacked with a broken glass bottle for wearing a Make America Great Again hat had his face fixed for free by a Trump supporting plastic surgeon.

Right-wing activist Jovanni Valle had his nose broken and his face sliced open during a brawl at Mehanata bar on the Lower East Side in the early hours of July 7.

The 26-year-old arrived at the bar, with 15 friends, still wearing the MAGA hat after attending a book party for Milo Yiannopoulos' new book, Dangerous.

Jovanni Valle a right-wing activist, was wearing his MAGA hat (left) when he had his nose broken and his face sliced open (right) during a brawl at Mehanata bar on the Lower East Side in the early hours of July 7

'I wear my hat because I want to make America great again like the president,' he told the New York Post.

'I like Trump because he doesn't sugarcoat anything. A hat that says "America" and "great" on it shouldn't be polarizing. This is a political hate crime. I got attacked for what I think.'

He says he was dancing when his hat fell off, and was promptly stomped on by a woman at the bar.

Valle, who does not have health insurance, says he confronted the fellow bar patron, Emma Rodriguez, asking her why she was stamping on her hat, and she replied: 'I hate this hat, I hate you,' he claims.

Valle said he had put his hand on the woman's shoulder, when Rodriguez' boyfriend, Leonardo Heinert, 25, attacked him.

He claims he was dancing when his hat fell off and was stamped on by a woman at the bar. When he confronted her and says he put his hand on her shoulder, her boyfriend attacked him, he claims (pictured covered in blood after the attack)

Valle has already undergone one operation to fix his broken nose and will have to undergo two more before he is fully healed - all given for free by Pober

He told the cops Heinert 'repeatedly punched' him before Rodriguez, 24, 'smashed a bottle' over his head.

The couple were charged with assault, and released without bail, records show. Valle was also arrested for misdemeanor assault, but the Manhattan DA say they have declined to prosecute.

Meanwhile, Park Avenue plastic surgeon, Dr. Joseph Pober, heard about the attack on the fellow Trump supporter and decided to help fix up Valle's injuries - for free.

'This is something that had to be done. When I heard about this I was shocked,' Pober told The Post.

'It's freedom of speech that is being attacked and assaulted.  I can't imagine that anyone in America would viciously assault you, break your nose and slice your face with a broken beer bottle.'

Trump supporter and Park Avenue plastic surgeon Dr. Joseph Pober (pictured) heard Valle's story and offered to repair his face for free

Last week, he performed surgery to repair Valle's nose fracture, re-sutured the laceration, 'which was gaping open' (Valle and Pober together)

Last week, he performed surgery to repair Valle's nose fracture, re-sutured the laceration, 'which was gaping open.' The surgery was worth around $30,000.

He will need several more surgeries to repair his face but Pober said he was happy to cover them.

Valle said he was 'astonished' by the generous gesture.

The 26-year-old has a history of radical activism and just three weeks before the brawl, he was arrested for storming the stage during the final performance of the Public Theater's Julius Caesar play which cast Caesar as Trump.
Charges against University of Montana senior Guthrie McLean, 25, were dropped after he was arrested on July 16 in China for allegedly beating up taxi driver

Chinese authorities have dropped charges against an American college student who allegedly beat up a a taxi driver.

Guthrie McLean, a senior at the University of Montana, claimed that he was acting in defense of his mother, who was being roughed up in a fare dispute.

The 25-year-old was released from a detention center in the central China city of Zhengzhou early Monday local time, according to Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana.

'Prayer's answered. Guthrie's home, his mother, Jennifer McLean, wrote in an email to Daines's office.

Tom Mitchell, a family friend who is also the Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times, said Guthrie was trying to protect his mother from a local taxi driver in a dispute that took place last month.

In May, after finishing up his junior year, Guthrie flew out to Zhengzhou to visit his mother, who teaches English there.

Guthrie has spent most of his life in China, moving there with his mother in 2001.

His plan was to volunteer at a panda rescue center for the summer and then return to Montana for his final year of college, where he's an East Asian Studies major, on August 29.

But those plans came halted on June 10, when Jennifer got into an altercation with a cab driver who drove her home, and then refused to give her change.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

The East Asian Studies student's mother, Jennifer McLean (pictured together above), says that her son was defending her

The map above shows where Zhengzhou is located in China

She says that the ride came to 70 Renminbi, or $10.36 in US dollars. She gave him a 100 Renminbi note, but says he refused to give her change.

'There then was a bit of an argument and the taxi driver started to rough Jennifer up,' Mitchell told KPAX. 'So, she describes him pushing and shoving her, grabbing her bags; she was very scared.

'She was able to call Guthrie and he saw what was happening. He pulled the taxi driver off her, threw him to the ground, and end of story. Or so it seemed.'

Then, five weeks later, police returned looking for Guthrie. The cab driver had gone to the police, alleging that he was seriously injured by Guthrie.

The police demanded that Guthrie pay 100,000 Renminbi, or $14,800 U.S. dollars, as a settlement to the cabbie.

When Guthrie said he couldn't pay that amount, they lowered it to 60,000 Renminbi and then 50,000 Renminbi - the equivalent of almost $7,400. But when Guthrie still couldn't pay it, they took him into custody.

Guthrie was practically raised in China, moving there with his English teacher mom in 2001

He returned to China in May for summer break, and about a month later got into the confrontation with a cab driver

He was arrested last Sunday and charged with intentional injury.

Mitchell says that Chinese law dictates that Guthrie could have been held for up to 30 days without police charging him.

'You could end up actually sitting in the detention center for the better part of a year waiting for the police and prosecutors to finish their investigation, at which time it goes to trial,' Mitchell said.

Before his released Democrat Senator Jon Tester of Montana wrote a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad on the matter.

'It is my understanding that Guthrie has not yet been able to contact his mother nor has he been able to contact US officials about his detention,' Tester wrote.

'For that reason, I strongly urge you and the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to provide diplomatic intervention to secure his timely release.'

Senator Daines, who lived in China from 1991 to 1997 when he worked for Proctor and Gamble, said he was in contact with the US Embassy, the Chinese Embassy, and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing about Guthrie.

Jennifer McLean says a cab driver refused to give her change, and when she complained, started roughing her up. She called her son, who came outside and pulled him off of her. Above, an arrest document from Chinese authorities

Daines said the family did not pay the amount requested by police , but he declined to comment further.

'We were able to come to an agreement that worked for everybody, most importantly for Guthrie and for Jennifer, his mother,' Daines said in a conference call with reporters.

Tester said in a statement that he was 'overjoyed' Guthrie McLean was safe.

'As a parent, there is nothing more nerve-wracking than being concerned about your child's safety,' the lawmaker said.

Local police in China have declined to comment on the case.

Five weeks after the June 10 incident, police came searching for Guthrie, saying that the cab driver had alleged that he had been seriously injured

Police demanded that Guthrie pay a 100,000 Renminbi settlement, and when he couldn't pay it, they lowered it to 60,000 Renminbi and then 50,000 Renminbi

When Guthrie still couldn't pay the settlement, he was arrested on Sunday and charged with intentional injury

'Prayer's answered. Guthrie's home,' Jennifer wrote in an email to the office of Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana

Friends back in Montana had started a YouCaring page to raise money for his bail, in case diplomatic efforts stalled

Jennifer, who is deaf and founded a deaf community development center in Beijing in 2006, described her son as a very sweet, caring person.

Meanwhile, friends back in Montana had set up a fund to raise money for Guthrie's bail in case diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful.

Friend Zakk Winch and his fiancee set up a YouCaring page, which, as of Thursday morning, had raised $630 of its $7,500 goal.

'Even though I have faith in our government, I don't have faith in the Chinese government,' Winch told ABC Fox Montana.
Labor has maintained its lead over the coalition, benefiting from a fall in the Australian Greens' primary vote after the party's horror month.

According to the latest Newspoll, the Turnbull government and Labor party won back supporters from the minor parties.

The results come as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull backs opposition leader Bill Shorten's call to resurrect fixed terms - the idea that federal government go to the polls only every four years.

Scroll down for video

Bill Shorten's Labor Party was out in front, at 53 to 47 percentage points on a two-party preferred basis, according to the latest poll results

Labor was out in front, at 53 to 47 percentage points on a two-party preferred basis, the poll published by The Australian on Monday showed.

But the good news for the government is that it has regained support from Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, which saw support fall to nine points from an earlier 11.

Likewise, Labor benefited from a fall in the Australian Greens primary vote from 10 to nine percentage points.

On the primary vote basis, the coalition rose one point to 36 per cent, while Labor also went up a point to 37 per cent.

The Greens had a terrible month, with NSW senator Lee Rhiannon suspended from the party room and two senators, including co-deputy leader Larissa Waters, forced to quit because of their dual citizenship.

The Greens had a terrible month, with NSW senator Lee Rhiannon suspended from the party room and two senators, including co-deputy leader Larissa Waters (pictured), forced to quit because of their dual citizenship

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has had a personal boost this Newspoll, regaining his double-digit lead over Labor's Bill Shorten.

His rating as preferred prime minister is up to 43 per cent, while Mr Shorten is on 32 per cent.

The results come as Bill Shorten resurrected the idea that federal government go to the polls every four years, to bring more stability to politics in Australia.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has had a personal boost this Newspoll, regaining his double-digit lead over Labor's Bill Shorten

The opposition leader believed changing to a fixed term - as is in place in most states and territories - would allow governments to be more daring and determined, because they're not focused on the next election.

The prime minister phoned Mr Shorten after he floated the proposal during a television appearance on Sunday to discuss the idea.

Mr Turnbull indicated he had previously been on the record in support of fixed terms, and suggested discussing the idea further.

The results come as Bill Shorten resurrected the idea that federal government go to the polls every four years, to bring more stability to politics in Australia

Cabinet Minister Steve Ciobo expected the public would be broadly supportive of the idea, but acknowledged some issues around it would have to be looked at closely.

'Let's just let the community have a think about it, have a chat about it if they'd like to and if there's opportunity for us to look at it so be it,' he told Sky News.

His Liberal colleague David Coleman earlier this year flagged a private member's bill to bring in fixed four-year terms.

He hopes a referendum could be held at the next federal election.

'It would mean more certainty for business in terms of business investment,' he told ABC radio on Monday.

The prime minister reportedly phoned Mr Shorten after he floated the proposal during a television appearance on Sunday to discuss the idea

Frontbencher Kelly O'Dwyer is open to the discussion but warned there are two sides to the argument.

'If you have fixed terms you can either entrench good governments or bad governments,' she told ABC radio.

Nowadays the prime minister has the power to decide when an election will be, and the average term in between has been about two-and-a-half years.

One hurdle against change has been the assumption moving to four-year terms would be matched with a corresponding change to elect senators for eight years when at the moment they are chosen for six, but Mr Shorten said that shouldn't be a 'deal-killer'.
A YouTube star seemingly caused a disturbance outside of fellow YouTuber and ex-Disney star Jake Paul's Los Angeles home early Sunday morning causing police officers to respond to the scene.

YouTuber Jackson Tenney was photographed outside of Paul's West Hollywood home setting up a large hammock around 2.30am.

Photographs from the scene show Tenney sitting in the hammock while holding a large camera before he was ordered by officers with the Los Angeles Police Department to get out of the hammock.

Tenney then began acting up by doing back flips before getting down to his knees and mocking the police.

Scroll down for video

YouTuber Jackson Tenney (above) was photographed outside of ex-Disney star Jake Paul's West Hollywood home setting up a large hammock around 2.30am that he eventually sat in with a large camera

When LAPD officers arrived to the scene, Tenney (above) was ordered to get out of the hammock, which he did

Tenney then began acting up by doing back flips in front of LAPD SUV's (above)

Officers asked him to remove the hammock and gave him a warning to leave the area.

They warned that if he was to return, the LAPD would be forced to arrest him for trespassing.

It's unclear if Tenney is friend's with Paul or if Paul was at home during the incident. A video shared to Tenney's Twitter account on Sunday afternoon shows him pranking Paul with a fake eviction notice.

Paul, who is a Millennial 'influencer,' was accused of terrorizing his neighborhood, and on Saturday he announced that he'd be parting ways with Disney insisting that he's 'outgrown' the channel.

He also mocked officers by getting down to his knees and placing his arms behind his back. He was let go with a trespassing warning not to return. It's unclear if Tenney is friend's with Paul or if Paul was at home during the incident

Paul (right) was accused of terrorizing his West Hollywood neighborhood and was dropped by Disney. The Millennial 'influencer' insisted that he's 'outgrown' the channel when he made the announcement (left) on Twitter Saturday evening

The 20-year-old made the announcement on Twitter about stepping away from portraying Dirk on Disney Channel's Bizaardvark.

'My team, Disney Channel, and I have come to the agreement it's finally time for me to move from the Disney family and Bizaardvark,' Paul said in the statement posted to his Twitter.

The YouTube star, who is famed for his 'crazy' pranks which have included throwing a Harley Davidson in his backyard pool and setting furniture on fire, said that 'being a part of the Disney family for the past two years was incredible and a dream come true'.

The network also released a statement thanking Paul for his work.

'We've mutually agreed that Jake Paul will leave his role on the Disney Channel series 'Bizaardvark.' the statement read.

Paul (pictured) has portrayed Dirk on Disney Channel's Bizaardvark for the last two years. 'My team, Disney Channel, and I have come to the agreement it's finally time for me to move from the Disney family and Bizaardvark,' Paul said in the statement

Earlier this week, Paul clambered up on top of a KTLA van while he was being interviewed on Tuesday. He made headlines when families in the LA neighborhood accused him of turning their lives into a 'living hell'

'We thank Jake for his good work on the TV series for the past 18 months and extend our best wishes to him,' the statement added.

Paul wrote that he loves his cast mates and will continue to support Disney, but 'I have outgrown the channel and feel it's time to move forward in my career'.

The star made headlines when families in his LA neighborhood accused him of turning their lives into a 'living hell'.

And while his 8.5 million young followers may be impressed with his antics, his neighbors are not.

Paul and his 'squad' love to throw rowdy parties, while he often publicizes his address which allows hoards of his young fans - he calls 'Paulers' to show up outside his home.

'It used to be a really nice, quiet street and now [it's] just this, like, war zone,' Maytal Dahan told KTLA. 'We're families here and we're more than happy to have them live here if they're respectful of their neighbors, but they're not.'

Neighbors are even considering banding together to file a class-action public nuisance lawsuit against Paul and the homeowner. They say not only is Paul annoying but he's dangerous.

His fire stunt, when he set ablaze furniture in his pool, saw flames reach the height of the home.

Meanwhile, Paul seemed amused by the misery he is imposing on those around him.

'The neighbors hate me,' he told KTLA, laughing.

Neighbors are considering banding together to file a class-action public nuisance lawsuit against Paul and the homeowner after this fire stunt, when he set ablaze furniture in his pool, saw flames reach the height of the home

Paul and his 'squad' love to throw rowdy parties, while he often publicizes his address (pictured is his home) which allows hoards of his young fans - he calls 'Paulers' to show up outside his home

Maytal Dahan said their once 'nice, quiet street' had been turned into a 'war zone'

When a reporter told him that locals fear he has turned the neighborhood into a 'circus' with his non-stop parties and dangerous stunts, the millennial replied: 'But, I mean, people like going to circuses.'

Paul was then seen running and skipping through the streets before climbing on top of the KTLA van - ignoring the pleas of staffers to stop.

Eventually, Paul, who appeared to be challenged in the attention span department, returned to the interview, where he was able to compose himself for a second to say: 'It's terrible, it's a bad situation and I feel bad for them, but there's nothing we can do.

'Jake Paulers are the strongest army out there.'

'Dab,' he added, pulling the 2016 cliched dance move, before pointing at the reporter's shoes, and screeching, 'What are those?' and then running away with his friends.

Earlier this year, Paul landed himself in trouble after he hid in the bathroom of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building after attending a Social Media Event at the White House (left in July at a charity basketball game). He is also the brother of internet star Logan Paul (right)

He also released 'rap' song, 'It's Everyday Bro,' which became the tenth most disliked video in YouTube history

He has since taken to taunting his neighbors on Twitter, posting footage of his KTLA interview with a laughing emoji, and the caption: 'I'm dead.'

In Paul's YouTube bio, he described himself as living 'a crazy life' 'making comedy vids, acting, doing action sports, & going on crazy adventures' with his squad 'Team 10'.

He also released a laughably bad 'rap' song, It's Everyday Bro,' which became the tenth most disliked video in YouTube history.

Earlier this year, Paul landed himself in trouble after he filmed himself hiding in the bathroom of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building after attending a Social Media Event at the White House.

Logan shut down a New York City street on July 15 when fans rushed to see him at a pop up shop he'd set up for the day. He thanked the NYPD afterwards for 'keeping them safe'

Although he claimed he spent several hours there before leaving in the early morning, sources confirm the video was fake and actually just filmed during the event.

After he posted footage of the stunt on his blog, he was visited by the Secret Service at home.

In June, Paul was accused of emotionally abusing his ex-girlfriend Alissa Violet who also claimed he used his agency Team 10 to take advantage of women. He has denied the claims.

His older brother, 22-year-old Logan Paul, is also a YouTube star. Logan caused his own commotion in Manhattan on July 15 when his fans shut down an entire street.

They had rushed to the area after he set up a pop-up shop for the day. He took to Twitter afterwards to thank the NYPD for 'keeping my fans safe'.
Canadian authorities have called off the search for missing Australian hiker Sophie Dowsley, whose family made the heartbreaking announcement.

Authorities called off the search for Dowsley, 34, after searching for her in treacherous and remote Canadian wilderness where they believe she may never be found.

Dowsley's Canadian boyfriend Greg Tiffin, 44, was found on Tuesday near Statlu Lake's beautiful but deadly waterfall, about three hours' drive east of Vancouver.

One of Ms Dowsley's personal items was discovered below the waterfall.

Scroll down for video

The search for Australian hiker Sophie Dowsley, 34, (pictured) has been called off in Canada

Rescue crews have been searching for Dowsley (pictured) for 15 days in dangerous wilderness

The search for the avid hiker (pictured) was at an area that has a history of fatalities

The 34-year-old's family members, who went to Canada to help in the search, acknowledged Canadian rescue teams were risking their lives performing 'one of the most dangerous search and recovery operations' they have conducted.

'Today the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have made the decision to cease the search for Sophie Dowsley who went missing 15 days ago,' Ms Dowsley's brother, Jamie, wrote in a heartfelt message on Facebook.

'This decision has been made on the basis that there are no plausible or conceivable areas left to search.

'After visiting this area and gaining an understanding of the terrain and conditions our family fully accept this decision.'

The waterfall has a history of fatalities and its terrain and trails are challenging for experienced hikers.

Searchers, including dog teams, had to be flown in by helicopter.

Dowsley's (pictured) family members flew to Canada but believe she may never be found

Rescue teams found the body of Dowsley's boyfriend Greg Tiffin, 44, (pictured) last week at the deadly waterfall

The search for Dowsley (pictured) was 'one of the most dangerous' for Canadian rescue crews

Some of Dowsley's personal belongings were found at the bottom of the waterfall (pictured) near where Tiffin was found

The search for Dowsley (pictured) has ended with rescue teams saying there was nowhere left to look

'We would like to put out a special thank you to the RCMP, the Emergency Response Teams, the Police Dog Service, the expert dive team and especially the many volunteer search and rescue teams,' he wrote.

'Every day you put your lives at risk to find Sophie and we thank you for that.'

The water search will resume 'when nature allows' but the Dowsley's 'understand that Sophie may never be found'.
Shocked holidaymakers at a Center Parcs were placed on lockdown in their lodges as police swept the resort for a suspicious package.

A guest raised the alarm after overhearing talk of a device in a restaurant, forcing bomb disposal units to flock to the resort in Elveden, Suffolk.

Experts have been trawling the site since they first arrived at around 8pm, but no bomb was found.

But families with young children enjoying the first weekend of the school holidays were left to trudge more than a mile, some in bare feet, back to their cabin, while one mother said she was unable to reach her diabetic daughter's insulin pen.

Shocked holidaymakers at a Center Parcs have been placed on lockdown in their lodges as police sweep the resort for a suspicious package

A guest raised the alarm after overhearing talk of a device, forcing bomb disposal units to flock to the resort in Elveden, Suffolk

One guest online said she and seven other members of her group had to walk more than a mile back to their accommodation.

Images circulating on social media show dozens of swimmers and other guests huddled around in foil blankets after being evacuated.

A four-night stay the park this summer for a family of four costs 1,4999, equating to 375 per night.

Center Parcs tweeted: 'Due to an incident in the Village Square this area is closed for the remainder of this evening.'

And guests also expressed their frustration via social media.

Experts have been trawling the site since they first arrived at around 9pm, but no bomb has yet been found

Information was put out for guests, although some have complained about not being kept up to speed

One guest said: 'Never thought 7 of us + baby would have to walk barefoot 1.5 miles in emergency blankets back to our lodge tonight'.

Another added: 'Got evacuated at 8pm it's now 11pm, stuck in our room not knowing what's going on still?'

One mother of a diabetic child was even forced to use Twitter for an emergency medical query.

She asked: 'Are any of the staff type 1 diabetic with any way to administer insulin? My daughter is diabetic and her insulin pump is in the lockers!'
A greyhound trainer was killed by an improvised explosive device two years ago, police have revealed.

John Burrows, 58, was killed by a bomb detonated using a toy remote control as he walked towards his mother's garage in the tiny village of Portland, west of Sydney, on July 24, 2015.

After two years of investigations, police now believe the device was detonated using a radio-controlled receiver which was likely sourced by someone in Portland.

Scroll Down For Video

John Burrows, 58, was killed by a bomb detonated using a toy remote control as he walked towards his mother's garage in the tiny village of Portland, west of Sydney, on July 24, 2015

After two years of investigations, police now believe the device was detonated using a radio-controlled receiver which was likely sourced by someone in Portland

Mr Burrows was killed by the improvised explosive device at his mother house in 2015

The type of receiver used has only been available since May 2013 and is found in model planes and helicopters.

Chifley Local Area Command Crime Manager, Detective Chief Inspector Luke Rankin, has asked for the community's help.

'We are particularly interested in speaking to retailers or people in the Portland area who may have sold an item - on social media sites, garage sales or even disposed of at a local tip - matching the description of the radio-controlled receiver,' he said.

'We believe the steel tubing used around the outside of the device was sourced as scrap metal and modified to make the device.'

'Someone must know something about these devices so I urge you to pick up the phone and call us  you can do this anonymously through Crime Stoppers,' Det Ch Insp Rankin said.

Mr Burrows died after the explosive detonated while he was walking towards a garage in 2015

Mr Burrows, 58, who was killed abruptly in 2015 was formerly a greyhound trainer in NSW
Princes William and Harry had not seen their mother for almost a month before her death, they have revealed in a documentary about Dianas life.

Her divorce from Prince Charles meant the boys were bounced between their parents, losing out on time with both of them, Harry said.

She died the day before they were due to be reunited. In the film, which airs tonight, the princes lavished praise on their mother and her ability to smother them with love.

But Harry laid bare how the divorce, Dianas high-profile charity work and her romance with Dodi Fayed meant he and William had not seen her for weeks before she died in Paris in August 1997.

Prince Harry and Prince William looking at a family photo album in Kensington Palace in the documentary, Diana, Our Mother

The late princess holding Prince William while she was pregnant with Prince Harry

Poignant: The princes pictured with their mother in France just six weeks before she died

In the documentary, an adult Harry told an anti-landmine campaigner: You saw my mother more recently than I did.

William, then 15, and Harry, 12, were at Balmoral with their father when Diana died. In candid interviews to mark the 20th anniversary of her death, the brothers revealed their regret that they cut short their final phone call with her, just hours before her death, because they wanted to go and play.

They said their grief was still raw but also recalled treasured memories of their mother.

They released photographs from her personal album, including a picture of Diana holding a baby Harry, taken on the royal yacht Britannia by Prince William.

Prince William and Prince Harry watch as Diana's coffin is driven away from Westminster Abbey

This picture, taken by Prince William, shows the princess sitting and playing with Prince Harry on the Royal Yacht Britannia

Princess Diana sunbathing aboard the Jonikal Yacht moored in Portofino, Italy, in 1997

The Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed, on a pontoon in the French Riviera resort of St. Tropez in August 1997

PRINCE HARRY: THE FILM NEARLY MADE ME CRY Prince Harry admitted his grief was still raw, but praised tonights film as brilliant Prince Harry was almost reduced to tears by the new film about his mother. He called producers after seeing it and said: I nearly cried several times watching it back. The prince admitted his grief was still raw, but praised tonights film as brilliant. Prince William said the decision to speak so openly about their mother was a one-off, adding: We felt it was the right time to do it. We wont be doing this again. Producers approached Kensington Palace more than a year ago, seeking permission for a programme to mark the 20th anniversary of Dianas death. They were invited to meet the princes and discussed Dianas legacy, but also their personal memories. Producer Ashley Gething said: William and Harry realised there is a new, younger generation who didnt know about their mum  She did so much in raising awareness on taboo subjects such as HIV, mental health and homelessness. The princes want people to know all of that. William said he had found speaking about his mother quite daunting at first but cathartic and quite a healing process. Advertisement

Lady Diana Spencer pictured looking at her future husband Prince Charles during a visit to the Cheshire Regiment at Tidworth in 1981

Prince William and Princess Diana Skiing Holiday in Lech, Austria, in 1991

Speaking of the divorce, Harry said: The two of us were bouncing between the two of them and we never saw our mother enough or we never saw our father enough.

There was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the backseat with my brother, which I would win. I dont pretend were the only people to have to deal with that. But it was an interesting way of growing up.

The supermodel surprise for William Fun-loving Princess Diana arranged for three supermodels to pay a surprise visit to Prince William, he revealed. The future king came home from school to find Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington waiting for him at Kensington Palace. It was typical of his mothers cheeky sense of humour and love of mischief, William said. She organised, when I came home from school, to have Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell waiting at the top of the stairs. I was probably a 12 or 13-year-old boy who had posters of them on his wall and I went bright red and didnt quite know what to say and sort of fumbled, and I think pretty much fell down the stairs. I was completely and utterly awestruck. The prince added that it was a very funny memory thats lived with me forever about her  loving, embarrassing and being the joker. Diana also had a serious side, first taking William to a homeless shelter when he was 12. Advertisement

William and Harry spent ten days with their mother and Fayed, the son of then-Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, at his villa in the South of France. But while they returned to London and then Balmoral, she joined Mr Fayed on his yacht around the Mediterranean, and went to the Greek islands with a friend. She also travelled to Bosnia to campaign against landmines.

Diana remained in frequent phone contact with her sons, but they told how their final conversation lasted just five minutes.

Harry said: I never enjoyed speaking to my parents on the phone. We spent far too much time on the phone rather than speaking to each other. I cant really remember what I said but I regret how short the phone call was. Ill have to deal with that for the rest of my life. Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum, how differently that conversation would have panned out if Id had even the slightest inkling.

William said the call interrupted a game with their cousins Zara and Peter Phillips, and said he and Harry were in a desperate rush to say goodbye so they could go back to playing.

He said: If Id known what was going to happen I wouldnt have been so blase about it. But that phone call sticks in my mind, quite heavily.

William said her death was utterly devastating and he and Harry struggled to understand their feelings or speak to each other about their grief. They praised Diana as the best mother ever who left them with a personal legacy of her love, as well as her global charitable impact.

Diana, Our Mother is on ITV tonight at 9pm.
A pensioner who shoved a 10 note into the mouth of a fellow rail passenger in a row over free snacks has been found guilty of assault.

Leslie Gilmer had a ticket for standard class but helped himself to the first class wine and snacks trolley.

Barrister Dr Peter Ellis became irritated by Gilmer, 69, and felt compelled to speak him after this happened five times.

Prosecutor Sonia Croft told Exeter magistrates court Gilmer was acting in a rather obnoxious manner on the night last November.

Leslie Gilmer walked off, but then returned to the carriage and rammed the 10 note into the mouth of the former hospital doctor and personal injury lawyer, the court heard

She said the food and drink was complimentary for first class passengers only.

When Dr Ellis challenged Gilmer, the defendant allegedly retorted: Im hungry. I will see you in court.

Gilmer walked off, but then returned to the carriage and rammed the 10 note into the mouth of the former hospital doctor and personal injury lawyer, the court heard.

Retired engineer Gilmer was spoken to by police at Exeter St Davids station and admitted throwing the note but claimed any physical contact was accidental. Miss Croft said the court had to decide whether the incident was a pure accident or a deliberate or reckless assault.

Dr Ellis told the magistrates that Gilmer was involved in a disturbance with train staff over the toilets saying they were a ****ing disgrace and were not working.

He said Gilmer was also involved in a discussion about whether he could have some alcohol and snacks from the first class trolley  even though he had bought a 47.50 standard ticket.

Dr Ellis said the defendant was hectoring, boorish and bullying.

He explained that Gilmer kept returning to the first class section and helped himself to red wine because the buffet car had run out.

On a fourth occasion Gilmer put snacks into his pockets and strode back to his seat next to his wife, Dr Ellis said.

On the fifth occasion he said Gilmer was unsteady on his feet. Dr Ellis said: He was inebriated and swaying. He said he confronted Gilmer, from Exeter, saying: Excuse me. Would you mind if you require any more to eat to use the buffet in your section of the train.

First class ticket: When Dr Ellis (pictured) challenged Gilmer, the defendant allegedly retorted: Im hungry. I will see you in court

He said Gilmer replied: I am hungry, if you have a ****ing problem with that I will see you in court, and walked away.

Dr Ellis said minutes later his head was pushed back against the headrest. He said: I felt an object being pushed into my mouth. I smelled stale alcohol. The defendants speech was not coherent but he said, Eat this, you c***.

Dr Ellis, head of clinical negligence and personal injury at his London chambers, spat out a tightly folded 10 note. He rejected the defences claim that Gilmer was instead trying to drop a note into his hand.

Any passenger paying a premium does expect an undisturbed journey, he said, accepting that he was irritated by Gilmers actions.

Gilmer told the court he had shared a half bottle of red wine with his wife but they were both hungry because the dining car was closed and they had not eaten all day.

He denied using bad language to rail staff but admitted: I do use language. He also denied stealing and said the contact had not been intentional.

The magistrates convicted Gilmer of assault by beating. He was fined 650 and ordered to pay 840 court costs and 250 to Dr Ellis.
Advertisement

We often hear stories in which wily travellers wangle first class travel at a fraction of the cost, but usually that means taking out a load of cards and spending a fortune to earn points.

But few of us actually have the time, patience, or ability to do this - so is it still possible to fly at the front of the plane without so much as owning a credit card?

Yes, according to professional flight hacker Gilbert Ott, based in New York, who shares his tricks with MailOnline Travel - everything from buying air miles cheaply without actually flying anywhere, to missing flights on purpose.

Professional flight hacker Gilbert Ott (pictured), based in New York, shares his tricks with MailOnline Travel - everything from buying air miles cheaply without actually flying anywhere, to missing flights on purpose to save money

Buy points, don't earn them

'Paying for tickets in loyalty points is often cheaper than with actual money, and there are two ways to amass points: by spending money on credit cards, or flying with a certain airline,' explains Mr Ott, the man behind the blog God Save The Points.

'But there's a third way - and that's to just buy them directly from the carrier. Every few months, airlines sell off their points in promotional sales which means you can purchase air miles without actually flying anywhere. You can then use them to book trips in upper class for significantly less.'

For example, a deal with United Airlines at the moment means you can fly from Hong Kong to Sydney in first class, sipping Dom Perignon all the way, using just 40,000 miles - which you can purchase for 839. Booking the traditional way, it would cost 4,689.

Earlier this year, a similar deal with Alaska Airlines meant you could fly from the US to Australia in first class for only 1,185 - a trip which should cost 8,000. In economy, it's 800.

Every few months, airlines sell off their points in promotional sales which mean you can 'buy' frequent flyer points without actually flying anywhere,' explains Mr Ott. 'You can then use them to book trips in upper class for a fraction of the cost, since paying in loyalty points is often cheaper than with actual money'

The trick simply meant buying points from Alaska - which has a little-known but very generous frequent flier program - then applying them to a Qantas flight, one of its partners.

Booking a first class flight from the US to Australia directly with Qantas using miles would require 144,000 of them.

But booking through Alaska only costs you 70,000 for the same journey - and they'd put you on a Qantas plane anyway, thanks to their partnership.

Purchasing the 70,000 miles you'd need from Alaska cost 1,185 - so there's your first class plane ticket.

Set price trackers

'Many flash sales or crazy promotional fares like this expire within hours', Mr Ott says.

'But you can set alerts for them for free using Google Flights or Kayak, so if there's a sudden drop on a route you're interested in, you'll be the first to know about it.

'And don't be afraid to set trackers for premium or business class too, since sometimes premium or business class seats will randomly be cheaper than economy ones, especially over peak summer travel periods.'

'Many flash sales or crazy promotional fares like this expire within hours', Mr Ott says. 'But you can set alerts for them for free using Google Flights or Kayak, so if there's a sudden drop on a route you're interested in, you'll be the first to know about it'

Additionally, follow deal sites and travel blogs manned by people who trawl the web day-in, day-out to find bizarre deals.

'Our site, and others like Secret Flying, highlight deals you won't find unless you're looking hard. For example, we recently found a round-trip business class deal from Amsterdam to Tokyo on Qatar Airways for for 560.

'That deal lasted three hours.'

Download airline apps

'Airlines offer flash upgrades all the time now,' Mr Ottt reveals. 'Even with dirt-cheap economy tickets, many carriers now offer them to passengers who use their website or mobile app to check on their booking.

'Upgrades are first come first serve though, so don't miss out by rocking up to the airport, when they're likely already gone.'

'Miss' your last flight on purpose

Known as 'hidden city ticketing', the trick works by booking a flight to a destination where your intended city is a layover, rather than the final stop.

By not taking this last leg of the flight, you can fly from London to Los Angeles, for example, in premium economy for 515 return - when a standard economy flight booked the traditional way costs 539.

'Hidden city ticketing is an opportunity to save money on flight prices by booking travel via a city you don't want to visit - which for whatever reason is pricing out cheaper than the place you do really want to visit,' Mr Ott explains.

Example: Booking a flight from London to LAX in economy class with Air New Zealand costs 539 in economy class (left). However, flying from Sweden to LAX with British Airways in Premium Economy costs only 486 (right) - and stops over in London on its way back

All you'd need to do for the plan to work is get yourself from London to Stockholm one-way, which only costs 29 with Monarch

Last year, Mr Ott (pictured) wangled a flight from Boston to Washington in a $23million private jet for free using vouchers and promo codes

For example, booking a flight from London to LA with Air New Zealand costs around 539 in economy class.

However, flying from Sweden to LAX with British Airways in premium economy costs only 486. You just need to find a cheap one-way flight to get you from London to Sweden - they go for around 29 with Monarch airways - bringing the total to 515.

The return flight stops at London Heathrow for a layover before its final leg back to Sweden - this being the flight you would miss intentionally.

If you are booking to fly business class, the savings multiply even more. Flying from London to Rio in business class cost around 2,000. But if you get yourself to Brussels and fly from there instead, it costs only 1,200.

The one thing you must do is restrict your luggage to carry-on only. If you do check in a bag, it'll end up at the city you didn't want to go to.

Status challenges

Becoming an elite frequent flyer means free perks like lounge access, upgrades, free drinks and so forth.

'Gaining this status usually requires a lot of year-round travel,' Mr Ott says. 'But many airlines will offer people limited time "status challenges", where they can complete only a fraction of the usually required flying time, to earn the same status.

'For example, American Airlines normally requires you to accrue 100,000 miles before granting you top-tier elite status. But if you take their status challenge, flying 25,000 miles in three months, it's yours. For someone with a big trip coming up, this is totally doable.'

Becoming an elite frequent flyer means free perks and upgrades, and many airlines will offer people limited time 'status challenges', where they can complete only a fraction of the usually required flying time, to earn the same status

Use lucrative referral programs

RocketMiles and Kaligo, both hotel booking sites, give you 1,000 airline miles or more for referring friends to their platform.

Getting ten friends, therefore, to book the same hotel they would anyway, would earn you 10,000 miles - enough for a short haul return anywhere in Europe, or a one-way in the US.

Up your chances of an upgrade

Booking yourself onto oversold flights, Mr Ott says, is the only practical tactic that works, since when airlines overfill their economy section, it's their prerogative to win back favour - and if that means an upgrade, so be it.

'This has worked for me quite a few times, on quite a few different airlines around the world, and for the traveller without miles or status, it really is one of their only hopes,' he states.

'The good thing with oversold flights is that at the very least, youre owed compensation, which can make for a free future trip.'

He points out that his best triumphs using this trick in the past have been during peak travel periods when airlines are frantically selling more tickets than they have seats.

So how to find out which overburdened flights to target? Mr Ott advices using a site like ExpertFlyer.com, which lets you see how many seats are left on any flight you search.
It's thanks to Joanna Lumley that I ticked off the very top item on my bucket list and took the ultimate long-distance train ride.

Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the longest line in the world, and the charming Ms Lumley had been dispatched by ITV to travel seven time zones and several landscapes, from east to west across Russia.

I was seduced by her joyous enthusiasm as she crossed some of the harshest, yet most beautiful terrain on Earth. By the middle of the series, I had booked myself a cabin on the exclusive Golden Eagle train. Ms Lumley may have done it the hard way, but I was going to cross Russia in style.

Ride of a lifetime: Sian Lloyd decided to go on a 21-day adventure from Moscow to Vladivostok on the exclusive Golden Eagle train (above, Sian pictured horse-riding in Mongolia)

So last summer I found myself at Moscows Kazansky station, sipping champagne in a beautiful waiting room with oak panelling and magnificent murals, and being introduced to the smartly dressed train staff and my fellow travellers.

A band played on the platform outside and attendants unfurled a red carpet for us to board the creme de la creme of trains. My adventure on wheels would be in the opposite direction to Ms Lumleys trip  I was heading from Moscow to Vladivostok.

I liked the thought of going from the urban to the isolated, ending up almost 6,000 miles away on the Pacific Ocean, in that once off-limits naval city close to the borders with China and North Korea. Somehow it seemed to sum up the otherness of Russia.

I was a little apprehensive about travelling on my own. I had done the Ghan and the Indian Pacific in Australia with my former husband Jonathan, and I enjoyed both train trips immensely.

Luxury edge: The dining room on the Golden Eagle train is completed with draped curtains and crystal glasswear

Sian said she often took lunch and supper in her compartment so she could watch the scenery fly by. There was also a DVD player in the snug cabin for evening entertainment

But since Jonathan had disappeared from my life faster than a bullet train, and just as silently, this time I found myself settling in to a snug cabin alone. If Im honest, I was feeling a tad forlorn.

But I need not have worried. Within minutes, the energetic train manager Tatiana had popped by, and my fresh-faced cabin attendant Sergio had brought me green tea and some dainty biscuits.

I felt comfortable and well looked after, a blissful feeling that stayed with me throughout the next 12 days.

Id packed several books, including Tolstoys War And Peace, thinking that Id have a lot of time on my hands as we rolled gently through birch forests and Siberian steppes.

That was laughably wrong. I couldnt take my eyes off the view from the window, from the moment I got up to the time it was so dark I could barely see outside. The landscape was totally absorbing and mesmerising.

Mesmerising: The train seen snaking its way around Lake Baikal

I often took lunch and supper in my compartment, so as not to miss out on another tiny rural hamlet, an isolated old factory, or perhaps a collection of bright blue beehives surrounded by drunken fences. I loved every single vignette that flew past. I imagined the stories behind the window as Russia rushed by.

I had the privilege of enjoying this engrossing montage in motion from the comfort of a Gold cabin. From the banquette, which folds out into a beautiful bed, to the wardrobe space and en suite shower room, its designed for optimum comfort.

There was even a DVD player, with a great library of documentaries and films available from Tatiana.

I watched Dr Zhivago and War And Peace under my goose-down duvet, content and cosy, reassuring myself that there was never going to be enough time to actually read both hefty books I brought with me.

On board there were Russian language classes, lectures, harp and piano recitals, film showings, vodka tastings

On board there were Russian language classes, lectures, harp and piano recitals, film showings, vodka tastings.

And as I chatted with new friends over blinis and caviar, and borscht in the sumptuous dining car, time melted away faster than the Siberian snow in spring.

Although I loved our days on board the train, the stops along the way were even better. Engrossing and enlightening, we got a fascinating insight into Russia and the Russian psyche.

From visiting the church on the poignant site where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were shot by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg, to lunching with the traditionally dressed orthodox Old Believers in their delightful time-warp village of Tarbagatay, we got a true sense of Russian history.

We saw a patchwork of modern Russia too, meeting wedding couples and elegant young women in leather and furs, as well as devout babushkas and genial dacha owners.

Ive lost count of the number of churches and heroic sculptures we visited. But just like Mother Russia herself, each one was fascinating and entrancing.

Sian said memorable trips included being hauled around Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world, where she and fellow passengers feasted on barbecued fish in the clear Siberian air

Flexible friend: Sian's group was entertained by a contortionist in Mongolia

Memorable trips include being hauled around Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world, where we feasted on barbecued fish in the clear Siberian air, and the intrepid among us took a dip in the icy waters; visiting Irkutsk, dubbed the Paris of Siberia, where we enjoyed a candlelit classical concert in a museum, once the house of a 19th Century exiled Decembrist aristocratic family; seeing the city of Kazan, with its stunning Kremlin, a World Heritage site; and Ulan-Ude, the site of the largest Lenin bust in Russia  25ft tall and weighing 42 tons. Our guide compared it to the size of two polar bears.

This once-in-a-lifetime trip also took me to Mongolia  not just to its capital Ulan Bator, with its huge Genghis Khan monument and famous Gandan Buddhist monastery, but out to green pastures, dotted with yurts, grazing cattle and horses.

Here we sipped fermented mares milk with local nomads, and even tried a spot of horse-riding, while learning about their culture and customs. It was fun and fascinating.

Back in Ulan Bator that night, I was bowled over by performances of traditional Mongolian throat singing and incredible contortionists. Mongolia was mysterious and magnificent.

After finally reaching Vladivostok, I felt Id covered a huge chunk of the world, and even though Id done so in luxury, I still had a sense of achievement. This is a perfect trip for adventure junkies, cultural types and history buffs.

The unhurried pace of the train makes you relax during the on-board days  you lose the sense of time. But on tour days, you gain an incredible insight into a warm and funny people and their captivating history. If you do only one long-distance rail trip, let this be the one.
Chloe Green has found a new accessory to hang off her every word  and I dont mean her current squeeze, hot felon Jeremy Meeks.

This poor parrot, which Im pleased to report didnt die from the shock of seeing such a mismatched pair in identical denim outfits, was cradled by Chloe last week at a bird sanctuary in Los Angeles.

The upside-down position is soothing for the birds, but will do little to calm Chloes father, Sir Philip Green.

Scroll down for video

Chloe and Jeremy cradled a bird sanctuary in Los Angeles. The upside-down position is apparently soothing for the birds

The tycoon is said to be in denial about her affair with a married ex-convict, and is telling pals that the relationship is just a holiday romance.

A word of warning, Phil: Chloe has been on holiday ever since her shoe line for your Topshop chain fizzled out in 2014!

They're as famous for their faith as their music, but Mumford & Sons did not show much Christian charity at Latitude  they stopped other bands from playing at the five-stage Suffolk festival while they were performing.

The headliners were surely in no danger of being overshadowed  after all they have three brilliant albums under their belt.

Mumford & Sons stopped other bands from playing at the five-stage Suffolk festival while they were performing

But it seems they were sufficiently concerned to request that no music acts play at the same time last Saturday.

The last act to reportedly make such a diva-like request was Justin Bieber at Hyde Parks BST Festival.

Music lovers took to Twitter to question whether frontman Marcus Mumford  husband of Hollywood star Carey Mulligan  was being humble or self-important.
With a villain like Steppenwolf about to attack the planet, it would be bad time for Batman to retire.

Ben Affleck has denied reports he is about to stepped down as the Caped Crusader.

Speaking at the Justice League panel at Comic Con in San Diego, the 44-year-old refuted reports he wanted out of the franchise.

Scroll down for trailer

Sticking around: Ben Affleck has denied reports he is about to hang up the cowl as the Caped Crusader

'I am the luckiest guy in the world,' he told a rapturous audience, per Variety. 'Batman is the coolest f*cking part.'

'Theres a misconception that because I wasnt directing it, I wasnt enthusiastic about it.'

Ben was originally supposed to star and direct a future standalone Batman film, but handed the reigns to War For The Planet Of The Apes director Matt Reeves, supposedly so he could could focus on one side of the camera.

'I would be a f*cking ape on the ground for Matt Reeves,' he joked.

Squad: Ben joined Ezra Miller, Gal Gadot, Ray Fisher, and Jason Momoa at a Justice League panel at Comic Con on Saturday

He's staying! 'I am the luckiest guy in the world,' Ben told a rapturous audience, per Variety. 'Batman is the coolest f*cking part.'

Keep Khal and carry on: Jason was his usual horseplaying self

A brand new extended trailer for Justice League was also unveiled to a packed Hall H, which gave the very first look at their opponent Steppenwolf, played by Irish Game Of Thrones star Ciaran Hinds via motion capture.

The trailer opens with a group of well-dressed armed men, led by an unseen villain, taking a group of people hostage, only for Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman to burst in neutralize them one by one.

A news report reveals that the world is still in mourning after the death of Superman at the hands of Doomsday in the previous film; and that a crime wave has followed in its wake, with the 'masked vigilante Bat of Gotham' nowhere to be found.

Wonderful: Gal arrived in a stunning short white dress

Flash! Ezra showed off even more going shirtless beneath his coat

Quident? Jason showed off his trident-wielding skills, despite it technically not being a trident

Take a seat: He also showed off his chair smashing skills

Not even the Bat-signal, engaged by JK Simmons as Commissioner Gordon seems to be able to summon him.

'They said the age of heroes would never come again,' Gadot tells' Affleck's Bruce Wayne. 'It has to,' he replies. 'We don't have any more time.'

The action then cuts to Diana's home of Themyscira, where her kin wait with weapons drawn at a portal for the arrival of the film's villain: Steppenwolf.

First look: A brand new extended trailer for Justice League was also unveiled to a packed Hall H

Missing: A news report reveals that the world is still in mourning after the death of Superman at the hands of Doomsday in the previous film; and that a crime wave has followed in its wake, with the 'masked vigilante Bat of Gotham' nowhere to be found

Light it up: Not even the Bat-signal, engaged by JK Simmons as Commissioner Gordon seems to be able to summon him

He sticks the superhero landing perfectly, carrying his massive electro-axe.

'No protectors here... no Lanterns. No Kryptonian,' he growls, name-checking two of the future League's more powerful members, Green Lantern and Superman. 'This world will fall, like all the others.'

Meanwhile Jeremy Irons' Alfred Pennyworth makes a crack at Batman's past cinematic Rogues Gallery: 'One misses the days where one's biggest concerns were exploding wind-up penguins,' he quips.

Busted: The trailer opens with a group of well-dressed armed men, led by an unseen villain, taking a group of people hostage, only for Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman to burst in neutralize them one by one

Secret: Nevertheless she tells a colleague she did 'nothing interesting' over the weekend

Quick wit: Ezra had plenty of funny moments in the trailer

As Steppenwolf's parademons are showing assembling, Jason Momoa's Aquaman gives his appraisal of the team's chances.

'This is crazy... honestly I think we all going to die,' he admits.

'Don't engage alone,' Diana advises them. 'We do this together.'

En guard: The action cuts to Diana's home of Themyscira, where her kin wait with weapons drawn at a portal for the arrival of the film's villain: Steppenwolf

Ta-da! He sticks the superhero landing perfectly, carrying his massive electro-axe

Ezra Miller's Flash is another one that doesn't fancy their chances: 'It's really cool you guys seem ready to do battle and stuff, but I've never done battle,' he whispers'. I've just pushed some people and run away.'

Ray Fisher's Cyborg is then shown using his cybernetic implants to commandeer a downed vehicle belonging to Batman.

'Relax Alfred, I'll take it from here,' he tells the Butler over the radio. 'Uh, do I know you?' comes the reply.

Hatchet job: It is the first look at the supervillain, played by Irish Game Of Thrones star Ciaran Hinds via motion capture

Easy prey: 'No protectors here... no Lanterns. No Kryptonian,' he growls, name-checking two of the future League's more powerful members, Green Lantern and Superman. 'This world will fall, like all the others.'

The League are then shown taking on Steppenwolf's forces in an action-packed montage, with the best moment reserved for Momoa who surfs a parademon down from the sky, through a building, before hopping off with a casual hair flick.

The penultimate scene of the film shows the team assembled before Commissioner Gordon who asks Batman: 'How many of you are there?'

'Not enough,' he growls in reply, before they all disappear before Gordon can turn back around.... all except Miller, who clearly isn't yet au fait with the traditional superhero sneaky maneuver.

Battle royale: The Amazon's are seen in a chaotic battle against the parademons

Surf's up: the best moment reserved for Momoa who surfs a parademon down from the sky, through a building

Because I'm worth it: He then hops off with a casual hair flick

'Oh wow, they just... they really just vanished, huh? That's rude,' he declares, before finally disappearing himself.

And just like the superhero films themselves, even the trailer had a bonus sequence at the end.

Working in the lab alone, Alfed here's vibrations and electrical interference, before locking eyes on an unseen visitor.

'That's rude': The penultimate scene of the film shows the team disappearing before Gordon can turn back around.... all except Miller, who clearly isn't yet au fait with the traditional superhero sneaky maneuver

'You said you'd come': And just like the superhero films themselves, even the trailer had a bonus sequence at the end, hinting at Superman's return

'You said you'd come,' he tells the mystery person off screen. ' Now let's hope you're not too late.'

While not present at Comic Con, Henry Cavill is still listed among the cast of the film, and had previously hinted his involvement in the film; pointing to Alfred's visitor being Superman.

Warner Bros also unveiled a new poster for Justice League on Saturday with the five members featured, as well as the tagline: You can't save the world alone. Each word has a letter replaced by a member's insignia - including Superman's.

It's not an S: Warner Bros also unveiled a new poster for Justice League on Saturday with the five members featured, as well as the tagline: You can't save the world alone. Each word has a letter replaced by a member's insignia - including Superman's
It's not just David Beckham who has succumbed to the rural life  model Jodie Kidds new bosom buddy is a chicken and goats have been spotted roaming around the offices of Vogue!

Jodie, 38, has moved to the country to open a pub but she is still learning how to manage a menagerie of farmyard animals  one of which is a chicken called Mavis, who follows her wherever she goes.

Mavis likes to cuddle up to her on the sofa and perch on the gearstick of her BMW.

Scroll down for video

A goat was spotted perched on the front desk of Vogue House  munching on yellow roses

It's not just David Beckham who has succumbed to the rural life  model Jodie Kidds new bosom buddy is a chicken (pictured)

Jodie took to Instagram last week to bemoan: Mavis youre not funny now! Turn my back for two seconds and youre in the driving seat of my car!

Meanwhile, my spies clocked this goat perched on the front desk of Vogue House  munching on yellow roses.

It had escaped from a photoshoot organised by Tatler. One staffer joked that the goats were being interviewed for jobs at Vogue, which is based in the same building.

Action-movie stars Sam Claflin and Laura Haddock are celebrating the news that Laura is expecting their second child

Their romance started with a freak meeting on the London Underground.

And now action-movie stars Sam Claflin and Laura Haddock are celebrating the news that Laura is expecting their second child.

Hunger Games star Sam and Laura, who is famous for her role in Transformers and Guardians Of The Galaxy, met in 2011 at an audition but never swapped numbers before going their separate ways.

But in a plot straight out of a romcom, Sam, 30, got a Tube home later that day and, when the doors opened at his local station, he found Laura, right, standing on the platform quite by chance.

The happy couple married in 2013 and already have a toddler son. I wish them all well.
The development came following a Supreme Court order setting all six free. They were serving life term for about three decades.
She is known for posing in as little as possible.

And on Saturday, Emily Ratajkowski did not stray away from tradition in a series of snaps shared to Instagram.

The 26-year-old displayed her best modeling skills as she posed in white bikini for an iPhone photo shoot.

Scroll down for video

Another day in her life: On Saturday, Emily Ratajkowski, 26, posed in a white bikini in a series of snaps shared to Instagram

The model-turned-actress accessorized with hoop earrings, choker and a gold medallion necklace.

The brunette wore long hair down and to one side.

Emily's make-up looked lovely as she highlighted her brown eyes with matching shadow and completed her look with a bronzed face and glossy lips.

Messy and undone: The brunette wore long hair down and to one side

Emily's claim to fame was her role in 2013's Blurred Lines.

The model showcased her bare chest in the music video, and has continued to use her body in hopes to expand her career.

In an interview with Allure, the UK-born, American starlet discussed her thoughts on a woman's bosom.

The road to stardom: Emily's claim to fame was her role in 2013's Blurred Lines. The model showcased her bare chest in the music video, and has continued to use her body in hopes to expand her career

'It really bothers me that people are so offended by breasts,' she began.

'That's when I realized how f***** our culture is. When we see breasts, we don't think of beauty and femininity. We think of vulgar, oversexualized images.'

And Emily does not appear to shield hers from the public anytime soon.

'To me, any expression that is empowered and is your own as a woman is feminist. If a woman decides to dress sexy, it doesn't mean she's not a feminist,' she later noted.

'[We] should be doing things for ourselves. If that is the woman's choice, and it makes her feel good, then that's great. Good for her.'
She's played the leading role in hit Disney series, Jessie, for much of her formative years.

But Debby Ryan has credited her time in Australia for guiding her transition from teen to adult actress.

Speaking with Confidential this week, the 24-year-old revealed it was shooting for upcoming film, Rip Tide, in New South Wales that gave her the space she needed to 'evolve.'

Break from the chaos: Debby Ryan, 24, said shooting in Australia helped her 'evolve' away from the 'entitlement' culture in the US

Filming in the southern coastal town of Kiama late last year, it was the perfect setting for both Debby, and her character in the film, Cora, to 'find themselves.'

'Not only playing someone who is finding herself, figuring out who you are, I was doing that at the same time Cora was,' she told the publication.

The star said she'd felt nervous to go out in public in America and filming in a quiet Australian town had provided a much-needed break from the chaos.

Child star: Debby played Disney series' Jessie from 2011 until 2015

'(In the US) there was so much entitlement that I experienced to the point where it just scared me to leave the house and in Australia I had such freedom.

'Id go for a surf at lunch and be hanging out with the crew and the cast there, I think it really gave time to my development and evolution, just having a little bit of space and being so far away.'

It seems the Hollywood star's career is booming, with her featured recently in Rolling Stone's 25 Under 25 list of Young Musicians, Actors, Activists Changing the World.

Grown up: Filming in the southern coastal town of Kiama late last year, it was the perfect setting for Debby to 'evolve'

Boasting an impressive 7.5 million Instagram followers, Debby is also set to star in upcoming comedy, Life Of The Party, alongside Melissa McCarthy.

Last year, she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges after being arrested for Driving Under the Influence.

Rip Tide follows the journey of model, Cora, who is sent to live with her Aunt in Australia after an embarrassing video goes viral

The movie is due to be released in September.
She's the former Home And Away star-turned-radio host who has been subject to persistent split rumours surrounding her marriage to husband Stuart Webb.

But Kate Ritchie, 38, has finally put split speculation to rest after she was pictured putting on a loved-up display with Stuart at Sydney Airport earlier this month.

Kate and Mae, two, returned from a sunny trip to Fiji and Stuart, 36, was there to give them a warm welcome home at the arrivals terminal.

Scroll down for video

In love: Kate Ritchie, 38, has quashed any lingering doubt over her marriage putting on a loved-up display with husband Stuart Webb at Sydney Airport recently

PDA: The couple could barely keep their hands off each other, while Kate cradled daughter Mae, two, in what was an adorable familial moment

A welcome reunion: The pair looked overjoyed to be back in each other's company, kissing as they reunited at the airport's terminal

The couple looked overjoyed to be back in each other's company, kissing as they reunited amongst other travellers.

Mae wasn't left out of the affection, with doting dad Stuart looking genuinely excited to see his daughter again.

Leaning in to give his cherubic progeny a welcome home kiss, the former rugby league star was quick to fawn over his daughter offering her a sincere smile and a playful attitude.

Family time: Mae wasn't left out of the affection, with doting dad Stuart looking genuinely excited to see his daughter again

Doting dad: Leaning in to give his cherubic progeny a welcome home kiss, the former rugby league star was quick to fawn over his daughter offering her a sincere smile and a playful attitude

Tight knit: At one point during the reunion, Stuart wrapped an arm around both Kate and Mae, displaying a close family bond

At one point during the reunion, Stuart wrapped an arm around both Kate and Mae, displaying a close family bond.

Kate went casual for her flight, wearing a blue and white striped T-shirt and a pair of khaki-coloured three-quarter length pants.

With her hair tied back in a bun, the radio host accessorised with a pair of white sneakers and a mauve and pink scarf which she tied loosely around her neck.

Cool and comfortable: Kate went casual for her flight, wearing a blue and white striped T-shirt and a pair of khaki-coloured three-quarter length pants

It seemed that the Fiji sun agreed with Kate as her skin gave off a radiant glow.

Mae, meanwhile wore a cute pink sweater with gold bunny heads, a pair of blue jeans and a pair of white sneakers.

The angelic two-year-old accessorised with a flower-embossed bag that said 'Fiji.'

Looking refreshed: It seemed that the Fiji sun agreed with Kate as her skin gave off a radiant glow

As Kate walked through the terminal with Mae, there was a palpable sense of excitement on her face about the impending reunion with Stuart.

Kate appeared to be drumming up anticipation in Mae over the reunion who looked, wide-eyed around the terminal for her father.

As she pushed their luggage, Kate took some time out to have a brief chat on her phone while still cradling Mae.

Can't wait: As Kate walked through the terminal with Mae, there was a palpable sense of excitement on her face about the impending reunion with Stuart

Where's dad? Kate appeared to be drumming up anticipation in Mae over the reunion who looked, wide-eyed around the terminal for her father

Who'se there? As she pushed their luggage, Kate took some time out to have a brief chat on her phone while still cradling Mae

With the trio reunited, they left the airport looking every bit the close family unit with Stuart and Kate exchanging a romantic glance as Mae smiled widely in her mother's arms.

Kate and Stuart married in an intimate country-style wedding in 2010, a year after getting engaged on holiday in Europe.

In August 2014, they welcomed Mae into the world, an experience that inspired Kate's first children's book, I Just Couldn't Wait To Meet You.

Happy together! With the trio reunited, they left the airport looking every bit the close family unit with Stuart and Kate exchanging a romantic glance as Mae smiled widely in her mother's arms.

Romance: Kate and Stuart married in an intimate country-style wedding in 2010, a year after getting engaged on holiday in Europe

Inspiration: In August 2014, they welcomed Mae into the world, an experience that inspired Kate's first children's book, I Just Couldn't Wait To Meet You

Speculation of a break-up began after Kate and Stuart bought a new house in the Southern Highlands last August.

The Daily Telegraph alleged the pair were living separately, with the retired NRL player staying in their new home while Kate remained in their Sydney property with daughter Mae.

Appearing on the Morning Show in June, Kate appeared to quash the rumours admitting that she would like to expand her family.

On the rocks? Speculation of a break-up began after Kate and Stuart bought a new house in the Southern Highlands last August.

Rumour mill: The Daily Telegraph alleged the pair were living separately, with the retired NRL player staying in their new home while Kate remained in their Sydney property with daughter Mae

Kate was quizzed by co-hosts Kylie Gillies and Larry Emdur on what she would like to have achieved in 10 years' time.

'I'd like to think in 10 years I'd had more children,' Kate revealed.

'And as much as I hate to say it, in 10 years I'll be frantically planning a 50th birthday party,' she added.
Coco Austin vigorously defended herself on Saturday from online backlash for getting cornrows and christening the hairstyle 'Da Coco Swoop.'

Some online apparently saw cultural appropriation in Coco's decision to name the braids after herself, but she's insisted she gives sobriquets to all her hairdos.

In the first of of two Instagram videos, Coco said: 'So, recently I got social medias panties in a bunch because I did braids to my hair. This is so stupid. I cant believe Im talking about it, and I believe this shouldnt be turned out to be a "race thing."'

Scroll down for video

Call and response: Coco Austin vigorously defended herself on Saturday from online backlash for getting cornrows and christening the hairstyle 'Da Coco Swoop'

Her braids defiantly flung over one shoulder to be in full view, the 38-year-old explained in the first video that 'I did my braids and I called them the Coco Swoop. I name all my styles that I do to myself. These are called the Coco Swoop. The braids before were called the Bo Derek Braids. And its a Coco-ism. I've always done it.'

She's argued: 'Why cant we all rename hairstyles or braids? That sounds so stupid. Why is everybody claiming something they shouldnt? I know braids have been around for thousands of years. Dont you think I know that?'

Coco thundered: 'If I wanna wear a pineapple on my head, then I should be able to wear a pineapple on my head and call it the Pineapple Cocowop. I dont know. You see where Im going with this? Why is everybody hating?'

The issue: Some online apparently saw cultural appropriation in Coco's decision to name the braids after herself, but she's insisted she gives sobriquets to all her hairdos

'Coco-ism': In the first of of two Instagram videos, Coco said that 'I cant believe Im talking about it, and I believe this shouldnt be turned out to be a "race thing"'

In the next video, she maintained that 'People rename hairstyles all day long. Look Beyonce. Beyonce  she does this hairstyle, and now its the Lemonade, but no ones gonna get mad at her, right? So, at the end of the day, this shouldnt be a race war.'

Quoth Coco: 'This should be a "human thing," right? Everybody should be able to do it. Its a "human thing"  give that a shot  not a race war,' said the mother of one.

'It has nothing to do with race. But this just goes to show you that no one reads the captions underneath pictures. Otherwise, you would understand that this is not an issue. Its something that I do. Its a Coco-ism, okay?' she held again.

Holding forth: Maintaining: 'People rename their hairstyles all day long,' she's argued 'That we should be, like, loving each other, instead of hating on each other because of a hairstyle'

Coco switched gears: 'Now, to the love out there. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I see it. I see all the comments. You know, power to you guys.

She's said 'I get this much love and that much hate,' gesturing to indicate lots of the former and a tiny amount of the latter, 'but sometimes, its gotta come in and say something about it, because its so disgusting.'

Coco closed out by giving her belief 'That we should be, like, loving each other, instead of hating on each other because of a hairstyle. Get over it.'

'My new braids!': She'd initially shown off her new look to her Instagram following six days prior, explaining that 'I name all the braid styles I do even hair styles with no braids'

She'd initially shown off her new look to her Instagram following six days prior, trumpeting in her caption: 'My new braids!' and effervescing that 'I call um Da Coco Swoop.. I wanted a little change up for the Summer'.

After thanking stylist Makessia Ollivierre for 'always doing a great job with my braids,' Coco'd written: 'Oh and by the way.. I name all the braid styles I do even hair styles with no braids .. Its a cute thing I do.. I have many weird Coco-isms do'.

On Monday a Twitter user posted a snap of Coco with the braids, writing: '"Da Coco Swoop braids" I blame black men for allowing their white significant other to even remotely think this was ok @FINALLEVEL she wrong,' tagging her husband Ice-T.

'Still enjoying my braids': She's continued parading the hairdo on Instagram, including in a Thursday post vaunting stylist Makessia Olivierre 'for spending 8hrs on them!'

Ice-T, who's 59 years old, leaped to his wife's defense, quoting the tweet and retorting: 'Wrong for what? Braiding her hair??' adding: 'You sound Dumb.'

The Twitter user whose criticism Ice-T had just quoted and responded to went on to reply: 'These aint no damn "Coco swoop braids" & I get so mad when they rename & act like they invented it. Knowing dam well they're called lemonade'.

This Thursday the Twitter account @XiomaraLaChelle wrote: '@FINNALEVEL is stuck in the sunken place if he thinks people are mad at Coco for wearing braids,' adding a facepalming emoji before urging him to 'dig deeper bruh'.

The day of: Before her impassioned Instagram defense of her hairdo on Saturday, she'd posted an album of her in the same dress she'd worn when she filmed the videos that same day

When Ice-T quoted that tweet and said: 'WTF are you talking about? You sound stupid...', @XiomaraLaChelle replied to him: 'Its the part that she renamed it that people are upset about like it was her style. Not her actually wearing it!'

The same day, Ice-T quoted another tweet insisting that 'The correct name for these kind of braids are lemonade braids' and quipped: 'Lol... I honestly can't believe you MFs are STILL taking bout braids for 3 days.... Lol'.

Another Twitter user's insisted to Ice-T: 'No one has a problem with the picture, the caption f***s it all up. If you don't get that... ur a fkn idiot,' but he's quoted that tweet as well and riposted: 'B****.. kick rocks.... I'm suprised you can read.'

'You sound Dumb': Ice-T has been defending his wife Coco Austin on Twitter, as in this exchange that took place on Monday, the day after she'd unveiled the new do

'You sound stupid': His tweeting advocacy for his wife of 15 years continued this Thursday

'I honestly can't believe...': He's expressed incredulity at how long the conversation's lasted

Yet another Twitter user argued Thursday to Coco's husband of 15 years that 'From what I've read the last few days ppl aren't mad she's wearing them they're mad she tried to name them after her like she invented them'.

Ice-T's quoted that and written: 'Lol... Lucky she didn't put Afro Puffs in her hair and call em 'Coco Puffs' ... The World might come to an end!!!! Lol Who gives a F***..'

Coco and Ice-T went down the aisle in 2002 - kicking off his first marriage and her second - and they've got a one-year-old daughter they've called Chanel.

'I'm surprised you can read': He's been clapping back at quite a few Twitter critics
Love Island star Dom Lever, who made a fleeting appearance on the show, kicked off the first date in his 40 night tour of UK clubs, in his native Manchester on Saturday.

Upon announcing his plans on Instagram earlier in the day, the 26-year-old reality star was met with widespread mockery as some of his 588,000 followers pondered why he is embarking on a tour due to his brief stint on the show.

Atop the mirthless response from fans, Midlands-based users also spotted the fact that his appearance on Friday 20 October in Nottingham is listed at Oceana - a nightclub in the city which shut a year ago.

Scroll down for video

He's out! Love Island star Dom Lever, who made a fleeting appearance on the show, kicked off the first date in his 40 night tour of UK clubs, in his native Manchester on Saturday

Dom entered the villa as one of the original stars as he was initially paired with Montana Brown before he was snared by now-girlfriend Jess Shears - who he has joined in hitting the publicity trail since their departure.

As with many male reality stars, he has chosen to make nightclub appearances in which he meets and greets fans while enjoying a night out. The work is reportedly lucrative with stars said to receive handsome funds for the evening's work.

His night in Manchester's Neighbourhood bar saw him pose with a bevy of delighted and glamorous clubgoers while himself posing in a charcoal grey T-shirt and beaming in front of a table laden with booze.

Earlier in the day, he shared the promotional image of his tour dates with his many followers acting stunned at the idea of his extensive trip around the country.

All smiles: Upon announcing his plans on Instagram earlier in the day, the 26-year-old reality star was met with widespread mockery as some of his 588,000 followers pondered why he is embarking on a tour due to his brief stint on the show

Users penned: 'You were on love island for 10 minutes f**king hell calm down... YOU ARE NOT FAMOUS I DONT UNDERSTAND... Tour for what ? What do you do??...

Tour for what pls? He has no talent other than looking good. Love island giving these man 2 second fame... Imagine being so fame hungry you line all these gaffs up im hope that at least one delusional 12 year one will come see ya...

'what are you going to do on tour? hahaha. you were on a show for 10+ mins... how embarrassing... he was on love island for 2 minutes he needs to sit down... He was on love island for abt 10mins what is he appearing to do?? He has no talent...

'Your a C**t rather meet my nan in a night club than you... Enjoy your 5 minutes of fame honey because in a few months you'll be a nobody... lol where's your verified tick? Calm down mate...

Beaming: Atop the mirthless response from fans, Midlands-based users also spotted the fact that his appearance on Friday 20 October in Nottingham is listed at Oceana - a nightclub in the city which shut a year ago

Shut down: Users wrote: 'his PR team obvs did their research... there is no oceana in Nottingham anymore ... nah more of an Oceana Nottingham fan...considering it shut down last year'

'what a joke he's coming to wakefield but he can't even spell the club's name correctly nice one... What is this mess, u r hardly Michael Jackson... hes got more 'tour dates' than days he spent in the show. How cringe. 'No meet or greets planned tho'

The real shock came from Nottingham fans who noted the fact Oceana no longer exists in the city having shut down in June 2015 and reopened as PRYZM.

Users wrote: 'his PR team obvs did their research... there is no oceana in Nottingham anymore ... nah more of an Oceana Nottingham fan...considering it shut down last year.'

All happy: As eagle-eyed fans spotted the blunder they were quick to share a host of quips as they mocked the star for being caught out

MailOnline has contacted Dom's representative for comment.

The incident came just three days after he became the subject of hilarious memes and taunts after he was caught out in a bizarre lie.

The Love Island star shared a video on Instagram as he claimed to be travelling alone in an empty train carriage, only to film another passenger clearly sitting behind him.

As eagle-eyed fans spotted the blunder they were quick to share a host of quips as they mocked the star for being caught out.

His love: Dom entered the villa as one of the original stars as he was initially paired with Montana Brown before he was snared by now-girlfriend Jess Shears - who he has joined in hitting the publicity trail since their departure

Moment in the spotlight: Dom's appearance on Love Island was fleeting

Sharing a screengrab of the moment, one Twitter user wrote: Literally someone behind you mate #loveisland, whilst another posted: Confused because that definitely looks like a person behind you Dom #loveisland

Other bemused fans added: 'what a cabbage', this kid gets rinsed', 'what a div', 'think he needs to look behind him', and 'Dom is honestly getting torn apart'.

Another fan hilariously shared a picture of a train so packed that commuters were forced to cling onto the outside, quipping 'Train to myself'.
They were the much-loved duo of Great British Bake Off, who charmed viewers with their hilarious jokes and references to 'soggy bottoms'.

And fans of presenting pair Mel Giedroyc, 49, and Sue Perkins, 47, will rejoice, as it has been announced that they will front a revamp of BBC1 show The Generation Game.

The show will return for a four-episode series later this year, and will once again see family members battle it out in differing games to scoop prizes.

Scroll down for video

Exciting news: Fans of presenting pair Mel Giedroyc, 49, and Sue Perkins, 47, will rejoice, as it has been announced that they will front a revamp of BBC1 show The Generation Game

The news comes after it was revealed that GBBO will take on a different format in its new Channel 4 home.

The much-loved baking show - which enjoyed eight series on the BBC - will have a 'new tone' and 'feel modern' on the new channel, it's said.

The new Bake Off will see hosts Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig take over from Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, who decided to quit the show when Channel 4 bought the rights from Love Productions for a reported 75 million.

Reunited: The show will return for a four-episode series later this year, and will once again see family members battle it out in differing games to scoop prizes

Culinary expert Prue Leith will also take over from national treasure Mary Berry, who left the show with Mel and Sue out of loyalty to the BBC.

In a first look at the new show, which is to air in the autumn, a source said that in the first episode of the new series, there were none of the 'soggy bottom' jokes that Bake Off has been long-associated with.

Jay Hunt, Channel 4's chief creative officer and the force behind the broadcaster securing The Great British Bake Off, said that she was 'quietly confident' about the series.

Revamp: The news comes after it was revealed that GBBO will take on a different format in its new Channel 4 home. The much-loved baking show - which enjoyed eight series on the BBC - will have a 'new tone' and 'feel modern' on the new channel

She told 'sceptics' that the quality of the baking was 'jaw-dropping' and that the new show is looking 'absolutely fantastic'.

Sue has previously explained that she didn't join the revamped show on Channel 4 because she thought their baking related puns were going stale.

'I think we were running out of puns, I'm not going to lie', she said. 'There's only so many in the tank. When we had a Croatian bun and I said rather loudly "it had Split", I thought, I have really, really sunk to the very bottom of what is possible.

'Every bap pun, every Hungarian ring pun was just mined and mined and mined. But I would have carried on doing it (Bake Off) I think. It was a really sweet show. I loved all of it.'
He's the male model who has quickly garnered a reputation for his party lifestyle.

But on Sunday, Jordan Barrett was keeping things low-key as he caught up with friends in the New York borough of SoHo.

The 20-year-old Australian radiated effortless style in a simple ensemble.

Keeping it low-key! On Sunday Australian model Jordan Barrett (pictured) was spotted spending the afternoon catching up with friends in the New York borough of SoHo

The runway star opted for a basic light-coloured T-shirt which he teamed with beige pants that cinched at the ankles for the outing.

Jordan, who at one point could be seen pointing his finger in the direction of the camera lens, completed his look with gold accessories including a bracelet, rings and wire rim glasses.

Around his neck hung a chunky gold chain with pendants including a cross.

Keeping a tight grip on his phone and wallet with his left hand, he also wore a leather-strapped watch.

What a pair! The genetically blessed 'bad boy of fashion' was joined by a handsome male friend

Finger on the pulse! In one shot, the 20-year-old can be seen pointing directly at the camera

Jordan was joined by two companions, a male and female who gave the star a run for his money in the style stakes.

His male friend wore a grey T-shirt with olive green pants that were neatly folded at the ankle; his perfectly-coiffed brown locks fell casually into his brow line as he looked up.

In one image, the friend can be seen lifting up his shirt with his mouth, providing a glimpse of his toned physique underneath.

Showing some skin: Jordan's male friend was spotted lifting his shirt up with his mouth to flaunt his toned physique

Hug it out! Jordan was also snapped sharing an embrace with a mystery female friend

Also spending time with Jordan was a mystery blonde clad all in black.

The stunner was casual yet chic, tying her hair back into a neat bun, she shielded her eyes from the summer sun with a pair of round-framed sunglasses.

Jordan, the son of convicted drug dealer Adrian Barrett, has become known for his celebrity friend circle.

Among the high-profile stars he's been spotted hanging out with are Bella Hadid, Paris Hilton, Lara Stone, Kate Moss and Hailey Baldwin.

Just hanging out! The trio shared some laughs as they spent time together in New York

Three's (not) a crowd: Jordan is known for his knack for striking up friendships with A-Listers
Laura Csortan lashed out on Instagram earlier this month, over 'heartbreaking accusations' by The Sunday Telegraph that she was 'dating' Anthony Bell.

The 40-year-old single mother claimed the publication also insinuated that the celebrity accountant is the father of her seven-month-old daughter, Layla Rose.

But in Sydney's Bondi on Sunday, the personality looked to have put the drama behind, beaming broadly as she doted on her precious offspring.

Putting the drama behind? Laura Csortan, 40, was all smiles and doted on baby daughter Layla Rose, seven months, in Sydney's Bondi on Sunday...after furiously denying Anthony Bell is the father of her child

Laura cut a casually chic figure as she took to the streets of Sydney's Bondi.

A black slim-fitting T-shirt was paired with indigo skinny leg jeans and black Nike wedge sneakers.

Shielding her eyes behind a pair of designer sunglasses, the former model appeared to go makeup-free and styled her blonde locks in a deep side part.

A baby carrier strapped to her chest, Laura doted on daughter Layla Rose, placing two protective hands on her frame.

Precious: Layla Rose looked cute-as-a-button in a red jumper, beige pants and a beanie

Layla Rose looked cute-as-a-button in a red jumper and beige pants.

A coordinating beanie added an extra layer of warmth.

Also on hand was Laura's mother, who pushed the stroller during the outing.

The sighting comes just weeks after Laura hit back at The Sunday Telegraph over accusations she was dating celebrity accountant Anthony Bell, and that he is the father of her only child.

Denial: Laura lashed out earlier this month, over 'heartbreaking accusations' that she's 'dating' Anthony Bell (left) after the pair were spotted on a Gold Coast getaway, stating: 'He is nothing more than a friend'

Laura took to Instagram three weeks ago, slamming the publication for its 'cruel insinuation' she was in a relationship with Anthony.

'I woke up this morning to the most hurtful and cruel article by Annette Sharp. No mother, let alone a single mum should be put through an insinuation like this just because they support a friend unconditionally,' she wrote.

Laura emphatically denied they were romantically involved, after the publication claimed they had once dated.

'Anthony is one of my closest friends and we are not (nor have we ever been) in a coupled relationship,' she explained.

Just friends: Anthony, who has a Bell Partners office in Brisbane, has visited Queensland several times in recent months and spent time with Laura

Furious statement: Laura also denied the 'insinuation' Anthony Bell was the father of her child

Laura also fired back at the 'insinuation' Anthony Bell was the father of her child.

'Layla's father is presently living overseas and does not wish to be dragged through the media. Nor is it anyone's business,' she added.

Laura also wrote that she and her family were helping Anthony through his high-profile split with former Getaway star Kelly Landry.

Dad's the word: 'Layla's father is presently living overseas and does not wish to be dragged through the media. Nor is it anyone's business,' she said

Not fair: The TV presenter said she and her family were helping Anthony through his relationship breakdown with former Getaway star Kelly Landry

'My mum, sister and I have had to watch our dear friend go through a most painful relationship breakdown and we are not the type of people to desert a friend in need at a terribly difficult time,' she revealed.

Anthony has denied he is the child's father, telling The Daily Telegraph: 'There is absolutely no truth to that rumour.'

Laura has refused to reveal the identity of her daughter's father, saying 'he doesn't want to be involved.'
He's the rock legend who's enjoyed a successful musical career as both a solo artist and as part of iconic group, Australian Crawl.

And now James Reyne has revealed that his new music is not appealing to pop radio stations or younger audiences.

Speaking to Stellar magazine this week, the 60-year-old confessed that he felt disheartened that his latest material would not be heard by as many people as it could be.

'I don't have the right sound': James Reyne, 60, wished his music could be shared with more people by being played on the radio

James is determined to continue making music regardless of his success, but said coming to terms with the cut-throat nature of the industry had been a hard.

'It can be frustrating that people dont get to hear my newer work. I dont have the sound radio wants to play,' he told the publication.

'A 16-year-old isnt going to relate to me. I dont look like Harry Styles anymore.'

Still got it: James said coming to terms with the cut-throat nature of the industry had been hard, but it wouldn't slow him down

And while his solo projects have never quite enjoyed the same success as Australian Crawl, the performer says he's been 'luckier than most'.

'Ive had two bites at the cherry. I have a great audience who sing along passionately to my solo songs.'

James will hit the road for his solo Australian tour The All Crawl next month and is set to play a series of crowd favourites.

Born rocker: The legend said he's determined to continue making music regardless of his success

James said his set list was merely a reflection of what his audience wanted, so it was understandable that Errol, The Boys Light Up and Oh No Not You Again made it on there.

Other songs however, were not quite as predictable.

'Hoochie Gucci Fiorucci Mama is crap, but we will do it. I was 17 or something when I wrote it. It is the sound of a young man trying much too hard. But people love it.'

He's also currently enjoying life as a newlywed, having married his partner Leanne Woolrich, in May.
She stars as Nakia in the upcoming Marvel Comics film Black Panther.

And on Saturday, Lupita Nyong'o hit the stage at Comic Con in San Diego for the upcoming film.

The 34-year-old stepped out in a stunning green and black jumpsuit with a matching cape.

Happy arrival: Lupita Nyong'o hit the stage at Comic Con in San Diego for the upcoming film The Black Panther on Saturday

The actress grinned ear to ear for the Black Panther presentation.

The star's elegant summer appropriate look featured a leafy pattern emblazoned all over.

The Oscar winning actress chose a loose fitting jumpsuit that featured a low-cut neckline.

Lupita paired the look with a matching cape, adding a chunky gold choker from Alexis Bittar to complete her ensemble.

Strike a pose: The 34-year-old stepped on stage in a stunning green and black jumpsuit with a matching cape

Having a laugh: The actress grinned ear to ear while hitting the stage for the Black Panther presentation

She was joined at the Black Panther panel with her co-stars Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Daniel Kaluuya, Forest Whitaker, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Letitia Wright and director Ryan Coogler.

Chadwick plays the main character T'Challa/Black Panther.

While at Comic Con event, Ryan introduced some never before seen footage of the upcoming action film.

Reunited: She was joined at the Black Panther panel with her co-stars (from l to r) Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B. Jordan, Danai Gurira, Forest Whitaker, Daniel Kaluuya, and Andy Serkis

Stunning: Lupita sported a chunky gold Alex Bittar choker to give her look a metallic touch

HAndsome: Michael B. Jordan beamed at the crowd while rocking a bomber jacket

According to Variety, the scene shown was of Andy Serkis, who plays Ulysses Klaue, in a poker table room with Chadwick, Lupita and Danai Gurira's characters.

Andy's character is seen trying to negotiate a deal with Everett K. Ross, played by Martin Freeman.

Saying hi: Danai Gurira and Forest Whitaker greeted the crowd at the Comic Con panel

She's ready: Danai Gurira donned a plaid blue and yellow dress

Focused: Letitia Wright wore a white long-sleeved ensemble

A fight erupts with Gurira's character Okoye using a golden spear;Chadwick jumps up the building and takes hold of the balcony there where the villain, played by Andy, is at.

Variety reports that Ryan told the crowd that he 'grew up as a young black kid in the Bay Area' and he dreamed of finding a character 'who looked like I did.'

Adding that the first comic book character he found was in fact the Black Panther.

Happy: The cast hugged and greeted each other warmly at the Comic Con panel

Looking great: (Back row L-R) Moderator Chris Hardwick, actor Andy Serkis, director Ryan Coogler, actors Forest Whitaker, Michael B. Jordan, Winston Duke, and Daniel Kaluuya, (Front row L-R) actors Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong'o, Chadwick Boseman, and Letitia Wright

Wow: Actors Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong'o and Letitia Wright looked incredible at the event

They also released a new Black Panther poster that they unveiled at Comic Con.

The poster showed Chadwick's character standing on a panther sculpture as he gazes down at the city.

The film is scheduled to be released on February 16, 2018.

Fancy: The star added black heeled boots which paired perfectly with her look
They are the iconic Australian rockers who disbanded in 2010.

And after seven years since their last show , Powderfinger made a triumphant return to the stage in an impromptu performance at the Splendour In The Grass festival in Byron Bay on Saturday.

Fans were taken completely by surprise as frontman Bernard Fanning was due to perform a solo set, but instead was joined by his erstwhile bandmates Ian Haug, John Collins, and Darren Middleton.

They're back! After seven years since their last show , Powderfinger made a triumphant return to the stage in an impromptu one-off performance at the Splendour In The Grass festival in Byron Bay on Saturday

Drummer Jon Coghill was absent from proceedings.

The band played a short set, consisting of their hits These Days and On My Mind much to the amazement of festival-goers.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Bernard casually introduced the set with: 'It's been 10 years since Powderfinger played Splendour. Let's have a little anniversary.'

Surprise: The band played a short set, consisting of their hits These Days and On My Mind much to the amazement of festival-goers

Bernard's proclamation sent a shock-wave through the crowd who threaded to drown the sound out with appreciative screaming.

Powderfinger had previously played the popular festival on three occasions - in 2001, 2003 and 2008.

Bernard took to Instagram after the performance to share a photo of the band relaxing backstage.

Tea and rock: Frontman Bernard Fanning (second left) took to Instagram after the performance to share a photo of the band relaxing backstage. Also pictured are John Collins (left), Darren Middleton (centre) and Ian Haug (right)

'Just catching up with a couple of old mates before we head out to @splendourinthegrass Just like old times with The Fingers,' he captioned the post.

The photo sent fans into just as much excitement as the performance, with many pushing for a permanent reunion.

'Feeling like you guys need to go around again - one more album and tour,' one fan gushed while another offered a similar 'Probs the best photo on the internet currently.'
It's all in a day's work for Scott Disick.

The 34-year-old Keeping Up With The Kardashians hosted a pool party in Las Vegas on Saturday.

Renowned for his love of partying, hordes of fans turned out to see the reality star at the LIQUID Pool Lounge at the Aria Resort & Casino.

Party dude: A casually dressed Scott Disick hosted a pool party at the LIQUID Pool Lounge at the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on Saturday

Scott appeared to have been living something of a male fantasy as models in skimpy pink bikinis queued up behind him holding up signs with letters spelling out 'DISICK'.

But the self-professed 'Lord Disick' stayed covered up for the party.

Scott wore a pair of navy blue board shorts, which he teamed with a grey T-shirt.

He also wore white sneakers and reflective sunglasses.

Covered up: Seemingly staying out of the water, Scott donned a grey T-shirt and reflective sunglasses at the party

Clear sign: Scott appeared to have been living something of a male fantasy as models in skimpy pink bikinis queued up behind him holding up signs with letters spelling out 'DISICK'

Party people: Renowned for his love of partying, hordes of fans turned out to see the reality star at the LIQUID Pool Lounge at the Aria Resort & Casino

In the thick of it... Scott was seen posing for photos with his die-hard fans, who had turned out for the party

A long necklace with a pendant was around his neck.

Joining Kourtney Kardashian's ex at the pool party was his friend, Connor Treacy.

The 24-year-old events producer posed for photos alongside Scott, dressed in a black Metallica T-shirt and a similar pair of navy blue board shorts.

Two days before the party, Scott took to Instagram to share a photo of himself standing outside a Hummer on an airport tarmac.

Party pal: Joining Kourtney Kardashian's ex at the pool party was his friend, events producer Connor Treacy

Buddies: The 24-year-old posed for photos alongside Scott, dressed in a black Metallica T-shirt and a similar pair of navy blue board shorts

A private jet can be seen in the background behind him, with the stairs down following his arrival.

'And I'm back,' he simply captioned the photo, which was apparently taken in Vegas.

The controversial star has become something of a mainstay in Sin City, regularly hosting parties in the notorious town.

Jetting in: Two days before the party, Scott took to Instagram to share a photo of himself standing outside a Hummer on an airport tarmac

Party hard star: Scott was later seen partying at 1 OAK nightclub in Vegas
She made her name owning the runway as a Victoria's Secret Angel.

And supermodel Elsa Hosk, 28, showed off her stunning physique in a plunging dress as she made a playful appearance at the FIJI Water at #REVOLVEintheHamptons bash on Saturday.

The Swedish stunner daringly went braless for the glittering party in a plunging golden dress which flashed her pert cleavage and ample assets.

Scroll down for video

Peace out! Supermodel Elsa Hosk, 28, showed off her stunning physique in a plunging dress as she made a playful appearance at the FIJI Water at #REVOLVEintheHamptons bash on Saturday

Elegant ruched detailing on the waist drew attention to her slender midriff.

Thanks to the thigh-grazing number, the 5ft10 beauty showed off her endless, toned pins.

Forgoing the vertiginous heels for the occasion she slipped on some black lace-up sandals.

Her California blonde locks were styled into soft beachy waves which were parted in the middle, with her sparkling peepers hidden by round shades.

Smouldering: Thanks to the thigh-grazing number, the 5ft10 beauty showed off her endless, toned pins

Her glowing complexion was highlighted with deftly applied touches of make-up.

The clotheshorse was clearly in a playful mood for the bash, adjusting her sunglasses and flashing the peace sign while pouting her lips.

Elsa was in good company for the party hosted by the women's e-commerce brand, as she was joined by fellow angel Josephine Skriver, 24 and former VS star Chanel Iman, 26.

Chanel revealed her envy-inducing abs in a blush pink floral shirt which was tied above the waist, teamed with denim hotpants.

Her raven locks were styled sleek and straight into a side parting and she accessorised with a candy pink manicure and oversize gold hoop earrings.

Power quartet: Elsa was in good company for the party hosted by the women's e-commerce brand, as she was joined by fellow angel Josephine Skriver, 24 (end right) and former VS star Chanel Iman, 26 (first left) as well as Kylie Jenner's rumoured ex, rapper Travis Scott, 25

The Vogue coverstar accentuated her feline eyes with fluttery lashes and added a touch of soft pink lipstick.

Clearly having received the midriff memo, Danish stunner Josephine flashed her bra and her toned waist in a lemon knotted blouse which she paired with a A-line ivory skirt.

Her caramel hair was worn in cute plaits with a white headband holding her tresses off her face.

She accessorised with jade mirrored shades.

Kylie Jenner's rumoured ex, rapper Travis Scott, 25, also joined the group for a effortlessly cool snap while clad in a jungle green ensemble of t-shirt and shorts.

Supermodel style: Chanel and Josephine both revealed their envy-inducing abs and toned legs

Striking a thoughtful pose, the star flashed his many inkings as well as a clutch of silver rings and bracelets.

The bash was a welcome break from Elsa's hectic schedule, with the top model recently joining a bevy of lingerie-clad Victoria's Secret beauties for Justin Bieber's steamy 2U video.

The music video for the David Guetta song featuring Justin also included VS Angels Jasmine Tookes, Romee Strijd and Sara Sampaio.

It featured an array of fashion shoot-inspired scenes with Elsa stripped down to her bra as she readied for her photo shoot.

Elsa has walked in the Victoria's Secret show since 2011, and was promoted to Angel status in 2015, joining an elite group of famed supermodels that include Alessandra Ambrosio, Behati Prinsloo and Stella Maxwell.
She recently revealed that she is at 'triple high risk' as a 'geriatric mum' - despite wanting to add to her brood.

But Cat Deeley put the health news to the side as she stepped out in Beverly Hills for a lovely family outing on Saturday, which included her parents Janet and Howard, husband Patrick Kielty and their 19-month-old son Milo.

The So You Think You Can Dance presenter, 40, looked simply stunning and couldn't wipe the smile from her face as she emerged from upscale eatery E Baldi with her clan.

Scroll down for video

Family outing: Cat Deeley, 40, looked summer chic as she stepped out in Beverly Hills on Saturday with parents Janet and Howard, husband Patrick Kielty and their 19-month-old son Milo

Cat was dressed to embrace the scorching Californian weather in a flirty, yet feminine, summery dress which boasted billowy sleeves.

The garment fell at a stylish ankle-grazing level and she accentuated her statuesque height with a pair of towering brown strappy heels.

The British beauty kept her make-up look simple, focusing on bronzer and blusher, which complemented her tumbling blonde tresses.

Cat wouldn't wipe the smile from her face as she emerged with her sweet son Milo, who was dressed in an all blue ensemble.

The presenter was dressed to embrace the scorching Californian weather in a flirty, yet feminine, summery dress which boasted billowy sleeves

Snitten: Cat and Patrick married in a romantic ceremony in Rome in September 2012. The couple tied the knot after 11 months of dating yet spent years as close pals

Her Irish TV host husband Patrick was also in high spirits as he followed his wife and child.

Cat and Patrick married in a romantic ceremony in Rome in September 2012. The couple tied the knot after 11 months of dating yet spent years as close pals.

After welcoming Milo to the world in January 2016 it seems, Cat is eyeing a larger brood although she admitted her fears over being an older mother.

Earlier this month, the former model discussed how she would love to add to her brood because she is loving every minute of being a mother yet revealed doctors have warned her she is at 'triple high risk' as a 'geriatric mum'.

Talking about her wish to have more children, she told The Mirror: 'I would love some more. But I have got to get on with it if I do.

Concerns: The British beauty recently revealed that she is at 'triple high risk' as a 'geriatric mum' - despite wanting to add to her brood

'When you go for your check-ups they call you a "geriatric mum". That is the terminology they use, I swear. They say, "Ma'am, you are triple high risk".'

The phrase is used to refer to women who get pregnant after the age of 39, where it is considered that there is a high risk of abnormalities.

Risks are said to include premature birth, low birth weight in the baby, stillbirth and chromosomal defects in the baby.

In the mother, it's thought that there could be tabor complications, higher chance of cesarean section high blood pressure in the mother and gestational diabetes.
She's been catching up on family time since her husband Oliver Curtis was released from Cooma Correctional Centre last month.

And on Sunday, Roxy Jacenko had more than just her second engagement to toast to, as she was celebrating her mother Doreen and Oliver's birthdays as well.

Taking to Instagram, the 37-year-old PR queen and her relatives shared several photos of their lunch date at Sydney's Otto Ristorante.

Raise your glass! On Sunday, Roxy Jacenko (L) had more than just her second engagement to toast to, as she was celebrating her mother Doreen (C) and husband Oliver's (R) birthdays

'Lunch with my favourites,' Doreen captioned a sweet photo of herself with her daughter Roxy and son-in-law Oliver, 31.

And after an Italian spread at the exclusive Woolloomooloo eatery, the family made sure they still had room for dessert.

Sharing a video to Instagram, Roxy showcased several incredibly detailed and personalised cakes from Spoon And Fork.

Delicious! After an Italian spread at Sydney's Otto Ristorante, the Jacenko-Curtis family made sure they still had room for desserts, courtesy of Spoon And Fork

And the exquisite cake wasn't the only surprise for the grandmother to Pixie, five, and Hunter, three, who celebrated her birthday on Friday.

Surprising Doreen, Roxy gifted her mother a Cartier Love Bracelet that has a price tag of $5,700 upwards.

Meanwhile, it is believed Oliver turns 32 next week.

Expensive taste! And the exquisite cake wasn't the only surprise for Doreen - who celebrated her birthday on Friday - as Roxy also gifted her mother a $5,700 Cartier Love Bracelet

Lavish accessories: Taking to Instagram, Roxy posted a photo of her Sunday outfit - which included her $84,000 Hermes Birkin handbag

Present time! Roxy and her family shared several photo of their family lunch in Woolloomooloo

Posing alongside her children, the mother-of-two braved the winter chill in a pair of black shorts and a polka dot off-the-shoulder top.

Showcasing her long legs and toned physique, Roxy paired her ensemble with designer Sergio Rossi sandals she bought the previous day.

Pixie and Hunter also dressed up for the family gathering, both promoting the upscale childrenswear brand LM Bambini.
She is rumoured to have split from her husband Danny Dyer.

And Joanne Mas appeared to have a lot to celebrate as she enjoyed a night on the town with friends on Saturday.

The blonde, 40, looked carefree as she posed with a drink in her hand on her fun night.

Out for drinks: Joanne Mas appeared to have a lot to celebrate as she enjoyed a night on the town with friends on Saturday

She posted two photos on Twitter, with the caption: 'Letting loose with my girls'.

Joanne wore her blonde locks down in a centre parting as she quaffed beverages and took photos with her brunette friend.

The mother-of-three showed off her flat stomach in the revealing ensemble and accessorised her glam look with bangles on her wrist.

Joanne's night on the tiles comes as the EastEnders actor moved 18 miles away from the family home.

'Letting loose with my girls': The mother-of-three showed off her flat stomach in the revealing ensemble and accessorised her glam look with bangles on her wrist

Danny was seen removing belongings from the house to move into a 1700-a-month rented apartment.

His on-screen wife Kellie Bright was spotted helping with the transition.

Last month, it was reported that Danny was residing in a hotel near the EastEnders set.

Estranged: Joanne's night on the tiles comes as the EastEnders actor moved 18 miles away from the family home

Sources stated he was without Joanne or their three children - daughters Danni, 19, Sunnie, nine and son Arty, three - and had been staying alone, reportedly wearing the same outfit for the duration of his stay.

The couple have been together since meeting in school in 1992 - yet only married last September in an idyllic Spanish-themed ceremony.

Danny's youngest children reportedly visited the star's new digs on Friday and helped their dad stock up on shopping after having a tour of the apartment.

Sources tell The Sun: 'At first, we hoped Danny and Jo would patch things up again as they have so many times before. Its not the first time Danny has stayed away rather than go home after filming. But its clear this time it is different.

'He is obviously hoping that she changes her mind and that they can work things out. But things have never been this bad between them before. Before he was forced to take his break from EastEnders this year he was in a pretty dark place...

'It is clear that the problems between them are much more serious than that. Danny would never have moved out otherwise.'

Neighbours revealed Danny was working with the removal men from around 9am-5pm. Joanne was later seen looking in the window of an estate agent shop.
She has been open about her struggle with an eating disorder as a teenager.

And Helen Flanagan has shed more light on her 'borderline anorexia', which she battled for seven years.

Speaking to Fabulous magazine, the Coronation Street star, 26, said even though she has recovered, people still worry about her weight.

Scroll down for video

Moving on: Helen Flanagan has shed more light on her 'borderline anorexia', which she battled for seven years as a young adult

She said: 'I had a problem with my food from about 16 to the age of 23. I was obsessed with being skinny.'

The actress claims she eats cake every day and has a high metabolism which means she doesn't gain weight easily.

Helen also said she wants to be a good role model for her young daughter Matilda and plans to bring her up to have a good relationship with food.

The actress grew up in the public eye as Rosie Webster, making her Weatherfield debut at the tender age of nine.

Doting mother: Helen also said she wants to be a good role model for her young daughter Matilda and plans to bring her up to have a good relationship with food

She returned to the soap in February 2017 but her performances regularly face a vicious backlash from online trolls, who criticise her acting skills.

One cruel troll wrote on the star's Instagram page: 'When are you and your bad acting leaving Corrie so I can watch it again?'

Another social media user commented: 'They could have employed a chair leg it would have been less wooden.'

But Helen's fans also came to the rescue and praised the actress for being brave.

Savaged: Helen returned to Coronation Street in February 2017 but her performances regularly face a vicious backlash from online trolls, who criticise her acting skills

One wrote: I hope you are managing to rise above all the horrible comments. People are just jealous because you are living a lovely life.'

Even though she tries to not let the comments get to her, Helen said she still gets upset by what people say.

She said: 'It did really hurt, because being an actress is something I care about. Its the only thing thats ever bothered me. Id worked hard and was pleased with all my performances.'

Helen is the proud mother of Matilda, two, who she shares with partner Scott Sinclair.

She has been open in the past about letting her daughter sleep in the same bed as her.

Despite saying previously she would stop letting Matilda sleep with her when the child turned one, Helen now says she will let the her sleep in the bed until the child starts kicking her.

Developing a thick skin: Even though she tries to not let the comments get to her, Helen said she still gets upset by what people say

She said: 'Theyre not young forever and its quite special having them there.'

While the actress lives in Bolton, her partner of eight years lives in Glasgow as he plays for Celtic.

But when Helen and Scott are reunited, the star said Matilda is placed in her cot so the couple can enjoy some time together.

Young family: Helen is the proud mother of Matilda, two, who she shares with partner Scott Sinclair

The Coronation Street actress drives her daughter to Scotland every weekend in order to see Scott and often supports him on match days.

In February, Helen said she finds it much easier living apart from boyfriend Scott Sinclair, revealing that it's 'lovely' to have a break.

She told the Loose Women panel: 'Its not easy but I really wanted to go back to work. Ive always been supportive of his career and hes supportive of mine.'

Controversial: Despite saying previously she would stop letting Matilda sleep with her when the child turned one, Helen now says she will let the her sleep in the bed until the child starts kicking her

Helen has returned to Coronation Street as troublemaker Rosie Webster following a four and a half year absence, admitting it has been hard work to juggling her filming commitments with motherhood.

She said: 'Its been OK. I have an amazing mum whos really supportive. Its hard though, Im up at 6am and dont get in til 8pm when Im filming.'

Rosie has had her fair share of dramatic storylines over the years, developing a penchant for bad boys and a glamorous lifestyle, much to her parents Sally (Sally Dynevor) and Kevin's (Michael Le Vell) distress.
She got engaged to her boyfriend Arron in May after he got down on one knee and asked her to be his wife at Manchester Town Hall.

And Coronation Street's Sonia Ibrahim - who plays Mel Maguire in the ITV soap - couldn't look happier as she arrived at her hen party at Neighbourhood bar in Manchester on Saturday.

The soap star, who flashed a peek of her stomach in a cropped white top, was clearly in mood to party as she arrived with her large group of hens.

Scroll down for video

Her big night! Coronation Street's Sonia Ibrahim - who plays Mel Maguire in the ITV soap - couldn't look happier as she arrived at her hen party at Neighbourhood bar in Manchester on Saturday

Sonia couldn't wipe the smile from her face as she made a sartorially savvy display in the skin-tight white top which bared her stomach.

The star paired the number with a high waisted grey trousers, which featured flared poofy bottoms and fell at a stylish ankle grazing level.

Sonia teamed the look with towering black peep-toe heels and accessorised with a chic oversized clutch.

The on-screen sensation embraced her natural features with a simple slick of make-up, which complemented her curly, glossy brunette tresses.

Hen do: The soap star, who flashed a peek of her stomach in a crop white top, was clearly in mood to party as she arrived with her large group of hens

Stylish: Sonia couldn't wipe the smile from her face as she made a sartorially savvy display in the skin-tight white top which bared her stomach

Fashionista: The star paired the number with a high waisted grey trousers, which featured flared poofy bottoms and fell at a stylish ankle grazing level

Like a pro! Sonia teamed the look with towering black peep-toe heels and accessorised with a chic oversized clutch

Sonia proved to be in great company as her group of pals, who were also dressed to impress, as they posed for fun-filled snaps - signalling the start of a fantastic night.

The hen party came after she took to her Instagram account to share a photo of the special moment when her partner Arron got down on one knee.

Alongside the picture, she wrote: 'I'M ENGAGED this is the moment my beautiful husband to be asked me to be his wife.

'I honestly couldn't ask for a more perfect man to be my soon to be husband.'

Sonia revealed that Arron's decision to pop the question took her totally by surprise but she is delighted he was brave enough to propose and they are both very excited to take their relationship to the next level.

Stunning: The on-screen sensation embraced her natural features with a simple slick of make-up, which complemented her curly, glossy brunette tresses

Lively: Sonia proved to be in great company as her group of pals, who were also dressed to impress, as they posed for fun-filled snaps

Ready to party! The girls' demeanour signalled the start of a fantastic night

Loved up: This comes after she got engaged to her boyfriend Arron in May after he got down on one knee and asked her to be his wife at Manchester Town Hall

Beaming: Sonia took to her Instagram account to share a photo of the special moment and admitted she can't wait to tie the knot

Speaking to the Manchester Evening News newspaper, she shared: 'I'm so happy to be engaged. He is my best friend as well as my partner and we're excited to spend the rest of our lives together!'

Revealing more details about the spot he chose to ask her to be his wife, Sonia added: 'He took me to Manchester Town Hall pretending we were supposed to be trying a new restaurant in there.

'He then surprised me by getting down on his knee with the ring in his hand.

She told the Manchester Evening News: 'I burst into tears and of course said yes! It was the most special moment of my life and we couldn't be happier'

Stunning setting: The star was lured upstairs to the beautiful area called The Bees, under the false pretense of trying out a new restaurant

Bling: Sharing a picture of the ring, she enthused, 'I honestly couldn't ask for a more perfect man to be my soon to be husband'

'I burst into tears and of course said yes! It was the most special moment of my life and we couldn't be happier.'

Sonia has rarely been off screens in Corrie recently as she is at the centre of the shocking sex ring storyline which has seen older man Nathan Curtis - Mel's boss at his beauty salon - groom teenager Bethany Platt, played by Lucy Fallon.

The storyline has seen Nathan (Chris Harper) pimp his girlfriend out to his friends and the plot in the ITV soap is set to get much darker before Bethany can escape Nathan's evil clutches.
As psychokinetic Eleven and high schooler Nancy Wheeler, they shot to fame in the hit Netflix drama Stranger Things.

And Natalia Dyer and Millie Bobby Brown stole the limelight at Comic Con as they arrived in patterned summer dresses.

Natalia, 20, struck a pose in a high-necked red dress, which was covered in a thin-stemmed black rose pattern.

In the spotlight: Natalia Dyer and Millie Bobby Brown stole the limelight at Comic Con as they arrived in patterned summer dresses

The short-sleeved frock showed off the actress's spare frame as she arrived in San Diego for the Stranger Things Panel.

The knee-skimming garment hung loosely from the waist down and Natalia paired her look with black stilettos.

The actress wore her shoulder-length chestnut locks down and accessorised with a pair of earrings and painted fingernails.

She was joined by Millie, 13, who upped the style stakes in a white pinnafore with a black and red strawberry print.

Slim: The short-sleeved frock showed off the actress's spare frame as she arrived in San Diego for the Stranger Things Panel

Bright and bold: The knee-skimming garment hung loosely from the waist down and Natalia paired her look with black stilettos

Dress to impress: Wearing a plunging white dress printed with chocolate-dipped strawberries, the 13-year-old star looked quirky in her ensemble

The teenager's dress featured plaits, letting the garment flow to her knees.

Millie, who has a keen interest in fashion, mixed different fabrics by teaming the pinafore with a sleeveless cream blouse.

She accessorised with a woven bracelet around her left wrist and wore her bobbed hair in two French plaits.

Fist pump: The animated actress was seen triumphantly pumping the air with her fist during a panel discussion for the show's second season

Sweet: At one stage, Millie was seen cuddling up to veteran actor Matthew Modine as they posed for photos together

She paired her fun look with low heels as she soaked up the attention of her fans at the convention.

The young teen looked confident as she strode on stage and waved at the audience.

Natalia and Millie were joined on stage by a host of Stranger Things stars as three new cast members were announced at the panel.

Struggle for the spotlight... Gaten and Millie were seen playfully battling it out for the limelight as they posed together

Hug it out: The outgoing actress was seen cuddling up to her co-star, Noah Schnapp, as they posed for photos

Bye, Barb: At one stage, Dacre Montgomery, Natalia Dyer and Joe Keery were seen posing in front of what looked like a makeshift memorial for the character Barb

New beginnings: Sadie Sink, who plays newcomer Max, arrived on stage in a patterned colour block smock dress

Paul Reiser, 61, Dacre Montgomery, 22, and Sadie Sink, 15, will join the ensemble cast as Dr Owens, Billy and Max.

Dacre posed with Natalia in an open-necked blue shirt, which he paired with coordinating slacks.

The newcomer starred in the reboot of Power Rangers earlier this year and is set to shake things up in Hawkins.

Good friends: Sadie later changed into a black and pink floral dress, which she wore with silver trainers

Group shot: Paul Reiser (L) is one of the three new cast members and plays Dr Owens in the suspenseful series

Sadie, who plays Max, walked on stage at Comic Con in a patterned colour block smock dress, which she paired with sparkling silver flats.

She later changed into a black and pink floral ensemble, which she wore with trainers.

Her new character moves to Hawkins from California at the start of season two, but the teenager remained tight-lipped about the rest of Max's story.

Ride on: The show's cast appeared to have fun posing on bikes in front of a backdrop designed to look like the one seen on the show

Ambience: They even managed to recreate some of the show's iconic sets, with the actors all making the most of the opportunity to pose for the cameras

Working the crowd... Gaten Matarazzo was given a rockstar welcome when he walked onstage ahead of the panel discussion

Cast photo: The close-knit co-stars posed for a series of photos together. Pictured is (back, L-R) Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Noah Schnapp, Finn Wolfhard (front, L-R) Sadie Sink and Millie

Cutting loose: All close in age, the real-life friends were seen laughing and joking around in between photos

Joe Keery opted for a retro-inspired look, rocking a mustard-colored short-sleeve shirt.

The 25-year-old actor wore olive green chinos and black brogues with yellow laces.

David Harbour kept things casual in a black polo shirt, which the 42-year-old actor teamed with grey pants and a black sneakers.

Mixing it up... Joe Keery (left) and Caleb McLaughlin (right) both opted for differing styles for the event

Hamming it up... The 13-year-old actress positioned herself front and center during a cast photo

Team photo: Following their panel discussion, the close-knit cast posed for a series of group photos

What it's all about... Stranger Things follows the disappearance of a young boy, as supernatural forces threaten to overtake the town he lives in

Surprises: While the second season is being kept largely under wraps, it's expected to pick up where the first one left off

Meanwhile, Caleb McLaughlin went for a red T-shirt printed with an illustration of a face.

The 15-year-old actor also wore a pair of ripped blue jeans and grey Nike sneakers.

They were joined onstage by more co-stars, including Gaten Matarazzo, 14, and Matthew Modine, 58.

Coming in waves... Matthew Modine was also in attendance at the panel discussion, and was seen smiling and waving at the audience

Laidback style: David Harbour kept things casual in a black polo shirt, which the 42-year-old actor teamed with grey pants and a black sneakers

The cast participated in a panel discussion at the renowned fan event, ahead of the release of the hit Netflix series' second season on October 27.

During the animated discussion, the cast previewed a gripping new trailer for the highly anticipated second season.

The new trailer teased the return of Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, who mysteriously disappeared at the end of the first season.

She's back! Eleven returns to season two of Stranger Things, as seen in a new trailer for the highly anticipated series

Scary: The youngster could be seen walking their an eerie classroom

Thrilling: The gripping new trailer was shown during a panel discussion with the show's cast, giving fans an insight into what they can expect

The show's cast hadn't even viewed the sneak peek, which starts up in an arcade and is set to Michael Jackson's Thriller.

And like the first series, season two also promises to have fans on the edge of their seats, with plenty of twists and turns.

The trailer shows that Will Byers may not be out of the woods yet after spending time in the Upside Down, and his troubles continue as he acclimates to life back home.

The trailer shows Noah Schnapp's Will Byers having strange visions and emotionally relaying it to his concerned mom, played by Winona Ryder.

Coming soon: The Stranger Things cast debuted a new trailer for the hit series' highly anticipated second season

On the search: The boys brought flash lights as they ventured out

At one stage, the young boy appears to be almost comatose as his distraught mother orders him to 'wake up'.

Following their panel discussion, the close-knit cast posed for a series of group photos.

They even managed to recreate some of the show's iconic sets, with the actors all making the most of the opportunity to clown around for the cameras.

Surprises: Apparently the show's cast hadn't even viewed the sneak peek, which starts up in an arcade and is set to Michael Jackson's Thriller

Brace yourself... Like the first series, season two also promises to have fans on the edge of their seats, with plenty of twists and turns

Stranger Things follows the disappearance of a young boy, as supernatural forces threaten to overtake the town he lives in.

Screen veteran Winona Ryder wasn't in attendance at the event, despite winning praise for her comeback role in the series.

While the second season is being kept largely under wraps, it's expected to pick up where the first one left off.

Cult classic: The first season of Stranger Things turned out to be a huge hit for Netflix, and season two promises to be even bigger

Troubled: The trailer shows that Will Byers may not be out of the woods yet after spending time in the Upside Down, and his troubles continue as he acclimates to life back home
She's admitted that trolling over her 'weird boobs' has driven her to a reduction.

But Jess Shears left her bikini top behind this weekend, when she boldly posed braless for a raunchy 2018 calendar shoot in Ibiza, Spain.

Watched on by her Love Island beau Dom Lever, ITV2 pin-up Jess really came into her own in little more a gold lame thong and a see-through top, while her rumoured ex Mike Thalassitis continued to steal the spotlight with his sex claims.

Scroll down for video

Showing all: Love Island babe Jess Shears certainly seemed to get her own back on the critics on Friday, as she posed braless for a racy shoot

This time, it was Tyla Carr that Mike was talking about when he reportedly boasted about using Viagra in the villa.

He was heard in an audio clip reportedly saying: 'Mate, first night back in the villa I had in my suitcase, I had a Viagra and I was drunk innit because we started drinking straight away. I popped it and my piece was absolutely breathtaking.'

It was no more than two weeks ago that Mike publicly embarrassed Jess by suggesting that he 'l***ed her out' after their time on Love Island.

Very cheeky: Throwing her all into the shoot at the poolside, Jess was watched on by love Island boyfriend Dom Lever

Sexy: Jess has previously said that she's ready to correct her 'weird boobs'

Jess has consistently denied a liaison with Mike and reuniting with on-screen flame Dom as soon as he was dumped from the show.

Jess' latest stunning photoshoot certainly seems to stick two fingers up to Mike, as well as critics who insulted her 'weird boobs'.

Posing on her knees at the poolside in Ibiza, she throws caution to the wind by bravely discarding her bikini top.

Beneath her mesh top, Jess boldly flashes her sizeable chest and reclines provocatively against a palm tree to further boost her assets.

Cheeky: The brunette has been candid on her sex life with Dom since the show

The camera loves you: Jessica was shot from all angles, looking confident in her pin-up poses

Watching on: Dom didn't feature in the photoshoot, but he couldn't keep his hands off Jess

Striking: Dom kicked back to catch a glimpse of the stunning brunette in action

Creative direction? Dom looked like her could have offered advice, but staying out of it

Jess revealed to OK! magazine two weeks ago: 'Yes, I had my boobs done when I was 20 or 21, but I didnt make a very well-advised decision about them.'

'They didnt turn out great and I suffered a lot of side effects. Ive been looking at getting them reduced,' she continued before confirming she had 'found a surgeon' for the reduction.

Lamenting her '120cc implants' further, Jess admitted that she shouldn't have gone that big 'at such a young age.'

Stunning: Jess kept Dom close by, but he seemed more content catching some rays

Snap happy: Jess couldn't help but snap her boyfriend, too

She admitted: 'Ive got rippling and what they call bottoming out, which is when the implant is too heavy for the skin.'

Jess has successfully boosted her glamour modelling career, thanks to her appearance on the hit ITV2 reality show.

In a constant nod back to the dating game, she has not been shy about over-sharing on her new-found life with Dom.

Confident: Her glamour modelling career has certainly received a boost

Posing up a storm: It's not the first time Jess has done a modelling gig

In shape: She's become quite a reality TV favourite since leaving

She's got the look: Jess is hoping to alter her image with a breast reduction

On their bedroom antic outside the villa, Jess said the pair have been more 'experimental' now they are not in view of cameras.

Jess told The Daily Star: 'It's very grabby and rough, we're both up for experimenting.'

Previously, it was claimed that Jess filmed a sex tape with Ex On The Beachs Rogan OConnor, who used to date Bianca Gascoigne.

Catching attention: She has said that their liaisons outside of the house have been 'rough'

Looking ahead: Jess is working on her 2018 calendar

Keeping an eye on things: Jess made sure she liked all of the photos

Taking advice: She worked closely with the photographer on the shoot

Cheeky: Jess seemed extremely confident in minimal clothes

Posing up a storm: The beauty was in her element

Watchful eye: Dom didn't seem to get involved with the calendar shoot

Keeping up to date: Jess seemed to have her finger on the pulse

Hanging out: Jess and Dom struck up their relationship on Love Island
Diana Chan and Ben Ungermann are set to battle it out for a whopping $250,000 on the MasterChef Australia grand final on Monday.

And judge Gary Mehigan has said that fans shouldn't underestimate retail manager Ben, 32, despite accountant Diana, 29, being tipped to win.

Gary, 50, told News Corp on Sunday: 'This is the most level playing field we've had for a MasterChef Australia grand final for a number of years.'

Scroll down for video

'This is the most level playing field': MasterChef's Gary Mehigan (pictured) says fans shouldn't underestimate Ben Ungermann as he prepares to battle Diana Chan in the grand final

Describing Ben as an 'absolute workhorse', Gary said that Diana might stumble a little in the grand final.

He added: 'Diana is very strong but I think we'll see a few chinks in the armour coming out in the finale.'

Gary admitted that he never thought the pair would make the top two.

Who will win? Pictured are the top two MasterChef Australia contestants, Ben and Diana

'I really thought Sarah Tiong was going to take it out,' he said of the former contestant.

Diana and Ben will complete three rounds in the finale - a mystery box challenge, a round where they create the dish they want, and a dessert recreation challenge.

On Sunday's show, Karlie Verkerk was eliminated in a heated semifinal.

Better luck next time? Gary admitted that he never thought the pair would make the top two, and instead thought Sarah Tiong (pictured) was going to win

She almost made it! On Sunday, Karlie Verkerk (pictured) was eliminated in a heated semi-final

The amateur chef, 26, felt the pressure when she had to cook a main and dessert for 25 people, alongside Diana and Ben.

After hearing she had been kicked off the show, Karlie became visibly upset but said she 'had a feeling' she would be the one leaving.

'Seeing these two work in the kitchen, it was just incredible,' she added. 'And I felt like... I was lacking a little bit. I shouldn't cry.'

Looks divine: Karlie had cooked crayfish for her main, with a ginger broth, prawn oil and stir fried water spinach

Karlie had cooked crayfish for her main, with a ginger broth, prawn oil and stir fried water spinach.

For dessert, she made a black sesame ice cream with mandarin and ginger.

Karlie was told by the judges that her main dish was 'pretty and sophisticated,' but her dessert was lucklustre.
She's the daughter of one of the most beautiful supermodels in the world.

So it's no surprise Kaia Gerber showed Cindy Crawford's effortless model looks runs in the family when she arrived at the airport in Toronto on Saturday.

The high-profile model's daughter, 15, looked stunning in a casual white Tee, fresh-faced after catching a flight from Los Angeles.

Scroll down for video

Gorgeous girl: Kaia Gerber, 15, showed Cindy Crawford's model looks runs in the family when the supermodel's daughter arrived at the airport in Toronto on Saturday

Showing off her style credentials, the beauty looked every inch the biker chick in the leather jacket.

Kaia cut a casual figure completed her look with a pair of navy tracksuit bottoms for added comfort on her flight.

The brunette styled her locks in loosely-tousled waves and sheltered her eyes with shades as she strolled through the terminal in trainers.

Showing off her style credentials: The beauty looked every inch the biker chic in the leather jacket

The statuesque model has set her sights on a similar star-studded modelling career to her mother Cindy.

Following in her footsteps, she has begun to successfully carve her own career in the industry.

Kaia landed her first Versace campaign at the tender age of 10 but her mum temporarily stopped letting her take part in shoots because of her young age.

Wow: Kaia (pictured at Moschino Spring/Summer 18 Menswear and Women's Resort Collection in June 2017) has set her sights on the same star-studded modelling career as her mother

But the beauty made a triumphant return to the industry three years later, marking her comeback with a contract from the prestigious IMG Models.

Cindy's daughter made her American Vogue debut on the front of the magazine's September issue in 2015.

At age 14, she styled a jewellery line for Chrome Hearts and the same years she starred in her first magazine cover.

Kaia was supported by her mother in a shoot on the cover of Vogue Paris' April edition, with the pair photographed by the famous Mario Testino.

The rising starlet has landed campaigns with Marc Jacobs' Daisy fragrance and beauty line as well as for Alexander Wang and Penshoppe.
She has just returned from a romantic trip to Europe with fiance Tim Robards.

And on Sunday, The Bachelor's Anna Heinrich appeared to be feeling the post-holiday blues.

The criminal lawyer shared a bikini-clad throwback snap of herself soaking up the sun in Santorini, writing: 'Take me back'.

Scroll down for video

'Take me back': Anna Heinrich flaunted her flawless bikini body in a throwback Instagram snap from her romantic European holiday with fiance Tim Robards

Anna captioned the holiday snap, 'Just memories', before adding the hashtags: 'Take me back', and 'One week today'.

In the photo, the former reality TV star sits on a low wall that overlooking the ocean and smiles for the camera.

Appearing to wear minimal makeup, Anna styles her long blonde hair loosely and swept over to one side.

Chasing the sun! On their holiday, Anna and Tim enjoyed time in the Greek Islands, as well as France and Italy

On their holiday, Anna and Tim enjoyed time in the Greek Islands, as well as France and Italy.

Tim and Anna announced their engagement at the end of May, having first met on The Bachelor Australia in 2013.

Meanwhile, Anna can be seen on the new cover of Cosmopolitan Bride, wearing a stunning white wedding gown.

Wedding bells: Tim and Anna announced their engagement at the end of May, having first met on The Bachelor Australia in 2013

She recently spoke to OK! Magazine about the eight-page spread, saying she felt lucky to be surrounded by such beautiful dresses.

'All of the dresses were stunning, and I felt so lucky that I got to play dress-ups with those beautiful gowns,' she said.

And it was model-turned-chiropractor Tim who calmed her nerves on-set.

'Looking at the pics together gave (us) a real sense of excitement,' she added.
Their love appears to be written in the stars.

On Saturday, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez ushered in Leo season in Miami for a joint birthday celebration that he shared on Instagram.

The diva, who turns 48 on Monday, wore a sensational sheer mini dress that featured some strategically placed patches to protect her modesty.

Scroll down for video

Sheer brilliance: Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez celebrated their birthdays in Miami on Saturday night

In the photo, her brunette locks are worn straight down, but later in the night she put them in a ponytail which showed off her massive hoop earrings.

Lopez carried a sparkly clutch purse with her as she posed with her beau, who turns 42 on Thursday.

Rodriguez looked smart in a blue custom Musika Frere suit, he kept the first few buttons of his undershirt undone to beat the Miami heat.

Leo season: The singer and actress turns 48 on Monday, the former Yankee turns 42 on Thursday

A-Rod shared a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the bash on his Instagram Stories including a shot of the couple posing with a decadent gold and white cake which was embellished with flowers and some silver detailing.

Though Lopez is known as the musical one of the pair, Rodriguez appeared happy to have his go on the dance floor, passionately singing along to Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline.

He posted another cuddled up shot with his lady love sitting on his lap and wrote 'Bronx' with it.

Hometown heroes: A-Rod shared this photo which he wrote Bronx on, representing the borough J-Lo was born in, he played for the Yankees, aka the Bronx Bombers until 2016

Lopez was born in the NYC borough, while Rodriguez played on the Yankees, also known as the Bronx Bombers, until his retirement in 2016.

The pair have been dating since early this year after bumping into each other at a restaurant and subsequently going on a dinner date.

They have been nearly inseparable since, traveling to New York, Miami, Paris, Las Vegas, the Dominican Republic and several other destinations together in the last seven months.

Performer: Though Lopez is known as the musical one of the pair, Rodriguez appeared happy to have his go on the dance floor

So sweet: He had a passionate sing-a-long to Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline as J-Lo watched

She has nine-year-old twins Max and Emme from her marriage to Marc Anthony and Rodriguez has two girls Ella and Natasha with his ex Cynthia.

When asked by Ellen Degeneres if the pair want more children together, Lopez replied, 'Oh, my God. We're just having a nice time right now.'

He will surely be with his love when she returns to Las Vegas for her All I Have residency at Planet Hollywood for a run of shows in September.
It has been reported that she has split from her husband Danny Dyer nine months after they said 'I do'.

And now in the midst of the rumoured fallout, Joanne Mas, 40, made a statement to the masses as she donned an eye-catching T-shirt with 'Sorry... Out of order' emblazoned across the back.

The blonde beauty - who had first met the actor in school aged 14 - appeared downcast while she mad her way back to her car carrying her purchases over her forearm.

Scroll down for video

'Sorry out of order': Joanne Mas, 40, made a statement to the masses as she donned an eye-catching T-shirt with 'Sorry out of order' emblazoned across the back

Keeping her ensemble casual, she teamed a pair of ripped ripped denims with her head-turning slogan tee while she carried a large black cross-body bag.

Joanne left her blonde locks loose while her oversized shades kept her glossy locks at bay as she made her way back to her car, looking defeated.

The stunner's recent appearance comes after their marriage was catapulted into the spotlight after it was reported that her long-term love had an affair with former Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding when filming 2012 flick Run for Your Wife.

Joanne and Danny - who had been together since 1992 - had only walked up the aisle last September in an idyllic Spanish-themed ceremony which was witnessed by their three children - daughters Danni, 19, Sunnie, nine and son Arty, three.

Downcast: The blonde beauty - who had first met the actor in school aged 14 - appeared downcast while she mad her way back to her car carrying her purchases over her forearm

Making a statement: Joanne appeared to make quite the statement with her font covered tee

In light of the alleged infidelity, Danny has moved 18 miles away from the family home and was spotted removing belongings from the house he shared with her to move into a 1700-a-month rented apartment with a helping hand from on-screen wife Kellie Bright.

Last month, it was reported that Danny was residing in a hotel near the EastEnders set.

Danny's youngest children reportedly visited the star's new digs on Friday and helped their dad stock up on shopping after having a tour of the apartment.

Tee time: Joanne headed to the parking meter following her day of shopping, showcasing her striking tee

Stress: Keeping her ensemble casual, she teamed a pair of ripped ripped denims with her head-turning slogan tee while she draped a large black cross-body bag around her frame

Defeated: Joanne left her blonde locks loose while her oversized shades kept her glossy locks at bay as she made her way back to her car, looking defeated

Sources tell The Sun: 'At first, we hoped Danny and Jo would patch things up again as they have so many times before. Its not the first time Danny has stayed away rather than go home after filming. But its clear this time it is different.

'He is obviously hoping that she changes her mind and that they can work things out. But things have never been this bad between them before. Before he was forced to take his break from EastEnders this year he was in a pretty dark place...

'It is clear that the problems between them are much more serious than that. Danny would never have moved out otherwise.'

Elsewhere, Danny is currently planning a 'low-key' 40th birthday bash with his children in the midst of his personal woes while his closest confidants - including Lee Ryan and Kellie Bright - rally around him in his hour of need.

Furore: The stunner's recent appearance comes after their marriage was catapulted into the spotlight after it was reported that her long-term love had an affair with former Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding when filming 2012 flick Run for Your Wife

Style: Her stylishly faded tee featured a telling motto

A source told the Mirror: 'Lee wanted to do something for Danny, a party to make sure he could enjoy himself, but Danny didnt want it.

'He isnt in the mood to do much at the moment and just wants to spend it with his kids. But his co-stars  including Lee and Kellie Bright  have been a real support.

'He would normally be with Jo on his birthday but she isnt around. He doesnt know what to do without her.'

Despite his want for an understated celebration, Jo appeared to let her hair down on Saturday as she enjoyed a night out on the tiles, posting on Twitter with the caption: 'Letting loose with my girls'.

Celebrations: Elsewhere, Danny is currently planning a 'low-key' 40th birthday bash with his children in the midst of his personal woes while his closet confidants - including Lee Ryan and Kellie Bright - rally around him in his hour of need
It's due to premiere in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon.

But the producers of The Emoji Movie didn't want fans in New York to miss out on all the fun.

So Sofia Vergara, who voices Flamenca, hosted a special screening of the family animation at the New York Institute Of Technology on Sunday morning.

Give us a hug: Sofia Vergara hosted a special screening of The Emoji Movie at the New York Institute Of Technology on Sunday morning, giving Poop, voiced by Patrick Stewart, a cuddle

Lovely in LBD: The 45-year-old looked stunning in a short-sleeved black lace dress with a red lining and an asymmetric hemline that started mid-calf and rose to just above her knee

The 45-year-old looked stunning in a short-sleeved black lace dress with a red lining and an asymmetric hemline that started mid-calf and rose to just above her knee.

The petite actress added inches to her height with black platform sandals that had a wide strap across her foot, an ankle strap and stunningly high stiletto heels.

Sofia's long brunette tresses were styled in soft waves and she added a pop of color to her ensemble with bright red lipstick.

She was joined at the screening by Poop, and emoji voiced by Patrick Stewart.

Stunning: The Modern Family actress flashed her toned pins in the daring lace number

Simply chic: The actress styled her brunette tresses in soft waves and ringlets that spilled over her shoulders

They have a lot in common: Sofia voices Flamenca in the family animation that promises to unlock the secret life of the emojis in every cell phone

And Sofia bent down to give the brown, appropriately, character a big hug.

Guests at the event included Saturday Night Live's Rachel Dratch, 51, and son Eli, six.

Fargo's Patrick Wilson, 44, brought along his two sons, Kalin, 11, and Kassian, seven.

Leggy: The ageless star glowed as she made a polished appearance at the premiere

Catwalk worthy: The Colombian-born actress looked statuesque as she strode down the street

Her plus one: Saturday Night Live's Rachel Dratch, 51, and son Eli, six, seemed excited to see the movie

The Emoji Movie unlocks the never-before-seen secret world inside your smartphone as Gene, a multi-expressional emoji voiced by T.J. Miller, sets out on a journey to become a normal emoji.

Aside from Sofia, Patrick and T.J., the movie features a starry voice cast including James Cordon, Anna Faris, Maya Rudolph, Christina Aguilera and Sean Hayes.

It's due to open on July 28.
Carrie Fisher tragically passed away late last year.

But Star Wars fans made sure to show that the force is always with her.

Four Star Wars costuming clubs held a tribute to their favorite fallen princess at San Diego Comic-Con.

The force is with them: Guest speaker Diana Font was among the members of four costuming clubs that held a tribute to their favorite fallen princess at San Diego Comic-Con

Legend: Carrie Fisher - pictured as Princess Leia in 1977's Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope - passed away at the age of 60 in December

The fan groups celebrated the life and work of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia at the pop-culture convention in San Diego on Sunday.

Several women dressed in Leia's flowing white gown and iconic twin buns spoke about how much the character inspired them.

'You put on a pair of buns, and you're unstoppable': Diana, left, and Lisa Saunders dressed up in Carrie's famous character's signature garb

One said she walked down the aisle at her wedding to Leia's theme. Another said, 'You put on a pair of buns, and you're unstoppable.'

The presentation included an exhibit of fan art created after Fisher's death last year.

The fans also celebrated the life of Kenny Baker, the actor who played R2-D2, who also died last year. Members of the R2 Builders Club honored him by bringing out four replica droids they built.

Aww: The fans also celebrated the life of Kenny Baker, the actor who played R2-D2, who also died last year

Commitment to the craft Alex Doan (left) and Stephanie Soewito wear Jawa costumes

Happy: A Yoda doll based on the character from the franchise sits next to fan Patricia Law Games at the event

The touching tribute comes just weeks after Carrie was awarded the highest honor The Walt Disney Company can bestow on an individual at the D23 Legends Awards in Anaheim, California.

Her daughter Billie Lourd penned a touching letter in honour of her late mother Carrie winning a Disney Legends Award.

And although the 24-year-old actress couldnt be there to accept the award on her mothers behalf, she wrote a touching letter which was read by Disney chairman Bob Iger.

Loving daughter: This comes just weeks after Billie Lourd, 24, penned a touching letter in honour of her late mother Carrie Fisher winning a Disney Legends Award in Anaheim; (pictured 2016)

The letter read: 'As far back as I can remember, my mom and I have been Disney fanatics. We went to Disneyland so much that I now realise she might have even loved it more than I did.

'Becoming part of the Disney family was truly an amazing moment for her. She secretly always wanted to be a Disney princess, so getting to be a Disney princess and a Disney legend would have been her ultimate dream.

'I wish I could be there to accept this award on her behalf, but unfortunately, I am currently working on American Horror Story.

'I am beyond grateful to Mr. Iger and everyone at Disney for this incredible honour. Thank you again, and may the force be with you always.'

Longtime fans: The letter read: 'As far back as I can remember, my mom and I have been Disney fanatics. We went to Disneyland so much that I now realise she might have even loved it more than I did.'
The Doctor Who Christmas special will see the Time Lord's companion Bill Potts return, and will also feature a cameo performance from Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss.

The festive special, which will be the last time Peter Capaldi will be seen on-screen playing the Doctor, will be called Twice Upon A Time, it has been revealed during a cast panel at San Diego's Comic-Con.

Details of Bill's return have not been revealed, but Gatiss will play a World War One soldier known as The Captain.

Scroll down for video

Reunion: Peter Capaldi's companion Bill Potts WILL return for the Doctor Who Christmas special... and writer Mark Gatiss will surprise fans with a cameo (left) as they are joined by the First Doctor David Bradley (right) in Twice Upon A Time

During the 2017 series finale, fans were left wondering about Bill (played by Pearl Mackie) and they also saw the Doctor's regeneration process begin after he was fatally shot by a Mondasian Cyberman.

Viewers saw his flashback through previous incarnations as past sidekicks played by Billie Piper, Jenna Coleman, Catherine Tate and John Barrowman were seen calling out his name.

But the biggest clue to the plot of this year's Christmas special came in the closing moments of the episode when Capaldi's character struggled out of the Tardis into a snowy wasteland and came face to face with the original Doctor.

Uncertain future: During the 2017 series finale, fans were left wondering about Bill (played by Pearl Mackie) and they also saw the Doctor's regeneration process begin after he was fatally shot by a Mondasian Cyberman

Capaldi's 12th Doctor shouted: 'I don't want to change again, never again, I can't keep on being somebody else.

'I'm staying. I will not change. I am the Doctor.'

But he was answered by a figure who emerged through the snow saying: 'No, no, no, I am the Doctor, the original.'

Played by David Bradley, the character was dressed as the late William Hartnell's Doctor, the first ever incarnation of the Time Lord.

Reluctant to change: Viewers saw his flashback through previous incarnations as past sidekicks played by Billie Piper, Jenna Coleman, Catherine Tate and John Barrowman were seen calling out his name

Tense: But the biggest clue to the plot of this year's Christmas special came in the closing moments of the episode when Capaldi's character struggled out of the Tardis into a snowy wasteland and came face to face with the original Doctor

Flashback: But he was answered by a figure who emerged through the snow saying: 'No, no, no, I am the Doctor, the original.' Played by David Bradley, the character was dressed as the late William Hartnell's Doctor, the first ever incarnation of the Time Lord

It harked back to a 1966 episode, The Tenth Planet, in which the Doctor travelled to the South Pole to take on the Cybermen.

Bill's return will have fans speculating after she was rescued by her love interest from her debut episode, who disappeared as a ghost in a watery puddle, but then returned to invite a grieving Bill to travel through the universe by her side.

Capaldi will be replaced by Broadchurch star Jodie Whittaker, who will become the first woman to ever play the role.

Return: Bill's return will have fans speculating after she was rescued by her love interest from her debut episode, who disappeared as a ghost in a watery puddle, but then returned to invite a grieving Bill to travel through the universe by her side

The episode is also the Doctor Who swansong for the show's writer and executive producer Steven Moffat.

Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall will take over from Moffat and said he had always known he wanted the 13th Doctor to be a woman.

Following the announcement of Whittaker as the new lead, he said in a statement:

'After months of lists, conversations, auditions, recalls, and a lot of secret-keeping, we're excited to welcome Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor.

'I always knew I wanted the 13th Doctor to be a woman, and we're thrilled to have secured our number one choice. Her audition for The Doctor simply blew us all away.

'Jodie is an in-demand, funny, inspiring, super-smart force of nature and will bring loads of wit, strength and warmth to the role. The 13th Doctor is on her way.'

To-date the trailer on the corporation's official Facebook page of Whittaker being unveiled as the new Doctor has been viewed more than 10 million times.
Israeli security forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes following prayers outside Jerusalem's Old City on July 21, 2017 over new security measures at the highly sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound

A Palestinian broke into a home in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank on Friday and stabbed four Israelis, killing three of them, the Israeli army said.

The attack in Neve Tsuf, north of Ramallah, came after a day of clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces over new security measures at a highly sensitive Jerusalem holy site.

Three Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded in the clashes in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The attacker at the settlement was a 19-year-old Palestinian supporter of Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, according to an Israeli military official.

He jumped the fence of the settlement before breaking into the house, where he stabbed the Israelis during a Sabbath dinner, the army official said.

According to the official, a grandfather and two of his children died, while the grandmother was wounded. The official provided no further details on the victims.

The Palestinian was stopped by a neighbour, an off-duty Israeli soldier, who shot him, the official said. The Palestinian was being treated in hospital.

The Israeli army said the Palestinian had spoken of the Jerusalem holy site and of dying as a martyr in a Facebook post.

The clashes earlier in the day came after Israeli ministers decided not to order the removal of metal detectors erected at entrances to the Haram al-Sharif compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, following an attack nearby a week ago that killed two policemen.

In anticipation of protests on Friday, Israeli police barred men under 50 from entering the Old City in annexed east Jerusalem for prayers, while all women were allowed in.

The holy compound includes the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. It is considered the third-holiest site in Islam and the most sacred for Jews.
The war in Yemen has caused more than 8,000 deaths since March 2015 -- a situation worsened by a cholera epidemic that has killed 1,828 people in the past three months

The head of anti-poverty NGO CARE International on Saturday denounced the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Yemen, which is also suffering from a cholera epidemic, as "an absolute shame on humanity".

The conflict in Yemen has escalated dramatically since March 2015, when Saudi-led forces launched a military operation in support of the government against the Iran-backed Huthi rebels.

"We are now in the 21st century and the current situation is an absolute shame on humanity," Wolfgang Jamann told reporters after a five-day visit to the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country.

"Thousands of civilians have died since the start of the conflict and millions more have been displaced inside the country," he told a news conference.

Jamann said "60 percent of the country is food insecure and over half the population is unable (to access) safe drinking water".

"Many areas in Yemen are just one step away from a famine situation," he said, and urged the international community to "end the suffering".

The war in Yemen has caused more than 8,000 deaths -- mostly of civilians -- since the coalition intervened, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

More than 44,500 people are estimated to have been wounded.

The situation in the country of some 27 million has been worsened by a massive outbreak of the bacterial infection cholera.

On Friday, the WHO said the number of suspected cholera infections in Yemen had risen to nearly 370,000, as of July 19.

It said 1,828 people have died in the outbreak since it erupted in late April.
In the suburbs of violence-wracked Chicago, women have formed a gun club, and are learning to handle firearms to protect themselves

Her hands slowed by rheumatoid arthritis, 71-year-old Marietta Crowder stands in front of her paper target, steadies her gun and pulls the trigger. Shots are fired in quick succession.

Crowder is perhaps not the typical patron of a gun club.

But she is one of seven women learning to safely handle firearms at a shooting range in a suburb of Chicago, a city wracked by gun violence and a soaring murder rate.

"My husband influenced me and we thought about it a long time. Maybe you need a gun these days, in your house at least," said Crowder, who lives in a gated community with her retired banker husband.

A fellow retiree, Javondlynn Dunagan, came up with the idea of gun training classes geared toward women, and for the "Ladies of Steel" gun club -- after successful training, the women gather twice a month to practice their skills.

Dunagan served as a parole officer for 25 years before finishing her career in January, but had rarely held a gun when dealing with convicts.

She said she started carrying one after divorcing her police officer husband.

"I was at home by myself with my daughter, and I was used to having a firearm in a home with my ex-husband," she explained. "So, I wanted to make sure that we were safe."

But Dunagan noticed something curious when she visited gun ranges around Chicago to practice.

"I noticed that I never saw two women at the range together or a group of ladies," she recounted.

- 'Scared of guns' -

Javondlynn Dunagan, a former parole officer, founded the "Ladies of Steel" gun club in the Chicago area

Dunagan was particularly struck by the lack of African-American women like herself interested in learning how to use firearms.

"I started asking friends and they said, 'Yeah, I'm scared of guns.'"

That answer prompted her to start JMD Defense & Investigations, offering gun training programs geared towards women. The "investigations" side of the business will debut next year.

Dunagan also offers classes such as the "Mommy & Me Self-Defense Class," where women can bring their daughters, ages 8-18 years, to learn hand-to-hand combat.

"That came about because my daughter was going to college four years ago and she couldn't find a self-defense class on the south side of Chicago," Dunagan said.

Her clients are from the predominantly African-American communities in Chicago's south side, in or near neighborhoods struggling with runaway gun violence.

Chicago does not have the worst crime rate in the nation, but owing to its large population -- it's the third-biggest US city -- it has seen a staggering number of killings and shootings.

By mid-July, there had been 1,557 shootings and 369 people murdered so far this year, according to the Chicago Police Department.

Gangs and the drug trade are behind most of the shootings, and they are indiscriminate.

Just this week, a 78-year-old man was wounded in one shooting, and a six-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother were wounded in another. All survived.

- 'People shooting everywhere' -

Shandrea Boyd (R), a 40-year-old physical therapist, said she wished she did not feel the need to carry a gun, but has learned to use one because so many others in Chicago are armed

"Things happen in the neighborhoods all the time," said Shandrea Boyd, a 40-year-old physical therapist wearing a "Black Girls Rock" t-shirt.

Boyd said she wished she did not feel the need to carry a gun, but there were too many others who were armed, she said.

"You see people shooting on expressways. You see people shooting everywhere. You just never know. So you'd better be prepared (rather) than unprepared," she said.

Boyd planned to buy a gun with enough safety features that she would feel comfortable having it at home with her four-year-old child.

That will likely be an expensive proposition. Purchasing a gun can cost several hundred to thousands of dollars. A concealed gun permit in the state of Illinois costs another $150.

The process is not for those without means. But, for students like Rhonda Gary, the cost is worth it.

"I get up before daylight and I live alone," said the 51-year-old railroad worker. "I've been broken into before."

Gary was also joining Dunagan's gun club to get regular practice shooting with other women.

"I think it will be a little bit of comfort," she said. "A feeling of security."
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, special counsel on the Russian investigation, has quietly built a team of federal prosecutors, FBI investigators, spy-chasers and money-path followers

For two months, Robert Mueller -- the lanky, 72-year-old independent prosecutor investigating the Russia scandal -- has worked in virtual silence in a nondescript government office building in downtown Washington.

But even without saying a word, the former FBI director and no-nonsense prosecutor has deeply unnerved the occupants of the White House just eight blocks away, especially President Donald Trump, over where his probe is going.

Mueller has built a team of more than a dozen tough-as-nails investigators, including one expert in flipping mafia witnesses, a money laundering specialist who chased down a corrupt billionaire, and one of the country's most experienced Supreme Court litigators.

Since May, they have been quietly interviewing witnesses and collecting documents to establish whether there are links between top aides from Trump's campaign, members of his family, and possibly the president himself and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

After dismissing the probe for months as "ridiculous" and "fake news," Trump laid bare his concerns this week, lashing out at the Justice Department, from his hand-picked Attorney General Jeff Sessions on down the line, over the probe.

He took special aim at Mueller, making clear he intends to try to undercut and discredit the man who could bring down his presidency -- and possibly eventually remove him.

In an interview with The New York Times, Trump complained that one day after he interviewed Mueller to replace fired FBI chief James Comey, Mueller instead went and took the job of investigating the Russia scandal.

"The next day, he is appointed special counsel. I said, what the hell is this all about? Talk about conflicts?" Trump said.

"I have done nothing wrong. A special counsel should never have been appointed in this case."

- Unflappable -

Any prosecutor taking on the presidency has to shoulder an immense amount of political pressure, said Randall Samborn, an attorney who took part in a probe that targeted political heavyweight vice president Dick Cheney in the 2000s.

But if anyone should be able to handle that, Samborn said, it would be Mueller.

Mueller, a former Marine wounded in fighting in Vietnam, is also a veteran of tough prosecutions, including taking on former Panama president Manuel Noriega and mafia don John Gotti.

Former FBI director Robert Mueller (L) and his successor James Comey, shown here at the White House in 2013, have both been at the center of the widening Russia investigation

He took the helm of the FBI one week before the September 11, 2001 attacks. In the following years, he turned it into a potent counter-terrorism agency.

And in a now-legendary defense of rule of law, he and Comey faced down president George W. Bush in 2004 over a secret, illegal domestic surveillance program.

Risking being fired, they forced Bush to adjust his plans.

It's the kind of fortitude that has garnered Mueller praise from both Democrats and Republicans for years.

"I don't think there's a legitimate concern about Bob Mueller," said Ken Starr, whose 1990s investigation of Bill Clinton very nearly forced him from the White House.

"Mueller is a pillar of Washington's legal and political communities, which heavily overlap," said former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy in the conservative National Review.

- Sprawling investigation -

Since May, Mueller's team of hard-nosed and deeply experienced federal prosecutors, FBI investigators, spy-chasers and money-path followers have been talking to witnesses and amassing files, the only hints of their work coming from requests they send to their targets.

The investigation appears to have spread beyond the issue of collusion with Russia.

According to reports, Mueller is looking into Trump's past real estate business and his tax returns, possible money laundering by campaign aides, perjury and obstruction of justice, and other possible crimes.

Donald Trump's ire was piqued when his eldest son Donald Jr found himself the subject of investigation over a June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney

The investigation - as well as parallel probes by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees -- have extended beyond campaign aides to Trump's inner circle, including son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Clearly off balance, the White House has recruited its own brigade of attorneys with expertise in constitutional law, criminal defense, and cold-blooded media counter-attack.

They have accused Mueller's team of being biased toward Trump's election opponent Hillary Clinton, and have assailed the breadth of the investigation.

Media reports say Trump's legal team has studied the possibility of him issuing pardons to protect those in Mueller's crosshairs.

In a Saturday morning tweet, Trump boasted of a US president's "complete power to pardon."

Analysts say Team Trump is laying the groundwork for removing Mueller.

Trump's interview with the Times "is one more widening of the window on discussions taking place within the White House about a potential firing of Robert Mueller," Bob Bauer, the former White House counsel to president Barack Obama, said on the Lawfare website.

- 'Witch hunt' -

Samborn, who took part in the investigation of who exposed Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent during the George W. Bush presidency, said such pressure is unsurprising.

His team fought off constant media stories aimed at throwing investigators off balance, most of them likely leaked by the lawyers, investigation targets, and others not under the control of Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent counsel.

"It was a very highly charged political atmosphere," said Samborn, now a senior vice president at public relations firm Levick.

"There was a lot of criticism and commentary, and that you have to shut out or ignore.... You keep your head down."

What helped the Plame investigation, though, was that Bush himself said he wanted to get to the bottom of the case.

By contrast, Trump has labelled Mueller's probe a "witch hunt."
Thai Army Lieutenant General Manas Kongpan (C) surrounded by police officers when he turned himself in at the police headquarters in Bangkok

An army 'Big Shot' whose influence seeped across the south, Lieutenant-General Manas Kongpan sat at the apex of Thailand's grisly trade in humans, raking in an untold fortune to keep prying eyes off the trafficking route.

As the number of desperate Rohingya and Bangladeshis shuttled through the trafficking operation shot up, so did Manas' rank in the Thai military.

But the silver-haired general was condemned to 27 years in prison on Wednesday for profiting from the trade, an extraordinarily rare conviction of a senior member of an army that dominates the kingdom.

The 61-year-old's downfall was hastened in 2015 after investigators uncovered secret jungle prisons in the south where traffickers starved and tortured migrants while holding them for ransom.

Human trafficking in Southeast Asia

The discovery exposed Thailand's horrifying role in a criminal operation that shifted victims from Myanmar to Malaysia, and forced the ruling junta to launch a belated crackdown.

Police followed a money trail that lead straight to Manas, an army hardliner with a passion for bullfighting.

"He was involved in such an obvious way...at a time when the junta was really trying to show themselves to be clean," said Paul Chambers, an expert on Thailand's military.

"He is going down because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time."

- Money trail -

Manas was first highlighted as a suspect in early 2015 after 98 famished Rohingya were found in trucks in Nakhon Si Thammarat, stopped by a random police checkpoint.

Provincial police -- aided by anti-trafficking NGO Freeland -- used the drivers' cell phones to trace their regular route.

The trail carved through Thailand's southern neck from coastal Ranong, where boatloads of migrants arrived from Myanmar, to malaria-infested camps near the Malaysian border, where they were held in appalling conditions.

Phone and e-banking records from the drivers led to key trafficker Sunan Saengthong, a Ranong politician and businessman who had deposited nearly $600,000 in accounts belonging to Manas.

In May 2015 police found more bank slips revealing that Sunan's nephew had also transferred huge sums to Manas, including some $400,000 in just over a month.

Sunan was jailed for 35 years in a separate trial but his nephew Nattaphat Saengthong and others remain at large.

Around the time of the money transfers, Manas served as a top commander of Thailand's southern security arm.

His job was to enforce its controversial "push-back" policy -- which meant turning around boats of stateless Rohingya who were trying to flee persecution in Myanmar.

But he used this position to do just the opposite, according to last week's verdict, which exposed a matrix of collusion between state officials and businessmen who profited from trafficking.

Witnesses said Manas instructed officers to force back a boat of 265 Rohingya in 2012 -- only to covertly re-route the ship to shore and truck the human cargo south to the jungle prisons.

Manas "had direct responsiblity in the push-back mission and must have been part of this human trafficking network, otherwise the Rohingya would not have been able to return to Thailand so quickly," the verdict read.

- Southern 'Big Shot' -

The trafficking operation flourished until the 2015 crackdown, with tens of thousands of victims funnelled through a trade worth an estimated $250 million dollars.

Many were lured from the Myanmar-Bangladesh border by brokers who promised jobs, while others were violently kidnapped and forced onto the boats.

The big money was made in Thailand, where jungle camp wardens phoned relatives of the weakest migrants and threatened to kill them if they didn't send more cash.

The young and strong were sold off as labour to Malaysian palm oil plantations or fishing boats, according to Freeland.

All the while, Manas' seemingly inexorable rise up the army ranks continued, with his command stretching over increasingly large chunks of the south.

Months before his arrest in 2015, he was promoted to Lt-General and given the sweeping role of "military advisor".

It wasn't the first time the hawkish officer had hurdled controversy.

He was linked to a 2004 raid on a mosque that left more than 30 Muslim rebels dead in Thailand's far south, one of the early sparks of an insurgency still burning today.

"He had a reputation for often going beyond the law," said Chambers, adding that he was known as a "big shot" in the region.

Manas was the only military man convicted in last week's trafficking trial, which saw more than 60 people sent to jail.

Rights groups welcomed the verdict but warned that many perpetrators remain at large.

"We know not everyone has been accounted for in this trial," said Amy Smith from Fortify Rights, which closely tracked the investigation.

"More needs to be done to account for the horrific crimes that took place... and to ensure this never happens again."
While serving as Nigeria's powerful Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke arrives for a Vienna meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in June 2012

Nigeria's former oil minister faces charges only at home but her name crops up in a growing number of international cases that lift the lid on the scale of alleged corruption in the country's oil sector.

Since leaving office in 2015, Diezani Alison-Madueke has been implicated in bribery, fraud, misuse of public funds, and money laundering cases in Nigeria, Britain, Italy and the United States.

The first female president of the global oil cartel OPEC -- who was one of Africa's most prominent politicians -- has always denied the allegations, which involve billions of dollars syphoned from oil deals and state coffers.

But former US State Department Nigeria specialist Matthew Page suggested that a US civil forfeiture case to seize $144 million (124 million euros) of assets from allegedly ill-gotten crude contracts may just be the start of Alison-Madueke's legal troubles.

"Although this is the first attempt by US law enforcement to go after assets allegedly stolen by Diezani and her henchmen, it almost certainly will not be the last," he told AFP.

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari, elected in 2015 on a promise to eliminate graft, has said that "mind-boggling" sums of public money were stolen by previous administrations.

Officials in Abuja say they are talking with US prosecutors about repatriating the money if the civil forfeiture claim is successful.

- String of cases -

Alison-Madueke served under president Goodluck Jonathan from 2010 to 2015 and was Nigeria's first female minister of petroleum resources. But her tenure was dogged by scandal.

On her watch, the former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi was sacked for claiming the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had failed to remit $20 billion.

In one case heard in Nigeria in February, Alison-Madueke was accused of diverting some $153 million from the NNPC coffers.

In another ongoing trial, some 23 billion naira ($73 million) of NNPC money is alleged to have been used to influence the 2015 presidential election to keep Jonathan in power.

Prosecutors in Lagos this week began proceedings to recover $1.76 billion of assets owned by Kola Aluko and Jide Omokore, whose companies were awarded oil contracts by Alison-Madueke.

A similar asset recovery case was filed last week in Houston, Texas, seeking the seizure of luxury property, including a New York apartment and superyacht, bought by the businessmen.

On Wednesday, another judge ordered the forfeiture of Alison-Madueke's $37.5 million luxury Lagos property, saying it was purchased with ill-gotten funds.

Meanwhile, Italian prosecutors allege that she and Jonathan received kickbacks from oil majors ENI and Shell as part of a $1.3-billion deal for an offshore oil block in Nigeria.

Charges relating to the same oil block deal have also been filed against the oil majors and some senior Nigerian politicians.

Jonathan and Alison-Madueke are not named in the suit but the former president is under pressure from parliament to answer questions about the so-called Malabu deal.

Finally, Diezani-Madueke was arrested in London in October 2015 in connection with a British probe into international corruption and money laundering, but she was freed on bail.

- 'Morale booster' -

As the international cases pile up, anti-graft campaigners hope the growing body of evidence will boost current President Muhammadu Buhari's faltering war on corruption.

Several high-profile figures in Jonathan's government have been charged with corruption since Buhari came to power, however so far there have been no major convictions.

Still, some activists believe the overseas cases will serve as a powerful example of justice.

Debo Adeniran, of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders lobby group, said the latest cases involving Alison-Madueke, Aluko and Omokore could be a "morale booster".

"Once a conviction is got abroad, the right signal will be sent to all looters that the judgment day has come," he said.

"The fight against corruption will receive a boost. At last, the chickens are coming home to roost."

Dolapo Oni, an oil analyst with Ecobank, said that in contrast to Nigeria's sluggish courts, the overseas corruption cases may be concluded faster.

But whatever positive impact that may have, fears remain that with Buhari on indefinite medical leave, his anti-corruption war is losing momentum.

Leading Nigerian lawyer Festus Keyamo said the cases demonstrated the need fundamentally to overhaul the NNPC -- and to investigate just how far up corruption went in the ruling elite.

"The big unanswered questions: is it possible one Minister allegedly stole so much without the knowledge, connivance & approval of the C-in-C (commander-in-chief)?", he tweeted.
Indonesia's President Joko Widodo (C) has ordered the police to shoot drug traffickers who resist arrest in the latest effort to eradicate drug use

Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has ordered the police to shoot drug traffickers who resist arrest in the latest effort to eradicate drug use in the country.

In a speech to one of Indonesia's political parties late Friday, Widodo urged law enforcers to crackdown on drug dealers in Indonesia.

"Be firm. Especially to foreign drug dealers who enter the country. If they resist even the slightest, just shoot them," Widodo said.

The Indonesian Narcotics Agency recorded there are 6 million drug users in the archipelago out of its 255 million people, a situation the president labelled "drug emergency".

But Widodo's remarks prompted criticism from human rights activists.

Andreas Harsono, Indonesia's researcher from Human Rights Watch condemned the order.

"A president statement like that can seem like a green light to shoot without the correct procedure," Harsono told AFP Sunday, adding that law enforcers should be cautious and follow the law.

Indonesia imposes a tough punishment for drug trafficking, with smugglers who carry five or more grammes given the death penalty.

In the last two years, it has executed about 18 drug traffickers, including foreigners such as Australian Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, which sparked diplomatic outrage and a call to abolish the death penalty.

Widodo's comments came just a week after Indonesian police shot dead a suspected Taiwanese drug dealer who was caught with one tonne of crystal methamphetamine, but tried to escape. rws/iw
Anthony Scaramucci (L), Donald Trump's new White House communications, and Sean Spicer

Donald Trump's new communications chief has deleted tweets in which he shared views contrary to the US president's own, saying they were a distraction.

The day after he started his new job Friday, Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier, cleared up his Twitter trail of remarks in which he differs from Trump on illegal immigration, climate change, Islam and even gun control.

"Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction. I serve @POTUS agenda & that's all that matters," the new man on the White House job announced on Twitter.

A bit later, Scaramucci followed up with "The politics of 'gotcha' are over. I have thick skin and we're moving on to @POTUS agenda serving the American people."

In a 2012 comment he tweeted, he appeared to back many causes long championed by Democrats, describing himself as "for Gay Marriage, against the death penalty, and Pro Choice."

White House press secretary Sean Spicer abruptly resigned Friday in protest at Scaramucci's hiring.

In a written statement, Trump said he was "grateful" for Spicer's work and praised his "great television ratings" -- a reference to Spicer's keenly watched, combative and often-satirized news briefings.

Spicer's departure marked rising tensions in an administration that has seen its legislative agenda falter at the same time it has been buffeted by an investigation into alleged collusion with Russia.
The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Sunday embarked on a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no-one had an interest in prolonging the crisis.

Erdogan will first meet the Saudi leadership in Jeddah before moving on to Kuwait and then visiting Qatar on Monday for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began.

"No-one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," said Erdogan at Istanbul airport before leaving on the two-day trip.

He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying it had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran. Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

Over the last years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has sped up the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

- 'Saudi has big role' -

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan is also due to meet his son Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

The Qatar emir said Friday he was ready for talks to resolve the crisis so long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.

Erdogan is likely to get a warm welcome in Doha where Turkey has been loudly applauded for sending in food, including fruit, dairy and poultry products by ship and by plane to help Doha beat an embargo.

Turkey has also benefited, with its exports to Qatar doubling in the last month to over $50 million. According to the economy ministry, Ankara has sent some 200 cargo planes filled with aid since the crisis began.
Jordanian security forces stand guard outside the Israeli embassy in Amman following an 'incident' on July 23, 2017 in which a Jordanian man was killed and an Israeli seriously injured

Israel faced mounting pressure Monday over tougher security at a sensitive Jerusalem holy site after a shooting at its embassy in Jordan raised further concerns following a weekend of deadly unrest.

It was not immediately clear whether the incident in Amman on Sunday -- in which two Jordanian men were killed and an Israeli seriously injured -- was linked to the dispute over the Jerusalem compound.

But it came after new security measures were implemented at the Haram al-Sharif mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, prompting violence that left eight people dead, with fears of further unrest.

Israeli officials signalled they may be open to relaxing security measures at the holy site after metal detectors were installed at entrances following an attack that killed two policemen.

The UN Security Council will hold closed-door talks Monday about the spiralling violence.

Israel and Jordan are bound by a 1994 peace treaty, but tensions have been high over the new security measures at the site in annexed east Jerusalem.

Jordan is the official custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

Jordan

The metal detectors remained in place on Sunday, though cameras had also been mounted near at least one entrance to the compound in Jerusalem's Old City.

Tensions have risen following the July 14 attack that killed two policemen.

Israeli authorities say the attackers smuggled guns into the site and emerged from it to shoot the officers.

- Security assessments -

Palestinians view the tougher security measures as Israel asserting further control over the site. They have refused to enter the compound in protest and have prayed in the streets outside.

A Palestinian protester runs from the path of an Israeli army bulldozer during clashes in the village of Kobar, west of Ramallah, on July 22, 2017

"Since the start of the events, I have held a series of assessments with security elements including those in the field," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday's cabinet meeting.

"We are receiving from them an up-to-date picture of the situation, as well as recommendations for action, and we will decide accordingly."

Israeli Major General Yoav Mordechai -- head of COGAT, the defence ministry agency responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories -- signalled that changes to the policy were possible.

"We are examining other options and alternatives that will ensure security," Mordecai said in an interview with Al-Jazeera.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who has announced he was freezing contacts with Israel over the dispute, said Sunday this included the security coordination that has been credited with preventing wider unrest in recent years.

"They must know that they will be the main losers because we play an important role in assuring our security and theirs," Abbas said.

Friday's main weekly Muslim prayers -- which typically draw thousands to the holy site -- brought the situation to a boil.

Palestinian Muslim worshippers run for cover as Israeli security forces disperse crowds outside the Lions' Gate entrance to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, on July 23, 2017

In anticipation of protests, Israel barred men under 50 from entering the Old City for prayers.

Clashes broke out between Israeli security forces and Palestinians around the Old City, in other parts of annexed east Jerusalem and in the occupied West Bank, leaving three Palestinians dead.

- House set for demolition -

On Friday evening, a Palestinian broke into a home in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank during a Sabbath dinner and stabbed four Israelis, killing three.

The Israeli army said the 19-year-old Palestinian had spoken in a Facebook post of the holy site and of dying as a martyr.

On Saturday, Palestinian youths hurled stones and petrol bombs as the army used a bulldozer to close off the attacker's West Bank village and prepare his house for demolition.

Netanyahu said Sunday the demolition would go ahead "as soon as possible".

Israel frequently razes or seals attackers' homes as a deterrent, although rights groups say this amounts to collective punishment.

Israeli security forces are seen next to metal detectors, new security measures by Israeli authorities, outside the Lions Gate, a main entrance to Al-Aqsa mosque compound, in Jerusalem's Old City, on July 18, 2017

Clashes also flared in east Jerusalem and other Palestinian villages in the West Bank near Jerusalem on Saturday, police said.

Two Palestinians died, including one when a petrol bomb exploded prematurely.

Israeli security forces said Sunday they had arrested 25 men active in the militant Hamas group that rules the Gaza Strip.

- Rocket fired from Gaza -

Also Sunday, a rocket fired at Israel from Gaza hit an open area, the army said, causing no injuries. No group claimed the attack.

The holy site in Jerusalem has served as a rallying cry for Palestinians.

In 2000, then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the compound helped ignite the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which lasted more than four years.

The Haram la-Sharif/Temple Mount was seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

Considered the third holiest site in Islam, it is the most sacred for Jews.

burs-jms/msh/mrs/hkb/aph/iw
Tourists bow before statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il-Sung (L) and Kim Jong-Il (R), on Mansu hill

The Westerners lined up on Sunday before giant statues of North Korea's founder Kim Il-Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-Il and, on command from their guide, bowed deeply.

It is a ritual that the Trump administration intends to stop US tourists performing, with Washington due to impose a ban this week on its citizens holidaying in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as the North is officially known.

The move comes amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile ambitions -- it launched a rocket earlier this month which specialists say could reach Alaska or Hawaii -- and after the death of US student Otto Warmbier, who had been imprisoned for more than a year by Pyongyang.

Warmbier was convicted of crimes against the state and sentenced to 15 years' hard labour for trying to steal a propaganda poster from a Pyongyang hotel. He was sent home in June in a mysterious coma that proved fatal soon afterwards.

Most tourists to North Korea are motivated by curiosity and the desire to experience a different destination.

A tourist takes a selfie during a metro station visit in Pyongyang

The iconic 20-metre-high (66-feet) statues at Mansu hill look out over Pyongyang and groups of North Koreans in suits and ties arrive regularly to pay their respects. Passing traffic is obliged to slow down.

As the tourists reached the platform speakers played "We miss our general", about Kim Jong-Il, the father of current leader Kim Jong-Un.

"President Kim Il-Sung liberated our country and built a people's paradise on this land," they were told.

Call centre manager Kyle Myers, 28, from Ireland, said he wanted "to go somewhere very different from what I'm used to" for his first trip to Asia, "to see something that not a lot of people from back home have seen."

The mounting tensions in the year since he booked the tour had made him nervous, he said, but he added: "I don't see the threat here for tourists as long as they behave themselves and they follow the rules of the country."

- 'A little disquieting' -

Some of the visitors -- who paid from 1,850 euros ($2,157) for the tour -- expressed enthusiasm. Australian IT manager Pallavi Phadke, 43, was among those who placed a bouquet before the statues.

A tourist takes a photo during a visit to a subway station in Pyongyang

It was "a sign of respect", she told AFP. "It's the same as covering your head when you go to a mosque or removing your shoes when you go to a temple.

"The people seem happy, they certainly don't appear to be oppressed or anything," she said. "They're very proud of their country, they're proud of their history and it's nice to watch them be patriotic."

Many disagree, with the United Nations, multiple Western governments and independent groups accusing Pyongyang of widespread human rights violations.

Other tourists were more sceptical. Mark Hill, a writer and editor from Calgary in Canada, compared the statues to "a very grim Mount Rushmore".

"It's all very impressive and also a little disquieting," he said.

For years the US State Department has warned its citizens against travelling to North Korea, telling them that they are "at serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea's system of law enforcement", which "imposes unduly harsh sentences for actions that would not be considered crimes in the United States", including showing disrespect to the country's leaders and proselytising.

It is "entirely possible that money spent by tourists in the DPRK" goes to fund its weapons programmes, it adds.

The ban will go into force 30 days after it is formally declared, said department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, and "US passports will be invalid for travel to, through and in North Korea".

- 'Monolithic evil force' -

A tourist takes a photo of statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il-Sung (L) and Kim Jong-Il (R), on Mansu hill

The vast majority of tourists to North Korea are from China, its sole major ally and key provider of trade and aid.

Americans make up around 20 percent of the 4,000 to 5,000 Western tourists who go to the country each year, according to Simon Cockerell of Koryo Tours, the leader in the niche market, which brought Sunday's visitors to Pyongyang.

Warmbier's death had already hammered the market, he said, with bookings down 50 percent since then.

"It's would-be customers' perceptions that anybody can make a mistake," he told AFP. "And almost everyone in their lives has made some mistake and of course they don't want the consequences of that mistake to be so devastating."

But Washington's move, he said, was self-defeating. As well as the potential ramifications for North Koreans who earn their living from tourism, he said, it would "completely eliminate any human interaction between United States citizens and North Korean citizens".

Pyongyang's state propaganda about the US was "100 percent negative", he said, but contacts between tourists and locals "work against the idea that foreigners are some kind of monolithic evil force out to undermine the North Koreans."

"The idea that tourism is somehow sustaining the government is absurd," he added. "The numbers are very low, the revenues are very low."

Young Pioneer Tours, the firm which brought Warmbier to the North, had already said it would no longer take US citizens to the country.

Among Sunday's tour group was comedy writer Evan Symon, from Los Angeles, who as a result of Washington's ban is likely to be one of the last American tourists to the country for several years.

"It's just what happened," he said. "Kind of cool in a way, I guess."
Syrian rebel fighters from the Faylaq al-Rahman brigade carry their homemade 12.7mm sniper rifle in Ain Terma in the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus, on July 20, 2017

Syria's regime carried out air raids on one of the last rebel strongholds near Damascus Sunday, a monitor said, a day after it declared a ceasefire in parts of the besieged enclave.

The Syrian army on Saturday announced a halt in fighting for parts of Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held region on the outskirts of the capital that has been ravaged in the six-year conflict.

"Regime warplanes targeted the area of Ain Terma with at least six strikes since early morning, and two raids were carried out on and around the city of Douma," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

The Britain-based monitor, which relies on sources in Syria for its information, did not report any casualties.

Regime shelling also hit the outskirts of the town of Jisreen on Sunday, the Observatory said, after regime artillery and rocket fire on areas including Ain Terma and the town of Harasta on Saturday after the ceasefire started.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have surrounded the Eastern Ghouta region for more than four years, and regime forces have regularly targeted the area.

Assad's forces have for weeks been fighting rebels on the outskirts of Ain Terma, which links Eastern Ghouta to opposition-held parts of the Damascus district of Jobar.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said no jihadist forces were present in the areas targeted by regime bombardment.

The army announced a halt in fighting in areas of Eastern Ghouta on Saturday from midday local time, but did not say which areas exactly would be included.

The ceasefire announcement came after regime ally Russia said it had reached a deal with "moderate" rebels on the boundaries and policing of the safe zone.

It said the sides had also agreed "routes to supply humanitarian aid to the population and for free movement of residents".

But no rebel group yielding influence in Eastern Ghouta said they had signed that agreement.

The rebel enclave is in one of four proposed "de-escalation zones" designated in a deal reached by government allies Iran and Russia and rebel backer Turkey in May.

But the accord has yet to be fully implemented over disagreements on policing the safe zones.

A ceasefire was implemented in another "de-escalation zone" in southern Syria on July 9, but none has so far been announced for the northwestern province of Idlib or parts of the central province of Homs.

More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since its conflict broke out in March 2011 with anti-government protests.
The San Antonio Police Department said 28 people were being treated in seven local hospitals

Eight people were found dead Sunday inside a truck in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas in what police said appeared to be "human trafficking crime."

Another 28 people were injured -- 20 of them severely -- and were being treated at seven local hospitals, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus and Fire Chief Charles Hood told reporters.

The police chief said the group included children, but later told CNN that the eight dead were adult men.

He said the truck driver had been arrested.

"We got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot here," McManus told a news conference.

"He was approached by someone from that truck, who was asking for water."

The employee returned with the water and then called the police who "found eight people dead in the back of that trailer," the police chief said, calling it a "horrific tragedy."

He said store security footage showed that some vehicles came to pick up some travellers who were on the truck and who had made it out alive.

"We're looking at a human trafficking crime this evening," he added.

It was not immediately clear how many people may have survived and fled, McManus said.

Hood said the air conditioner in the trailer was not working.

"We started extricating patients out of the back of a semi-truck ... we had another 20 patients that were either in extremely critical condition or very serious condition and they have been transported to a number of hospitals."

Map locating San Antonio, where eight people were found dead inside a truck at a Walmart parking lot

San Antonio lies a few hours drive from the border with Mexico's Nuevo Leon state. Weather in the area has been hot and dry.

Federal immigration officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have also been notified, the police chief said.

The deadly discovery, sadly "is not an isolated incident. This happens quite frequently under cover of night," McManus said.

Illegal migration over the US border with Mexico is an everyday fact. Most of the migrants are from Mexico and Central America seeking better-paying work in the United States.

This time, "fortunately there are people who survived, but this happens all the time," he said.

There have been many cases of migrants -- often scores at a time -- stranded and killed in northern Mexico when the truck they are being moved in was abandoned in heat by drivers.

The smugglers in their haste to evade authorities often leave passengers without air conditioning, and often without air to breathe.
An internally-displaced Afghan woman and children who left their homes following a mass-kidnapping by suspected militants look on after arriving from the district of Shawali Kowt following in Kandahar on July 23, 2017

Afghan police on Sunday launched a search operation for some 30 villagers still missing two days after a mass kidnapping blamed on Taliban militants in the southern province of Kandahar.

Seventy people were abducted Friday from their village near the main road in the south and seven of them were found dead the following day alongside the highway, from the city of Kandahar to Tarinkot in Uruzgan province.

Around 30 people have been released while 30 others remain missing, Kandahar police spokesman Zia Durrani told AFP.

It remained unclear why the villagers were seized. But some officials suggested the Taliban had kidnapped or killed them for suspected cooperation with the Western-backed government which the militants are striving to topple.

On Sunday dozens of families from the affected area who arrived in Kandahar city blamed the insurgents for forcing them out of their villages.

"The Taliban came to our villages at midnight and accused us of supporting the government, they warned us to either leave or they will burn us and our houses," a woman, who was among the displaced, told AFP.

The Taliban however denied involvement, while confirming they had attacked police checkpoints in the area.

"Our mujahideen killed a number of local police and pro-government militias there, also capturing 17 suspects who were later released after interrogation. We have not killed or kidnapped any civilians," the Taliban said in a statement.

Civilians are increasingly caught in the crosshairs of Afghanistan's worsening conflict as the Taliban step up their annual spring offensive launched in April.

Highways passing through insurgency-prone areas have become exceedingly dangerous, with the Taliban and other armed groups frequently kidnapping or killing travellers.

In July Taliban fighters closed a highway connecting Farah to Herat city in the west, stopping a bus and forcing 16 passengers off it. They shot at least seven of them while the remainder were taken hostage.

Elsewhere in the country, the Taliban on Sunday captured two district centres in northern Faryab and central Ghor provinces, officials said.

In the volatile Faryab, the insurgents overran Kohistan district centre after an overnight attack triggered hours of heavy fighting, said provincial police spokesman Abdul Karim Yourish.

He said troops had retreated two kilometres from the centre of Kohistan district. There was no word on casualties.

In the central Ghor province, militants seized Taywara district early Sunday after days of clashes with Afghan security forces, provincial governor spokesman Abdul Hai Khatibi told AFP.

Some local media also said that after the Taliban entered Taywarea, insurgents torched the district hospital and killed a number of doctors and patients, but provincial officials could not immediately confirm the reports.

Fighting has escalated in several northern and southern Afghan provinces in recent days, including in Helmand in the south where 16 Afghan police officers were killed by a US airstrike on Friday night.

The strike, the latest setback in Washington's efforts to pacify the country, hit a compound in Gereshk district, large parts of which are under Taliban control.

Afghan troops and police are battling largely alone on the ground against the insurgency, after US-led foreign forces withdrew from most combat operations in December 2014.

The United States is actively considering sending more troops to Afghanistan and US commanders there have requested thousands of extra soldiers on the ground.

The US contingent now numbers about 8,400, and there are another 5,000 from NATO allies, a far cry from the US presence of more than 100,000 six years ago. They mainly serve as trainers and advisers.

strs-us/ds
This photo released by Turkey's Presidential Press Service shows President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meeting Saudi Arabia's King Salman on July 23, 2017

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday began a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no one had an interest in prolonging the crisis.

Erdogan, whose country has come to Qatar's aid in the crisis, had talks in Jeddah Sunday with King Salman who hailed the Turkish leader's "efforts in the fight against terrorism and its financing," Saudi state news agency SPA reported.

Erdogan is scheduled to fly to Kuwait later Sunday before heading to Qatar on Monday for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began.

"No one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," Erdogan said in Istanbul before leaving on the two-day trip.

He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying Doha had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said.

This photo released by Turkey's Presidential Press Service shows President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meeting Saudi Arabia's King Salman on July 23, 2017

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran.

Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position, and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

In recent years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has expedited the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

- Gulf's 'elder statesman' -

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan was also to hold talks with Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

The Qatari emir said Friday he was ready for talks to resolve the row as long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.

His call received a cold reception from the UAE's state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, who said he hoped the emir had pledged to reconsider Qatar's position.

"Dialogue is necessary, but it should be based on a revision" of Qatar's stance, he tweeted.

Erdogan is likely to get a warm welcome in Doha where Turkey has been loudly applauded for sending in food, including fruit, dairy and poultry products by ship and by plane to help Doha beat an embargo.

Turkey has also benefited, with its exports to Qatar doubling in the past month to more than $50 million. According to the economy ministry, Ankara has sent around 200 cargo planes filled with aid since the crisis began.

A handout photo provided by the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA on July 23, 2017, shows the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah meeting EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini

Erdogan's tour coincides with a visit to Kuwait by the EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, who held talks Sunday with Kuwaiti officials.

A statement said Mogherini paid tribute to Kuwait's "relentless mediation efforts" in the dispute and called for a resolution "through dialogue and without delay".

gkg-sjw-ak-ny/srm
An Afghan Shiite man prays as he kisses the tomb of a relative, a member of the 'Enlightenment Movement', buried at a graveyard on the outskirts of Kabul

Silently, the figures climb the hill in a dusty breeze to reach the gravestones of their loved ones.

The site west of Kabul is the last resting place for victims of a deadly suicide bombing on July 23 last year -- the first claimed by the Islamic State group in the heart of Kabul against Afghanistan's Shiite Muslim Hazara ethnic minority.

A demonstration had been called for Monday -- the first anniversary of the atrocity, according to the religious calendar -- by the leaders of the "Enlightenment", a movement born out of a protest against the routing of a high-voltage power transmission line.

But on Sunday the movement leaders said in a Twitter message the march had been postponed because they are holding talks with the government.

The line from Turkmenistan to Kabul, capital of energy-starved Afghanistan, bypasses the province of Bamiyan, a Hazara stronghold.

For Hazara leaders the route is a further sign of discrimination against their community and their province, one of the least developed in Afghanistan.

The young people interred on a stony hilltop west of Kabul were mown down by two suicide bombers as they ended a good-humoured protest a year ago in Kabul.

The official death toll was put at 84 dead with 320 injured.

In the early evening when the heat of the day diminishes, it is time for the women to remember the dead.

Three of them, in multicoloured shawls, are accompanied by seven children -- the youngest of whom, less than 15 months old, stumbles among the tombs.

They insist they come to pray for all the young victims and not for anyone in particular, and make a point of passing from one grave to another.

-'So worried'-

"We are so worried. Day by day, Daesh (Islamic State) becomes more powerful and our government is not honest with us," says a frail man in a grey suit, a black umbrella in hand to protect himself from the sun.

Musa Afzali, who is 56 but looks 20 year older than that, has come to mourn at the tomb of his nephew. Mohamad Juna was just 20 years old when he died.

"I was working that day. I got a call announcing the attack. It took us two days to find his body," said Musa Afzali, wiping his eyes on his shawl at the memory.

Amid the panic and the confusion, survivors took victims randomly to hospitals.

Because his nephew was very active in the Enlightenment movement, Musa Afzali is ready to take part in any protest in memory of all those who died.

"We are no better than them, we cannot give up," he said.

Most of the victims were young people, mainly students -- the elite of the community and its hope for the future.

But Qambar Hayder Ali, 68, who watches over the cemetery, also indicates the graves of three schoolchildren and their relatives. Like Assadullah, who looks six years old, buried near his big brother.

A little further on, some grieving parents display their son's certificate of admission to the Peking University Language Institute. Sharif Beiroz would have graduated in July 2020.

Afghanistan's Hazaras, who now number around three million, have been persecuted for decades.

Thousands of its members were killed in the late 1990s by al-Qaeda and the Taliban, whose ranks are mostly made up of Sunni Muslim ethnic Pashtuns.

With its own attack on the Hazaras a year ago, Islamic State -- which established a foothold in eastern Afghanistan in 2015 -- gave the Afghan conflict a fresh sectarian twist.

Afghan Shiite mourners ascend a hilltop to offer prayers for their relatives, members of the 'Enlightenment Movement', buried at a graveyard on the outskirts of Kabul

Since then IS has repeatedly attacked Shiite mosques and crowds in the country, notably in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif during Ashura -- the most important Shiite observance.

ach/sm
A photograph of Tibetan student Tenzin Choeying on display during a candlelight memorial in New Delhi, on July 23, 2017

A Tibetan student who self-immolated in an act of protest against Chinese rule in the Himalayan region has died in an Indian hospital, a doctor said Sunday.

Tenzin Choeying, 19, succumbed to critical burn injuries in New Delhi a week after shouting "Victory to Tibet" and setting fire to himself at a university campus in Varanasi, in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state.

"He died on Saturday days after he was shifted from a Varanasi hospital for specialised treatment," Anil Rai, medical superintendent at Safdarjung hospital, told AFP.

His body will be handed over to the authorities after a postmortem, Rai added.

Self-immolation has regularly been used as a protest against China's actions in Tibet.

The International Campaign for Tibet -- which claims 150 Tibetans have self-immolated since since 2009 -- said Choeying shouted "Victory to Tibet" before setting himself on fire.

Varanasi police, quoting eyewitnesses, said the 19-year-old yelled "freedom" before dousing himself with kerosene and setting himself ablaze on July 14.

They were investigating the motive behind the suicide, including recent exam failures as being a possible cause for his actions.

China says its troops "liberated" Tibet in 1951, but many Tibetans accuse the government of religious repression and eroding their culture.

China rejects the accusations and accuses the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader who lives in exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala, of inciting self-immolations in a bid to split Tibet from the rest of the nation.

Choeying was the youngest of four siblings from a Tibetan family living in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

Tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees live in Indian settlements, the biggest of which is in southern Karnataka state.

A young farmer self-immolated in southwest China in March, the first Tibetan to set themselves on fire in 2017.

Choeying is the not the first Tibetan to set himself on fire in India.

Last year a schoolboy set himself on fire in the northern city of Dehradun to protest against Chinese rule in the Himalayan region.
US golfer Jordan Spieth celebrates on the 18th green of the Royal Birkdale golf course on July 23, 2017

Jordan Spieth recovered from the brink of a disastrous collapse to regain his nerve and win the British Open with a breathtaking late flourish at Royal Birkdale on Sunday.

The 23-year-old American ended up shooting a one-under-par round of 69 to finish 12-under and claim his third major title by three strokes from compatriot Matt Kuchar.

Spieth had been top of the leaderboard after each of the first three rounds and, having already won the Masters and US Open in 2015, his victory saw him emulate the great Jack Nicklaus in getting his hands on a third different major before turning 24.

But this was very nearly a historic meltdown from Spieth equal only in recent times to his own collapse in the 2016 Masters, when he threw away a five-stroke lead halfway through his final round to hand the green jacket to Danny Willett.

"This was eventful. Seventeen pars and a birdie would have been fine too, but there are a lot of roads to get there," Spieth said after receiving the Claret Jug trophy to go with the $1.85 million cheque for the winner.

Spieth had let a three-stroke overnight advantage fritter away by the fourth hole. Although he soon moved two ahead again, he was playing some wayward stuff off the tee in particular and catastrophe nearly struck at the par-four 13th.

After hitting his drive miles right into unplayable thick rough, Spieth became engaged in a lengthy debate with officials before taking a drop from the adjacent practice ground.

The images brought back memories of Jean Van de Velde's infamous collapse at Carnoustie in 1999, when he ended up in a water hazard at the last as he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

US golfer Jordan Spieth poses for pictures with the Claret Jug at Royal Birkdale on July 23, 2017

But somehow Spieth salvaged a bogey to trail Kuchar by just one shot, and the response on the following holes was emphatic.

A birdie at the short 14th came after he nearly holed his tee shot, and he then went eagle-birdie-birdie to see off Kuchar's own charge.

"I was in a tough one early on, but I showed resilience. As you can imagine thoughts came in from my last scenario where I was leading a major on a Sunday," Spieth added.

"The wheels had kind of come off everything and we were trying to work out how to get back on track to salvage the round, and it took a bogey to do so."

He does not celebrate his 24th birthday until next Thursday and is the youngest winner of the Claret Jug since the late Spaniard Seve Ballesteros triumphed at Royal Lytham in 1979 aged 22.

- 'Crushing' for Kuchar -

Spieth's win ends a run of seven consecutive majors going to players who had never previously won one of golf's biggest prizes.

US golfer Matt Kuchar misses a putt on the 13th green on July 23, 2017

Kuchar had been hoping to extend that run and become the sixth champion from the last seven Opens aged 39 or older.

"It's crushing. It hurts. And there is excitement and a thrill to have played well, put up a battle, put up a fight," said Kuchar.

"You work so hard to get to this position, you don't get many opportunities. To be this close, taste it with five holes to go, it's a hard one to sit back and take."

Spieth is the sixth American winner in 10 Opens held at Birkdale, following in the footsteps of Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson among others.

China's Li Haotong caused a sensation as he came from nowhere to finish third thanks to a seven-under-par final round of 63.

The 21-year-old finished on six-under for the championship and his is the best ever finish for a Chinese golfer in a major.

His round would have equalled the best ever in a major had Branden Grace of South Africa not shot 62 on Saturday.

"It's kind of a dream come true, you know," he said.

Rory McIlroy, the 2014 champion, finished with a 67 to share fourth on five-under with Spain's Rafael Cabrera-Bello.

Last year's winner Henrik Stenson ended on three-under but his playing partner, world number one Dustin Johnson, shot 77 and finished way down on four over par.
Two young elephants washed out to sea were saved from drowning on Sunday by the Sri Lankan navy in the second such incident off the island in as many weeks.

The navy said the pair of wild elephants were brought ashore after a 'mammoth effort' involving navy divers, ropes and a flotilla of boats to tow them back to shallow waters.

Photos showed the elephants in distress, barely keeping their trunks above water in the deep seas about 0.6 miles (one kilometre) off the coast of Sri Lanka.

Scroll down for video

Two wild elephants were saved from drowning by the Sri Lankan Navy on Sunday after drifting out to sea

The Sri Lankan Navy said a pair of wild elephants were brought ashore after a 'mammoth effort' involving navy divers, ropes and a flotilla of boats to tow them back to shallow waters on Sunday

'Having safely guided the two elephants to the shore, they were subsequently released to the Foul Point jungle (in Trincomalee district),' the navy said in a statement.

'They were extremely lucky to have been spotted by a patrol craft which called in several other boats to help with the rescue.'

The Navy worked with the Trincomalee Wildlife Department in the rescue.

The elephants were brought to shore unharmed and later released in the Foul Point forest.

Two weeks ago, the navy mounted a similar operation in the same region to save a lone elephant washed five miles (eight kilometres) off the Sri Lankan coast into the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.

Photos showed the elephants in distress, barely keeping their trunks above water in the deep seas about 0.6 miles (one kilometre) off the coast of Sri Lanka

Navy officials say the animals were likely swept out while crossing shallow lagoons in the region. It's the second incident in two weeks in Sri Lanka

The rescue, which took 12 hours was hailed as a 'miraculous escape' for the giant mammal.

Navy officials say the animals were likely swept out while crossing shallow lagoons in the region.

They are not the only wildlife to encounter trouble in the biodiverse island.

In May, the navy and local residents saved a pod of 20 pilot whales that became stranded in Trincomalee, a natural harbour that is popular for whale watching.

The waters around Trincomalee, which were used by Allied forces as a staging post during World War II, have a high concentration of blue and sperm whales, while the surrounding jungles have herds of wild elephants.
The truck packed with suspected migrants -- eight of them dead -- were found was parked at this Walmart store in San Antonio

Nine suspected migrants were found dead Sunday after being packed inside an overheated truck discovered in a Walmart parking lot in Texas, and 30 others were hospitalized in what police said appeared to be a "horrific" human trafficking crime.

Seventeen of those taken to hospitals after the discovery in the early morning hours in San Antonio -- about a two hour drive from the Mexican border -- were in critical condition, suffering from heat stroke and dehydration, authorities said.

At least 39 people were in the trailer, including one person who was later found in a nearby wooded area, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

At least two were school-age children, Fire Chief Charles Hood said.

It was not immediately clear how many suspected migrants might have fled and were unaccounted for.

City police chief William McManus told CNN that the dead were all adult men. Authorities were not releasing the victims' names or nationalities until their families were notified.

Mexican officials were working with US authorities to identify the dead, the country's foreign ministry said.

McManus told a news conference that someone from the truck had approached a Walmart employee asking for water.

The employee brought water to the truck in the parking lot, and then called the police who "found eight people dead in the back of that trailer," the police chief said, calling it a "horrific tragedy."

"We're looking at a human trafficking crime," McManus said.

The truck driver had been arrested, he said.

Suspected human trafficking crime in Texas

Federal prosecutors said James Mathew Bradley Jr, 60, of Florida, was in custody and would be charged Monday morning in San Antonio.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed Sunday evening that the death toll had climbed to nine and called the case "a heartbreaking tragedy."

"Texas will continue to provide protection for the victims who have been robbed of their most basic rights, and bring down the full weight of the law for the perpetrators of this despicable crime," he said in a statement.

- 'Hot to the touch' -

People in the truck were "hot to the touch," Hood said. The air conditioner in the trailer was not working.

"For those people who survived, they took a beating," he told CNN.

"With heat stroke, you sometimes have neurological deficits that you're never going to be able to recover from."

Hood estimated the temperature in the truck could have reached 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius).

"If that truck would have been there overnight, there's no doubt that we would have lost all 38 of those people," Hood said.

- Happens 'all the time' -

The US Department of Homeland Security and immigration officials are assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.

"This is not an isolated incident... this happens all the time," McManus said.

"It happens late at night, under darkness because they don't want to be discovered."

The police chief said store security footage showed that some vehicles came to pick up some travelers who were on the truck and who had made it out alive.

It was not immediately clear how long the truck had been in the parking lot, and police were working to determine who owns it.

Tens of thousands of illegal migrants from Mexico and Central America attempt to make the treacherous trip into the United States each year.

In 2003, 19 would-be migrants died in an overheated truck while being taken from south Texas near the Mexican border to Houston.

President Donald Trump has pledged to build a security wall along America's border with Mexico in order to crack down on illegal immigration.

So far, the project has been stalled by reluctance in Congress to dedicate funding for the barrier, which could cost as much as $20 billion according to some estimates.

US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has been to Mexico twice to discuss immigration, human trafficking and the spiraling cross-border drugs trade.

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Thomas Homan said the incident "ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished."
General Khalifa Haftar (R), commander of the armed forces loyal to the internationally recognised Libyan government, shakes hands with the head of the UN backed Libyan Presidential Council, Fayez al-Sarraj, in the eastern town of al-Marj in 2016

The heads of the opposing sides in Libya's crisis are planning to meet in Paris on Tuesday for talks to find a way out of the impasse, according to reports.

Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east of the oil-rich country, and the head of the UN-backed government Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj are expected to hold discussions under the auspices of French President Emmanuel Macron, according to France's JDD newspaper on Sunday.

The report said Ghassam Salame, the newly appointed UN envoy for Libya, had confirmed the meeting would take place.

Salame declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Macron's office did not confirm or deny that a meeting in the French capital was planned.

It would be the second talks between Sarraj and Haftar in the space of three months after they met in Abu Dhabi in May.

Sarraj this month laid out a new political roadmap for his violence-wracked country, including the scheduling of presidential and parliamentary elections in March 2018.

Political rivalry and fighting between militias have hampered Libya's recovery from the chaos that followed the 2011 uprising that toppled and longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, who was killed in the aftermath.

Sarraj's Government of National Accord has been struggling to assert its authority since it began work in Tripoli in March 2016. Haftar's rival administration based in the remote east has refused to recognise it.

Western intelligence services fear that Islamic State jihadists are capitalising on the chaos to set up bases in Libya as they are chased from their former strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

Libya has also become the main springboard for migrants seeking to reach the EU by sailing to Italy in often flimsy and overloaded boats.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Le Monde newspaper in June that Libya was "a priority" for the new French president and said there were "a security risk because of the trafficking of all kinds, including humans" from Libya.
Jordanian security forces stand guard outside the Israeli embassy in the residential Rabiyeh neighbourhood of the capital Amman on July 23, 2017

An Israeli security guard shot dead a Jordanian who attacked him with a screwdriver at the Israeli embassy compound in Amman, while a second Jordanian was accidentally killed, officials and a security source said.

The incident on Sunday night came with tensions high over new Israeli security measures at a highly sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, but it was not clear if there was any link.

The Jordanian had come to an apartment in an annex building at the Israeli embassy, to install furniture and stabbed the security guard in the back with the screwdriver, Israel's foreign ministry said.

The guard then responded by shooting dead the Jordanian worker, while the apartment owner who was there at the time was wounded and later died from his injuries, according to the foreign ministry and a security source.

The security guard was lightly wounded, the foreign ministry statement said.

The security source in Amman had confirmed earlier that two Jordanians were killed in a shooting in the area of the embassy.

"The first Jordanian, 17-year-old Mohammed Jawawdeh, succumbed to his injuries at the scene. The second, Bashar Hamarneh, a doctor who was in the residential quarter of the embassy at the time of the incident... died of his injuries after midnight in hospital," the security source said.

The injured Israeli is "deputy director of security at the Israeli embassy and is still receiving treatment in hospital", the source added.

Jordanian police said in a statement they were "informed late evening (Sunday) of a shooting at a residential building inside the compound of the Israeli embassy".

Police deployed to the scene and surrounded the area, the statement said, adding that the two Jordanians had gone into the building to carry out "carpentry work".

An investigation into the shooting was still underway, the police said.

Jordanian security forces deployed in the streets around the embassy when the incident occurred.

Israel and Jordan are bound by a 1994 peace treaty, but tensions have been high in recent days after Israel put in place security measures at a highly sensitive holy site in annexed east Jerusalem.

Israel installed metal detectors at entrances to the site following an attack nearby that killed two policemen.

Palestinians view the move as Israel asserting further control over the Haram al-Sharif mosque compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount.

On Friday, thousands of Jordanians took to the streets of Amman after the weekly prayer to denounce the Israeli measures at the holy compound, which includes Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

Jordan is the official custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

A crowd estimated at more than 8,000 turned out for a demonstration called by Islamist movements and leftist parties.

Israel shut off the mosque compound on July 14 after Arab Israelis attacked and killed two police officers nearby.

It reopened it on July 16, but with the metal detectors in place, stoking Palestinian anger.

Violence has since flared between Israeli security forces and Palestinians who are demanding that Israel remove the metal detectors.

On Friday, a Palestinian also stabbed three Israelis to death inside their home in a settlement in the occupied West Bank.
Iranian Parliament speaker Ali Larijani underlined the importance of preserving Iraqi unity "because if it wasn't for the emergence of political differences, the (Islamic State group) would not have been able to penetrate there"

Iran and Iraq on Sunday signed deals aimed at boosting military cooperation during a visit by Baghdad's Defence Minister Irfan al-Hayali to Tehran.

In a memorandum of understanding signed by Hayali and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Dehghan, the neighbours agreed on a "wide range of military and defence cooperation" including the "fight against terrorism and extremism," state news agency IRNA reported.

Hayali, who was leading a military delegation, also met separately with parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

Larijani and Shamkhani emphasised the importance of "unity".

"Iran supports the unity of all groups and ethnicities in Iraq," the state broadcaster's website quoted Larijani as telling Hayali.

Larijani also underlined the importance of preserving Iraqi unity "because if it wasn't for the emergence of political differences, the (Islamic State group) would not have been able to penetrate there".

The Iraqi minister acknowledged Iran's help in the fight against IS and also stressed the importance of unity.

Iraq's Kurdistan region has announced it will hold an independence referendum in September.

"We will not let any political side disintegrate Iraq," Hayali said.

In his talks with Hayali, Shamkhani warned that "secessionist approaches can become a platform... to prepare the ground for insecurity and instability".

Tehran has been a key supporter of Baghdad in its fight against IS and has provided Iraq with financial and military help.

Iran has its own Kurdish population along its borders with Iraq and Turkey, and does not want to see Iraq's Kurdish region become an independent state.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. John McCain is telling his best friend in the Senate to keep it together as he grapples with brain cancer.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham says McCain called him three times on Thursday about immigration legislation. Graham says McCain "is yelling at me to buck up so I'm gonna buck up."

McCain's glioblastoma diagnosis has devastated his Senate colleagues. But he's told them he's not gone yet.

FILE - In this Feb. 15, 2000, file photo photo, then-Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., responds to a question during the Republican presidential debate sponsored by the South Carolina Business and Industry Political Education Committee, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Eric Draper, Pool)

The resilience is classic McCain, the Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war turned congressman and senator. He twice ran for president, losing a GOP primary to George W. Bush and a general election to Barack Obama. Still a force in Congress, the 80-year-old six-term Arizona Republican is chairman of the powerful Armed Services Committee.

The grave medical diagnosis hit McCain just as he was settling into the latest notable role in his storied career, emerging as a voice for what some Republicans feel is a party lost in the Trump era. He's lambasted President Donald Trump as a defamer of military personnel, recoiled from Trump's willingness to cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and rejected the president's self-described boorishness toward women.

After audio surfaced in October of Trump talking about groping women, McCain broke with the candidate and said he'd write in Graham's name on Election Day. When Trump won, McCain called for a special committee to investigate Russian meddling in the election. He has lamented that the Russia issue 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."

McCain says he received sensitive information last year and turned it over to the FBI, an apparent reference to an unsubstantiated report that Russia had compromising personal and financial information about Trump.

On Thursday, from his home in Arizona, McCain said the administration would be "playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin" if, as The Washington Post reported, Trump was ending a program to back the Syrian opposition.

"I think John is a force that is unique to him. He has done things that most people could not do," said Graham. "Going forward he's excited, quite frankly, about getting a second chance to finish things that have been stuck."

Yet for all of his confrontational style, McCain has voted with Trump most of the time. He backed most of the president's Cabinet nominees and sided with Trump against several Obama-era regulations.

Longtime colleagues, even those McCain has called names, say he developed his fearlessness as a Navy aviator held as a prisoner for more than five years in Vietnam. Resilience, they say, has fueled his long Senate career and helped him overcome two failed presidential campaigns. For some, McCain has become the moral voice of the Republican Party, whose leaders have not always said out loud what they really think about Trump.

"He's not afraid of anybody or anything, clearly," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican at whom McCain shouted, "F--- you!" in 2007. "He's unique, to say the least."

"He does everything to make sure he's heard," said GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, whom McCain has called "a f------ jerk." ''When he disagrees with people he's going to tell them he disagrees."

He's been known to apologize after some of his more colorful outbursts.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said pushing back against the administration only rarely requires a public challenge of the president.

"But I think John McCain figured out that his personality and his history let him do that," Blunt said. "That irascibility helps keep everybody else moving in the right direction."

McCain's relationship with Trump has long been testy, dating back at least to Trump's declaration two years ago that McCain was not a war hero by virtue of having been captured. McCain said Trump owed other veterans an apology.

The Arizona senator emerged early in the Trump administration as the new president's nemesis, breaking with Trump on his immigration order, warning him against any rapprochement with Moscow, lecturing him on the illegality of torture and supplying only a lukewarm endorsement of Rex Tillerson, Trump's choice for secretary of state.

"Clearly, in the Republican Party he has been completely unafraid to tell his own party when he thinks they're wrong," said McCain friend Steve Duprey.

McCain has long given policy-watchers whiplash.

He snarled about the Obama administration's handling of the deadly assault in Benghazi, Libya, and ripped into former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel over the Iraq war.

But he also has tried to revive his past bipartisan effort on immigration, at one point reaching out to Obama, the man who beat him for the presidency.

On Thursday, McCain warned his colleagues, and Trump, not to get too comfortable in his absence.

He tweeted from afar: "I'll be back soon, so stand-by!"

___

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Astrid Galvan and Steve Peoples contributed to this report.

___

Follow Kellman at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2008, file photo, then-Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., departs a rally in a hanger at Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon Township, Pa. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2008, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., talks on the phone outside a Republican Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 12, 2000, file photo, recovering from skin cancer surgery, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., right, talks with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texsd, on Capitol Hill during the Senate Commerce Committee on the Firestone tire recall. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 15, 2004, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks during his senatorial debate against democratic challenger Stuart Starkey in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the ongoing investigations into Russia meddling in the 2016 election (all times EDT):

7:35 p.m.

The Washington Post reports that the Russian ambassador to the U.S. has said he discussed election-related issues with Sen. Jeff Sessions when the two men met during the 2016 presidential race.

FILE - In this July 11, 2017, file photo, Donald Trump Jr. is interviewed by host Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel television program, in New York. President Donald Trump's eldest son and his former campaign chairman are agreeing to discuss being privately interviewed by a Senate committee investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The Post is citing anonymous U.S. officials who described U.S. intelligence intercepts of Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's descriptions of his meetings with Sessions.

Sessions was then a foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump. The former Alabama senator now serves as the Trump administration's attorney general.

Sessions failed to disclose the meetings with Kislyak during his confirmation hearing. He later said he did not recall discussing the Trump campaign with Kislyak.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores says Sessions stands by his previous assertion that he never had conversations with Russian officials about any type of interference with the election.

___

7:30 p.m.

The House intelligence committee says it will interview the son-in-law of President Donald Trump as part of its ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The committee says the meeting with Jared Kushner will take place Tuesday. Kushner is also scheduled to meet privately one day earlier with the Senate intelligence committee.

Kushner was among the participants at a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian-American lawyer. Emails released last week show that Donald Trump Jr. took the meeting with the expectation of receiving damaging information about his father's opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Separately Friday, the Senate Judiciary Committee says it is in talks with Trump Jr. and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort about private interviews ahead of a committee hearing.

___

6:55 p.m.

President Donald Trump's eldest son and his former campaign chairman are agreeing to discuss being privately interviewed by a Senate committee investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

Senate Judiciary committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, says Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort are in talks about the interviews as well as the possibility of turning over documents. Grassley says he will not force the men to testify publicly next week.

Both men face questions about attending a Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016. Trump Jr. was told the lawyer had damaging information that could be used against Democrat Hillary Clinton. The meeting was also described to Trump Jr. as part of a Russian government effort to help Trump's campaign.

___

3:55 p.m.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is in talks with representatives of Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort about testifying at a hearing next week.

That's according to committee chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican.

The committee has invited Trump Jr. and Manafort, the one-time chairman of the Trump campaign, to a Wednesday hearing on a law governing the registration of foreign lobbyists.

Grassley's office says he and the committee's top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California, want "voluntary cooperation" but have not ruled out subpoenas to force participation in the hearing.

Both Trump Jr. and Manafort attended a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian-American lawyer. In agreeing to the meeting, Trump's oldest son was told he'd be presented with damaging information on his father's opponent, Hillary Clinton.

___

2:50 p.m.

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice has met with staff on the Senate Intelligence Committee as the panel probes Russian interference in the U.S. election.

A spokeswoman for Rice confirmed that the closed-door meeting happened Friday. Erin Pelton says Rice was pleased to cooperate with the investigation "given its extraordinary national significance."

In addition to Rice, the panel is interviewing several members of former President Barack Obama's administration this week. Panel staff met with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Monday and former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump has said Rice may have committed a crime when she asked intelligence analysts to disclose the name of a Trump associate mentioned in an intelligence report. Rice has said she did nothing improper.

___

8:30 a.m.

White House aide Kellyanne Conway says it's only fair to expose any potential conflicts of interest of investigators helping Robert Mueller examine Russia's interference in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.

Conway tells Fox News' "Fox & Friends" that members of Mueller's team have contributed to Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the past. She says: "It's relevant that people know what the motivations are. That is not an attack on the team. That is what's fair is fair."

This comes as Mueller's probe into Russia's election meddling appears likely to include some of the Trump family's business ties.

On Friday, Conway said Americans are interested in the financial details of Mueller's staff: "Let's at least have the transparency and accountability speak for itself."

___

3:15 a.m.

President Donald Trump's legal team is evaluating potential conflicts of interest among members of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team.

That's according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The revelation comes as Mueller's probe into Russia's election meddling appears likely to include some of the Trump family's business ties. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow tells The Associated Press Thursday that the lawyers "will consistently evaluate the issue of conflicts and raise them in the appropriate venue."

The people with knowledge of the matter insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

FILE - In this July 17, 2016 file photo, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort talks to reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland as Rick Gates listens at back left. President Donald Trump's eldest son and his former campaign chairman are agreeing to discuss being privately interviewed by a Senate committee investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
MARSEILLE, France (AP) - Annemiek van Vleuten has won La Course after maintaining her lead in the final pursuit stage in Marseille.

The Dutch rider had won the first leg of the women's race earlier this week after launching an attack on the climb to the Col d'Izoard pass in the Alps and soloing to victory.

On Saturday, Van Vleuten won a pursuit race on the same course of the time trial of the Tour de France, holding off Elizabeth Deignan and Elisa Longo Borghini.

Van Vleuten sustained three small fractures to her spine in a crash during the women's Olympic road race last year in Rio de Janeiro.
THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) - The ship hadn't yet left Vancouver for the Arctic Circle's Northwest Passage when the icebreaking began - with a round of "introduce yourself to the others."

We'd already met a few crew members of the MSV Nordica icebreaker the day before, including Capt. Jyri Viljanen, a master mariner from Finland who has been going to sea for 39 years.

This month's expedition through the Northwest Passage, with an Associated Press team and international researchers aboard, is Viljanen's first transit through the passage.

Researcher Daria Gritsenko, 30, of the University of Helsinki, sits for a portrait in her cabin aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as the ship sails north in the Bering Sea toward the Arctic, Thursday, July 13, 2017. She is hoping to learn more about the Northwest Passage to aid her work in energy development in the Arctic. Although this will be her first transit through the passage, she has been to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic. "I love the Arctic. It's such a powerful nature that I felt so little in comparison," she said. "It makes you realize how much of dust you are on this planet. It's very intimidating but I felt very calm inside." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Helping guide the ship safely through the treacherous waters is ice navigator Capt. David "Duke" Snider, a Canadian Coast Guard veteran with 35 years at sea and current president of The Nautical Institute for maritime professionals.

Others aboard include Cmdr. Bill Woityra, the ice operations division chief for the U.S. Coast Guard; marine consultant Nigel Greenwood, a retired Canadian admiral in charge of maritime forces in the Pacific; and Capt. Victor Gronmyr, a serving officer in the Canadian Coast Guard.

Two members of Canada's indigenous Inuit community, Maatiusi Manning and David Kullualik, are on board to gain "ship time" as part of their merchant marine training. Manning and Kullualik hope eventually to work on an Inuit-owned fishing ship off Canada's northeast coast.

Six scientists are accompanying the mission. Some, such as Daria Gritsenko of the University of Helsinki, are there to document the state of the ice and marine infrastructure along the Northwest Passage. Others, such as Scott Joblin of the Australian National University, will examine the legal and political issues arising from Arctic exploration and development.

The Nordica also has an experienced field biologist, Paula van Weller, on board. Van Weller is documenting wildlife encounters, including any sightings of polar bears, whales or seals.

___

Follow the team of AP journalists as they travel through the Arctic Circle's fabled Northwest Passage: https://www.apnews.com/tag/NewArctic

Deck repairman Mika Koponen, 41, sits for a portrait aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as the ship sails the Amundsen Gulf in the Arctic, Wednesday, July 19, 2017. Koponen, who is making his first traverse through the Northwest Passage, started sailing at the age of 15 after following in his brother's footsteps. "He was my idol. He sent me postcards from everywhere in the world," said Koponen of his brother who passed away five years ago. "After he became sick, I became his idol because he couldn't sail anymore. Now I'm taking these amazing adventures and I keep the tradition of the postcards. I think he'd be proud." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

First engineer Kristian Autio, 44, sits for a portrait in the engine room of the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as it sails in the North Pacific Ocean toward the Bering Strait, Sunday, July 9, 2017. Autio has worked aboard Finnish icebreakers since 2002 and this will be his first time crossing the Arctic's Northwest Passage. Finland has a long history of building icebreakers and has built 60 percent of the world's fleet. "We take care of the ship as if it's our own," said Autio. "We [Finns] are very proud of our icebreakers." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Master Mariner Jyri Viljanen, 56, captain of the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica stands for a portrait in the ship's bridge as it sails north in the Bering Sea toward the Arctic, Thursday, July 13, 2017. Viljanen has been going to sea for 39 years and this will be his first transit through the Arctic's Northwest Passage. "It's once a lifetime," said Viljanen. "The biggest risk is these are very remote areas so if anything happens it's very difficult to get any help or rescue or anything." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Trainee Maatiusi Manning, 33, of Cape Dorset, Nunavut, in Canada's northern territories, sits for a portrait on his bunk while resting from sea sickness aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as sails in the North Pacific Ocean toward the Bering Strait, Monday, July 10, 2017. "I knew I was going to get sea sick at some point," said the father of two who is trying his hand at ship work after working a series of labor jobs back home. "I'm trying to figure out if it's for me but it's a trip of a lifetime. It's very special. You have to be a little crazy to be on a trip like this." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Engine repairman Jari Jarvinen, 58, sits for a portrait in the mess hall after finishing a night shift aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as it sails in the North Pacific Ocean toward the Bering Strait, Tuesday, July 11, 2017. Jarvinen started working on boats over 30 years ago. "I've been there before. For me it's normal work," said Jarvinen of the Northwest Passage. "I like it though. Not everyday is the same. You look outside the window and it's always a different place." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Field biologist Paula von Weller, 45, of Portland, Ore., stands for a portrait aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as it sails in the North Pacific Ocean toward the Bering Strait, Tuesday, July 11, 2017. "Few people in the world get to sail the Northwest Passage," said von Weller, who will be marking her second passage after traveling through with another Finnish icebreaker in 2015. She is observing wildlife in the Arctic and hopes this time to see the elusive narwhal, the unicorn of the sea. "I've been fascinated with the Arctic. It is very special to me. I think it's just this mythical place." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Polar maritime lawyer Scott Joblin, 30, sits for a portrait aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as it sails north in the Bering Sea toward the Arctic, Wednesday, July 12, 2017. "It's a chance to ground my research in real world context," said Joblin who is pursuing his doctorate in international law at Australian National University. "I don't think the size or the scale [of the Arctic] is anything you can comprehend. The trip so far contextualizes how hard it is to get there," said Joblin of the roughly nine days the ship will take to reach the Arctic Circle from its departure in Vancouver. "It's really the frontier as it exists." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Trainee David Kullualik, 24, of Iqaluit, Nunavut, in Canada's northern territories, stands for a portrait on a deck aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as the ship sails north in the Bering Sea toward the Arctic, Wednesday, July 12, 2017. Kullualik is earning sea days toward his training and hopes of being a captain some day. "Our instructor said it was a trip of a lifetime. I said I don't know about that, I grew up around them [polar bears] and the ice is around us nine months of the year," said Kullualik. "I have three kids and I'm just trying to put food on the table. I think of them all the time." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Electrician Kaija Peuhkuri, 42, stands for a portrait in the machine shop of the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as the ship sails north in the Bering Sea toward the Arctic, Wednesday, July 12, 2017. Peuhkuri started as a cook on ships over 20 years ago before going back to school and becoming an electrician on icebreakers in 2009. Growing up on a farm working on machines, she prefers working away at sea as opposed to commuting to a job at home. "I don't want to do this every morning," she said of having to drive to work. "Here, I come downstairs every morning, have a cup of coffee and I'm at work." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Ice navigator, Capt. David "Duke" Snider, 60, a Canadian Coast Guard veteran with 35 years at sea, sits for a portrait aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica next to a satellite image of ice conditions along the Northwest Passage as the ship sails the Chukchi Sea into the Arctic, Saturday, July 15, 2017. Snider, who is aboard to help guide the ship safely through the ice, has sailed into the Arctic hundreds of times and completed the entire passage twice. "Maneuvering a ship in ice takes an entirely different set of skills. You have to understand how ice moves and grows," said Snider. "It's a dance, a slow dance. That's what it's all about, getting the ship through without stepping on her toes." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
SOUTHPORT, England (AP) - A hole-by-hole look at the 62 that Branden Grace shot Saturday in the British Open at Royal Birkdale.

No. 1, 445 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. Gap wedge from 127 yards to 16 feet. One putt. Birdie.

No. 2, 427 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. Gap wedge from 130 yards. Two putts. Par.

No. 3, 460 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. 9-iron from 158 yards to 9 feet. Two putts. Par.

No. 4, 182 yards, par 3: 8-iron to 35 feet. One putt. Birdie.

No. 5, 310 yards, par 4: Driver to 25 feet away on the green. Two putts. Birdie.

No. 6, 489 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. 3-iron from 218 yards onto the green. Two putts. Par.

No. 7, 156 yards, par 3: 9-iron to 14 feet. Two putts. Par.

No. 8, 451 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. 9-iron from 188 yards to 25 feet. One putt. Birdie.

No. 9, 420 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. Gap wedge from 129 yards to 12 feet. One putt. Birdie.

No. 10, 391 yards, par 4: 5-iron off the tee. 9-iron from 161 yards to just short of the green. Two putts. Par.

No. 11, 434 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. 7-iron from 173 yards to the green. Two putts. Par.

No. 12, 185 yards, par 3: 6-iron to 15 feet. Two putts. Par.

No. 13, 507 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. 8-iron from 180 yards to 11 feet. Two putts. Par.

No. 14, 168 yards, par 3: 9-iron to 36 feet. One putt. Birdie.

No. 15, 536 yards, par 5: Driver off the tee. 2-iron from 240 yards missed the green to the left. Chip to 7 feet. Two putts. Par.

No. 16, 433 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. 9-iron from 142 yards to 28 feet. One putt. Birdie.

No. 17, 563 yards, par 5: Driver off the tee. 3-iron from 239 yards to 26 feet. Two putts. Birdie.

No. 18, 470 yards, par 4: Driver off the tee. Pitching wedge just over the green. Two putts from 60 feet. Par.
SAN DIEGO (AP) - When Steven Spielberg first read the book "Ready Player One," which is about a dystopian future where humans take refuge in a virtual reality world, he had one thought: "They're going to need a younger director."

But Spielberg decided to take on the challenge anyway, spending two and a half years bringing author Ernest Cline's vision to life. The director unveiled a new action- and nostalgia-packed trailer for the film Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con to much excitement.

The 6,500-person Hall H crowd gave the director a standing ovation and cheered heartily when the first images of "the stacks" appeared showing a bleak vision of the housing situation in Columbus, Ohio, in 2045. Tye Sheridan stars as the lead character Wade Owen Watts, who longs to have been born in the 1980s.

Steven Spielberg, left, greets T. J. Miller at the Warner Bros. "Ready Player One" panel on day three of Comic-Con International on Saturday, July 22, 2017, in San Diego. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

For Spielberg, the film was a chance to both go back to his heyday of filmmaking while also gazing into the future. Eagle-eyed viewers spotted references to everything from "Tron" to "The Iron Giant" in the footage.

"It was like the most amazing flash-forward and flash-back at the same time," Spielberg said.

For Cline, having Spielberg directing the adaptation of his book was like closing a circle. He grew up on Spielberg's films, which informed how he evolved as a writer.

"They are woven into the fabric of my DNA," Cline said. "I learned how to be a storyteller because of this man."

He brought his DeLorean to his first meeting with the director in honor of "Back to the Future," which he had Spielberg autograph, Cline said.

Co-star T.J. Miller went one step further in his Spielberg fandom, sporting "Back to the Future" inspired sneakers, and "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" inspired red hoodie and T-shirt.

Spielberg, who simply smiled at his gushing actors and collaborators, said that he was really proud of the footage, which gives "a slight taste of things to come."

"Ready Player One" opens in March 2018.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

Steven Spielberg greets the audience as he walks on stage at the Warner Bros. "Ready Player One" panel on day three of Comic-Con International on Saturday, July 22, 2017, in San Diego. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Steven Spielberg speaks at the Warner Bros. "Ready Player One" panel on day three of Comic-Con International on Saturday, July 22, 2017, in San Diego. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo says police should shoot drug traffickers who resist arrest because of a narcotics crisis facing the country.

Presidential spokesman Johan Budi said Sunday that Jokowi made the comments at a recent meeting of an Indonesian political party.

"We have to take firm action. If drug dealers who operate in Indonesia fight back when arrested, officers can shoot them, because we are in a narcotics emergency position now," Jokowi said, according to his spokesman.

Local media reported last week that police shot dead a Taiwanese man for resisting arrest during a seizure of 1 ton of crystal methamphetamine, Indonesia's largest-ever seizure of the drug.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte launched an anti-drug crusade last year in which thousands of alleged drug dealers and users have been killed, often in circumstances akin to lawless summary executions. The crackdown has been condemned by rights groups and governments around the world.

Indonesia has tough anti-drug laws and traffickers can receive the death penalty. Four people, one Indonesian and three Nigerians, were executed by firing squad last year, and dozens are on death row for trafficking.

Budi said Jokowi's comment is not a shoot to kill order and police actions should be measured and in accordance with the law.

It's a message to all Indonesians to show the commitment of the government to fighting narcotics, he said.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - An exiled Palestinian politician who quietly negotiated a power-sharing deal for Gaza with former arch foe Hamas discussed the details for the first time in an interview, saying he expects it to lead to a swift opening of the blockaded territory's border with Egypt and an easing of crippling power outages.

The Egypt-Gaza border crossing is expected to open by late August and funding has been secured for a $100 million power plant, Mohammed Dahlan, a former Gaza security chief, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from the United Arab Emirates.

Dahlan said his chemistry with Gaza's newly elected Hamas chief, Yehiyeh Sinwar, helped forge the once unthinkable alliance. The two grew up in the tough streets of southern Gaza's Khan Younis refugee camp before joining rival camps, the Islamic militant Hamas and the mainstream Fatah movement, respectively.

File - In this Jan. 3, 2011 file photo, then Palestinian Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan gestures as he speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The exiled Palestinian politician who quietly negotiated a power-sharing deal for Gaza with former arch foe Hamas discussed the details for the first time in an interview, saying he expects the understandings to lead to a swift opening of the blockaded territory's border with Egypt and ease crippling power shortages. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)

"We both realized it's time to find a way out" for Gaza, Dahlan, 55, said in an hour-long conversation Saturday. He said both sides had learned lessons from the destructive rivalries of the past.

The deal, backed by Egypt and the UAE, is still in the early stages of implementation. There are no guarantees of success, but all involved seem to benefit.

It enables Egypt to contain Hamas, the militants on its doorstep, through new security arrangements. Dahlan has a chance to return to Palestinian politics. And cash-strapped Hamas can prolong its rule through the promised border opening.

If it goes ahead, the deal could deliver a crushing blow to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who presides over autonomous enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Abbas has a toxic relationship with Hamas, which seized Gaza from him in 2007, and with Dahlan, a former top aide he sent packing in 2010. A Hamas-Dahlan alliance would further sideline the 82-year-old Western-backed Abbas and undercut his claim that he represents all Palestinians.

The objectives of the Dahlan-Hamas deal - ending the border blockade, reviving Gaza's battered economy - could also weaken Palestinian statehood aspirations by creating a "mini-state" in Gaza.

For more than two decades, Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, have unsuccessfully sought to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in negotiations with Israel. Israel, which captured those territories in the 1967 Mideast war, withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but keeps a tight grip on the rest.

The territories sit on opposite sides of Israel which has deepened the geographic separation with strict travel bans.

Dahlan dismissed concerns that his deal with Hamas will gradually turn Gaza into a separate entity.

"We are patriots, not separatists," he said, adding that he would do everything in his power to prevent a further drifting apart of the Palestinian territories.

The multi-millionaire with far-flung business interests in the region and close ties to leaders of Egypt and the UAE said he no longer aspires to replace Abbas.

"I have no ambitions to be president," he said. "Maybe that was the case when I was younger, but now I see the situation. ... Seventy percent of the land is in the hands of the Israelis, and they have no intentions to give us a state."

Dahlan said the new deal is meant to revive Palestinian political institutions that have been paralyzed since the 2007 split between Hamas and Fatah. This would include a new attempt to form a national unity government and revive parliament.

Dahlan said Abbas is welcome to lead such efforts, but that "we are not going to wait for him forever" to make a move.

Previous Abbas-led efforts to form a unity government with Hamas backing have failed over the years, with both sides ultimately refusing to give up power in their respective territories. In recent weeks, Abbas took a different approach, stepping up financial pressure on Gaza to force Hamas to cede ground there.

Azzam al-Ahmed, an Abbas aide who negotiated with Hamas in the past, said Sunday that the Dahlan-Hamas understandings "are going nowhere."

He said Abbas' Palestinian Authority supports Gaza with $1.2 billion every year, covering wages of ex-loyalists, social welfare payments and electricity. He suggested Dahlan and Hamas would be unable to cover such sums.

Al-Ahmed also said Egypt assured Abbas "that they are not going to help any new entity in Gaza."

However, the lengthy negotiations between Dahlan's representatives and a Hamas team in Cairo last month would not have been possible without Egypt's blessing, participants said.

Dahlan said meeting the needs of Gaza, a crowded sliver of land on the Mediterranean with 2 million people, presents huge challenges.

He said he has raised funds to refurbish Gaza's gate to the world, the Rafah crossing with Egypt, and that he received Egyptian assurances that the crossing will open by the end of August.

"Everyone who needs to travel will be able to travel," he said.

Over the past decade, Rafah only opened sporadically because of the blockade, and thousands of Gazans are currently on waiting lists, hoping to travel abroad for study, work or medical care.

The UAE has promised $100 million for a power plant that would be built on the Egyptian side of the border, Dahlan said. Once the exact location is chosen, construction would take 18 months, he said.

In recent years, Gazans have endured blockade-linked rolling power cuts, most recently of as long as 20 hours a day. Egypt has been sending fuel to Gaza's existing power plant in recent weeks, as part of the understandings.

Hamas officials describing the deal have said their group will remain in charge of security in Gaza.

Dahlan is to raise money and advocate for Gaza abroad.

He hasn't been back to Gaza since the Hamas takeover in 2007.

In the months preceding the takeover, he had led Fatah forces in Gaza street battles with Hamas. Grievances of the families of people from both sides killed in the fighting - about 700, according to Dahlan - still haven't been addressed.

Disbursements to the families from a multi-million-dollar UAE-backed compensation fund are to begin soon, in an attempt to buy calm that is in line with tribal traditions.

Several dozen of Dahlan's lieutenants and key supporters are expected to return from exile as part of the arrangements.

Dahlan said he will remain in exile.

"It's better for Gaza that I stay in the diaspora and approach everyone who can extend a helping hand to Gaza," he said.

Supporters hold a photo of exiled former Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan during a protest against metal detectors that Israel has installed at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, in Gaza City, Thursday, July 20, 2017. A Gaza power-sharing deal between Dahlan and Hamas, two former arch foes, is slowly taking shape on the ground and could lead to big changes in the Hamas-ruled territory, including an easing of a decade-long border blockade. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

FILE - In this Aug. 4, 2009 file photo, then Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan listens to a speech during a Fatah conference in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. The exiled Palestinian politician who quietly negotiated a power-sharing deal for Gaza with former arch foe Hamas discussed the details for the first time in an interview, saying he expects the understandings to lead to a swift opening of the blockaded territory's border with Egypt and ease crippling power shortages. (AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill, File)

Supporters of exiled former Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan, flash the victory sign while carrying a banner with his picture, during a protest against metal detectors that Israel has installed at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, in Gaza City, Thursday, July 20, 2017. A Gaza power-sharing deal between Dahlan and Hamas, two former arch foes, is slowly taking shape on the ground and could lead to big changes in the Hamas-ruled territory, including an easing of a decade-long border blockade. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
New Delhi: On Saturday the Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As per the reports, PM Modi recalled the successful visit of Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore, to India in October 2016. On the successful roll-out of GST Shanmugaratnam congratulated the Prime Minister.

The two leaders also discussed the potential for bilateral collaboration in banking, digital finance, tourism, and innovation.

Also Read:

PM Modi holds farewell dinner for President Pranab Mukherjee

Boy killed by leopard in UP village

Soldier killed in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - Zambian media say 93-year-old Kenneth Kaunda, the country's independence leader and its former longtime president, has left a hospital after several days of treatment.

State broadcaster ZNBC reports that Kaunda went home Saturday from the hospital in Lusaka, the Zambian capital. He will return at an undisclosed time for previously scheduled tests.

ZNBC had earlier quoted the health minister as saying Kaunda had been suffering from "minor complaints."

FILE -- In this Jan. 25, 2015 file photo former Zambian president, Kenneth Kaunda, attends the inauguration ceremony of the Patriotic Front's Edgar Lungu, in Lusaka. Zambian media say 93-year-old Kaunda, the country's independence leader and former longtime president, has left a hospital after several days of treatment. State broadcaster ZNBC reports that Kaunda went home Saturday, July 22, 2017 from the hospital in Lusaka, the Zambian capital. He will return at an undisclosed time for previously scheduled tests. (AP Photo/Moses Mwape, File)

Kaunda led Zambia from independence from Britain in 1964 until 1991. Zambia was a one-party state for most of that time, although Kaunda eventually yielded to pressure and held a multi-party vote. He peacefully left office when he lost.

Zambia's democratic record after Kaunda has been widely praised but the recent jailing of an opposition leader and increased police powers are raising concerns.
SOUTHPORT, England (AP) - Jordan Spieth faced more blustery conditions at Royal Birkdale as he set out to try to win the third leg of the career Grand Slam at the British Open.

Spieth had a three-shot lead over Matt Kuchar, who is playing in the final group of a major for the first time.

Xander Schauffele put together a 65 on Sunday morning, the best round of the early starters. The wind was expected to increase, though nothing like the second round.

A groundsman prepares the 18th green ahead of the final round of the British Open Golf Championship, at Royal Birkdale, Southport, England, Sunday July 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

Kuchar was the only player within five shots of Spieth.

A record crowd has taken it all in. The R&A says this is the highest attendance for a British Open in England, topping the 230,000 mark set at Royal Liverpool when Tiger Woods won in 2006.
LONDON (AP) - Chelsea apologized to China on Sunday for social media comments by Brazilian player Kenedy which it accepted "caused great offense and hurt the feelings" of the country during the Premier League champions' pre-season tour.

The 21-year-old Kenedy has been "strongly reprimanded and disciplined" for the Instagram posts, Chelsea said. The since-deleted messages featured a profanity relating to China and a message mocking a security guard he photographed.

"Even though he quickly deleted the messages and apologized, and the club also apologized via our Chinese social media channels, the damage had already been done," the London club said. "Chelsea Football Club once again solemnly and sincerely apologizes.

CAPTION CORRECTS THE NAME - Arsenal's Mohamed El Neny, left, tackles Chelsea's Kenedy during the second half of their friendly soccer match in Beijing, Saturday, July 22, 2017. Chelsea beat Arsenal 3-0. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

"Kenedy's actions were a mistake that he will learn greatly from. His behavior does not represent the entire team and does not align with the club's high expectations and strict requirements of its young players."

The messages were posted ahead of Chelsea's 3-0 victory over Arsenal in a friendly on Saturday in Beijing where Kenedy was jeered.

"Everyone at Chelsea Football Club has the utmost respect and admiration for China and loves our Chinese fans," Chelsea said. "It is because of this that the negative impact we have seen over the last two days has left us shocked and saddened. Once again, we sincerely apologize for the hurt caused to our Chinese fans as well as to the Chinese people."

On the next leg of Chelsea's tour of Asia, Antonio Conte's side plays Bayern Munich and Inter Milan in Singapore.
Advertisement

The USS Constitution, the world's oldest commissioned warship still afloat, will return Sunday to Boston's waters - just one day after the Navy's newest vessel was rolled out.

The undocking of the 'Old Ironsides' will mark the end of restoration work that started two years ago, officials said. A celebration will be held at the USS Constitution Museum.

The wooden ship was launched in 1797 and earned its famous nickname notching victories in the War of 1812.

'The ship has been the cornerstone of the Navy for a long time,' said Robert Gerosa, the Constitution's commanding officer. 'To be a part of the ship is truly an honor.'

The USS Constitution, known as 'Old Ironsides,' the world's oldest commissioned warship, is seen on the docks just before it returns to the water near Boston on Sunday

The USS Constitution is seen sitting in dry dock in this photo from July 17 after a more then two-year long restoration

The wooden ship was launched in 1797 and earned its famous nickname notching victories in the War of 1812. It is pictured in the docks on Monday, July 17, 2017

The restorations extend the life of the nearly two-feet-thick vessel - the last remaining survivor of six ships created when President George Washington signed the Naval Armament Act - Margherita Desy, a historian at Naval History and Heritage Command Detachment Boston, said.

The ship enters dry dock about every 20 years for below-the-waterline repairs.

The most recent work included replacing 100 hull planks and installing 2,200 new copper sheets, 500 of which were signed by nearly 100,000 museum visitors, according to USS Constitution Museum President Anne Grimes Rand, who called the ship 'a wonderful symbol for our democracy.'

HOW DO THE USS CONSTITUTION AND USS GERALD FORD COMPARE? TOP SPEED Constitution: 13 knots Gerald Ford: 30 knots CREW Constitution: 450 Gerald Ford: 4,660 SERVICE YEAR Constitution: 1797 Gerald Ford: 2017 LENGTH Constitution: 204 feet Gerald Ford: 1,106 feet WIDTH Constitution: 44 feet Gerald Ford: 252 feet Advertisement

'It was meant to last for 10 or 20 years, and to have (the) ship here more than 200 years later, it needs constant care,' Rand said.

The Constitution entered the dock at the historic Charlestown Navy Yard on the night of May 18, 2015, and on Sunday - a day expected to have the highest tide of the summer - the dry dock at the navy yard will be flooded, and the ship will be lifted off the keel block that night.

When the height of the water at the dry dock equals the height of water at the Boston Harbor, the ship will be pulled out of the dock.

Once the vessel is refloated, it will be temporarily docked at a nearby pier to undergo more restoration work until September, when it will re-open for public tours.

The end of the restoration work comes just one day after the newest Navy vessel, the USS Gerald Ford was officially put into commission following a ceremony on Saturday.

The $12.9billion warship was in construction from 2009 and was due to be finished in September 2015.

The Navy has blamed the delays and budget overruns on the ship's advanced systems and technology, including electromagnetic launch systems for jets and drones that will replace steam catapults.

The warship also has a smaller island that sits farther back on the ship to make it quicker to refuel, re-arm and relaunch planes, and a nuclear power plant designed to allow cruising speeds of more than 30 knots and operation for 20 years without refueling.

The vessel completed sea trials in April but still will go through a battery of tests and workups at sea before becoming ready for deployment, work that is expected to cost nearly $780 million and take more than four years to complete, congressional auditors said this month.

Docked at Naval Station Norfolk, the USS Ford eventually will house about 2,600 sailors, 600 fewer than the previous generation of aircraft carriers. The Navy says that will save more than $4 billion over the ship's 50-year lifespan.

Bob Gerosa, the 74th Commander of USS Constitution stands beside the vessel while it sits in dry dock after a more then two year long restoration

THE HISTORY OF THE USS CONSTITUTION The USS Constitution was launched in September 1797 in response to the threat of Barbary Corsairs, pirates threatening shipping lanes off the coast of north Africa. It was one of six commissioned by President George Washington after the American Revolution as the United States' Continental Navy had been disbanded, leaving the nation without a credible sea power. So while it had hugely lucrative trade routes, it had nothing to protect it's ships from being plundered by pirates. The USS Constitution is seen in this undated painting The 44-gun frigate won all her engagements in her first two wars, the Quasi War with France (1798-1801) and the Barbary Wars (1801-1805). And during the War of 1812 with Great Britain, to the surprise of both the Americans and the British, she defeated four English warships, earning each of her three captains a congressional gold medal. The Constitution was under the command of Captain Issac Hull when it engaged the Guerriere off Nova Scotia on August 19, 1812. The young war was not going well for America, which had surrendered Detroit to the British with basically no resistance a week earlier. But the Guerriere proved no match for the Constitution, which was heavier and longer. The vessels blasted away at each other at close range, even colliding at one point, during the 35-minute battle. It wasn't the first naval win in what would be a divisive, expensive war, but it set off celebrations around the country. It has been a much-loved vessel ever since. It had impressive specifications of 1,576 tonnage, displacement of 2,2000 tons, a length of 204 feet, and mainmast height of 220 feet. Advertisement

The ship is scheduled to be refloated overnight Sunday July 23, 2017 and be docked back at its berth Monday morning

A group of people are seen standing below the now-restored ship, which is due to hit the water again on Sunday night

The USS Constitution is due to get back on the water just one day after the Navy's newest warship, the USS Gerald Ford, was celebrated with a ceremony

Once the vessel is refloated, it will be temporarily docked at a nearby pier to undergo more restoration work until September
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Crews contending with triple-digit temperatures slowed the spread of an aggressive wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes in a rural area of California near Yosemite National Park, officials said Sunday.

The blaze burning for a week has scorched just over 119 square miles (308 square kilometers) of dense brush and dead trees in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Many evacuated residents were allowed to return, but flames continue to threaten about 1,500 homes in Mariposa County.

The fire was 45 percent contained, but officials said it could take crews another two weeks to fully surround it.

This satellite imagery, posted Wednesday, July 19, 2017 on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website, shows a large plume of smoke spreading hundreds of miles east from the Ditwiler fire, near Yosemite National Park in California's Sierra Nevada. Authorities say the stubborn wildfire burning in foothills west of Yosemite had destroyed dozens of structures while forcing thousands of people from their homes Wednesday. The San Francisco Bay Area is at left; Lake Tahoe is at top center. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via AP)

"They are still out in front of an uncontrolled fire, but the fire isn't moving at 30 mph (48 kph). The fire is crawling along," fire spokesman Brandon Vaccaro said Saturday. Flames spared Mariposa, a historic Gold Rush-era town, but more than 130 buildings, including 63 homes, were destroyed.

More than 5,000 firefighters fought the blaze using air tankers and fleets of helicopters and bulldozers.

The fire grew by up to 47 square miles (122 square kilometers) a day at its peak. But by the weekend, the growth rate was slowed despite dry, blistering weather, Vaccaro said.

The smoke blurred the scenic vistas of Yosemite National Park, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) west of the fire. Tourists expecting the grandeur of falls and granite peaks instead saw hazy gray silhouettes.

Some roads remained closed. But Mariposa, with a population of about 2,000, was coming back to life.

Steve Valdez was back at work Saturday at a hardware store despite losing his home of 17 years to the fire.

"There are people out there who depend upon us to get power, to get water, to get their equipment fixed," he said.

Valdez, 60, and his wife had 20 minutes to grab a few photographs, bills and some family Bibles before they fled the encroaching flames. When they returned, only the home's chimney was still standing. They plan to rebuild.

The fire was one of more than a dozen that have ravaged California in recent weeks.

To the south, officials have finally lifted all remaining evacuations in a stubborn fire burning for more than two weeks in the mountains of Santa Barbara County. The blaze, which destroyed 16 homes, is 87 percent and hasn't grown in size for several days.

The evacuated downtown of Mariposa, Calif., is viewed Thursday, July 20, 2017, as firefighters battle a large wildfire in the surrounding hills and mountains. Mariposa normally bustles with tourists on their way to Yosemite National Park. The town's center is made up of old brick and wooden buildings in the holding modern clothing and gift shops, restaurants and wine bars. (AP Photo/Scott Smith)
ROME (AP) - Venice's mayor says six young Belgian men were going to spend the night in jail after they dived from a bridge into the lagoon city's Grand Canal.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro also tweeted "caught!!!" after police detained the tourists, ages 21 to 23, following the 10-meter (33-foot) leap after dawn Sunday from Constitution Bridge near the parking terminal for cars, which are banned from the historic center.

The mayor said he hoped the "most exemplary punishment possible" would be meted out for the prank. Stiff fines or being banned from Venice are among possible sanctions, although just how high fines might be wasn't immediately known.

Officials said that police monitoring surveillance camera footage spotted the tourists as they dived.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - The Latest on the crisis diplomatic crisis between Qatar and four Arab countries (all times local):

9:50 p.m.

Turkey's president has met with the ruler of Kuwait to discuss ways to end the diplomatic crisis between Qatar and four of its Arab neighbors.

Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani talks late Friday, July21, 2017 in his first televised speech since the dispute between Qatar and three Gulf countries and Egypt, in Doha, Qatar. Qatar's ruling emir says the embattled Gulf nation remains open to dialogue with four Arab countries that have isolated it, but that and resolution to the crisis must respect his country's sovereignty. (Qatar News Agency via AP)

Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled Sunday evening to Kuwait for talks with the country's emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, who has been mediating the dispute.

He earlier held talks with the king of neighboring Saudi Arabia. He is due to travel to Qatar on Monday.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties and transport links with Qatar in early June, accusing it of supporting extremists. Qatar strongly denies the allegation and sees the dispute as politically motivated.

___

3:50 p.m.

Turkey's president has arrived in Saudi Arabia to begin a three-nation tour aimed at helping to forge a resolution to the diplomatic crisis between Qatar and four of its Arab neighbors.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled Sunday to the Red Sea city of Jiddah, where he is expected to hold talks with King Salman. His trip will include stops in Kuwait, which has been mediating the crisis, and Qatar.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties and transport links with Qatar in early June, accusing it of supporting extremists. Qatar strongly denies the allegation and sees the dispute as politically motivated.

___

3:10 p.m.

Britain's top diplomat is welcoming comments from the ruler of Qatar on his country's commitment to opposing terrorism and resolving its dispute with Arab neighbors through dialogue.

Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said late Friday that Qatar is prepared to talk with the four countries that are isolating it and reaffirmed Qatar's opposition to terrorism. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties and transport links with Qatar last month over allegations it supports extremists. Qatar denies the charge.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in a statement Sunday that he hopes the quartet will respond to Qatar by "taking steps towards lifting the embargo" so that "substantive discussions" on their differences can begin.

___

12 p.m.

A top official in the Arab bloc isolating Qatar says the Gulf state needs to change its policies as part of any direct negotiations to resolve the crisis.

Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said late Friday that Qatar is prepared to talk with the four countries lined up against it, but that any resolution must respect its sovereignty and the terms cannot be dictated from outside.

United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Relations Anwar al-Gargash responded in a Twitter post late Saturday that dialogue is necessary, but that Qatar must review its policies since repeating its previous positions only "deepens the crisis."

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties and transport links with Qatar in early June.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - An American university student is free following a weeklong detention in China for allegedly injuring a taxi driver who was roughing up his mother during a fare dispute, in a case that drew objections over the student's treatment from U.S. lawmakers.

Guthrie McLean, a student at the University of Montana, was released from a detention center in Zhengzhou early Monday, according to his mother, Jennifer McLean, a teacher who lives in the central Chinese city.

"We are very, very very, very happy," Jennifer McLean wrote in an email to The Associated Press. She said the release - at 2 a.m. local time when her son was delivered to her doorstep - came as a surprise after she'd twice been told to anticipate a release only to be disappointed.

FILE - This undated file photo provided by Jennifer McLean shows her son, University of Montana student Guthrie McLean, in China. Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines says police in central China freed 25-year-old Guthrie McLean early Monday, July 24, 2017, local time, after he was arrested in China a week earlier after reportedly injuring a taxi driver who was roughing up his mother in a fare dispute. Jennifer McLean told The Associated Press her son's actions were justified because the taxi driver was hurting her. (Jennifer McLean via AP, File)

"They have not finished the process completely, but we are hopeful it will go smoothly from here on," she said.

The U.S. State Department confirmed McClean's release, but provided no details citing privacy concerns.

"The safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas is one of the Department's highest priorities," it said in an emailed statement Monday.

The release followed an agreement with Chinese authorities to drop any charges against Guthrie Mclean, according to Montana U.S. Sen. Steve Daines.

Further details on the agreement were not disclosed. People who answered the phones at Zhengzhou police headquarters said there was no one available to comment on the case.

Daines and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and Rep. Greg Gianforte had pressed McLean's case with China's Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The lawmakers said McLean had been justifiably defending his mother, who is deaf, from the driver, whose knee was reportedly hurt in the encounter.

Jennifer McLean told The AP the taxi driver had been pushing her around and hurting her when her son intervened and pushed the taxi driver to the ground.

Jennifer McLean said that when police detained Guthrie five weeks later on charges of intentional injury, they demanded the equivalent of $7,400 in compensation and threatened to imprison her son for up to three years if they refused to pay.

The family did not pay $7,400, according to Daines, who added that more details would be released at a later time.

"After two 20-hour days in back and forth negotiations with Chinese officials, we were able to come to an agreement that worked for everybody, most importantly for Guthrie and for Jennifer, his mother," Daines said in a conference call with reporters.

Daines said he spoke with Guthrie McLean after his release, and he plans to return to Missoula, Montana to resume his studies next month.

Tester and Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte issued statements Sunday saying they were pleased with the outcome of the case.

Guthrie McLean has been majoring in East Asian studies at the University of Montana in Missoula for about two years and works in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, according to school officials.

He's a U.S. citizen, but he largely grew up in China after living in Missoula as a young child while his mother was studying at the university, according to his boss, Olivia White.

___

Associated Press writer Didi Tang contributed to this report from Beijing.
TALKEETNA, Alaska (AP) - Stubbs, the honorary feline mayor of the Alaska town of Talkeetna, has died at the age of 20.

The animal's owners announced the cat's death late Saturday in a statement.

"Stubbs lived for 20 years and 3 months," the family wrote. "He was a trooper until the very last day of his life; meowing at us throughout the day to pet him or to come sit on the bed with him and let him snuggle and purr for hours in our lap. Thank you, Stubbs, for coming into our lives for the past 31 months; you are a remarkable cat and we will dearly miss you. We loved the time we were allowed to spend with you."

FILE - In a May 29, 2016 file photo, Stubbs, the honorary feline mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, walks out of the West Rib Bar and Grill. Stubbs was found dead by his owners Friday, July 21, 2017, at the age of 20. Talkeetna, a town with a population of about 900, elected the yellow cat mayor in a write-in campaign in 1998. There is no human mayor in the town. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

According to Stubb's family, Mayor Stubbs, as the cat was most commonly known, went to bed Thursday and died overnight, KTVA-TV reports (http://bit.ly/2eF2Dbq ).

Talkeetna, a town with a population of about 900, elected the yellow cat mayor in a write-in campaign in 1998.

There is no human mayor in the town.

Stubbs had survived an attack by a dog in 2013 and a false report of his death last year. But by late 2016, he was largely staying at home instead of being out and about at local Nagley's General Store.

Although Stubbs is gone, one of his owners' kittens might be ready to take up his mayoral mantle.

"Amazingly, Denali has the exact personality as Stubbs," the family wrote of the kitten. "He loves the attention, he's like a little puppy when he's around people. We couldn't have asked for a better understudy than Denali - he really has followed in Stubbs' pawprints in just about everything."
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump expressed his frustration with Republicans on Sunday, saying they "do very little to protect their President."

In one of several tweets issued in the afternoon and evening, Trump said the lack of support happens even with "some that were carried over the line on my back."

Trump's tweet wasn't clear about why he was upset. It came as Republicans in the Senate struggled to come together on a bill to overhaul President Barack Obama's health care law.

President Donald Trump boards Air Force One in Naval Air Station Norfolk, in Norfolk, Va Saturday, July 22, 2017, en route to Dulles International Airport, in Dulles, Va., after attending the commissioning ceremony of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78). (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

On that topic, another tweet from the president was more specific: "If Republicans don't Repeal and Replace the disastrous ObamaCare, the repercussions will be far greater than any of them understand!"

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was making a last-gasp effort to resuscitate the legislation after Trump insisted that senators not leave town for their August recess without passing a health bill.

Trump has had a complicated relationship with the Republican Party, but GOP lawmakers have continued to be generally supportive of the president, even as his approval ratings slip.

Democrats did not escape Trump's twitter rantings as he turned his attention for a moment to the ongoing investigation into Russia meddling in the presidential election. In another missive he wrote: "As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!"

The president also took a shot at favorite targets in the news media: "It's hard to read the Failing New York Times or the Amazon Washington Post because every story/opinion, even if should be positive, is bad!"
Are 70-80 percent of goods at supermarkets Vietnam-made?

VietNamNet Bridge  The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) reports that Vietnamese goods account for 70-80 percent of the goods displayed at supermarkets, but analysts doubt the figure.

















In MOITs opinion, all the products made in Vietnamese territory, no matter whether they are made by Vietnamese or foreign invested enterprises, must be listed as Vietnamese goods.

Foreign retail chains have been expanding their business scale in Vietnam, displaying more and more goods from home countries at their supermarkets. However, MOET still affirms that 70-80 percent of the goods on the shelves at supermarkets are Vietnamese.In MOITs opinion, all the products made in Vietnamese territory, no matter whether they are made by Vietnamese or foreign invested enterprises, must be listed as Vietnamese goods.As such, the products of multi-national conglomerates such as Samsung, Unilever, P&G, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, or products of some Vietnamese brands which have been sold to foreigners such as Kinh Do, X-Man and Bibica are all counted as Vietnamese.

Vu Kim Hanh, chair of the Vietnam High-quality Goods Enterprise Association, pointed out that there is a confusion about Vietnamese goods.



An international brand must not be considered Vietnamese even if the product is made in Vietnam at the factory which hires Vietnamese workers and uses Vietnamese materials.



And it will still be an international brand if the owner leaves Vietnam and sets up a production base in another country.



Kinh Do, the sweets brand, was once a Vietnamese brand. However, after it was sold to foreign investors, the investors stopped registering Kinh Do as Vietnamese high-quality product, because this is now a foreign owned brand.



However, Kinh Do, like other brands with Vietnamese origin, is still counted by state management agencies when making reports to prove that the Buy Vietnamese campaign has been successful.



Nguyen Van Nam, former director of the Trade Research Institute, said he has suspicions about the reported proportion of 70-80 percent of Vietnamese goods at supermarkets.



He believes that state management agencies tend to count all the products made in Vietnamese territory as Vietnamese goods to embellish reports. State agencies need to show the real figures to show the real panorama of the Vietnamese economy.



What is the percentage of authentic Vietnamese goods? Hanh believes the figure could be around 40 percent.



Vu Vinh Phu, former deputy director of the Hanoi Trade Department, said he doesnt agree with the concept about Vietnamese goods defined by by MOIT.



If counting farm produce alone, Vietnamese products may account for 80-90 percent. However, Vietnamese goods just account for 5-10 percent of cosmetics and electronics. Most processed food products are imports or products of foreign companies which set factories in Vietnam, he said.



Vietnamese goods are estimated to account for 40-50 percent, Phu said.





RELATED NEWS

Vietnamese prefer Thailands expensive rice to Vietnams cheap rice

Vietnamese prefer the most luxurious smartphones





Kim Chi
An errant US airstrike has killed 12 Afghan National Police officers who were fighting the Taliban and wounded two others.

Helmand provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar Safi said on Saturday that the death toll in Fridays airstrike was determined after a site inspection of the compound in Gereshk District.

The Pentagon confirmed the airstrike on the Security Forces compound happened during a US-supported operation against Taliban insurgents in the area, and offered its condolences to the families of the security forces who were killed.

(PA)

U.S. confirms Afghan casualties resulting from airstrike pic.twitter.com/DPlPd95nPb  USFOR-A Spokesman Col Sonny Leggett (@USFOR_A) July 21, 2017

While much of Helmand province is under the control of Taliban, Afghan national security forces have been waging fierce battles to retake territory.

Nato and US troops are in Helmand to assist Afghan troops.

Mr Safi told The Associated Press that the dead were police officers who were operating with the army in the area.

He said they had recaptured the post from the Taliban when the airstrike occurred.

The Helmand governor, Hayatullah Hayat, said it was believed the police officers were not in uniform, which may have resulted in mistakenly identifying them as Taliban fighters.
Experts are examining the damage to cultural monuments and infrastructure on the eastern Greek island of Kos, a day after a powerful earthquake killed two tourists and injured nearly 500 others in the Aegean Sea region that stretches to Turkeys sprawling coast.

Residents and tourists were still jittery as a series of aftershocks continued to rock the island.

A tremor measuring a preliminary 4.4 magnitude struck at 8.09pm local time (6.09pm BST), sending residents and restaurant customers running towards the middle of the towns main square, as far away as possible from buildings.

A graphic displays a 6.7 magnitude earthquake off the coast of the Greek islands and Turkey (PA graphic)

Sixteen minutes later, a second 4.6-magnitude tremor struck, the Athens Geodynamics Institute reported.

The first tremor had its epicentre only 12 miles north-east of Kos at a depth of 6.2 miles.

Hundreds of residents and tourists spent Friday night sleeping outdoors on the island, too afraid to return to their homes or hotels after the quake that struck early on Friday.

Hundreds of residents and tourists on the eastern Greek island of Kos spent the night sleeping outdoors (Petros Giannakouris/AP)

Many camped out in parks and olive groves, or slept in their cars or on beach and swimming pool lounge chairs.

The aftershocks on Saturday night meant that many would spend a second night outdoors.

During the day in Kos, churches, an old mosque, the ports 14th-century castle and other old buildings that suffered in the quake were being checked by archaeologists and experts from Greeces Culture Ministry.

This mosque sustained damage from the earthquake (Petros Giannakouris/AP)

The US Geological Survey measured the quake on Friday at magnitude 6.7, with Greek and Turkish estimates a fraction lower.

Prelim M6.7 earthquake Dodecanese Islands, Greece Jul-20 22:31 UTC, updates https://t.co/a4L8l90U5l, 392 #deprem tweets/min  USGS Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (@USGSted) July 20, 2017

Two men, a Turk and a Swede, were killed when a wall collapsed into a popular bar in the Old Town of Kos.

The most seriously injured in Greece were airlifted to hospitals on the mainland and the southern island of Crete, and at least two were still in critical condition Saturday.

The Turkish mans parents were on the island making arrangements to repatriate his body by boat, possibly on Sunday.

Kos harbour

Dozens of aftershocks have shaken the island.

John Grant, a 60-year-old tourist from Britain, said he felt safer sleeping outside.

Coming from somewhere that doesnt have earthquakes, you dont understand, he said from his makeshift bed on a lounge chair.

So to me it was very frightening being in the building. But being outside, I know Im safe.

About 350 of the injuries occurred in Turkey, in Bodrum and other beach resorts, as people fled buildings and as a sea swell flung cars off the road and pushed boats ashore. Seismologists said the shallow depth of the undersea quake on Friday was to blame for the damage.

In Kos, the quake damaged the islands main port, so ferries were being diverted to the smaller port of Kefalos on the islands south-western coast.

Serif Damadoglou Soukri, the imam of Kos, said the greatest damage to Kos mosques was sustained by the central 17th-century Defternatar Ibrahim Pasa mosque, whose minaret, restored a few years ago, collapsed completely. Ancient columns also toppled over in the southern part of the 2nd-century agora in the main town.
The Republican-led House is to vote on a sweeping Russia sanctions package that defies the White House by demanding Donald Trump gets Congresss permission before lifting or easing penalties against Moscow.

Politicians are scheduled to consider the sanctions package as early as Tuesday, and the bill could be sent to Mr Trump before Congress breaks for the August recess.

The legislation is aimed at punishing Moscow for meddling in the presidential election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats announced on Saturday that they had settled lingering issues with the bill, which also includes stiff economic penalties against Iran and North Korea.

The sanctions targeting Russia, however, have drawn the most attention due to Mr Trumps push for warmer relations with President Vladimir Putin and ongoing investigations into Russias interference in the 2016 campaign.

North Korea, Iran and Russia have in different ways all threatened their neighbours and actively sought to undermine American interests, according to a joint statement by California Republicans Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, and Ed Royce of California, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman.

Kevin McCarthy

The bill the House will vote on, they said, will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions.

But the bills pending passage by the House and Senate puts Capitol Hill on possible collision course with Mr Trump.

The White House has objected to a key section of the bill that would mandate a congressional review if Mr Trump attempts to terminate the sanctions against Moscow.

Donald Trump

Top administration officials have said the provisions infringe on the presidents executive authority and may tie his hands as he explores avenues of cooperation between the two former Cold War foes.

If Mr Trump were to veto the bill, he risks sparking an outcry from Republicans and Democrats and having his decision overturned.

Indeed, the sanctions review was included in the bill because of wariness among lawmakers from both parties over Mr Trumps affinity for Mr Putin.
The sister of murdered fusilier Lee Rigby has been helping to comfort the family of one of the Manchester Arena bombing victims.

Courtney Rigby told The Sun on Sunday she has befriended the bereaved family of Olivia Campbell  one of 22 fans who died in the attack at the Ariana Grande concert in May.

The bombing happened on the four-year anniversary of her brothers murder by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, in Woolwich, south London, in 2013.

The 16-year-old told the paper how she had visited her brothers grave and released balloons before seeing the news of the arena bombing on the television that evening.

She has offered Olivias distraught older sister Chelsea advice on how to cope with the grief of losing her 15-year-old sibling.

Courtney told the newspaper: I could see this family, in their grief, were exactly where we were four years earlier and it was heartbreaking.

Olivia Campbell was one of the Manchester attack victims. (Danny Lawson/PA)

No-one should go through this. My vow is to help as many bereaved young people as possible.

The teenager was speaking as she launched her Siblings Stand Together campaign, which will form part of the Lee Rigby Foundation.

She is hoping to offer comfort and support to young people facing similarly traumatic experiences and share her advice.

To all those who are helping us build a legacy for Lee. We thank you. Your kindness is overwhelming. #leerigby #LeeRigbyMemorialCup  Lee Rigby Foundation (@leerigbyfdn) May 24, 2017

She added: I want to be there for youngsters who feel as lost as I did and let them know that they are not on their own.

That would make Lee proud and that makes me smile.
Diana, Princess of Wales once made every teenage boys fantasy come true for her son the Duke of Cambridge  by inviting three supermodels to their home.

William tells the story of his mothers wicked sense of humour in a documentary that chronicles the life of one of the most famous women of the 20th century.

His brother Prince Harry also describes her in the ITV programme, which will be screened on Monday, as a total kid through and through whose motto was you can be as naughty as you want, just dont get caught.

Cindy Crawford was one of the surprises. (Yui Mok/PA)

The duke says about his embarrassing experience with the models: She organised when I came home from school to have Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell waiting at the top of the stairs, I was probably a 12 or 13-year-old boy who had posters of them on his wall.

I went bright red, and didnt know quite what to say and sort of fumbled and I think pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up. I was completely and utterly awestruck.

That was a very funny memory thats lived with me forever
Boris Johnson will push for progress on a post-Brexit trade deal with New Zealand when he lands in Wellington for talks with the prime minister.

The Foreign Secretary is on the latest leg of a nine-day international tour that will see him head to Australia next.

Both countries are viewed as key allies by the Government and Mr Johnson is keen to see deals taking shape, according to Government sources.

Mr Johnson will meet New Zealand Pm Bill English. (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Working groups have been set up to thrash out the details of future deals with each nation and the progress made so far will be set out during the visits.

Mr Johnson is meeting Bill English, New Zealands prime minister, and the countrys foreign minister Gerry Brownlee on Sunday before flying to Australia for talks with counterpart Julie Bishop.

It follows a three-day trip to Japan that left Mr Johnson predicting the UK was poised for an all-singing, all-dancing post-Brexit free trade deal with the nation.
The memory of granny Diana is being kept alive for Prince George and Princess Charlotte by their father the Duke of Cambridge who regularly talks to them about his mother.

George, who celebrated his fourth birthday on Saturday, and two-year-old Charlotte are growing up with just Carole Middleton as their sole grandmother.

But William is determined his children should also have Diana in their lives through the stories he tells them about the Princess.

(Jane Barlow/PA)

The Duke and Prince Harry are pleased to share 3 photographs from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. pic.twitter.com/mUhzQB08TV  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) July 23, 2017

Asked in the ITV documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, how he keeps the memory of his mother alive for his children, the Duke replied: I think, constantly talking about granny Diana, so weve got more photos up round the house now of her and we talk about her a bit and stuff.

Its hard because obviously Catherine didnt know her, she cannot really provide that level of detail.

But the duke stressed he regularly talks to George and Charlotte about Diana when putting them to bed to remind them there are two grandmothers in their lives, so its important they know who she was and that she existed.

Watch TRH share some of their favourite memories of their late mother.



Prince Harry: "She was one of the naughtiest parents!" pic.twitter.com/zKIcZbe4rf  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) July 23, 2017

Speaking in the documentary, which will be screened on Monday, William joked about the havoc his mother would have caused at his childrens bath times if she was alive: Shed be a nightmare grandmother, absolute nightmare. Shed love the children to bits, but shed be an absolute nightmare.

He added: Shed come, probably at bath time, cause an amazing  scene, bubbles everywhere, bath water all over the place, and then leave.

George and Charlotte joined their parents when they and Prince Harry attended a service to re-dedicate Dianas grave at her familys ancestral home Althorp House, on her birthday July 1.

Speaking about his mother William added: I want to make as much time and effort with Charlotte and George as I can because I realise these early years particularly are crucial for children, having seen what she did for us.
Israels security cabinet has met to review a decision to install metal detectors at a contested Jerusalem holy site.

The meeting comes after a week of escalating tensions with the Muslim world, mass prayer protests and Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The ministers met amid mounting controversy at home, with some critics saying the government had acted without sufficiently considering the repercussions of introducing new security measures at the Holy Lands most sensitive shrine and the epicentre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinians pray in front of mock metal detectors during a demonstration in Bethlehem

In a possible spillover of the tensions, a Jordanian man was shot to death and an Israeli wounded in a violent incident at the Israeli embassy in Amman on Sunday evening, a Jordanian security official and a news site linked to Jordans military reported.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

The metal detectors were installed a week ago, in response to an attack by Arab gunmen there who killed two Israeli policemen.

Muslim religious leaders alleged Israel was trying to expand its control at the compound under the guise of security, a claim Israel denied.

An Israeli police officer takes aim during clashes near the Qalandia checkpoint

On Sunday, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, an outspoken supporter of the security measures, for the first time raised the possibility that the metal detectors might be removed, provided an alternative is found.

He said security measures at the 37-acre esplanade, with eight entry gates for Muslim worshippers, were insufficient before the shooting attack.

We need different security measures and means for checking (those entering) there, he told Israel TVs Channel 2.

Mr Erdan said it is certainly possible that the metal detectors will be removed if police recommend a different security programme, but added that he is currently not aware of such a programme.

Muslim leaders signalled earlier on Sunday that they would reject any new proposal that leaves additional security measures in place.

A Palestinian protester stands in tear gas during clashes near the Qalandia checkpoint

The top Muslim cleric of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, told Voice of Palestine radio that he demands a complete return to the security measures before the shooting attack.

In a statement on Sunday, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, of which he is a part, said they affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation.

Disputes over the shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, have set off major rounds of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations in the past.

On Friday, several thousand Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in Jerusalem after noon prayers  the centrepiece of the Muslim religious week.

Three Palestinians were killed and several dozen wounded after protesters burned tires and threw stones and firecrackers.

Palestinians run away from tear gas shot by Israeli army during clashes in the West Bank on Friday night

Israeli troops responded with live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Late Friday night, a 20-year-old Palestinian stabbed and killed three members of an Israeli family in their home in a West Bank settlement. The victims were identified on Sunday as Yosef Salomon, 70, and his adult children, 46-year-old Chaya and 35-year-old Elad.

The elder Solomons daughter-in-law escaped to a separate room to shelter her young children.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack as an act of terror, carried out by an animal who was incited with unfathomable hatred.

At his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Mr Netanyahu said the killers home would be demolished swiftly in retribution and those who incited and glorified his act would be dealt with.
A Jordanian man was shot dead and an Israeli man wounded in a violent incident at the Israeli embassy in Amman.

The Hala Akhbar news site, which is linked to Jordans military, said the violent incident also included a stabbing.

It said the Israeli man was in an unstable condition and that the Jordanian died after suffering critical gunshot injuries.

Security officials near the Israeli embassy in Amman

In the incident, the assistant to of #Israel embassy security in #Amman was also injured, condition "unstable" pic.twitter.com/0RY2smQy7Y  Saad Abedine (@SaadAbedine) July 23, 2017

A security official confirmed a Jordanian had been killed and an Israeli wounded, but would not provide further details.

The site says one of the wounded was in a critical condition and the other is unstable.

Israels Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

The incident comes at a time of mounting tensions between Israel and the Muslim world over metal detectors Israel installed at a Jerusalem shrine revered by Muslims and Jews.

Jordan is the Muslim custodian of the site.

On Friday, thousands of Jordanians staged an anti-Israeli protest in Amman.
MELBOURNE, July 23 (Reuters) - One of Australias most senior ministers on Sunday reignited debate on whether same-sex marriage should be legalised, proposing a national postal vote on the issue.

Conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's policy is for a national vote, or plebiscite, but that proposal was defeated in the Senate in late 2016.

Turnbull has said the issue will not be revisited until after the next election due in 2019.

Same-sex marriage is supported by 61 percent of Australians, according to a Gallup opinion poll in 2016.

"I think there is momentum in relation to having the matter resolved one way or the other," Immigration and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told Sky News television.

"I'm working on the assumption that this issue is going to be dealt with in this parliament," Dutton said in proposing a postal vote.

Opponents to a national vote argue it would be divisive and that a parliamentary vote could easily decide the issue.

There have only been three plebiscites in Australian history, two relating to conscription during World War I, and one to choose a national song in 1977.

Dutton said a postal vote would not require legislation to establish, would not be compulsory and would be a more cheaply administered option than a regular plebiscite.

Opposition Labor Party leader Bill Shorten took to social media on Sunday to slam Dutton's proposal.

"The postal plebiscite is a policy for a government that has neither the intellect to know what to do, nor the courage to do what is right," he tweeted.

Failure to move forward on the matter is seen as a blow to Turnbull's popularity and has given rise to frustrations that he has failed to live up to his progressive reputation.

Earlier in July a government senator said he was drafting a private members bill aimed at legalising same-sex marriage, but Turnbull said he would not allow the bill to be voted on. (Reporting by Josephn Hinchliffe; Editing by Michael Perry)
#football Injured star Son Heung-min named to S. Korean World Cup squad The injured South Korean football star Son Heung-min was named to the country's World Cup squad Saturday, as the football-crazed nation waits with bated breath to see if the belove...
By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM, July 23 (Reuters) - Israel will not remove metal detectors whose installation outside a major Jerusalem mosque has triggered the bloodiest confrontations with the Palestinians in years, but could eventually reduce their use, Israeli officials said on Sunday.

With Israeli generals warning the violence may spiral, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering alternatives to the walk-through gates placed at entrances to al Aqsa mosque compound after two policemen were shot dead there on July 14.

But the rightist Netanyahu government is wary of being seen to capitulate to Palestinian pressure at the site, which Jews revere as the vestige of their two ancient temples and which was among East Jerusalem areas Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed as its capital in a move not recognized internationally.

"They (metal detectors) will remain. The murderers will never tell us how to search the murderers," Tzachi Hanegbi, Israeli minister for regional development and a senior member of the ruling Likud party, told Israel's Army Radio.

"If they (Palestinians) do not want to enter the mosque, then let them not enter the mosque."

Incensed at what they perceive as a violation of delicate decades-old access arrangements at Islam's third-holiest site, many Palestinians have refused to go through the metal detectors, holding street prayers and often violent protests.

Israeli security forces shot three demonstrators dead on Friday, Palestinian medics said. Police said they were investigating the charge. A fourth Jerusalem-area Palestinian was killed on Saturday when an explosive device he was building went off prematurely, the Israeli military said. Palestinian medics said he died of shrapnel wounds to the chest and abdomen.

In a sign unrest was spreading, a Palestinian stabbed three Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank on Friday after vowing on Facebook to take up his knife and heed "al Aqsa's call". On Sunday, a rocket was launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip but hit an open area, causing no damage, Israel's military said.

"LARGE-SCALE VOLATILITY"

The incidents "attest to the combustability of the current period," military chief Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot said in a speech to new recruits. Gilad Erdan, Israel's public security minister, also warned of potential "large-scale volatility".

Interviewed on Army Radio, Erdan said Israel may do away with metal-detector checks for all Muslims entering the al Aqsa compounds under alternative arrangements under review. These could include reinforcing Israeli police at the entrances and introducing CCTV cameras with facial-recognition technologies.

"There are, after all, many worshippers whom the police knows, regulars, and very elderly people and so on, and it recommended that we avoid putting all of these through metal detectors," Erdan told Army Radio, suggesting that only potential trouble-makers would be subjected to extra screening.

Any such substitute arrangement was not ready, he added.

The Muslim authorities that oversee al Aqsa said they would continue to oppose any new Israeli-imposed measures, however.

"We stress our absolute rejection of the electronic gates, and of all measures by the Occupation (Israel) that would change the historical and religious status in Jerusalem and its sacred sites, foremost the blessed Aqsa mosque," the Palestinian grand mufti, the acting Palestinian chief justice and the Jordanian-sponsored Waqf religious trust said in a joint statement.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday ordered the suspension of all official contact with Israel. He gave no details. With Palestinian statehood talks long stalled, contacts have long been limited mainly to West Bank security cooperation.

Jordan and Turkey, among Israel's few Muslim interlocutors, have pressed for the metal detectors to be removed. The U.N. Security Council scheduled a session on the crisis for Monday.

"We are managing this with level-headedly, determinedly and responsibly," Netanyahu said in televised remarks before his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, adding that security measures would be decided in accordance with the situation on the ground.

Netanyahu's decision-making security cabinet was due to convene at 7.30 p.m. (1630GMT). (Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by X)
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN, July 23 (Reuters) - Two Jordanians died from wounds inflicted during a shooting on Sunday in the compound of the heavily-guarded Israeli embassy that also wounded an Israeli, police and a security source said.

Police said earlier that the two Jordanians worked for a furniture firm and entered the embassy compound before the shooting to do repairs. Police did not identify the wounded Israeli, and few other details were immediately available.

Israel has imposed a ban on reporting the incident and has made no public comment.

The fortress-like embassy in the affluent Rabae district of the capital Amman is protected by Jordanian gendarme. It has long been a flashpoint of anti-Israeli protests at times of turmoil in the Palestinian territories.

Violence against Israelis is rare in Jordan, a tightly policed country that is also a staunch regional ally of the United States and signed a peace treaty with Israel, the Arab neighbor with which it shares a long border.

But tensions have escalated between the two countries since Israel installed metal detectors at entry points to Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem after two Israeli policemen were shot dead by three Arab-Israeli gunmen on Friday near the site.

The new security measures have triggered the bloodiest spate of Israeli-Palestinian violence for years.

Jordan has called for the removal of the metal detectors and thousands of Jordanians have protested against the Israeli move in an outpouring of public anger against Israel.

Jordanian police said after Sunday's shooting that they sealed off the embassy compound and deployed dozens of anti-terrorism gendarmie forces.

"We have started a large scale investigation into the incident and ordered the prosecutor general to look at all the details," the police said in a statement.

Initial checks suggested the two Jordanian men had entered the embassy compound as workmen, the statement said.

Many of Jordan's 7 million citizens are of Palestinian origin. They or their parents or grandparents were expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948.

Israel has in the past given repeated assurances that it understands Jordan's concerns and does not seek to alter the status quo in the Muslim holy sites of Jerusalem.

King Abdullah's Hashemite monarchy has been custodian of the sites since 1924, paying for their upkeep and deriving part of its legitimacy from the role. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Editing by Gareth Jones and Daniel Wallis)
This year marks the 34th anniversary of the July riots of 1983 which reshaped the socio political history of our nation forever. Many still recall the grim images of gutted buildings, vehicles set on fire and bodies charred beyond recognition. The damage the Black July did cannot simply be evaluated in terms of physical casualties or monetary terms. It split the body politic with an incisive divide in to North and South, an abyss un-bridged to date.

The July riots became the catalyst for the upsurge of Tamil militancy and pushed the Tamil society in to the bosom of the murderous LTTE, sparking a smouldering Civil war which raged for 30 years and launching the Tigers to international recognition as the sole representative of the Tamils.

Hundreds of Tamil civilians lost their lives, while tens of thousands lost all they had on earth to be followed by an exodus of citizens to foreign countries. Very few have returned and very few will. The blame put on some chauvinistic ministers of the then regime who are dead and gone now, and everything else swept under the carpet.

Three leftist parties including the JVP were proscribed. The end of the civil war has not ensured harmony between the two communities and mutual distrust and apprehensions about each others motives lurk underneath. We are not the only country to emerge out of ethnic conflict and yet why are we unable to bring these two communities, who are not at war any more, together, begs answer.



The non apologetic mindset

Among many reasons the one that I hold as the most crucial is the lack of remorse and absence of an apology shown by the Sinhalese Majority to the minority that was victimized in the July pogrom. We have not apologized for the gruesome murders, rape, arson, robbery, torture committed by chauvinistic elements of the majority, abetted by authorities and applauded by many non-participants. Who apologized for the total collapse of the law enforcement machinery during those few days? Have we rectified the absolute lack of restitutive measures including legal ones to vindicate the victims?

The commission established, albeit belatedly, by the Peoples Alliance government to inquire in to and compensate the victims has led to nothing tangible.Who is the perpetrator punished and which the political bigwigs are held accountable as the orchestrators of this repulsive act of pogrom? Answers to all such questions remain negative. In fact, would it be outrageous if I ventured to utter that we identified ourselves more with the perpetrator rather than the victims?

Why is it that at all times of political and civil unrest our criminal justice system with its law enforcement apparatus comprising of the Police, Law courts, penal regime etc. seem to petrify? This is applicable not only to the Black July, but also to the JVP insurrections as well as the last stages of the civil war as well. Is it due to a technical or structural insufficiency of these institutions or is it more an inherent lackadaisical attitude engraved in our psyche that might is right and nothing could be done about it?



Paralysis of the criminal justice system

The absolute failure of the security apparatus was highlighted in the plight of the Tamil political prisoners, at Welikada prison, where despite being in the heart of Colombo, the Police or the Security forces failed to prevent murder. Why has not the court system been able to prevail and proper inquiries done and perpetrators brought to justice under the criminal laws of the country? The inquest held at the prison premises hit a dead end. Is the Penal Code being the main statute defining crimes bereft of provisions for each and every offence committed in broad daylight? Or are we saying that the law is applicable only when it comes to apolitical deeds and not otherwise? Is the rule of law a mere figment of ambitious imagination and mere rhetoric?

The July riots were horrendous to a civilized mind; yet the apathy and inaction of the majority chills the conscience.The failure of the justice system is mind boggling as murderers, rapists and robbers walk the streets untouched, although obviously aged and bent, even today.

"The July riots became the catalyst for the upsurge of Tamil militancy and pushed the Tamil society in to the bosom of the murderous LTTE, sparking a smouldering Civil war which raged for 30 years and launching the Tigers to international recognition as the sole representative of the Tamils"

Restitution before reconciliation



Jennifer Lind in her book Sorry States recognizes acknowledgement of past misdeeds essential for a genuine reconciliation after war. Given to the blame game of them instead of us, we have evaded the most glaring and immediate spark that led to the civil war. The Germans reconciled themselves with the Jews not by evading the obvious but by revisiting each and every act, place and atrocity attributed to Nazism with a view to reconciling themselves. It is not the Jews who have preserved concentration camp sites as lessons for the future but the German authorities. That, I believe speak volumes for the genuineness of the reconciliation with and reabsorption of the victimized component of the population back to the states citizenry.

"The July riots were horrendous to a civilized mind; yet the apathy and inaction of the majority chills the conscience. The failure of the justice system is mind boggling as murderers, rapists and robbers walk the streets untouched, although obviously aged and bent, even today"



Norman Schultz, an expert on critical thinking and ethical theory, in his thesis called Apology and Forgiveness claims a genuine apology not only to be an admission of a mistake but also a reversal of previously held views or policies. That emphasizes that an apology, even if it becomes a reality, still has to be organically linked to a general turning point of the psyche of our civil society in recognizing collective guilt in relation to catastrophes of this nature and not yet another formality.

We brandish lofty words like reconciliation, racial and ethnic harmony as well as reassuring terms as rule of law, due process, restitutive justice, etc. now more than ever. Yet reconciliation as well as a genuine will to that end remains as illusory as ever. Let the Black July become a rally point, not an embarrassing debacle to evade and ignore, to show a genuine will as a nation for a society that each and every citizen, irrespective of his race, religion, caste or creed truly enjoys the equality before law that our Constitution enshrines in unequivocal terms.
A leading private sector business chamber will be holdings its annual economic summit yet again this week. The event will provide Sri Lankas socialite businessmen yet another chance to be photographed with their fellow corporate buddies, and not-so-secret partners-in-crime; the politicians.

Of course, a dozen or so plenary sessions and speeches to further the capitalist agenda of monopoly, mercantilism, globalization, automation, unemployment, mindless consumerism, and austerity for the common folk will be on high display, along with the attendees designer suits, dresses and sarees, and would be made somewhat sweet for the digestion of the plebs by sprinkling a few words of corporate social responsibility on top.

Perhaps these hedonistic modern-day slave masters sincerely believe that giving back a few rupees in wages and donations after sucking out millions and piling on their private risks on the nation through their dealings with the rogues in Diyawannawa, would be fair. As always, they will politely clap at the end of each session, before taking up the whip and returning to their daily routine the following day.

This year, there will be one session on the Greener Path and the sustainable development goals. While commendable, one has to wonder how far this discussion will go before the crowd starts murmuring about their donations during the floods and droughts, and their tree planting campaigns as adhering to the green principle. Charity is praiseworthy, but totally irrelevant to any company attempting to become sustainable.



Income puzzle

Meanwhile, this weekend, Public Enterprise Development Minister Kabir Hashim gave a reminder of the true objective of economic management.

We believe in the free market economy. We believe in the social market economy. We need to begin more equity, and thats what we believe we need to do. We need to balance incomes, we need to bring down disparities, and give everybody an equal chance, he said.

Those who believe in the free market tend to forget the rest of the explanation given by Adam Smith when advocating this system.

Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it, Smith said.

This in itself explains that the free market system could cause distortions in the economy due to the selfish nature of economic agents. The social market economic model was introduced in order to create safeguards for the society stemming from the ill-effects of the free market.

"Why are they lobbying so hard for preferential trade agreements, which actually contribute to regression in the global trade nexus, by disrupting free trade flows and promoting inefficient utilization of resources?"

But even in Germany, where the social market economic policy is practised so fervently, the system has only managed to keep income inequality from degrading further, at an uneasy equilibrium, instead of reducing the gap.

Inequality is the greatest economic issue facing the world today. Even in Sri Lanka, it could be argued that except for the almost insurmountable debt problem, income inequality is the most acute economic problem. How far do these so called summits contribute towards this? These business chambers may argue that the lack of growth through exports is what holds the country back from paying back its debt and achieving greater prosperity, and that addressing this is also required for firms to pay their employees better.

This theory could almost hold water, since even Thomas Piketty says that increased growth reduces inequality - although the accumulation of wealth, especially among the top executives and capital owners grows faster and Piketty advocates taxing them heavily to account for the disparity.

Even IMF staff papers published in 2014 show that increased trade and globalization in todays world has only served to uplift underserved segments from abject poverty into poverty, with very little progress beyond that.

How many members of these business chambers are lobbying to have themselves taxed further to account for inequality? The US city of Portland is adopting a law-based on Pikettys principles where a company paying its CEO over 100 times the median salary of its median employee salary will be charged super taxes. Piketty responded saying that the ratio should be considerably lower. Perhaps this ratio should be in the range of 1:5 or 1:10 and should be extended to each of the top executives in a firm.

It makes enormous sense to give a greater share of the economic pie to the, sections of society shedding their blood sweat and tears to fatten the wallets of their masters since this will increase the marginal rate of spending within the bottom 90% of the income pyramid, thus leading to greater economic growth.

After all, for the minority of hedonists earning hundreds of thousands or millions a month wont spend much if their income increases by Rs.100,000 but for the millions earning less than Rs.30,000 - 40,000 a month, such an increase would be ground-breaking.

Perhaps these business chambers should be lobbying the private sector for much more attractive salaries and working conditions for these workers instead of complaining about the

lack of labour.

No transparent trade negotiations

Setting this aside, these chambers export promotion arguments main points of working towards tariff liberalization, preferential trade agreements, and trade facilitation, seem to be at odds with each other. Why lobby for tariff liberalization and preferential trade agreements simultaneously?

If tariffs are liberalized, there would be no need for preferential trade agreements. Perhaps these calls for tariff liberalization - the goal each country should work towards - are just lip service, knowing that the cash strapped government would not do this.



Why are they lobbying so hard for preferential trade agreements, which actually contribute to regression in the global trade nexus, by disrupting free trade flows and promoting inefficient utilization of resources? Trade agreements in the long-run could lead to a country continuing to import from high cost, inefficient producers and exporting inefficiently produced goods by excluding other economies from these agreements.

"Perhaps these calls for tariff liberalization - the goal each country should work towards - are just lip service, knowing that the cash strapped government would not do this"



One has to wonder how much of a benefit Sri Lanka would get from these agreements, given that trade between countries Sri Lanka has signed agreements with is greater outside the trade agreements, than within them. It is however clear that the other countries are fighting for the much more attractive prize of the control of the Indian Ocean, by having Sri Lankas economy dependent on them. Also, is it coincidence that the membership of these trade chambers includes monopolies and oligopolies which rose to the top based on protectionist tariffs imposed through political influence? Who would bet against an outcome where these industries could be in the negative lists of the preferential trade agreements being negotiated?

Why should these trade chambers get a seat at the negotiation table, while the public are not given details on the key points and progress of negotiations, which could tie Sri Lanka up with another country, with deep economic and diplomatic repercussions attached to attempts at exiting such arrangements if they become harmful?

Inconsistency abound

It is also dizzying to comprehend why these business chambers call for policy consistency from the government, when their members cant follow such a principle themselves. While some of their members call for trade liberalization, others call for import protections and price floors.

Isnt it weird that Former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said that just 25-30 hotels pay taxes? There are around 600 hotels. Perhaps these trade chambers should clean their houses first before asking the government, which too is similarly made up of parties with differing viewpoints of cleaning itself up.

If the event to take place this week were really an economic summit, most of the discussions would be centred on how to create a better economy for the normal Sri Lankan by reducing inequality and creating a symmetric information system. But instead would it continue to lobby politicians to further the perverse capitalist agenda?
An emotional Jaffna High Court Judge Manikkavasagaar Ilanchezhiyan was seen bowing to the wife of the killed Police Sergeant following the postmortem in Jaffna this morning.

The Police Sergeant was killed due to gunshot injuries while giving escort to the Judge Ilanchezhiyan at Nallur.

High Court Judge was seen even more emotional when the wife of Police Sergeant Sarath Premachandra arrived at the scene.(Romesh Madushanka)

Video by Gobi Ranjan and Wanni Romesh Madushanka
Time had come for the legal sector and the Government to think whether it was possible to regulate social media such as Facebook, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Saturday.

The Prime Minister came up with this statement at the 28th Law Asia Conference in Colombo over the weekend.

Modern technology society has changed the issues which the legal sector in particular is facing. For example consider the internet, Facebook. If you regulate Face Book and the internet is it a violation of Fundamental Rights?

Many foreign governments are tackling it especially in the social sector and child welfare. These are the issues which we have to tackle. These are new issues which we have not even thought of, he said.

The Premier said there were three areas which the Government and the law experts would have to discuss.

First is the ease of doing business, the Ministry of National Policies and International Trade and Ministry of Finance coming up with a plan for it and we will send it across to you and you place your views, you know the problems. It is the same with the trade reforms. Then we need to focus on off shore financial city," he added.

"How are we going to be creative? We are going to talk with China Harbour and with a Reserve Bank of India. That matter needs consultation with both from the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) and the bench. You cannot bring about changes in a controversy but in a consensus background. Lets start working on this. What are the commonalities with principals and changes which economic and legal sectors should work together? We are willing to work with you," he told the members of BASL and Law Asia.

We are hoping for free trade agreements with India, China and Singapore and with other Asian countries which means in no way that will take domestic industries a risk. In the next ten to 15 years we have to become competitive. Now the modernisation will have to take place and we are concentrating on trade agreement with India and we must work with the five Southern states," the premier stated.

"We have a combined GDP of $ 600 billion, if we work together getting a trillion dollar GDP for the five states and us it will be possible. We should think out of the box. Now within it, we need new laws, we have to draft the laws, we have to talk to the BASL on new systems he added. .

What Sri Lanka wants to become is the hub of the Indian Ocean, to become hub of logistics and communication. This requires modernisation, he added.

He said the foreign exchange Bill would be debated in Parliament this week. (Yohan Perera)
A group of naval personnel attached to the Eastern Naval Command had rescued two elephants that were swept out to the sea, in between Round Island and Foul Point, Trincomalee this morning.

Courtesy : Sri Lanka Navy
A group of Naval personnel attached to the Eastern Naval Command had to rescue two elephants that were swept out to the sea, in-between Round Island and Foul Point, Trincomalee this morning, the Navy media said.

The jumbos were first noticed by an Inshore Patrol Craft during a routine patrol.

The Navy launched a combined rescue operation with the Trincomalee Wildlife Department; to save the two wild elephants with the support of the Navy divers and three Fast Attack Crafts.

Accordingly, the mammoth effort of the rescue teams saw the two jumbos being carefully directed to the shore without causing any harm to the animals. The animals were later released to the Foul Point forest.

In the same vein, a team of Naval personnel belonging to the same Naval command saved an elephant caught in current in the seas about 8 Nm off Kokkuthuduvai on July 11. (Amadoru Amarajeewa)

Video by Navy Media
A Police Sergeant attached to the security detail of Jaffna High Court Judge M. Ilanchezhiyan, who was undergoing treatment at the Jaffna General Hospital for gunshot injuries in yesterdays shootout at Nallur, died early this morning, the Police said.

They said another Policeman was also injured in the shooting.

Police said an individual had grabbed a pistol of one of the two Policemen, who were providing security to the judges vehicle, and fired at the Policeman and the Jaffna High Court Judge M. Ilanchezhiyan, who is a member of the trial-at-bar that is hearing the rape and murder of Vidya in Jaffna.

However, the judge escaped unhurt as the Policemen prevented the judge from getting off the vehicle.(DS)

Video by Gobi Ranjan
Jaffna lawyers will boycott their normal duties today as a mark of protest against the shooting incident that killed the security officers of Jaffna High Court Judge M. Ilanchezhiyan. The lawyers took this decision yesterday.

Besides, private bus operations will also come to a standstill today.

The northern province private bus owners association said that arrangements have been made to stop all private buses today by condemning the shooting at the security officers of the High Court Judge and demanding the immediate arrest of the suspects . (Romesh Madhushanka)

Video by Gobi Ranjan
A doctors perspective of present-day practice of medicine in Sri Lanka

I was listening to the radio Corrupt specialist doctor got caught while taking bribes. This story went viral on social media. The radio station gave the full story of his behaviour with evidence. It was a shame to the whole of medical profession that prompted me to write about medical ethics. I sat down with a book titled great traditions in ethics. Suddenly I saw some nurses and a young doctor running towards a patient, there was a sudden cardiac (heart) arrest. The doctor without thinking twice started resuscitating the patient. The poor old patients clothes were soiled with faecal matter, vomit and saliva.

The smell was unbearable. The young doctor was resuscitating even without gloves. I saw his tie, shirt and the trouser all stained with the secretions from the patient. The doctor quickly cannulated the patient and restarted his care up to the maximum with pouring sweat. After everything was over, he went to the tap, to see he needs to take a bath. Unfortunately he cannot leave the ward. I slowly started my conversation with him.

Its faeces, vomit and saliva on your hands; you need to take a bath, isnt it?

Its ok, I used to work with my father in his paddy field in the mud and in the hot sun, and Im used to it.

The both these doctors were products of free education in Sri Lanka. The first specialist as far as I know has come with flying colours in undergraduate and postgraduate examinations.

When it comes to SAITM issue, where do I stand was with the universal declaration of Human Rights -Article 26.



Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stage. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

We think we have a fair, just and transparent system of merit to enter into medical schools-though our district quota system has its limitations. When I entered the university, I felt it was the power of cramming and memorising that they checked at the examinations.

Although medicine is based on facts, the exercising of these facts requires articulate thinking, balance and judgement, which are informed by ethical considerations.

An individual wishing to become a healthcare professional has to learn the principles by which the profession works. For healthcare, these include many fundamental issues in philosophy such as humanity, personhood, relationships and society, as well as morality and regulation.

Medicine is unique in many ways, dealing as it does quite literally with matters of life and death. Even if the gravity of this is recognised, it is and will remain a fallible practice.

To expect doctors to never make mistakes, while at the same time acknowledging, that to err is human, appears to be logically inconsistent.

Lord Justice Nourse once said Of all sciences, medicine is one of the least exact. Others have suggested that it is overly simplistic to regard medicine simply as a science, suggesting instead that it is a discrete discipline that draws on many others.



The Law of Hippocrates states Medicine is of all the arts the most noble, but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it and of those who inconsiderately, form a respect by all men, in all times but should I trespass and violate this oath, may the reverse be my lot

In Canada, at graduation, civil engineers are given a ring to wear throughout their lives. The metal from which these rings are made comes from a bridge which collapsed, causing many deaths.

By way of analogy, doctors who forget the fundamental ethical principles to which they subscribe at graduation will be liable to cause unnecessary suffering, and even death.

In our professional lives as doctors, we will regularly encounter problems that require us to make difficult decisions. There will be times when we are not certain what the best choice of action ought to be. There are times when our own choices, beliefs and values do not coincide with those of others. Such conflicts will arise with colleagues, other professionals, superiors, accepted guidelines and most significantly with patients.

Ordinarily, we tend to rely on our own intuitions and beliefs to settle these problems, but when conflicts arise they may be counterproductive to fall back on these very beliefs that are causing the conflict in the first place. Thus we require other approaches for decision making.

Science can not address all the problems encountered in healthcare. There are issues that must be covered by the Art of Medicine.



The three rules i.e., laws, professional codes and guidelines, the principles and theories of ethics can be recruited to assist our own natural decision making abilities, which include common sense, personal beliefs and the factual scientific knowledge.

As it stands today, we have no absolutes for handling difficult decisions, there are no clear signposts and there is no unequivocal way. If we did have formula answers for them, the decisions wouldnt be difficult.

Finally I would like to highlight a part of oath and Law of Hippocrates,

Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine, ought to be possessed of the following advantages: a natural disposition, instruction; a favourable position for the study, early tuition; love of labour; leisure.

First of all, a natural talent is required, for when nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labour and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits.

Having brought all these requisites to the study of medicine, and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus in travelling through the cities, be esteemed physicians not only in name but in reality. Those things which are sacred are to be imparted only to sacred persons, and it is not lawful to impart them to the profane until they have been initiated into the mysteries of the science.



The writer is a doctor working at National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL) Colombo and possesses MBBS (SL ), HND /JMM, Dip. Psychology & counselling.

Where do I stand......
There is little doubt that the Indian Army is in dire need of 7.62mm and 5.56mm assault rifles. The Army still uses the AK-47 in the category of the 7.62mm rifles while the Indian Small Arms Systems (INSAS) 5.56 is an obsolete as well as unreliable assault rifle and needs replacement. A 5.56mm assault rifle is smaller-calibre ammunition which is lighter; hence, for the same load, more rounds can be carried by each infantryman.

In 2016, there were reports that the Army was looking for 1,85,000 assault rifles. Acquiring the assault rifle is crucial for the infantry as it not only faces the brunt on the borders but also carries out counter-terrorism operations. It is a known fact that the Indian Army does not use heavy weaponry in counter-terrorism operations unlike the US and the NATO countries.

One of the reliable weapons systems for the Army during counter-terrorism operations is the assault rifle. Hence, it is important for India to acquire modern and sophisticated assault rifles.

There have been efforts to procure the assault rifle since 2011 but consistent delays have stalled the progress of acquiring a good quality rifle. This delay is a concern for the Army. Despite global companies participating in the assault rifle tender, in 2015, the task to manufacture the rifle was ultimately given to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

The DRDO was to make the INSAS Excalibur, but that plan was cancelled. The same year, India decided to manufacture an assault rifle with interchangeable barrel that would be able to fire different calibres - both 5.56mm round and 7.62mm round - so that the same gun could have served the purpose of counter-terrorism as well as guarding borders and peace stations.

However, this ambitious project did not meet any success as the contractors could not meet with the ambitious demand of the Army. The project required the gun to be lightweight and the calibre needed to be changed by changing the barrel and magazine.

This was followed by another event in September 2016, when the ministry of defence reissued a request for information for a 7.62x51mm assault rifle that can "shoot to kill" instead of a 5.56mm INSAS. Such "shoot to kill" weapons are characteristic of a 7.62mm assault rifle and are best suited in counter-terrorism operations when the reaction time is less. The DRDO was previously developing a 7.62x45mm gun but the Indian Army was then interested in a 7.62x51mm assault rifle.

The Indian Army still uses the AK-47 in the category of the 7.62mm rifles. Photo: Indiandefensenews

The government wanted to procure an assault rifle under the Make in India strategy but that has not reached any success. This year, the Army rejected the indigenously made 7.62mm rifle on the grounds that it was technologically not up to the mark. The Army cited reasons that the gun was of poor quality and had ineffective fire power. According to reports, during the trial sessions, excessive flash and sound signature was observed and did not meet the standard.

Rahul Bhonsle, a retired Indian Army brigadier and defence analyst, stated once: DRDO projects will remain technology demonstrators given that they do not provide confidence to the customer, the Indian armed forces, that these weapons systems are modern or state-of-the-art.

However, hope is not yet lost as Indias private sector organisations are now keen to venture into weapon manufacturing. In May 2017, reports came in that Indias private firm Punj Lloyd Raksha Systems has set up a venture Israeli Weapon Industries (IWI) to manufacture the Tavor assault rifle.

India has already entered into an agreement with Israel to jointly manufacture weapon systems and transfer of technology and this venture would only strengthen this agreement. The special forces of the Army, the Garud special force of the Indian Air Force and the Marine Corps of the Indian Navy already use the Tavor-21 assault rifles.
A Crozet man who spent nearly 15 hours on the lam was recaptured Saturday morning after an Albemarle County resident spotted him in a Mill Creek neighborhood.

Matthew Michael Carver, 26  an inmate at Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail  was caught without incident just before 10 a.m. Saturday in the 1200 block of Foxvale Lane and Southern Parkway in the Mill Creek area of Albemarle County, according to police.

Carver was then taken to the University of Virginia Medical Center after complaining of minor injuries, and he is currently in the custody of the regional jail.

At about 7:20 p.m. Friday, Carver, shackled and handcuffed, kicked out the rear window of a Louisa County Sheriffs Office patrol car while being transported to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail after a court hearing on a probation violation charge.

Carver vanished in the area of Scottsville Road and Lyman Hills Drive. The deputy was not injured during Carvers escape.

Police from multiple agencies  including the Charlottesville Police Department, Albemarle County Police Department, Henry County Sheriffs Office, Louisa County Sheriffs Office and Virginia State Police  soon swarmed the area and set up a command center near Piedmont Virginia Community College. The search also was aided by a Virginia State Police helicopter, multiple bloodhounds and K-9 units and the Albemarle County SWAT team.

Authorities searched for Carver throughout the night and canvassed Avon Street in the Mill Creek area and U.S. 20 in the area of Monticello and Mill Creek Drive. But police said it was an observant citizen who noticed a suspicious man matching Carvers description that eventually led to his recapture by an Albemarle County police officer, according to police spokeswoman Madeline Curott.

What were most thankful for are the citizens in the area, Curott said. They listened to us, they were looking out for each other, they were staying vigilant  and, ultimately, that is what led to the recapture of Matthew Carver.

By using the Code RED reverse 911 system in a two-mile radius on Friday night, Curott said police were able to get word out quickly and warn residents to stay indoors.

When Carver was finally captured, police said he was no longer wearing his black-and-white jail jumpsuit, but theywould not say whether he was still shackled and handcuffed.

Police also are still investigating how he kicked out the window of the Louisa County cruiser.

Prior to his escape, a Louisa County sheriffs deputy was returning Carver to ACRJ after a probation violation hearing in Louisa County court related to a shoplifting charge, to which he pleaded guilty in 2015.

In June, Carver was arrested after he allegedly attempted to break into a Crozet house and stole a nearby Honda CR-V. Police eventually found Carver driving the CR-V, and he was arrested after he abandoned the vehicle.

Carver, who had been wanted on six unrelated felony warrants, is charged with nine felony counts in that case: Five counts of breaking and entering, two counts of abduction and two counts of theft of automobiles. He also faces two misdemeanor counts of destruction of property.

In addition to his previous charges, Carver now faces a felony charge of unlawful escape with force, as well as misdemeanor charges of fleeing from law enforcement; petit larceny, first offense; and vandalism or destruction of property.

Police said additional charges may be pending.

Earlier updates follow below.

UPDATE: 6 p.m.

Matthew Michael Carver was recaptured at about 10 a.m. Saturday in the 1200 block of Foxvale Lane and Southern Parkway in the Mill Creek area of Albemarle County.

At about 7:20 p.m. Friday, Carver, shackled and handcuffed, kicked out the rear window of a Louisa County Sheriff's Office patrol car while being transported to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail after a court hearing on a probation violation charge. He was lost in the area of Scottsville Road and Lyman Hills Drive.

In addition to nine felonies and two misdemeanors that Carver already faces in Albemarle, he is now charged with unlawful escape with force, a felony, and three other misdemeanors: feeling for a law enforcement officer, petit larceny and vandalism.

Police said additional charges may be pending and the investigation is ongoing.

UPDATE: 11:20 a.m.

Albemarle police say Matthew Carver has been recaptured, more than 15 hours after he escaped a Louisa County police car by kicking out the rear window.

Carver was being transported back to Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail after facing a probation violation charge in Louisa County.

Authorities said more details about additional charges would be released later on Saturday.

A man being transported to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail kicked out the police cars rear window and escaped on Friday night near the Mill Creek area.

Authorities lost Matthew Michael Carver, a 26-year-old Crozet man, at about 7:20 p.m. at Scottsville Road and Lyman Hills Drive. A Louisa County sheriffs deputy, who was not injured by the escape, had been returning Carver to the jail after a court hearing.

Police say residents in the area should stay inside, lock their doors and remain vigilant. Anyone who sees Carver is asked to call 911 immediately. A Virginia State Police helicopter was aiding the search.

While a police mugshot shows Carver with brown hair and a goatee, a police spokeswoman said he is more closely shaven now. In addition, police do not think Carver is still wearing his black-and-white jumpsuit. He is still believed to be handcuffed.

In June, Carver was arrested after allegedly attempting to break into a Crozet house and stealing a nearby Honda CR-V. Police eventually found Carver driving the CR-V, and he was arrested after he abandoned the vehicle.

Carver, who had been wanted on six unrelated felony warrants, is charged with nine felony counts in that case: Five counts of breaking and entering, two counts of abduction and two counts of theft of automobiles. He also faces two misdemeanor counts of destruction of property. Carver had been held at the Albemarle-Charlottesville jail without bond.
RICHMOND  For 12 years, Francis Stevens has kept a lookout for potential threats to public order at the epicenter of Virginias state government. While on patrol or manning a post as a Capitol Police officer, he cant help but watch what the politicians he passes in the halls are doing. And what they arent.

As he was getting ready to leave work one day last year, Stevens felt a pain in his chest. He says it was the heart attack and his brush with the pitfalls of the health care system, along with a family history of political service in his native Philippines, that pushed him to pursue a different job at the Capitol: serving as a member of the House of Delegates.

For me, as a human being, we have to help one another, Stevens, 55, said as he explained why he feels it should be easier for needy people to get health insurance. I just dont understand how we can have a hard heart and always think about balancing the budget.

A Midlothian resident who immigrated to the United States when he was 12, Stevens is running as a Democrat against Del. R. Lee Ware Jr., a Powhatan County Republican who has represented the 65th House District for almost 20 years.

The General Assembly has several current members with law enforcement backgrounds, but Stevens, who previously worked in retail management, believes he may be the first Capitol Police officer to try to make the jump into state politics.

Its hard not to pay attention. Especially during the session, Stevens said. You hear about it. People talking about it. People gathering at Meriwethers [cafe] talking about issues and the bills they want to work on. So its hard not to get involved.

Stevens said he sought advice from the Attorney Generals Office and the state ethics council to make sure he was allowed to run. According to past legal opinions, theres no strict barrier against state employees running for office, but winners would probably have to give up their state job.

The 65th District  made up of parts of Fluvanna, Chesterfield and Goochland counties and all of Powhatan  is deep-red, and Stevens says hes aware of the challenges in his way. Last year, 61 percent of the districts voters supported President Donald Trump, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

Elizabeth Hardin, the chair of the Chesterfield County Democratic Committee, said the 65th has been seen in the past as a sacrificial lamb district for Democrats. The party has often been unable to field a candidate, she said, but Stevens stepped up to run for all the right reasons.

Hes out there earning every vote, Hardin said. The demographics have changed in the district. And I think a lot of people have lost their complacency about things since the election last fall.

Though hes a clear underdog, Stevens said he had nothing negative to say about Ware, a former history and government teacher who has served in the House since 1998.

Hes a kind and decent individual, Stevens said. Hes always been good to me personally. But hes been in for almost 20 years. And possibly, maybe its time for a change.

Ware declined to comment. In an email, a Ware aide said a profile article on Stevens would be an inappropriate forum for a comment from the delegate.

Stevens said the top issues hell focus on are school quality, rural broadband, law enforcement pay and health care, particularly stalled efforts to expand Medicaid in Virginia under the Affordable Care Act.

Stevens said his heart attack last year, which required him to be rushed across the street to MCV, was an eye-opener.

After I looked at my bill, I said to myself, Im lucky. I have insurance, Stevens said. How about those that cannot afford insurance? They would go bankrupt. A young family, it would devastate them.

Raised by his extended family in the Philippines, Stevens said he got a taste of financial hardship early in life.

We didnt have a whole lot in terms of the things that normal people would have here I guess, Stevens said. Like a TV set. A refrigerator. Our running water wasnt always reliable.

His father, a Marine, left before he was born. His mother was a bank supervisor and city councilor. Stevens said he tries to emulate the basic goodness of his grandfather, a transportation official who he said spurned the corrupting gifts and favors of politics in the Philippines.

Stevens eventually moved to San Diego to live with an aunt and uncle. Because his uncle was in the military, he finished high school in Japan before heading to college at Sonoma State University in Californias wine country. It was there, while studying political science, that he met his wife, Michele. A psychologist, she was offered a job at Central State Hospital, prompting a cross-country, sight unseen move from San Diego to Petersburg.

Stevens said he quickly got work looking for ways to get involved in civic affairs. He briefly served on the Petersburg City Council in the early 2000s. In 2015, he ran for the Clover Hill seat on the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors, drawing almost 40 percent of the vote against a Republican incumbent on what he called a shoestring budget. Last year, he served as a Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

At the state level, hes served on the Fair Housing Board and the Virginia Asian Advisory Board.

The diversification of the Richmond suburbs, particularly Chesterfield, Stevens said, opens the door to potential political change.

I felt that maybe someone of a different background who hadnt lived here or grew up here can give a little bit of a different perspective on how to solve problems, Stevens said.

In the 2017 legislative session earlier this year, Republicans had a 66-34 advantage in the House, a margin Democrats want to cut into in November. They hope it will be a wave year fueled by energetic opposition to Trump.

Running in a more rural, Trump-friendly district, Stevens offered only mild criticisms of the president. The administrations first six months have been chaotic, he said, because Trump seems to be delegating all policy details to others.

I would have run regardless of whether the Trump phenomenon was there or not, Stevens said.
LYNCHBURG  Buckingham County contractor David Ball has joined the crowded field in the race against Del. Matt Fariss, R-Rustburg, to represent the 59th District of the Virginia House of Delegates.

Hailing from the far eastern end of the sprawling district that includes Appomattox, Buckingham, a large section of Campbell and parts of Nelson and Albemarle counties, Balls campaign centers on serving the needs of rural Virginians, changing the tax code to encourage job creation and representing the needs of constituents over political parties.

I felt that people needed to have a choice that isnt party related, the independent candidate said. They need somebody who will carry the banner of the voters and not the party. [Thomas] Jefferson and [James] Madison both cautioned about the negative possibilities that would come about because of political parties.

Ball, 60, supports the increased use of strategic tax credits and other tax breaks to bring more light manufacturing jobs and other high-paying industries to the region.

I think that tax credits can be used to help stimulate the economy, he said. Theres an argument that theres too many tax credits in Virginia, but I think if you target the tax credits at job creation, then what youre going to see is jobs going to come in.

He wants to see policies that would increase access to high-speed internet in rural areas, which he said especially is a problem in Buckingham, where he has resided since 2007.

There is no reason why our rural area does not have DSL service, he said. There is very limited access in some areas, but the majority of the county is unserved, so youre left with using cellphones as hot spots or getting a satellite dish, which is very expensive.

Another concern of Balls is changing the medical system in Virginia to increase rural residents access to emergency medical care.

Originally from Northern Virginia, Ball moved to Buckingham permanently in 2007 after owning property in the area for a few years in order to escape the rapidly growing region surrounding Washington, D.C. He has earned five associate degrees from Northern Virginia Community College across a variety of subjects including business, psychology, science, education and psychology. Ball said he has held a variety of jobs, including in residential real estate and working for the Virginia Department of Transportation in road and bridge construction decades ago.

Recently after moving to the area, Ball was elected to the Peter Francisco Soil and Water Conservation District in 2007, a state entity managing money in Buckingham and Cumberland counties for agriculture-related conservation, which he held for two terms. He lost his third re-election bid in 2015.

Previously, Ball unsuccessfully challenged Lynchburg-area attorney Mark Peake and Goochland County Supervisor Ken Peterson for the Republican nomination in the special election held earlier this year to represent Virginia Senate District 22 following now-Rep. Tom Garrett winning the race to represent the 5th Congressional District.

Now Ball is challenging Fariss, who has held the seat since 2012, Albemarle-based Democrat Tracy Carver and Green Party candidate Marcus Sutphin.

Although Fariss had to battle it out with Democrat Connie Brennan and independent Linda Wall in 2011 to first win the seat, he has gone uncontested in the past two election cycles. More than half of the 59th District has voted for a GOP candidate in every election since the boundaries were redrawn in the once-every-10 years redistricting process in 2011, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

Despite several challengers, Fariss said he welcomes the opposition.

I am very proud of the job I have done representing the hard working people that elected me in the 59th District, he said in a statement. I am not surprised that I have acquired opposition in todays political climate. I look forward to running a campaign that focuses on the issues that affect my constituents in the 59th District.
MONTGOMERY, Ala.  The aircraft arrayed around the spacious lawn of Maxwell Air Force Base, home of the Air University, mostly represent long-retired types. The largest, however, is a glistening B-52 bomber, which represents a still employed component of the Air Force's aging fleet: The youngest B-52 entered service in 1962. Sons have flown the same plane their fathers and grandfathers flew.

But, then, the average age of all the Air Force aircraft is 27 years; fighters, more than 30 years; bombers and helicopters, more than 40 years; refueling tankers more than 50 years. America's security challenges change much faster  think of the Soviet Union's demise and the Islamic State's rise  than new technologies can be conceived, designed, approved, built and deployed. The F/A-18 and the F-16 were designed about 45 years ago.

On April 15, 1953, two U.S. soldiers in Korea were attacked and killed by a propeller-driven aircraft supporting Chinese and North Korean troops. Since then, no U.S. ground troops have been attacked by an enemy aircraft. Such has been the permissive environment guaranteed by U.S. air dominance, not since Vietnam has a U.S. pilot used his aircraft's bullets to down an enemy fighter plane (although air-to-air missiles downed enemy aircraft over the Balkans).

The Air Force's dominance in controlling the air and in supporting ground troops might have been what an F-16 pilot here calls a "catastrophic success," distracting attention from the rapidly evolving challenge of multi-domain, combined-arms warfare on land, on and under the sea, in the air, and in space and cyberspace.

From Dec. 8, 1941, through August 5, 1945  the day before Hiroshima  there were no radical technological disjunctions during World War II. Aircraft, aircraft carriers, tanks and radar were pre-Pearl Harbor technologies. Future wars, however, will be won by information superiority that produces superior decisions. Which means that China gave a chilling glimpse of the future when in January 2007 it successfully launched an anti-satellite weapon.

Beginning with the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, airpower has been the first, and sometimes the only, recourse of presidents. In 1991, six weeks of air attacks enabled U.S. ground forces to finish Iraq's army in 100 hours. In 1999, in three months of combat over Serbia and Kosovo, airpower sufficed to enable diplomacy to attain the political objectives. In 1991, in the first night of the Gulf War air campaign, U.S. airpower struck more targets than the Eighth Air Force struck in Europe in all of 1942 and 1943.

These recent episodes may, however, be remembered not as harbingers of future conflicts but as punctuations ending an era. In this, its 70th year as an independent service, the Air Force, like the other branches of the military, but more than any other, is being required to rethink its mission in light of rapidly evolving threats and technologies.

The Air Force is in charge of two legs of the nuclear deterrence triad  strategic bombers and Minuteman ICBMs  but also has been delivering 70 percent of the bombs against ISIS. For decades, the Air Force's strategic role was defined by President Dwight Eisenhower's configuration of U.S. forces for long-range deterrence of the Soviet Union in order to reduce the need for massive forward-based forces. In 2009, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who perhaps possesses broader knowledge and experience of national security matters than any American has ever had, said: "If the Department of Defense can't figure out a way to defend the United States on a budget of more than half a trillion dollars a year, then our problems are much bigger than anything that can be cured by a few more ships and planes." Indeed, safety might come from buying fewer ships and planes, and more drones.

And developing hypersonic (more than five times the speed of sound) weapons that can strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour. And electromagnetic kinetic weapons (railguns) with muzzle velocities of 5,000 miles per hour, twice as fast as the muzzle velocity of a high-caliber bullet. Directed-energy laser-based weapons operating at the speed of light are about 134,000 times faster than railguns.

What Air Force people call "fast movers"  fighter planes, the fastest bombers  are mere plodders compared to weapons that are not far over the horizon. And compared to the pace of geo-strategic and technological changes that challenge even the fine Air University's capacity to comprehend them.

George Will is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Email him at georgewill@washpost.com.
There is more to the story of Yancey Elementary that the public needs to know. The elephant in the room that few politicians and so-called education experts dont want to acknowledge is how much the emphasis on standardized test scores has hurt education in our country. It's led to some of our best teachers leaving the profession and low morale among teachers, principals, and students.

Before 2002, when No Child Left behind was enacted, some politicians wanted to find a way to channel federal education funds to private schools.

First, they had to create a way to prove that public schools were "failing." What better way than to force public school students to take standardized tests? Since public schools cannot screen applicants, there would be disadvantaged students who would bring average public school scores down.

It's taken a number of years and a new administration, but the strategy is working. We appear destined to have federally funded vouchers for parents of private school students.

Students who are struggling don't need test scores to learn to read and compute. More than anything, they need to succeed. Nothing stifles learning more than being told again and again that you've failed.

When a school's enrollment becomes so low that important services are no longer available, there is little recourse but to close. But why did Yancey's enrollment decline? A Daily Progress/Charlottesville Tomorrow story on July 10/9 tells us that one student transferring out of Yancey with high test scores could dynamically affect a grade's test scores (The struggle to overcome numbers in final years). Were students leaving because the school had been proclaimed a "failing school"?

The story also stated that the Yancey students showed "a year's growth in Phonological Literacy Screening" after a few months of tutoring and doubled the percentage of students that liked going to school. But the only thing that the state and federal governments look at is how proficient students are at blackening the correct circles on SOL tests.

The children who need education the most have been left behind.

Gerry Kruger, Albemarle County
The chairman of parliamentary panel on finance, M Veerappa Moily, said he was for changing the financial year to January-December.

New Delhi: The chairman of parliamentary panel on finance, M Veerappa Moily, on Sunday said he was for changing the financial year to January-December, but the government should not rush the process lest it disrupt the economy.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday informed Parliament that the government was considering changing financial year to January-December from April-March.

The present financial year (April 1 to March 31) was adopted by the Government of India in 1867 principally to align the Indian financial year with that of the British government. Prior to 1867, the financial year in India used to commence on May 1 of the current year to April 30 of the following calendar year.

Talking to PTI, Moily said the government could announce changing the financial year in Budget in February and accordingly the next Budget presentation date could be adjusted.

There are reports that government may advance the Budget presentation to November from February. "The issue of changing financial year was examined by many committees since pre-Independence days. It is not a new thinking. "I am also for it, but don't hurry up. Take opinion of states. Only three states, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have given opinion and that too unofficially," said Moily, the Chairman of Standing Committee on Finance and senior Congress leader.

Among others, the panel had looked into budgetary reforms including merger of railway budget with General Budget. The former Union minister and chairman of 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission said that the change in financial year should be done because "April-March is not rooted in Indian culture and ethos. It is absolutely British".

Moily said several committees have gone into the issue, however the Administrative Reforms Commission headed by him refrained from getting into because earlier suggestions for change in fiscal year were never accepted by the government.

Giving rationale for aligning the fiscal year with calender year, he said: "We are in global economy. Many of the countries have adopted calender year. We should adopt but not arbitrarily".

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed desire to align the financial year with the calendar year, the government had last year appointed a committee to study the feasibility of shifting the financial year to January 1.

The panel headed by Shankar Acharya submitted its report to the Finance Minister in December. "Let them (the government) announce in the budget the change in fiscal year to January-December and implement from next year," Moily said.

Moily sees that abrupt change in the accounting year may lead to disruption in the economy as tax laws will have to be amended and also accounting procedures. He also said the Congress would support change in the year, but the government should do it methodologically and consult all states.
The submission by the Centre was made before a five-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra which was examining the contentious issue of 2016 privacy policy of WhatsApp.

New Delhi: Mobile apps seeking blanket access to phone users information  even if irrelevant to their functions  have come under the lens of Trai, which will start consultation on data privacy and security in the telecom sector, according to an official.

There should be a link between what an application does and information the application is asking for... You will see a consultation paper... we are working on the issue, Trai chairman, R.S. Sharma, told PTI.

On Friday, the Centre told the Supreme Court that data of users are integral to the right of life and personal liberty guaranteed under the Constitution and it would come out with regulations to protect the same.

The submission by the Centre was made before a five-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra which was examining the contentious issue of 2016 privacy policy of WhatsApp.

Without referring to the case, Mr Sharma in a recent interview emphasised that information a mobile app asks for should be relevant to its purpose and that minimal information principle needs to be followed in normal course.

If an app has nothing to do with your, say, gender, then it should not ask for such information. That is the broad principle, Mr Sharma said, citing an example.

The Trai chief declined to specify whether the consultation would result in norms or regulations around data privacy and security, saying it is premature.

I will raise various issues during consultation... the form will depend on what stakeholders say, and also how much right we have as a regulator..., he added.

At present, discussions have started internally within Trai to look at these issues of data security and privacy in the telecom sector, he noted.

Mr Sharma said he had flagged the matter at a recent ITU global symposium of regulators and stressed on the need for regulators to come together to fix international norms in this regard. ...In case I am downloading an app and it asks for 20 information, completely irrelevant... and if I dont provide that information, it does not download... then there should some basis for information that an application can ask for, he said.

When contacted, Pavan Duggal, advocate and cyber law expert, said there are no adequate laws to govern mobile apps. The current dispensation is not enough. The IT Act is India's only legislation governing the mobile ecosystem. But it has not gone in the direction of stipulating parameters of due diligence to be done by mobile app service providers, he said.
Stills from the two films.

Mumbai: The week's two releases 'Munna Michael' and 'Lipstick under My Burkha' started their weekend with lukewarm response.

According to Box-Office India, Tiger Shroff starrer 'Munna Michael' earned six crore rupees at the ticket windows and witnessed a drop from the opening day collection.

The movie has not impressed the critics, but is getting some praises by the public.

On the other hand, 'Lipstick Under My Burkha' has impressed the critics with the bold subject.

The Alankrita Srivastava-directorial earned 1.85 crore rupees on Day 2 making the total to 2.95 crore rupees.

With the film being made on a budget of six crore rupees, the movie is set to do well at the box-office.

Meanwhile, Ranbir Kapoor's 'Jagga Jasoos' made two crore rupees on its ninth day, taking the total to 46.27 crore rupees.
The pre-release woes for Madhur Bhandarkars political drama, Indu Sarkar, seem to be increasing by the day. While there is news that the FCAT (Film Certificate Appellate Tribunal) will be seeing the film this week, a petition has been reportedly filed by Sanjay Gandhis biological daughter, Priya Paul to stay the films release till Bhandarkar deleted certain portions in the film. Meanwhile, the Congress tough opposition to the film and the uproar of its party workers, particularly in Pune, have now prompted theatre owners to ask for security cover after the film is officially cleared for release.

The president of the Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India, Nitin Datar, revealed that he was planning to write to the government asking for protection to all cinemas where the film would be screened. We have decided to ask the government for security cover to those cinemas which choose to screen the film. If they are unable to safeguard the theatres, we intend to ask government to compensate for damages in the event of unruly elements trying to create problems. We will see what the situation is like after the film is cleared, but the safety of cinemas and audiences is uppermost on our minds, says Nitin.

The COEAI President, who was in the news for calling for a ban on Ae Dil Hai Mushkil due to the protest against Pakistani artistes, recalled incidents from the recent past where sections of the crowd became unruly and vandalised several cinemas, during the release of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Dilwale, Bajirao Mastani and several other films.

The situation is growing from bad to worse for cinemas and we dont want to take any risks. Madhur Bhandarkar has got protection from the government, but what about the exhibitors? They are the ultimate sufferers, he said.

Nitin further said that the decision was being taken in view of the aggressiveness of Congress party workers and certain unsocial elements creating a ruckus about the film, The Congress high command does not seem to have issued a statement about the protest, but the local leaders are doing it on their own and also issuing threats. We didnt see any problem earlier, but considering the manner in which the Congress party workers have been going on a rampage in several places, especially Pune, it is only imminent, Nitin says, adding that the Congress had effectively tried to stall the release of films like Kissa Kursi Ka and Gandhi in the past. However they were in the ruling party at that time. Now the government should not have a problem providing security cover to all theatres, he said.

Meanwhile, the dialogue writer of the film, Sanjay Chhel, has said that the ruckus created by protesters around the film is unjustified. The film is not on the Emergency. It instead is set against the backdrop of the Emergency. It is also a well-known fact that the period of the Emergency was well-documented and everything is on record, which includes the Shah Commission. There have been so many films against the backdrop of partition too, but there was no big deal about it. When I wrote Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani way back, I had taken digs on earlier governments, but there was no problem, he recalls. Indu Sarkar is scheduled to release on July 28.
London: William Shakespeare, whose sexuality has been a long-running debate in academic circles, may have been a gay, a top UK theatre director has claimed, asserting that it was "no longer acceptable" for performers to conceal the sexual orientation of the Bard's homosexual characters.

Artistic director of Britain's major theatre company 'Royal Shakespeare Company' Greg Doran said he believed it was Shakespeare's sexuality which gave the noted playwright an outsider's insight that had helped his work.

"I guess a growing understanding of Shakespeare as I have worked with him over the many years that I have, makes me realise that his perspective is very possibly that of an outsider," Doran said.

"It allows him to get inside the soul of a black general, a Venetian jew, an Egyptian queen or whatever and that perhaps that outsider perspective has something to do with his sexuality," he told BBC Radio 4.

Doran said the key clues to understanding Shakespeare's sexuality were in his sonnets. "He wrote a cycle of 154 sonnets, which were published in 1609, and 126 of those sonnets are addressed to a man and not to a woman," Doran said.

He said directors should not hide the sexuality of Shakespeare's gay characters including Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, who is "absolutely clearly in love with the young man Bassanio and sometimes that is kind of toned down". Doran said their love had instead been depicted as "we chaps are very fond of each other".

"It's not, it's clearly a very particular portrait of a gay man and I think in the 21st century it's no longer acceptable to play that as anything other than a homosexual," he said.

Debate over Shakespeare's sexuality has raged for decades among scholars. Three years ago leading scholars clashed in the Times Literary Supplement about the issue, The Telegraph reported.

Brian Vickers started the row by criticising a book suggesting sonnet 116 appeared in a "primarily homosexual context," the report said.

He said it was an "anachronistic assumption" because Shakespeare, 52, was using a form of rhetoric that allowed men to express love without implying sexual attraction. Stanley Wells, a Shakespeare expert at the University of Birmingham, said, "Shakespeare was certainly not exclusively gay. He married Anne Hathaway when he was only 18 and they had a daughter, Susanna, within six months, then twins - a boy,

Hamnet and a girl, Judith". "But he was pretty certainly bisexual, and actively so.

The strongest evidence comes from the sonnets, in some of which he writes of a triangular relationship with a man and a woman. Some people claim that these poems are fictional, but I think this is an evasion," the report quoted Wells as saying.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, 38 plays and two long narrative poems. Born in 1564, the Bard died in 1616.
Anushka had also signed a Tamil film and she felt that the dates would clash with that of Sahoo.

While there is a lot of clamour to see Anushka and Prabhas sharing screen space in the upcoming film Sahoo, reliable sources say the actress is not part of the action drama. The 35-year-old actress, who had asked for two months before coming on board, apparently feels she hasnt had enough time at her disposal. Moreover, she had also signed a Tamil film earlier and she felt that the dates would clash with that of Sahoo.

It is highly unlikely that shell be part of the film, Also, she had a Tamil film to start shooting for, so there could be clash of dates between the two films, informs a source.

Meanwhile, the makers have started scouting for another leading lady.
Hepatitis B causes 60,000 deaths every year in India alone, according to World Health Organisation.

The increasing cases of hepatitis B and C is primarily due to blood transfusions with unscreened blood, surgical procedures that follow unsafe practices and use of unsterile needles by diabetics and intravenous drug users.

Hepatitis B causes 60,000 deaths every year in India alone, according to World Health Organisation.

The prevalence of Hepatitis C is one per cent in the general population but doctors state that due to lack of screening, the actual numbers are not known. Chronic Hepatitis C cases, which reach hospitals require aggressive treatment. If there is damage to the liver, they can be fatal as very little can be done to make it bounce back.

The increasing cases of liver diseases and liver cancers in the country are making doctors look at Hepatitis B and C closely. Hepatitis B and C is a virus that causes acute to severe infection in the liver and needs to be treated properly.

Dr Ramanjaneyulu Erukulla, senior consultant gastroenterologist and hepatologist explains, Those who undergo blood transfusion and surgeries must get their blood tested after a few months. Often, we find patients coming with full blown virus due to surgeries and blood transfusion.

While blood is subjected to tests at the best of centres, there is a window period of 60 days for the virus to show in the tests. This is one of the prime reasons where secondary causes of transmission are showing up in people.

Dr Sethu Babu, senior gastroenterologist says, Screening all those who have had a surgery 10 to 15 years back, and those who have received transfusion in the past should be made special targets. In hospitals, we are now finding these patients coming with full blown disease and serious liver complications. Some of them also have liver cancer. Anti-viral therapy is not only economical but is also highly cost effective if the disease is detected early.

Apart from these factors there are also cases of unprotected sex, multiple utilisation of personal care items like toothbrushes and razors which have infected people with the virus.

Dr Ramanjaneyulu adds, Awareness of the disease is very low in India. While the disease shows few symptoms in the early stages, people often ignore it and that leads to further development.

Pregnant women coming to the institutes are screened but those who are missed continue to carry the virus which proves fatal.

Effective awareness is the need of the hour. Regular screening, Hepatitis B vaccination and safe injection practices must be followed by the medical fraternity in the rural areas. Diabetics, who are using self-injections, must also be sensitised on the safe methods, state experts.
Oracle bone script to be identified [Photo/Beijing Youth Daily]

The National Museum of Chinese Writing announced on July 12 that they are conducting a study on oracle bones characters. People can receive up to 100,000 yuan for identifying new characters and 50,000 yuan per character for new explanations of controversial identifications.

A report by Beijing Youth Daily revealed that the reward is not easy to win. Experts have reached a bottleneck. However, with the application of new technologies, it is possible to identify more ancient characters of shell and bone writings.

According to the announcement, all domestic and international scholars, research teams, and academic institutions that have made recognized achievements in oracle bone script interpretation can participate for a chance to win. Only findings on or after October 28, 2016, are allowed.

Applicants for the reward have to write a report on their findings of oracle bone script. The report should be recommended by two senior specialists before submission. An experts committee organized by the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science in China will make recommendations for the reward based on strict evaluations and identifications. The research findings and authors will receive public opinions for seven days.

According to the National Museum of Chinese Writing, the selection encourages oracle bone script researchers to explore original study results via a combination of traditional methods and modern technologies, including cloud computing and big data. The museum has the right to use all data and information of the findings submitted by the award winners.

Zhu Yanmin, a professor engaged in studies of oracle bone script and the history of the Yin and Shang dynasties at the History College at Nankai University explained that among the 5,000 characters found so far only 1,500 have been identified.

Inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones represent the original characters of the Chinese written language. They date back to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC).

Identifying oracle bone characters is of great significance in historical studies. "For instance, a newly recognized noun or a verb will bring vitality to a large amount of oracle bone scripts, which will help us understand more about the history," said Zhu.
The controversy behind the concept of a state flag with Constitutional status is, quite frankly, baffling. The demand for a separate state flag has existed in Karnataka for several decades, reaching a head in the 1960s. Undercurrents of the movement had begun at the start of that century, when migrant workers from Tamil Nadu were brought to the state by the British to work in Bengaluru's textile mills. Sporadic movements to protect Karnataka's language and culture had sprung up across Karnataka, although these were badly in need of consolidation.

Resentment was felt as early as 1856 and the Karnataka Vidyavardhaka Sangha was established in 1890. Aluru Venkata Rao had, in 1903, made a bid for the integration of all Kannada-speaking regions. Supporters like Gudleppa Hallikeri, Siddappa Kambli, Rangarao Diwakar and K. Hanumanthaiah, the second (and immensely popular) Chief Minister of Karnataka took on the cause as well. It is also regarded as one of Hanumanthaiah's greatest achievements.

The unification of Karnataka, then the Mysore State, took place in 1956. Borders of several states were redrawn, based on linguistic demographics. This was a moment of triumph for the people; the areas that now comprise Karnataka had fallen under around 20 different administrative units. These included the princely state of Mysore, Nizam's Hyderabad, the Bombay Presidency, the Madras Presidency and Kodagu territory. Nearly 2/3 of what makes up Karnataka today fell outside the state's confines prior to unification.

Kannadigas, therefore, were a scattered lot, with their language being pushed into the shadows across these administrative units. Kannadigas living under the Nizam's rule were growing embittered, as they felt Urdu was being imposed upon them. Those who fell under the Bombay Presidency had to accept Marathi as the dominant language and Kannadigas in South Canara used Tamil as the main language. Rumblings of discontent, therefore, were hardly surprising.

However, despite the Unification, the prevailing sentiment remained one of discontent. The people felt that not enough was being done to support Kannada as a language. To them, Tamil and Telegu were still being given precedence over Kannada, in their own state. Celebrated Kannada writer, A.N. Krishna Rao, who also served as an editor of the Kannada Sahitya Parishath's publication Kannada Nudi (Kannada speech) launched a movement. An active, fiery proponent of Kannada, started a movement to promote the language.

Attended by stalwarts of Karnataka culture, a 1962 conference, aimed at protecting and promoting indigenous traditions was held in Mysuru. In 1964, the hoisting of flags from Tamil Nadu caused a stir. M. Ramamurthy, a Bangalore-based writer and activist, who is often lauded as a commander of the Kannada movement during the 1960s, went on a four-day padayatra to protest this. He realised, soon enough, that Karnataka did not have a flag to hoist.

This led to his designing of the yellow-and-red flag, which symbolises Arrishna (turmeric) and Kumkuma (vermillion), was an attempt at consolidating a defense against what was seen as a fundamental threat to local culture. The flag has been in use ever since, hoisted on important occastions like Karnataka Rajyotsava, as a symbol of the state's language and culture. It was never attended as a political weapon, neither did it stand for a separatist ideology. This is one of the reasons why we feel that the state flag deserves to receive Constitutional recognition.

Hindi is our national language and our national emblem is a symbol of India's sovereignty. Karnataka has its own emblem, the two-headed bird, Gandaberunda. Every state has its own language and emblem, despite which the unity and integrity of the nation has remained intact. Therefore, it would be incorrect to say that awarding Karnataka's flag Constitutional status will affect the overall peace of the nation. All we want is a flag that stands for Karnataka, its language, culture and heritage. And it must be said that nobody is compelled to hoist the State flag during important occasions. The demand for the flag symbolises our struggle for the recognition and preservation of our state and its culture.

Flag facts

The Flag Committee was constituted on June 23, 1947. It held several meetings and studied the question in depth. After detailed deliberations it arrived at the decisions on July 14, 1947



The National Flag of India should be made of hand-spun and hand-woven wool/cotton/silk khadi bunting.The National Flag should be rectangular in shape. The ratio of the length to the height (width) of the Flag shall be 3:2

After India became Republic, the Indian Standards Institution (now Bureau of Indian Standards) brought out specifications of the National Flag for the first time in 1951 which were revised in 1964 with a view to completely changing over the dimensions of the flag to the metric system. The specifications were further revised on 17th August, 1968

A person was prevented by the officials of Madhya Pradesh government from flying the National Flag at his factory premises as Flag Code - India did not permit it on private buildings by individuals except on special occasions. He moved the Delhi High court Court which ruled that individuals are free to hoist flag with reasonable restrictions laid by the government.

The writer is a Kannada activist
Chennai: Police on Saturday seized Rs 52 lakh cash, gold and property documents from a gutka trader after surprise raids in Choolaimedu on Friday night. The main accused surrendered to the police on Saturday.

Police sources said that a team from Kilpauk police conducted raids at the residence of P. Pritesh Kumar Tiwary alias Babloo (39) on V.V. Koil Street, based on a tip off.

The man, however, is said to have fled the house learning of the raids. According to police sources, apart from Rs 52 lakh, bond papers worth another Rs 50 lakh and 200 gram of gold were also found in the house. The suspect already has cases pending against him in Periamet and Vepery police stations.

A raid in Babloos uncle Shiyojis house nearby resulted in police recovering about 60 kg of tobacco, 12 kg of mawa. Shiyoji led police to three other accused, T. Baskaran (36) from Aynavaram, A. Velu (44) from Aynavaram, P. Chandran (44) from Nammaalvarpet who were all arrested.

Police said that the income tax department has also been informed of the seizure of cash. In raids across the city in the past four days, 750 people have been arrested and over 720 cases have been booked, police said.
New Delhi: A 15-year-old girl delivered a premature baby inside the washroom of a government school in North Delhi; her neighbour who had allegedly raped her repeatedly over a period of one year has been arrested, police said.

The class 10 student had gone to the school in Mukherjee Nagar on Thursday to give an exam. She reportedly experienced stomach ache and went to the washroom, where she gave birth to the baby.

The girl was rushed to a hospital by the school authorities and the police was informed.

She reportedly told the police that she was raped four-five times by her 51-year-old neighbour during the past one year. The accused used to give money to the girl asking her not to inform about his activities to anyone, police said.

The accused was later identified by the girl and arrested on Saturday. He hails from Bihar and works as a autorickshaw driver in Delhi, they said.

The man told the police that he gave the girl some abortion pills after she told him about her stomach pains but did not realise that they failed to work, a police official said.

The pills created complications due to which the girl delivered the premature baby in its 26th week only, the official said.

Even the girl's parents did not realise that their daughter was pregnant and ignored it thinking that her stomach problem was merely a gastric ailment.
New Delhi: Hitting out at Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Vice-Presidential nominee M Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday asked Islamabad to recall the 1971 war and said that aiding and abetting terror will not help them.

Addressing "Kargil Parakram Parade" in Delhi, Naidu said terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion and it has unfortunately become Pakistan's state policy.

"Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them, they should recall what happened in 1971 and should focus on their own country and maintain peace there. Terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion. Pakistan is mixing terrorism with religion. It has unfortunately become Pakistan's state policy," he added.

He further said that Kashmir is an integral part of India and not an "inch" of it will be allowed to be taken.

"We are a peace loving people, we never attacked any country and this is our specialty. We don't want war, we don't want confrontation, we don't want violence we want to have peace, we also want to have good relation with the neighbours but they should also reciprocate the same. They should remember that Kashmir is an integral part of India and not an inch of even PoK will be allowed to be taken by anybody," the Union Minister said.

He also squarely blamed Pakistan for funding terrorism and influencing the situation in Kashmir.

"Ours is a peace loving country. We never want war. But when this highly coveted peace is denied to us, our brave soldiers respond in a befitting manner..we are too strong to lose our focus to country's development and betterment of the country," he said.

The NDA nominee said that on this day we should recall the valor of our brave soldiers and their sacrifices which got us back the Kargil heights.

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was a military confrontation between India and Pakistan that occurred during the liberation war in East Pakistan, from 3 December 1971 to the fall of Dacca (Dhaka) on 16 December 1971.

The war began with pre-emptive aerial strikes on 11 Indian air stations that led to the commencement of hostilities with Pakistan and Indian entry into the war of independence in East Pakistan on the side of Bengali nationalist forces.

Lasting just 13 days, it is one of the shortest wars in history.
Uddhav Thackeray also attacked the Central govt stating that when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, he had provided Panchayati Raj to the lower level instead of running the govt from Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena has once again targeted ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government, asserting that the latter's good days are only limited to government advertisements whereas the truth is different.

Questioning the decision of Prime Minister Modi government regarding the demonetisation drive and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray said despite being a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ally, he won't hesitate speaking against the things which are not right.

"Nearly 15 lakh people have lost their jobs in the last four months and what is the arrangement made by the government for the ones who have lost their jobs?" Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna quotes Thackeray as saying.

He also attacked the Central government stating that when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, he had provided Panchayati Raj to the lower level instead of running the government from Delhi.

"The achhe din are only in advertisements. Do we have true democracy in the country if all affairs are going to be run as per the wishes of the Prime Minister? He is centralising power at the Centre, instead of decentralising it. He is taking away the independence of the states," he said.
BJP President Amit Shah with Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje having lunch at Dalit Family during his three day visit in Jaipur on Sunday. (Photo: PTI)

Jaipur: BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday had lunch with a Dalit family in Jaipur on the last day of his three-day visit to Rajasthan.

After rounds of meeting in the party office, Shah left for Sushilpura where he had lunch at the house of BJP Yuva Morcha member Ramesh Pacharia amid tight security arrangements.

Shah, accompanied by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, party's state president Ashok Parnami, MP Bhupendra Yadav and others, was given a warm welcome in traditional Rajasthani manner.

They were served food by Pacharia's family and had lunch sitting on the ground. "My mother cooked daal, rice, chapatti, halwa, kheer for the party president," Pacharia told reporters.

Before Shah's visit, party leaders made several rounds to review preparations.

Social justice minister Arun Chaturvedi said the party selected the house of its booth level worker, Pacharia, based on his active work for the party and not due to his caste or class.

"We identify our workers on the basis of their work. We do not consider their caste or class and decision for Shah's lunch at his house was made just because of his active participation in the party's work," he said.

The minister said that it is the media, not the party, which sees the caste and Dalit factor.

"For us, his work is considerable and we sees it as the party's national president has gone to the house of a booth level work to have lunch," he said.

"It is not that we selected a Dalit family. Several Dalit families live close the BJP office but the party president came at the house of an active party worker. The distance of Sushilpura is also not very far from the party office," he said.

The narrow lanes of Sushilpura are populated by lower middle class and Dalit families. It is located in the middle of the city and witnessed VVIP movement for the first time.

Excited people lined up on roads and congregated on rooftops to catch a glimpse of Shah.

Shah spent close to half an hour at the house of Pacharia and interacted with the family members. He met the locals outside the house and waved to those standing on rooftops.

Police Commissioner Sanjay Agrawal reviewed the sercurity arrangements for the visit.

Union minister Rajyawardhan Rathore, MP Bhupendra Yadav, Nihal Chand Meghwal, state social justice minister Arun Chaturvedi and other leaders were present with him.

Assembly elections are due next year in Rajasthan.
Chennai: Sasikala was given an entire corridor of about 150 feet with five cells. She lives in the middle cell. She has kept her personal bedding and clothing in the other rooms. She exercises in a separate room. She has a LED TV... That was DIG Roopa on television on Saturday, coming out with shocking revelations on Sasikalas preferential treatment in the Parappana Agrahara jail in Bengaluru.

The scam has been grabbing headlines over the week though only through leaked video clips, but now the whistleblower cop has come out with guns blazing.

She insists she did not violate any service conduct rules  as alleged by some ministers  as the Supreme Court had clearly ruled in a 2014 case that speaking about an instance of mal-administration would not constitute violation of the All-India Service Rules.

Speaking with confidence and composure, the young DIG told her interviewers on TV channels that when she made her first visit to the prison on July 28, she had noticed several wrong-doings, such as ganja peddling and abuse. For instance, a drug test on 25 inmates showed 17 of them were positive, which meant about 70 per cent incidence.

Also, there was no action taken after a prisoner attacked the jail doctor. She had put all these violations in an internal note to her superior, not just the preferential treatment given to Sasikala. But the media picked up only Sasikala, Roopa said.

Elaborating on the facilities given to the AIADMK Chinnamma, the DIG said though she was not a class-one prisoner and only an ordinary inmate, she was allowed to wear her own clothes and had the food of her choice cooked in the jail kitchen. She was allowed the luxury of use of five cells along an entire corridor whereas there was overcrowding in other cells. In some barracks, there were 50-60 inmates.

And Sasikala was allowed use of a brand new LED TV in her cell. The justification given was that other inmates too had access to TV, but then, there were TV sets in each barrack of some 40-60 people and none given for just one prisoner.
The rescued people were evacuated and taken to a safe place. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

Gandhinagar: Golden Katar Division personnel on Saturday rescued 35 people from flood in Surendranagar district's Kuda village and distributed food and medicines to aid the flood victims.

The team mobilised several columns of troops along with specialised equipment and trained manpower to boost the ongoing rescue and relief work in the worst flood affected district after receiving a requisition from the Gujarat Government.

The Army's rescue teams comprised the Engineer Task Force and a medical team rescued citizens.

The rescued people were evacuated and taken to a safe place.
Police found the decomposed body of a man on the cars rear seat. Later, using his mobile phone and ID documents he was identified as N. Avinash. (Representational Image)

Hyderabad: Troubled by a failed relationship a man committed suicide by locking up in a car and gassing himself in KPHB.

Nittala Avinash, 26, who was working as an executive at RGI Airport, covered his face with polythene and connected a pipe to his mouth from a nitrogen cylinder which he had kept in the car and committed suicide.

Police suspects that he committed suicide three days ago. Cops said that on Saturday morning residents of Malaysian Township detected a rotten smell coming from a car parked in the parking area allotted to Block No: 35. They found a man inside the car and informed the Township Welfare Association, who alerted the police.

Police found the decomposed body of a man on the cars rear seat. Later, using his mobile phone and ID documents he was identified as N. Avinash.

Avinash locked himself inside, covered his face with polythene and sealed it using tape. He then connected a nitrogen cylinder to his mouth, opened its valve and died, KPHB inspector Kushalkar said.

Police found a suicide note supposed to be written by Avinash in which he stated that he was depressed after troubling Madhavi whom he loved and her parents.

I love Madhavi. But we had some fights due to financial problems. I didn't do anything wilfully. I am sorry. I cannot imagine life without you. I thought of marrying yu. I am leaving this world. Goodbye and thanks for everything, the note said.

Police found that Avinash had reached the Malaysian Township on Wednesday night and did not leave the car. Though the vehicle was parked for a long time none of the residents noticed it. Police registered a suspicious death case.
Aurangabad: Raking up a controversy, Aurangabad District Magistrate Kanwal Tanuj has said that those who cannot build a toilet for their wives, should sell them.

He was addressing a public gathering on Saturday on a cleanliness drive in Jamhore village of the Aurangabad district.

"Due to lack of toilets, women get raped and harassed. It only costs Rs. 12,000 for the construction of the toilet. Is 12,000 more than anyone's wife's dignity? Who can let her wife get raped in return of Rs. 12000?" Tanuj said.

"If this is your mentality then go and sell your wife. Those who cannot build toilet should sell or auction his wife," he added.
Sat., Nov. 12, 1-2:30 p.m.

Calvary Baptist Church 2208 E. Kansas St., Springfield Springfield Area

Bulletin Board, Faith & Philosophy

An eastside community focus group hosted by the Faith Coalition for the Common Good. Come out and share hope to build empowerment. The strongest voices and advocacy come from the people whose lived experiences are riddled with domestic violence, food insecurity, persistent poverty, hopelessness, inequity and discrimination. Your voices need to be heard. We need to listen. What do you think and what would you like to see in your neighborhood?Youth ServicesEconomic AssistanceReentry ProgramsEnvironmental JusticeLegal AidViolence PreventionHousing Support Transformation and empowerment will take your thoughts, ideas, voices, and community actions. We look forward to seeing you there. Peace, light, and 309-318-9615
The 60-year old accused, identified as Kasimbai, was arrested from Jamrooth Mahal lodge in Ramanathapuram. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

Ramanathapuram: An illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka has been arrested by Erwadi Police from Tamil Nadu's Ramanathapuram district.

The Police have recovered Pakistani currency and four ID cards from his possession.

The 60-year old accused, identified as Kasimbai, was arrested from Jamrooth Mahal lodge here.

As per information, he was staying here from July 16.

Following his arrest, the police are now interrogating him to get to the bottom of the matter.

More details to follow.
The operation is in progress. (Representational Image)

Srinagar: A militant was on Sunday killed as the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the Line of Control (LoC) in Machil sector in north Kashmirs Kupwara district.

Troops guarding the LoC noticed suspicious movement along the LoC and immediately challenged the intruders.

In the ensuing firefight, one militant was killed. "An infiltration bid was foiled in Machil sector on Sunday. One terrorist has been killed," a Defence spokesman said here.

He added the operation is in progress.
A case was registered on Thursday against Congress MLA M Vincent, who represents the Kovalam segment, on charges of stalking, rape and abetment of suicide based on the statement given by the woman. (Photo: YouTube | Screengrab)

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala): Kerala Congress MLA M Vincent, who was arrested on charges of rape, stalking and abetment of suicide of a 51-year-old woman, has blamed the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) for the indictment.

"I am the prey of the CPM's conspiracy. The police did not arrest Thrissur Councilor even though there was the woman's statement. This is due to the pressure of the Chief Minister's Office. My fight to prove my innocence starts here," Vincent said.

Earlier on Saturday, Vincent, who was booked on the aforementioned charges, was arrested and presented in a local court. He was then sent to 14-day judicial custody.

The woman had reportedly attempted suicide after being allegedly sexually harassed by Vincent.

Sections 376 and 354(d) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) have been slapped against the MLA. The decision was taken after the woman gave a statement in this regard to the police on Thursday.

The woman's husband reportedly complained that the Kovalam MLA used to harass her over phone.

The police will now take the Kovalam MLA's statement only after the medical examination of the complainant.

Meanwhile, Vincent has filed a complaint requesting a detailed probe into the matter. He has alleged that the whole sequence of events involving the suicide attempt appears scripted.
President Pranab Mukherjee is presented a coffee-table book by Vice President Hamid Ansari and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan during his farewell ceremony in the Central Hall of Parliament in New Delhi on Sunday. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: As President Pranab Mukherjee, the 13th president of India, vacates the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday, making way for his successor President-elect Ram Nath Kovind, Parliamentarians from both the Houses  Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha  gathered at the Central Hall to bid farewell to the outgoing Raisina Hill occupant.

Overwhelmed with the ceremony, President Mukherjee thanked everybody present in the Hall, most particularly the Parliament for 'creating' him.

"If I claim I am the creation of this Parliament, perhaps it will not be treated as immodesty. The Parliament gave a direction to my political vision as I got to learn a lot from the serious discussions held in both Houses of the Parliament," he said, adding, he attended the first session of the Parliament on July 22, 1969.

"For the last 37 years, I have been a part of five Rajya Sabhas, four times from Bengal and once from Gujarat," he added.

President Mukherjee remembered the former prime ministers of India, including late Indira Gandhi.

"The Constitution represents the unity of the 125 crore people of India," he said.

President Mukherjee expressed happiness over the fact that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime was launched during his tenure and disappointment over the constant downfall of the Parliament's stature.

"The recent passage of the GST and its launch on July 1 is a shining example of cooperative federalism and speaks volumes of the maturity of India's Parliament," he said.

"It is unfortunate that the Parliamentary time devoted to legislations has been declining," he added.

Concluding his address as he shouted "Jai Hind", President Mukherjee thanked the gathering again for the farewell given to him.

Earlier, Lok Sabha Speaker presented a book signed by the members of Parliament. The book includes signatures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha Thambidurai, and deputy chair of Rajya Sabha PJ Kurien.

"President Mukherjee brought a presidential focus and centrality to human development," Mahajan said in her address.

Rajya Sabha Chairman and Vice-President Hamid Ansari, while addressing the Central Hall, spoke of the "long and distinguished" career of President Mukherjee, adding he has been an erudite scholar, along with being an excellent statesman.

Earlier on Saturday, President Mukherjee attended a farewell dinner hosted by Modi.

The prime minister hosted the ceremony at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi, where president-elect Ram Nath Kovind, Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, senior ministers and Opposition leaders were also present.

The president, who is also Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, was also given a farewell by the chiefs of the armed forces. The function was held at the Manekshaw Centre.

President Mukherjee will address a farewell speech to the nation at 7.30 p.m. on Monday (July 24).

President-elect Ram Nath Kovind will take oath as the 14th President of India on Tuesday (July 25).
New Delhi: The Iraq Embassy on Sunday has informed India that search operations are underway to locate the 39 missing Indians who were taken as prisoners by ISIS in 2014, further assuring there is a high level coordination between Iraqi and Indian concerned authorities to locate them.

The Government of India has already sent two high-level senior delegations to Iraq to follow up on this matter.

However, Iraqi Ambassador to India Fakhri H Al-Issa had said that the Embassy has no information about the missing 39 Indians citizens.

"I don't want to say anything. I have no information. Sometimes no news is good news. They might be in Badush prison," Issa said.

Sushma Swaraj, along with Minister of State (MoS) for Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) M.J. Akbar and MoS MEA Gen. (Retd.) VK Singh, met families of 39 Indians who are missing in Iraq since 2014 on July 16.

Sushma had assured, "Once fighting stops in Badush and the area is cleared, we can probably find out about the whereabouts of the missing nationals."
New Delhi: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj will hold extensive talks with her Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Monday during which focus is expected to be on the issue of 39 Indians kidnapped by the Islamic State group (ISIS) three years back from Mosul city.

Al-Jaafaris visit from 24-28 July to India comes two weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced liberation of Mosul, the second biggest city in his country, from the ISIS, which marked a major milestone for the Iraqi security forces.

In their talks, the two sides will take stock of bilateral relations and explore ways to enhance cooperation in areas of energy and trade. Iraq has been one of the major suppliers of crude oil to India. On the visit by al-Jaafari, the external affairs ministry has said the two sides will discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.

The visit is expected to add further impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement, the MEA had said on Friday. As liberation of Mosul brightened chances of information about the kidnapped Indians, Swaraj, in a meeting with their relatives last week, had said that they might be languishing in a jail in Badush in the northwest of Mosul where fighting was going on.

However, a media report from Badush on Saturday said the jail now is an abandoned structure and has been unoccupied for weeks. Minister of state for external affairs VK Singh was sent to Iraq days after the Iraqi PM announced victory in the fight to liberate Mosul.

Swaraj had told the family members that an Iraqi official quoting intelligence sources had told Singh that the kidnapped Indians were deployed at a hospital construction site and then shifted to a farm before they were put in a jail in Badush.

She had said al-Jaafari may bring fresh information about the kidnapped Indians, mostly from Punjab. The volume of bilateral trade in 2016-17 was nearly $13 billion. Iraq contributes significantly to Indias energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to us (over 37 MMT during 2016-17), the MEA has said.

Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan is also scheduled to meet the Iraqi foreign minister who will be accompanied by a senior-level official delegation. Al-Jafaari will travel to Mumbai on 26 July and will be back in Delhi on 27 July.
Tharoor further added that there should be clear rules that flag of states cannot substitute the national flag and it should be smaller and fly lower. (Photo: PTI)

Bengaluru: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday asserted that there should be no brouhaha over states having their own flags.

"So as long as there are set rules for it I don't see any issue in states having their flags," Tharoor said in Bengaluru in an address.

"There should be clear rules that flag of states cannot be substitute of a national flag and it should be smaller and fly lower," he added.

The Karnataka government constituted a nine-member committee to submit a report to the state government on the possibility of designing a separate flag for the state.

Journalist-writer and president of Karnataka Vidyavardhaka Sangha, Dharward, Patil Puttappa and social worker Bheemappa Gundappa Gadada had submitted a representation to the government, following which the committee was constituted.

They had urged the government to design a separate flag for Kannada 'naadu' and accord statutory standing for that.

Earlier on Tuesday, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah defended the demand for a separate flag for the state, asking if there is any provision in the Constitution that prohibits the state from having its own flag.
Hyderabad: There are indications that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will initiate steps to appoint Governors to at least seven states that currently have temporary appointees, and will also reshuffle the Union Cabinet to fill key portfolios sometime after August 11, the last day of the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament.

Some Governors have held additional charge of other states for more than a year. This includes Andhra Pradesh Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan, who was given additional charge of Telangana state in 2014. His second term as Governor ended on May 2 and he has been asked to continue till his successor steps in.

Going by the Bharatiya Janata Partys nominations for President and Vice-President, where strong ideological commitment carried weight, the gubernatorial appointments will likely see BJP leaders take the hot seat in various Raj Bhavans.

Maharashtra Governor may go to TN

Maharashtra Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao has been overseeing Tamil Nadu for over a year, including the tumultuous period following the death of Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.

West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi is in charge of Bihar, Gujarat Governor Om Prakash is also Governor of Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland Governor P.B. Acharya is also in charge of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam Governor Bhanwarilal Purohit is in charge Governor for Meghalaya.

With the general elections less than two years away, and states like Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Bihar ruled by non-BJP governments, the appointment of Governors to these states gains significance.

A key source in the BJP Central Office said party president Amit Shah has prepared a list of probables and is expected to finalise it with Mr Modi.

It is the normal practice for the Union home minister either to consult with the state government on the appointment of the Governor or convey the decision to the Chief Minister of the state.

In the case of Mr Narasimhan, the speculation is that he will be given a special assignment involving strategic affairs in Delhi.

Mr Narasimhan, however, has gone on record stating that he will peacefully retire and settle in Chennai.

It is still not clear whether the Centre will appoint separate Governors for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state or continue the arrangement of a common Governor in view of the special provision of Section 8 of the AP Reorganisation Act that gives special powers to the Governor to safeguard the interests of people residing in Hyderabad, which was declared the common capital for both Telugu states for a period of up to 10 years from June 2, 2014.

According to sources, Mr Vidyasagar Rao may be appointed as Tamil Nadu Governor in view of the tricky political situation prevailing there and given his handling of the situation in the post-Jayalalithaa period.

If that happens, former Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel may be moved to the Maharashtra Raj Bhavan.

Sources said Union minister Kalraj Mishra may be asked to put in his papers and would be sent as Governor.
Bengaluru: Mr Narendra Modi loves acronyms. His name itself is an acronym that stands for 'Murder of Democracy in India'. Modi as PM is consistently shrinking space for parliamentary debate, while also hijacking Ambedkar. This is hypocrisy," said Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, addressing the media during the Dr. Ambedkar International Conference, here on Sunday.

Mr Ramesh said the BJP does not believe in the Constitution and it is weakening parliamentary institutions. He claimed that the BJP and RSS were hijacking human rights advocate Ambedkar, just the way, they did with Mahatma Gandhi.

Dr Ambedkar would not approve of Modi in the last two years for bringing in all bills through the money bill. He even included Aadhaar in the money bill," Mr Ramesh said.

On the Dalit and other minority groups as a vote bank, he admitted that there was a competition between political parties, be it Congress, BSP or BJP for Dalits, Tribals and other minorities.

The Congress has believed in social empowerment of weaker sections. We are launching leadership programmes for younger Dalits. 20% of the popular vote was for congress in 2014 elections. It is a challenging situation now and we recognise its seriousness. We need aggressive outreach for women, Dalits and other minorities," Mr Ramesh said.

On the idea of Mahagatbandhan, he believed that the Congress is strong enough to come back to power on its own in Karnataka and it will have a renewed mandate by 2018.

"At a national level, there is no doubt that in 2018, there has to be an understanding of all progressive, democratic, secular, opposition forces that believe in democratic debate," he added.

My personal view is that awards like Bharat Ratna and Padma create more trouble than solving anything. We are better off without them. I feel musicians, spokespersons and civil society activists should be honoured, but not politicians. Public service and politics is its own reward," he said.

Mistaken identity

A reporter sneaked into the VIP lounge at the B.R. Ambedkar International Conference venue. Not realising that the ID tag for VIPs and media representatives were of the same colour, hospitality volunteers were about take him to the stage when they realised that he was mistaken for a speaker wearing a shirt of the same colour.

A journo throng?

When Congress MP Jairam Ramesh arrived at the media centre of Dr Ambedkar International Conference to address the press, the room was packed with the public, trying to get a glimpse of him. The confused MP said, Let's start but who are the media people here?
There is no positive news yet on the 39 Indian construction workers abducted from Mosul in June 2014. While we would pray hard for their safety, there is also the fear that kin must prepare for the worst. A war was being fought for three long years in parts of Iraqi territory between the official Iraqi forces backed by the US and allies, and ISIS. It is only now that those ranged against the ISIS are claiming victory, at least in Mosul. The relatives of the Indian workers have been living in hope over the fate of their dear ones. It is in dealing with hope that the Indian government may have been optimistic to the extent of believing in every bit of intelligence and rumour coming out of the war-torn region.

To politicise the issue of the government saying it had inputs to the extent that the Indians were being held in the Badush prison is to make capital out of human despondency. Images coming out of Badush from an Indian television channel have dashed all hopes, as there is only rubble there and no prison. What has happened to the Indians likely to have been kept captive there is anybodys guess? Its fine for kin to be very disappointed at the positive lead the external affairs ministry believed it had. To imagine the Congress would pile on the government by bringing in a privilege motion against the two ministers who spoke about the Badush prison is to think the worst of Indian politics. Its quite possible no one knows anything credible about the fate of these poor workers. Pray for them but dont add to the misery of their kin in India.
Apart from hosting and possible maintenance costs, there are not exactly downsides to having your own website. Even if its just a personal blog it can always become more useful down the line, if you utilize it in the right manner. In other words, more
Now a team including Stanford scientists says it has found the first firm evidence of such a Majorana fermion. (Representational image)

In a discovery that concludes an 80-year quest, Stanford and University of California researchers found evidence of particles that are their own antiparticles. These 'Majorana fermions could one day help make quantum computers more robust. See video here.

In 1928, physicist Paul Dirac made the stunning prediction that every fundamental particle in the universe has an antiparticle  its identical twin but with opposite charge. When particle and antiparticle met they would be annihilated, releasing a poof of energy. Sure enough, a few years later the first antimatter particle  the electrons opposite, the positron  was discovered, and antimatter quickly became part of popular culture.

But in 1937, another brilliant physicist, Ettore Majorana, introduced a new twist: He predicted that in the class of particles known as fermions, which includes the proton, neutron, electron, neutrino and quark, there should be particles that are their own antiparticles.

Now a team including Stanford scientists says it has found the first firm evidence of such a Majorana fermion. It was discovered in a series of lab experiments on exotic materials at the University of California in collaboration with Stanford University. The team was led by UC-Irvine Associate Professor Jing Xia and UCLA Professor Kang Wang, and followed a plan proposed by Shoucheng Zhang, professor of physics at Stanford, and colleagues. The team reported the results July 20 in Science.

Our team predicted exactly where to find the Majorana fermion and what to look for as its smoking gun experimental signature, said Zhang, a theoretical physicist and one of the senior authors of the research paper. This discovery concludes one of the most intensive searches in fundamental physics, which spanned exactly 80 years.

Although the search for the famous fermion seems more intellectual than practical, he added, it could have real-life implications for building robust quantum computers, although this is admittedly far in the future.

The particular type of Majorana fermion the research team observed is known as a chiral fermion because it moves along a one-dimensional path in just one direction. While the experiments that produced it were extremely difficult to conceive, set up and carry out, the signal they produced was clear and unambiguous, the researchers said.

This research culminates a chase for many years to find chiral Majorana fermions. It will be a landmark in the field, said Tom Devereaux, director of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where Zhang is a principal investigator.

It does seem to be a really clean observation of something new, said Frank Wilczek, a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study. Its not fundamentally surprising, because physicists have thought for a long time that Majorana fermions could arise out of the types of materials used in this experiment. But they put together several elements that had never been put together before, and engineering things so this new kind of quantum particle can be observed in a clean, robust way is a real milestone.

Search for quasiparticles

Majoranas prediction applied only to fermions that have no charge, like the neutron and neutrino. Scientists have since found an antiparticle for the neutron, but they have good reasons to believe that the neutrino could be its own antiparticle, and there are four experiments underway to find out  including EXO-200, the latest incarnation of the Enriched Xenon Observatory, in New Mexico. But these experiments are extraordinarily difficult and are not expected to produce an answer for about a decade.

About 10 years ago, scientists realized that Majorana fermions might also be created in experiments that explore the physics of materials  and the race was on to make that happen.

What theyve been looking for are quasiparticles  particle-like excitations that arise out of the collective behavior of electrons in superconducting materials, which conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency. The process that gives rise to these quasiparticles is akin to the way energy turns into short-lived virtual particles and back into energy again in the vacuum of space, according to Einsteins famous equation E = mc2. While quasiparticles are not like the particles found in nature, they would nonetheless be considered real Majorana fermions.

Over the past five years, scientists have had some success with this approach, reporting that they had seen promising Majorana fermion signatures in experiments involving superconducting nanowires.

But in those cases the quasiparticles were bound  pinned to one particular place, rather than propagating in space and time  and it was hard to tell if other effects were contributing to the signals researchers saw, Zhang said.

A smoking gun

In the latest experiments at UCLA and UC-Irvine, the team stacked thin films of two quantum materials  a superconductor and a magnetic topological insulator  and sent an electrical current through them, all inside a chilled vacuum chamber.

The top film was a superconductor. The bottom one was a topological insulator, which conducts current only along its surface or edges but not through its middle. Putting them together created a superconducting topological insulator, where electrons zip along two edges of the materials surface without resistance, like cars on a superhighway.

It was Zhangs idea to tweak the topological insulator by adding a small amount of magnetic material to it. This made the electrons flow one way along one edge of the surface and the opposite way along the opposite edge.

Then the researchers swept a magnet over the stack. This made the flow of electrons slow, stop and switch direction. These changes were not smooth, but took place in abrupt steps, like identical stairs in a staircase.

At certain points in this cycle, Majorana quasiparticles emerged, arising in pairs out of the superconducting layer and traveling along the edges of the topological insulator just as the electrons did. One member of each pair was deflected out of the path, allowing the researchers to easily measure the flow of the individual quasiparticles that kept forging ahead. Like the electrons, they slowed, stopped and changed direction  but in steps exactly half as high as the ones the electrons took.

These half-steps were the smoking gun evidence the researchers had been looking for.

The results of these experiments are not likely to have any effect on efforts to determine if the neutrino is its own antiparticle, said Stanford physics Professor Giorgio Gratta, who played a major role in designing and planning EXO-200.

The quasiparticles they observed are essentially excitations in a material that behave like Majorana particles, Gratta said. But they are not elementary particles and they are made in a very artificial way in a very specially prepared material. Its very unlikely that they occur out in the universe, although who are we to say? On the other hand, neutrinos are everywhere, and if they are found to be Majorana particles we would show that nature not only has made this kind of particles possible but, in fact, has literally filled the universe with them.

He added, Where it gets more interesting is that analogies in physics have proved very powerful. And even if they are very different beasts, different processes, maybe we can use one to understand the other. Maybe we will discover something that is interesting for us, too.

Angel particle

Far in the future, Zhang said, Majorana fermions could be used to construct robust quantum computers that arent thrown off by environmental noise, which has been a big obstacle to their development. Since each Majorana is essentially half a subatomic particle, a single qubit of information could be stored in two widely separated Majorana fermions, decreasing the chance that something could perturb them both at once and make them lose the information they carry.

For now, he suggests a name for the chiral Majorana fermion his team discovered: the angel particle, in reference to the best-selling 2000 thriller Angels and Demons in which a secret brotherhood plots to blow up the Vatican with a time bomb whose explosive power comes from matter-antimatter annihilation. Unlike in the book, he noted, in the quantum world of the Majorana fermion there are only angels  no demons.

The materials used for this study were produced at UCLA by a team led by postdoctoral researcher Qing Lin He and graduate student Lei Pan. Scientists from the KACST Center for Excellence in Green Nanotechnology in Saudia Arabia, UC-Davis, Florida State University, Fudan University in Shanghai and Shanghai Tech University also contributed to the experiment. Major funding came from the SHINES Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center at UC-Riverside funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Zhangs work was funded by the DOE Office of Science through SIMES.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Vigilance officials from Jio were shocked to discover the access given to commoners through the website on July 9 at 5.15pm and continued monitoring the same till 9.30pm, the police official said. (Representational image)

It was the lure of free recharge after Reliance Jio started charging its customers that led 35 -year-old computer science student Imran Chippa to gain unauthorised access to the company's database systems, a police official said today.

Chippa was arrested last week in connection with the unauthorised access to the Reliance Jio's database.

"Chippa got hold of a forwarded message on a chat application which promised people ways to get free recharges. After clicking on the link provided, he found out an ID and password," the official said.

These credentials are the ones given to Jio vendors to be put in a specially designed mobile application for carrying out transactions like recharges for customers.

The credentials (the ID and password found by him) which the accused got were reportedly of a vendor in Odisha. However, Chippa, who had earlier appeared for an MCA exam and was searching for a job, could not get the free recharge that he was seeking, the official said.

He put in Jio mobile numbers on the app after gaining access using the credentials and was surprised to get "personal details" of Jio customers, he said.

"This is when an idea to commercially utilise the data stuck him. Using his skills of computer programming, Chippa began developing an app similar to (the app) TrueCaller and started by creating a Web host," the official said.

In that attempt, he created the website - magicapk.com - which was hosted by Andheri-based company Endurance International Group, he said.

According to police, Chippa claimed to provide Jio user data through his website.

He allegedly started to get unauthorised access to Reliance Jio's systems in the first week of July and the company's customer data started to appear on magicapk.com, he said.

Vigilance officials from Jio were shocked to discover the access given to commoners through the website on July 9 at 5.15pm and continued monitoring the same till 9.30pm, the police official said.

The vigilance officials then approached the Rabale MIDC police station later with a complaint.

"Since getting unauthorised access to Jio's data, the website magicapk.com had got more than 50,000 hits by viewers," Navi Mumbai's Deputy Commissioner of Police (crime) Tushar Doshi told PTI.

On July 9, a telecom industry portal wrote about the alleged data security issues, following which a probe was launched which resulted in the arrest of Chippa from Rajasthan.

He is a resident of Rajasthan's Sujangarh town.

Jio had earlier said that the claims of the website were "unverified" and "unsubstantiated".

"Prima facie, data appears to be unauthentic. We want to assure our subscribers that their data is safe and maintained with highest security. Data is only shared with authorities as per their requirement," it had said.

Jio had said it has "informed law enforcement agencies about the claims of the website and will follow through to ensure strict action is taken".

Doshi had earlier explained that as part of its regular operations, Jio - whose subscriber base had crossed 100 million within six months of the launch - makes certain data available to its retailers through a website and Chippa gained unauthorised access to the company's servers.

Asserting that this excludes sensitive details like Aadhaar details or PAN numbers, Doshi said one was able to get a Jio subscriber's name, email ID, SIM activation date, telecom circle and alternate number by putting the Jio number in the search command.

Reliance was one of the first operators to add customers solely on the basis of Aadhaar details as address and identity proof. Later, the government made it mandatory for all new connections to be activated against Aadhaar details.

The presence of Aadhar details, which includes biometrics, had raised concern in certain quarters after the data breach came to light.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Even if Microsoft does not build a foldable phone, it is clear that the company was interested in some form of that smartphone at some point of time.

We have been hearing about the Surface Phone project for quite some time and we hope its true. Microsoft has not confirmed it yet. But new details have emerged where in the company is looking at building such a device behind closed doors.

According to a new patent discovered by MSPU and titled Wireless Communication Device, the device is described as a foldable smartphone with LTE support. Microsoft has also provided specifics on this design, even offering dimensions on each part of the device. However, the chance to see this exact project going live is very little.

However, its interesting to see how Microsoft look at the foldable phone approach, so check out the attached photo and read the description below for more information:

In the implementation shown in FIG. 1, display 112 is raised above second housing 104 by an amount roughly equal to the thickness of first housing 102 such that, when wireless communications device 100 is in the closed position, display 112 and first housing 102 sit flush with respect to one another.

In this implementation, second housing 104 may measure approximately 6 mm by 72 mm by 74.5 mm, except in the area of display 112 where the thickness is double, approximately 12 mm. First housing 102 in this implementation may measure 6 mm by 72 mm by an amount such that first housing 102 and display 112 equal approximately 74.5 mm.

Therefore when wireless communications device 100 in this implementation is in the closed position, its dimensions are approximately 12 mm by 72 mm by 74.5 mm and, when wireless communications device 100 is in the fully open position, i.e., when angle 108 equals approximately 180, its dimensions are approximately 12 mm (o.47 inch) by 72 mm (2.8 inch) by 144 mm (5.6 inch).

Even if Microsoft does not build a foldable phone, it is clear that the company was interested in some form of that smartphone at some point of time. However, if the Surface Phone does get the green light, we can expect it to hit the shelves no sooner than 2018.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Many lawmakers hope the bill would send a message to President Donald Trump to keep a strong line against Russia. (Photo: AP)

Washington: US Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on legislation that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and now also North Korea, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday.

The Countering Irans Destabilizing Activities Act passed the Senate a month ago but was held up in the House of Representatives after Republicans proposed including North Korea sanctions in the bill. Both chambers of Congress will have to pass the revised legislation.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, however, expressed concern that by including North Korea the legislation could face delays in the Senate. While we support the tougher sanctions on North Korea, which the House has already passed, I am concerned that adding them to this bill instead of standalone legislation will cause further procedural delays in the Senate, she said in a statement.

It is essential that the addition of North Korea to this package does not prevent Congress from immediately enacting Russia sanctions legislation and sending it to the Presidents desk before the August recess, she added.

Many lawmakers hope the bill would send a message to President Donald Trump to keep a strong line against Russia.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said a strong sanctions bill is essential. I expect the House and Senate will act on this legislation promptly, on a broad bipartisan basis and send the bill to the Presidents desk, Schumer said in a statement.

Senator Ben Cardin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the agreement was reached after intense negotiations.

A nearly united Congress is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message, he said in a statement.
The tweets were unusual in their breadth and scope, even for Trump, given the wide variety of topics he touched on as Saturday dawned. (Photo: AP)

Washington: Hours before he was to help commission a new aircraft carrier at a patriotic ceremony on the Virginia coast, President Donald Trump fired off a volley of early morning tweets that again showed how furious he remains over multiple investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The tweets were unusual in their breadth and scope, even for Trump, given the wide variety of topics he touched on as Saturday dawned. His 10 tweets, all sent within two hours starting before 6.30 am US time, ranged from the Russia investigation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to Hillary Clinton, the health care effort and his newly appointed White House communications director.

While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

The Washington Post recently reported that Trump has inquired about the authority he has as president to pardon aides, relatives or even himself in connection with the widening investigation into Russian interference in the election and whether any Trump associates were involved.

The president has long criticised leaks of information about the investigation and has urged authorities to prosecute leakers.

Trump maintains that no crimes have been committed.

One of Trumps attorneys, Jay Sekulow, said the president has not discussed the issue of pardons with his outside legal team.

Next week, Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; his son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner; and Paul Manafort, a former campaign chairman, are scheduled to appear before Senate committees investigating Russian meddling.

Trump defended his son, saying he openly gave his e-mails to the media & authorities whereas Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted (& acid washed) her 33,000 e-mails!

So many people are asking why isn't the A.G. or Special Council looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes. 33,000 e-mails deleted?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

My son Donald openly gave his e-mails to the media & authorities whereas Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted (& acid washed) her 33,000 e-mails!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

Trumps namesake has become a focus of the investigation after it was revealed that he, Kushner and Manafort met with Russian representatives at Trump Tower in June 2016. Trump Jr. later released email exchanges concerning the meeting on Twitter, after learning that The New York Times was about to publish them.

The FBI investigated Clinton for using a private email server as secretary of state. She turned thousands of emails over to the government, but deleted thousands of others that she said were personal or unrelated to her work as the nations top diplomat.

Trump also complained on Saturday about a Washington Post report that the Russian ambassador to the US said he discussed election-related issues with Jeff Sessions when the men met during the 2016 presidential race. Sessions, now the attorney general, at the time was a US senator and foreign policy adviser to Trump.

A new INTELLIGENCE LEAK from the Amazon Washington Post,this time against A.G. Jeff Sessions.These illegal leaks, like Comey's, must stop!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

The Post on Friday cited anonymous US officials who described US intelligence intercepts of Ambassador Sergey Kislyaks descriptions of his meetings with Sessions.

The Justice Department said Sessions stands by his previous assertion that he never had conversations with Russian officials about any type of interference with the election.

Trump also said Republican Senators must step up to the plate and, after 7 years, vote to Repeal and Replace the Obama-era health care law. An effort to advance legislation collapsed in the Senate earlier this week after several Republicans said they wouldnt vote for the bill.

ObamaCare is dead and the Democrats are obstructionists, no ideas or votes, only obstruction. It is solely up to the 52 Republican Senators!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017
Israel installed the metal detectors after an attack at the site in which two Israeli police officers were killed (Representational image)

Israel on Sunday said it would not remove metal detectors whose installation outside a major Jerusalem mosque has triggered the bloodiest clashes with the Palestinians in years, but could eventually reduce their use.

Israel installed the metal detectors after an attack at the site in which two Israeli police officers were killed.

In addition to the metal detectors, Israel has also began installing sophisticated security cameras at one of the entrances to the compound housing the al-Aqsa mosque, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif and revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, Guardian reported.

The metal detectors  seen by Palestinians and Arab countries as an attempt by Israel to exert control over the holy site  triggered widespread protests across Jerusalem and the West Bank. The added installation of security cameras is liable to spark more protests, CNN reported.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council will meet on Monday to discuss the bloodiest spate of Israeli-Palestinian violence for years, diplomats said on Saturday.

Sweden, Egypt and France requested the meeting to urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported, Swedens deputy UN ambassador, Carl Skau, tweeted. The Arab League has warned Israel is playing with fire over the red line of Jerusalem.
The Indonesian Narcotics Agency recorded there are 6 million drug users in the archipelago out of its 255 million people, a situation the president labelled drug emergency. (Photo: File)

Jakarta: Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has ordered the police to shoot drug traffickers who resist arrest in the latest effort to eradicate drug use in the country.

In a speech to one of Indonesia's political parties late on Friday, Widodo urged law enforcers to crackdown on drug dealers in Indonesia.

"Be firm. Especially to foreign drug dealers who enter the country. If they resist even the slightest, just shoot them," Widodo said.

The Indonesian Narcotics Agency recorded there are 6 million drug users in the archipelago out of its 255 million people, a situation the president labelled "drug emergency". But Widodo's remarks prompted criticism from human rights activists.

Andreas Harsono, Indonesia's researcher from Human Rights Watch condemned the order. "A president statement like that can seem like a green light to shoot without the correct procedure," Harsono said on Sunday, adding that law enforcers should be cautious and follow the law.

Indonesia imposes a tough punishment for drug trafficking, with smugglers who carry five or more grammes given the death penalty.

In the last two years, it has executed about 18 drug traffickers, including foreigners such as Australian Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, which sparked diplomatic outrage and a call to abolish the death penalty.

Widodo's comments came just a week after Indonesian police shot dead a suspected Taiwanese drug dealer who was caught with one tonne of crystal methamphetamine, but tried to escape.
Around 15 Conservative party MPs have agreed to sign a no-confidence motion against British Prime Minister Theresa May as part of a plot to oust her, according to a media report.

Although the letter of no confidence falls short of the 48 names required to trigger a leadership contest, the UK Parliaments summer break could prove critical for Ms Mays future as Prime Minister, The Sunday Times reported.

If she has a quiet summer and there are no crises she might be able to cling on beyond conference, but that is still a big if, a former minister was quoted as saying.
The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible. (Photo: File)

Istanbul: Prolonging the crisis in the Gulf sparked by the isolation of Qatar is not in the interest of anyone, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday as he embarked on a key visit to the region.

"No-one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," said Erdogan before leaving Istanbul airport on the two-day trip that will take him to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and then Qatar. He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran. Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

Over the last years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has sped up the process since the crisis began and

reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, with explicitly criticising the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said Friday he was ready for talks to resolve the crisis so long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.
Tehran: Iran's government rejected US demands to release detained Americans on Saturday, saying it had no control over the judiciary.

"The judiciary, courts and judges in Iran are completely independent, as in any other country," said foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi in a statement.

"Any interventionist and threatening statement by American officials and institutions has no effect on the will and determination of the country's judicial system to try and punish criminals and violators of the country's laws and national security," Ghasemi added.

He was responding to a White House statement on Friday, which said: "President (Donald) Trump is prepared to impose new and serious consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens are released and returned."

It followed the 10-year sentence for espionage given to a Chinese-American researcher from Princeton, Xiyue Wang, earlier in the week.

The statement mentioned Wang, along with jailed US-Iranians Siamak and Baquer Namazi, and ex-FBI agent and CIA contractor Robert Levinson who went missing in March 2007.

"As announced to American officials several times, the person called Robert Levinson travelled to Iran many years ago and Iran holds no new information on his fate after he left Iranian territory," Ghasemi said.

He also criticised the jailing of several Iranians by the United States in recent years on "baseless and unfounded grounds".

Washington and Tehran severed diplomatic relations in 1980 when US embassy staff were taken hostage for 444 days.

Trump has taken an aggressive approach to Iran, but has so far stopped short of tearing up the nuclear deal that eased sanctions on the country, as he had threatened on the campaign trail.
Barely 12 hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation to announce demonetisation, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was the first leader from the Opposition camp to back his one-time rival.



I fully endorse the prime ministers bold step to strengthen the economy. But at the same time, Modiji will have to hit at the benami property if he really intends to weed out corruption, Nitish said on November 9.



By striking a discordant note (when the entire Opposition was baying for Modis blood), Nitishs ties with other leaders, particularly his friend-turned-foe-turned-friend Lalu Prasad, has frozen since then.



A few months later, when BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi started tumbling out one document after another about the various land deals of Lalu and his family, and the numerous other benami properties held by Rabri Devi and her sons and daughters, it was crystal clear whom Nitish wanted to actually target.



The Income Tax (I-T) raids in June, followed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raids in July and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) questioning Lalus kin only gave credence to the theory that though the BJP-led government at the Centre may appear to be targeting Lalu, the man behind Lalus woes was suspected to be Nitish himself.



No wonder, Sushil Modi profusely thanked Nitish the day the CBI raided Lalu-Rabri residence on July 7 after the premier investigating agency registered an FIR against Lalu, Rabri and Tejashwi Yadav (the deputy chief minister of Bihar) naming them as accused in the land-for-hotels scam.



We would thank Nitishji for this raid. Had his men not raised the issue (the land scam) in 2008, and had his ministers not helped me in procuring the documents about various shady land deals, Lalu would not have been exposed to this extent, said Sushil Modi, in his attempt to drive a wedge between the two ruling coalition partners.



It is believed that the gulf between Nitish and Lalu widened further since then with the chief minister, through his spokespersons, gunning for Tejashwis scalp. Those who have been charged with amassing huge wealth and benami property will have to give a proper explanation. So far, their arguments may please the RJD supporters but legally it is neither tenable nor convincing, said Nitish while addressing the legislature party meeting held at his official residence 1, Anne Marg.



At least two out of the 27 JD(U) leaders, who spoke on the occasion, struck a discordant note. At a closed-door meeting, Nitishs close aide and senior minister Bijendra Yadav is believed to have told him: When you joined hands with Lalu Prasad in 2015 to take on your arch-rival Narendra Modi, were you not aware that the RJD chief was already convicted in fodder scam?



We should first analyse our strengths and weaknesses before taking any decision (to snap ties), argued Bijendra. He was, however, booed. Outside, the two alliance partners continued to trade charges. While the RJD insisted that Tejashwi will not quit come what may, the JD(U) took a high moral ground and reiterated that Nitish was known for his zero tolerance towards corruption.



Theories galore



In between, numerous theories were floated around. One was that Nitish may run the government with outside support from the BJP if Tejashwi was forced to quit and the RJD withdrew its support. The other was the RJD would not like to be seen as the one which wrecked the alliance, so it would extend outside support. Yet another theory was propagated by those who claimed to know Nitish well. Nitish may prefer to dissolve the House than run his government with outside support of any party, said a BJP legislator.



Days passed. Suspense increased. But not one shred of political upheaval took place as anticipated by a large chunk of electronic media and hundreds of other political pundits. On July 18, Tejashwi met Nitish in the chief minister's chamber after a Cabinet meeting and had a one-to-one where he is reported to have explained how he had been booked due to political vendetta.



Reports stated that Nitish was not fully convinced with Tejashwis arguments and cited how no tainted minister had ever continued in his Cabinet. With neither side willing to yield, the stalemate continues till date. And so is the frozen ties between the two ruling allies.



But those who are in the know of things argue how Nitish may not stretch the matter too far. A senior leader, who was earlier a minister in Nitishs Cabinet, told DH that as of now there is a ceasefire. Though its very tough to predict Nitish Kumars next move, at least till the CBI files a charge sheet against Tejashwi, nobody is likely to ask for the deputy chief minister's resignation, the former minister argued.



While dwelling at length why Nitish may not desert the RJD and the Congress, the ex-minister said: What will he gain if he joins the BJP-led NDA? He is already Bihar CM. And working with the BJP this time will be tough for him as its not the party of Vajpayee-Advani era any more. Its quite possible that the team of Modi-Amit Shah may make things quite difficult for Nitish if he aligns with the BJP, given the history of bitter acrimony between Nitish and Modi. I guess, better sense has prevailed upon the Bihar CM, who may bide his time in the Grand Alliance and wait for the opportune moment for his dream (of emerging as Oppositions prime ministerial candidate) to come true. And this could happen only if he does not cross the fence.



Political observers feel that a weakened Lalu suits Nitish more. After the apex court ruling on holding trial in fodder scam, Lalu will remain engrossed with his legal battles. His two sons, both ministers, but charged with amassing wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income, will face the CBI, ED and the I-T sleuths in the days to come. This, in turn, will give Nitish ample leeway to run his government in his own inimitable style. After all, good governance has been his USP.




The contours of Bihars politics for the last two decades were largely drawn by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar keeping the major political players at tenterhooks. He chose his alliance partners right from the CPI(ML) to the BJP and to the RJD and the Congress to suit his political convenience.



He came into power in 2005 with the help of the saffron party that declared him as their chief ministerial choice despite being a major party. It was a tactical move to dislodge the Lalu Prasad-Rabri Devi-led RJD government ruling the state for 15-long years. The strategy worked well and the RJD government was replaced by the Nitish-led NDA government.



Though this alliance had worked well till 2013 when the saffron party moved ahead declaring Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate for the next Lok Sabha poll, Nitish made it clear that he cant continue with the BJP under the new leadership, considering Modis hardliner image.



But Nitish started exhibiting his tactical aversion for Modi in 2010 itself when he cancelled a dinner of top BJP leaders who were in Patna to attend the national executive of the party. The immediate provocation was an advertisement which appeared in newspapers of Bihar showing Modi and Kumar hand-in-hand. Actually, this picture was from the May 2009 election campaign. However, the alliance lasted till mid-2013, when Nitish sacked all BJP ministers from the government.



Incidentally, this happened before Modis final ascent in his party  of becoming the PM candidate. Kumars misadventure failed to pay any political dividend to him and his party, the JD(U), lost miserably in the Lok Sabha election held in 2014. The party struggled to win two seats out of the 40 it contested. This made it very clear that the party is not capable of going alone in the state. Losing no further time, Nitish decided to join his arch-rival and political foe Lalu as well as the Congress. His master stroke resulted in a landslide victory for the JD(U)-RJD-Congress grand alliance in the 2015 Bihar Assembly election and stopped the saffron wave from sweeping the state.



This new political amalgamation may not suit his own chemistry as he built up his political career by making an anti-thesis of Lalu, whose regime was often referred to as Jungle Raj due to the poor law and order situation. Nitish crafted his image as a no-nonsense politician going ahead with all seriousness to deliver on the development front. Nitish had to accommodate two young sons of Lalu in his government with some key portfolios. Lalus younger son, Tejashwi, was made the deputy chief minister. Nitish, who always opposed dynastic rule and kept his only son away from politics, had to make a serious compromise in the name of gathbandhan dharma (coalition compulsion).



Cannot blame anyone



But Nitish cannot blame anyone as he humiliated BJP leaders and left the NDA on his own and joined hands with the Lalu family fully knowing the latters dynastic compulsion and an image as a convicted leader.



Nitish, to a great extent, successfully sidelined Lalu from power-sharing though his party with 80 MLAs was the major partner in the coalition. Nitish never allowed the government to run from two parallel power centres, said a senior civil servant. He kept deferring the appointment of chairmen to various Boards and Commissions as a large chunk of it will go to other partners based on their strength.



But former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi has a different take on the current political standoff: Both Lalu and Nitish had their own agenda. While Lalu wanted to make his sons deputy chief minister and minister and has sent his daughter to the Rajya Sabha, Nitish is busy branding himself as a tall leader at the national level. Knowing well that Lalu is getting into trouble after the Supreme Court order on holding a fast trial on the fodder scam, Nitish finds it the best time to cut the RJD to size. He knows that Lalu cannot afford to break alliance at this point in time.



The chief minister has already given signals that he wont allow his administration to extend undue favours to leaders of alliance partners. The state government moved the Supreme Court for the cancellation of bails of RJD legislator Rajballabh Yadav, accused of rape, and Shahabuddin, another party strongman facing about two dozen criminal cases. Both were considered close to Lalu and later the Supreme Court cancelled their bail. Similar was the case of son of JD(U) MLC Manorma Devi who allegedly killed a young boy in a road rage incident in Gaya.



Though by joining hands with Lalu after his conviction, Nitish made the biggest compromise, his party spokesman Neeraj Kumar insisted: Our leader cant compromise on the issue of probity and we have a long track record. Thats why we are asking the deputy chief minister to make his stand clear on the charges levelled by the CBI.



While Nitish wanted Tejashwi to resign, the RJD made it very clear that he wont quit the government and in case he was forced to do that, his party may withdraw from the government and would extend support from outside.



The current political standoff would adversely affect the move to put up a joint front against the NDA for the 2019 parliamentary election. Considering its larger impact, the Congress is trying its best to broker peace between alliance partners. Political observers feel that the continuing political deadlock has put Nitishs credibility on test. He has only two choices - succumb to RJD pressure or resign.



(The writer is editor, bihartimes.com)
The Grand Alliance in Bihar is in the news after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar extended support to NDA Presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind and the CBI case against Deputy Chief Minister and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav. Speculation was rife that Nitish will break ranks with the alliance. Senior JD(U) leader K C Tyagi spoke to Shemin Joy of DH on the developments.



Is the alliance united? Or is it breaking?



The alliance is intact and united. There were some strains when the names of Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav and Health Minister Tej Pratap Yadav appeared in FIRs or allegations. There were ED notices, I-T raids and a CBI case. Nitish did not want it to have any impact on the alliance government. Particularly, he wanted Tejashwi to come clean. He was of the view, which he said in a meeting of ministers, MLAs and MPs, that there should be clarity.



When their names had come in Jain hawala diary, leaders like Sharad Yadav and L K Advani had resigned. This was the tradition. Earlier, three ministers were removed by Nitish. If Tejashwi was in the JD(U), he would have been removed. But this is an alliance government. For 15 days, the RJD was adamant that Tejashwi would not resign, saying communal forces are targeting them, etc. Finally, Tejashwi met Nitish. Tej Pratap also met him.



Can we infer that Nitish Kumar has backtracked from his demand on seeking Tejashwi's resignation?



As the chief minister, Nitish Kumar never asked for Tejashwi's resignation. If the chief minister had asked a minister to resign, he has to. Otherwise, he will be sacked.



There is a perception that the RJD calls the shots. Is it an overbearing ally?



It was running smooth. The RJD had 22 MLAs earlier. With the JD(U) it has risen to 80. But one has to understand, the JD(U) had given its winning seats to allies the RJD and the Congress. One has to understand that in that process, we contested less number of seats. One can say that the Congress had a better strike rate as most of its candidates won the elections. The issue is that there is a systematic attack on Nitish Kumar. Leaders like Raghuvansh Prasad and some MLAs use whatever opportunity to target him. However, one should remember that not a single JD(U) leader attacked (RJD chief) Lalu Prasad.



Were you upset with the Congress reaction to the JD(U)s decision to support NDA Presidential candidate?



Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad's statements on Nitish Kumar were unwarranted. But how did the JD(U) end up supporting Kovind? As there was wider consultation on vice presidential polls, the JD(U) and the BJD have also come together with other Opposition parties. We are of the opinion that if Gopalkrishna Gandhi was declared the candidate for Presidential polls earlier, there was no question of the JD(U) going out. Then it would have been a close contest. Most of the parties were for a non-Congress, civil society person. But then also, for the JD(U), the support for Kovind was a one-time, isolated incident.



There is a perception that Nitish Kumar always keeps his options open. Is it so?



He doesn't. He is a staunch Lohia follower and had gone to jail during Emergency but he never hobnobbed with the Congress then. When he and George Fernandes joined the NDA, they entered into an agreement that the coalition will not go ahead with the BJP's policies of abrogation of Article 370, Uniform Civil Code and Ayodhya issue. Then Nitish Kumar and George Fernandes had said the court will decide the Ayodhya issue.



For 15 years, we were in the NDA but fringe elements were not allowed. It is not the case now.



The NDA in which the JD(U) was part of is not there anymore. It is different. Earlier, it was not a bad thing to be in the NDA but it is a bad thing to be in the NDA now because the NDA has changed its character.



Then it was the same Nitish Kumar who first opposed the idea of banning triple talaq when the Law Commission sought an opinion. Nitish Kumar does not oppose for the sake of opposing.
Jet Airways has asked junior pilots to furnish surety bonds worth up to Rs 1 crore and serve the airline for at least five to seven years, union sources said.



The development comes at a time when many of its junior pilots have been asked to take 10 days off every month, a move that would result in up to 30 per cent pay cut, as part of cost saving measures.

Sources at the National Aviators Guild (NAG), the pilots' union of Jet Airways, said the bond requirement has been communicated to the junior pilots.



These pilots have been asked to furnish surety bonds worth Rs 1 crore and the development also comes as the airline has "unilaterally" decided on salary cuts for them, sources told PTI.



"No new bonds (have been) asked for. It is just a pattern that has been introduced," a Jet Airways spokesperson said.



He was responding to a query whether the airline has asked its trainee pilots to sign a bond amount of up to Rs 1 crore.



The spokesperson was also asked the junior pilots have to serve the airline for 5-7 years and face encashment of the bond in case of failure to serve that tenure.



Sources at the NAG said plans to meet the airline management this week to discuss the pay cut proposal as it has been done in a unilateral manner.



Jet Airways has more than 200 junior pilots, including those undergoing training.



"As an interim measure, we shall be offering you a Lifestyle Work Pattern which entails 10 days block off per month with the appropriate remuneration... This will be effective from August 1, 2017," the carrier said in a letter to many junior pilots last week.



The NAG would be taking up the matter with the management soon, sources added.



On July 20, Jet Airways said that certain developments in the market, including that in the Gulf region, as well as its continued efforts to enhance internal efficiencies, have resulted in the review of network, fleet and crew utilisation.



Consequently, as a proactive measure, the company has made interim alignments to its crew work patterns, which will be reviewed in future, in line with network growth, the spokesperson had said.


Pakistan's restive Balochistan province has received a Mi-171E non-combat helicopter from a Russian firm, the second such chopper delivered to the country this year, a media report has said.



The Mi-171 is a civilian variant of the Mi-17 military cargo helicopter, which is already in service in the Pakistan Army.



"I am confident the convertible Mi-171E handed over to the customer will perform decently when accomplishing any missions, whether in passenger and freight carriage or in medical, search and rescue operations," Chief Executive Officer of Russian Helicopters Andrei Boginsky was quoted as saying by the Russia's TASS news agency.



In the case of a medical emergency, the chopper can be used as an ambulance as it has the capacity to carry 14 stretchers if seats are replaced.



Russian Helicopters made the helicopter supply contract with the government of Balochistan province in December 2016.



The helicopter was built in the convertible option. The helicopter cabin can be converted from a freight one to a VIP cabin with 13 seats and a flight attendant at customers option within the short period.



Mi-171E can carry up to 27 passengers and up to four tonnes of cargo inside the cabin or on the external suspension in its transport version. Three points for direct deployment provide quick landing of paratroopers and rescuers when the helicopter is hovering, it said.



The Mi-17 is widely used across the world due to its reliability and ability to operate in all climates and could be used by the provincial government to transport cargo or passengers or as an emergency response aircraft.



Russian Helicopters has sold Mi-171E helicopters to several countries, including China.



Balochistan has also been facing insurgency by Baloch nationalists and Islamist militants.



Earlier this year, on February 13, a blast took place near the Saryab Bridge in Karachi killing two personnel of the bomb disposal squad and leaving 11 injured.


"The visit is expected to add further impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement," the MEA had said on Friday.



As liberation of Mosul brightened chances of information about the kidnapped Indians, Swaraj, in a meeting with their relatives last week, had said that they might be languishing in a jail in Badush in northwest of Mosul where fighting was going on.



However, a media report from Badush yesterday said the jail now is an abandoned structure and has been unoccupied for weeks.



Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh was sent to Iraq days after the Iraqi PM announced victory in the fight to liberate Mosul.



Swaraj had told the family members that an Iraqi official quoting intelligence sources had told Singh that the kidnapped Indians were deployed at a hospital construction site and then shifted to a farm before they were put in a jail in Badush.



She had said al-Jaafari may bring fresh information about the kidnapped Indians, mostly from Punjab.



The volume of bilateral trade in 2016-17 was nearly USD 13 billion.



"Iraq contributes significantly to India's energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to us (over 37 MMT during 2016-17)," the MEA has said.



Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is also scheduled to meet the Iraqi foreign minister who will be accompanied by a senior-level official delegation.



Al-Jafaari will travel to Mumbai on July 26 and will be back in Delhi on July 27.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will hold extensive talks with her Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari tomorrow during which focus is expected to be on the issue of 39 Indians kidnapped by the ISIS three years back from Mosul city.Al-Jaafari's visit from July 24 to July 28 to India comes two weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced liberation of Mosul, the second biggest city in his country, from the ISIS, which marked a major milestone for the Iraqi security forces.In their talks, the two sides will to take stock of bilateral relations and explore ways to enhance cooperation in areas of energy and trade.Iraq has been one of the major suppliers of crude oil to India.On the visit by al-Jaafari, the external affairs ministry has said the two sides will discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.
Kerala Congress MLA M Vincent, arrested in connection with the alleged rape of a 51-year-old woman, was on Sunday removed from all official party positions.



However, Vincent, who was the secretary of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), will remain a party member.



The party has decided to remove him from official positions till he is cleared of the charges, KPCC president M M Hassan said.



Hassan, however, reiterated that Vincent will not step down as MLA till the charges against him are proved.



The 49-year-old MLA from Kovalam in Thiruvananthapuram was arrested on Saturday on charges of rape, stalking and abetting suicide.


Congress MP Shashi Tharoor today said he was more anxious than anyone else to know the truth behind his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death.



He also said he would cooperate only with the probe agencies in investigation of the case and not with publicity seekers.



"No one in this country can be more anxious than me to know the truth and to see a constructive and clear conclusion to this prolonged investigation," Tharoor told reporters here.



"My responsibility is to cooperate with the authorities and not with obstreperous, self-interested, publicity-seeking people ... I'm not going to cooperate with such people," the former Union minister said.



Tharoor was speaking on the sidelines of a three-day international conference on Dr B R Ambedkar here.



Tharoor's stepson Shiv Menon had yesterday moved the Delhi High Court opposing BJP leader Subramanian Swamy's plea for a court-monitored CBI-led SIT probe into the death of Sunanda Pushkar.



The counsel for Menon, late Pushkar's son from her earlier marriage, has filed an application on his behalf in a pending plea filed by Swamy seeking probe in the death of Sunanda, on the ground that the BJP leader has no locus standi in the issue.



Swamy, in his plea file through advocate Ishkaran Singh Bhandari, has alleged "inordinate delay" in the investigation, claiming that many of the evidence in the case have been destroyed, and accused Tharoor was influencing investigation in the matter.



Sunanda Pushkar was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a suite of a five-star hotel in south Delhi on the night of January 17, 2014.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced mounting pressure today over new security measures at a sensitive Jerusalem holy site after a weekend of violence left eight people dead, with fears more unrest could follow.



Israeli officials signalled they may be open to changing the measures at the Haram al-Sharif mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, after the installation of metal detectors at entrances following an attack that killed two policemen stoked Palestinian anger.



The metal detectors remained in place today morning, though cameras had also been mounted near at least one entrance to the compound in Jerusalem's Old City -- a possible indication of an alternative to the detectors.



Netanyahu was also holding a cabinet meeting and was due to meet with his security cabinet later in the day.



"Since the start of the events, I have held a series of assessments with security elements including those in the field," he said at the start of the meeting.



"We are receiving from them an up-to-date picture of the situation, as well as recommendations for action, and we will decide accordingly."





Israeli Major General Yoav Mordechai -- head of COGAT, the defence ministry agency responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories -- signalled changes to the policy were possible.



"We are examining other options and alternatives that will ensure security," Mordechai said in an interview with Al-Jazeera.



Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said he would continue to support the metal detectors remaining in place unless police provide a satisfactory alternative.



The crisis has resonated internationally.



The UN Security Council will hold closed-door talks Monday about the spiralling violence after Egypt, France and Sweden sought a meeting to "urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported".



Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit today accused Israel of "playing with fire" with the new security measures.



Tensions have risen throughout the past week over the metal detectors at the compound, which includes the revered Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, following the July 14 attack that killed two policemen.



Palestinians reject the metal detectors because they view the move as Israel asserting further control over the site. They have refused to enter the compound in protest and have prayed in the streets outside.



Israeli authorities say the July 14 attackers smuggled guns into the holy site and emerged from it to shoot the policemen.



Today's main weekly Muslim prayers -- which typically draw thousands to Al-Aqsa -- brought the situation to a boil.



In anticipation of protests, Israel barred men under 50 from entering the Old City for prayers.

Clashes broke out between Israeli security forces and Palestinians around the Old City, in other parts of annexed east Jerusalem and in the occupied West Bank, leaving three Palestinians dead.
A team of doctors led by Dr Joseph Bonventre, Chief of Renal Division, Brigham Womens Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA will be visiting Uddanam region of north coastal Andhra Pradesh on 29 July, where 34,000 people were said to be suffering from Kidney failure. The Harvard team will be accompanied by another expert team sponsored by Pawan Kalyans Jana Sena Party.



The Uddanam health crisis has to be solved as it has already claimed a large number of lives. It needs urgent medical attention, Dr Bonventre said in a statement released here. He said that they will be assisting Pawan Kalyan to set up a Kidney Research Centre in the affected region for the benefit of its people. Though Uddanam Nephropathy as it is known was first identified in 1990 the cause is yet to be scientifically established. The disease was found to be affecting farmers and agriculture labour that eke a living on cashew and coconut plantations. The phenomenon is spread all over 100 villages in Kaviti, Sompeta, Kanchili, Itchapuram, Palasa and Vajrapukotturu blocks of Srikakulam district.



As per government estimates, 5000 people died due to kidney failure in the past decade. Such is the impact of the disease, that a least one person in every family in the 100 villages is affected by renal failure. The phenomenon was extensively discussed in the 2013 International Congress of Nephrology held in Hong Kong and in several other international forums.



The Uddanam issue came to lime light after Telugu superstar and Jana Sena party chief Pawan Kalyan demanding action from ruling Telugu Desam Party to respond within 48 hours in January this year. Thanks to the actor turned politician, the state government announced free dialysis for the affected people and financial assistance. Pawan Kalyan spoke with experts in Harvard about the Uddanam crisis and sought their help.
Members of Parliament today bid adieu to outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee at a gala ceremony in the Central Hall of Parliament as leaders recalled his contribution in upholding democratic values.



Eighty one-year-old Mukherjee was received by Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar at Parliament for the farewell ceremony.



In her speech, Mahajan said, "This is a solemn occasion for each one of us to express our profound respect to President Mukherjee."



Ansari lauded Mukherjee for his "unshakable belief in the idea of India" and said he often appealed to the people to re-dedicate themselves to the democratic values of the country. Mukherjee also stressed upon pluralism and diversity "as the greatest strength" of the country, he said.

Ansari also complimented Mukherjee for the manner in which he essayed the role of the president. "He brought great distinction and dignity to the top office. His views on national and international issues have enhanced the stature of the office," he said.



The outgoing president expressed gratitude to the parliamentarians for the farewell. "After Independence, we undertook to promote fraternity, dignity and unity of the nation. These ideals became the lodestar for the country," Mukherjee said.



He asked the members to avoid frequent disruptions in Parliament saying it hurt the opposition more. "During my years in Parliament, I learnt that it stands for debate, discussion and dissent. I also learnt that disruptions hurt the opposition more," he said.



Mukherjee also said the government should avoid the ordinance route as it should be reserved only for compelling circumstances. "It should not be taken for matters being considered for discussion (in Parliament)," he added.



Mukherjee said, "As the President, I have tried to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution, not just in letter, but in spirit as well."



He concluded by saying, "I leave this magnificent building with a rainbow of memories and a sense of fulfilment and happiness of having served the people of this country as their humble servant."
A 55-year-old woman was arrested today for allegedly burning the private parts of her four- year-old granddaughter with a tong as she was upset at the birth of her third girl grandchild, police said.



The woman, identified as Kamla, had been cursing her daughter-in-law ever since she gave birth to the third girl four years back, SHO, Ding police station, Sirsa district, Inspector Jangir Singh told PTI over phone.



He said it also emerged during the preliminary investigation that Kamla earlier had even tried to kill the child, for which an attempt to murder charge has been added in the FIR registered against her.



"We arrested her today from near her house in Maujukhera village in Sirsa district," Singh said.

"She has been booked under the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015," he said.



The SHO said the accused was "annoyed" at the birth of three grand daughters.



He said members of the Sirsa District Child Protection Committee, who learnt about the incident, rescued the child and took her to a hospital. Later, they lodged a police complaint, Singh said.



Notably, the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' campaign was launched in Haryana to improve its skewed sex ratio. The state is notorious for its adverse sex ratio.



Singh said while the accused woman was illiterate, her daughter-in-law had also been reluctant to complain about Kamla's behaviour.



"Kamla used to curse the daughter-in-law that she had given birth to a third girl. She also used to taunt her for being the only one in the family to have so many daughters.



"The accused felt proud that her own daughter and another daughter-in-law bore sons while the victim's mother was the only one to have three daughters," the SHO said while giving details what led to the shocking incident.



Kamla herself has two sons and a daughter.



The victim's elder sisters are aged six and seven.



The SHO said the girl's father too has given a statement to the police about her mother's actions.



About the condition of the child, Singh said, "The girl was initially admitted to a civil hospital in Sirsa and discharged later. However, the District Child Protection Committee people have once again got her admitted to the hospital owing to her condition."



The shocking incident, which took place on July 9, had come to light on July 18 when a member of the Sirsa District Child Protection Committee received information that a grandmother of a four-year-old girl allegedly burnt her private parts with "chimta" (tongs).



Police had, earlier, said there were burn injuries at and around the private parts of the girl.



On the complaint filed by the member of the Child Protection Committee, Geeta Kathuria, a case had been registered against unknown persons, earlier. However, the investigations led to the accused woman who was put under arrest.
Rain on Sunday lashed several parts of the country, including Gujarat, where at least 7,000 people were shifted to safer places over the past two days.



The situation in deluge-ravaged Assam showed signs of improvement.



Heavy showers were also witnessed in parts of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi.



In Gujarat, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani conducted an aerial survey in parts of the inundated Surendranagar district to take stock of the situation.



According to the state Director of Relief A J Shah, 7,000 people were shifted to safer places due to a flood-like situation in several districts of the state. Transport was brought to a standstill as 19 state highways and 102 roads were closed due to waterlogging.



In Assam, almost 60,000 people are still affected across nine districts, even though the overall flood situation improved in the state, a report by the Assam State Disaster Management Authority said. The deaths in flood-related cases this year stand at 76, including eight in Guwahati.





4 more deaths in Maharashtra



Four rain-related deaths have been reported from Raigad and Palghar districts as heavy rain continued to lash Maharashtra on Sunday, DHNS reports from Mumbai.



At Dahanu in Palghar district, a woman rider was killed when her two-wheeler skidded over a pothole.



In Raigad district, a father and daughter died drowning, while a tourist died in a mudslide.



In Mumbai, two senior citizens were injured as trees were uprooted following heavy rain, posing a problem for civic authorities.


The survey, carried out by the Party Members' Project, comes as Parliament stands down for the summer but with bitter party infighting and behind-the-scenes plotting expected to continue over the recess.



It found 21 per cent of members backed Brexit minister David Davis, 17 per cent preferred foreign minister Boris Johnson, while the third choice was backbencher Jacob Rees- Mogg, who has something of a cult following, but was backed by just six per cent of those surveyed.



A quarter of respondents said they did not know or could not say who the next leader would be. However, most Conservatives are keen to avoid a leadership contest until the Brexit negotiations have concluded in 2019, and would prefer to let May finish the job  and carry the can  in the event of a poor deal with the European Union (EU).

Around 15 Conservative party MPs have agreed to sign a no-confidence motion against British Prime Minister Theresa May as part of a plot to oust her, according to a media report.Although the letter of no confidence falls short of the 48 names required to trigger a leadership contest, the UK Parliament's summer break could prove critical for May's future as British prime minister, 'The Sunday Times' reported."The numbers change from day to day depending on what's happened but there are about 15 who are fairly consistent in their desire for change. If she has a quiet summer and there are no crises and things are not mismanaged then she might be able to cling on beyond conference, but that is still a big if," a former minister was quoted as saying.The reports come days after a summer party in the House of Commons last week where May pleaded with her MPs to "go away and have a proper break and come back ready for serious business"."No backbiting, no carping. The choice is me or (Opposition Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn - and no one wants him," Conservative MPs who were present reported her as saying.Meanwhile, a Conservative party survey indicates that some Tory grassroots MPs want May to quit by Christmas time this year.
NDA's vice presidential nominee M Venkaiah Naidu today warned Pakistan against aiding and abetting terror, saying it should recall what happened in the 1971 Indo-Pak war when it faced a humiliating defeat and Bangladesh was born.



He also charged Pakistan with using terror as an instrument of "state policy".



"Pakistan is mixing terror with religion. Terrorism unfortunately has become their state policy. Terrorism is an enemy of humanity and has no religion," he said at the 'Kargil Parakram Parade' here to mark the supreme sacrifice of the soldiers in the 1999 conflict.



He said Kashmir is an integral part of India and not an "inch" of it will be ceded to the neighbouring country.



Naidu's strong warning comes days after the US State Department listed Pakistan among the countries providing "safe havens to terrorists".



"Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them. They had an experience in 1971, they should remember that experience and focus on creating peace and prosperity for their people," he said.



Naidu also said Pakistan, which had embarked on the "Kargil misadventure", was now resorting to "diplomatic misadventures" to foment trouble in Kashmir.



"It is time all 'mis-adventurists' realise that India's development story can't be derailed by such 'shoot and scoot' tactics. We are too strong to get irritated and lose our focus," he said, ahead of the Kargil Vijay Diwas on July 26.



On that day in 1999, India recaptured all the posts in Kargil that had been occupied by the Pakistani troops and intruders from the neighbouring country.


To strengthen telemedicine services in the state, the Uttar Pradesh government is planning to introduce a scheme under which people, especially those living in far-flung area, can seek medical consultations by simply dialing a number



Under the scheme, the state is being divided into five clusters and control rooms will be established in five prominent cities, Health Minister Sidhartha Nath Singh said here.



A team of doctors will be posted round-the-clock at these control rooms, which will also have a helpline number, he said.



The minister said the efforts of the state government is to ensure that everyone gets medical help near his house and no person is forced to make repeated rounds of hospitals.



Explaining the process, he said if a person residing in a village is suffering from fever, the patient can seek medical help from a doctor by dialing the toll-free number of the control room following which medicines will be prescribed.



"If the patient does not recover from the illness, they can inform the doctor, who can ask him or her to get a blood test done.



"The patient will not have to go to any pathology centre. A staff from the nearest health centre will come and collect the blood sample at no cost," Singh said.



The patient will be given a number by the control room, which will be sent to the beneficiary through SMS, he said.



"If there are no signs of serious ailments, then the doctor will advise the patient to take free medicine from the nearest health centre.



"In case of serious illness, the person will get expert medical advice from specialists of KGMU and SGPGI at their village health centre or respective district hospital," Singh said, adding that the scheme will be run on a public-private partnership (PPP) mode.



The minister said that once the scheme becomes operational, the pressure on hospitals in cities will reduce.
The Trump administration's new Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said today he wants to reset ties with the media by creating "an era of a new good feeling" but he would not ask the US president to change his style.



Scaramucci, during his introductory appearance at the White House on Friday, had expressed a desire to improve the administration's relationship with the media, which has hit a new low over several issues, including Donald Trump's repeated accusations that some US news outlets reported what he calls "fake news".



The53-year-old soft-speaking New York financier told two American news networks that the administration needed to deliver its message a "little bit differently". But, he added, he would not want to change Trump's style of communication.



"He is 71 years old. We're not going to change him. The last time I checked, he won the presidency quite handily. He's going to win it again in 2020. He's our guy. And so how to learn to work with and operate with him," he told CNN.



"The president likes speaking from the heart. He likes telling what he likes and he dislikes... I just think we need to deliver the messaging a little bit differently than we have been doing it in the past," Scaramucci told the network.



Appearing on Fox News, he said there was a need to reset the ties with the media and "create a more positive mojo".



Responding to a question from the interviewer, Scaramucci said he wants "the president to be the president".



"I want him to express the full nature of his personality. Corey Lewandowski used to say early on, on the campaign, let Trump be Trump."



"My point is if he wants to talk about things like that, I'm not going to want to stop him or be able to stop him. I want to be there to help aid and abet his agenda," he said.



Though he will officially begin on August 15, Scaramucci said he would have his first meeting with his communications team tomorrow and would tell them: "Hey, I don't like these leaks. And so we're going to stop the leaks. And, if we don't stop the leaks, I'm going to stop you."



"In some ways, we want to deescalate things and have there be a level of diplomacy. In other ways, we want it to be very hard-hitting and war-like. So it's sort of a blend of those two things," he told the network.



Scaramucci's appointment as Trump administration's communications director coincided with the resignation of the press secretary, Sean Spicer, whose six-month controversial tenure saw several run-ins with the media. Spicer was mocked on popular television shows for his aggressive responses to journalists.



Spicer reportedly resigned because he was opposed to Scaramucci, whom he had to report to as press secretary.
The Canadian government has decided to close the investigations into the brazen threats issued in April by the pro-Khalistanis against Capt Amarinder Singh.



The Punjab Congress on Sunday urged the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to take up the matter with the Canadian prime minister.



A formal complaint was lodged by the Indian High Commission in Ottawa to Global Affairs-Canada in April after videos of the April 22 Baisakhi Day event in British Columbias Surrey city surfaced.



The videos showed pro-Khalistani elements issuing threats as part of the hate speeches made by Sikh radicals operating from Canadian soil.



The Congress on Sunday said the MEA should seek the intervention of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to ensure that those guilty of using the countrys soil to issue open and violent threats to the Punjab chief minister are not allowed a free run.



Put pressure on Canada

The Congress has called for activation of all international diplomatic channels to put pressure on the Canadian government to take necessary steps to check the proliferation of anti-India forces on their soil.

The Congress said that Canada should be asked to reopen the case. The party said it was evident that a proper inquiry had not been carried out.
With threats from China looming large, India is set to increase its military flying in the Northeast as a large heliport will be operational in Tawang by September.



This will open up a new window for the Indian Air Force to enhance flying in areas close to the Sino-Indian border.



Not to be left behind, the Indian Army, too, will have a new aviation base in Assam to house a squadron of indigenous armed choppers.



An advanced landing ground (ALG) in the strategic Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh was to be completed by April, but was delayed by a few months with the new projected date of completion set for September 2017, sources told DH.



Though categorised as ALG, it would actually be a heliport as fixed-wing aircraft cannot operate from the monastery town because of its elevation and rarefied atmosphere.



The IAF may fly its Mi-series of Russian choppers as well as the indigenous advanced lightweight helicopters from Tawang.



In 2009, the Cabinet Committee of Security approved a Rs 1,000-crore IAF plan to upgrade eight existing ALGs under the Eastern Air Command. Those selected were Tuting, Mechuka, Along, Tawang, Ziro, Passighat, Walong and Vijaynagar in Arunachal Pradesh.



In the last year and a half, the IAF activated six of them  Walong, Ziro, Along, Tuting, Passighat and Mechuka  even as the seventh one at Tawang nears the finish line. The force has given up on Vijaynagar for the time being in the absence of connecting roads.



While Passighat is meant for fighter flying as well as a civil aviation base, five other ALGs would be used for transport aircraft operations, whereas Tawang can only handle the helicopters.



The army is coming up with it own aviation squadron in Assams Likabali town, which will house the indigenous armed Rudra choppers. Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd handed over 22 of these gunships  armed version of the Dhruv advanced lightweight helicopters  to the army and eight to the IAF.



The Likabali base is also likely to be functional within a month or two in keeping with Indias plan to improve military infrastructure in areas close to its disputed boundary with China. The armys first armed helicopter unit in the Northeast will have 10 aircraft.


If Bengalureans could count the time they have spent at traffic signals, they could easily go on a holiday. Yes, they are the most tired lot when it comes to waiting at traffic signals. Also, not all traffic signals in the city have digitised timers to indicate the number of seconds before the colour turns green.



Four engineering students of Vijaya Vittala Institute of Technology  Prajwal Ashwin Cutinha, Daniel K, David J Prabhakar and Sachin Philip  with the help of their teachers, have designed an affordable traffic signal bar which can be used to indicate the time duration at a traffic signal.



The signal bar, a series of lights arranged in a vertical fashion, comprises a micro controller unit through which the time duration can be adjusted. Once the signal bar is fed with a specific duration, it becomes easy for motorists to know the remaining waiting period. The signal bar is simpler than the digitised timers and even costs lesser. While two-digit digitised timers cost Rs 10,000, the signal bar costs only Rs 3,000, said Dr Dinesh K Anvekar, director, Research and Development Product Innovation Cell, Vijaya Vittala Institute of Technology.



The digitised timer directly displays the specific number of seconds remaining for the signal to change. However, in case of the signal bar, motorists have to keep an eye on the bar to know the time remaining for the colour to turn green. But the device has its own merits. The bar will be visible even from a long distance and can be useful for those who are far away from the signal. When one or two segments of the digitised timers do not function, there is a possibility of making a wrong interpretation. This can be avoided using a traffic signal bar, adds Anvekar.



The students have appealed to assistant commissioner of police (Traffic) to consider adopting the traffic signal bar at signals that have no digitised timers.
An inspector fired five rounds in the air when a group of seven suspected ganja peddlers attacked a police party in Venkatappa Layout near Ullal on the western outskirts of Bengaluru on Sunday morning.



Byadarahalli police inspector Satyanarayana and four constables raided a godown in Venkatappa Layout around 5.30 am following a tip-off that ganja was stocked there. A group of seven suspected drug peddlers was hiding in a car. The suspects attacked the policemen with knives. Waseem, one of the drug peddlers, stabbed the constable, Sabreddy, in the right hand.



Satyanarayana then took out his service pistol and fired in the air, asking the suspects to surrender. But the suspects remained undaunted and tried to attack the inspector. Satyanarayana fired four more times in the air. Police caught five suspects. Police seized 500 grams of ganja from the godown.



Two of the arrested suspects were identified as Karthik and Waseem. The three others are still being identified, said Ramesh B, Superintendent of Police, Ramanagaram. A case under IPC 353 (assault or criminal force to deter a public servant from discharge of his duty) has been registered.


Kannada scholars and artistes along with Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV) activists held a protest on Sunday against City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood for filing cases against Kannada activists for masking Hindi names on signboards at Metro stations.



Addressing journalists, writer Chandrashekar Patil said the police had arrested Kannada activists without proper evidence.



We condemn the disregard shown by the police in filing cases of communal riots against Kannada activists. The government should take strict action against foisting false and fabricated cases.



We do not believe in inciting violence but in non-violent means, said Patil.



On Saturday, Sood had filed cases against 36 Kannada activists including KRV workers under Section 153 of the Indian Penal Code for destroying public property in Metro stations.



Senior theatre artiste and writer Prakash Belawadi threatened that if the baseless arrests of Kannada activists continue, they would begin a Jail Bharo campaign.



KRV had initially given a warning to Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) that it should remove the Hindi boards. They had given sufficient time, before acting against Hindi signboards. Are the police trying to create a rift between Kannada-speaking and non-Kannada speaking people? Belawadi said.



Patil said they would launch Praveen Sood Hatao campaign along with Hindi Hatao campaign.



Transfer Sood

Meanwhile, M Venkataswamy, President, Samatha Sainika Dala, demanded that Sood should be transferred.



It is not surprising to know that a person like Praveen Sood is involved in such behaviour. If Chief Minister Siddaramaiah does not transfer him, we will launch a protest, said Venkataswamy.


Even the states highest official hasnt been able to get a prosecution sanction order issued against an engineer accused of corruption.



On May 31, at a high-level meeting to discuss requests to prosecute government employees, chief secretary Subhash Chandra Khuntia ordered the issue of a prosecution sanction order against L Raghu, executive engineer, Bangalore Development Authority, within 10 days.



Raghu is in charge of the Kempegowda Layout. Even two months after Khuntia gave his direction, the order is nowhere in sight. The order against Raghu has remained pending since 2014. At the May 31 meeting, it came to light that requests for prosecution sanction had been rejected in nine cases and kept in abeyance in 43 cases.



In 31 cases, prosecution sanction orders remain pending for more than three months. L Raghus was one of the longest-pending cases and the Chief Secretary instructed the additional chief secretary to clear the file within 10 days, an official said.



Official absent

A copy of the May 31 proceedings, accessed by DH, reveal that the additional chief secretary of the Public Works Department had not attended the meeting.



The PWD has also not cleared three other long-pending cases. A Lokayukta official said Raghus file was being stalled by some official or minister, perhaps on the pretext that legal opinion had been sought.



The Lokayuktas office had first sought an order against Raghu on October 10, 2014. The final report of the Lokayukta police stated Raghu possessed Rs 1.92 crore in assets disproportionate to his income.



The Lokayukta police kept sending reminders, but nothing moved. The Lokayuktas office has also recommended disciplinary action against Raghu for his misconduct as a government servant.



Raghus wealth

The official in question, Raghu, was raided on November 8, 2012. He was then executive engineer, national highways. His house in RPC Layout and office on Nrupatunga Road were searched. The Lokayukta police said he owned a house in RPC Layout and another on Magadi Road, a commercial complex in KHB Colony, Dasarahalli, three sites in Bengaluru and one in Mysuru. They also found 2.7 kg gold, 20 kg silver and three cars. The final report said he owned assets worth Rs 1.92 crore disproportionate to his income.


Another playground seems to have become victim of the governments Indira Canteen project.



A part of the playground on Malleswaram 18th cross has been taken over by BBMP to build an Indira Canteen, the subsidised food outlet.



Many playgrounds and plots initially allotted for building public amenities have been given to BBMP to construct Indira Canteens.



Not only a part of the Malleswaram playground has been taken over, but a few branches of an old Gulmohar tree also have been cut to facilitate the construction of the canteen. When asked about the work, the BBMP area engineer refused to comment.
Bringing a law to curb caste, gender and religious discrimination at workplace on the lines of the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act was among hundreds of recommendations made in the Bengaluru Declaration that was released by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Sunday.



The declaration, a set of recommendations, made at the concluding session of an international conference on B R Ambedkar here calls upon all progressive forces across party lines in the country to adopt and work for implementation of the recommendations to realise Dr B R Ambedkars dream of an equitable, just and egalitarian society.



Though there were no explicit political references, the tone of the declaration made it clear that it was aimed at the BJP-led Central government. With the recommendations, the state government takes forward its political and ideological goals that focus on Dalits.



The recommendations include major reforms to strengthen democratic institutions, including state funding of election to curb black money, setting up an equal opportunity commission, reservation for the SC/ST/OBCs in higher judiciary, private sector as well as in procurement and contracts.



Most of the recommendations focused on ensuring equal representation of the SC, ST and OBCs in almost all sectors, from education to employment in public and private sectors. The recommendation calls for reservation for Dalits in Assembly and Parliament, judiciary and even media houses.



Siddaramaiah noted that those who follow Ambedkar should reaffirm their commitment to the principles laid by him.



Recommendations:



Upholding the Rule of Law and reassert political and legal accountability for any violence to prevent lynchings.



Set up Equal Opportunities Commission to ensure wider representation of SC, ST, OBC, women and minorities in employment.



Law for prevention of caste, religious and gender discrimination in educational institutions.



Removing of provisions in law that place constraints on freedom of speech and expression, include those on defamation, sedition, art/film censorship and social media.



Reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs in higher judiciary.



Ensuring diversity in media houses by promoting representation of SC, STs, OBCs.



Protecting media freedom and journalists from attacks by fundamentalist elements and tacit state censorship.



Empowering the Press Council of India to regulate corporate monopoly and cross ownership of media.



A national legislation to ensure that a portion of the budget equal to the population proportion of SC & STs is reserved to support schemes to promote their development.



Reservations in procurement and contracts for up to Rs 100 lakh.



English medium education to SCs, STs, OBCs, women and minorities.



Universal access to hostels for SCs, STs and OBCs.



Reservations in the private sector.



Agricultural land for landless Dalits with legal entitlement and special support.



Comprehensive reform of caste based occupational vocations through modernisation.



Immediate publishing of socio economic caste census.



Farmers Income Commission to ensure income security.


Sri Lanka is preparing to be part of the ambitious Ramayana circuit India is planning for tourists. The Indian government is identifying places connected with the Ramayana, while Sri Lanka has already identified 71 locations across the island nation for inclusion in the circuit.



The Ramayana describes how Sita, Ramas wife, is kidnapped by Ravana and taken away to Sri Lanka. Hanuman then launches a grand operation, building a stone bridge across the sea, to rescue her.



Sri Lankan has appointed a committee to identify more places, John A E Amaratunga, minister of tourism development, told DH.



He was speaking on the sidelines of the 99th edition of the India International Travel Mart, organised by Sphere Travelmedia and Exhibition, which concluded on Sunday.



Hallowed spots

Amaratunga said his government had entered into an agreement with the Indian government to create a full circuit.



We are closely working with various Indian state governments to link all places. The two countries share a 5,000-year-old relationship, he said.



Excavation is on for more places described in the Ramayana. "We aim to complete the entire circuit by the end of this year. Just like prime minister Narendra Modi, we look at Sri Lanka and all south Indian states as one unique unit, housing the maximum Ramayana spots, he said.



The two governments are also working closely on the Buddhist circuit. Not many know that Buddha visited Sri Lanka three times. The spots he visited are not so well known either, said V Krishnamoorthy, Deputy High Commissioner, Sri Lanka. He said Sita stayed at Sita Vyasa in Sri Lanka, and was taken to Ussangoda.



More than 3.20 lakh tourists from south India visited Sri Lanka last year and a similar number of Sri Lankans visited India, he said.
The chief minister of Karnataka will soon be receiving postcards from citizens all over the city, asking if he wants them to choose his government in the 2018 Assembly election or settle for the new Common Zoning Regulations.



Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs) have begun a campaign against the proposed zoning regulations which were notified on July 1.



They are concerned that the new rules will allow commercial establishments in residential areas, disturbing peace in their neighbourhood and stretching limited resources.



RWAs across the city are now busy writing postcards addressed to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.



Keeping in mind the 2018 elections in the state, we are writing sarcastic comments about whether the chief minister wants us to choose his government or the new zoning rules, said Somayaji, member of the J P Nagar 4th Phase RWA.



The RWA is also mobilising citizens to send in their objections to the Urban Development Department. We will send objections too but we dont know if they will consider our comments seriously. So, we want to appeal to the political bosses as well, he said.



People in Indiranagar, Koramangala, Richmond Town and other RWAs are working hard at the #CommonZoningBeda or #HosaZoningBeda campaign. They are getting people to sign letters of objections to send to the Urban Development Department before July 31.



They will also work on the postcard campaign simultaneously. Meanwhile, they are using social media to spread the word and let others know that with the new rules, their next-door neighbours could be a salon, a gas agency or a bottling plant.



Citizens hope that the power of public opinion will sway the government, just as it did with the 6.7-kilometre steel flyover from Basaveshwara Circle to Hebbal.


Reservoirs in the state continued to receive good volume of water despite a lull in monsoon showers. The inflow to Tungabhadra reservoir has increased following the release of water from Tunga dam in Shivamogga district.



The reservoir near Hosapete has received a staggering 8 tmcft of water since Friday. The storage level in the reservoir on Sunday stood at 26.211 tmcft. It was 18.305 tmcft on Friday. The inflow was 51,162 cusecs while the outflow was 2,359 cusec.



Harangi reservoir in Kodagu district is only 2 feet short of reaching the full reservoir level (FRL). The water level at Harangi on Sunday was 2,857.21 feet while the FRL is 2,859 feet.

About 1,200 cusecs water from the reservoir was released into the river.



Minor Irrigation, Superintending Engineer, M N Chandrakumar, said,  Based on the volume of inflow to the reservoir, water would be released into the river in phases.



A meeting of the irrigation consultation committee will be held in Bengaluru on July 25. After the meeting, the decision will be taken to release water through canals for agricultural activities.



Keeping in mind the safety of the reservoir, the water level would be maintained at 2,857 feet, said Executive Engineer S C Rangaswamy.



At present, the Harangi reservoir has a storage of 7.89 tmcft. The reservoir had reached FRL last year on July 10. The reservoir irrigates 1,34,895 acre farm land in Kodagu district and Periyapatna, Hunsur, KR Nagar in Mysuru district and Arkalgud in Hassan district.



Meanwhile, the six low-laying barrages-cum-bridges across Krishna and its tributaries in Chikkodi taluk in Belagavi district continued to remain under water despite a lull in showers in Maharashtra. Krishna river has recorded an inflow of 1.71 lakh cusecs on Sunday while its tributary Malaprabha received 20,113 cusecs. Doodhganga and Vedganga are flowing in full spate.


Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
The Alzheimers Resource Center in Dothan will hold its annual fundraiser, A Walk to Remember, on Oct. 7, marking the events 25th anniversary.

In memory of her mother and her sister, Elaine Brackin, managing editor of The Dothan Progress, will chair the 2017 walk at Westgate Park. The walk will also honor walk chairs from previous walks.

This event is the primary fundraiser for the nonprofit Alzheimers Resource Center, an independent organization providing support services in Southeast Alabama and part of the Panhandle of Florida. All funds raised stay local. The walk is not part of a national walk.

The walk raises awareness of the devastation of Alzheimers disease and provides financial support for educational and support services for families, caregivers and victims of Alzheimers disease. Services provided by the Alzheimers Resource Center include monthly family support groups, a caregiver newsletter, and books, pamphlets and brochures about Alzheimers disease and related issues.

The Oct. 7 walk is open to everyone, and teams are especially encouraged to participate. Teams may be made up of two or more co-workers, club members, relatives and family members, friends or neighbors.

You can donate online through PayPal or pre-register for the walk online at the website wesharethecare.org. You can also pre-register by calling 334-702-2273 or going by the ARC office located at 1314 Westgate Parkway, Suite 2.

The Alzheimers Resource Center is currently seeking sponsors for the walk and is accepting pre-registrations from individuals or teams of walkers who wish to participate. The registration fee is $15 without a souvenir shirt and $25 with a souvenir shirt. There is no registration fee for children 4 years old and younger. A walk T-shirt is guaranteed for everyone who has paid $25 and who has pre-registered prior to Sept. 15.

Walkers are encouraged to collect additional pledges to help the Alzheimers Resource Center reach its goal of $100,000. Teams are invited to design special shirts or carry banners or signs to identify their group.

On the day of the walk, registration and team photos will begin at 7:30 a.m., opening ceremonies will begin at 8:30 a.m., and the walk will begin at approximately 8:45 a.m. There will be one-mile, three-mile and five-mile walks to enable people of all ages to participate.

Refreshments will be provided before, during and after the walk.
Steel and aluminum are essential to our everyday life. We use metals in our helicopters, tanks, bridges and electrical grids. In Dothan, manufacturing is the fourth largest employment sector boasting a workforce of over 3,000, with more than 200 of these jobs in steel alone.

With foreign imports threatening American jobs, our country may soon be too dependent on foreign metal to provide resources for our infrastructure and military defense equipment affecting our economic and national security. This is a risky path to go down.

Americas reliance on foreign steel impairs our ability to respond to crises like natural disasters and terrorist attacks. We cannot continue to depend on Russia or China for metals that are capable of being produced in America.

Fortunately, the Department of Commerce will soon make a recommendation on the Trump Administrations Section 232 investigation of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This investigation looks into whether imports of steel and aluminum are negatively impacting our economy and national security. It is imperative that the Department of Commerce recommend swift, meaningful action that will have a positive impact this opportunity to protect America and our jobs.

There is a direct correlation between a healthy steel sector and Americas independence and stability and the results from this investigation can reassure the American people that their government is putting its taxpayers first.

I encourage the Trump Administration to impose the necessary measures that will safeguard Americas and Alabamas steel industry.

Valerie D. Judah, chairman

Houston County Republican Executive Committee

Dothan
Mark Salibas roots run deep in Dothan, back to the citys early days when the first generation of Salibas came to Dothan and established themselves, mostly as businessmen.

The Saliba name is very familiar in Dothan. Alfred Saliba, Marks father, served two terms as Dothans mayor, beginning in 1989. And Mark Saliba is involved in the family business, Alfred Saliba Corporation, serving as president of the company known for new construction and remodeling around the Wiregrass.

Saliba was 29 years old when his father was first elected. Up until that point, Alfred Saliba had no political experience. Mark Saliba continues that family tradition as well. Though he had been approached before about running for the District 5 commission seat, it just wasnt meant to be.

It just was not the right time for me, my business, or my family, he said.

Instead, Saliba has dedicated his time to working in his industry and with various non-profits, such as the Hawk-Houston Boys and Girls Club, Wiregrass United Way, and Grow Dothan.

For me, I enjoy being a part of the community and helping others working on the issues and the topics of the day, he said.

As a big supporter of outgoing Mayor Mike Schmitz, Saliba had no interest in running against him, but Schmitzs decision to not seek a third term made the mayors office a possibility for Saliba.

I had prayerfully considered it, Saliba said. As doors opened, I went through them.

If elected mayor of Dothan, Saliba will take over a part-time job that has, in effect, been turned into a full-time position by Schmitz. For Saliba, this would mean continuing to follow the standard Schmitz set. He said his brother would still work at Alfred Saliba Corporation and handle company business. They are also working on succession planning and training the next level of management, so scaling back his daily responsibilities is already in the works.

I expect to spend 90 percent of my time at the city, Saliba said. I think it is a full-time job.

Saliba wants to focus on the policies that guide city business and long-range strategic planning, along with being out in the community to see what issues are facing each district. He said many issues, such as affordable housing and homelessness, have an impact on all residents, though some issues are more important in individual districts.

Issues important to Saliba include workforce development and education, which he said impact the overall quality of life in Dothan.

Workforce development is a huge issue going forward  its about making sure our citizens are able to get the jobs that are out there that are available, Saliba said. If we dont have a highly employable population, the economic developments are affected.

With a healthy aviation industry and the potential for an automotive factory at a megasite just south of the Alabama-Florida state line, Saliba sees potential for much more job growth. He said if an automotive plant locates at the megasite, southeast Alabama would be in line to land Tier 1 and 2 suppliers that would manufacture parts used in automotive construction.

Thats one of those things weve just got to keep working on, Saliba said. That, I think, is big.

And while new jobs would be something to get excited about, Saliba acknowledges that keeping the citys water, sewer, electric, and technology up to date is also an important responsibility for city leaders.

Infrastructure is never a sexy topic, but it is something we have to do, Saliba said. I think Im uniquely qualified about infrastructure because of the business Ive been in. I understand the construction and infrastructure and development needs of the city.

For years going forward, Dothans leaders will be responsible for seeing the city pay off the millions of dollars of debt incurred to upgrade and repair the sewer system. Saliba said the city still has a strong bond rating and money in reserves, but reducing what is owed is important.

Just like a family, a municipality needs to have their eye on the debt, Saliba said. Im for keeping debt in control and paying debt off. I just think that is vital to the communitys financial health.

What happens to Dothan in the future has an impact on Saliba and his familys legacy. He has three children, two grandchildren and a third grandchild on the way.

Family and church are very, very important to me, he said. I love the community as well. I feel like this is the best way for me to contribute and give back to the community.
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.

Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.

If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .

Support our mission and join our community now.
The remains of the three Bruckless women who lost their lives in Friday's early morning crash Ardee in Co Louth arrived back in Donegal on Saturday evening.

Margaret McGonigle, 69, her daughter Mairead Mundy, 39, and Rachel Cassidy Battles, 39, all died in the three-car collision. They were returning home to Donegal from Dublin Airport after a holiday in Turkey to celebrate Maireads first wedding anniversary.

This evening, hundreds of mourners lined the narrow road which led to the small Ballyloughan housing estate where the friends lived, to bid farewell to three mothers from the close knit community.

Around 5 pm the remains of Margaret McGonigle and Mairead Munday passed the church in Bruckless, followed by an endless stream of cars. A guard of honour stood in respect at Naomh Ultan's GAA club. A few hours later, the remains of Rachel Cassidy Battles arrived.

There were scenes of immense sadness as the coffins of the three rash victims were brought into the tranquil South Donegal village.

The three women were close friends and they were held in high regard by the entire community. The number of people who were present this evening stood testament to this.

Around 400 people attended a rosary in the local church on Friday night to pray for the bereaved, deceased and injured.

The funeral mass of Margaret McGonigle and her daughter Mairead Mundy will take place in the Church of Saint Joseph and Saint Conal in Bruckless at 11 o'clock on Monday morning, with burial afterwards in the adjoining cemetery. Their remains will repose at the home of the late Margaret McMonigle at Bally Loughan, Bruckless.

The funeral mass of Racheal Cassidy Battles will take place in the Church of Saint Joseph and Saint Conal in Bruckless on Monday at 2.30 pm, with burial afterwards in the adjoining cemetery. Her remains are reposing at her late residence at Ballyloughan, Bruckless.



A rosary will take tonight at 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock. A shuttle bus will operate from Bruckless National School to the wake houses, leaving a one way system in operation.
I believe that retirement is not the end of your life but the beginning of your new one. It was just that it was seen negatively as it is associated with old age. We all could retire at any age as long as we have secure financial capabilities like living on passive income or savings. []
Latest News

ICMAI CMA December 2022 exam form submission date extended The candidates who have not applied yet will have the opportunity to fill the application form for the ICMAI

NAAC accreditation will now be in binary terms, check details here Individual programmes offered by a college or an individual department of any university will also have the

President Murmu launches AICTE Engineering books in Odia language The Odia language translated books are available at called e-KUMBH portal
News Details

EUV is ready for mass production of 7 nm and 5 nm semiconductor chips

Date: 23/07/2017Finally the wait for mass production capable EUV is over with the successful demo of 250W exposure-power EUV lithography equipment from the only vendor ASM Lithography. Though ASM has already supplied good number of EUV lithography equipment to leading semiconductor fabs but they are of lesser power rating. With the announcement of 250 W capable EUV to process 125 wafers per hour, ASM is preparing to supply them to leading semiconductor fabs with volume production scheduled to happen in 2019.Although many leading semiconductor fabs including TSMC and Samsung are still using Deep Ultra Violet (DUV) for 7 nm chip production, but some of the fabs are ready to migrate to EUV with mixed use of both the DUV and EUV for 7nm and sole EUV for 5 nm. In sync with this trend, ASM launched TWINSCAN NXE:3400B EUV lithography system and the new TWINSCAN NXT:2000i DUV immersion system supporting methods such as redesigned leveling and alignment sensors. This enables DUV/EUV cross-matching on-product overlay of 2.5 nm that addresses a mix-and-match production environment for the most advanced nodes.ASM said in it release "TWINSCAN NXE:3400B and YieldStar 375F metrology tool are currently shipping to logic and memory customers worldwide. The HMI eP5 is expected to ship in the second half of this year. The TWINSCAN NXT:2000i has an ongoing early access program that includes key hardware innovations as field upgrades. The first TWINSCAN NXT:2000i that is completely built in our factory is expected to ship in 2018."At 5 nm, there is also changes from finFET to gate all around (GAA) and nano wires which really requires EUV to ensure yield as well as reduction of mask costs. IBM has used EUV to produce its 5nm NW/NS chips.Picture: IBM Researchers using EUV litho for 5nm NW/NS chips (Source: Suny)Along with ASM lithography, lot of other innovative companies have worked in the progress of EUV. A company called Trumpf has supplied carbon dioxide lasers to ASM litho. Zeiss is the optic specialist who has worked with ASM in EUV lithography.Inpria is making photo-resist material for EUV. Inpria is a spin-out from Oregon State University has received $23.5 million in a series B round of venture funding supported by investors such as Intel Capital, Samsung Ventures, and Applied Ventures. Inpria to use the new funds to complete its pilot manufacturing and start commercial production of its photoresists, which are based on tin oxides instead of polymers. Element Six, and II-VI are also the companies working in the EUV eco.ASM lithography and some other semiconductor equipment companies involved in EUV have posted double-digit revenue growth in recent times. Not only EUV even the overall semiconductor equipment market is witnessing the best market growth since many years. The end market of semiconductor equipment, which is basically semiconductor chip market is also expected to see highest growth rate since 2009 and is expected to reach US dollar 400 billion in 2017. If there is no memory-market bust, 2018 will also look to be good for complete semiconductor manufacturing eco.With all this development, still cost is an issue, if you go for DUV, the mask costs makes your 7nm VLSI chip design nearly 8X more than the 28 nm design. It may approximately cost around US$ 400 million for a 7 nm SoC chip, compared to 50 to 75 million for a 28 nm chip. With the EUV lithography that cost fall significantly. EUV lithography equipment costs around US$ 100 million.Intel is the major buyer of EUV equipment and roughly followed by Samsung, TSMC and Globalfoundries.ASML shared these below revenue and sales data in its recent quarterly financial release:Industry Strength and EUV Demand Drive Expected Sales Growth of About 25 Percent in 2017 - Current Business Trends Likely to Continue into 2018.Q2 (2017) net sales of EUR 2.10 billion, gross margin 45.0 percent8 additional EUV orders in Q2, underscoring that adoption for high-volume manufacturing reached inflection point.EUV backlog grows to 27 systems valued at EUR 2.8 billionASML expects Q3 2017 net sales around EUR 2.2 billion and a gross margin around 43 percentOutlook for next quarter by ASM: For the third-quarter of 2017, ASML expects net sales around EUR 2.2 billion which includes approximately EUR 300 million EUV revenue.History of EUV: The leading semiconductor research agencies and companies such as Intel, AMD, Micron, and IBM have started a program called EUV LLC in the late 90s. And it was expected that EUV technology will be ready by 2004, though long-delayed now it is available for the nano tech industry so that the scaling will continue for at least two more nodes. The journey of EUV is well explained in an online PowerPoint presentation available at website:http://www.sematech.org/meetings/archives/litho/euvl/20021015/Oral%20presentations/Oral%20111-PSilverman.pdf
Something went wrong, please try again later.

Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later.

Get the latest on all the biggest court and crime news in Essex direct from our expert court reporter

A man is in a critical condition following a knife attack in Romford and two others have been left with gunshot wounds.

Police were called at approximately 5.30am today (July 23) to a private event in Bridge Close in Romford where they were informed that someone had been seen in possession of a firearm.

Officers found a man suffering from a stab wound. He was taken by the London Ambulance Service to an east London hospital where he remains in a critical condition.

Two other men were found with gunshot injuries. They were also taken to hospital where they are both described as stable, with non-life threatening injuries.

Two men have been arrested on suspicion of possession of a firearm and taken to an east London police station.

The Trident and Area Crime Command has been informed.

Enquiries continue and anyone with information is asked to contact officers via 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Hi All,



Need help on USA PCC !!



I have sent request for police verification for WA state and FBI on 11th of July.



I am able to see that both documents has been successfully reached destination.



Is there any way to confirm that the document is good enough to process my request ?



Thanks !!
It is very important to know that without a protected password, some countries such as Pakistan not allowed one to take an international flight. The main purpose of this protector is to get proper information of the emigrant. cover the candidate with life insurance and to illegal international travel elimination.
Sorry I was new on this forum so I might not be up to scratch categorizing myself.

Both my wife and I were Filipino, I am the sponsor (already Australian citizen)

My wife is already here as well but with temporary VISA, it is currently on the second stage (permanent residency). It is now 14 months since we submitted the application online (thought that it will be faster), and still not assigned. I did everything I can to follow up but they keeps saying still under global standard yet it keeps increasing and getting push back. I thought new processing times only applies to new application submitted but looks like even existing ones. Thanks
If you are planning to visit Ecuador in the near future you should give a look of this list where is detalied all items you can bring through customs at the airport or borders in Ecuador.





 Clothes

 Toiletries

 Personal hygiene items

 Jewelry and home decorations

 Books, magazines, photographic material

 Food and items for kids;

 Tools you use in your profession

 Also bring no more than one portable tool for domestic use that is not part of your profession.

 Sports, circus, and artists clothing

 Medicine and vitamins. But remember medicines should be accompanied by a national or foreign medical prescription and vitamin supplements can only be up to 4 kg

 Assistive devices for seniors or disabled people, for you if you need one but also for a relative. They can only be intended for one person.

 A maximum of two blood pressure cuffs, thermometers, and glucometers.

 Cds and Dvds you can easily carry with you.

 A maximum of two pets

 A maximum of two musical instruments and/or musical accessories that can be easily carried by you

 A maximum of three different sports equipment and/or their accessories easily carried by you

 Toys and/or their accessories that can be easily carried

 Only for passengers older than 18 years of age, a maximum of three liters of alcoholic drinks, 20 cigarette packets, 1 pound of tobacco and 25 units of cigars or cigarettes.

 A maximum of six digital memory cards

 Only up to ten video games

 Kitchenware, but nothing electric

 Portable electrical appliances for personal hygiene such as: hairdryer, hair straightener, electric shaver. But remember this

 : you can only bring one of each device per passenger, or two per family

 A maximum of three home electric devices

 A maximum of 300 milliliters of perfume per passenger or 600 milliliters of perfume per family;

 A maximum of 1250 milliliters per passenger or 3000 milliliters per family of beauty products.



In addition to the before, all passengers can bring to Ecuador as personal effects up to one unit, new and used of the following portable devices for personal use:

 Cell phone, 1 new and 1 used

 Camera, 1 new and 1 used

 Video camera, 1 new and 1 used

 Video player, 1 new and 1 used

 Satellite phone, 1 new and 1 used

 Tablet, 1 new and 1 used

 GPS for personal usage

 Laptop and/or its accessories, 1 new and 1 used

 Electronic calculator, 1 new and 1 used



If you are coming with your family, keep this in mind: cellphones, cameras, video cameras, video players, satellite phones, tablets, GPS, laptops, and electronic calculators your family group can only bring one new unit of each of these items (fast), and each member of your family group can bring one used item.

For both single passengers as well as family groups traveling together, you will be allowed to bring as personal effects only one new or used unit of the following items:

 Television up to 32 inches

 Monitor screen up to 24 inches

 Desktop and/or its accessories of domestic use

 Desktop printer of domestic use with a value no more than US $300,00;

 Binoculars

 Telescope

 Projecting apparatus and/or screen for domestic use

 Phone or fax

 Drone up to US $500,00 in value.



Remember to travel smart: Pack light, secure, and follow these instructions.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The latest venture for ex-FourWinds Logistics CEO Stan Bates, who was indicted with state Sen. Carlos Uresti in a criminal fraud case in May, apparently has run into some troubles.

Bates San Antonio-based Bates Energy Oil & Gas this week sued a Utah company for refusing to accept delivery on more than 40,000 tons of frac sand, which is used in fracking to extract oil and gas from shale rock.

Like Bates Energy, FourWinds traded frac sand. But FourWinds imploded in 2015, with some investors saying they were defrauded. A federal grand jury indicted Bates, Uresti and company consultant Gary Cain on a combined 22 charges in May. Uresti recruited a couple of the investors and served as FourWinds outside general counsel for a short time.

Bates, 45, hasnt let the FourWinds fiasco sidetrack his efforts to reap profits in the oil patch. He started a similar company, Bates Energy, where he is CEO and president.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Bexar County district court, Bates Energy accuses Complete Oil Field Services of Sandy, Utah, of breaching an agreement regarding orders for a total of 80,000 tons of frac sand.

Under the terms of the agreement, Complete Oil placed $4 million in escrow accounts with Austin-based Equity Liaison Co. and Amegy Bank, the suit said. Any withdrawals were subject to Bates Energys approval, the suit added.

But Complete Oil regularly sought withdrawals from the escrow accounts without Bates Energys authorization, the lawsuit said. Complete Oil also refused to give its approval for the disbursement of monies for costs incurred by Bates Energy, the suit continued.

Bates Energy also alleged it racked up about $550,000 in lost profits as a result of Complete Oils breach.

In addition, the suit said Complete Oil officer Sam Taylor approached Bates Energys suppliers and offered to enter into independent agreements with them in order to cut Bates Energy out of the transaction. At least one of the suppliers terminated its relationship with Bates Energy as a result of Mr. Taylors interference, the suit added.

A call to Taylor was not returned.

Bates couldnt be located for comment. Bates is represented by a public defender in his criminal case. A financial affidavit to support Bates request for a court-appointed lawyer was filed under seal the day of his arrest on May 17.

Bates Energy is represented in the lawsuit against Complete Oil by Tiffanie Clausewitz, a partner in The Rosenblatt Law Firm in San Antonio. Clausewitz didnt respond to a request for comment.

Separately, Clausewitz also represents Dewayne Naumann, the owner of Equity Liaison, the Austin escrow company. Earlier this week, she filed a court document to quash a subpoena served on Naumann by Uresti relating to the FourWinds criminal case.

FourWinds was a former Equity Liaison client and Uresti wants Naumann to turn over a host of documents and other information relating to the defunct frac sand company. They include contracts, join venture agreements, communications involving Bates, Uresti and Cain, and bank records.

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.

San Antonio lawyer Mikal Watts, who represents Uresti, said an original memorandum of understanding between FourWinds and one of its investors, Denise Cantu of Harlingen, listed Equity Liaison as third party escrow agent. But the final document signed by Bates and Cantu no longer called for an escrow agent, Watts said.

So I want to know how it went from a memorandum of understanding that called for an escrow agent to protect all sides to a final document that omitted the escrow agent and allowed Cantus money to go to directly to FourWinds, Watts said.

Cantu invested about $900,000 with FourWinds, losing all but $100,000. Uresti received a $27,000 commission on the investment. Cantu has sued Uresti and Bates, though the case against Bates was put on hold because he was forced into personal bankruptcy.

Naumann objected to the subpoena, saying in an affidavit the documents and information are of a highly confidential nature. Even if he didnt object to turning over the information, he said to do so would be unduly burdensome, unreasonable and oppressive.

Naumann did not respond to a request for comment.

pdanner@express-news.net
In a school in Durban, South Africa, Brianna Diaz jumped and danced the cha-cha slide with Zulu and Indian children.

At 19, the University of Texas at San Antonio student had never taken dance, much less taught it, but that didnt seem to matter. The point was to let loose, have fun and learn from each other. Moments like that, when she was so out of her element, with people so unfamiliar to her, became the very reason she went there.

Its important to realize theres a life outside of your bubble, said Diaz, a Texan who grew up in Alvin. I feel like Ive been in a bubble most of my life: Growing up in a small town, that was my first bubble. Going to college, that was my second bubble.  So going to South Africa by myself and living with other people, it forced me to sit back and adjust myself to the way theyre living. Because I was the foreigner in that situation. I was learning about them.

Diaz is an incoming junior enrolled in the UTSA Top Scholars program, which admits Texas residents who ranked in the top 5 percent of their grade nationwide in standardized tests, in their senior class and in advanced courses. Now in its fifth year, it fully funds tuition and board and has a study abroad requirement.

About a quarter of the 34 incoming students in the program are Pell Grant-eligible and the majority of them are nonwhite, said program director Kristi Meyer.

Diaz, who is majoring in psychology with minors in both math and civic engagement, said she wasnt able to study abroad for a whole semester, so she opted for the School for International Trainings six-week education program in South Africa.

She was looking for a unique experience, instead of the more typical sojourns her peers took to France or Italy  something well outside her comfort zone, Meyer said.

Diaz wants to get a doctorate and work in education, and she was curious to see how South Africas history of apartheid affected its education system.

That access to education is something that, until very recently, many (black families) didnt have because of apartheid, she said. And so because this access is so new, the parents and everyone are pushing for students to go to school. And they understand this is what they need to be successful in the world.

Her interest in the subject is why Diaz was the only UTSA student to be awarded the Gilman International Scholarship Program this year, which pays for economically disadvantaged students to study abroad, Meyer said.

I would say more than anything, her passion for education and her passion for making a difference in the world around her, is really very special about Brianna. Very special, Meyer said.

The trip opened perspectives and questions Diaz wants to more fully explore.

Learning about their education system there, and all the strides theyre trying to make, given their history and what they just went through as a country, it really shines a new light on how far weve come and how far we havent come, in a sense, she said.

Because our democracy is a lot older than South Africas, but theres still things we havent solved. So, its like, why are we still getting these things wrong, given how old our democracy is? And how realistic is it for their country to solve all these problems in the time span theyre trying to do so?

Diaz wants to return to South Africa someday, to get a little bit closer to the answers.

sfosterfrau@express-news.net
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A 10th person has been confirmed dead after immigrants were trapped inside a tractor-trailer at a Walmart parking lot, officials confirmed Monday morning. Several people are still in critical condition at local hospitals.

Eight immigrants initially were found dead inside the closed trailer just after midnight Saturday. More than two dozen others, the only ones left of the estimated 100 travelers who started the trip, were taken to area hospitals, many in serious to critical condition due to the heat.

A ninth person died Sunday afternoon and the U.S. Attorney's Office stated on Monday morning that a 10th person died following the incident.

READ MORE: Survivor of deadly trailer trip to S.A. said Zetas Cartel helped people cross the Rio Grande

All the victims so far are adult males, officials said.

The driver of the vehicle, 60-year-old James M. Bradley Jr. of Florida, was booked into a federal jail in San Antonio on Sunday morning for his alleged role in what U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin called "an alien smuggling venture gone horribly wrong."

The truck was parked at a back corner of the Walmart parking lot at 8538 S. Interstate 35 and Texas 16 on the Southwest Side at least since Saturday evening. The immigrants are believed to have died as a result of heat exposure/asphyxiation, according to a San Antonio Police Department news release, but an official cause of death will be determined by the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office.

RELATED: Federal immigration agents round up 123 people in Texas

No names or ages have been released of any of the 10 victims as of Monday morning.

Officials said it was a refrigerated trailer but the air conditioning wasn't working. Experts estimate the temperature inside the closed-in trailer could have reached dangerous levels; at just 80 degrees outside, the temperature inside a closed vehicle can reach 115 degrees in a half hour, according to the National Weather Service. San Antonio reached Saturday's high of 100 degree at 6 p.m.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said police were alerted by a Walmart employee who was approached by someone in the truck who asked the employee for water.

"These people were in the trailer without any water," said San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood "Looking at a lot of heat stroke, a lot of dehydration."

Engine 25 arrived at 12:26 a.m., Hood said, and firefighters started extricating patients out of the back of a semi-truck.

RELATED: U.S. Border Patrol on high alert as 3 bodies of immigrants found in South Texas, heat rises

"Our paramedics and firefighters found that each patient had heart rates over about 130 beats per minute and were very hot to the touch," Hood said.

Police did not know all of the victims' countries of origin, destination or ages, although officers said the two youngest victims are 15.

University Hospital and SAMMC received 17 people with life-threatening injuries, police said, and 13 victims were taken to five other area hospitals with non-life threatening injuries.

Five men and one woman were taken to University Hospital in critical condition, presenting heat exhaustion.

ARCHIVES: 2007: Truck driver sentenced to life for smuggling attempt that killed 19 illegal immigrants

While it is not known how long the tractor-trailer had been in the parking lot, the temperature inside the truck would have climbed rapidly, said Jason Runyen, meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

"Most of the heating that would occur once someone is inside of a vehicle that doesn't have AC would occur in the first 30 minutes of them being in there," Runyen said.

McManus said a check of the video from the store showed that a number of vehicles arrived at the parking lot Saturday evening and picked up people from the trailer.

The black, red and white truck had a logo of Pyle Transportation on it.

Mike Pyle and Tom Kolpin of the company said Bradley is an owner-operator who owns his own semi but is authorized to haul under the Pyle name.

"It's our trailer, but it's his truck," Pyle said.

RELATED: Abandoned on U.S-Mexico border: Photos show life, belongings left behind by immigrants

Bradley was not authorized to be hauling anything in Texas when the immigrants were discovered, Pyle and Colton said.

Both Pyle and Kolpin said they were shocked by the news of the deaths.

"This is terrible," Pyle said in reference to the victims.

Around 6:30 a.m. Sunday, the tractor-trailer was still parked adjacent to Walmart, along with a hearse, with several police cars positioned nearby. A large portion of the parking lot remained cordoned off by police tape as detectives gathered evidence.

Around 7 a.m. Sunday, SAPD's Eagle helicopter arrived on scene, repeatedly circling over the Walmart parking lot and the adjacent wooded area for around 20 minutes. Police said in an earlier news conference that they conducted a sweep of the woods to search for any potential victims who may have escaped the tractor trailer, and that they would conduct a secondary sweep at daylight.

The tractor-trailer was towed from the scene

Around 10 a.m., the tractor-trailer was towed from the scene. A few police cars remained, guarding a small area still cordoned off by police tape.

Throughout the morning, several onlookers stop to examine the scene, taking pictures and commenting on the horrific deaths.

Border Patrol agents in Laredo have reported an increase in smuggling attempts in tractor-trailers in recent weeks, starting with the discovery of 44 people from Mexico and Guatemala discovered after police stopped an 18-wheeler on June 19 near one of the city's international bridges.

On July 7, agents found 72 people from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador inside a locked trailer in the same part of town. The next day, they found 33 people from Mexico and Guatemala inside a trailer stopped at the Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 35. In another incident last week, agents at the checkpoint found 16 people inside a locked trailer, according to a news release from Border Patrol.

"These criminal organizations view these individuals as mere commodities without regard for their safety," Laredo Sector Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Gabriel Acosta said in a statement released last week. "The blatant disregard for human life will not be tolerated. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to disrupt and dismantle these organizations and prosecute those responsible."

In one of the biggest smuggling tragedies in the country's history, 19 people died in 2003 after being abandoned in a trailer in Victoria. The driver of the truck was sentenced to life in prison, but that was overturned and he was later given a prison term of nearly 34 years.

Thomas Homan, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, said as long as he leads the agency, "there will be an unwavering commitment to use law enforcement assets to put an end" to smuggling.

"By any standard, the horrific crime uncovered last night ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations works year-round to identify, dismantle, and disrupt the transnational criminal networks that smuggle people into and throughout the United States," Homan said. "These networks have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for those they smuggle, as last night's case demonstrates. I personally worked on a tragic tractor-trailer case in Victoria, Texas, in 2003 in which 19 people were killed as a result of the smugglers' total indifference to the safety of those smuggled and to the law."

Staff writers Nicole Bautista and Jason Buch contributed to this story.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014, Chandra Reyes had been through just about every hurdle life could throw at her  chemotherapy, aggressive surgeries, radiation therapy.

But the 53-year-old San Antonio resident wasnt going to let her second battle with cancer defeat her, and just two years later, she was in remission. Again.

I decided during one of my chemotherapy sessions that if God would get me through this, then I would take whatever responsibility and every opportunity to do the right thing by my body, Reyes said. When youre sitting there taking that drip, you have a lot of time to reflect.

Doing the right thing, for Reyes, meant starting the Fit Family Challenge last summer after hearing about the program through her church. The free 12-week program, organized by San Antonio Sports, is divided into four, three-week sessions where participants can take Zumba lessons and other classes. At the end of every session, the program hosts a big event filled with prizes and games to provide more incentives for healthy living.

Were trying to eliminate all the barriers to a healthy lifestyle, said Mary Ullmann-Japhet, senior vice president for San Antonio Sports. Whats great about this program is you dont have to start with us in May, you can start at any time along the way. We just welcome you  come, be a part of this.

Saturday, the program hosted Rockin at Roosevelt Park to finish off the third three-week session, where Reyes and more than 100 others participated in numerous activities, including Zumba lessons, walks and health screenings. Children jumped rope and played games in the kids zone.

Theres good reason for the program.

More than 70 percent of Bexar County is considered overweight or obese based on body mass index, and the hardest hit are those making less than $25,000 a year, according to data released last year by Metropolitan Health.

The family fitness program, which is in its eighth year, is strategically placed at eight locations throughout San Antonio to combat adverse health trends, focusing on getting those in the poorest and most affected parts the city up and active.

Diana Gonzalez, 64, said she was headed toward diabetes before joining the program six years ago.

Instead of sitting at home, the San Antonio resident decided to get her health back on track, and now shes in better health. Gonzalez now attends Zumba classes twice a week, where shes developed a tight, close-knit group of friends.

Everybody hugs each other, asks each other how everything is, Gonzalez, who had several friends come up to greet her, said. You dont usually get that on a daily basis, and its really positive. Thats what Im saying, its about family and positive. Who doesnt want to live for that, you know?

For anyone whos thinking about joining her and others in the next three weeks, Gonzalez has three, solid reasons to come out: Its free, family-oriented and a lot of fun.

If you dont stay fit, it could lead to a whole lot of problems and even death, Gonzalez said. If you stay within those boundaries and stay healthy, you might be here a little longer.

The challenge is entering its final three-week stretch, and a big event, called Jump into Fitness, will close this summers program on Aug. 12 at Southside Lions Park. The event is free and open to the public.

fmilburn@express-news.net
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

AUSTIN  Thirty years ago, following a bribery scandal involving a former speaker of the House, lawmakers banned members of the Texas Legislature from accepting campaign contributions during the regular biennial session.

A couple of years later, during a special session, a poultry magnate seeking favorable support for a bill ignited another scandal when he handed out $10,000 checks to legislators on the floor of the Senate. In response, lawmakers made it illegal to accept campaign contributions in the Capitol.

But the law remains mute on accepting contributions during special sessions  a loophole the size of the Lone Star State itself  and for some legislators this year, in the short time between the close of regular business and the start of what promises to be a contentious and controversial 30-day gathering, the cash has been rolling in.

It doesnt really make sense, does it? said Andrew Wheat, research director for the nonprofit watchdog group Texans for Public Justice. You would think that if it is wrong during the regular, then its wrong during the special.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who is already sitting on a $41 million campaign fund and called for the special session to push through his conservative vision for the state, is aggressively seeking contributions.

During the next 30 days, lawmakers are going to tackle important issues to Texans from out-of-control local regulations to skyrocketing property taxes to runaway state and local spending, campaign aide Mary Ruegg wrote in an email blast shortly before the special session convened. Contribute right away if you support Governor Abbotts special session agenda.

The sentence contained a link to a website where contributions can be made.

Abbotts campaign also solicited donors for contributions with a midnight deadline on the opening day of the special session that Abbott called.

Abbott spokesman John Wittman said: Regardless of special session or not, the Governor makes decisions on what is in the best interests of the state, not those who support his campaign. The most important standard is to avoid any conflict of interest and follow the letter and spirit of the law. That is being done.

The ban on regular session contributions  which begins 30 days before the session and ends after the governors deadline to veto bills  is a rare brake on campaign giving in a state that doesnt have caps on contributions to statewide officials and legislators.

Some legislators  Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Strauss  have pointedly announced they would not be accepting contributions during the session. Abbott and others, however, have been.

State Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, held a fundraiser last Tuesday, on the first day of the special session, at the Austin Club, a private venue three blocks from the Capitol. Sponsors included three powerful lobbyist firms, the Graydon Group, Focused Advocacy and Blackridge.

Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, raised money Thursday afternoon, also at the Austin Club. A small group gathered in the clubs ornate Medallion Room, including state Sen. Royce West, a Dallas Democrat first elected to the Senate in 1992.

The conflicting rules open the door for a potential scandal, public interest groups say.

A lobbyist who spoke on the condition of anonymity said a legislator recently invited him to a fundraiser and then mentioned a topic  now a special session bill backed by Abbott  that the lobbyist has worked on to get passed. The legislator said it should be passed during the special session. The lobbyist, who did not attend the fundraiser, said he was alarmed by the legislator talking about a fundraiser and an upcoming legislative vote in the same phone call.

Unless there are leaks, the public largely will be in the dark about the role of money during the special session. Legislators and statewide executive officeholders are not required to disclose their contributions until the special session ends, on Aug. 16. The filing deadline is within 30 days of the sessions adjournment. Its unclear if Abbott would call a second special session or a string of them if legislators do not enact enough of his 20-topic agenda.

The Senate and House should adopt a rule that would extend the regular session ban on accepting campaign contributions to this special session, said Tom Smitty Smith, former director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer and environmental group.

Otherwise, we will have another chapter in the sordid saga of government for and by the donors, he said.

Its unclear how much fundraising will occur and whether it will consist of fundraisers or contributions that legislators receive way below the radar.

Lobbyists and campaign aides said fundraising usually is slow in late July and August because legislators and statewide executive officials face a midyear deadline to file campaign finance reports with the state Ethics Commission. The deadline this year was July 17.

The ban on accepting contributions extended beyond the May 29 end of the regular session. Thats because legislators in 2003 passed a bill that became law to lift the ban after the deadline passes for the governor to veto bills, which was June 18.

Patrick, a Houston-area Republican, decided to not accept campaign contributions during the special session in part to avoid distractions, said Allen Blakemore, Patricks campaign consultant. Patrick also had a campaign fund balance of nearly $17 million as of June 30, Blakemore added.

Hes not asking anybody to please join me and do the same thing, said Blakemore, who also is a lobbyist. Its something we can do and this session does cover a lot of issues. Its just to avoid any appearances, avoid giving anybody a chance to write an ugly story or say something bad.

As a state senator, Patrick collected $22,579 in contributions during the three special sessions that Gov. Rick Perry called in 2013. Patricks campaign did not receive any contributions during special sessions in 2009 and 2011.

Straus announced his decision in a Facebook post last Tuesday that said: State law prohibits legislators from accepting campaign contributions during regular sessions of the Legislature. I have also decided that I will not accept campaign contributions during the special session that began today.

Straus, a San Antonio Republican, did not receive campaign contributions during special sessions in 2009 and 2011, but his campaign hauled in $326,703 during the three Perry-called special sessions in 2013.

Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, called 12 special sessions  which ranged from two days to the maximum 30  and his campaign hauled in $5.1 million.

The Legislature enacted a ban in 1987 on campaign contributions during the regular session after House Speaker Billy Clayton had been indicted several years earlier on a charge of accepting a bribe of $5,000 during an FBI sting operation. A jury acquitted Clayton.

During a 1989 special session, poultry magnate Lonnie Bo Pilgrim made national news when he handed out $10,000 checks on the Senate floor to nine of the 31 members. Pilgrim said the checks  distributed two days before a vote on a workers compensation bill that he had an interest in  were campaign contributions, not attempted bribes.

In response to the public outrage, legislators approved a bill to ban the acceptance of campaign contributions in the Capitol.

Austin attorney Randall Buck Wood, a former executive director of the Texas office of Common Cause who in the 1970s helped pass major open meetings and records laws, said some legislators asked him after the Pilgrim furor to craft legislation to ban campaign contributions during special sessions.

But Wood said he couldnt find a way without unwittingly picking winners and losers. For example, if the governor calls a special session close to a primary or general election, a ban would affect incumbents in hotly contested seats. Their opponents would not be prohibited from collecting contributions.

Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, said hes heard talk that legislators say they cant schedule fundraisers because they dont know when the governor will call a special session.

The clever folks in the lege council could write a black-out statute that deals with that issue if the politicos had the will to do it, he said.

Last Friday, state Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Frisco, filed a bill to extend the contribution ban to cover special sessions, from when the governor calls one until adjournment. The penalty for making or accepting such a contribution would be the same as the current one for regular sessions, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail, a maximum $4,000 fine or both.

Fallons bill would apply to contributions made or accepted starting Dec. 1. But its not eligible for a vote unless Abbott adds the topic to his special session agenda.

james.drew@chron.com
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Dori Lapenias walked softly through the hallways of Haven for Hope, stopping at the doorway of one of the families staying in the non-profits affordable housing.

The 25-year-old social work intern knocked twice.

This is all new to me. Military life. Social worker school. Moving to Texas, said Lapenias, a California native.

Although she wore no uniform this day, Lapenias is a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Army, training to be a military social worker. As an intern at Haven for Hope, Lapenias is part of how the Army is expanding its emphasis on social work, in ways unimaginable in 2001.

The Army hopes military social workers can handle the psychological aftermath of a decade and a half of war. Recent years have been heady times for military social work, once seen as an afterthought in the Army.

At a masters of social work program at Fort Sam Houston, changes include a new contract with the University of Kentucky and the upcoming addition of Air Force students. Faculty at the social work program note their offices have recently been moved up from the basement. The military is offering retention bonuses for social workers for the first time.

Prior to 2001, social workers worked in division headquarters, far from the frontlines of the fighting. As the wars continued, however, social workers moved closer to the battle to assess conditions such as post-traumatic stress as soon as possible.

Social work and going to war and fighting people were an oxymoron, said Col. Nathan Keller, director of the social work school. All that has changed, and the reason its changed is because of the length of the war that weve been engaged in as a country.

Dexter Freeman, a retired Army social worker and assistant director at the school, said on deployment he often traveled to outposts to set up combat stress clinics.

Freeman and Keller said they started the school ten years ago as an experiment.

Before it had the school, the Army relied on its ability to recruit qualified civilians willing to deploy and work with soldiers. These qualified civilians were in short supply, and those who joined often chafed at Army living, said Col. Steve Lewis, director of Psychological Health at the San Antonio Military Medical Center. During the height of the war, many left the Army due to near-constant deployments.

We were not able to meet our recruiting requirement, Lewis said. Social workers were deploying two, three times, we just didn't have enough that were available.

At the beginning of the war, there were slightly fewer than 100 social workers for the entire Army. There are more than 250 now, Lewis said.

The school now teaches 80 percent of all military social workers, with the remainder gaining credentials through civilian universities.

The program teaches soldiers how to assess psychological and social programs. After leaving the program, the Army social workers may end up at a battlefield clinic, at a family advocacy unit or in a drug and alcohol clinic.

The course stuffs a two-year masters program into 14 months. Students enter 14 weeks of classes and then spend seven weeks at an internship with a local organization like Haven for Hope or Laurel Ridge Treatment Center. After the internships are done, its back to the classroom for 14 more weeks of class and then another stint at a non-profit.

An average day began at 6:30 a.m. with prep for physical fitness and ended with homework late at night, according to 1st. Lt. Angela Park, 28, a naturalized citizen from South Korea.

If you want to go to the River Walk or spend time with your family, thats not going to happen in this program, Keller said.

Graduates of the program will leave with a University of Kentucky diploma, per a new contract signed in October. The current crop of students will be the last to graduate under the old contract with Fayetteville State University.

Many students hail from the Army, although there are some Navy students. The course will soon expand to include Air Force students, with the possibility of adding civilians in the future, Keller said.

Working at local charities teaches students lessons for when they leave Fort Sam Houston and join the militarys growing social worker corps, Keller said.

At Haven for Hope, 1st. Lt. Phillip Metcalf, 46, leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as he spoke to a client about jobs programs. The younger man, Arturo Rodriguez, had been sleeping in the courtyard of the charity.

The 24-year-old kept his arms crossed as he listened to Metcalf, a former police officer who served in the Army as a medical officer and basic training officer.

I still don't know what I want to do yet, said Rodriguez, adding he was interested in welding or electrical work.

Metcalf listened and clasped his hands and said he wanted to introduce Rodriguez to the Gary Job Corps Center in San Marcos.

I think youre a good fit, Metcalf said.

jlawrence@express-news.net
AUSTIN  Embracing pleas for relief from hundreds of taxpayers and dressing down cities including San Antonio, a Senate committee voted Saturday to put new limits on the ability of local governments to raise local property tax revenues unless they get a vote of the people.

Its all about the taxpayers money, said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, author of the proposed tax changes and chairman of the newly created Senate Select Committee on Government Reform. I think its very important that taxpayers have a say in their tax bills.

With strong backing from Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Bettencourt is pushing to more tightly restrict the ability of cities, counties and special districts to increase property taxes.

Local officials say the measure would mean little for individual taxpayers but would impair governments ability to pay for services such as public safety, especially in fast-growing cities such as San Antonio.

Bettencourt said taxpayers tell him they want relief from tax bills that are overwhelming. His legislation wouldnt reduce current assessments but is aimed at trying to rein in how quickly bills can rise.

Current law allows voters to petition for a rollback election if a local government increases collections by more than 8 percent. Bettencourts Senate Bill 1, approved 5-2 by his committee, would change the rollback rate to 4 percent and make the election automatic. The vote was along party lines, with Sens. Carlos Uresti of San Antonio and Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville, the two Democrats on the committee, opposing the measure.

The bill would exclude entities that collect less than $10 million, an exemption that Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, said he would seek to double when the bill hits the Senate floor, a move expected in the coming week. Senate approval will send the measure to the House for consideration.

Republicans on the committee sparred with opponents of the measure, including local officials and the Texas Municipal League.

All were asking is that city officials be able to make the decisions that make the most sense for their community, said the leagues Bill Longley.

Sen. Van Taylor, R-Plano, said he was somewhat staggered that Longley could argue both that the proposal would have little value for taxpayers while at the same time be destructive for cities.

Im amazed that youre able to spin it that way, he said.

Bettencourt zeroed in on San Antonio, which he said has increased its property tax levy from roughly $400 million to more than $540 million in three years.

Thats astonishing, Bettencourt told Troy Elliott, the citys deputy chief financial officer.

Bettencourt said the 35 percent increase has driven up the average tax bill by 24 percent.

Please just take back to your elected officials that I see theres a tremendous need for more tax rate reduction here, Bettencourt said.

San Antonio is one of the nations fastest-growing cities, with a construction boom adding property to the rolls and increasing home values. The median price was at $222,000 in June.

As city officials work to keep up with the rising demand for services, Elliott said they have residents support for their budget decisions. He said officials take a transparent, grass-roots approach in reaching out to taxpayers about the reason for proposed increases and that they are sensitive to the burden of taxes on our citizens.

Our process has worked for years, and our elected officials have been voted in by the constituents and  if they have an issue with what were proposing as professional staff and our elected officials are agreeing to, they would vote them out of office, Elliott said, calling the city very well financially managed.

Elliott said the current process allows officials the flexibility to meet the financial needs of the city, citing pulls on revenue including public services, collective bargaining agreements and pensions.

The proposed restrictions would harm the citys ability to support public safety and to service vital infrastructure, Elliott said. He said that by restricting the citys flexibility, the restrictions also could affect San Antonios excellent AAA credit rating.

If the 4 percent rollback had been in effect over the past 10 years, he said, the effect on San Antonio would have been about $298 million. For the current year, he said, the effect would be about $60 million on the general fund budget.

Thats about the same as hiring 600 new police officers, he said.

At the same time, he said, the lower rollback would have saved the average homeowner just $3.90 a month.

Taylor also needled Elliott, asking why San Antonio wouldnt want to go to voters if officials believe they have their support.

Your city clearly has intentionally avoided going to the voters, Taylor said, seizing on a comment by Elliott that San Antonio officials view the current rollback rate as a ceiling and dont exceed it. I dont know why youre afraid of them.

Elliott said, Were not afraid of them. I think our process  works for us.

San Antonio voters in May overwhelmingly approved the largest municipal bond in the citys history  $850 million  for citywide improvements.

The tangle between state and local officials came against a backdrop of Texans saying they need lawmakers to address property taxes that are straining their budgets. Taylor read from a stack of 434 pages of pleas for relief. Lucio joked that a letter from his own wife might be among them.

Among those who testified was the Rev. Marialice Billingsley of Kerr County, who said, This has been my home for three generations. I dont want to lose it.

The back-and-forth also came as local governments and House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, argue that the best way to reduce the local property tax burden is by revamping public school finance. School districts, which already have automatic rollback elections, wouldnt be affected by Bettencourts proposal.

Schools rely heavily on local property taxes, along with receiving state aid.

In 2013, school districts statewide accounted for nearly 55 percent of the property tax levy, compared with 16.7 percent for counties and 16.2 percent for cities, according to the state comptrollers office. In San Antonio, Elliott said, the slice of property taxes imposed by the city is 21 percent of the total tax bill.

The Senate in the regular legislative session earlier this year approved a version of the automatic rollback measure, which has been championed by Patrick. Senators are expected to again give the idea their approval in the special session, called by Abbott, who has emphasized the importance of property tax relief.

Its future in the House is less certain.

Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, didnt bring up an automatic rollback proposal for a vote in the chamber during the regular session. He said then that there wasnt enough House support to pass it and instead focused on legislation to better shine a light on the process and ensure that people get information about how their taxes are set and how they can affect their rates.

But Bonnen has since said support might be growing, and he reiterated that Thursday.

I think there is better support in the House for an automatic rollback. Were going to find out. Ill certainly bring it up for a vote in my committee. Well see what happens, he said. I can assure you I am not going to back down from changing the present rollback rate. If cities and counties want to fight over that, I will be up for the fight.

pfikac@express-news.net

Twitter: @pfikac
A couple of weeks ago, Ivy Taylor was talking to a friend about her future.

The former San Antonio mayor, who lost a bitter runoff election last month to Ron Nirenberg, didnt specify what line of work she wanted to attempt next, but she was clear about the parameters she had set for herself.

She said her focus is to find employment that has the adequate compensation to make up for her eight years of public service, a Taylor associate told the San Antonio Express-News on the condition of anonymity. She just said she really needed to get to work and earn a paycheck.

Its an understandable sentiment.

For six of Taylors eight years on the City Council, she earned a negligible salary from the city (roughly $1,000 a year during her 2009-14 stint as a District 2 council member and $4,000 during her first year as mayor). Even after voters approved a 2015 council-pay charter amendment, Taylors annual salary of $61,725 was less than half of what goes to the Bexar County judge.

Taylors current situation is unique among former San Antonio mayors. Unlike Bill Thornton, an oral surgeon who was the last mayor to be voted out of office (in 1997), she doesnt have a career to which she can readily return.

From 2009-15, Taylor served as a lecturer in UTSA's Public Administration Department. She gave up that position, however, when the council-pay amendment kicked in and sources say a return to teaching is not on her radar.

She also earned income from her husband Rodney's bail-bond company, and was forced in 2015 to amend several personal financial statements, submitted annually to the city, because she had failed to disclose that income.

The bail-bond company is now defunct, but Taylor also has derived income from her husband's rental properties, including taxpayer-funded Section 8 rent subsidies from the San Antonio Housing Authority.

Because Taylor, as the city's mayor, had appointment power over the SAHA board, this created a conflict of interest during her first 15 months in office, until the Housing Authority of Bexar County took over the Taylor vouchers. In January 2016, Taylor's council colleagues granted her immunity from any ethics complaints on the issue.

Unlike many politicians, Taylor doesnt have a legal background. While she built alliances with the development community during her mayoral tenure, local observers cant really see her in that line of work. Unlike Phil Hardberger, Taylor, 47, leaves the mayors office decades away from retirement age. Unlike Julian Castro, she doesnt necessarily have the promise of (or the desire to seek) higher political office.

In fact, sources say Taylor has been pretty adamant that she never wants to see her own name on a ballot again. When asked about the possibility of a future political campaign from Taylor, one former associate said, Hell no. I know she doesnt have an interest.

Could that ever change? I seriously doubt it. Being a politician was not her thing. And everything that came with it, she had no patience for.

Taylor did not respond to an interview request for this column.

During her years at City Hall, Taylor frequently expressed the sentiment that she enjoyed the nuts and bolts of municipal governance, but never felt comfortable with the glad-handing associated with campaigning. In fact, her (ultimately unsuccessful) advertising message against Nirenberg was that she was a planner, not a politician.

Charles Williams, the godfather of the East Side business community, is a close friend of the former mayor and threw the first fundraiser for her in 2009 after she launched her District 2 council campaign.

Williams said there is buzz on the East Side about the possibility of Taylor challenging Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, a first-term Democrat, in Texas House District 120. None of that buzz, however, is coming from Taylor.

If Taylor has truly shut the door on elective office, her instincts are probably correct. At this point, she would be something of a candidate without a party.

At her core, Taylor is a moderate Democrat, but she alienated local Democrats with her 2013 vote against the citys nondiscrimination ordinance, not to mention her suggestion, during a mayoral forum this year, that the chief cause of homelessness was broken people who are not in relationships with their creator.

Republicans gravitated toward her in 2015 because she was an alternative to former Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, but Taylors bond with the GOP was always a flimsy marriage of mutual convenience.

The most natural move for Taylor would be a return to her roots in the nonprofit world. Before entering politics, she served as the director of resident services for Merced Housing. Old friends suggest she could be a good fit for a local foundation or museum.

Even a nonprofit job, however, could come with complications. San Antonios Ethics Code prevents former municipal officials from taking money to represent private entities before the city for at least two years after leaving City Hall. That means Taylor could offer guidance to a nonprofit, but couldnt lobby  either formally or informally  on its behalf.

True to her nature, Taylor has kept a low profile in the six weeks since her election defeat. Williams said he hasnt spoken with her since Nirenbergs swearing-in ceremony last month, although he has thought about giving her a call.

I just felt like she needed some down time, Williams said. She just needed to step back, spend some time with her family. And sometimes that takes three or four months.

ggarcia@express-news.net

Twitter: @gilgamesh470
Hilary Duff is beefing up security after her home was targeted by thieves.

Hilary Duff

The 29-year-old actress was on vacation in Canada when her Beverly Hills home was broken into earlier this week and she is "thankful" that "her family, staff, home and pets are all safe".

A representative for Hilary told MailOnline: "This is a scary and upsetting situation for anyone to go through, but Hilary is thankful that her family, her staff, her home and her pets are all safe.

"That said, she has a significant security team in place that will work with the authorities on this incident and handle security measures moving forward."

The thieves did not set off the alarm when they broke in and TMZ previously reported that jewels worth thousands had been stolen in the break-in.

The thieves reportedly targeted Hilary's home as they knew the actress was on vacation after she posted numerous pictures on Instagram.

Hilary is the latest high-profile star to be targeted by thieves.

In May, A$AP Rocky allegedly had his home robbed of $1 million worth of property.

The 28-year-old rapper's Los Angeles home was reportedly targeted by armed robbers who entered the property after knocking on the front door of the home and forcing their way inside when a woman answered.

The men are said to have grabbed the woman - who is believed to be a relative of the 'L$D' hitmaker - and took her with them around the home whilst they allegedly grabbed around $1.5 million worth of jewels and other property. It is also believed the perpetrators attempted to take a safe from the home, but left it on the sidewalk.

A$AP - whose real name is Rakim Mayers - was not at home when the alleged robbery took place.

That break-in came just two months after A$AP's girlfriend, 21-year-old model Kendall Jenner, had her own home robbed of over $200,000 worth of property.

It is thought the burglars entered Kendall's house sometime between her leaving at lunchtime and returning home at 8pm. Kendall didn't raise the alarm at first as she didn't know things had gone missing until she went to her bedroom just after one in the morning.
Returning later this year to FOX in the US, Gotham will be delving deeper into the Bruce Wayne origin story than ever before, with the villains that make up the criminal gang land of Gotham never far behind him. Check out the brilliant season 3 highlight reel below, along with a first look at the upcoming fourth season:

Released over the weekend at San Diego Comic Con, fans also learned from one of the shows producers that, despite past comments, Harley Quinn would never be appearing on the television series.

It came as quite a shock to fans, as theyd been preparing for Erin Richards character Barbara Kean to adopt the mantle at some point. Shes certainly been showing signs of madness since the shows second season and echoes some of the traits Harley is best known for, but its now been confirmed shes simply a Quinn-esque character rather than the full-blown partner of the Clown Prince of Crime.

Gotham makes its US FOX return on Thursday, September 28 at 8/7c.

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

find me on and follow me on
Mark Gatiss will play a World War One soldier known as 'The Captain' in the 'Doctor Who' Christmas special.

Mark Gatiss and Peter Capaldi as The Captain and the Time Lord

The show's writer will take on his fourth role in the BBC sci-fi series when he appears on screen in Peter Capaldi's final episode, which will be called 'Twice Upon a Time', in December.

No other details about 'The Captain' were revealed when the character was announced during a cast panel at San Diego Comic Con on Sunday (23.07.17).

Mark has previously played a mutated scientist called Professor Lazarus in 2007, voiced World War II pilot 'Danny Boy' in 2010 and 2011 and played Gantok in 'The Wedding of River Song' in 2011.

And he recently admitted he has no idea if he will remain as a writer when Steven Moffat steps down as showrunner and Chris Chibnall takes over.

He said: "I've no idea. It's a funny thing, an end of an era.

"Obviously working very closely with Steven I feel it more than when Russell [T Davies, previous showrunner on' Doctor Who'] left. I suppose there was more of a sense of continuity there, but I've no idea.

"I've had a fantastic run on my favourite show, so if I don't do anymore then I'm perfectly sanguine. But who knows?"

Meanwhile, it was also revealed that Pearl Mackie will make an appearance in the upcoming Christmas special.

The actress' alter ego Bill Potts was converted into a Mondasian Cyberman in season 10 of 'Doctor Who', much to the shock of fans after she had seemed to die, and the Time Lord's companion will be back for the upcoming episode.

However, it has not been made clear exactly how Bill will make her return.

A teaser trailer for 'Twice Upon A Time' also debuted at Comic Con on Sunday.
OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN -- (Marketwired) -- 07/22/17 -- Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) will have 100,000 reasons to celebrate when its team arrives at this year's EAA AirVenture, held July 24 to 30. In April of this year, P&WC marked the production of its 100,000th engine, a remarkable industry milestone. P&WC is a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX).

"Achieving 100,000 engines produced has been a proud moment for us at P&WC and there is no doubt the support of the General Aviation segment has been instrumental in reaching this milestone," says Nicholas Kanellias, Vice President, General Aviation Programs, Pratt & Whitney Canada. "The PT6A engine contributed to shaping the General Aviation segment as we know it, and it leads our engine fleet with some 47,000 PT6A engines manufactured and 23,000 such engines in operation today."

During EAA AirVenture 2017:

-- P&WC will be co-sponsoring the airshows. It will be using its social media channels to promote the shows and offer surprises to attendees who follow P&WC (www.twitter.com/pwcanada and www.facebook.com/PrattWhitneyCanada). -- A PT6A engine workshop will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. at Forum Stage 3. This session is designed especially for aviation enthusiasts interested in discovering what the engine delivers to experimental aircraft. -- P&WC will be sharing over social media news on which OEMs will be recognized at EAA AirVenture 2017 for helping achieve the 100,000 engine milestone.

Next Generation Engine

P&WC recently announced it is developing an integrated electronic engine and propeller control and a true 2,000 shp thermal engine tailored to General Aviation operators' business needs. It will reduce pilot workload and simplify installation, while reducing the number of levers per engine from 3 to 1.

P&WC will be at EAA at booth #2132, Hangar B. Interested operators are invited to drop by to speak with a marketing or customer service representative.

100,000 Reasons to Go Beyond

P&WC reached a significant milestone in April, 2017, when it produced its 100,000th engine, a testament to the company's longevity and leadership in the global aerospace market. P&WC will celebrate this achievement throughout the year, recognizing all families of products as well as dedicated employees and loyal customers who, together, have marked the many accomplishments of its journey.

About Pratt & Whitney Canada

Founded in 1928, and a global leader in aerospace, P&WC is shaping the future of aviation with dependable, high-technology engines. Based in Longueuil, Quebec (Canada), P&WC is a wholly owned subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. United Technologies Corp., based in Farmington, Connecticut, provides high-technology systems and services to the building and aerospace industries.

This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning future business opportunities. Actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to changes in levels of demand in the aerospace industry, in levels of air travel, and in the number of aircraft to be built; challenges in the design, development, production, support, performance, and realization of anticipated benefits of advanced technologies; as well as other risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those detailed from time to time in United Technologies Corp.'s Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Note to Editors

For more information, visit our media page at www.pwc.ca/EAA2017-media

Follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/pwcanada) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/PrattWhitneyCanada) for our latest news and updates.

Contacts:

Kathy Roberge

Pratt & Whitney Canada

1-514-827-5625

kathy.roberge@pwc.ca

www.pwc.ca




Pahlaj Nihalani, chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification, has been continually hitting the headlines. Usually, he is in the news for recommending unreasonable cuts to films, but it's different this time.

Nihalani has sent a legal notice to IIFA with regards to an act performed by Riteish Deshmukh and Maniesh Paul, wherein his picture was allegedly used in an appropriate manner, as per Deccan Chronicle.

The IIFA Rocks event was held in the New York City and hosted by Paul and Deshmukh. The two referred to Nihalani as a "watchman", which has not gone down well with him.

The legal notice demands IIFA to applogise on numerous platforms - both print and broadcast and a pledge to not project Nihalani in such a light.

The notice has also been slapped on Wizcraft International, the organisers of the function. Says Nihalani, The matter has gone legal now. So Ill say only one thing. I know when to laugh and when to make others cry," Nihalani tells The Quint.

He also stated that a similar kind of "defamatory" act was put up on the stage by Farhan Akhtar and Shahid Kapoor in 2016. Nihalani plans to go after all those who have been ridiculing him for a while now, according to the same report by The Quint.

Earlier, Nihalani had slammed the award show for their extravagant ways. He criticised IIFA for not nominating the likes of Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar (though IIFA clarified that Khan did not file nominations). He also attacked film celebrities who went to the New York City at the IIFA's expense but did not turn up for the main award show as they were "tired after partying all night."

Nihalani had added that IIFA lost its dignity and relevance a long ago, when Amitabh Bachchan severed his ties as the brand ambassador of the award show.
It doesnt take a genius to see what Matt Reeves seminal work War For The Planet Of The Apes tries to drive home. Yes, its about a big group of apes wanting to find a safe haven to live a peaceful life, away from the cruelty inflicted on them by humans; however, you are more likely to forget that its about apes in the first place.

Your mind is filled with flashes of stories about how war has torn apart families in the Middle-East and if you couldnt stop thinking about the millions of immigrants from Syria walking all the way up to Germany to find a safe place to live, then you arent alone.

In War For The Planet Of The Apes, when Caesar states, I didnt start this war, you know that hes speaking for all those marginalised sections of the human race whose survival is at stake because of the greed of others. We are forced to spare a thought for countless tribes across the world, whose normal life is threatened with the advent of industrialisation and desire for greener pastures for corporate expansion.

Now, the question which the Planet of the Apes trilogy raises is - What is the cost of our lives? And does everyone deserve a fair chance to live? Whether its humans or apes, can we ever live in harmony with each other without one group feeling threatened from another?

The Planet of the Apes trilogy isnt the only film which, fundamentally, forces its viewers to question their beliefs and moral values. Recently, Bong Joon-hos action adventure Okja focused on a different aspect of the 21st century - Capitalism and how it affects everyone.

The film narrates the story of a young girl Mija, whose world turns upside down when she finds out that her beloved super pig Okja has been taken away by the Mirando Corporation. When she sets out on a quest to save Okja, shes forced to make a choice - Whether to save the pig or carry on with her life. Of course, she chooses to save the pig, but in the process of doing that, Bong Joon-ho focuses a lot on how animals are treated in the assembly-chain of meat factories.

Filmmakers and writers have addressed such moral dilemmas for a while now, and its only when you start reading between the fingers that you figure out why such films have such a profound impact on you.

Few years ago, when I saw Kornel Mundruczos White God, a 2014 Hungarian film, about a bunch of stray dogs wh0 revolt against their human abusers, I began wondering if this was a film about Nazis and Jews set in World War II. In the film, we are told that the Hungarian government has imposed a tax on everyone who owns a mixed-breed dog and as a result, a 13-year old girl is forced to separate from her dog Hagen.

Out in the streets, Hagen struggles to survive and then, hes sold and re-sold to different people who abuse him beyond belief. When the dog finally ends up in a kennel, with all his innocence shredded to pieces, Hagen becomes so cruel at the very sight of humans that he leads a dog revolution against humans and the dogs ransack the entire city.

Sometimes, the tales of animals and birds instead of humans set the stage for bigger existential questions about human race.

In the Game of Thrones series, we find ourselves rooting for Wolves, which come to the rescue of the Stark family at key moments. So crucial are the wolves to the narrative that their emergence from the shadows or the woods beyond the wall qualify as a truly wolf-whistle worthy moment in the episode. That is also a reason why we mourn their death, when they fall defending a Stark.

And then, there are the dragons. On numerous occasions, dragons have come to the rescue of their mother  Daenerys Targaryen  and theyve already become a key force to reckon with in the Great War thats bound to happen between men and White Walkers in Westeros. Who knew that, one day, we would end up rooting for dragons so much!

A similar incident happens in Godzilla, the 2014 monster film directed by Gareth Edwards, when Godzilla battles with MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) and defeats them, in the end, the Godzilla is baptised as the King Of Monsters: Saviour of the city.

Read George Orwells Animal Farm, a book which has stood the test of time, which gave us a popular adage - All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Orwell might have well very referred to humans in this context, but narrating a story from the perspective of animals makes it all the more devastating, if you read between the lines.

By making apes, wolves, dogs and even cats more humane than humans, a select few films and books have given a new spin to the human vs animal conflict. And it leaves us wondering if we can ever co-exist in peace, where one group doesnt encroach upon others habitats.

To quote a line from Ceyda Toruns documentary Kedi, which focuses on lives of seven stray cats in Istanbul, - A cat meowing at your feet, looking up at you, is life smiling at you. Those are moments when were lucky they remind us that were alive.

Are we truly alive? Or are we bound to be in an eternal battle with those whom we dont understand and speak the same language? No, Im not talking about animals. Read between the lines.
New Delhi: Search for the 39 missing Indian labourers who were kidnapped in Mosul three years ago is expected to gather momentum with the visit of Iraqi foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who arrives in New Delhi on Monday on a five-day visit.

The visit of al-Jaafari, who is to hold talks with his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj in New Delhi, comes days after the Indian minister announced that the 39 Indian labourers, mostly from Punjab, are believed to be in a jail in Mosul, that was freed from the Islamic State earlier in July.

Sushma Swaraj had said that with the freeing of Mosul on 9 July from the Islamic State militants, the process to trace and rescue the missing Indians would be taken forward. She said they had information that the Indians were in a jail in Badush. Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh was sent to Erbil in Iraq to pursue the matter.

On 12 July, Singh visited the Peshmarga frontline in Mosul area to seek information on the Indians. He said the Peshmerga were still clearing the Islamic State held areas. He also met the Iraqi foreign minister.

However, a report in Hindustan Times said that the jail in Badush was in ruins and there was no sign of the Indians.

Sushma Swaraj has met the families of the 39 persons around a dozen times since they were abducted in June 2014 and assured them that the government is doing everything to locate them. She has maintained that they have received inputs from sources over the months of the 39 men being alive.

Besides the missing Indians, the Iraqi minister and Sushma Swaraj are to discuss the entire gamut of bilateral relations as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.

He is also to meet Union petroleum and natural gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan and later call on Vice President Hamid Ansari.

He will leave for Mumbai on Wednesday.

The bilateral trade between the two amounted to $13 billion in 2016-17. Iraq also contributes significantly to India's energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to India (over 37 MMT during 2016-17).

Thousands of Indians visit Iraq annually for pilgrimage to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
New Delhi: 10 Rajaji Road, the new abode of outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee, is all ready to welcome its latest resident.

The eight-room, two-storey villa  quite a change from the 340-room Rashtrapati Bhavan  is no stranger to former presidents, having previously hosted APJ Abdul Kalam.

The rooms of the villa  spread over an expansive 11,776 sq feet  have been spruced up and the walls repainted. The existing furniture has also been replaced and the entrance and exit gates await the nameplates of the next resident.

"It is not overcrowded with furniture. We are keeping it simple. Also, a large space has been created which is being turned into a library," a senior official from the Urban Development Ministry told IANS.

With Ram Nath Kovind elected as the 14th president of India, it is time for Pranab Mukherjee to bid adieu to Rashtrapati Bhavan and move to the new address as he goes into retirement.

Mukherjee will be moving out of the sprawling presidential palace atop Raisina Hill to his new home on 25 July after the incoming president is ceremonially welcomed to Rashtrapati Bhavan, an official told IANS. Kovind will then escort Mukherjee to his new home.

Mukherjee, 81, who was elected president in 2012, is a voracious reader and will be carrying all his personal books to his new address, which will be comparable to a residence allotted to a Union minister.

"He is also planning to pen a book based on his five years as the president although nothing is final yet," another official said.

As a former president, Mukherjee's pension will be Rs 75,000 per month (50 per cent of that while in office). There are some other perks, including two telephones, one mobile phone and a car for free. The President Emoluments Act also allows former presidents to access secretarial staff, and office expenses of up to Rs 60,000.

This will be apart from free medical attendance and treatment as well as travel anywhere in India, accompanied by one person, in the highest class in any mode of travel.

According to the President Emoluments Act 1951, a retired president is entitled to facilities like rent-free Type VIII accommodation anywhere in India, free water and electricity, apart from the landline, mobile phones and medical amenities.

Mukherjee will have at his disposal five personal staffers, including a private secretary, a personal assistant and two peons. Responsibility for his security will be handed over to the Delhi Police.

The 10 Rajaji Marg bungalow was allotted to Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Mahesh Sharma in 2015 after Kalam's death. Sharma has been allotted another bungalow on the adjacent Akbar Road.
Jammu: Nine soldiers among 11 people were killed while 16 others injured in border skirmishes this month between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

Amid one of the worst fatalities in recent times, the month also saw over 110 livestock falling prey to shellings and firings by Pakistani army in which nearly 35 structures, including over two dozen houses were damaged along the LoC in Rajouri district alone.

The repeated skirmishes saw over 4,000 villagers from near borders to government camps at safer places in the district.

"The month has seen greater ceasefire violations along LoC in the state. The aim was to engineer infiltrations and push in more and more militants in Jammu and Kashmir," said a senior Army officer adding that Indian forces also aptly retaliated to the shellings by Pakistani army.

The security agencies attribute the increased shelling and firing by Pakistani army to their support to the Pakistan-based terror group Jamaat-ud-Dawa's "Year of Kashmir" campaign to make the LoC "more active to highlight the Kashmir issue."

Known as Lashkar-e-Taiba earlier, JuD has now named itself Tehreek Azadi Jammu and Kashmir (TAJK).

On 21 July, 28-year-old rifleman Jayadrath Singh was killed when Pakistan army resorted to firing at Indian Army posts in Sunderbandi sector of Rajouri district.

Singh belonged to village Bhagwanpur of Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Mamta Devi.

A juniour commissioned officer, Subedar Shashi Kumar, who was grievously injured in an unprovoked ceasefire breach by Pakistan in Naushera on 18 July, died at Udhampur Command Hospital on 19 July.

Subedar Kumar was a native of Galon village of Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Santosh Sharma and children.

The 18 July ceasefire violations by Pakistan also saw two Army jawans, Sepoy Jaspreet Singh, 24 and Rifleman Bimal Sinjali, 21 killed in Naushera and Nowgam sectors of Rajouri and Kupwara districts respectively.

Eight people including 5 jawans had suffered injuries that day.

"More than 110 livestock were reported dead and two dozen houses damaged.

A total of 35 structures including private houses, government buildings including schools, were damaged in recent mortar shelling in Nowshera," said Rajouri Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Choudhary.

On 18 July, Pakistani troops also targeted school children, shelling their schools and trapping 217 of them in in 3 schools in Kadali and Seha areas of Rajouri near the LoC for 6 hours. The Army and state police, however, rescued and evacuated them to safer places in bullet-proof vehicles along with other people totalling 261.

Earlier on 17 July, one Army jawan and a girl were killed when the Pakistan army violated ceasefire twice in two sectors and resorted to firing at Indian Army posts and civilian areas in Rajouri and Poonch districts.

The victims were identified as 37-year-old Naik Muddasar Ahmed of militancy-infested Tral belt of South Kashmir and 9-year-old girl Sajada.

On 15 July, another jawan, Lance Naik Mohmmad Naseer, 35 was killed and yet another injured in Pak shelling along the LoC in Rajouri district.

Two other jawans, Lance Naik Ranjit Singh and Rifleman Satesh Bhagat, both of Jammu, were killed along LoC on 12 July, in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of North Kashmir sector.

Four days earlier on 8 July, jawan Mohmmad Showkat, who was on leave, was killed along with his wife, when his house was hit by a Pakistani army's mortar shell in Poonch sector.

Four people were injured.

The officials said there have been 23 incidents of ceasefire violations, one attack by Pakistan's notorious Border Action Team and two infiltration bids by Pakistan-backed militants in June in which 4 people, including 3 jawans were killed and 12 injured.

On 29 June, two Indian Army jawans were injured when Pakistani troops fired from small arms and shelled mortars on forward posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Poonch district.

Even on the occasion of Eid-ul Fitr on 26 June, the Pakistani army had fired small arms and automatic weapons and shelled mortars along the LoC in Bhimbher Gali sector of Rajouri.

On 22 June, in the third such attack this year, a team of Pakistani special forces sneaked 600 metres across the LoC into the Poonch sector and killed two Indian jawans, but lost one Border Action Team (BAT) member in retaliatory action.

It had carried out the attack at around 2 PM on an Army patrol party in the Gulpur belt of Poonch on 22 June under heavy cover fire by Pakistani troops.

In the firefight, two Indian soldiers, Naik Jadhav Sandip, 34, of Aurangabad and Sepoy Mane Savan Balku, 24, of Kolhapur were martyred.
BJP president Amit Shah had lunch with a Dalit family on Sunday, on the last day of his three-day visit to Rajasthan. After rounds of meeting in the party office, Shah left for Sushilpura where he had lunch at the house of BJP Yuva Morcha member Ramesh Pacharia amid tight security arrangements.

Shah, accompanied by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, party's state president Ashok Parnami, MP Bhupendra Yadav and others, was given a warm welcome in traditional Rajasthani manner. They were served food by Pacharia's family and had lunch sitting on the ground. "My mother cooked dal, rice, chapati, halwa, kheer for the party president," Pacharia told reporters.

Before Shah's visit, party leaders made several rounds to review preparations. Social justice minister Arun Chaturvedi said the party selected the house of its booth level worker, Pacharia, based on his active work for the party and not due to his caste or class.

"We identify our workers on the basis of their work. We do not consider their caste or class and decision for Shah's lunch at his house was made just because of his active participation in the party's work," he said.

The minister said that it is the media, not the party, which sees the caste and Dalit factor. "For us, his work is considerable, and we see it as the party's national president going to the house of a booth level work to have lunch," he said. "It is not that we selected a Dalit family. Several Dalit families live close the BJP office but the party president came at the house of an active party worker. The distance of Sushilpura is also not very far from the party office."

The narrow lanes of Sushilpura are populated by lower middle class and Dalit families. It is located in the middle of the city and witnessed VVIP movement for the first time. Excited people lined up on roads and congregated on rooftops to catch a glimpse of Shah.

Shah also spent close to half an hour at the house of Pacharia and interacted with the family members. He met the locals outside the house and waved to those standing on rooftops. Police commissioner Sanjay Agrawal reviewed the sercurity arrangements for the visit.

Union minister Rajyawardhan Rathore, MP Bhupendra Yadav, Nihal Chand Meghwal, state social justice minister Arun Chaturvedi and other leaders were present with him. Assembly elections are due next year in Rajasthan.
Guwahati: For the first time, the city will play host to the National Handloom Day celebrations on 7 August, as the government looks to accord due recognition to the North East by showcasing its rich art and craft culture.

The glittering ceremony will display handloom products crafted by artisans from the seven north eastern states through a fashion show and an exhibition.

A film made by Umrao Jaan fame director Muzaffar Ali showing the distinct handloom products from the region bearing geographical indication status will also be screened at the event, in the presence of Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani and Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, among others.

"The focus will be on the seven north eastern states so that each and every state is given due recognition by displaying their handloom and silk products," Development Commissioner (Handlooms) Shantmanu told PTI.

The Office of the Development Commissioner (Handlooms) under the Union Textiles Ministry is coordinating the event.

However, this time around, the Sant Kabir and National awards will not be presented to handloom workers, as the government has decided to club them with the Shilp Guru awards for handicraft artisans, which will be presented together at a function in the national capital Delhi.

Numerous artisans spread across the North East region spin magic weaves and craft goods which serve as a means of their livelihood.

The date 7 August holds a special significance in India's freedom struggle as the Swadeshi Movement was formally launched on this day in 1905. The movement involved the revival of domestic products and production processes.
Lakhimpur Kheri: BJP MLA from Lakhimpur Yogesh Verma on Sunday called off his protest after he was assured by the police and the district administration that a probe will be ordered into illegal sand mining.

Verma had been on a sit-in-protest since last evening.

He had alleged that he was "attacked and threatened" by some persons when he stopped tractor-trolleys which were allegedly carrying illegally mined sand, at the city over-bridge on Saturday night.

He also accused the Kotwali police of exercising "laxity", "which resulted in two nabbed accused fleeing the spot".

Verma, who also accused the police of being in "connivance" with sand miners, ended his protest after assurances by the senior officials of the police and the district administration.

District magistrate Akashdeep said all the seven trolleys which the MLA suspected of carrying illegally mined sand have been seized and the mining inspector has been instructed to carry out a probe.

"A probe into the alleged misbehaviour by Kotwali city in-charge has been instructed, while an FIR against four persons who were accused of attacking the MLA lodged," he said.
Greater Noida: The Uttar Pradesh Police on Sunday claimed to have solved the case related to the alleged gangrape on the Bulandshahr-Jewar highway as four people were arrested after an encounter here.

The police got a tip-off on Saturday night that a gang of criminals were planning to strike near Sabota underpass and it was the same gang which was involved in the alleged gangrape of four women in May this year, Senior Superintendent of Police, Gautam Budh Nagar, Love Kumar told reporters.

On Saturday, police teams reached the site and after a shootout, managed to arrest four persons. One of the suspects suffered a bullet injury while two others managed to escape, he said.

Eight people were going to visit a relative undergoing treatment at a hospital in Bulandshahr in western Uttar Pradesh, when a gang of criminals attacked them on Bulandshahr-Jewar highway.

SSP Love Kumar had said that a gang of five robbers targeted the vehicle after the driver stopped it near a roadside hut to fix a flat tyre.

The occupants were attacked and, along with an old man who was in the hut and taken to a nearby field. The women were misbehaved with and a man was shot dead when he resisted, he said.

Four women, who were travelling in the car along with as many men, alleged that they were raped at gunpoint after they tried to resist the robbery bid.

An FIR under sections 396 (Dacoity with murder) and 376 (Punishment for rape) of IPC was registered at Jewar police station.

The police also claimed to have recovered the jewellery robbed in the incident that allegedly took place on the intervening night of 24-25 May near Sabota village in Jewar.

The recovery includes a gold chain, a gold ring, two ear rings, two mobile phones, a sharp-edged weapon, Rs 11,000 in cash and three country-made pistols, police said.

The four arrested have been identified as Ashok alias Raju, Rakesh alias Chun Chun, Deepak and Jai Singh. Injured Ashok has been admitted to a hospital.

The two absconding have been identified as Monu and Sanjay. A manhunt has been launched to nab them.
New Delhi: A special court has directed the CBI to respond by 6 September to the objections of union ministers Prakash Javadekar and Hansraj Ahir against its move to close a coal scam case.

Special Judge Bharat Parashar allowed the probe agency's plea seeking time to respond to the ministers' petition in a case allegedly involving Prakash Industries Ltd (PIL) and others as accused.

HRD Minister Javadekar and Minister of State for Home Ahir, who are complainants in case, had approached the court seeking rejection of the CBI's closure report and a direction to the agency to further investigate it and file a supplementary charge sheet.

In 2014, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) had started its proceedings on the complaints made by the two ministers.

The case was registered on the basis of CVC's reference, but after completing the probe, the CBI had filed a closure report in 2014 saying no incriminating evidence had come on record warranting prosecution of any accused.

The BJP leaders had alleged in their petition that the PIL had deliberately misrepresented facts to the 35th screening committee with the connivance of others to get the coal block in Chhattisgarh's Fatehpur allotted to it and the CBI had wrongly accepted the claims made by the accused.

Their petition came in response to the court's earlier notice asking them whether they wanted to submit anything on the final report in the case.

The court had issued notices to both the ministers after CVC director Sanjay Agarwal had informed it that the anti-graft watchdog was not a complainant in the matter and had no role to play in the case. It was these two leaders on whose complaint the CVC had started its proceedings, he had said.

The court had said that before accepting CBI's closure report, it was duty-bound to issue notice to the complainant. It had also directed the CVC to clarify its stand on the report.

According to the CBI's FIR, the Fatehpur coal block was allocated jointly to PIL and another firm by the 35th screening committee.

The FIR was lodged against PIL, its three officials, some officials of the Coal Ministry and others on the charge that the firm had misrepresented its net worth while applying for the block.

The FIR was registered under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with 420 (cheating) of the IPC and under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The CBI had also alleged in its FIR that while the company had misrepresented facts relating to its net worth, the screening committee had deliberately not followed the guidelines and showed undue favour to it
Thiruvananthapuram: A Congress MLA in Kerala was arrested on Friday on a rape charge filed against him on the basis of a woman's complaint, in an embarassment to the opposition party.

The first time MLA, M Vincent, who represents Kovalam constituency, was booked for alleged rape, stalking and abetment to suicide of a housewife at nearby Balaramapuram.

Vincent has maintained throughout that the allegation against him was baseless and was "politically motivated."

"The MLA has been arrested in the case," Kollam Police Commissioner Ajeetha Begum, who is heading the investigation team, told PTI.

The case was registered against the legislator for alleged rape, stalking and abetment to suicide, police sources said.

The incident came to light on 19 July after the 51-year-old woman attempted suicide by consuming an overdose of pills and her husband filed a police complaint against the MLA, alleging that he used to repeatedly call her over the phone and harass her.

Police said the MLA had allegedly made more than 900 calls to the lady in the past few months.

She later filed a statement before the magistrate and police, levelling serious allegation of rape against the MLA.

Police had questioned Vincent for over three hours at the MLA's hostel in Thiruvananthapuram after which he was arrested.

Reacting to the arrest, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said government was committed to provide equal justice and protection to women.

"Government will ensure that the accused, however high, will get the punishment he deserves," he told reporters at Delhi.

No mercy would be shown to those committing atrocities against women, he said, adding the government views such cases very seriously.

The development, which has stunned the Opposition Congress-led UDF, comes hardly a week before the state Assembly is to meet.

Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala and former KPCC President K Muraleedharan said that a transparent and impartial probe was needed.

Kerala Women's Commission chairperson M C Josephine said the statement of the woman victim was very clear.

In such cases, the statement of the victim is important.

The MLA also moved an anticipatory bail before a court in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday.

Activists of DYFI, the youth wing of CPM, took out a march demanding his resignation and burnt his effigy in front of the MLA hostel in Thiruvananthapuram.

The CPM has also said that the party would launch agitations till he resigns and also boycott his public functions in his constituency.

The MLA was later remanded to 14 days judicial custody by a court at Neyattinkara in Thiruvnanthapuram district.
Hyderabad: The Communist Party of India (CPI) would hold nation-wide demonstrations including picketing of central and state government offices and 'jail bharo' for three-days from tomorrow, over farmers issues.

The CPI's state, districts and other units will organise 'jail bharo', picketings, dharnas throughout the country from 24 to 26 July in support of farmers, a release quoting CPI national council secretary Atul Kumar Anjaan said.

"The Communist Party of India supports the ongoing agitations of farmers in different states on genuine demands of agrarian sectors and rural people," he said.

Anjaan alleged that the farmers were hit hard due to the central government's economic and agrarian policies and accused the BJP-led NDA government of "miserably failing" to check the ongoing farmers' suicides in the country.

The Indian Agriculture and Farmers welfare ministry in its record said that during 2016 in BJP-ruled state of Maharashtra more than 1,841 farmers committed suicides, the CPI leader claimed.

The protests will be for fulfillment of demands including the immediate implementation of recommendations in totality of the Swaminathan Commission, reducing growing agriculture input cost.

"Seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, diesel, electricity, pumping set and generators must have zero tax, which means they should be out of GST," he said.

Other demands include creation of Rs 1 lakh crore price stabilising fund by the government to check the downward prices of agri-produce. "Loans taken from all nationalised and cooperative, banks and other agencies be brought under loan waiver scheme," the CPI leader demanded.
New Delhi: The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation's (DMRC) non-executive employees have called off their threatened strike from Monday in support of their demands, official sources said on Sunday.

Demanding a hike in salaries, a section of the Delhi Metro's non-executive employees, led by some staff council members, had announced a strike from Monday.

The decision to call it off came after a meeting of the staff council members with top DMRC management.

"The ongoing protest by DMRC's non-executive employees was called off today (Sunday) after all issues raised by the agitating employees were amicably settled following many rounds of meetings and deliberations with DMRC Managing Director Mangu Singh and other senior officials," Delhi Metro spokesman Anuj Dayal said in a statement.

"The Delhi Metro services will continue as per schedule tomorrow (Monday)," Dayal said.

The issue was also deliberated upon on Saturday at a high-level meeting chaired by Urban Development Ministry Secretary DS Mishra and Delhi Chief Secretary MM Kutty with the DMRC MD, the statement said.

The Delhi Metro has around 9,000 non-executive staff who perform critical functions such as station controllers, train operators, station managers, and junior engineers etc.

They have been protesting by wearing black arm bands and organising sit-ins at different Metro stations.

The agitating staff had threatened to completely shut down the services from Monday if their demands were not met.

The staff council had been demanding a hike in salaries of non-executive staff, whose basic pay at present varies from Rs 8,000 to Rs 14,410.
New Delhi: A 32-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly masturbating in front of a German woman, who is pursuing PhD, in southeast Delhi's Greater Kailash, the police said.

The incident took place on Thursday around 2.45 pm when the 33-year-old scholar had taken her dog out for a stroll in Greater Kailash-II, they said.

She stopped for a while when she saw the man looking at her in a weird manner.

However, when he looked away, she moved ahead. But as soon as she reached closer to where he was standing, he pulled his trousers down and started masturbating while looking at her, the police said.

She shouted at him but before she could try and catch him, he drove off in his car. The woman managed to capture a picture of the car and its numberplate.

The woman informed the police following which the accused, Tarun, was arrested on Friday. Tarun was produced before a court that sent him to judicial custody.
To activate the text-to-speech service, please first agree to the privacy policy below.

Taipei, July 23 (CNA) A lighthouse of the island of Kinmen, which was shut down in 1951 after the Chinese Civil War, was lit up for the first time in decades at a ceremony on Sunday and will again guide ships traveling across the Taiwan Strait.
Agartala: Bangladesh and India have already signed a memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to connect the Northeast and West Bengal with Bangladesh through new waterways, Union minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said.

"The new waterways would enable transportation of people and goods by ships. The new waterways would be set up by using major rivers of Bangladesh, West Bengal and Brahmaputra in Assam.

"Dredging in the rivers would be required and the concerned countries would conduct the dredging works in the rivers in their countries," the Union minister of state for road transport, highways and shipping told reporters on Saturday night.

The new project would be operational in 2017 and boost the trade and passenger movement between the countries, he said.

The two countries share a 4095 km border of which 1116 km is through river.

Bangladesh as lower riparian state receives water from 54 rivers from India.

Mandaviya, who is also Union minister of state for chemicals and fertilisers met Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar and Governor Tathagata Roy on Saturday and discussed about implementation of Pradhanmantry Bharatiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojana with a target of providing quality medicine to the poor people.

He said the Narendra Modi government is giving importance to strengthen the "Look East, act East" policy by building more infrastructure and institutions in the region to catch up with the rest of the country.

Construction of highways was one of them, he said.

Mandaviya said at present there are six national highways having length of 854 km in Tripura and in addition to this four new roads covering 229 km have been approved by the ministry.
Washington: India has witnessed the third highest number of terrorist attacks in 2016, more than Pakistan that has slipped to the fourth position, according to the latest data compiled by the US State Department.

Iraq with 2,965 terrorist attacks and Afghanistan with 1,340 terrorist attacks, were ranked first and second position respectively, followed by India that recorded 927 attacks and Pakistan at 734 attacks, the department said in its Country Report on Terrorism.

The department said more than half of the terrorist attacks in India in 2016 took place in four states: Jammu and Kashmir at 19 percent, Chhattisgarh at 18 percent, Manipur at 12 percent, and Jharkhand at 10 percent.

This geographic pattern is relatively stable compared to 2015, with the exception of Jammu and Kashmir, which experienced an increase of 93 percent in attacks in 2016, it said.

In its annual report, the department said the number of terrorist attacks has increased by 16 percent and the total number of deaths has increased by 17 percent in India in 2016.

Although India ranked third among countries that experienced the most terror attacks in 2016, the lethality of these attacks remained relatively low compared to other countries that also experienced a great deal of terror violence.

On average, terror attacks in India led to 0.4 deaths per attack in 2016, compared to 2.4 deaths per attack worldwide, the report said.

Nearly three-quarters of attacks at 73 percent in India in 2016 were non-lethal, the report said.

According to the report, the deadliest attack in India in 2016 took place in July, when the Communist Party of India  Maoist detonated explosives and opened fire on Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Bihar. Sixteen people were killed in the attack, including six assailants.

According to the report, a majority of terrorist attacks in India in 2016 involved either bombings/explosions at 47 percent or armed assaults at 18 per cent.

In addition, kidnappings were particularly prevalent in India at 15 percent of all attacks, compared to 10 percent worldwide, as were facility/infrastructure attacks at 12 pe cent of all attacks, compared to six percent worldwide, the report said.

The report ranked the Philippines at fifth position with 482 terrorist attacks and Nigeria at sixth position with 466 attacks.

In 2015, Iraq at 2418 attacks and Afghanistan at 1708 attacks were ranked first and second respectively, while Pakistan took the third spot with 1009 terrorist attack.

Pakistan was ranked second in 2014, when it experienced 1823 terrorist attacks.

In 2013, there were as many as 1920 terrorist attacks in Pakistan, killing 2315 people.

In Pakistan, the report said in 2016, the total number of terrorist attacks reported in Pakistan decreased by 27 percent, and the total number of deaths decreased by 12 percent.

However, the total number of people injured increased 29 percent in comparison to 2015.

The number of perpetrators killed in attacks in Pakistan in 2016 decreased 25 percent between 2015 and 2016.Perpetrator deaths comprised nine of all deaths in Pakistan in 2016, compared to 26 percent worldwide, the report said.

The State Department said for 70 percent of all attacks in Pakistan, source materials did not identify a perpetrator group.

Of the remaining attacks, 30 percent were carried out by Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the most active and deadly perpetrator group in Pakistan in 2016.

The number of terrorist attacks carried out by TTP continued to decline, to 67 in 2016, down from 136 in 2013.

However, following sharp declines in previous years, the lethality of attacks carried out by TTP increased in 2016 to 283 total deaths, up from 240 in 2015, it said.

According to the department, several countries that have routinely experienced large numbers of terrorist attacks in recent years observed considerable decreases in total attacks in 2016, compared to 2015.
Srinagar: Police on Sunday arrested three overground workers (OWGs) of militants in Srinagar and recovered an AK-47 rifle from their possession.

Police sources said on Sunday that three OWGs of militants were arrested in Tengpora (Batmaloo) area of Srinagar city.

"They were arrested while moving in a car. One AK-47 rifle has been recovered from the possession of these OWGs," sources said.

OWGs are described by the security forces as facilitators of militants who arrange hideouts, ferry weapons and keep an eye on movement of the security forces to alert militants during crackdowns and search operations.
I am a Gujarati who lives in Karnataka. Both states have individual identities. Surat, where my parents live, was an international port town till about 1700. It has a mix of people, all sorts of castes and communities, who have visited and stayed over centuries.

It is the only city in India to have multiple indigenous merchant castes: Bania, Jain, Shia Bohras and Khojas, Sunni Bohras and Memons, Parsis, and since the 1970s, even Agarwals and Oswals by the thousands.

In previous centuries, even foreigners would live and trade in the city. Leo Tolstoy has written a short story called The coffee house of Surat. In it, at a cafe in Surat, a Persian, an African, an Indian, an Italian, a Jewish trader, a Chinese, a Turk and an Englishman discuss the nature of god. It is difficult to imagine such a gathering in Surat today, about 150 years after the story was written.

Indeed, it is difficult even to imagine the story in the 1800s because by then the port on the Tapti river had silted over and large ships could no longer sail up the Arabian sea to Surat. The new port on the west was Bombay. Today, it is possible to imagine all those different nationalities accidentally gathering in one Mumbai restaurant.

Bengaluru is a more recent city than Surat, but it has just as rich a history. It is a city that is international brand recognition. When I travel around the world to Europe or Africa or South East Asia, people ask me where I am from. It is sufficient to say I am from Bengaluru. They understand, because of the superb work being done here in information technology. But this city has many charms, even outside its economy and ability to produce jobs.

Bengaluru has people of many languages. The woman who comes to clean our house is illiterate, but she can speak four languages fluently: Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Hindi. She also understands Malayalam. I dont think there are many north Indians, even the literate, who have this diversity in their cities. We Bangaloreans are very proud of this fact. Even though there is an insistence on primacy to Kannada (and I support this), there is great tolerance in this city to other languages and this is quite unique. There is nothing wrong in our celebrating our city and our state.

I am writing this because of the recent controversy over the Karnataka flag. The chief minister has asked to committee to examine whether it is all right for the state to have an official flag. It already has a flag, yellow and red, which all Kannadigas, (including Gujarati Kannadigas like me) recognise. This flag has acceptance in all our political parties and it is not offensive to anyone. Unlike the saffron flag, the Karnataka flag does not stand for one religion.

There is absolutely no problem with the state using this as a symbol of the rich and proud heritage of Karnataka. Opposition to the idea of a state flag has come from the small thinking pseudo-nationalists, who are the ones pushing Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan. Identifying India wrongly as a one language, one religion nation.

To a large extent this issue is being used to abuse the Congress but I think Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is within his rights. He has said quite clearly that the state flag comes below the national flag. So he is already disarming those who think this is the first step towards some sort of separatism.

He is also absolutely correct on the constitutional side and I suspect that is what his committee will also tell him. The first line of the Indian Constitution is: India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. And so we are starting by accepting the idea of different states. If we look around us, there is already a sort of sub-nationalism with its own flags.

We have city specific (Chennai Super Kings) or state specific (Kings XI Punjab) IPL teams and that is another form of sub-nationalism. These teams all have their own flags and we don't have a problem with that. Nor is there a problem with political parties and their flags.

The other thing is that if we look at other nations similar to ours, the idea of a state identity is quite common. All American states have their own flags and there is no accusation that this, in any way, goes against national unity.

All of our states have unique histories and because of that they have unique identities. These identities should be allowed to express themselves. They are not in contradiction with our Constitution and there is no reason for them to be suppressed.
Gracy Pereira was 26 years old when her husband John was stabbed to death at Juhu beach in February 1983.

Gracy did not know why her husband was murdered or who his killers were. Worse, she was left with three small children, two of whom witnessed their father's murder.

Now, 34 years later, as Chhota Rajan gets ready to stand trial for John's murder, Gracy, 60, says that it's far too late. Nothing can erase the tragedy that has befallen her family  her desperate struggle to support her children  or the tears she shed when they asked when their father will return.

Ive seen his pictures in newspapers, Gracy says. Him. Chhota Rajan. She refuses to speak his name.

"He looks like he's put on weight. He didn't look like this when I saw him at the police station  after my husband's death  he was thin and frail. He had long hair. Was in a lungi. Tied to a chair. When I entered, the cops asked him who I was. 'Bhabhi hai' he replied. 'John bhai ki wife'. The cops kicked him. He made me a widow."

It was the morning of 21 February, 1983. John, a fisherman-turned-smuggler dropped his four-year-old son Bill Robinson to nursery school and was taking a stroll on the beach with his two other children  nine-year-old Helen and two-year-old Jackson.

Suddenly, a group of men grabbed John. Helen took her brother and hid behind a balloon stall. She didn't cry out even as she watched them stab her father. After they left, Helen rushed over and began screaming for help.

He was semi-conscious, Helen told Firstpost. A coconut vendor spotted us, and contacted my uncle. They rushed my father to Cooper Hospital immediately, but he'd stopped breathing. I remember that morning, but the picture is hazy. I was too young. After I identified the killers for the police, my mother made sure we never discussed it again. She was protecting me."

After Johns death, the family, which was living in a Juhu chawl, had to face even more hardship.

A few months later, the civic authority razed their home, saying it was constructed illegally. John's parents refused shelter to his widow and children, after which Gracy sought refuge at her mother's home. Gracy's godmother would often bring leftovers. Although Gracy would feel embarrassed to ask for food, she couldn't stop. The children were hungry.

Later, I started getting grain and supplies through our ration card, but the quality was abysmal. The children could not eat the rice. They'd ask me when their father would return and take them for dinner to their favourite food stall. I'd tell them 'he's in God's home now and I am your mother as well as your father.' They'd cry themselves to sleep. A few days later, they'd ask me the same thing again."

Months after John's murder, Gracy went to Kuwait, and became a house help. She left her three children with her brothers. But after spending two years in the Arab country, she was forced to return. Jackson, her youngest, had fallen ill. The children wouldn't let her go back. She ended up marrying an auto driver, who had been a friend.

He took good care of the children, sending Helen to boarding school and made sure that the boys got a decent education. They also bought a room in a chawl at Moora Village, Andheri. Five years ago, he passed away.

Gracy remains fuzzy over the details of John's livelihood. Maybe she doesn't want to know.

When I would ask him what he did for a living, he'd say 'don't get into all that.' He'd say that it was enough that he was supporting me and our children. He told me to focus on taking care of them. My husband was a good man. He fulfilled our every need. He even spoilt us," she says.

Helen, meanwhile, learnt that Chhota Rajan was one of the accused in her fathers murder only a year ago. The police approached her after Rajan was extradited to India in November 2015. But Helen refuses to seek any information on Rajan. She doesn't know that he is a big time gangster or the former aide of Dawood Ibrahim.

"I hope I never find out," Helen says.

Like Gracy, she doesn't know and doesn't want to know.

The writer is a journalist and author of the true crime book, The Front Page Murders
Kolkata: Union Human Resource Development minister Prakash Javadekar has said vernacular question papers for the NEET will be mere translation of the question paper in English.

"The vernacular question papers for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)  the all-India entrance examination for entrance to medical colleges  will just be translation of the question paper in English", he told reporters in Kolkata on Saturday.

Javadekar was replying to a question about the West Bengal education minister recently complaining that this year the students appearing for all medical entrance examination in vernacular languages had faced tougher questions than the ones set in English and Hindi.

About 'one nation one test' in engineering he said, "We are yet to take a call on this issue. It is in discussion stage."
A militant was killed on Sunday after the army foiled an infiltration bid along the Line of Control (LoC) in Machil sector in Jammu and Kashmirs Kupwara district.

Jammu & Kashmir: One terrorist killed as infiltration bid foiled in Machil Sector. Operations in progress. pic.twitter.com/7tkc2zau73  ANI (@ANI_news) July 23, 2017

Troops guarding the LoC noticed suspicious movement along the LoC and immediately challenged the intruders. In the ensuing firefight, one militant was killed.

"An infiltration bid was foiled in Machil sector today. One terrorist has been killed, a defence spokesman said on Sunday. He added that the operation was in progress.

Frequent incidents of exchange of fire have been reported along the LoC consistently over the past months. On Friday, an army jawan was killed in a ceasefire violation by the Pakistan Army which opened fire on Indian posts along the LoC in Rajouri district, after a day's lull.

In June, the Indian Army foiled another infiltration bid in the same Machil sector when two militants were gunned down after sundown in north Kashmir. Troops engaged the heavily-armed militants and killed two of them, after which search operations were on to track down other members.

In 2017, the Indian Army has foiled a total of 22 infiltration bids along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir, and 38 armed intruders have been eliminated in such operations, according to The Times Of India.

With inputs from agencies
Pakistani troops violated ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Uri sector in north Kashmir's Baramulla district, but there was no loss of life, police said on Sunday.

The ceasefire violation took place near LoC at Manga Kamalkote in Uri, a police official said.

He said the shelling by Pakistani forces damaged a cow-shed and a house, both belonging to locals.

However, no loss of life was reported, he added.

The Uri sector has been subject to tensions of cross-border issues as the Indian Army was attacked in the area in September last year.

Deemed as one of the deadliest attacks on the army in Jammu and Kashmir, heavily armed militants stormed a battalion headquarters of the army in north Kashmir's Uri town, killing 17 jawans and injuring 20 other personnel.

Recently, Pakistan subjected India to another ceasefire violation along the LoC in Uri sector in June. The attacks lead to a woman getting injured. The army retaliated to the Pakistani firing on the latter occasion.

With inputs from PTI
In a setback to DMK veteran K N Nehru, the Supreme Court has paved the way for further investigation into the alleged disporportionate assets of his son and set aside his exoneration in the case.

The apex court has set aside the order of the Madras High Court exonerating Nehru, a former transport minister, and his wife terming their discharge pending investigation as "visibly prematured" and "unsustainable in law as well as on facts".

Nehru, his wife Shanta and son Arun are accused of acquiring assets disproportionate to their known sources of income during his tenure as the transport minister of Tamil Nadu between 2006 and 2011.

Currently an MLA from the Tiruchirappalli West constituency, he has been a four-time legislator of the

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party. "The impugned order directing the discharge of the respondents is hereby set aside and the order of the Trial Court vis-a-vis them is restored," a bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy said.

It directed the vigilance department to complete further investigation at the earliest so as to enable the trial court to proceed in accordance with law.

The bench upheld the direction of High Court and the trial court for further probe and said the probe agency should keep in mind "the seriousness of the charge and the avowed objectives of the anti corruption law involved and conduct the investigation as expected of it and submit its report as

expeditiously as possible".

The apex court allowed the appeal of the state government challenging the High Court order exonerating Nehru and his wife but affirming the direction for further probe against his son Arun.

"Having regard to the FIR, the explanation provided by the respondent No.1 (Nehru), the charge-sheet submitted as well as the indispensability of the scrutiny of the sources of income of Arun and his assets, we are of the view that the courts below had rightly directed further investigation to verify the genuineness or otherwise of the source(s) of income of Arun and his assets and the bearing thereof, if any, on the charge levelled against the respondents," it said.

The court observed that the High Court, having endorsed the direction for further investigation vis-a-vis Arun, ought not to have recorded its findings of exoneration of Nehru and his wife at this stage.

"In fact, the discharge of the respondents flies in the face of the direction for further investigation into the affairs of Arun in order to verify the lawfulness or otherwise of his source of income and his assets.

"In our estimate, in view of the correlation of the explanation provided by the respondent No.1 to the imputation of disproportionate assets and the probe ordered into the affairs of Arun, to say the least, the discharge of the respondents before the completion of the investigation is visibly prematured," the bench said.

Nehru in his explanation about his income said he had received the amount only from his son Arun and the latter had received remuneration for which he had paid TDS under the Income Tax Act and therefore the question of disproportionate of his assets did not arise.

The court said that the exoneration of Nehru and his wife pending investigation amounted to "prejudging the charge" against them. "We have thus no hesitation to hold that the order of the High Court, discharging the respondents herein, pending the investigation against Arun, at this stage, is unsustainable in law as well as on facts," the bench said.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the state government, contended that on taking into account the materials on record, the High Court ought not to have discharged them at this stage while affirming further probe into the sources of income of Arun.

He said the outcome of the further probe would have a vital bearing on the charge leveled against the accused and their discharge at this stage is wholly unwarranted. Counsel appearing for Nehru and others said that the available materials do not substantiate the allegation and the discharge of the respondents is perfectly justified and does not merit any interference.

An FIR was lodged in 2011 against Nehru, his wife and son by the Deputy Superintendent of Police (vigilance & anti- corruption), Trichy, alleging that Nehru while serving as the transport minister had acquired assets in his name and in the names of his wife and son far beyond their known sources of

income.

Before the check-period (May 13, 2006-March 24, 2011) both husband, wife and son had assets worth over Rs 2.83 crore which swelled to over Rs 18.52 crore at the end of the period.

After the charge sheet was filed against them, the accused moved trial court seeking discharge but the court ordered further probe into the assets and income of Arun. The High Court on 19 December , 2013 , exonerated Nehru and his wife but affirmed further probe into the assets and income of Arun.
Bengaluru: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor Sunday said he was more anxious than anyone else to know the truth behind his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death.

No one more anxious than me for a conclusion: Shashi Tharoor on #SunandaMurderProbe Read @ANI_news story -> https://t.co/7bGa98teFv pic.twitter.com/G5WWovZuD5  ANI Digital (@ani_digital) July 23, 2017

He also said he would cooperate only with the probe agencies in investigation of the case and not with publicity seekers.

"No one in this country can be more anxious than me to know the truth and to see a constructive and clear conclusion to this prolonged investigation," Tharoor told reporters in Bengaluru.

"My responsibility is to cooperate with the authorities and not with obstreperous, self-interested, publicity-seeking people ... I'm not going to cooperate with such people," the former Union minister said.

I will cooperate with authorities and not with self interested publicity seeking attempts by others: Shashi Tharoor #SunandaPushkar pic.twitter.com/x4IZSnz0jT  ANI (@ANI_news) July 23, 2017

Tharoor was speaking on the sidelines of a three-day international conference on Dr BR Ambedkar here.

Tharoor's stepson Shiv Menon had Saturday moved the Delhi High Court opposing BJP leader Subramanian Swamy's plea for a court-monitored CBI-led SIT probe into the death of Sunanda Pushkar.

The counsel for Menon, late Pushkar's son from her earlier marriage, has filed an application on his behalf in a pending plea filed by Swamy seeking probe in the death of Sunanda, on the ground that the BJP leader has no locus standi in the issue.

Swamy, in his plea file through advocate Ishkaran Singh Bhandari, has alleged "inordinate delay" in the investigation, claiming that many of the evidence in the case have been destroyed, and accused Tharoor was influencing investigation in the matter.

Sunanda Pushkar was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a suite of a five-star hotel in south Delhi on the night of 17 January, 2014.
Ramanathapuram (TN): A 65-year-old Pakistan national has been arrested on charges including of drug-peddling, police said on Sunday.

The arrest comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Rameswaram in the district to inaugurate a memorial for former president late APJ Abdul Kalam on 27 July.

Mohammed Yunus, from Karachi, was arrested from a lodge in Ervadi, they said. Ervadi is famous for its centuries-old dargah in Ramanathapuram district.

When he was arrested on Saturday, he neither had a passport nor a visa. He was carrying Pakistani Rupees 2,500 and Rs 3,000 in Indian currency, the police said.

During interrogation, it came to light that he had come to Tamil Nadu illegally by a boat from Sri Lanka.

After travelling to several places, including Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu allegedly in search of a contraband substance, he had come to Ervadi, Q branch district police, which deals with national security, said.

Two others from Ervadi, who had allegedly promised to get him the drug, have also been arrested, they said.

The Pakistani national was produced before a magistrate at his residence in Paramakudi and was remanded to judicial custody.

He is being taken to the Puzhal Central Prison in Chennai, which has a separate cell to house foreigners.
Hyderabad: The city police have arrested a 48-year-old man in Hyderabad for allegedly raping a mentally challenged teenaged girl following which she became pregnant.

The accused, a tailor by profession, allegedly raped the 15-year-old girl on multiple occasions over the past few months at a house in Trimulgherry area here after offering her water laced with a sedative, the police said.

The girl used to work as a helper at the house of a woman, who ran a cloth business, where the man was employed as a tailor, a release from the Hyderabad police said.

Some days back, the girl took ill following which her mother took her to a state-run hospital where it came to light that the minor was pregnant, it said.

When her mother enquired, the girl, who is mentally challenged, told that a man working at the woman's house used to give her water after drinking which she felt drowsy. He allegedly raped her four or five times in that condition, the release said.

The girl's mother then lodged a complaint with the police on 18 July, it said.

The man was arrested yesterday and booked under IPC section 376 (rape) and relevant provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, it said.

Under IPC section 376, a convict faces a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.

The woman, at whose house the survivor worked, was also arrested and booked under relevant sections of the Juvenile Justice Act for employing a minor, the release said.
New Delhi: Hitting out at Pakistan for "aiding and abetting terror", NDA's vice-presidential candidate M Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday reminded it not to forget what happened in 1971, in a reference to the Bangladesh war, in which it faced a humiliating defeat.

Naidu was addressing the annual Kargil Parakram Parade, held in remembrance of soldiers killed in the 1999 war with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir's Kargil sector.

"Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them, they should recall what happened in 1971. Terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion," he said.

Criticising Pakistan for "mixing terrorism with religion" as its State policy, the former Union minister asserted that Kashmir is an integral part of India and "not an inch" of it will be ceded.

He also urged Pakistan to shun the path of confrontation.

"We are a peace loving people. We never attacked any country. We don't want war, we don't want confrontation. We want to have peace and good relations with our neighbours, but they should also reciprocate," Naidu said.
Beijing: War between India and China over Doka La is a possibility and diplomats from both sides must prevent an armed conflict, a Chinese expert has said.

Long Xingchun, a research fellow at The Charhar Institute and director of the Center for Indian Studies at China West Normal University, said there were "precedents of the unnecessary war in the past" and the looming one between India and China will harm both countries.

Long also said it was wrong to think that China was using the Doka La border stand-off for the Communist Party of China National Congress to be held later this year.

"A war is not completely impossible. There is a great deal of precedents of unnecessary battles fought at the completely wrong time and place. So far, it is the prime goal of diplomats of both sides to prevent a war that neither wants," Long wrote in the Global Times.

Indian and Chinese troops have been engaged in over a month long stand-off in Doka La, which is at a tri-junction of India, Bhutan and China.

India wants the issue to be resolved diplomatically, but China says the withdrawal of troops by India is a precondition for talks.

"To this end, they must not bluff. The 1962 war, triggered as India operated the Forward Policy, has left Indians hostile toward China for decades. A larger war today may give rise to strong animosity between the two sides for centuries."

Long also slammed Indian journalists in China and Indian experts on China for blaming Beijing and state-run media for stoking tensions.

Chinese media and experts have launched a blitzkrieg against India and called for war.

"China doesn't want a war. Many Indian media outlets and analysts put all the blame on China for the stand-off and conclude that China had plotted to provoke the conflict in an attempt to divert attention from its internal problems.

"The reports even related the face-off to the 19th Communist Party of China National Congress to be held later this year. This bookish analysis reflects what little knowledge of China some Indian media and scholars have."

He said there were not more than 200 China experts in India of which only 10 percent can read or speak Mandarin.

"Regrettably, it is these people that shape India's understanding and judgment of China."

"China does have many domestic problems, nonetheless they are no more serious than what's facing India internally. In fact, to prepare for the 19th Party Congress, China needs domestic harmony and a peaceful international environment rather than conflict, a point which may be hard for Indians to understand," he writes.

"If India fights a large-scale war with China now, it will not only scare away foreign investment but also disrupt India's economy.

"Even if a war is brief, China and India may still be locked in a standoff for a long time. In this case, India will have its economic momentum disrupted and lose its opportunities to rise."

India has blamed China for trying to change the status of the India-Bhutan-China tri-junction, and ruled out unilateral withdrawal of Indian troops.

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj last week said that China's attempt to build a road through Bhutan posed a security challenge to India.

On China's insistence that India withdraw troops from Doka La, she said: "India wants that all troops are removed from the tri-junction point before discussing the issue together. All countries, including Bhutan, are with us."

The matter is expected to feature in talks between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart State Councillor Yang Jiechi when they meet on 27-28 July in Beijing at a NSAs meet from BRICS countries.
Editor's note: In this column called 'Beyond the Artists Studio  Travelling for Art's Sake', Rosalyn D'Mello will be engaging with artists as she travels to new places, both at home and abroad.

This is the second in a three-part series from Turkey. Read part one here.

It is early evening. Were we in India, the sun would have already begun its descent. But here in Istanbul, it is 6 pm, there are at least three hours of daylight left.

I am in Asl Cavusoglus studio in Karakoy. Ive come armed with cans of beer, provisional respite from the humidity of June-end. As I slump into a chair, my fingers pore into a bowl of pumpkin seeds, the most preferred Turkish pastime snack. To my left I see a broadsheet resembling a newspaper filled with outlandish headlines: Turkish East and West to be reintegrated, reads one; NOTHING IS WHAT IS SEEMS, says another, just above the boldest one that seems to leap out of the page: Federal state system to be established in Turkey. Inches below is one that conflicts with the earlier one: TURKEY WILL BE DIVIDED INTO TWO and a stranger one that says Two jaguars are running towards India.

The newspaper is another collaborative work of art conceived by Asl in 2017 as a response to the worsening conditions for freedom of speech vis-a-vis the media after the Gezi protests, following which many journalists lost their jobs. The 2016 coup led to the shutdown of more newspapers and magazines, with members of the press being imprisoned due to increased polarisation. Asl noticed that the marginalisation of press freedoms led to a new crop of news makers; fortune tellers and astrologers who were soon being invited to newscasts and panels and begun to enjoy a position of authority.

Future Tense brought together 50 soothsayers from diverse political opinions and ethnicities who consulted sand, lead, tarot cards, coffee grounds, blank sheets of A4 paper, dreams, water, clairvoyance, astrology, pendulums and horoscopes in order to reveal the point that Turkey has reached in newscasting. This piece of conscious exaggeration drives home the point about who is really in command of a countrys future when the forces of reason and presumed objectivity are repressed. As populism, lack of empathy, discrimination are reaching new extremes both in the world and in Turkey, as everyone is asking the question of what will happen next, Future Tense questions our habits of receiving the news by mixing propaganda, news and fortunetelling, writes Asl.

Where Asl is concerned with the challenge of imagining the future, two other artists I met find their practice immersed in the past, as if looking there for answers or clues as to what will be forgotten and what must be remembered. Dont forget to carry your swimsuit, Asl told me when we were getting ready to leave Buyukada to take the ferry to Heybeliada, the very next island, where Sibel Horada lives with her husband and daughter in a somewhat incredible sea-facing apartment built and designed by architect Edmond Sarfati.

When we arrive, Sibel shows us around, then asks if it might be better if we went for a swim first. I imagine we will go for a dip in the swimming pool just downstairs. Instead, Sibel directs my steps to the shoreless sea. I sit by the edge like a chicken and watch Asl and Sibel swim like mermaids. Later, over beer and a large platter of black cherries and peaches, Sibel demonstrates, through her spellbinding narration over illustrative slides, how her 2009-2010 work, As If It Never Existed was an excellent example of the Turkish artistic penchant towards the reclaiming of evidences that bear testimony to forgotten, suppressed or displaced histories.

She had spent hours with a Paulownia tree, among the oldest, in her alma mater, the Yildiz Technical University, until it was cut down in 2009, all traces of it disappearing further once the stump, too, was uprooted. Horadas installation features broken pieces of the stump and roots that she managed to reclaim, along with the information specific to its erstwhile existence that she was able to gather.

Two years later, through two works, Untitled Machine and Last Impressions, Horada, a non-practising Jew, focussed her artistic lens on the Passover Bakery in Istanbul that was rendered obsolete because it was more cost-effective for the resident community to import matzo (ritualistic unleavened bread) from Israel. She got the machine to run one last time and produced a series of 24 prints on paper, which she titled Last Impressions. Neighbouring this work, in the group exhibition, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place, was her Untitled Machine, which mirrored the 21-metre-long machine through 14 video loops that show the phantom machine functional but producing ghost bread.

In 2015, a day before the birth of her daughter, Horada installed A Void in Retrospect as part of a group show in Istanbul, the consequence of a bizarre idea she had to excavate a void. 2015 was the centennial anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Living in Turkey and pondering the effect of its missing people on the land itself, I had decided to deal with a Void and work to generate a number of interactions around this idea. I, an artist who often dealt with objects and sculpture had accidentally stumbled upon a Void, she writes, facetiously, almost, because in Horadas practice, there are no accidents, only serendipitous encounters, as attested by the rather amazing story around her work, The Fall, recounted in an essay titled Wing Story by the well regarded Turkish writer Elif Batuman, who speaks of the real-life protagonists who happened to be named Michelangelo and Icaro, who were her guardian angels, so to speak, while she was attempting to solve the mystery of the cloaked Pegasus statue in the Plaza de Legazpi in Madrid.

I met Hera Buyuktascyan a few days later, barely half an hour after my visit to the Hagia Sophia, an overwhelming experience by any account. I was still basking in the afterglow of its spectacular gold mosaics and frescoes when I climbed the many staircases that led to her studio space, in the building that once housed a Greek school, opposite an Armenian church. It is now being used as a gallery space for contemporary art shows and is one of the venues of the 2017 Istanbul Biennale. Hera and I got along instantly. It turns out that besides Asl, who engineered our meeting, we had more artworld friends in common than we could have imagined.

Acquaintances aside, Hera, who is half Greek, half Armenian, unusually traces her Armenian heritage to Kolkata and Amritsar, as a result of which, both sites have become phenomenally important to her artistic research. Before getting around to talking about her work, she chalks out a list of places she believes I absolutely must visit, including the Chora Monastery and the Balat neighborhood in the Golden Horn area. Two days later, when I allow myself to be guided by her proposed itinerary, I find I am immensely grateful for the recommendation, though I harbour deep regrets about not having had the privilege of having her take me through the city so I could discover it through her eyes, particularly because so much of her practice is guided by the question of how space is liquefied and about places that water holds together.

Like Sibel, she is also concerned with the ephemerality of memory. The blue-edged book she gifted me, Write Injuries on Sand and Kindness in Marble, the catalogue of her eponymous show at Green Art Gallery in Dubai, reveals her fascination with the past lives of spaces, in this case, the marble factory that used to exist on the site of the gallery. For Hera Buyuktascyan, the term aquamorphology grants water a physical, transformative agency through its collaboration with time. It symbolises the fluid, aquatic nature of memory, as it can simultaneously purify, divide, connect, heal and destroy, reads the text at the beginning that snakes its way through the book, edging through the images of her work and contextualising her concerns with frameworks of power, labour, production and reconstruction of memory.

When asked by Haig Aivazian what coded memories emerge in her work and what they tell us about power today, Hera speaks about how, throughout history and across geographies, monuments, palaces and all forms of imperial power are associated with their commissioning ruler/patrons. This she calls the architecture of power  the desire people have to leave a trace of themselves for posterity, often through grand architectural projects. This is often coupled with the erasure or even denial of the actual elements or actors that were integral in the creation of that monument. We even refer to figures of power when we cite great historical architectural feats: Hagia Sophia was built by Emperor Constantine, the Taj Mahal by Shah Jahan, the Great Pyramid of Giza commemorates Pharaoh Khufu, The Palazzo della Civilta Italiana is synonymous with Mussolini, and so on. We dont remember the names of those who actually built them. Instead, architecture becomes the physical manifestation of a historical, political or social memory.

Coming up: Part III
For 13 long years, Chetna Mehrotra, now 40, lived in an abusive marriage, coped with the stress of her hectic corporate job and parenting her little boy.

Finally shaking off what might be called a case of the Stockholm Syndrome (where a person develops a psychological alliance with their oppressor, as a survival strategy), Mehrotra left her husbands house six years ago. Emotionally and physically scarred and alone in the city of Mumbai, Mehrotra desperately searched for a space to talk, share and most importantly, grieve.

She travelled to Bengaluru for a workshop on 'Theater of the Oppressed', a form of creative arts therapy, which uses theatre techniques and games to heal and empower people in a group setting. An exercise of image theatre freed her from the overwhelming emotion that had her in its grip. I realised that I had so much anger and sadness all pent up. I realised that my mind and body were both oppressed, says Chetna. I grieved in the process, discusses and shared my problems and felt a sense of release.

She thus embarked on a journey to self-discovery and empowerment and later also attended workshops on psychodrama and dance and movement therapy, other emerging expressive arts therapies in the country.

Growing awareness

With a dedicated institute of psychodrama in Chennai, a diploma course in dance and movement therapy at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Kolkata, and visual arts courses in Pune and Delhi, urban India seems to be warming up to creative therapies with the goal of seeking mental well-being.

Its no longer a taboo to seek help if you are disturbed or going through a tough, challenging time  thanks in some part to Bollywood and media. So many of my clients now tell me that they experience the same symptoms that actor Deepika Padukone did when she was depressed, says clinical psychologist Nipa Shah. Movies like Dear Zindagi and Tare Zameen Par have also changed peoples perception of mental health.

Creative therapies and Indian culture

Expressive therapies such as theatre, dance and movement, music, story-telling and visual arts are effective and powerful tools for overall mental well-being, usually practised in a group setup, enabling people to establish the crucial face-to-face social connection  lacking in the time of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Moreover, these interactive, non-judgmental and non-threatening practices are also culturally imbibed in the country that has had a tradition of mixing different arts with everyday life, says Eric Miller, assistant director, Indian Institute of Psychodrama, and East West Center for Counselling, Chennai.

A puja could be a classic example. It combines music, visual art in the form of rangoli and even devotional dances. Or, telling grandmother's tales or stories from the Panhatantra, to offer people guidance and advice.

These ancient examples were pre-cursor for modern psychotherapies, says Eric.

People have realised that the body is an important tool for therapy. In most centres, the mind is given lot of importance and the body is ignored. But the creative therapies  especially dance and movement  give importance to the physical and the psyche, says Tripura Kashyap, dance and movement therapy pioneer in India, teaching in Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune.

Reaching out

Schools, colleges, corporate houses, community centres and NGOs across metros are using these to empower their clients/employees/students.

NGO Kolkata Sanved has reached out to 65,000 sex-trafficking victims and sexual-abuse survivors through dance and movement therapy. It has trained over 100 students to become practitioners in its year-long course at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and at its centre in Kolkata, since 2013. As the need for holistic well-being grows rapidly in this complex world, the demand for expressive therapies grows as well. In India, these are at an emerging stage, but would definitely grow more in the future, says Sohini Chakraborty, founder and director of Kolkata Sanved.

At Toral Vithalani's Shamanic Music Therapy workshops, in Mumbai, the numbers are constantly rising and so is the interest in experiencing and learning theatre-related and story-telling therapies in Chennai.

Western psychotherapy v/s Eastern healing practices

People are also questioning the practice of traditional psychotherapy, which labels people and only focuses on ones behaviour and behaviour modification. In eastern philosophy, mental well-being is part of the overall health and spirituality of a human being and looks at a person as a whole. Creative arts therapies help nourish a person completely and work much better in the long run, says Mona Doctor, founder of Integral Space, a holistic wellness centre in Mumbai. These do not categorise people as normal or abnormal or stigmatise them in any other way. In a group session of these therapies all are treated as equals and the exercises help people accept and love themselves, says Mona.

Hence many psychiatrists and other doctors prescribe these. Dr Gargi Goel, a pediatrician from Jaipur, is a student of dance and movement therapy. I work in rural and urban setups and find that many stress-related or psychosomatic problems such as lower back pain in most patients could be resolved through these therapies rather than popping pills, says Goel. The therapy helped me love and accept myself and has centred and balanced me. I can now deal with most of my emotions much better and that of course promotes better physical health.

Clinical psychologist Nipa also prescribes these therapies to her patients. I have been using visual arts therapy to help a 13-year-old client with borderline depression to communicate and express better. And the results are better than the traditional talk therapy which I attempted earlier, says Nipa.

These therapies untie the knot of confusion and depression and encourage healthy living. As famous dancer and choreographer Agnes de Milleous once said, 'The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.'
Michael Rezendes was part of the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe that investigated and published pathbreaking stories on abuse within the Catholic Church. In India for a media convention, Rezendes ( who was played by Mark Ruffalo in the Oscar-winning film Spotlight) talks about his work, the film, investigative journalism and dealing with a president like Donald Trump.

What is life like, when you are part of a team like Spotlight?

Well the team isnt new. It was established in the '70s, modeled on a team that the Times of London used to have. So the Globe decided that we should have a similar team. There is one even today. As for life while working for such a team, it is an incredible amount of work. The story we did on the Catholic Church took two years of my life.

Do you face a lot more dead ends, compared to the daily reporting that papers thrive on?

I wouldnt say dead ends. I mean I have been doing this all my life, so now, when we have something new on our hands, it takes me a couple of weeks to see where it is going. The trick, perhaps, is to know which stories to do and which ones to set aside. Because now we get so many tips and people calling the team that we have to sort according to the story we can actually do. Think around whether well get documents to prove something, or get authorities to talk to us.

The film compresses a very long investigation into two hours. In an attempt to be cinematic, even sensational, does it miss out, or misrepresent any of your work?

Well the film compresses a five-month investigation. And it ends on the day when we published our first piece. In fact, we went on to write about 600 stories over a year. So yes, a lot has been compressed. But that aside, the film is a work of genius. There will always be things for cinematic effect. For example, the documents that I receive that prove the guilt of the Catholic Church, in reality, arrived in two installments via couriers at my desk. But when I had to get psychiatric records of father John Gagan, I did have to argue with a judge. So you see some of it has to be changed for cinematic effect, but most of it is pretty accurate.

While working at the Globe, youve served a local readership, which means a lot of your work happened at close quarters. Here in India, local journalists come under severe pressure when trying to report objectively. Does it make your job that much more difficult?

I think that can be true. Dealing with local power brokers is not easy. I think we just got lucky, because our publisher stood behind us all the way. Boston is the most Catholic city in America. The church was incredibly powerful at the time. We did fear that a majority of our subscribers would stop reading the paper. But I think it was very courageous on the part of our publisher to let us do what we wanted to.

So you have to be smart about it, because as is shown in the film, these are people you run into every other day?

Absolutely, you do have be to smart about it. Courteous, but most importantly you have to persistent. Give them the benefit of a conversation, but dont back down from the reporting.

Religion is perhaps the touchiest subject for a journalist to pursue. Not just part of the job, but what it may personally mean to you. Did you at any point contemplate on any of it?

To be honest, if you were to ask the Globe to the same story today, maybe they wont do it. At that time we were owned by the New York Times, who had a Jewish editor in Marty Baron. Perhaps that made things easier for us. But if a lone reporter wants to tackle a religious institution, he ought to talk to his or her editor. Good reporters need the support of their editors.

Since you did the groundbreaking story, a lot has changed, mostly in the emergence of the web and social media. Has it changed investigative journalism for the worse?

No, I dont think so. I think it has made our work a lot easier. We have resources that we did not have before. We now have access to data that makes it really easy to find people these days. At the end of the day, you have to make sure your story is accurate, and true to fact, which would make it all the more difficult to discredit it, even though that is a real possibility now. I dont think social media is that much of a problem. I put my stories on social media, but I always look for stories that have not been written. Had we had social media back when we did the story on the Catholic Church, I think things would have moved faster.

Coming to the political climate in the US in general, how has working under Trumps rule been different from that of Barack Obama?

Well, it has changed. But I want to say this upfront that Barack Obama persecuted a lot of journalists and leaders. He did not say much about his approach to reporting. But he did persecute more people than almost all presidents before him combined. With Trump we have a lot more rhetoric. What is dangerous about Trumps rhetoric is the way he has polarised Americans. The most troubling of all is his insistence on establishing things that are not true, as true; his creation of an alternate reality where he is the only source of information. I mean, take for example, his statement that we did not know if Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. But of course we do know that. Absolutely verified. So he just insists on creating these ideas.

Was Trumps election a wake-up call for the media?

Absolutely. The media missed the story. More importantly they missed the forces that elected him. They did a lousy job of covering dissatisfaction of lower-middle class Americans. I think that is true.

I hope it is a cause for self-evaluation. Introspection is necessary.

How big a problem has fake news become?

I think it has become big enough to be troubling. A lot of people read and watch fake news. And they believe it. Coming back again to the point that I made earlier, about an alternate reality that is being created... earlier, we at least agreed on facts. Now people do not even want to agree on a fact. It makes it very difficult to move ahead, when people do not agree on what reality is.

So the job is going to get harder?

I think so. I mean we could come to a point where investigative journalists publish stories that are demonstrably accurate, but people refuse to believe them. So then, what do we do?
New Delhi: Describing as "disturbing" the CAG report which highlighted that the Indian Army is battling critical shortage of ammunition, especially for its tanks and artillery, the Congress on Saturday accused the NDA government of taking defence very lightly.

"The Prime Minister and his government have to answer definitely since when he assumed this office he took defence very lightly," senior Congress leader Anand Sharma told reporters.

"Now if the country is not prepared or under prepared and the requirements, the critical needs of ammunitions and spares have not been met for three years then this government is definitely in the dock," he added.

Sharma was responding to the Comptroller Auditor General report that revealed no significant improvement was made in the availability of War Wastage Reserve (WWR), which is ammunition needed to meet the requirements of 40 days of intense war or a full-scale war.

"The report of the CAG is revealing and disturbing amid tension on both the borders," Sharma said pointing out that there was a stand-off on the northern borders with China and on the western frontier with Pakistan.

He also said that on the international border and across the Line of Control there has been heavy artillery firing and exchange of firing for a long period of time.

The Congress leader said there have been attacks and cross-border attacks on Indian defence establishments and on strategic bases of the Indian Army and Air Force.

Sharma said the government has to ensure that the genuine needs of the army are met.

"And for any professional army, particularly when you have to guard such large frontiers against nuclear power neighbours, there is no room or luxury for shortages of critical spares and repairs," he said.

Lamenting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not appointed a full-time Defence Minister, Sharma said, "India does not have a full-time Defence Minister. When he took oath there was no full-time Defence Minister. Then (Manohar) Parrikar came who was non-serious and a non-performer. Now he has gone back to Goa and again the country is back with no full-time Defence Minister."

"So it is for everyone to see concerning India's defence, and the security of our borders is not a question of politics. But we as a opposition have a duty to ask questions and we will ask questions about it," he said.

Lashing out at the government, Sharma said, "This government and Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) believes in talking all the time."
Sparks flew in Parliament in the first week of Monsoon Session as the Opposition sought to corner government on the increasing incidents of cow vigilantism.

However, the BJP counter-attacked, slamming the 'selective amnesia' of the Opposition as a minister raked up the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and the 2002 Godhra train burning.

The ensuing debate saw the BJP top brass talk tough on mob lynchings and violence in the name of cow protection.

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said the government will show no sympathy to those lynching people in the name of cow protection.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir echoed a similar sentiment, saying the Modi government was neither anti-Dalit nor anti-Muslim.

Minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi also called for a united fight to isolate and tackle those behind such crimes.

However, we would be misquoting BJP leaders if their statements, which were laced with caveats, were not reproduced in full. The strongly-worded condemnations tapered off with 'buts' and the words that followed reflected a balancing act rather than sincere criticism.

Besides, '...in the name of cow protection' is another pet catch phrase in the BJP lingo.

The message is clear: The party top brass have been tasked with distancing the BJP, the holy cow, and the RSS  the fountainhead of right-wing ideology  from cow-related violence. For the party, cow protection and vigilantism are as different as chalk and cheese. However, the Opposition argues that it is a slippery slope and one leads to the other.

Firstpost looks at some recent statements made by BJP bigwigs with all their ifs and buts, clauses and sub-clauses and brings you their unvarnished perspective:

Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar, responding to the debate of cow vigilantism in the Rajya Sabha, said that mob violence must be condemned but it should not be done "selectively".

"I condemn mob lynching but I do not suffer from selective amnesia like some of our Opposition colleagues," Javadekar said. "In 1984, Sikhs were lynched or burnt alive, at least 3,000 of them. In 2002, Ram 'bhakts' (devotees) returning from Ayodhya were lynched in Godhra. We condemn all such incidents," the HRD minister said.

However, he did not mention the Godhra riots. Interestingly, the two incidents occurred just days apart and the latter claimed many more lives.

He also that said there were 16 mob lynchings in 2012 and 14 in 2013. "Where are the culprits involved in the lynchings in 2012 and 2013? Where are the culprits involved in anti-Sikh riots of 1984?... Very few of them are in jail, rest are roaming free," Javadekar said.

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley told the Upper House that the government would show no sympathy to those lynching people in the name of cow protection. However, the minister said it was also not proper to "eulogise" cow slaughter in states where there was no prohibition on cow slaughter.

"Nobody has the right to take law in his hands. And if somebody does, he should be condemned, arrested and prosecuted. The government's stand is very clear: Nobody is allowed to do that," Jaitley told Rajya Sabha.

"...there is no rationalisation, no argument about hurting of sentiments can be an explanation for the crime," he said, adding that the central government was absolutely committed on the issue and had already sent an advisory to the states.

On the atrocities against Dalits, Jaitley said oppression in the name of caste would not be tolerated and that stringent laws were in place to protect Dalits. "The way we have historically treated one section of our brethren is a black spot in our history. We owe it to ourselves, if not to them, to reverse that process of history," the minister said.

The BJP leaders often referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement, who also condemned violence by hoodlums masquerading as gau rakshaks three times in three years of power. Here's what Modi said: Killing people in the name of cow is unacceptable. No one has the right to take law into his/her hands."

However, in his condemnation, the prime minister was careful to distinguish between "asli and nakli gau rakshaks".

"The cow protection which Mahatma Gandhi used to talk about cannot be wrong. But these fake gau rakshaks are not concerned about cows," he added.

Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari also exhorted media to not link lynchings with the BJP.

Gadkari said that the BJP did not support such people and violence in the name of protecting cows should not have happened.

"This is not our agenda. These are not our people. Those who did it are wrong. We are not with them. Prime minister had condemned (them).We all have condemned (such violence). Why are they being hoisted in our name?" he said. "BJP, VHP, RSS and our government do not support such elements.

Gadkari, however, went on to clarify that cow protection was another matter entirely and said that the party was against cow slaughter. It's a matter of belief, he said, adding that he uses cow urine for therapeutic purposes.

Another statement made by a BJP MLA on the sidelines of the Una Dalit flogging incident, which occurred on 11 July, 2016, is important in its own way, even though the leader who made it wasn't a prominent face in the leadership.

Raja Singh, BJP MLA from Hyderabad, lauded cow vigilantes for thrashing seven Dalit youth for allegedly killing a cow. He said: "Jo Dalit gai ke maas ko le ja raha tha, jo uski pitai hui hai, woh bohut hi achhi hui hai" (Those Dalits who were taking the cow, the cow meat, those who were beaten, it was a very good thing to happen).

Singh said that many members of the community dedicated their lives to the cause of "gau raksha" and extended support to gau rakshaks who took it upon themselves to teach the "galeez" (filthy) Dalits a valuable lesson.

To be fair to the BJP, such comments, in no way can be deemed a fair representation of right-wing ideology and may not reflect the views of other more liberal leaders.

Singh, a local MLA from Hyderabad could be dismissed as a loose tongue. But the fact that Singh's bluster and Modi's parsing between asli and nakli gau rakshaks should give the BJP  and the rest of us  food for thought.

Else, let the voter beware.
New Delhi: Vice President Hamid Ansari on Sunday said outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee had last week told governors and lieutenant governors that their role is "mainly confined to giving advice to chief minister" as "there cannot be two functional executive authorities in a state".

Ansari cited Mukherjee's remarks in his speech at the farewell ceremony for Mukherjee in the central hall of parliament.

He also said Mukherjee had noted that the governor has no discretion but to accept the verdict of floor test in certain situations.

"In a farewell dinner for governors and lieutenant governors last week, President Mukherjee spoke about the constitutional design by which 'there cannot be two functional executive authorities in a state' and the governors role, therefore, is 'mainly confined to giving advice to chief minister'," Ansari said.

"He (Mukherjee) added that in certain situation the governor has no discretion but to accept the verdict of the floor test. He advised the governors to implement diligently their constitutional responsibility in regard to the Scheduled Tribe areas in the states," he added.

Mukherjee's remarks assume significance in the wake of present spat between Puducherry chief minister V Narayanasamy and Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi. There was a tussle earlier between Delhi between Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and then Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and there have been instances in the past of differences between chief ministers and governors.

Ansari also lauded Mukherjee for adorning the highest office in the land with great distinction and dignity.

"His contribution in enrishing our national life, parliamentary institutions, and political discourse are highly regarded along with his unshakable believe in the idea of India," he added.
Jaipur: BJP national president Amit Shah is holding meeting with party leaders, including Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, MPs and MLAs, on the last day of his visit to Rajasthan.

Shah is in Jaipur on a three-day visit to review preparations of the party for the state assembly elections, due next year, and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Raje, state BJP president Ashok Parnami and other senior party leaders are present at the BJP office, a party spokesperson said.

He will also meet BJP core committee members and vistaraks (full-time workers) later in the day to discuss ways to strengthen the organisation, the spokesperson said.

Shah will return to New Delhi this evening, he added.
Afghanistan: Afghan police on Sunday launched a search and rescue operation two days after at least 70 villagers were kidnapped by suspected Taliban militants in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

At least 7 of the kidnapped villagers were found dead on Saturday, along the highway that runs from Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan, to Tarinkot, capital of Uruzgan province, a poppy-growing area where the Taliban has a heavy presence.

The police blamed the Taliban for the deaths.

Around 30 people were released, while 30 others were still missing, Kandahar police spokesman Zia Durrani told AFP.

No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, and it was also not clear why the villagers were abducted, though some government officials have suggested the villagers might have been kidnapped on suspicion of cooperation with the Afghan government.

Civilians are increasingly caught in the crosshairs of Afghanistan's worsening conflict as the Taliban step up their annual spring offensive, launched in April against the Western-backed Kabul government.

Highways around Afghanistan passing through insurgency-prone areas have become exceedingly dangerous, with the Taliban and other armed groups frequently kidnapping or killing travellers.

In July, Taliban fighters closed a highway connecting Farah to Herat city, stopping a bus and forcing 16 passengers to leave it. They shot at least seven of them, while the remaining nine were taken hostage.
London: Some of the BBC's most prominent female journalists and TV presenters are banding together to demand that the broadcaster fix its wide gender pay gap immediately rather than in several years as management has proposed.

TV personalities including Clare Balding, Victoria Derbyshire and others wrote an open letter on Sunday to the BBC's top manager saying that plans to resolve the company's gender pay gap by 2020 must be accelerated. They pointed out that the Equal Pay Act became the law in 1970.

BBC responded in a statement that it has made "significant changes" in recent years but needs to do more to close the pay gap.

Documents made public last week showed that male BBC TV and radio personalities make substantially more than their female counterparts. The salary disparity came to light after the publicly funded BBC was forced to publish the salary ranges of its best-paid actors and presenters.

The list showed that two-thirds of the highest earners were men, with the highest-paid woman earning less than a quarter of the highest-earning male star. Many BBC men were also found to be receiving far higher salaries than women in comparable jobs.

Education secretary Justine Greening, who handles matters involving women and equality, told Sky News on Sunday it is "impossible not to be shocked" by the BBC's pay disparity.

She said the salary gap is "very hard to justify." Prime Minister Theresa May has also criticised the pay differential.

The letter to BBC Director-General Tony Hall says the documents confirmed a long-held suspicion that "women at the BBC are being paid less than men for the same work."

Balding, one of BBC's most accomplished TV journalists, said in a pointed tweet that a 2020 target for equal pay isn't good enough, since the Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1970 and the Equality Act was passed in 2010.

"We're standing together to politely suggest they can do better," she said.

The women said they are taking action now so "future generations" of BBC women won't face gender discrimination.

Hall said, when the salary list was published, that the BBC needed to move more quickly on issues of gender and diversity.

The BBC said on Sunday that when annual figures are published next year substantial progress on salary equity will have been made.

The broadcaster's statement said its substantial workforce has been "hired over generations" and that the problem is complex and cannot be fixed overnight.
Baghdad: Iraqi forces have said dozens of Islamic State militants were killed in an air raid conducted by the Iraqi Air Force in the Anbar province.

Iraqi jet fighters carried out the air raid against two Islamic State-controlled towns in western Anbar bordering Syria, said the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) in a statement on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.

According to the intelligence body, the Iraqi forces bombarded an Islamic State command base, two weapons and ammunition warehouses, and a car bomb factory, killing dozens of Islamic State militants.

The statement did not mention the exact time of the air raid.

On 10 July, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi formally declared that Mosul, the last stronghold of the Islamic State in Iraq, was liberated from Islamic State control after nine months of fierce fighting.

On the following day, Iraqi local media reported the death of its top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a Russian airstrike in Syria.

However, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that he believed al-Baghdadi was still alive.

Mosul in northern Iraq had been seized by Islamic State since June 2014.
Ahmedabad: Heavy rains since Friday night created a flood-like situation in several parts of Gujarat on Saturday, leaving three persons dead, the state government said.

Surendranagar, Rajkot and Morbi districts in Saurashtra region were the worst affected by the heavy rains and the IAF, and the NDRF along with district authorities conducted massive relief and rescue operations at different places.

The National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) and the Indian Air Force (IAF) rescued several people from these areas and relocated them to safer locations.

Rail and road traffic in Saurashtra region were disrupted as over a dozen state highways were affected and several trains cancelled due to waterlogging in Maliya Miyana town of Morbi district which threw normal life out of gear.

As many as 214 people, who were stranded at different places in these affected districts, were rescued.

Morbi district disaster relief team officials said Maliya Miyana village was flooded after water was released from Machhu 2 and 3 dams and around 50 persons were rescued.

Ten gates of Machhu-2 and 14 gates of Machhu-3 dams were opened, leading to release of 55,000 cusec and 59,000 cusec of water respectively, they said.

"Two hundred people were rescued from different parts of the district by NDRF, IAF and fire brigade teams," Morbi District Collector IK Patel said.

Three persons died after being swept away by water at Jasdan taluka in Rajkot, Lathi in Amreli, and Junagadh, a state emergency operations centre official said.

Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, who headed a disaster review meeting on Saturday, told reporters that Surendranagar, Rajkot, Morbi, Amreli, Junagadh, Gir Somnath districts in Saurashtra received heavy rainfall.

As many as 65 roads and 10 state highways were damaged due to the rains, he said.

"NDRF, IAF and state rescue teams have so far rescued 214 people, stranded at different places," Rupani said, adding that 6,235 people have been shifted at safer places from low lying areas near rivers and dams.

According to Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) Commissioner BN Pani, a two-storey building in Hathikhana area of the city collapsed but there was no casualty.

"The city has received over 72 mm rain and water in the Lalpari reservoir has overflown. Nearly 60 people living in the nearby areas have been shifted to safer places," Pani said.

Surendranagar is the worst affected district in the Saurashtra region as over 350 mm rainfall was recorded in the temple town of Chotila.

The Indian Air Force, in a release, said four MI-17V5 helicopters were deployed for rescue and relief operation in different areas of Surendranagar and Morbi districts.

"In all, four IAF helicopters were today engaged in rescue and relief work. More requests have been received from the civil administration as reports last came in with three aircrafts currently engaged in ongoing missions at various locations," it said.

The NDRF said its teams carried out rescue operations in Limdi and Chotila talukas of Surendranagar district, where five persons were evacuated to safer places, six persons were shifted to safety in Rajkot, and 15 in Amreli.

State transport authorities said buses services have been temporarily discontinued on 17 routes due to waterlogging.

Train services in Samkhiyali, Maliya Miyan, Wankaner, Surendranagar and Viramgam were also suspended due to waterlogging on the route.

During the day, Deodar in Banaskantha received 204 millimetres of rains, followed by Kalol in Gandhinagar 181 mm and Bhabhar in Banaskantha 105 mm.

Ahmedabad city received over 100 mm of rain which led to waterlogging in several underpasses and roads.

According to IMD official Manorama Mohanty, Gujarat is likely to get light to moderate rains in the next four days while heavy to very heavy rainfall has been predicted in isolated areas.

Intensity of rains in Saurashtra region will decrease, she said, adding, "Port warning has been issued in Gujarat coast. Fishermen have been advised not to venture in the waters."
Washington: Eight people were found dead Sunday in a truck in a parking lot in San Antonio, Texas, in an apparent people trafficking case, authorities said.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus and Fire Chief Charles Hood told reporters that in addition to the dead, there were 28 injured  20 of them severely  who were being treated at seven local hospitals.

"We arrived on the scene and found eight people dead in the back of that trailer," the police chief said, calling it horrific.

He explained that store security footage showed that some vehicles came to pick up some travellers who were on the truck and made it alive.

"We're looking at a human trafficking crime this evening," he added.

It was not immediately clear how many people made it off the truck alive, McManus said.

San Antonio lies a few hours drive from the border with Mexico's Nuevo Leon state. Weather in the area has been hot and dry.

Federal immigration officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have also been notified, the police chief said.

The deadly discovery, sadly "is not an isolated incident. This happens quite frequently under cover of night," McManus said.

Illegal migration over the US border with Mexico is an everyday fact. Most of the migrants are from Mexico and Central America seeking better-paying work in the United States.

This time, "fortunately there are people who survived, but this happens all the time," he said.

There have been many cases of migrants  often scores at a time  stranded and killed in northern Mexico when the truck they are being moved in was abandoned in heat by drivers.

The smugglers in their haste to evade authorities often leave passengers without air conditioning, and often without air to breathe.
Misrata: Seven months after Libyan forces defeated Islamic State in the coastal city of Sirte, hundreds of bodies of foreign militants still lie stored in freezers as authorities negotiate with other governments to decide what to do with them, local officials say.

The corpses have been shipped to Misrata, a city further to the west whose forces led the fight to defeat Islamic State in Sirte in December.

Allowing the bodies to be shipped home to countries such as Tunisia, Sudan and Egypt would be sensitive for the governments involved, wary of acknowledging how many of their citizens left to fight as jihadists in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

"Our team removed hundreds of bodies," a member of the Misrata organised crime unit dealing with the bodies told Reuters, his face masked to conceal his identity because of security concerns.

"This is the main operation which allows us to preserve the bodies, document and photograph them and also collect DNA samples."

The crime unit said it was awaiting a decision from the prosecutor general, who was in talks with foreign governments over the return of the bodies.

Islamic State has now been defeated in its main stronghold in the Iraqi city of Mosul and is under pressure in its base in the Syrian city of Raqqa. But at the height of its territorial control it attracted recruits from the West Asia, North Africa and Europe to its ranks.

In Tunisia alone, officials say more than 3,000 citizens left to fight in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Tunisians who trained in militant camps in Libya carried out two gun attacks on foreign tourists in 2015 that battered Tunisia's vital tourism industry.

Islamic State took over Sirte in 2015, taking advantage of infighting between rival Libyan armed factions and using the city as a base from which to attack oil fields and other nearby towns.
Islamabad: Pakistan interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan postponed his much-anticipated news conference on Sunday, citing a severe backache, amid reports of a "patch-up" between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his powerful Cabinet member.

The interior minister was expected to address a crucial press conference and voice his reservations on policies of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leadership. However, he has denied reports that he would announce his resignation.

Chaudhry Nisar has been recommended complete bed rest, and the press conference has been rescheduled for Monday at 5 pm, his spokesperson said, according to Dawn.

Requesting the media to stop unnecessary speculations on the matter, the statement said the postponement of the Interior Minister's presser was caused by his ill health.

Earlier, TV channels had reported that federal ministers Saad Rafiq, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Rana Tanvir Hussain met Chaudhry Nisar on Saturday to persuade him to cancel his press conference, where the channels claimed, he would announce an end to his 35-year association with Sharif.

This was the only news report about him in recent days that was not rebutted by the Interior Ministry.

Sources said that Sharif was not happy that the interior minister was not at the forefront in dealing with the Panama Papers trial, that has put the prime minister's place in jeopardy.

While many members of the Cabinet issued vociferous statements against the Joint Investigation Team constituted in the Panama Papers case and some even indirectly uttered remarks against the judiciary, Chaudhry Nisar was not among the crowd and chose to remain silent on the issue at the height of the controversy, Dawn reported.
Tehran: Iran's government rejected US demands to release detained Americans, saying it had no control over the judiciary.

"The judiciary, courts and judges in Iran are completely independent, as in any other country," said foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi in a statement.

"Any interventionist and threatening statement by American officials and institutions has no effect on the will and determination of the country's judicial system to try and punish criminals and violators of the country's laws and national security," Ghasemi added.

He was responding to a White House statement which said: "President (Donald) Trump is prepared to impose new and serious consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens are released and returned."

This comes in the light of a 10-year sentence for espionage given to a Chinese-American researcher from Princeton, Xiyue Wang, earlier in the week.

The statement mentioned Wang, along with jailed US-Iranians Siamak and Baquer Namazi, and ex-FBI agent and CIA contractor Robert Levinson who went missing in March 2007.

"As announced to American officials several times, the person called Robert Levinson travelled to Iran many years ago and Iran holds no new information on his fate after he left Iranian territory," Ghasemi said. He also criticised the jailing of several Iranians by the United States in recent years on "baseless and unfounded grounds".

Washington and Tehran severed diplomatic relations in 1980 when US embassy staff were taken hostage for 444 days.

Trump has taken an aggressive approach to Iran, but has so far stopped short of tearing up the nuclear deal that eased sanctions on the country, as he had threatened on the campaign trail.
Washington: Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner will meet behind closed doors this week with both the House and Senate intelligence committees investigating possible collusion between the president's campaign and Russia.

Kushner, who is married to Trump's eldest daughter Ivanka, will testify before the Senate intelligence committee on Monday, according to his lawyer, and the House panel on Tuesday.

The 36-year-old White House aide will be asked about his meetings with Russia's ambassador to Washington, the head of a major Russian bank and a Russian lawyer  the latter along with Trump's son Donald Jr.

"There's a lot we want to know," Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House committee, said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation programme. "We certainly want to know about several of the meetings that have been alleged to have taken place. His counsel has said they'll only make him available for two hours. So we expect this is just going to be the first interview."

White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said he hoped the appearances would be "the last time that he has to talk about Russia".

Special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller is leading an investigation into possible collusion, but the House and Senate have organised separate probes.

Donald Jr and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are currently negotiating with the Senate Judiciary Committee about how and when they might testify about their Russia links.

The pair are working with the panel to provide documents and conduct pre-interviews behind closed doors, ahead of any public hearing, the committee chair Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein have announced.

The judiciary committee has set a hearing for Wednesday. Both Donald Jr and Manafort were invited to testify, but their participation was still unclear.

Grassley and Feinstein said late on Friday, "We will not issue subpoenas for them requiring their presence at Wednesday's hearing but reserve the right to do so in the future."
Jerusalem: Two Palestinians died in clashes with Israeli forces as the army moved in to seal off an attacker's home after violence over security measures at an ultra-sensitive holy site.

The UN Security Council will hold closed-door talks on Monday about the spiralling violence after Egypt, France and Sweden sought a meeting to "urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported".

The deaths yesterday followed bloodshed on Friday, when a 19-year-old Palestinian killed three Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and three Palestinians died in clashes with Israeli forces.

On Saturday, Palestinian youths hurled stones and petrol bombs as the army used a bulldozer to close off the 19-year-old attacker's West Bank village and prepare his house for probable demolition.

Israel frequently punishes the families of attackers by razing or sealing their homes as a deterrent, although rights groups say this amounts to collective punishment.

Clashes also flared in east Jerusalem and other Palestinian villages in the West Bank near Jerusalem, police said, adding that anti-riot measures were used against them.

At the Qalandiya crossing between the West Bank and Jerusalem, at least eight Palestinians were wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said.

A Palestinian died of wounds suffered in clashes east of Jerusalem, the ministry said.

It said 17-year-old Oday Nawajaa was hit by Israeli live fire at Al-Azariya.

Another Palestinian, 18, died nearby when a petrol bomb exploded prematurely.

The violence was triggered by security measures including metal detectors at the entrance to the Haram al-Sharif compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, ahead of the main weekly Friday prayers.

Israel imposed the measures after a gun and knife attack killed two Israeli policemen on 14 July.

The Palestinians reject the measures, viewing them as Israel asserting further control over the holy site.

The site in Jerusalem's Old City that includes the revered Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock has been a focal point for Palestinians.

In 2000, then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the compound helped ignite the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which lasted more than four years.

Israeli authorities say the 14 July attackers smuggled guns into the site and emerged from it to shoot the policemen.
United Nations: The United Nations Security Council will hold an urgent meeting on Monday morning to discuss the violence unfolding in Jerusalem, diplomats said.

According to the United Nations mission of China, president of the security council for July, the meeting will be held behind closed doors.

"Sweden, France and Egypt request UN Security Council to urgently discuss how calls for deescalation in Jerusalem can be supported," said Security Council coordinator of the mission of Sweden Carl Skau on his Twitter account on Saturday.

Sweden, France & Egypt request #UNSC to urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in #Jerusalem can be supported. https://t.co/qavY8xtuxZ  Carl Skau (@CarlSkau) July 22, 2017

Three Israelis were killed on Friday in a stabbing attack by a Palestinian in a West Bank settlement.

The attack followed clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in Jerusalem's Old City, in which three Palestinians died.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Middle East Quartet  Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations  expressed concerns over the escalating tensions.

"The Quartet envoys reiterate that violence deepens mistrust and is fundamentally incompatible with achieving a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said the statement.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau attended the 10th anniversary of the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Toronto on Sunday, hailed the temple as an "architectural masterpiece" and a "place for communal harmony".

Donning a traditional blue kurta and pajama along with a flower garland draped on his neck, Trudeau participated in the rituals and celebrations in the temple. Trudeau and his official Twitter account shared pictures on social media, which were received positively by the Indian community.

The BAPS Mandir is more than an architectural masterpiece  Its truly a place for community. Happy 10th anniversary! #bapstoronto10 pic.twitter.com/kh5S1T3oIE  Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) July 23, 2017

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau celebrates the 10th Anniversary of the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Toronto today. pic.twitter.com/RAVO7F5yBV  CanadianPM (@CanadianPM) July 23, 2017

ANI reports that the celebrations were also attended by former Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson and current Indian ambassador to Canada, Vikas Swarup.

Prior to this event, Mahant Swami Maharaj received a key to the City of Toronto from Mayor John Tory on Saturday. According to CBC News Mahant Swami Maharaj is the sixth spiritual guru of Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), an organisation based on Hindu principles, which has hosted several charitable events in the city, including walkathons, disaster relief operations and blood donation drives.

The report adds that Trudeau commended the diversity that this landmark adds to the nation.

"How remarkable and fitting it is that when visitors come to Canada through our largest airport, Pearson International, one of the first Canadian sights people see off Highway 427 is this mandir," said Trudeau, adding "I for one could not be more proud."

"I am honoured to recognise his Holiness' global and Toronto-based humanitarian, charitable, and community-building efforts through BAPS Charities Canada. His Holiness' great contributions have enriched Toronto," Mayor Tory said in a statement.

BAPS is a socio-spiritual Hindu organisation with its roots in the Vedas. According to its website, its universal work through a global network of 3,850 centres has received many national and international awards and even an affiliation with the United Nations.

With inputs from agencies.
Moscow: Pakistan's restive Balochistan province has received a Mi-171E non-combat helicopter from a Russian firm, the second such chopper delivered to the country this year, a media report has said.

The Mi-171 is a civilian variant of the Mi-17 military cargo helicopter, which is already in service in the Pakistan Army.

"I am confident the convertible Mi-171E handed over to the customer will perform decently when accomplishing any missions, whether in passenger and freight carriage or in medical, search and rescue operations," Chief Executive Officer of Russian Helicopters Andrei Boginsky was quoted as saying by the Russia's TASS news agency.

In the case of a medical emergency, the chopper can be used as an ambulance as it has the capacity to carry 14 stretchers if seats are replaced.

Russian Helicopters made the helicopter supply contract with the government of Balochistan province in December 2016.

The helicopter was built in the convertible option. The helicopter cabin can be converted from a freight one to a VIP cabin with 13 seats and a flight attendant at customers option within the short period.

Mi-171E can carry up to 27 passengers and up to four tonnes of cargo inside the cabin or on the external suspension in its transport version. Three points for direct deployment provide quick landing of paratroopers and rescuers when the helicopter is hovering, it said.

The Mi-17 is widely used across the world due to its reliability and ability to operate in all climates and could be used by the provincial government to transport cargo or passengers or as an emergency response aircraft.

Russian Helicopters has sold Mi-171E helicopters to several countries, including China.

Balochistan has also been facing insurgency by Baloch nationalists and Islamist militants.

Earlier this year, on 13 February, a blast took place near the Saryab Bridge in Karachi killing two personnel of the bomb disposal squad and leaving 11 injured.
London: Anjem Choudary, a notorious Islamist hate preacher of Pakistani origin jailed for propagating terror last year, has become one of the first extremists to be moved to Britain's new isolation jail unit, according to a media report on Sunday.

Choudary, now 50, was jailed for five and a half years in September last year for urging Muslims to support the Islamic State. The judge in his ruling then said that the "calculating and dangerous" man should be locked up behind bars.

Among Choudary's followers was one of the five attackers who stormed a cafe in Bangladesh capital Dhaka in July last year and killed 22 people, including an Indian girl.

Also among his followers was Indian-origin Islamic State fighter Siddhartha Dhar, whom the UK media dubbed 'Jihadi Sid'. The British Hindu converted to Islam and now goes by the name Abu Rumaysah.

Choudary has become the first known Islamist to be moved to a "separation centre" at HMP Frankland, a high-security prison in County Durham, northeast England, The Sunday Times reported.

He was moved to the unit after he refused to stop preaching his extremist views despite being warned by prison authorities, the newspaper reported.

Frankland's separation centre is the first of three in high security units. The other two are Woodhill, in Milton Keynes, which is expected to open in September, and Full Sutton, in Yorkshire.

Ian Acheson, who conducted the UK government's review into prison extremism, said separating "subversive hate preachers from their audience is a necessary step to prevent the spread of Islamist extremism".

But he added, "The possibility of hope and change is important, not just as a moral abstraction but because it will keep staff and prisoners safer."

The ministry of justice has refused to officially identify prisoners in Frankland's separation centre.
Islamabad: Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has admitted before the Supreme Court that he had worked for a UAE-based company till 2013 and also had a work permit (Iqama) for it at the time.

In a written reply submitted in the apex court through his counsels Khawaja Haris, Amjad Pervaiz and Saad Hashmi, Sharif rejected the allegation that he had concealed his employment as claimed by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that probed the ruling family's offshore assets.

"The Iqama and Respondent No 1 (Prime minister)'s employment with Capital FZE is reflected in the copies of his passport annexed with the nomination forms submitted for the General Elections 2013," reads the reply submitted on Saturday  just a day after the top court reserved its judgment in the Panama gate case, the Dawn reported.

On Friday, Khawaja Haris requested a three-judge bench of the top court to allow them to submit a written response to the JIT findings.

Earlier, instead of responding to the JIT's damning report with regard to his and his family's alleged graft, Sharif had raised legal objections to the JIT report and its members. However, in his fresh reply, the prime minister told the apex court that his son, Hassan Nawaz, was "owner, director & secretary and the authorised signatory" of Capital FZE.

"Respondent No 1 was neither a shareholder in, nor a director or a secretary of Capital FZE. Nor was he ever an authorised signatory of the company," it adds.

Giving an explanation regarding his designation as Capital FZE's "Chairman of the Board", the prime minister told the bench that this was only a ceremonial office acquired in 2007 when he was in exile, and had nothing to do with the running of the company or supervising its affairs.

The reply further says this ceremonial status of Sharif came to an end with the dissolution of Capital FZE - a process which began in July 2013 and ended in July 2014.

The prime minister also contended that matters relating to Hudabiya Paper Mills Limited (HPML) were closed.

Explaining the reasons for increase in his wealth from Pakistani Rs 8.33 million to Rs 68.027 million in 1992-93, he said in 1992 the Ittefaq Group was divided amongst seven families, including that of Mian Sharif, the prime minister's father.

After this division, Sharif claimed, he not only received his shares in the companies, which was set up by his father but also shares of his daughter, Asma Dar, and son, Hassan, as both children were minors at the time.

Sharif also denied that he had ever been the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Chaudhry Sugar Mills Limited (CSML). However, Sharif admitted, he remained a shareholder in CSML till June 2016.

"It is for this reason that the business name' is stated to be CSML. This does not, in any way, infer that the Respondent No 1 was the CEO of CSML," he said.

Sharif also requested the SC to dismiss all the petitions seeking his disqualification.
New Delhi: A Tibetan student who self-immolated in an act of protest against Chinese rule in the Himalayan region has died in an Indian hospital, a doctor said Sunday.

Tenzin Choeying, 19, succumbed to critical burn injuries in New Delhi a week after shouting "Victory to Tibet" and setting fire to himself at a university campus in Varanasi, in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state.

"He died on Saturday days after he was shifted from a Varanasi hospital for specialised treatment," Anil Rai, medical superintendent at Safdarjung hospital, told AFP.

His body will be handed over to the authorities after a postmortem, Rai added.

Self-immolation has regularly been used as a protest against China's actions in Tibet.

The International Campaign for Tibet  which claims 150 Tibetans have self-immolated since since 2009  said Choeying shouted "Victory to Tibet" before setting himself on fire.

Varanasi police, quoting eyewitnesses, said the 19-year-old yelled "freedom" before dousing himself with kerosene and setting himself ablaze on 14 July.

They were investigating the motive behind the suicide, including recent exam failures as being a possible cause for his actions.

China says its troops "liberated" Tibet in 1951, but many Tibetans accuse the government of religious repression and eroding their culture.China rejects the accusations and accuses the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader who lives in exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala, of inciting self-immolations in a bid to split Tibet from the rest of the nation.

Choeying was the youngest of four siblings from a Tibetan family living in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

Tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees live in Indian settlements, the biggest of which is in southern Karnataka state. A young farmer self-immolated in southwest China in March, the first Tibetan to set themselves on fire in 2017. Choeying is the not the first Tibetan to set himself on fire in India.

Last year a schoolboy set himself on fire in the northern city of Dehradun to protest against Chinese rule in the Himalayan region.
Istanbul: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday embarked on a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no-one had an interest in prolonging the crisis.

Erdogan will first meet the Saudi leadership in Jeddah before moving on to Kuwait and then visiting Qatar on Monday for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began.

"No-one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," said Erdogan at Istanbul airport before leaving on the two-day trip.

He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying it had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said.

On 5 June, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shia rival Iran. Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

Over the last years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has sped up the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

'Saudi has big role'

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan is also due to meet his son Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

The Qatar emir said on Friday he was ready for talks to resolve the crisis so long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.

Erdogan is likely to get a warm welcome in Doha where Turkey has been loudly applauded for sending in food, including fruit, dairy and poultry products by ship and by plane to help Doha beat an embargo.

Turkey has also benefited, with its exports to Qatar doubling in the last month to over $50 million. According to the economy ministry, Ankara has sent some 200 cargo planes filled with aid since the crisis began.
Washington: US Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on legislation that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday, in a bill that would limit any potential effort by President Donald Trump to try to lift sanctions against Moscow.

The Countering Iran's Destabilising Activities Act, which was passed by the Senate a month ago, was held up in the House of Representatives after Republicans proposed including North Korea sanctions in the bill.

The House is set to vote on Tuesday on a package of bills on sanctions covering Russia, Iran and North Korea, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthys office. The measure will "hold them accountable for their dangerous actions," McCarthy said in a statement Saturday.

Under the proposed bill, Trump must submit to Congress a report on proposed actions that would "significantly alter" US foreign policy in connection with Russia, including easing sanctions or returning diplomatic properties in Maryland and New York that former President Barack Obama ordered vacated in December.

Congress would have at least 30 days to hold hearings and then vote to uphold or reject Trumps proposed changes.

Many lawmakers hope the bill will send a message to Trump to keep a strong line against Russia.

Trump, who met Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month and said it was an "honor" to meet him, has been criticised for seeking to reset US-Russian relations. His administration has been bogged down by ongoing investigations of possible ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia.

With the bill, Republicans and Democrats are seeking to punish Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea, a peninsula belong to Ukraine, and for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Putin has denied any meddling in the US democratic process last year. Trump has said that his campaign did not collude with Russia.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Russia's "outrageous and unacceptable" behavior in the 2016 US election and in Europe "demand that we have strong statutory sanctions enacted as soon as possible."

Even so, she expressed concerns that by including North Korea the legislation could face procedural delays in the Senate.

Senior Republican lawmakers did not immediately comment on the latest bill.

In Brussels, the European Union sounded an alarm about the US moves to step up sanctions on Russia, urging Washington to coordinate with its Group of 7 partners.

The European Commission, the EU's executive body, warned of possibly "wide and indiscriminate" "unintended consequences," notably on the EU's efforts to diversify energy sources away from Russia.

McCarthy and Ed Royce, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement the revised bill helps "bolster the energy security of our European allies by maintaining their access to key energy resources outside of Russia."

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said a strong sanctions bill "is essential," and said in a statement that he expects "the House and Senate will act on this legislation promptly, on a broad bipartisan basis."

Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the agreement was reached after "intense negotiations."

"A nearly united Congress is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message," he said in a statement.
Washington: The Donald Trump administration's new communications director Anthony Scaramucci said he wants to reset ties with the media by creating "an era of a new good feeling", but he would not ask the US president to change his style.

Scaramucci, during his introductory appearance at the White House on Friday, had expressed a desire to improve the administration's relationship with the media, which has hit a new low over several issues, including Donald Trump's repeated accusations that some US news outlets reported what he calls "fake news".

The 53-year-old soft-speaking New York financier told two American news networks that the administration needed to deliver its message a "little bit differently".

But he added that he would not want to change Trump's style of communication. "He is 71. We're not going to change him. The last time I checked, he won the presidency quite handily. He's going to win it again in 2020. He's our guy. And so how to learn to work with and operate with him," he told CNN. "The president likes speaking from the heart. He likes telling what he likes and he dislikes. I just think we need to deliver the messaging a little bit differently than we have been doing it in the past," Scaramucci told the network.

Appearing on Fox News, he said there was a need to reset the ties with the media and "create a more positive mojo". Responding to a question from the interviewer, Scaramucci said he wants "the president to be the president". "I want him to express the full nature of his personality. Corey Lewandowski used to say early on, on the campaign, 'let Trump be Trump'. My point is if he wants to talk about things like that, I'm not going to want to stop him or be able to stop him. I want to be there to help aid and abet his agenda," he said.

Though he will officially begin on 15 August, Scaramucci said he would have his first meeting with his communications team and would tell them "Hey, I don't like these leaks. And so we're going to stop the leaks. And, if we don't stop the leaks, I'm going to stop you".

"In some ways, we want to deescalate things and have there be a level of diplomacy. In other ways, we want it to be very hard-hitting and war-like. So it's sort of a blend of those two things," he told the network.

Scaramucci's appointment as the Trump administration's communications director coincided with the resignation of the press secretary, Sean Spicer, whose six-month controversial tenure saw several run-ins with the media. Spicer was mocked on popular television shows for his aggressive responses to journalists.

Spicer reportedly resigned because he was opposed to Scaramucci, whom he had to report to as press secretary.
We value your privacy.

Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy.
It's nice to see cooperation in politics for once.United Conservative Party A Step Closer As Alberta PCs, Wildrose Vote To MergeRED DEER, Alta.  Alberta's political landscape profoundly shifted Saturday as its two main conservative parties  enemies for a decade  overwhelmingly agreed to end their feud and work as one to defeat Premier Rachel Notley's NDP.In separate votes, members of the Wildrose party and the Progressive Conservatives voted in a landslide to merge into the new United Conservative Party.Wildrose supporters voted 95.4 per cent in results announced at a hotel in Red Deer late Saturday afternoon.About two hours later, Progressive Conservative Leader Jason Kenney announced at Calgary's Stampede Grounds that 95 per cent of his members ratified the proposed deal, which had been brokered by both parties in May.
Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday took aim at the Senate Republican health care bill, saying the legislation, in its current form, wont work.

I think it keeps the fundamental flaw of ObamaCare, the death spiral will continue and were going to subsidize it, Paul, the Kentucky Republican, told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures.

Paul, who spent years working as an ophthalmologist before turning to politics, advocates for the use of association health care planswhere people would not have to individually buy insurance, but instead could purchase it through an organization or trade groupin an effort to make sure those left uninsured by the GOP health plan and ObamaCare would have medical coverage.

If you let people join associations, I think you can dramatically bring down the prices I think we can get extraordinary savings in health insurance if we let people band together, he said. That is one way I think we can help people get insurance in that interim period and really ongoing.

The Kentucky senator warned that if the current bill passes, it could have a detrimental impact on the next election for GOP lawmakers who currently hold the majority in both the House and Senate.

Theres less money from the government going to poor people, but theres more money from the government going to rich people who run insurance companies, Paul explained. I think when voters find out that Republicans gave billions of dollars to rich insurance companies and took money away from poor people getting Medicaid, I think thats a disaster.
Jennifer Lopez is receiving kudos from fans and members of the non-binary community after using gender-neutral pronouns describing her sisters child Brendan in an Instagram post.

This is Brendan my sister Leslies second child!! the Shades of Blue actress captioned a photo of Brendan beaming at the Global Young Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C. They were the one person selected to represent their school at #globalyoungleadersconference in Washington DC!! And I couldnt be more proud!!!

Brendan is strong and smart and loving and obviously a leader!!, she continued. Titi Jenn loves you!! #superproudauntie #familia.

The fact that you are using their pronouns correctly means so much to someone like me, whose family, while well intentioned, doesnt always get it right. you are leading by example, and we see you! a fan wrote.

Thank you for using the correct pronoun! While you are fabulous and talented, this post also demonstrates your sensitivity and education, wrote one user.

This means the world to me, gushed another. Thank you for shining your light on Brendan and sharing their accomplishments and beauty with the world!
A Kansas woman claims she won a contest sponsored by a company created by the reality TV star Kat Von D -- but later was disqualified over a post on her Instagram account which supported then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Makeup artist Gypsy Freeman, of Wichita, took screenshots which show she won the national Saint + Sinner Contest sponsored by Kat Von D Beauty in June, according to the Wichita Eagle.

Its definitely bigotry  its everything that theyre calling us, theyre doing, Freeman told the newspaper. Its a huge case of hypocrisy.

TEXAS MAN ORDERED TO PAY $65G IN CHILD SUPPORT FOR CHILD THAT ISN'T HIS

Freeman won with an image of an angelic figure beside a girl in an all-black outfit and thick mascara. The winner and a guest were supposed was supposed to be flown to a makeup line launch party in Los Angeles, according to the report.

Instagram users later reportedly discovered Freeman's pro-Trump post from Election Day in November.

Freeman claims that Von D later messaged her, saying she'd drawn a personal line in the sand between myself and anyone who supports that man.

She also says that the woman who photographed Freemans entry was invited in her stead and went to the party, according to the Eagle.

Freeman said it was really unfortunate politics were brought into the competition where I never brought it into the art contest.

Sunday messages seeking comment from Kat Von D Beauty's parent company Kendo Holdings were not immediately returned.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Florida man said he has a "new appreciation of life" after he nearly died when he contracted a flesh-eating bacteria through blisters while hiking in New Hampshire.

Wayne Atkins, 32, told WSVN on Thursday he went hiking on June 4 in New Hampshire during a family wedding celebration.

"I get blisters all the time, so I didnt think anything of it," Atkins told the news station.

MAN DIES FROM FLESH-EATING BACTERIA AFTER SWIMMING WITH NEW TATTOO

He kept hiking and felt fine afterward despite the blisters. But he started feeling sick when he returned to Miami, according to WSVN. He went to the hospital, where doctors discovered the flesh-eating bacteria devouring his internal organs.

"Pretty much every organ in his body was not functioning," Dr. Jonathan Auerbach told WSVN. "So the bacteria tracks up the body, digesting the body as it goes."

Auerbach added that the infection could be deadly if it isn't treated properly. Doctors believe the bacteria entered Atkins' body through the blisters.

WOMAN CONTRACTS FLESH-EATING BACTERIA WHILE FISHING OFF ALABAMA COAST

Atkins was in a coma as doctors worked to stop the flesh-eating bacteria from causing more damage. Antibiotics and surgery successfully removed it in Atkins.

"I definitely have a new appreciation of life after going through this experience, 'cause it's scary to know that I was so close to death," Atkins said.

"I dont think Ill ever want to play the Lotto again, if thats what hitting the jackpot feels like," he added.
This week the media got the scalp they wanted. Next to President Donald Trump, journalists have been out to get Sean Spicer more than any other member of the administration. Friday, they got their wish. In effect, journalists made an extremely difficult job impossible.

Spicer became a favorite media target for either press room theatrics from CNNs Jim Acosta (D-Diva) or lampooning by "Saturday Night Live." The liberal press hated everything Spicer did -- from refusing to bow to the traditional order of questions to journalists and their news organizations to calling on conservative outlets and using Skype to bring in other voices.

The press corps has been gunning for Spicer since Trump took office. When Spicer battled with reporters over the size of the inaugural crowd, the media went absolutely nuts.

ABCs Jonathan Karl let everyone know the press was out for blood by asking, Is it your intention to always tell the truth from that podium? And will you pledge never to knowingly say something that is not factual? (He repeated a version of that question to incoming Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci when he stood in the press briefing room on Friday afternoon.)

On the day of Karl's question to Spicer ABC, CBS and NBC then spent 20 minutes and 18 seconds on Spicers press room fight. That meant they gave 12 times as much coverage to their own egos over Trump signing an Affordable Care Act executive order that reined in penalties. Journalists began an immediate whisper campaign claiming Trump was unhappy with his press secretary.

Washington Post reporter and alleged stand-up comedian Elahe Izadi hammered Spicer. She claimed, Melissa McCarthys frustrated, unhinged parody of White House press secretary Sean Spicer on last weekends 'SNL' unsettled the White House and bothered Trump. Broadcast networks devoted more than 10 minutes of their evening news shows to McCarthys attacks on Spicer.

CNN and inside-the-Beltway journalists became obsessed with who Spicer would call on. At briefings, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has sought out friendly questioners, wrote Brian Stelter. CNN's "New Day" host Chris Cuomo grumbled that Spicer was relying on outlets that werent heavy hitters.

As the relationship between Spicer and the press worsened, Acosta and others tried to act out to get attention. Spicers critiques of the press also got more pointed. He called out news outlets for their biased ObamaCare coverage making it seem like it's all rainbows and puppies.

The problems escalated and the press reveled in them. CNN hired Spicer combatant April Ryan less than a week after she and the press secretary had a minor dust-up. "The Hills" Cristina Marcos even tweeted out a typo that referred to Spicer as Hitler.

In response to reporters showing off during the press briefings, the White House turned off the daily show and made it more of a normal press briefing. That outraged reporters. CNN responded by using a sketch artist.

CNNs Acosta went berserk in late June and Spicer humiliated him. There's no camera on, Jim, said Spicer. That didnt stop CNNs camera hog. Maybe we should turn the cameras on, Sean! Why don't we turn the cameras on? Why don't we turn the cameras on? Why not turn the cameras on, Sean? Theyre in the room, the lights are on, said Acosta. Spicer was quoted in The Washington Post as saying Acostas antics were hurting the profession.

Now Acosta and others will soon be yelling at newly minted Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And it starts all over again. But journalists will likely redouble their efforts because they are now convinced that a six-month temper tantrum can take down a press secretary they dont like.
In the first six months of this administration, President Donald Trump has fought every day to deliver on his promises to the American people. At a historic pace, this president has taken bold action to restore prosperity, keep Americans safe and secure, and hold government accountable.

President Trump has signed more than 40 bills and nearly 40 executive orders on everything from health care to energy, infrastructure and more.

While the previous administration turned to federal agencies to enact its agenda, President Trump has signed more laws to slash through federal red tape than any president in American history and has saved businesses up to $18 billion a year in costs.

And whereas the last administration stifled the use of Americas vast energy resources, President Trump has put a renewed emphasis on American energy  approving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, rolling back the Clean Power Plan, and putting America First by withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.

President Trump inherited an economy that would barely budge  but under his watch, American businesses small and large have already created more than 800,000 new jobs since January. Company after company is responding to the presidents agenda with optimism  investing billions of dollars in American jobs, American workers and Americas future.

As the father of a United States Marine, I couldnt be more proud to serve alongside a president who cares so deeply about the men and women of the armed forces of the United States of America.

After years of so-called sequestration and budget cuts to our armed forces, President Trump has already signed the largest increase in defense spending in nearly 10 years and called for the greatest investment in military readiness since the days of President Ronald Reagan.

It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve as vice president to a president who is fighting every single day to restore an America of freedom, prosperity and opportunity for all.

And this president calls our enemy by its name  radical Islamic terrorism  and with the leadership of this commander-in-chief our armed forces are taking the fight to ISIS on our terms on their soil.

When it comes to security here in the homeland, President Trump has taken decisive steps to secure our borders and enforce our laws  a direct contrast with the previous administration.

And while illegal immigration was rampant in recent years, our administration has been working with local law enforcement to take drug dealers, members of gangs like MS-13, and other violent criminals off our streets. Illegal crossings at our southern border are down by more than 60 percent since the start of this year.

After the previous president tried to stack the courts with liberal jurists, our president made a commitment to appoint federal judges who will uphold the Constitution and the God-given liberties enshrined there. Look no further than the newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch.

President Trumps accomplishments are nothing short of historic. But as the president likes to say, at this White House that's just what we call a good start.

President Trump will not rest and he will not relent until we keep our promise to the American people and repeal and replace ObamaCare.

President Trump has called on the Congress to do its job, and we will continue to work with both the House and Senate to give the American people health care reform built on the principles of personal responsibility, free-market competition and state-based reforms.

President Trump is firmly committed to passing the largest tax cut since the days of President Reagan. Were going to cut taxes across the board for working families, small businesses and family farms.

Well simplify the tax code. Well eliminate the alternative minimum tax. Well make the code flatter and fairer for everyone. And under President Trump, we will repeal death taxes once and for all.

And to get this economy moving again, were going to cut business taxes in America so that companies in this country can compete with companies around the world and create good jobs right here in America.

Well end the broken system that penalizes companies for calling America home. And well cut taxes on trillions of dollars that are locked away overseas so that American businesses can invest in Americas future.

It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve as vice president to a president who is fighting every single day to restore an America of freedom, prosperity and opportunity for all.

So with boundless faith in the American people, with faith in President Trumps vision and determination, and with faith in God who has ever watched over this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, I say with confidence: We will make America safe again. We will make America prosperous again. And to borrow a phrase, we will Make America Great Again.
A U.S. Senate panel has reached an agreement with President Trumps eldest son and his former campaign manager that makes it appear unlikely they will testify next week in connection with the probe into possible Trump administration ties to Russia.

A statement released Friday by the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee said the arrangement means the panel no longer needs to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. and former campaign manager Paul Manafort for Wednesday's hearing. But the commitee suggests it might invite Trump Jr. and Manafort to appear at a future public hearing.

Both Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, through their attorneys, have agreed to negotiate to provide the committee with documents and be interviewed by committee members and staff prior to a public hearing, the statement from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said. Therefore, we will not issue subpoenas for them tonight requiring their presence at Wednesdays hearing but reserve the right to do so in the future.

Both Trump Jr. and Manafort were invited to testify at the committee's July 26 hearing. The committee suggested it would subpoena them if they didn't voluntarily testify.

Feinstein tweeted Friday afternoon, The Judiciary Committee will talk to Trump Jr. & Manafort before they testify in public, but we will get answers.

Both Trump Jr. and Manafort have come under scrutiny following revelations that they attended a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian attorney and at least five other people.

The Trump administration has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Russia.

According to emails released by Trump Jr., the prospect of potentially damaging information about 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was touted as a reason for the meaning. But Trump Jr. later said the focus of the meeting turned to Russian adoptions.

Meanwhile, President Trumps son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, who also attended the meeting in Trump Tower, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday and the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, in connection with their Russia probes.
What is coolsculpting? How to get desired results? If you are confused about the treatment,
Congressional Republicans and Democrats announced Saturday that they had agreed to a package of sanctions meant to punish Russia for its actions during last year's presidential campaign, as well as Moscow's military adventures in Ukraine and Syria.

The bill also includes stiff economic penalties against Iran and North Korea. The sanctions targeting Russia, however, have drawn the most attention due to President Donald Trump's persistent push for warmer relations with President Vladimir Putin and ongoing investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign.

The White House had objected to a key section of the bill that would mandate a congressional review if Trump attempted to ease or end the sanctions against Moscow. But lawmakers from both parties opted to keep the sanctions review due to wariness over the relationship between Trump and Putin.

It was not immediately clear whether Trump would veto the bill, an action that would spark an outcry from both parties and risk a potential override.

"The legislation ensures that both the majority and minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the administration's implementation of sanctions," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the No. 2 House Democrat.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., posted a legislative business schedule that shows the sanctions bill will be voted on Tuesday. McCarthy had pushed to add the North Korea sanctions to the package. The House had overwhelmingly passed legislation in May to hit Pyongyang with additional economic sanctions, but the Senate had yet to take up the bill.



The Senate last month passed sanctions legislation that targeted only Russia and Iran. Congressional aides said there may be resistance among Senate Republicans to adding the North Korea penalties, but it remained unclear whether those concerns would further stall the legislation. The aides were not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

"North Korea, Iran and Russia have in different ways all threatened their neighbors and actively sought to undermine American interests," McCarthy and Rep. Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement. "The bill the House will vote on next week will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions."



The negotiators also addressed concerns voiced by American oil and natural gas companies that sanctions specific to Russia's energy sector could backfire on them to Moscow's benefit. The bill raises the threshold for when U.S. firms would be prohibited from being part of energy projects that also included Russian businesses.

Although there is widespread support for the legislation, the bill stalled after it cleared the Senate over constitutional questions and bickering over technical details. In particular, House Democrats charged that GOP leaders had cut them out of the congressional review, a complaint Republicans rejected.

The review requirement in the sanctions bill is styled after 2015 legislation pushed by Republicans and approved in the Senate that gave Congress a vote on whether then-President Barack Obama could lift sanctions against Iran.

That measure reflected Republican complaints that Obama had overstepped the power of the presidency and needed to be checked by Congress.

According to the bill, Trump is required to send Congress a report explaining why he wants to suspend or terminate a particular set of sanctions. Lawmakers would then have 30 days to decide whether to allow the move or reject it.

Top Capitol Hill Democrats joined Hoyer in offering qualified support for the measure.

Russias ... behavior in our election and in Europe demands that we have strong, statutory sanctions enacted as soon as possible, said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. I am concerned by changes (to the Senate bill) insisted upon by Republicans that give the GOP leadership the sole power to originate actions in the House to prevent the Trump Administration from rolling back sanctions."

The California Democrat suggested her party supports tougher sanctions on North Korea that the House has already passed, but that putting them in the large bill could result in procedural delays in the Senate.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday that he would have preferred the House adopt the upper chambers bill but welcomed the effort.

A nearly united Congress is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message, Cardin said.

He also said proposed changes to the Senate bill have helped to clarify the intent of Members of Congress as well as express solidarity with our closest allies in countering Russian aggression and holding the Kremlin accountable for their destabilizing activities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday said inaction is not an option when it comes to ObamaCare, as the administration pressures senators to vote to begin debate on repealing former President Barack Obamas health care law in the coming days.

Now, this week, the Senate will vote to begin the debate to repeal and replace ObamaCare once and for all, Pence said in Columbus, Ohio at the Ohio Republican Party State Dinner. The president and I are calling on every member of the Senate to support that measure.

He added, Republicans know inaction is not an option. America needs to be delivered from ObamaCare and Congress needs to act to repeal and replace ObamaCare and they need to do it now.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the Senate will hold a procedural vote to repeal ObamaCare in the upcoming week. This procedural vote, known as a motion to proceed, starts debate on a bill.

The Senate Republicans' latest bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare collapsed last week after too many Republican senators objected to its details. In response, President Trump has called on Congress to just repeal the law and figure out a replacement later.

But McConnell may not have the votes for this effort either: a number of Republicans have signaled they are against legislation that would repeal ObamaCare without offering a replacement.

Republicans have 52 seats in the Senate. McConnell can lose only two Republican votes if all Democrats vote against the effort.

Speaking Saturday about the effort to pass health care legislation, Pence said: The truth is ObamaCare has failed. And ObamaCare must go. Now, the House of Representatives, these great congressmen here, have already done their work.

He painted Democrats as obstructionists and called on the Republicans in attendance to work to defeat the states Democratic senator.

Its important to note in this moment, though, that Republicans have faced opposition from every single Democrat in the House and Senate, including Ohios own Sen. Sherrod Brown, Pence said.

He added, So could you do America a favor? Lets retire Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2018 and give Ohio two great Republican senators.

Pence, who served in the House of Representatives before being elected governor of Indiana, warned the Republicans in attendance against the possibility of Democrats reclaiming control of Congress.

You know, you really dont have to wonder what would happen if Democrats retook the Congress, he said. I was there the last time it happened. The last time Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats ran the Congress. They nearly ran America into the ground.

At the beginning of his speech, Pence offered praise for the states Republican governor, John Kasich, with whom he had a public back-and-forth earlier in the week over the state of health care in Ohio.

You know, Ive known your governor for a long time, Pence said. And John and I occasionally have differences of opinion. You know, theres one thing we can all agree on. Ohio is a great state and John Kasich has done a great job as governor of the state of Ohio.
Russian ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak -- a high-profile figure in the controversy over Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election -- has concluded his assignment in Washington.

The Russian Embassy in Washington announced on Twitter that Kislyak's tenure ended on Saturday.

Kislyak's successor has not been announced, although it is widely expected to be Anatoly Antonov, a deputy foreign minister and former deputy defense minister seen as a hardliner regarding the United States.

A Washington fixture with a sprawling network, Kislyak has emerged as a central figure in the investigations into Russian interference in the election and whether any Trump associates were involved.

President Trump has repeatedly dismissed the story as "fake news," but the investigations have shown no signs of stopping, with a focus on top aides heightening.

Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired after the White House concluded he had not been truthful about conversations he had with Kislyak. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation after acknowledging two previously undisclosed contacts with Kislyak.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Kislyak said he discussed election-related issues with Sessions when the men met last year. The Post cited anonymous U.S. officials who described U.S. intelligence intercepts of Kislyak's descriptions of his meetings with Sessions.

The Justice Department said Sessions stands by his previous assertion that he never had conversations with Russian officials about any type of interference with the election.

The president's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has also been criticized for failing to immediately disclose a meeting with Kislyak on his security clearance questionnaire. In that December meeting, he proposed a secret back channel between the Kremlin and the Trump transition team.

During a long diplomatic career, Kislyak has led the life of a fairly typical global envoy, making himself a reliable presence on the circuit of receptions, teas and forums that make up the calendar of any ambassador.

Kislyak, who was appointed to his post in 2008, is regularly spotted walking around town, heading to and from meetings. Early in his tenure, he often opened the doors of the Russian Embassy, hosting dinners for foreign policy professionals, Pentagon officials, journalists and Capitol Hill staffers.

His first foreign posting was to New York where he worked at the Soviet delegation at the United Nations in the early 1980s. He spent the following years as the first secretary and then councilor at the Soviet Embassy in Washington before returning to Moscow in 1989, where he took a succession of senior jobs at the Foreign Ministry.

He did a stint as Russian ambassador to Belgium and simultaneously served as Moscow's envoy at NATO. He then returned to Moscow to serve as a deputy foreign minister, overseeing relations with the United States and arms control issues before being sent to Washington.
Sen. John Thune said Sunday he thinks President Trump will sign a bipartisan House and Senate measure to impose sweeping sanctions on Russia and that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this week will finally hold a vote on overhauling ObamaCare.

This is a bill that will go to the presidents desk, and he should sign it into law, Thune, R-S.D., a member of GOP Senate leadership, told Fox News Sunday. The administration will come to the conclusion that Congress has: We need to sanction Russia for meddling in the election. Its in the presidents best interest.

Thune spoke after House and Senate negotiators said Saturday that they had agreed on a sanctions package, imposed because of Russia meddling in the 2016 White House race and for its military actions in Syria and neighboring Ukraine.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly this spring in support of its measure. The congressional negotiations agreed, despite the House making changes to the Senate bill, including rolling the Russian sanctions into a bill that includes sanctions on Iran and North Korea.

The House is set on Tuesday to formally introduce its measure.

Another major sticking point was the measures congressional review, which could be used if Trump attempted to veto or ease or end the sanctions against Moscow, considering the presidents push for warmer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The negotiators from both parties opted to keep the sanctions review due to wariness over the relationship between Trump and Putin.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News Sunday that Congress would override a Trump veto.

New White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci told CNN's "State of the Union" that he didn't know whether Trump would sign the sanctions bill.

On the effort in the GOP-led Senate to overhaul ObamaCare, Thune said McConnell will hold a vote this week to open debate on the measure.

McConnell, R-Ky., has failed twice this summer, and since Trump became president, to open debate on an overhaul measure. He failed on the first overhaul measure and on a new, revised one.

McConnell needs support from at least 50 of the chambers 52 GOP senators, with Vice President Pence casting the deciding vote.

Thune suggested McConnell is still working on a strategy for putting the measure to a vote. But he vowed that congressional Republicans, as promised to voters, will fully repeal and replace ObamaCare, the 2010 health care law struggling under rising insurance rates while offering Americans fewer policy options.

We are going to vote to repeal and replace, he said. Its not a question of if, but a question of when. ObamaCare is in a death spiral."

Cardin, like other Democrats, called for a bipartisan effort, including hearings to fix ObamaCare, not repeal it.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump slammed Democrats for what he called "laughing" over the Russia investigations while attacking fellow Republicans for doing "very little" to protect him, in a pair of new tweets Sunday afternoon.

The president repeated his assertion that the probes are a "Witch Hunt."

"Two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians," he tweeted.

Trump also had some choice words for the GOP.

"It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President," he wrote.

Trump, some of his family members and his associates are under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI and separate Congressional panels looking into potential collusion between his campaign and the Russian government.

U.S. intelligence agencies have already concluded that Russia used a combination of hacking and disinformation to influence the 2016 presidential election to boost Trump's candidacy and damage Hillary Clinton's.

Congressional lawmakers say Trump's eldest son and his former campaign chairman won't be forced to testify publicly next week as part of the investigations. Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort are discussing undergoing a private interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee's chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, also say they are negotiating with Trump Jr. and Manafort about possibly turning over documents.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and top White House aide, is scheduled to speak behind closed doors with the Senate intelligence committee on Monday and the House intelligence committee on Tuesday.

Later in the day, the president directed his Twitter anger at the New York Times and Washington Post, and pressured Republicans again to pass a replacement to ObamaCare.

"It's hard to read the Failing New York Times or the Amazon Washington Post because every story/opinion, even if should be positive, is bad!" the president tweeted Sunday night. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos created the holding company that owns the Post.

"If Republicans don't Repeal and Replace the disastrous ObamaCare, the repercussions will be far greater than any of them understand!" Trump also wrote.
This is a rush transcript from "Fox News Sunday," July 23, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

CHRIS WALLACE, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY" HOST: Im Chris Wallace.

A shakeup inside the White House. Six months in, where does the Trump agenda stand and will it be overwhelmed by the Russia investigation?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I think were going to get the health care done. I also think were going to get tax reform done. And whatever else is on the presidents agenda, were going to work very, very hard, very studiously here to make it happen.

WALLACE (voice-over): Well discuss the president's plans and is ongoing relationship with the media with the new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

Then special counsel Robert Mueller expands his investigation, looking into possible Russian ties to Trump businesses -- as the president criticizes his attorney general and warns the investigators.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: Let's go back to what the purpose of the investigation was -- Russian interference in our election.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Sessions should have never recused himself.

JEFF SESSIONS, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I have the honor of serving as attorney general and I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate.

WALLACE: Well discuss the latest developments on Russia with Republican Senator John Thune and Democratic Senator Ben Cardin.

(on camera): Plus, the presidents legislative goals are stalled as repeal and replace creates a logjam in Congress.

(voice-over): Well ask our Sunday panel if Senate Republicans can bring their health care bill back from the dead.

All, right now, on "Fox News Sunday."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: And hello again from Fox News in Washington.

President Trump has hit the six-month mark with his push to repeal and replace ObamaCare stalled in the Senate and investigations were expanding into possible links with the Russians. Little wonder then the president has decided to shake up his White House staff.

Joining me now to discuss the Trump agenda moving forward is the new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

Anthony, welcome to "Fox News Sunday."

SCARAMUCCI: It's great to be here, Chris. Thank you. Good morning.

WALLACE: Let's talk about how you see your new job. Here's what you had to say on Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCARAMUCCI: I think there has been at times a disconnect between the way we see the president and how much we love the president and the way some of you perhaps see the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: So, how do you close what you call that disconnect?

SCARAMUCCI: Well, listen, I actually don't think that's the hard part. I think the hard part is to get reorganized and figure out -- one of the first things I want to do, is mission to be (ph), weve got to get the leaks stopped, Chris. I know that it's Washington, so it's going to be impossible to stop all of them, but I think what's going on right now is a high level of unprofessionalism and it's not serving the president.

So, my three simple things is I would like to reset the culture inside the comms department so that people recognize that Im actually there to serve them and theyre going to be working with me, not for me. That's a very big distinction. And that all of us are there to serve the president of United States and his agenda.

So, first thing for me is I want to hit a cultural reset button, second thing is weve got to get the leaks stopped. If we don't get the leaks stopped -- I am a businessperson and so, I will take dramatic action to stop those leaks.

And the third thing is, Ill be traveling with the president this week and were going to focus and refine the messaging from the White House. Hes one of the most effective communicators thats never been born and were going to make sure that we get that message out directly to the American people and I think that albatross spread, the gap between how certain people think of him and how I see him -- or say like someone like Ivanka sees him, that will start to narrow soon.

WALLACE: I want to pick up on the leaks. You say youre willing to take drastic action to stop them. Now, these are leaks both coming from inside the White House and also from what's called the deep state, people in the bureaucracy, particularly the intelligence agencies or law enforcement. What kind of drastic action?

SCARAMUCCI: Im being very, very clear with people. As far as Im concerned that staff has amnesty. Well see how they do with me at the helm. If the leaks don't stop, Im going to pare down the staff because it's just not right, Chris. I think it's not fair to the president. It's actually not fair to America or the people in the government.

Im not going to be able to stop the leaks in the intergovernmental agencies and all that other stuff, that's a whole different ball of wax. But something is going on inside the White House that the president does not like and were going to fix it.

WALLACE: Well, you say pare down the staff. I mean, this isn't coming just from the communications team. Are you saying that you've been given carte blanche -- youve given authority by the president?

SCARAMUCCI: No, Im just -- Im just focused on the communications team. As far as Im concerned, it's a new start for everybody in that team and everybody in that team can stay as long as they follow the protocol of not leaking, because at the end of the day, the president is super upset about the leaks, it's unprofessional. And so, youre asking what the four steps are, thats going to be one of my first steps.

WALLACE: Do you believe that the mainstream media deliberately puts out fake news about this president?

SCARAMUCCI: There is some fake news, unfortunately. When you see the mainstream media, I think that's a very broad statement. And so, what I would like to say, and what I would like to believe, there still a level of objectivity in the mainstream media, but unfortunately, there are specific individuals that do stretch stories or do fabricate things.

Ive been the victim of it myself, and so, it's definitely there, Chris. I don't think we can dial that down, but we can use the mechanisms of social media and the president's presence in social media to hop over that if necessary.

But what I would say to you is that the good news here is that it's a fresh start for everybody. I certainly want to engage the mainstream media. I expect that theyre going to want to hold me and the White House accountable, but were going to sort of want to hold them accountable, too. So, Im hoping that it will be symmetry in that relationship.

WALLACE: You say that there are certain individuals, certain outlets. Do you want to call any of them out by name?

SCARAMUCCI: No, no. Again, it's more specific to specific stories for that matter. And so, it's not necessary to call anybody out by name. Im hoping to create an era of a new good feeling with the media, give everybody a fresh start, let's see if we can reset this and create a more positive mojo among everybody.

And again, like I said, we have a story that we want to tell. It's a phenomenal story for the American people. There's a policy agenda in place, but I think it's phenomenal for the American people.

If you look at the last six months, I think there's been some distortion in terms of how successful we've actually been and I think we want to clear that up. I think the president made that clear in his press release on Friday that we are doing very, very well, lots of the American people are super happy. And we just need to close that gap, if you will, and make that connection more forcefully.

WALLACE: Well, one of those areas where the president has said there's been a lot of fake news has been in the Russia investigation and the potential for a scandal there.

President Trump reportedly wanted you because you are a tough street fighter like he has. Is he putting together a ward staff and the White House to take on the various Russia investigations?

SCARAMUCCI: Well, listen, I sort of see this -- a two-prong as it relates to that. I mean, we want to refine our rapid response team. In some ways, we want to deescalate things and have there be a level of diplomacy. In other ways, we want it to be very hard-hitting and war-like. And so its sort of a blend of those two things, Chris.

But as it relates specifically to Russia, you know, theres certain things that I can talk about from inside the White House and theres certain things Im not allowed to talk about. And I really havent been briefed yet by White House Counsel Don McGahn as to what I can and cannot talk about --

WALLACE: Well, let me ask you --

SCARAMUCCI: Heres what Ill say to you, if you dont mind me saying this.

WALLACE: Go ahead.

SCARAMUCCI: I worked intensely on that campaign, and I think that the Russian situation is completely overblown. I was falsely accused of things related to Russia. I know other people are being falsely accused of things related to Russia. And Im confident that tomorrow when Jared Kushner speaks, and Ill keep my fingers crossed in saying this you, itll probably the last time that he has to talk about Russia.

And so for me Id like to get this behind us. Ill tell you, one of the things I do not like about Washington, I sort of feel like its scandals incorporated down in Washington, that we have to make up things about each other, Chris, so that we can personally destroy each other to make us less effective as public servants.

I dont like it all. Im going to try lead --

WALLACE: Let me interrupt for a minute. Youll learn we do this in Washington. But on the specific question, could you say that -- you know, part of it is diplomacy and part of it is hard-hitting.

Do you see anything wrong with going after the special counsel and his team when it comes to possible conflicts of interest, or when it comes to your feeling, or the presidents feeling, that he is expanding the scope of his investigation too far into the presidents business affairs?

SCARAMUCCI: I want the president to be the president, and I want him to express the full nature of his personality. Corey Lewandowski used to say early on, on the campaign, let Trump be Trump. A little disrespectful now that hes president, so lets let the president be the president.

And my point is if he wants to talk about things like that, Im not going to want to stop him or be able to stop him. I want to be there to help aid and abet his agenda.

So for me, I have a different personality style from this president in some ways; in other ways were very similar. I just want to there to be fairness and objectivity. And so, lets see how the whole thing rolls out, but my feeling about this thing is its overblown, its completely unfair, its designed to take people off message and off of our agenda. And were going to get people on our message and on our agenda.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Let me ask you one last Russia question, then I want to talk about agenda.

In a tweet this week, the president said this, this weekend. He asserted his complete power to pardon.

Question: if he and his people have done nothing wrong, why even talk about pardons?

SCARAMUCCI: See, this is one -- again, this is one of those things about Washington and its the convolution and the nature of the things. Im in the Oval Office with the president last week, were talking about that. He brought that up, he said but he doesnt have to be pardoned. Theres nobody around him that has to be pardoned. He was just making the statement about the power of pardons.

And so, now, all of the speculation and all the spin and oh, hes going to pardon himself and do all this other nonsense -- the president does not need to pardon himself.

And the reason that he doesnt need to pardon himself is he hasnt done anything wrong.

WALLACE: OK.

SCARAMUCCI: And so for me we can micro-analyze every one of the presidents tweets, thats fine, we can go in that direction, but what I want to do for people is get it back on the presidents agenda. This is a president -- this is a jobs president. This is a president whos going to help middle class families, lower middle class families.

You want to talk about gaps, Chris? There is a wide income gap that many elites do not feel, but the president feels it. And members of his staff feel it. And people in the middle of America feel it. And you know what were going to do? Were going to put policies together that close that gap.

If people want to talk about these nonsensical scandals, Ill let them do that, but Im going to be missile-locked on focusing on the presidents agenda, and helping people to understand the president the way I know him and the way I love him.

WALLACE: I got to ask you one last question, and I hesitate to do that. But does the president still have confidence in his attorney general? Hes had some tough things to say about Jeff Sessions this weekend and his decision to recuse, and then this new story in The Washington Post that the Russian ambassador told -- supposedly told his superiors that he had talked with Sessions about campaign matters, but Session denies.

So, does the president still have confidence in Sessions?

SCARAMUCCI: See, this is something that I think is super important. A question like that, I want to leave that for the president and Attorney General Sessions to talk about themselves. My guess is that hes in the seat and so therefore the president still has confidence in him.

Im sure, like all of us, theres things that Attorney General Sessions has done this president doesnt like, and let them have that conversation among themselves and hopefully we can fix it.

But, Chris, heres the thing: the good news about President Trump is that he wears a lot on his sleeve. We know exactly where he comes from and where he stands on things. The reason why the American people love him and the reason why he became president is because hes a, you know, wears heart on his sleeve type of person, very caring. But also as a business executive, he sort of tells people how he feels.

WALLACE: All right.

SCARAMUCCI: Again, another thing I dont like about Washington -- if I dont like something that youre saying and I put out a tweet saying I dont like Chris Wallace, all of a sudden now you and I have to be mortal enemies for the rest of our lives. I dont -- I dont think thats how it works in American business, and so, we sort of need to stop doing that in the political system.

WALLACE: OK, speaking of tweets, in the time we have left, lets do a lightning round. Quick questions, quick answers, Anthony.

SCARAMUCCI: Yes.

WALLACE: You have been deleting some old tweets over the last couple of days. You say, and quite understandably, because they were a distraction, they were when you werent working for Donald Trump, now you are working for Donald Trump.

But as you know, all this stuff lives forever. And I wanted to put one of them up.

SCARAMUCCI: Right.

WALLACE: In 2012, you tweeted we, the USA, has 5 percent of the worlds population but 50 percent of the worlds guns. Enough is enough. It is just common sense to apply more control.

Question: do you still believe that?

SCARAMUCCI: Well, OK, so the answer to the question, and Im a pro-Second Amendment person. My dad was a hunter. Ive got no problem with that. What I was worried about in 2012, in urban centers, if you dont have a little level of gun control, it could lead to more violence.

But truth be told, and is why I deleted the tweets, Chris, its a total distraction. Its total nonsense. When I made the decision to take this job, my politics and my political ideas do not matter at all. What matters is that I am supporting -- subordinating all of that to the presidents agenda.

Ed Koch, who lived in this city, had a great line: if you believe in nine out of the twelve things that Im for, you should vote for me. If you believe twelve out of the twelve things, you need a psychiatrist.

(LAUGHTER)

SCARAMUCCI: As far as Im concerned --

WALLACE: Wait, wait, now let me pick up because youre blowing the whole idea of the lightning round and I want to move on.

SCARAMUCCI: All right. But thats a super loaded question for a 15 second answer.

WALLACE: OK.

SCARAMUCCI: But go on, Chris, go ahead.

WALLACE: Heres another one. You talked on Friday about that famous incident in 2015 -- I know youre going to shake your head -- where you called President Trump a hack politician. But I looked at the tape; its actually much worse than that, Anthony.

So, take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCARAMUCCI: Hes a hack politician and --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, youre in trouble now.

SCARAMUCCI: -- hes probably going to make Elizabeth Warren his vice presidential nominee with comments like that.

Politicians dont want to go at Trump because hes got a big mouth and hes afraid hes going to light them up on Fox News and all these other places, but Im not a politician.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So whys he resonating? So whys he resonating?

SCARAMUCCI: You an inherited money dude from Queens County. Bring it, Donald.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Bring it, Donald. Heres the question --

SCARAMUCCI: Hey, look, were both New Yorkers. By the way --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: No, but heres the question, is that what Trump likes about you? Mr. Trump, President Trump likes about you -- youre like him, you fight like him?

SCARAMUCCI: Hey, let me tell you something, he hit first. And he -- so he called me from Air Force One yesterday on the way down to christening the aircraft carrier. He says you dont even remember the whole story.

And I said, what do you mean, sir? He says, I brought you into my office, I said Im thinking about running for president. You told me that I wasnt running, which is true, and this is way, way early.

And I was -- I told him I was going to sign up with Scott Walker because I needed a candidate --

WALLACE: All right, were on a lightning round. Get to the -- to the point.

SCARAMUCCI: OK, but if were on a lightning round and youre showing a clip like that, youve got to give me a chance to explain myself. The president was hitting the hedge fund industry that morning on "Fox and Friends".

WALLACE: I know that.

SCARAMUCCI: OK? And so, Im a fighter. When hes hitting the hedge fund industry and thats my life -- lifeblood, Im hitting back. OK, he knows that, he respects that about me. We were laughing about that last night.

But what I love about you guys, OK, is this three-minute segment that I guess is going to be played for eternity, we should put it on the Voyager spacecraft and send it interstellar, OK? I love the guy.

WALLACE: Let me just --

SCARAMUCCI: Were New Yorkers.

And this is my point, I want to finish my point. I love the guy. I spent the last 18 months supporting him unyieldingly because hes a great person and hes going to be a phenomenal -- he is a phenomenal president, and hes going to be a better president.

But youre not allowed to fight a little bit amongst your friends? If youre not allowed to do that, what are we doing?

WALLACE: Am I not allowed to actually put that on? I mean, its funny.

SCARAMUCCI: No, I love it. I love it.

WALLACE: I make you -- I make you a promise I will never play that clip again.

SCARAMUCCI: Play it -- you can play it again.

WALLACE: No, I dont want --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Final question.

SCARAMUCCI: Im totally fine with what youre -- heres my point, Im a New Yorker. Hes a New Yorker. Were allowed to go at it a little bit.

WALLACE: Im a New Yorker, too. So, that makes us three of us.

SCARAMUCCI: So, God bless, but my point is we were laughing about it yesterday. I think Jon Karl asked me about it at the press conference. He says does the president remind -- every 15 seconds reminds me, OK? I apologized for it, were moving on.

WALLACE: One quick final question; youve got 30 seconds to answer this one.

SCARAMUCCI: Go ahead.

WALLACE: You have suggested -- this was before you became communications director -- maybe well put on a show, a White House show every morning, anchor desk on the North Lawn, to talk about the administration policies. Are you serious?

SCARAMUCCI: I got to talk about the president about it. I mean, that was when I was brainstorming before I had an official job.

But heres what I would say to you in less than 30 seconds. We are going to reinvent the way we deliver information out of the White House because the world has changed. I have in my pocket a radio studio, a television studio, and a movie studio. The entire world has changed; we need to rethink the way were delivering our information. And so, stay tuned.

WALLACE: Anthony, thank you. Thanks for your time. We hope to have you back often.

SCARAMUCCI: Great to be here.

WALLACE: Up next, well bring in our Sunday group to discuss what the White House shakeup says about where President Trump wants to go from here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCARAMUCCI: I love the president. I love the president. I love the president. I love the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: New White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci leaving no doubt about his loyalty to his new boss.

And it's time now for our Sunday group. Former Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who is now a Fox News contributor, and welcome. Columnist for The Hill, Juan Williams. Julie Pace, Washington bureau chief of The Associated Press, and former National Security Council staffer, Gillian Turner.

Well, Julie, at the risk of repeating them, I love this new guy.

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: Finally, the Trump White House as a surrogate who talks like the boss.

JULIE PACE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Exactly, I think that's what has a lot of Trump loyalists and supporters happy with this pick. They feel like this is somebody who understands the way the president communicates, whos going to go up there and have one mission, and that's to serve the president, to promote his agenda.

And I know that sounds simple, that's what you're supposed to do in this job, but at the reality is that in this White House, you have a lot of different factions and theres a lot of speculation every day about their true motivations, about what they are really there to do. And particularly in the comms shop, you have a lot of people --

WALLACE: Communication.

PACE: Communication shop, you have a lot of people who came over from the Republican National Committee, an organization that while they were tacitly supporting Trump in the general election, it was pretty clear that they did not believe he was actually going to win. That has fueled a lot of attention and some of the things that Anthony said in that interview would make me pretty nervous if I came from the RNC and I was working in that comms shop right now.

WALLACE: Yes. And we should point out, they were brought over by Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer and he was basically saying there's a new sheriff in town.

PACE: Exactly. What do you make of -- the same question I asked him, what do you think his appointment and his aggressiveness says about the way this president is going to take on the Russia investigation?

PACE: Well, I think the Russia investigation is something that theyre going to be dealing with for months or even years. And they have to figure out a strategy. They can be aggressive, they can take this head on every day or, and this is what a lot of Republicans would prefer that they do, is they try to push a different agenda. They try to focus more on health care, have the president out there talking about it, try to focus on tax reform or infrastructure.

That's where they have fallen down on this. They keep getting bogged down by Russia and they haven't had this ability to promote a different, more positive agenda.

WALLACE: Well, speaking about getting tripped up and mixing messages, I want to play some clips from the president's interview with The New York Times this week. Here is the presidents take on his own attorney.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

TRUMP: How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would recuse himself before the job, I would have said thanks, Jeff, but I can't, you know, Im not going to take you. It's extremely unfair and that's a mild word, to the president.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

WALLACE: And here is the president on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MICHAEL SCHMIDT, REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: If Mueller was looking at your finances, and your family's finances unrelated to Russia -- is that a red line?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Would that be a breach of what his actual charge is?

TRUMP: I would say yes. I would say yes.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

WALLACE: Congressman Chaffetz, is it a mistake for the president to take on Sessions and Mueller, or should he go after them aggressively?

JASON CHAFFETZ, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, he's going to do what he's going to do. I mean, I think that's part of what's endearing to America, is the fact that he just kind of lays it out the way that he should, the way that he wants to.

I do think it was a mistake to have a special counsel. I don't think its risen to that level. But nevertheless, its in place. And I think he's going to have a very aggressive style going after him.

WALLACE: But do you think that's smart to go after the prosecutors and try to undercut them?

CHAFFETZ: Well, I don't. I dont think that's necessarily the right way to do it, but it is the way the president is going to do it, and I think that's why he brought on Anthony Scaramucci. He actually speaks native Trump and hes going to convey that to the American people.

WALLACE: Not only did Attorney General Sessions get a kind of vote of no-confidence from the president, but he also has to deal with this new Washington Post story that I talked to Anthony Scaramucci about, which reports that the Russian ambassador was intercepted, electronic intercepts, telling his superiors in Moscow, in the Kremlin, that he had discussions with Sessions about campaign matters, something as youll see now that Sessions flatly denied.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SESSIONS: Let me be clear: I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Gillian, how much trouble is Jeff Sessions in? And with Jared Kushner testifying not once, but twice this week before congressional committees behind closed doors, how serious is the Russia investigation at this point?

GILLIAN TURNER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: The Russia investigation, from my perspective, is growing more serious by the day. To the point about the attorney general, his dealings with Russian Ambassador Kislyak are the reasons he recused himself from the investigation from the get-go. So, he did that voluntarily, its something the president has now said he resents. It was completely his decision to do that.

And I would just say, in terms of the attorney general and this ongoing investigation, there's really -- to build on a point Julie made, theres really two models that the president can follow.

This is something that Steve Hadley, President Bush's national security advisor, captured brilliantly in May. He said theres two models here for the entire administration. There is the Nixon/Clinton model where you treat it as a criminal investigation. You lawyer up, you have your hand in the pot every day, you push back as hard as you can.

Or there is what he called the Reagan model that he chose during Iran-Contra, which is, you take a step back, you have respect for the process and you let the chips ultimately fall where they may.

The Trump administration is clearly choosing the former model. They could still reverse course if they wanted to, and I think certainly, they would be politically smarter for making that decision.

WALLACE: You know, it didn't work for Nixon. It did work for Clinton.

TURNER: Yes. But I think they both -- well, it worked for President Clinton to a certain extent. Yes, he stayed in office.

WALLACE: And he survived and he roughed up Ken Starr.

TURNER: Yes.

WALLACE: Let me move to you, Juan.

What do you think -- and I want to put this all together. What do you think the president's various actions this week on Scaramucci, on giving that surprising interview to The New York Times on shaking up his legal team? The guy who was in charge, New York lawyer Marc Kasowitz, no longer is. What do you think that tells you about where this president is right now?

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think hes totally focused on the Russia story. I think, you know, let's use the cultural term, the godfather, he's going to the mattresses right now. I mean, he brings in Scaramucci because he sees Scaramucci as a guy who got an apology from CNN, got people fired at CNN. He had --

WALLACE: Lets exactly point that out. CNN did a story that said that Scaramucci was under investigation. Theres no evidence that he was.

WILLIAMS: Right.

WALLACE: And that's what followed.

WILLIAMS: And then, President Trump, who had initially taken advice from his White House chief of staff not to bring in Scaramucci, his White House public liaison, suddenly he is now fascinated with Scaramucci because he's had success in the kind of street fight attitude. So, you have that, but then the big surprise was, as you point out, The New York Times interview to go after his old attorney general and you have to wonder about the subsequent leaks about the attorney general.

It could be -- given what he said about Robert Mueller and trying to discredit Robert Mueller, who is the investigator, that he now thinks if I can get rid of Sessions, I can get somebody over there who will fire Mueller and make it easier for me as we go down that path.

So, I think what we are right now is were on war footing. I mean, this is an explosive moment for the president, for the legal system, for the Constitution.

WALLACE: I just want to ask you one quick questions at the end of the segment because I must say, the thought occurred to me -- on Thursday, you have the president basically saying, Im really unhappy with Jeff Sessions and I wouldn't have appointed him. And the next day, there is this leak of information.

I see you smiling about the fact that Sessions may have misled everybody about what he talked to Kislyak about -- do you think -- I mean is that -- obviously the thought has occurred to you.

PACE: It has occurred to me and many other reporters. Ill just go with the -- my friends of The Washington Post said about the story, which is that they have been working on this information since June.

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: All right.

TURNER: Chris, if the president thinks hes felt the ire of the Washington, D.C. firmament (ph), fire the attorney general or the special counsel, and you will really feel the wrath of Washington --

WALLACE: All right. You know what were going to do, folks? I promise, we are now going to talk agenda. Well, maybe not quite, but we are. Were going to take a break. See you a little later.

Coming up, the Senate gets ready to vote on ObamaCare. But what will they be voting on? Two key senators join us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: Coming up, President Trump puts pressure on Senate Republicans to keep a major campaign promise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Any senator who votes against starting debate is really telling America that you're fine with ObamaCare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: We'll ask two top senators if repeal and replace is still alive, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: A look outside the beltway at Mount Rushmore in Keystone, South Dakota.

The Senate holds a big vote this week on what to do about ObamaCare with major splits among Republican members. Meanwhile, other priorities, like the budget, tax reform and raising the debt limit are stacking up like planes over an airport on a summer afternoon.

Joining me now to discuss the Trump agenda from South Dakota, the chair of the Republican conference, Senator John Thune, and from Baltimore, Democratic Senator Ben Cardin.

Gentlemen, before we get to ObamaCare, I want to talk you all about an agreement that congressional leaders in both parties have apparently reached over the weekend about a bill to impose new sanctions on Russia and to limit the president's ability to lift those sanctions.

Senator Thune, is the president going to sign that bill?

SEN. JOHN THUNE, R-SOUTH DAKOTA: I believe he will, Chris, because the Senate passed it 98-2. Obviously both Senator Cardin and I voted for that. The House has made some minor modifications. We included Iran. They extended it to North Korea. But this is a bill that will go to the president's desk and he should sign it into law.

WALLACE: You say he should sign it into law. There has been some pushback from the administration. They don't like the idea that it limits his ability to conduct diplomacy by imposing sanctions and limiting his ability to lift them.

THUNE: Well, that's true, but I think that the -- in the end the administration will come to the conclusion that an overwhelming majority of Congress has, and that is that we need to sanction Russia for their meddling in the U.S. election. That, I think, will pass probably overwhelmingly again in the Senate and with a veto-proof majority. So the president would -- I think it's in his best interest for a lot of reasons to sign it, and I believe he will.

WALLACE: Senator Cardin, do you share your colleague's confidence the president will sign it, and what if he doesn't? What if he does veto it?

SEN. BEN CARDIN, D-MARYLAND: Well, Chris, this is a very strong bill. It imposes mandatory sanctions on Russia. It provides for congressional review. If the president wants to wait or eliminate sanctions, it was -- it's very bipartisan. The -- Senator Corker and I, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, drafted a good part of it, Senator Crapo (ph) and Brown from the Banking Committee. It has broad support in the Senate and in the House. If he vetoes the bill, we will override his veto.

WALLACE: Let's turn to the big health care vote this week. Here's what Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, D-NY, MINORITY LEADER: We Democrats don't know what our Republican friends are planning to vote on it next week. I'll but many Republicans don't know yet either.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Senator Thune, as the number three Republican in the Senate, do you know what you're going to be voting on next week? Is it repeal, or is it repeal and replace?

THUNE: It's voting to get on the bill, Chris. It's voting to open the debate. We can't change the status quo, which is skyrocketing premiums and collapsing markets out there for way too many Americans less we get on the bill. So the vote will be at some point this week to proceed to consideration of the bill. It's a procedural vote. At which point all amendments become an order. There will be an unlimited opportunity for Democrats, for Ben Cardin and some of his colleagues to offer their amendments, for Republican colleagues to offer theirs to try and improve and strengthen the bill. But you can't do that unless you get on the bill.

So the first vote, which will occur sometime this week, will be to proceed to that consideration of that legislation and to -- and to at least have a debate where we can have an open amendment process and give people a chance to be heard.

WALLACE: But -- but -- but without getting too far into the weeds, I know the first -- when you get on the bill, the bill is the house bill, which nobody likes. The question -- including a lot of people in the House. Then Senator McConnell is going to offer a substitute, the first amendment, and is that going to be repeal or repeal and replace?

THUNE: I think ultimately that's a judgment that Senator McConnell will make at some point this week before the vote, depending on how these discussions go. If we can reach an agreement among Republicans about the Senate bill -- and I -- my own view is, and I'm speaking myself, I hope we do because I think the Senate bill does strike the right balance.

But one way or the other, we need to get on the bill in order to have that debate. And the leader will make that decision at some point about whether that's repeal, repeal and replace. I hope it's repeal and replace.

But whether -- which camp you're in, you can't have a debate about either unless we get on the bill. So we need a "yes" vote. That's the only way to change the status quo.

WALLACE: Senator Cardin, this got even more complicated on Friday when the Senate parliamentarian said that some measures in the McConnell bill, the bill that the Senate majority leader is offering, are outside Senate rules and may be out of order. So where does that leave this whole thing?

CARDIN: Well, if we go on the bill, if the Republicans had the votes to move on the bill, 22 million to 33 million Americans are at risk of losing their insurance coverage. All Americans are at risk of losing quality insurance coverage. So if we get on this bill, we're under what's called reconciliation. And many of the amendments will not be in order because they have to deal directly with the fiscal issues because it's reconciliation. So we don't have an open process if we get on the bill. We have a very narrow opportunity to really change this bill.

WALLACE: Senator Thune, President Trump, and you were at that meeting this week in the White House, said -- told Republican senators that you've all talked tough when President Obama was in the White House but things have changed. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: For seven years you had an easy route, we'll repeal, we'll replace and he's never going to sign it. But I'm signing it. So it's a little bit different.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Senator Thune, if Republicans blocked the bill this week, either don't vote to begin the debate or begin the debate and then go against whatever is on the floor, is that the end of repeal and replace?

THUNE: It's not. But it is a vote I think for the status quo.

But what will happen, and if and when that were to occur, is we'll go back to the drawing board and we'll get a bill up. We are going to vote to repeal and replace ObamaCare. The question is not -- it's not a question of if, it's a question of when.

My argument, Chris, is that we need to do it sooner rather than later, which is the argument that the president made, because this thing is spiraling out of control. ObamaCare is in a death spiral. You have seen, since 2013, premiums in this country in the individual marketplace have more than doubled. You've got markets that are in a free fall, in a collapse, and something has to be done sooner. And I think that's why we need to get on the bill and start this debate. And then if people want to amend it, it is an open amendment process. There will be unlimited amendments that can be offered and in the -- and the United States Senate will have an opportunity to work its will. But that can't happen. We can't change the status quo less w get on the bill.

And I think we have a responsibility and a duty to the American people that we committed and promised that we would repeal and replace ObamaCare with something that's better. And so they need to hold us accountable. And I think the sooner we get on the bill and debating these issues, the more quickly we will get a -- we will get a result, which takes us in a better direction with lower premiums and stable markets and liberating people --

WALLACE: Right.

THUNE: From all these mandates and regulations and taxes that they have an ObamaCare today.

WALLACE: Finally, gentlemen, I want to ask about -- we've only got a couple of minutes left.

Senator Cardin, as I mentioned before, there are a lot of other things that are stacking up that -- to basically keep the government running. You've got to pass a budget. The government runs out of money on October 1st. You've got to raise the debt limit. At a certain point we reach that barrier. What are the chances that we are going to be able to avoid a train wreck this fall?

THUNE: Well, if you want me, I'll take that, Chris. First off --

WALLACE: No. Wait, no, I'm asking Senator Cardin.

CARDIN: Well, there's a better way to move forward. And (INAUDIBLE) -- there's a -- there's a better way to move forward. In response to Senator Thune, if Democrats and Republicans work together, we can get things done. Senator Alexander, the Republican chairman of the Health Committee, says he'll schedule hearings. We had no hearings on the health care bill that the Republicans are considering. Let's work together. We've worked together on the FY '17 budget. We want to improve the Affordable Care Act, not repeal it. And there are ways we can do that, by bringing down overall health care costs and making, particularly in the individual marketplace, health insurance more affordable.

On the budget issues, we have members of the authorizing committees on both their Democratic and Republican side. The Environmental Public Works Committee, this week, will be passing out some authorization bills that deal with the budget. We need to deal with a realistic budget for FY '18 that reflects the progress we made in FY '17 working together. If we do that, it's going to be in the best interests of the American people. We can improve the health care system. We can get a reasonable budget. And we can move this country forward.

WALLACE: Gentlemen, we're going to have to close on that optimistic note. Senator Cardin, Senator Thune, thank you both. Thanks for coming in today. Always good to talk with you gentlemen.

THUNE: Thanks, Chris.

CARDIN: Thanks.

WALLACE: Up next we'll bring back the panel to handicap whether Senate Republicans can revive, repeal and replace or whether it's time to move on.

Plus, what would you like to ask the panel about the White House shakeup and what it says about the Trump presidency six months in? Just go to Facebook or Twitter @foxnewssunday, and we may use your question on the air.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Let ObamaCare fail. It will be a lot easier. And I think we're probably in that position where we'll just let ObamaCare fail. We're not going to own it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: President Trump, who took a number of different positions on ObamaCare this way, repeal, repeal and replace, and, as you saw there, just let the whole thing collapsed.

And we're back now with the panel.

So, Julie, what do they really think at the White House? Do they think that repeal and replace is dead or do they somehow think that at the last moment, faced with a vote, that some of these senators who have come out against it will vote for it?

PACE: It kind of depends what day you ask them that question. There have been some days recently where they have been pretty down on this, where they can't exactly see how they're going to get back, particularly with Senator McCain being out at the -- a crucial vote for this.

Look, they planned to spend the next couple of days trying to see if there's a way through here, trying to see if repeal and replace could get the votes, trying to see if repeal only could get the votes.

When you talk to Republicans, though, they -- mixed messages. The constant shifting from the president, sometimes within the same day, is hugely unhelpful because Republicans also want to move forward on this. They want to put a bill on his desk and have that bill signed. But it's really unclear day to day what bill the president actually wants to sign.

WALLACE: We asked you for questions for the panel and F.D. tweeted this, "could Donald Trump has done more to dig into health care legislative process -- was there a lack of presidential effort, involvement?"

Congressman Chaffetz, you know, I looked into this. The president has not made -- since he took office -- a single major speech that was really devoted to repeal and replace. And say what you will about ObamaCare, and I know you've got a lot of problems with it, but President Obama barnstormed the country at least pushing it. So the question is, how do you answer F.D.?

CHAFFETZ: No, I think the president actually could do more. Use the power of the -- Air Force One, get out to the country, make the speeches. I think at this point the White House communication is, let's just have something. We need some sort of victory.

You know it's sort of like Al Davis from the Oakland Raiders, just win, baby. Just get -- just put something up on the board. I mean now that they're playing with live ammunition, you've got a lot of Republicans that are getting squishy. So it's ultimately the responsibility know of the Senate. Here's a motion to proceed. It's a motion to, are we going to have a debate, from what is supposed to be the most deliberative body on the face of the planet, and we can't even get Republicans to agree to debate the bill.

WALLACE: So -- so what do you think is the impact of that if they won't even go into -- at this point they do not have the 50 votes plus the -- Vice President Pence to break the tie to even begin debate.

CHAFFETZ: That's what's so frustrating. And I think if you go to the heartland, that's what people are most concerned about. You don't even have the debate, let alone the vote. It may fail, but at least have the debate. And that's the first question that will come up this week.

WALLACE: We had some shocking news this week. Senator John McCain, we learned, has an aggressive, malignant form of brain cancer. Here was McCain's best friend in the Senate, Lindsey Graham.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, R-SOUTH CAROLINA: I can't think of anything I've done since 1999 politically and in many ways personally that was worth doing without John. I just asked God for one thing, that he has a voice and he can use it as long as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Juan, this has both personal and political residence here in Washington, doesn't it?

WILLIAMS: It has tremendous residence here in Washington. I think -- I think our prayers -- I think everybody's prayers are with John -- Senator McCain and his family. I want to just say a special expression to Meghan McCain, our Fox colleague, you know, to her and her dad, much love, much respect.

McCain has a special place in Washington, Chris, because he's in a time of polarized politics that we live in. He's able to operate across party lines. You think to McCain-Feingold, for example, on finance reform. You think of McCain-Kennedy on immigration reform. You think of his efforts going overseas tirelessly traveling to places in the midst of war to say, this is the American policy. I want to know what's going on, on the ground. And he takes people who are politically opposite, like Elizabeth Warren, with him to show them what is actually taking place on the ground.

So he operates in a way that I think gives him some special cachet, if you will, because everybody wants to talk to him, everybody embraces him. And I would add, given his status as a military hero, there's no one like him in that sense in this generation. You think about the idea that he stayed in a prison camp and said, I'm not leaving despite the statue of my father and grandfather. I'm not leaving till my men do.

WALLACE: And the North Vietnamese gave him -- said, we'll let you go because your father's an admiral.

WALLACE: Right. So at that moment you say, wow, now there's a man of character. There's a guy who you want standing up. And if you want to talk about, you know, I so often hear Republicans these days say somebody's a patriot, like, oh, he's one of us, he's a good -- you know what, there's a real patriot right here, John McCain.

WALLACE: Gillian, as a member of the National Security Council staff for both Bush 43 and Obama, how big a player is John McCain when it comes to national security issues?

TURNER: He is everything. You know, as a -- as a person, I messaged Meghan the other day when this became public and I said, you know, your dad is truly an American national treasure. We don't have many of them in this country, but he's one of them. The potential loss of his service in the Senate, whether he steps aside tomorrow or years from now --

WALLACE: Right, we should say, he -- he says --

TURNER: He says -- yes.

WALLACE: And if anybody can pull it off, he says, I'm coming back.

TURNER: And I hope he does. But that -- the loss of his Senate service, whenever it comes, whatever he steps aside, constitutes a national security crisis for the GOP, but by extension for the country, in the sense that this is a person who has been the primary voice on national security issues for a decade. This is somebody who explains the ISIS threat to us starting in 2014 when they first emerged on the scene. He has explained the threat posed by our nuclear adversaries around the world. And I don't see, on the Republican side, I don't see any current leader who rival him and I don't see the next generation of leaders who are going to have that same -- you know, have that same voice on these issues.

WALLACE: And I want to pick up --

TURNER: So it's no worry (ph).

WALLACE: I want to pick up on that with you, Congressman Chaffetz, because, you know, both with Barack Obama and with Donald Trump, there has been this talk about kind of pulling back, rolling up our engagement with the rest of the world and John McCain is one of the few voices out there, in either party, talking about the kind of Reagan-esque, aggressive, dominant engagement with the rest of the world.

CHAFFETZ: Well, his heart and soul is with the United States of America. He's a warrior, a true patriot in every way. He's uniquely American. And I think he wants to help lead the charge. He doesn't want to sit back. He wants to take the -- take the fight to the enemy. And -- and he'll do that till -- every step of the way.

And, you know, his fight with cancer touches all of us. All of us have some relative or some friend that's fighting cancer, and God bless him. We wish him nothing but the best.

WALLACE: Well, very good, strong sentiments. And I -- I have to say, it -- it feels like a -- it's not a good Sunday without John McCain on one of the Sunday shows. He loves to do it. And, senator, if you're watching, all of us are thinking of you and come on back and get into an argument with me, because we've got into plenty.

Thank you, panel. See you next Sunday.

Up next, our "Power Player of the Week." She calls her profession the original search engine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: The job description could not be more daunting, to maintain a universal collection of human knowledge, as we asked last fall who would take on that assignment. Here's our "Power Player of the Week."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARLA HAYDEN, LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS: I'm smiling because ,for a librarian, this is ultimate library.

WALLACE (voice-over): Meet Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress. She's in charge of 162 million items, the world's biggest collection of books, movies, maps and music. And it keeps getting bigger.

HAYDEN: Fifteen thousand items come in to the Library of Congress and about 12,000 of those items are actually added to the collection every day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So help me God.

HAYDEN: So help me God.

WALLACE: Hayden is just the 14th librarian of Congress since 1802, and he's the first professional librarian.

HAYDEN: Each librarian of Congress has had a different background. There have been lawyers, scholars, authors, politicians.

WALLACE: Of course a couple of other things set her apart.

WALLACE (on camera): You are the first woman. You're the first African-American. What does that mean to you?

HAYDEN: There are certain professions that have a preponderance of females. Being a woman at the helm of the world's largest library is very significant. African-American in a role that symbolizes knowledge and scholarship and information is also very empowering.

WALLACE (voice-over): The library's original mission was to be the research arm for Congress, which is still one of its roles.

HAYDEN: There's a tunnel that allows members and their staff and the library staff to go back and forth.

WALLACE: It's been called the most beautiful public space in America, built in 1897 for $7 million, which was under budget and ahead of schedule. But there's criticism the library has not kept up with the times in putting its collection online. Hayden means to change that.

HAYDEN: In her own handwriting she said, I have been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn't take it anymore.

WALLACE: Hayden showed us the handwritten notes of Rosa Parks when she refused to go to the back of the buss. Now the Parks' collection has been digitized.

HAYDEN: Imagine a child or a person looking at this, having that sense of history right here.

WALLACE: Hayden fell in love with reading as a little girl.

HAYDEN: I would read a cereal box. I would read anything.

WALLACE: And when she discovered libraries --

HAYDEN: Libraries are the original treasure chest because you never know what you'll find.

WALLACE: Hayden was the head of the Baltimore Library System during the 2015 riots there. She was determined to keep the library open in the midst of the unrest.

HAYDEN: There was no other place open and we were that life center for that community at a time.

WALLACE: Carla Hayden says libraries are opportunity centers where people can advance themselves and she calls librarians the original search engines.

HAYDEN: You have a person who has a lifetime of getting lost in books and libraries and bookstores to be the head of the world's largest library. That's pretty exciting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: As part of Hayden's digital initiative in May, the Library of Congress made 25 million pieces from its collection available for the public to download. And it's all free.

And that's it for today. Have a great week. And we'll see you next "Fox News Sunday."

Content and Programming Copyright 2017 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2017 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
Authorities in Pennsylvania helped complete an elderly man's daily trip to donate at a homeless shelter after his car broke down Wednesday in 90 degree heat.

The Tredyffrin Township Police Department, located outside Philadelphia, said in a Facebook post that officers stopped to help 84-year-old Arnold Reinikka after his truck broke down on the side of the highway.

Officers then learned Reinikka was traveling to a nearby homeless shelter to donate food he had collected from local businesses, a trip officials say he takes every single night.

"You read that right. Arnold, 84 years young, makes this same trip every. single. night," police said on Facebook. "And, as you probably guessed, he wasn't going to let a little thing like breaking down in the 90 heat stop him last night, either."

Even with his car disabled on the side of the road, police said Reinikka helped direct traffic and loaded boxes of food into his son-in-law's car so he could make the nightly delivery.

"He's one of Tredyffrin Township's unsung heroes," police said.

Reinikka lives in nearby Malvern with his wife, has five children, ten grandchildren, three great grandchildren, according to police.
Clifford and Gary Koekoek, 84-year-old twins who've survived living under Nazi occupation and fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, are now in "hell" and sleeping in their car after a bank foreclosed on their California home in October.

Born in the Netherlands, Clifford and Gary grew up under Nazi rule before coming to the U.S., where the brothers worked in Hollywood and then served their new country at war. But the brothers told FOX 40 Sacramento nothing they've lived through compares to their current predicament.

"It's a lot of stress," Clifford said, holding back tears. "Id rather go back to the war and get shot at, than this crap.



The Koekoek's recent housing plight started in 2007, when the brothers wanted to fix the roof on a Fair Oaks home they bought from their mother, and which had been in their family since 1984.

"We took a loan thinking that we had a conventional loan, Gary said.

The loan, however, turned out to be an adjustable rate loan, with payments getting higher over time -- until the two couldn't afford it. After their home was foreclosed, the two were kicked out and began sleeping in one shared car.

BRIDE-TO-BE CALLS OFF WEDDING, THROWS PARTY FOR HOMELESS

"Right now, I'm broke, Clifford told FOX 40. "Sometimes, we don't eat."

The two now spend most of their time just walking the streets and sitting at the Sacramento Public Library in neighboring Orangevale. Gary said he spends most of his time looking over deed records to figure out how the twins can win their home back.

"I would almost say it's hell," Gary said.

A friend of the family is now trying to help, launching a social media push and a GoFundMe account to help find the two men permanent housing.

Aaron Hoerner told FOX 40 the experience has given him a new perspective on homelessness.

"It's easy to walk by and not look at their situation. But if you stop and talk to somebody, everybody has a story, he said.
Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents discovered three people in the trunk of a car during an immigration inspection on State Route 83, north of Sonoita on July 20.

Officials say the agents stopped the 1998 Toyota Camry to check the driver's immigration status. The driver appeared to be traveling alone, but during the encounter, agents obtained consent to open the vehicle's trunk and discovered three adult Mexican males.

The driver was identified as a 56-year-old woman from Tucson. She was arrested for smuggling and the vehicle was seized. The men were processed for immigration violations.

Per U.S. Customs and Border Protection, "Further inspection of the Camry revealed there was no emergency trunk release. Even during monsoon season, Arizonas summer temperatures can climb dramatically when the sun comes out. Adding the possibilities of being crushed in a rear-end collision, or being poisoned by carbon monoxide, riding in the trunk of a vehicle could be equivalent to a death sentence."

Click here for more from Fox 10.
The death toll in what police called a horrific human trafficking case -- eight men died inside a sweltering 18-wheeler parked outside a San Antonio Walmart -- reached nine on Sunday.

James Mathew Bradley Jr., 60, from Clearwater, Florida, was taken into custody, federal prosecutors said. No immediate charges were filed.

One additional man died at the hospital, according to Liz Johnson, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE had announced 10 were dead before revising the number to nine.

A total of 39 people had been inside the tractor-trailer, including at least four teenagers, Fox 29 reported. Twenty people were taken to area hospitals in critical condition, and another eight had less critical injuries.

"Were looking at human trafficking crime here this evening, Police Chief William McManus said, adding that it was "a horrific tragedy."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is also looking into the incident.

A store employee first alerted police after being approached by someone from the truck who was asking for water. The vehicle did not have a working air conditioning system when it was found, authorities said.

"They were very hot to the touch. So these people were in this trailer without any signs of any type of water," San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said in a news conference. "It was a mass casualty situation for us."

The National Weather Service said the temperature in San Antonio hit 101 degrees just before 5 p.m. Saturday and didn't dip below 90 degrees until after 10 p.m.

According to police, surveillance video from the store showed "a number of vehicles" picking up people who survived the trip that were inside the trailer. Some people fled into the woods, prompting police to search the area in the morning.

The origin of the truck is still unknown. Investigators gathered evidence from the truck on Sunday, which had an Iowa license plate but no other markings.

Thomas Homan, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, said in a statement: "By any standard, the horrific crime uncovered last night ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished."

"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations works year-round to identify, dismantle, and disrupt the transnational criminal networks that smuggle people into and throughout the United States. These networks have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for those they smuggle, as last night's case demonstrates," Homan said in the statement.

U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin, Jr. also called Sunday morning's incident "an alien smuggling venture gone horribly wrong."

"All were victims of ruthless human smugglers indifferent to the well-being of their fragile cargo," Durbin said, adding that the Justice Department will be working with Homeland Security and local responders in the investigation.

Other cases of human trafficking in the United States have led to more deaths. In May 2003, 19 immigrants who were being transported from South Texas to Houston inside a sweltering tractor-trailer died.

Click here for more from Fox 29.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A 92-year-old legally blind veteran was attacked last week by a group trying to vandalize flags at his Texas home.

Last week, Howard Banks, of Kaufman, said he heard noises coming from near the flagpole in his front yard so he walked outside.

"I try to salute my flag every morning," he told KDFW/Fox 4 News. "I come out, hold on to my railing and salute my flag."

Someone then pushed Banks from behind, causing him to fall to the ground. Others later found Banks on the ground, helped him up and called the police. Thankfully, he suffered only minor injuries.

MARINE'S AMERICAN FLAG SET ON FIRE IN ACT OF VANDALISM

Banks said the vandals didn't touch his U.S. Marine Corps flag, but did toss his 'God Bless All Police' sign across the yard.

He told responding officers that his flags have been vandalized in the past. Someone reportedly cut them down, shredded the American flag and threw the U.S. Marine flag in the ditch, but he never reported the crimes.

He is legally blind so he was not able to provide a good description of the suspects. He said he heard more than one person running away.

Banks, who was 18 when he enlisted in the armed forces and fought in the battle of Iwo Jima during World War II, is extremely protective of the American flag.

CALIFORNIA CITY TELLS VETERAN TO TAKE DOWN FLAGPOLE FLYING AMERICAN FLAG

"It's the one thing I can cling to. Yet at my capacity, there's not much I can do. But I can honor our flag," he said.

We are doing everything in our power to find the suspects that committed this cowardly assault and bring them to justice, the Kaufman Police Department said. This gentleman is a hero to our officers and the city's residents should be extremely proud to have him as part of our community.

Banks admits he'd like to apply his own brand of justice when the culprits are caught. "If there's any way to catch them and was able to do so, I'd like to whoop them good with my crutch."

Banks' family is now planning to install cameras around the house, police said.
Ulysha Renee Hall will make history in Dallas in September, when she becomes the Texas citys first female police chief.

Hall, 46, currently deputy chief of the Detroit Police Department, was selected from a field of seven finalists that included another woman, Deputy Chief Carmen Best of Seattle.

Hall followed in her fathers footsteps by choosing a career in law enforcement. He was killed in the line of duty when she was just 6 months old.

Now, Hall will head a Dallas force thats still coping with the tragedy of July 7, 2016, when a sniper killed five city officers and wounded nine others, as well as two civilians.

Those shootings  by a veteran who had served in Afghanistan -- were believed to be an act of retaliation against police officers. They closely followed two high-profile cases, in Minnesota and Louisiana, in which police officers had fatally shot black men.

Hall, who is African-American, will succeed former Dallas Police Chief David Brown, also African-American, who retired shortly after the tragic shootings.

Brown recently tweeted his support for the selection of Hall.

I am so honored to be able to serve as the next police chief of the city of Dallas, said Hall during a press conference. The men and women of Dallas are my priority -- that they have my unwavering support.

Of the nations 50 largest police agencies, only five are headed by women  with Hall to make it six. Women currently hold roughly 13 percent of law enforcement positions in the U.S.

We do know that, historically, law enforcement is predominantly male, but so were so many other professions years ago, said Hall, who encouraged young women to pursue a career in law enforcement.

She added that women can bring a different approach to the job than men, offering that special something to law enforcement that truly, truly calms the savage beast.

We kind of do it a little different, a little better. Were a little bit more nurturing by nature, Hall said.
Whats in a name? In the case of one Oregon man, a lot.

A 22-year-old named Fellony Hudson is accused of felony kidnapping, felony eluding, felony possession of a stolen vehicle and several misdemeanors after police pursued him across state lines.

The Salem resident appeared Wednesday in court, where he was charged with a total of three felonies and four misdemeanors.

Officers received a report Tuesday evening of a woman being assaulted inside a moving vehicle, according to Vancouver Police spokesperson Kim Kapp, reports WCMH-TV Columbus. The driver, later identified as Hudson, was driving erratically and ran a red light.

The vehicle had been reported stolen out of Portland about a week ago, Kapp said.

COLORADO MAN ARRESTED IN KILLING OF 13-YEAR-OLD SON

After a chase that spanned several cities, his vehicle was eventually hit with a set of spike strips, causing a tire to deflate and leading to the end of the chase.

Hudson, who has been convicted of at least four previous felonies, was taken into custody.

The woman inside the car was Hudsons ex-girlfriend, according to jail records.

The case is now being prosecuted by the Multnomah County District Attorneys Office Domestic Violence unit, reports WCMH-TV Columbus.

Jail records also show that at the time of his booking into the Multnomah County Detention Center, Hudson told staff that he uses meth daily and uses heroin weekly, according to WCMH-TV.
More than 150 suburban Boston firefighters battled a massive eight-alarm fire Sunday that engulfed an apartment complex under construction.

No injuries were reported at the site of the blaze in Waltham. The fire broke out just before 4 a.m. and was still burning at 10 a.m., six hours later. Gusty winds hampered efforts to bring the blaze under control.

Waltham Fire Chief Paul Ciccone said just before 7 a.m. that the complexs five buildings had collapsed and were a large pile of debris, The Boston Globe reported.

Ciccone said no sprinklers were in place, which also allowed the fire to spread, Fox 25 Boston reported.

He said firefighters heard explosions as they fought the fire.

"Multiple explosions during the fire...something to do with the construction material -- could be propane, anything like that," Ciccone said, according to the station.

He said it was too early to say what caused the fire.

Nearby residents from two apartment buildings for the elderly were evacuated due to the smoke, the station reported.

Fox 25 reported that new development involved the construction of 400 apartments.

NECN-TV interviewed a person who was evacuated.

There was ash raining down on our house and they were spraying down our house with water to make sure it didn't catch on fire, the person told the station. Then they said, 'you want to leave, leave now.'"
An accused Al Qaeda recruiter who purportedly conspired with two American women has been extradited from Spain to the U.S., marking the first foreign terror suspect to be brought in for sentencing under the Trump administration.

Algerian-born Irish citizen Ali Charaf Damache, 52, appeared in a Philadelphia federal court Friday and is being charged with conspiracy to provide material support and resources to terrorists. A 2011 indictment implicated Damache  who is believed to be a member of an Ireland-based cell and went by the name Black Flag  of backing terrorism. He also is accused of being part of a thwarted scheme to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks because he illustrated the Prophet Muhammad as a dog.

Damache was initially arrested in Ireland in 2010, but released with only the charge of sending a threatening text message. At the request of American officials, he was jailed in Spain in 2015 and had been fighting extradition to the U.S.

His female co-conspirators in the cell included Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a Colorado woman who married Damache in 2009 the day she arrived in Ireland to meet him in-person for the first time. She went on to assist the FBI in uncovering the Internet terrorist group that enlisted women with Western passports to champion the violent extremism and men to commit violent jihadist attacks in South Asia and Europe.

THE TROUBLING US POST-PRISON EXPERIMENT TO REHABILITATE AN ISIS SUPPORTER

SYRIA CEASEFIRE BROKERED BY US, RUSSIA HOLDING, BUT WITH FLAWS, 'TRICKS' IN PLAY

Paulin-Ramirez pleaded guilty to providing material aid to terrorists and is now serving eight years behind bars. Pennsylvania woman Colleen R. LaRose, who used the online persona Jihadi Jane was also exposed as a cell member. In 2011, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy and terrorism-associated charges and is now serving a 10-year sentence.

Damaches expedition signals a sharp departure from President Trumps statements on the campaign trail that terror-linked suspects would be sent to Guantanamo Bay and tried in military courts. Rather, it was the Obama administration policy which contended that the U.S. civilian court system is the most appropriate legal avenue for prosecuting terror suspects apprehended in both the U.S. and abroad.

Damaches arraignment is scheduled for August 28.
Some of the people found packed in a sweltering 18-wheeler parked outside a San Antonio Walmart included Guatemalans and Mexican nationals, officials with both countries said Sunday, as the first details about the deadly alleged human-trafficking case started to emerge.

Eight men were found dead in the truck and one man died later at the hospital, according to Liz Johnson, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some 17 people were considered in "life-threatening" condition, The Associated Press reported. ICE had announced 10 were dead before revising the number to nine.

James Mathew Bradley Jr., 60, from Clearwater, Florida, was taken into custody and is due in court Monday, U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin Jr. said. He did not say whether Bradley was the driver of the truck, although investigators said earlier that the driver was in custody.

A criminal complaint will be filed in federal court in San

Antonio on Monday morning. It is anticipated that Bradley will have an initial appearance shortly after that time, reads a statement from the Attorneys Office.

Mexican nationals were among both the survivors and the dead, Mexican Consul General in San Antonio Reyna Torres said, without giving a specific number. Torres said the consulate has been in contact with relatives both in Mexico and in the U.S.

Guatemala's foreign ministry, meanwhile, said at least two Guatemalans were on the abandoned rig.

The two male survivors told Guatemalan consulate officials that they crossed the border by foot at Laredo and boarded the tractor-trailer, according to Tekandi Paniagua, communications director for the foreign ministry. The pair told officials their final destination was Houston, Paniagua added.

"This tragedy demonstrates the brutality of the network of which I often speak. These smugglers have no regard for human life and seek only profits," Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly said Sunday night. Walmart released a brief statement Sunday saying it was doing what it could to help investigators.

A total of 39 people had been inside the tractor-trailer, including at least four teenagers, Fox 29 reported. Paramedics rushed as many as 20 people to hospitals in critical condition, with others facing less critical injuries.

"Were looking at human trafficking crime here this evening, Police Chief William McManus said, adding that it was "a horrific tragedy."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is also looking into the incident.

A store employee first alerted police after being approached by someone from the truck who was asking for water late Saturday or early Sunday. The vehicle did not have a working air conditioning system when it was found, authorities said.

"They were very hot to the touch. So these people were in this trailer without any signs of any type of water," San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said in a news conference. "It was a mass casualty situation for us."

The National Weather Service said the temperature in San Antonio hit 101 degrees just before 5 p.m. Saturday and didn't dip below 90 degrees until after 10 p.m.

According to police, surveillance video from the store showed "a number of vehicles" picking up people who survived the trip that were inside the trailer. Some people bolted into the woods, prompting police to search the area in the morning.

The origin of the truck is still unknown. Investigators gathered evidence from the truck on Sunday, which had an Iowa license plate but no other markings.

Thomas Homan, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, said in a statement: "By any standard, the horrific crime uncovered last night ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished."

Click here for more from Fox 29.

Fox News' Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An 18-year-old Ohio cheerleader was charged with reckless homicide after the remains of her newborn baby were found in her backyard, according to reports.

Brooke Skylar Richardson was charged Friday after evidence showed the child was born alive and was not a stillborn baby, according to Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell, reports Fox 5 New York.

The newborns remains were discovered last week in the backyard of her Carlisle, Ohio, home, reports the Dayton Daily News.

The babys remains were reportedly discovered because of a tip from a doctor's office.

The prosecutor's office is reportedly still waiting on the coroner to determine the babys official cause of death.

BODIES FOUND IN TRACTOR-TRAILER IN SAN ANTONIO WALMART

Richardson pleaded not guilty to the charges on Friday.

Her attorney, Charles Rittgers, told reporters on Friday that Richardson is a good student who graduated high school recently, where she was a member of the school's cheerleading squad.

She didnt drink. She wasnt a partier or smoker, Rittgers said, reports the Dayton Daily News. By all measures, a very good girl who helped children... Shes by all means a very good person.

Richardson was bonded out of the Warren County Jail. Her preliminary hearing date was set for Aug. 1. If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison.
Clifford and Gary Koekoek, 84-year-old twins who've survived fighting in the jungles of Vietnam and ended up sleeping in their car after a bank foreclosed on their California home, say they're "grateful" for the outpouring of support they've received since their story went national.

Born in the Netherlands, Clifford and Gary grew up under Nazi rule before coming to the U.S., where the brothers worked in Hollywood and then served their new country at war. But the brothers faced a new challenge in October, when they ended up sleeping in their car after a bank foreclosed on their California home.

Since sharing their story with FOX 40 Sacramento, multiple homeless advocate organizations and Veterans Affairs reached out Friday to provide the twins with housing.

"These two gentlemen spent a lot of time out on the street struggling before we were able to make that connection, but we're glad we were able to make it today," said Ben Avey with Sacramento Steps Forward, a nonprofit agency with the goal to end homelessness in the region.

In addition to the new outreach, more than 2,500 strangers have also donated money to the brothers through a GoFundMe page, which totaled more than $101,000 as of Sunday.

"It made me proud to be an American citizen, that there are so many good people," Clifford told FOX 40. In a previous interview, the twin said the situation was "a lot of stress" while holding back tears, adding: "Id rather go back to the war and get shot at, than this crap.

Gary said the response to their situation has been "unbelievable." "I feel grateful," he said.

HOMELESS, 84-YEAR-OLD WAR VETERAN TWINS SAY 'IT'S HELL' AFTER HOME FORECLOSED

A local estate planning attorney has also volunteered to open a trust for the brothers to handle all the money that's been donated.

"This was one of those cases where we decided we could do some good here," Mark Drobny told FOX 40.

Aaron Hoerner, a friend of the family who launched the social media push and a GoFundMe account to try to help find the men permanent housing, hopes the outpouring of compassion continues.

"This whole thing started with talking to people and caring about people," Hoerner told FOX 40. "I just want people to continue doing that."
The Jamaican father and half-sister of an 11-year-old New Jersey girl who was found murdered have asked for President Trumps help so they can legally enter the U.S. to attend the girls funeral on Monday.

The body of AbbieGail Abbie Smith was found earlier this moth behind the Keansburg, New Jersey, apartment building where she had been living with her mother. A neighbor has been arrested in connection with the slaying.

The girl, her mother Carol Bennett and other relatives have been living in the U.S. since 2007.

The girls father and half-sister, living in Jamaica, made a video in which they ask Trump for help in attending the funeral, after initially being denied entry into the U.S.

My dear little AbbieGail was taken away and I need to pay my last respects to her, a tearful Kenroy Smith, the father, says in the video, posted on the website of Asbury Park Press. That's all Im asking.

Smith was denied a temporary visa because of a marijuana arrest in 2001, and half-sister Kenish Smith saw her application rejected because of fears she would overstay her visa in the U.S., the Press reported.

After being rejected, the Smiths visited the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, to plead their case in final attempt to be granted entry to the U.S., but were unsuccessful.

I was just wondering why they would deny me the chance to see my daughter for the last time, Kenroy Smith told the Press. I just want to see my beautiful angel. Shes my diamond. She always shines when I see her.

A U.S. State Department official said visa applications are judged on a case-by-case basis and the department does not comment on specific cases, the Press reported.

Another half-sister, Latisha Smith, has hired an attorney to help in the fight to grant the Smiths entry into the U.S.

Kenroy Smith said he hopes the president will be willing to help the family.

Mr. Trump, she is my daughter, he said. Put yourself in my position and see what would be suitable to you as a father who nourishes and cares for your child.
A Michigan man who told police he killed his 5-year-old stepdaughter and set fire to the family's apartment after she interrupted his nap has been convicted of first-degree murder.

Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Joyce Draganuchuk on Friday also found 25-year-old Thomas McClellan of Holt guilty of first-degree child abuse and first-degree arson. He's scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 23 to life in prison without parole.

Defense lawyer Patrick Crowley argued that a second-degree conviction would be more appropriate.

Authorities say McClellan told officers he stabbed Luna Younger on Nov. 1 and then set fire to the Lansing-area apartment to destroy evidence of the killing. During a taped confession played during the trial, McClellan said he killed the girl because she interrupted his nap and asked for something to eat.
The city of San Fernando, Pampanga - the culinary capital of the Philippines, welcomed its first green hotel: the Best Western Bendix. Situated on the McArthur Highway, which is just a 15 minute drive from Clark International Airport and 45 minutes from Manila, the hotel is exceptionally well-connected and convenient for both business and leisure travelers.

With its large domestic population, rising affluence and increasing popularity as an international tourist destination, the Philippines is an incredibly important market for Best Western, said Olivier Berrivin, Best Westerns Managing Director of International Operations - Asia.

In addition to our existing hotels and resorts in key markets like Manila, Cebu and Boracay, we have recently introduced our high-quality international hotels to new markets such as Subic Bay and Puerto Princesa. Now, I am delighted to announce Best Westerns entry into San Fernando - the Philippines gastronomic capital and an important regional market.

Best Western Bendix Hotel will provide local and international visitors with a modern midscale accommodation option in this vibrant city. With our world-class service standards and extensive facilities for events, including a large ballroom, we expect this hotel to become a strong player in the local market, Olivier added.

The Best Western Bendix Hotel features 45 contemporary guest rooms, all of which come equipped with complimentary Wi-Fi, flat-screen TVs with cable channels, work space and unique ergonomic pillows to guarantee a good nights sleep.

Guests can enjoy excellent local and international cuisine in the restaurant, which showcases a selection of popular dishes that originate in Pampanga. There is also a casual coffee shop with indoor and al fresco seating, making it the perfect place to unwind during the day.

The Best Western Bendix Hotel also offers a choice of three different function rooms, each of which host up to 120 guests for meetings and seminars. And for large corporate events, weddings and gala dinners, the 332m Giant Lantern Ballroom can accommodate up to 300 people.

Following the opening of the new property on July 21st, 2017, Best Western now operates a portfolio of eight hotels across the Philippines, making it one of the largest international hotel groups in the country. This portfolio covers a series of business and leisure destinations including Manila, Makati City, Boracay, Cebu City, Puerto Princesa, Subic Bay and now San Fernando.
A 20-year-old man accused of torching a North Carolina apartment building that left 130 people homeless last week was in the U.S. illegally, the sheriff's office told the Charlotte Observer.

Jesus Reyes Lopez, who was arrested Thursday in connection with the fire at the Woodscape Apartments, is an illegal immigrant from Mexico and is wanted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the paper reported.

He will likely be deported no matter the outcome of his arson and attempted murder case, according to the paper.

Police say 40 apartments were damaged as a result of the fire Monday, leaving the 130 residents without a place to live.

Sources told a local TV news outlet that Lopez set the fire as an act of revenge against an ex-girlfriend and the fire got out of control, the Observer reported.

The Red Cross was working to find new homes for the displaced residents.

Seven people were hospitalized trying to escape the fire.

Residents reported people dropping children from the third floor of the building because the stairwell was on fire, blocking their escape, Fox 46 Charlotte reported.

Lopez was jailed on a $1 million bail.

Authorities checked his immigration status when he was booked into the jail, the Observer reported.
Brooklyn aint afraid of no squirrel.

Prospect Park is fearless in the face of reports of an aggressive, possibly rabid squirrel  with many parkgoers asserting Saturday that theyd give the cretinous critter a swift boot to the nuts.

I would kick it and kill it, swore Lakendra Tookes as she took her Chihuahua, Savannah, for a walk.

Im not gonna sit there and be a victim of some squirrel, said Tookes, a 30-something publicist from Crown Heights.

Even her pint-sized pooch  a Brooklyn pup, after all  would win a squirrel fight, she insisted:

Between me and my dog, we could take the squirrel.

NYC'S PIZZA-LOVING RAT CAPTURED STEALING ENTIRE PIE

Carlos Nieves, 49, agreed that fancy footwork was all it would take to outfox a snarling squirrel.

Id pick up my [fishing] gear and I would stomp on it, said Nieves, a Sheepshead Bay-based electrician.

I have a big foot, he noted.

City Health Department officials say five people were bitten by a squirrel in Prospect Park between Tuesday and Thursday of last week  including a 7-year-old girl.

Click here for more from the New York Post.
A fishing crew reeled in a 926-pound shark on Saturday off the New Jersey coast, possibly the largest shark catch in the state's history.

The crew on the fishing boat named the Jenny Lee caught the Mako shark while fishing in Hudson Canyon, about 100 miles off the coast of New Jersey, according to NJ.com.

"It's a pretty awesome feeling," Kevin Gerrity, captain of the Jenny Lee, told the news site. "We saw him swimming up to the boat. We didn't think we were going to get him, but we got him."

"We were able to get him with a skipjack fillet with a squid combo as his last meal," Gerrity added.

MAN CATCHES RECORD-SETTING TROUT IN UTAH

The crew spent about 90 minutes reeling in the shark. It was so massive that some members almost went overboard as they brought the shark closer to the boat.

The mako shark could be the heaviest one caught in New Jersey history. The current record weight is an 880-pound tiger shark that was caught in 1988, according to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife.
A Purple Heart medal found along a road in Nyack, N.Y., nearly a decade ago was reunited Sunday with a war heros family.

Relatives of World War II Staff Sgt. Bernard J. McNamara were presented with the award Sunday morning by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., following a nationwide search to identify the rightful owner of one of the highest military honors awarded to those wounded or killed in action.

My father was such a quiet and humble man, McNamaras daughter, 67-year-old Catherine Birong, told Fox News.

He certainly deserves this recognition, she said of her father, who died in 1975 and who is buried in South Burlington, Vt. My family is overwhelmed.

McNamara  who was orphaned as a boy in New York City  became a staff sergeant in the U.S. military and was wounded during combat operations in Italy in World War II. He was then captured and held as a POW in Nazi Germany for 18 months, according to his military discharge papers.

PURPLE HEART MYSTERY: SEARCH UNDERWAY TO IDENTIFY OWNER OF LOST MEDAL

How the prestigious medal disappeared and later ended up decades later in gravel along a road in central Nyack  a New York City suburb  is not known. But Birong has a theory: One day, in the early 1960s, her mother gave McNamaras military gear and medals to some young cousins playing at the family home in the Bronx.

The children were getting antsy, said Birong. And my mother  a funny and generous woman  gave them my dads military hats and medals and said, Now go pretend youre a soldier.

That was the last time I recall seeing my dads Purple Heart, said Birong, noting that her cousins lived in Rockland County not far from where the medal was later discovered. My cousins probably took it home with them.

McNamara later relocated to Vermont with his wife, daughter and son, Brian McNamara, a Vietnam veteran. The elder McNamara died in 1975 after a battle with colon cancer, his family said.

On a spring afternoon nearly a decade ago, an elderly man named Joseph Dusty Ridlon was walking a friends dog along a street in Nyack when he picked up a shiny object on the ground covered in sand.

What happened next stunned him. There, in his hand, was a Purple Heart medal  its purple ribbon nearly disintegrated. The medal had the likeness of George Washington on its front and an inscription on its back reading, For Military Merit, and B.J. McNamara Dec. 9, 1943.

Ridlon told Fox News he had tried to locate the owner himself before tucking the medal into a box for years and forgetting about it. When Ridlon recently cleaned out his home, he gave the medal to a friend who then turned it over in early July to Anthony DelRegno, a former Navy corpsman and post commander of the C.R. and R.O. Blauvelt American Legion Post 310 in Nyack.

I knew immediately it was a real Purple Heart, said DelRegno, who summoned the help of military historians as well as Schumers office to help find the medals owner.

The Purple Heart is the oldest award still given to combat-wounded veterans of the U.S. military. The award  established by George Washington and originally called the Merit Badge  has been given nearly 2 million times to recognize the sacrifice of combat-wounded veterans.

There is no national database for all Purple Heart recipients, though various military organizations have been instrumental over the years in helping to reunite lost or stolen Purple Hearts with their owners or families. In 1973, a disastrous fire at the National Personnel Records Center destroyed approximately 16 to 18 million military personnel files  some of them Purple Heart recipients.

Schumers search eventually narrowed down to about 12 individuals in the U.S. with the last name McNamara whose first initials were also B.J. When Schumers office learned that Birongs father was deceased, they tracked down his next of kin  eventually contacting his grandson, Matthew Birong.

At a press conference on Sunday in New York City, the family was presented with the Purple Heart by Schumer who called the final outcome a "storybook ending." He lauded McNamara as a part of "America's greatest generation." Schumer also gave the family two additional awards that have been reissued to McNamara, the Bronze Star Medal and the Infantryman Badge.

To have this Purple Heart returned to us after so many years is incredibly special, Matthew Birong told reporters. This was a piece of who my grandfather truly was.
A Wisconsin bank announced in a Facebook post last week that it was open again -- after flood water hit its vault and ruined the money inside, WISN reported Monday.

Water got up to 21 inches high throughout the entire bank, Fox River State Bank president and CEO Keith Pollek told the station.

There was stuff floating everywhere - chairs, equipment at the bank in Burlington, he recalled. Pollek said at the time that all of the cash that was in the vault will need to be replaced.

THAT STINKS! MAN SEEKING DROPPED PHONE FALLS IN TRASH CHUTE

Heavy rain struck the town southwest of Milwaukee July 11 to July 12, the Journal Times reported.

All the payments were handled, loan applications were taken, Pollek told the newspaper. We never skipped a beat with the blessing of a second office in Lake Geneva nearby.

Some of you may have seen on the news that the cash in our vault was ruined, the bank said in a July 18 Facebook post. Don't worry, it has been replaced with clean and safe cash. So any cash you get is ready and safe to be used.
Chinese authorities have dropped charges against an American college student who was arrested and detained in the Asian nation a week ago after reportedly injuring a taxi driver who was roughing up his mother in a fare dispute, a U.S. lawmaker said Sunday.

Guthrie McLean, a University of Montana senior, was released from a detention center in the central China city of Zhengzhou early Monday local time, according to Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana.

"Prayer's answered. Guthrie's home," the 25-year-old student's mother, Jennifer McLean, wrote in an email to Daines' office.

Jennifer McLean confirmed her son's release in an email to The Associated Press. She provided no further information.

Jennifer McLean has been teaching in Zhengzhou, where her son was visiting her this summer.

His release followed days of negotiations between U.S. officials and Chinese authorities. Details on the deal that led to Guthrie McLean's release were not immediately disclosed.

Daines and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, had argued McLean's detention was unjustified because he was defending his mother, who is deaf, when he reportedly pushed the taxi driver to the ground during a June 10 altercation in Zhengzhou.

The college student majoring in East Asian studies was detained five weeks later, on July 16, on charges of intentional injury.

Jennifer McLean had alleged that police demanded the equivalent of $7,400 in compensation from the family and threatened to imprison her son for up to three years if they refused to pay.

Daines said the family did not pay that amount, but he declined to comment further.

DEFECTORS, GOOGLE EARTH MAP NORTH KOREA HORRORS

"We were able to come to an agreement that worked for everybody, most importantly for Guthrie and for Jennifer, his mother," Daines said in a conference call with reporters.

Local police in China have declined to comment on the case.

NORTH KOREA EXPERIENCING WORST DROUGHT IN 16 YEARS, U.N. AGENCY REPORTS

Guthrie McLean has been a student at the University of Montana in Missoula for about two years and worked for the past year in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, his boss, Olivia White, has said.

He largely grew up in China after living in Missoula as a young child while his mother was studying at the university, White said.
Israel set up new security cameras Sunday at the entrance to a sensitive Jerusalem holy site as officials consider alternatives to recently installed metal detectors that set off a weekend of violence and prompted the Palestinian president to declare a severing of ties.

Israel set up the metal detectors last week after Arab gunmen opened fire from the shrine, killing two Israeli policemen.

It said they were a necessary measure to prevent more attacks and were deployed routinely at holy sites around the world. Muslims religious leaders alleged Israel was trying to expand its control at the Muslim-administered site and launched mass prayer protests.

On Friday, three Palestinians were killed in street clashes sparked by the tensions over the shrine. Later Friday, a Palestinian who his family said was upset over Israeli policies at the holy site stabbed to death three members of an Israeli family in their home in a West Bank settlement.

At the same time, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced he is freezing ties with Israel on "all levels" until the metal detectors are removed.

On Sunday, Abbas said this suspension also meant a halt in security coordination between his forces in the West Bank and Israeli troops.

Such coordination, largely aimed at a common foe, the Islamic militant Hamas, had been a constant in frequently hostile Israeli-Palestinian relations. Ending those ties could quickly escalate tensions.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa quoted Abbas as saying that "when we made these decisions, we took a firm and decisive stance, especially with regard to security coordination."

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the security ties are more beneficial to the Palestinians and that Israel can manage without them. "We are not going to chase after them," Lieberman told the YNet news site,

In Israel, there was a growing debate over the initial decision to install the metal detectors at the most sensitive site of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some commentators said it had been a hasty decision, without proper consultations with the military and the domestic Shin Bet security services.

Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Israeli defense body for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel was open to alternatives to lower the tensions.

"The only thing we want is to ensure no one can enter with weapons again and carry out another attack," he said. "We're willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors as long as the solution of alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack."

However, the top Muslim cleric of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, told the Voice of Palestine he demands a complete return to procedures that were in place before the initial attack at the shrine, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

In a statement Sunday, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, of which he is a part, said they "affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation."

Disputes over the shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, have set off major rounds of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations in the past.

On Friday, several thousand Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in Jerusalem after noon prayers  the centerpiece of the Muslim religious week.

Three Palestinians were killed and several dozen wounded after protesters burned tires and threw stones and firecrackers. Israeli troops responded with live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Late Friday night, a 20-year-old Palestinian identified as Omar al-Abed jumped over the fence of the Halamish settlement near Ramallah and entered a home, surprising a family that was celebrating a new grandchild during their traditional Sabbath dinner. He stabbed to death Yosef Salomon, 70, and his adult children, 46-year-old Chaya and 35-year-old Elad, while his daughter-in-law escaped to a separate room to shelter her young children.

A neighbor, an off-duty soldier, heard the screams, rushed to the home and opened fire, wounding the attacker. TV footage showed the floor tiles drenched in blood, and officials called it a "massacre."

"This has nothing to do with metal detectors. There is no justification for murdering a grandfather at a party to celebrate the birth of his new grandson," said Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha settlers' council.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack as "an act of terror, carried out by an animal who was incited with unfathomable hatred."

At his weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu vowed the killer's home would be demolished swiftly in retribution and those who incited and glorified his act would be dealt with.

"Since the beginning of the events I've conducted a series of meetings and evaluations with the all the security officials, including those on the ground. We receive updates on the ground from them and recommendations on how to act and we decide accordingly," he said.

Israel has repeatedly accused the Palestinian Authority of permitting anti-Israeli incitement in the public Palestinian discourse and vowed to act against it. The Palestinians reject the allegations, saying Israel's 50-year-old occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state is at the root of widespread Palestinian anger and helps drive violence.

Israel has yet to comment on the new cameras and whether they offered a chance to restore calm. A top Abbas adviser said he was holding consultations with various countries, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco, about the crisis.
Two Jordanians were shot to death and an Israeli citizen was wounded Sunday evening at the Israeli Embassy in Jordan, news agencies including Sky News reported.

The shooting unfolded in an apartment building at the embassy, in the upscale Rabiyeh neighborhood in Amman. Jordanians had entered the building for carpentry work, security officials said.

One of the Jordanians killed was a physician at the scene, the officials added.

The Israeli man was said to be in an "unstable" condition, according to reporting from the news site Hala Akhbar, linked to the Jordanian military.

No further details were provided. Israel's Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

The incident comes at a time of mounting tensions between Israel and the Muslim world over metal detectors Israel installed at a Jerusalem shrine revered by Muslims and Jews.

Jordan is the Muslim custodian of the site. On Friday, thousands of Jordanians staged an anti-Israeli protest in Amman.

Click for more from Sky News.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hundreds of corpses of Islamic State fighters remain stored in freezers in Libya, as that nations government negotiates the return of the bodies to the fighters home countries, a report said.

Most of the dead, shipped to a morgue in Misrata, Libya, were killed in December when Libyan forces defeated ISIS in a battle at Sirte, on Libyas Mediterranean coast, Reuters reported.

In many cases, the fighters home countries  including Egypt and Sudan  have been reluctant to accept the remains because their arrival would help reveal how many of their citizens left to fight as ISIS jihadists, according to Reuters.

Officials in Tunisia have estimated that more than 3,000 of its citizens have left to join jihadists fighters in Iraq, Syria and Libya, the report said.

In the interim, Libyan authorities have documented and photographed the bodies and collected DNA samples, a Misrata law enforcement official told Reuters.

The Islamic State had captured Sirte in 2015, and held it until Libyan forces invaded in December.

Last week, Fox News reported that despite heavy losses for ISIS on the battlefield in recent months, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the terror organizations leader, has eluded capture.

U.S. Army Gen. Raymond A. Tony Thomas, commander of U.S. special operations, said U.S. forces recently were close to capturing Baghdadi, but a leak to the media allowed the ISIS leader to slip away.

The challenge we have [is] in terms of where and how our tactics and procedures are discussed openly, Thomas said. Theres a great need to inform the American public about what were up to. Theres also great need to recognize things that will absolutely undercut our ability to do our job.
Seatrade Europe, taking place in Hamburg from 6-8 September, has a dedicated conference session with a unique and new format. With the number of cruise ships deployed in Europe increasing each year, ports and destinations are under increasing pressure to accommodate the influx of ships and passengers, as well as larger ships and new technologies, the conference sessions will offer insight from key industry leaders.

Moderating the session will be Alessandro Carollo, Head of Port Operations EMEA for Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd who offers us a view of the topic from a cruise line perspective:

No doubt the increasing tonnage of new builds requires adjustments from ports and destinations alike; the improvements that these key stakeholders are constantly working on are critical to the success of the whole industry. Since the arrival of the worlds largest ship in Europe (Oasis class) in 2014, we have seen a lot of engagement from both to better understand the requirements for ships of that size in terms of technical as well as touristic-related needs. All ports and destinations keen to work with mega ships need to continue to improve their infrastructures and offering, utilizing the success and lessons learned from their predecessors.

The first of these case studies will look at port and airport collaboration for home porting operations, and will be led by Arnt Mller Pedersen, Chief Operating Officer, Cruise & Ferries, Copenhagen Malmo Port:

Copenhagen Malmo Port has for a number of years been working very closely with Copenhagen Airport, Bags Inc. and SAS, testing an Onboard Airline Check-in system, which will allow cruise passengers to place their luggage outside their cabin door the night before arriving to Copenhagen, and then retrieve their luggage at the final destination airport. In order to implement the service in full, we still have some challenges with the communication between the European Airlines Amadeus IT system and the Bags Inc. system.

The second case study, led by Sacha Rougier, Managing Director for Cruise Gate Hamburg, will look at adapting to a quickly changing world through efficient use of infrastructure. Rougier also has great insight into best security practices for ports, following the recent G20 summit in Hamburg:

Terminal Security during the G20 summit in Hamburg, and also after the recent attacks in Munich and Nice, is one of the topics I will be discussing during the session at Seatrade Europe. Hamburg deployed some 20,000 police officers for the G20 summit to prevent violent protests and to protect government leaders. As terminal operators we need to deal with most eventualities and therefore we worked closely with the Police to enable cruise ships to safely call at Hamburg during this period.

The final case study focusses on sustainable tourism and managing congestion ashore and will be led by Rita Berstand Maraak, Port Director for Geirangerfjord Cruise Port who has first-hand experience:

We need to change to preserve. Geirangerfjord cruise port relies on a close dialogue with the shipping companies if we are to achieve an appropriate development of the region, and a harmonious relationship between the local community and an active cruise industry. Together, we can ensure a forward-looking and sustainable development  safeguarding both commercial development and the environment.

The topic of ports and destinations and how they operate beyond peak demand will be discussed during the conference at Seatrade Europe 2017, taking place at Hamburg Messe und Congress in Hamburg, Germany this September. It is a new format for the session and will feature Case Studies from Copenhagen Malmo Port, Cruise Gate Hamburg and Geirangerfjord Cruise Port. The session will take place on Thursday 7 September 2017 from 1030-1130hrs.

To find out more about the full programme, and for regular updates, please visit www.seatrade-europe.com/programme/conference
North Korea is experiencing its worst drought since 2001, prompting officials to fear an increase in food shortage in the communist country that has suffered serious famine for years, a report by a United Nations agency revealed.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released the report on Thursday that detailed a prolonged dry period in North Korea from April to June, an important time for crop development. It's production of staple crops such as rice, corn, potatoes and soybeans has been damaged, "threatening food security for a large part of its population," the agency said.

DEFECTORS, GOOGLE EARTH MAP DECADES OF HORROR IN NORTH KOREA

The late arrival of rain in July didn't help crop production, either. The rain passed the planting and growth period for a successful harvest from October to November.

The decrease in rainfall already falls below the crisis the rogue nation suffered in 2001 when grain production fell an "unprecedented level" of about 2 million tons. Early harvest in June has already showed a significant decrease in wheat, barley and potatoes -- plunging more than 30 percent to 310,000 tons compared to last year's 450,000 tons.

The agency added North Korea will need significant imports from other nations to fill the gap caused by the drought.

"Increased food imports, commercial and/or through food aid, would be required during the next three lean months (July to September) until the harvest of the 2017 main season from the end of September to October, in order to ensure adequate food consumption for the most vulnerable people," the agency said.

NORTH KOREA FIRING SQUAD CARRIES OUT PUBLIC EXECUTIONS IN SCHOOL YARDS, REPORT SAYS

Without the imports, North Korea faces severe food shortages to feed its citizens. Large parts of the country's population could face malnutrition or death.

The country has dealt with years of severe famine since the 1990s. The North Korean government issued a rare international call in 1996 to prevent the crisis from worsening, the BBC reported. The World Food Program stepped in to assist what they called the "biggest emergency operation in its history."

Many children between the ages 1 and 2 were described to be extremely nalnourished at the time, with some families reportedly eating leaves and twigs as food substance, according to the BBC.

The North Korean government has implemented changes to prevent another deadly famine, though years of bad weather has also impeded the country's recovery.
Kibeho massacre : On April 22, 1995, RPA troops used all sort of arms, killing people in the camp. Few thousands survived the carnage that decimated the population of the camp. Thousands and thousands of corps were loaded in trucks and burned to ashes.

Mudende massacre: The same scenario occurred in Kanama (Gisenyi, NDLR), where civilians took refuge in caves in that area to escape the killings of RPA but were all bombarded, and none of them escaped from those caves. In October 24 to 27, 1997, up to ten thousand civilians were massacred in those caves in Kanama.

Madeleine Albright, the then Secretary of state, had to visit Rwanda and wanted to see atrocities that occurred in the caves of Kanama, mainly because the international community was shocked and horrified by the ferocity used by RPA troops by killing unarmed civilians; however, the Kagame government had to divert the anger of the US to something else, to keep the Clinton government on its side.

A night before the arrival of Albright in Kigali, RPA troops mercilessly attacked the refugee camp of Mudende, where the ethnic Banyamurenge and Bagogwe were living to escape attacks of Hutu militias that infiltrated Rwanda from Congo, killing Tutsi on their ways. The RPA troops ferociously killed those refugees (Tutsi refugees, NDRL) randomly without mercy for women and children because they wanted to prove the ruthlessness of Hutu militias to Secretary Albright. Rwandan officials showed her the aftermath of the carnage they pretended to be committed by Hutu. That what she saw and believed, and she could not ask for what occurred in Kanama.

The perpetrators of those massacres were put under house arrest for some months, then released without any trial because they complied to Kagames orders to kill.

Bagogwe are Tutsi from Gisenyi
Rhondavena and Bill LaPorte thought they had their retirement plan all figured out until they changed horses in midstream.

Instead of having a few pleasure animals in their back yard, the couple found themselves caring for a herd of colts and ponies, mares and stallions, an Arabian and half a dozen American saddlebreds. The horses had been starved, abused or, in one case, literally left behind in a field when their owners sold the property.

The LaPortes turned their 21-acre farm in Louisa County, with its scenic mix of open pastures and wooded trails, into the Serenity Farm Equine Sanctuary. There, they would repair the physical and emotional damage that had been done, retrain the horses for riding and find homes for as many as could be adopted.

They also would offer permanent pasture to other horses, like the blind Shiloh and the deaf Sonny Boy, whose owner became incarcerated.

There is such a need, she said, adding that recent years have been hard for horses.

Some families couldnt afford the equine upkeep when the downturn in the economy caused them to lose the roofs over their heads. In other cases, elderly husbands died and their wives didnt know how to care for the animals.

Its kind of like every story under the sun, she said. Even the ones that were starving were because people who got the horses really didnt know how to care for them.

RELIVING CHILDHOOD

Five years ago, the LaPortes moved from the hustlebustle of North Stafford to the relative quiet of Louisa. She had retired after 30 years as a special education teacher and administrator, then five more years as a civilian branch head with the Marine Corps, and he continued to work as an IT analyst, but his office was in Louisa instead of Crystal City.

The two have been married for almost 20 years, and for the first decade, neither knew the other was hot to trot to have horses.

Hed always wanted to ride, and shed spent many summers on her grandfathers horse farm in Roanoke. The late Charlie Williams would tell prospective buyers a horse was so gentle, his granddaughter could ride it.

She also dreamed of being a jockey and perhaps riding some of the racehorses her grandfather raised. She lived in Baltimore and during her high-school years, exercised horses at Pimlico Race Course.

But as an adult, she went 20 years without a four-legged connection. She was 50 when she got Jackson, an American quarter horse, and he was one of the first horses to run around the green pasture at Serenity Farm.

Hes retained his position of seniority.

Hes always been head of the herd, she said. He will mediate if two horses arent getting along. If anybodys being too hard on somebody, he gets right in there. Its the craziest thing.

While running a horse sanctuary isnt exactly what she had planned for her retirement years, Rhondavena LaPorte couldnt be happier.

How lucky is that, to be able to relive your childhood? she asked.

BECOMING A RESCUE

As so often happens in life, the LaPortes didnt take a direct route to owning a horse sanctuary.

Their path went through donkeys.

She wanted one in the mix, so they adopted from the Virginia Donkey Rescue. The group asked the couple to join its board, and one thing led to another until the LaPortes became involved with the Virginia Alliance of Equine Rescue Organizations.

They had a reputation for being able to handle horses deemed difficult, especially when it came to catching and transporting them. So, the couple helped for about a year when a case in Lunenburg County, southwest of Petersburg, changed their lives.

They were told three stallions had escaped from a farm and were on the lam on 800 acres of hay fields. They were American saddlebred, considered the ultimate show horse with their high-stepping and elegant nature.

The LaPortes took their trailer to the site for six weekends before they were able to lure the horses to them.

And, it turned out there were three stallions and three pregnant mares. Two of them lost their babies, but the LaPortes brought the contingent to their farm, where the colt was born.

Other rescue groups in the area were filled with horses that had been surrendered by their owners or seized by Animal Control. There literally wasnt room at their inns for any more, and Rhondavena LaPorte had a thought.

Why cant we become a rescue? she asked.

A GIFT FROM ASPCA

Within a day of bringing the Lunenburg horses to their home, the couple heard about another horse in need. They decided to incorporate as a nonprofit in June 2016 so they could solicit donations.

In one years time, theyve had 30 horses and donkeys on the place. Donkeys are not for adoption, but four of the horses have been sent to what the LaPortes hope will be their forever homes.

About 80 percent of the operational money comes from Rhondavena LaPortes retirement funds, and she said shes hoping the farm will get some solid sponsors as so many other rescue groups have done.

Serenity Farm recently got $5,000 from the ASPCA, which will be used to expand the current barn to provide enough stalls for all the horses on the property. The Louisa farm was one of 11 recipients out of 173 applicants in the United States and Canada.

Bill LaPorte estimates it would cost about $60,000 to build a new barn with stalls, including one for foaling, a classroom where visiting groups could meet and a concrete walkway. But the farm cant afford to build something new all at once, so hell use the ASPCA gift as seed money.

Were just going to do it ourselves, a piece at a time, he said.

As the couple expands the infrastructure, one thing is for sure. The LaPortes wont exceed capacity. They have 26 horses and donkeys and dont have room for more than that.

They want their horses to be able to run and chase each other, to have plenty of hay and water at their disposal. They also want to help out as many Louisa County horse owners as needed because the community has been so good to us.

The couple will start on the barn addition when she recovers from a broken foot. She does all the training, regularly climbing aboard animals that havent been ridden in decades or on the backs of those labeled as mean and nasty.

Prince the Arabian had that kind of reputation but hes more like a strong-willed pussycat.

But LaPorte didnt break her foot while training. Another horse was eager to get to the food and stepped on her.

If there was a stirrup big enough to fit her cast, shed be back in the saddle again.

In the meantime, the 20 or so people who volunteer at Serenity Farm have stepped up to help with feeding and farm maintenance, including scrubbing out water buckets.

The latter is what brought Mitsi Wood to the farm on a steaming hot morning, when humans and horses were seeking shade by 9 a.m. The Louisa resident worked with bone marrow transplants before she retired, and wanted to continue important work.

I want to stay in something in the community thats meaningful, Wood said, and I find this very meaningful.
WITH North Koreas successful intercontinental missile test this month, Americans again woke up to breathless alarm over possible military strikes and the specter of a North Korean nuclear attacka virtual repeat of the hype in April when it looked as if a sixth North Korean nuclear test was imminent.

Why are we so afraid of North Korea?

The media and policymakers like to remind us that North Korea produces one bombs worth of nuclear material every eight weeks. By most accounts, if nothing changes, the regime will build a nuclear arsenal able to hit the U.S. mainland by the mid-2020s.

Its also perfectly true that, with a bad decision or two, the U.S. could stumble into a devastating conflict on the peninsula that would cost millions of lives, put U.S. troops in harms way and might even spark a nuclear exchange.

That being said, we must put the situation in proper perspective. What has been lost amid the incessant punditry, news coverage and irresponsible headlines suggesting that North Korea can already hit California, is that deterrence on the Korean peninsula is alive and well. The balance of power, moreover, strongly favors the U.S.not North Korea.

The U.S. is the most powerful nation in the world. Our military is second to none, outspending the next eight countries combined. Our fighting men and women are the best-trained, most technically advanced force in history. We have thousands of nuclear weapons and many more precision-guided conventional bombs. Our warplanes, ships, drones and cyber capabilities are the envy of all. Most importantly, the American experimentone committed to democratic values and the rule of lawhas allowed us to become the worlds sole superpower.

In contrast, we have North Korea, a totalitarian state that consistently fails to meet the basic needs of its 23 million people. The United Nations World Food Program says 70 percent of the Norths citizens did not have enough food to eat in 2016. An estimated 25 percent of the Norths children are physically stunted. The country ranks 213 out of 230 countries in GDP per capita. The North does have a 1.2 million-man military; but an International Institute of Security Studies report found that the Norths conventional forces rely on increasingly obsolete equipment, with little evidence of widespread modernization. In other words, its equipment is old.

Who should be afraid of whom?

For all its idiosyncratic behavior, outlandish threats and actions, and gruesome human rights record, the North Korean government is not suicidal. It knows that, in a large-scale confrontation with South Korea and the U.S., the North Korean leadership and the country itself would cease to exist.

The U.S. must therefore maintain its policy of the strongest deterrence. At the same time, however, assuming the U.S. actually wants to solve this problem rather than simply contain it, we must offer more material carrots to the Northmeaningful security assurances, a semblance of political legitimacy and access to the international economic system.

This more flexible approach would, in turn, assuage Chinese concerns about regime collapse in North Korea. Indeed, once convinced the U.S. had a political solution in mind, China might be more willing to wield much harsher stickstruly crushing sanctions on food and energy, particularly oil and coal.

U.S. action cannot be driven by outdated policies, stereotypes and presidential tweets when overreaction in a high-stakes standoff could lead to catastrophic miscalculation. Above all, the U.S. must lead, and do so with confidence, not fear.

As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has said, We must take North Korea as it is, not as we wish it to be. While this is often interpreted to mean we shouldnt expect the country to comply with international standards (it wont), it also means that we cant view North Korea as a super-villain.

North Korea is a desperately poor country led by a desperately misguided regime. The threat North Korea poses is serious, but not an imminent one to the U.S. homeland. So lets not make things worse by scaring ourselves and adding to the risk of another Korean War.

Philip W. Yun is executive director of Ploughshares Fund, a San Francisco security and peace foundation. He previously served as a senior advisor to two U.S. coordinators for North Korea at the Department of State. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
America should support Qatar, not Saudis

The Free LanceStar could do its part in showing its commitment to freedom of the press by calling on President Trump to show military support for tiny Qatar, where the sole voice of truth in journalism in the Arab world is under attack.

The Saudis and Emirate sheiks fear Al-Jazeera news, as does Egypt and every other tyranny in the area, because it beams radio and TV reality over the heads of their own tightly controlled media. This is what this SaudiQatar fight is all about, not Qatars diplomatic ties with Iran or other groups.

Saudi Arabia funds many extremist groups on its own. President Trump chose to visit Saudi Arabia recently and was rewarded with $100 billion in armaments deals.

He can show the world this was not just a bribe to get him to look the other way while Saudi forces invade the one country in the area that hosts a vital American air base that we use to strike both the Taliban and the Islamic State.

This air base is in Qatar because the Saudis kicked it out some years ago. A phone call to the Saudi king would probably do the job, but an extra division of American troops in downtown Doha would not hurt.

Trump should show that American values are not for sale.

Robert Thomas

Fredericksburg
Free Freightnet Membership

List your company in the Freightnet directory. It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours.
Educational conferences and matchmaking events will be organized to promote Europe as a tourist destination to some of the worlds most important outbound travel markets. The programme, named Partnerships in European Tourism, will see a series of eight conferences and business-to-business matchmaking events, taking place within the EU and in the target markets of China and the USA. It also includes dedicated stands at international tourism trade exhibitions.

The launch event will take place in Venice on 19th January 2018. It will comprise a briefing for a delegation of Chinese tourism buyers on the European market, followed by matchmaking appointments with European suppliers. The second event will take place in Berlin in March, coinciding with ITB, the largest travel trade fair in Europe. The specific focus of the conference and matchmaking workshop will be Europes Culture, Pan European Itineraries: River Cruising and Group Tourism. The third event will take place in April in Beijing, where the emphasis will be on Family Travel and it will appeal to European companies seeking to tap in to this core outbound business from China. Subsequent events in China and the USA are to be announced in due course.

Recognising that many intercontinental tourists see Europe as a unified destination, the programme will not focus on countries, cities or specific sights but instead on themes and routes of interest to the visitor, such as family travel, culture, film and TV, lifestyle and romance.

EU-based companies keen to market themselves to the Chinese and American markets by participating in the Partnerships in European Tourism programme are invited to register their interest at www.EUtravelpartnerships.org. Here they can identify their business with an initial list of themes and, in collaboration with other companies, propose additional themes.

The programme is being funded by the European Commission and delivered by a consortium made up of ETOA - the European tourism association, the European Travel Commission and ECTAA, the European Association of Travel Agents and Tour Operators.

Tom Jenkins, CEO, ETOA said: The Partnerships in European Tourism programme is a bold and innovative EU-wide promotional initiative that recognises the high value of strong business relationships between supplier companies in the EU and potential customers in external origin markets. Thats why we are engaged in professional matchmaking - to help companies establish more valuable, long-term business relationships.

The Partnerships in European Tourism initiative targets two of the most important source long-haul travel markets for Europe: China and the United States. The programme will also have a special meaning in 2018, the EU-China Tourism Year commented Eduardo Santander, Executive Director of the European Travel Commission.

This initiative provides a unique opportunity to strengthen tourism relationships with strategic partners in third country markets, with a view to increasing travel and tourism. It will also foster cooperation among European tourism companies, for the promotion of EU transnational products said Michel de Blust, Secretary General of ECTAA.
Puerto Ricos Governor Ricardo Rossello recently signed a law that enables the creation of a Destination Marketing Organization (DMO). Notwithstanding the challenges and adversities faced during 2016, Meet Puerto Rico (MPR), the Destination Marketing Organization (DMO), will try to attract more than 220 groups to the island, generating an economic impact of approximately $120 million.

Meet Puerto Rico kicked off the new fiscal year focusing on its mission to generate economic activity by attracting groups and conventions to the island, through an aggressive year-long sales calendar including activities in major markets in North America, Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean, announced Milton Segarra, CDMA, president and CEO of the organization.

The calendar of opportunities includes approximately 60 sales and promotional events, including trade fairs, press trips and networking activities, in cities such as Frankfurt (Germany), Barcelona (Spain), Mexico City (Mexico), Chicago (USA), Orlando (USA), Las Vegas (USA), Toronto (Canada) and Montego Bay (Jamaica). Meet Puerto Ricos partners will participate as well to continue strengthening the destinations message, said Segarra.

Puerto Ricos tourism ecosystem is broad and offers an authentic and first-rate experience, said Segarra. Our partners reputation of successfully competing on a global scale in the groups and conventions market is priceless, said Segarra. Having them join us at these events is allows us to reach even more potential customers and adds a value to our offerings so that potential customers find out firsthand what we can offer them as a destination.

We are confident that implementing the DMO will be of great benefit to our industry, but at the same time it is crucial to continue maximizing our sales efforts during this transition period so that the industry will be strengthened and ready for exponential growth once the new organization takes over, said Segarra.
Strong thunderstorms Saturday night : Bonn spared from severe weather damage

Bonn A major thunderstorm front passed over Bonn and the region on Saturday night but the area was spared from severe weather damage. However, the German Meteorological Service warns that there could be once again heavy rain, hail and high winds.

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

According to the German Meteorological Service (DWD), a large thunderstorm front passed over major parts of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) overnight from Saturday to Sunday, bringing heavy rains, hail and high winds.

In Bonn and Rhine-Sieg County, there was significant thunder and lightening. Strong thunderstorms with some heavy rainfall was experienced in some areas. But there was no weather damage to report. The fire department confirmed they received no major weather-related calls.

Weather forecast for Sunday

Blue skies will appear more often in the southwestern regions of NRW: The cloud cover over Bonn and Rhine-Sieg County will slowly break up but the sun is expected to peek through only rarely. It should remain dry, with a maximum high of 25 Celcius.

Going into the week, however the German Weather Service says there is a renewed chance of storms: The week is expected to start out with rain and thunderstorms and the temperatures will vary between 13 and 21Celcius.

(Rain radar)? Here, you can observe the weather fronts as they move in.
The Turkish Coalition of America (TCA) is accepting applications for the 4th Annual Turkish American Youth Leadership Congress. Held every year in Washington, DC, this years Youth Congress will be held October 26-29, 2017.



Students and young professionals of Turkish American heritage are encouraged to apply.



The Youth Leadership Congress is open to undergraduate/graduate students and recent graduates of Turkish American heritage who wish to become active in American civic and political life, contribute to U.S.-Turkey relations and the Turkish American community, and who are committed to advancing the TCA mission.



TCA will select up to 25 young Turkish Americans to participate in this exclusive, all-expenses-paid forum. Participants will have the opportunity to:

Expand their knowledge of U.S.-Turkey relations and the political systems of both countries

Meet members of Congress, diplomats and policy experts

Increase their awareness of Turkish historical heritage in the United States and issues of importance to Turkish Americans

Learn about effective advocacy in the American political system

Develop leadership skills

Become more active members of the Turkish American community

Establish networks with peers from across the United States



The Youth Congress will include discussions with U.S. congressional staff, American and Turkish diplomats and scholars, and representatives of Turkish American community organizations. There will also be several opportunities to network with leaders in U.S.-Turkish relations and with other young Turkish Americans. Finally, the program will feature events highlighting the cultural and national landmarks of Washington, DC.



TCA will provide assistance for transportation and/or lodging to individuals selected to attend the Congress.



Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with any questions.



The deadline to apply for the TCA Turkish American Youth Leadership Congress is Monday, September 11, 2017. For more information on eligibility and to apply, please visit here.
Mother Cries Out After Her 20-year-old Son Visiting Nigeria Allegedly Committed Suicide

bohlah at 23-07-2017 07:42 AM (5 years ago) (m)

A Nigerian woman living in Bavarian, Germany, Mrs F. Owodunni, is alleging foul play after his 20-year-old son visiting Nigeria allegedly committed suicide. She claimed the son may have been killed.

A Nigerian woman living in Bavarian, Germany, Mrs F. Owodunni, is alleging foul play after his 20-year-old son visiting Nigeria allegedly committed suicide. She claimed the son may have been killed.

According to a petition sent to the Federal Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), Homicide Section, Alagbon Close, Ikoyi, Lagos, Mrs Owodunni said she started suspecting foul play after people close to the boy, Edwin Owodunni, began to avoid her phone calls while the boy was with them in Nigeria.



She said, I am writing a petition about the suspected murder of my son, Edwin Owodunni, 20, and a citizen of Germany. My son had been coming to Nigeria to visit his father and this trip was his fourth. Edwin came to Nigeria on March 16, 2017 for the burial of his paternal grandmother in the village at Owerri. 



Edwin was expected to return to Germany on April 7. He was communicating with me (via phone). He called on April 12 to inform that he had extended his flight to May 12 as he wanted to spend more time with his father.



That was the last time the family here in Germany heard from Edwin.



All efforts to reach Edwins father proved abortive. All efforts to reach my son also proved abortive.



But to our surprise, we were told that Edwin had committed suicide. We got this news on June 26 while Edwin allegedly committed suicide about three months ago in his fathers village in Owerri.



She said the boy was buried without her knowledge, saying he could have been a victim of ritual killing. To this end, we want the police to thoroughly investigate this case to unravel the mystery behind the death of my son.



Vanguard's efforts to get Alagbon to speak on the case were not successful as the Public Relations Officer (PPRO) of the FCID was said to be away to Jos.



Meanwhile, officers Sunday Vanguard met at the FCID did not deny that the case was with them. The officers also admitted that the father of the boy, Edwin Obele, had been arrested in connection with the sons death. According to a petition sent to the Federal Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), Homicide Section, Alagbon Close, Ikoyi, Lagos, Mrs Owodunni said she started suspecting foul play after people close to the boy, Edwin Owodunni, began to avoid her phone calls while the boy was with them in Nigeria.She said, I am writing a petition about the suspected murder of my son, Edwin Owodunni, 20, and a citizen of Germany. My son had been coming to Nigeria to visit his father and this trip was his fourth. Edwin came to Nigeria on March 16, 2017 for the burial of his paternal grandmother in the village at Owerri. Edwin was expected to return to Germany on April 7. He was communicating with me (via phone). He called on April 12 to inform that he had extended his flight to May 12 as he wanted to spend more time with his father.That was the last time the family here in Germany heard from Edwin.All efforts to reach Edwins father proved abortive. All efforts to reach my son also proved abortive.But to our surprise, we were told that Edwin had committed suicide. We got this news on June 26 while Edwin allegedly committed suicide about three months ago in his fathers village in Owerri.She said the boy was buried without her knowledge, saying he could have been a victim of ritual killing. To this end, we want the police to thoroughly investigate this case to unravel the mystery behind the death of my son.Vanguard's efforts to get Alagbon to speak on the case were not successful as the Public Relations Officer (PPRO) of the FCID was said to be away to Jos.Meanwhile, officers Sunday Vanguard met at the FCID did not deny that the case was with them. The officers also admitted that the father of the boy, Edwin Obele, had been arrested in connection with the sons death.

Post Reply I have been reporting on latest news from Nigeria for almost 10 years now. I report on every possible news area I come across, but always ensure my reports are compiled with dignity and fact to uphold my personal values and duty as a journalist Posted: at 23-07-2017 07:42 AM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero

maxzy277 at 23-07-2017 08:08 AM (5 years ago)

(m) This is bad & totally condemned. May his soul Rest In Peace, may Almighty God console the family and friends left behind Posted: at 23-07-2017 08:08 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac This is bad & totally condemned. May his soul Rest In Peace, may Almighty God console the family and friends left behind Reply

tegonwa at 23-07-2017 08:42 AM (5 years ago)

(m) No, No, No He Was Definitely Murdered.There Are No Two Ways About That.The Body Language Of The People Around Him In Imo Before And After His Death Spells Murder.Quite Wicked Of Them.Wickedly Hopeless! Posted: at 23-07-2017 08:42 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac No, No, No He Was Definitely Murdered.There Are No Two Ways About That.The Body Language Of The People Around Him In Imo Before And After His Death Spells Murder.Quite Wicked Of Them.Wickedly Hopeless! Reply

angesco at 23-07-2017 08:46 AM (5 years ago)

(f) Very sad.



And more troubling is that the MOST INCOMPETENT Nigeria POLICE FORCE in the WORLD can do nothing.



Even if the EVIDENCE is staring them in the face they will NOT see it.



NICE country. NASTY citizens! Posted: at 23-07-2017 08:46 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Very sad.And more troubling is that the MOST INCOMPETENT Nigeria POLICE FORCE in the WORLD can do nothing.Even if the EVIDENCE is staring them in the face they will NOT see it.NICE country. NASTY citizens! Reply

pricklong at 23-07-2017 08:47 AM (5 years ago)

(m) THe father is a primesuspect Posted: at 23-07-2017 08:47 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac THe father is a primesuspect Reply

Patrioti at 23-07-2017 09:37 AM (5 years ago)

(m) In order to bring the killers to book, you have to involve German government since he is a citizen of Germany because Nigeria police will just take bribe and forget the matter. His father may be behind his death because jealousy for not living or having more influence over the boy's life. RIP my son. Posted: at 23-07-2017 09:37 AM (5 years ago) | Upcoming In order to bring the killers to book, you have to involve German government since he is a citizen of Germany because Nigeria police will just take bribe and forget the matter. His father may be behind his death because jealousy for not living or having more influence over the boy's life. RIP my son. Reply

euwilliams at 23-07-2017 09:39 AM (5 years ago)

(f) Chie! That's real ritual killing, they will never finds peace Posted: at 23-07-2017 09:39 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Chie! That's real ritual killing, they will never finds peace Reply

tottori51 at 23-07-2017 09:57 AM (5 years ago)

(m) very sad! Hope they will found who murdered him Posted: at 23-07-2017 09:57 AM (5 years ago) | Upcoming very sad! Hope they will found who murdered him Reply

gogoman at 23-07-2017 10:25 AM (5 years ago)

(m) @FREETHINKER DID IT Posted: at 23-07-2017 10:25 AM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero @FREETHINKER DID IT Reply

Afriqueenn at 23-07-2017 10:39 AM (5 years ago)

(f) Non-ibo wey no fear ibos, dey play with him life.

You, a Yoruba woman allowed your son to visit his ibo father unaccompanied???

I read from other blogs that the woman doesn't even know his family.

She just allowed the man to sweet mouth and deceive her to destruction.

Ibos don't have regard for non ibos, except there's money involved. People wise up!!! Posted: at 23-07-2017 10:39 AM (5 years ago) | Upcoming Non-ibo wey no fear ibos, dey play with him life.You, a Yoruba woman allowed your son to visit his ibo father unaccompanied???I read from other blogs that the woman doesn't even know his family.She just allowed the man to sweet mouth and deceive her to destruction.Ibos don't have regard for non ibos, except there's money involved. People wise up!!! Reply

tegonwa at 23-07-2017 10:56 AM (5 years ago)

(m) Quote from: Afriqueenn on 23-07-2017 10:39 AM Non-ibo wey no fear ibos, dey play with him life.

You, a Yoruba woman allowed your son to visit his ibo father unaccompanied???

I read from other blogs that the woman doesn't even know his family.

She just allowed the man to sweet mouth and deceive her to destruction.

Ibos don't have regard for non ibos, except there's money involved. People wise up!!!

I Beg Your Pardon.That's Not True About The Igbo Man's Attitude To Non Igbos. Posted: at 23-07-2017 10:56 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac I Beg Your Pardon.That's Not True About The Igbo Man's Attitude To Non Igbos. Reply

benosky4 at 23-07-2017 11:05 AM (5 years ago)

(m) No peace for the wicked.

RIP bro #MyVerdict. Posted: at 23-07-2017 11:05 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac No peace for the wicked.RIP bro Reply

proly at 23-07-2017 11:13 AM (5 years ago)

(f) Why will they bury him in the absent of the mother....why are they so in a rush to bury him Posted: at 23-07-2017 11:13 AM (5 years ago) | Hero Why will they bury him in the absent of the mother....why are they so in a rush to bury him Reply

crocatum at 23-07-2017 01:31 PM (5 years ago)

(m) they have killed him, so sad, they were jealous, we need Nigerians to be successful, as much as they come, it will profit everyone in the long-run. Posted: at 23-07-2017 01:31 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac they have killed him, so sad, they were jealous, we need Nigerians to be successful, as much as they come, it will profit everyone in the long-run. Reply

paulsmit at 23-07-2017 01:44 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Quote from: angesco on 23-07-2017 08:46 AM Very sad.



And more troubling is that the MOST INCOMPETENT Nigeria POLICE FORCE in the WORLD can do nothing.



Even if the EVIDENCE is staring them in the face they will NOT see it.



NICE country. NASTY citizens!

You are right my dear. Nigeria is a bad place. Can you believe that a young man with a good heart to visit his motherland will be killed. Nigeria is honestly a bad Country with many bad and dark heart people. It is very frightening and that's why abroad do not want to visit Nigeria. Full of bad evils and all in the name of money Posted: at 23-07-2017 01:44 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming You are right my dear. Nigeria is a bad place. Can you believe that a young man with a good heart to visit his motherland will be killed. Nigeria is honestly a bad Country with many bad and dark heart people. It is very frightening and that's why abroad do not want to visit Nigeria. Full of bad evils and all in the name of money Reply

paulsmit at 23-07-2017 01:45 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Nigeria is a bad place. Can you believe that a young man with a good heart to visit his motherland will be killed. Nigeria is honestly a bad Country with many bad and dark heart people. It is very frightening and that's why abroad do not want to visit Nigeria. Full of bad evils and all in the name of money Posted: at 23-07-2017 01:45 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming Nigeria is a bad place. Can you believe that a young man with a good heart to visit his motherland will be killed. Nigeria is honestly a bad Country with many bad and dark heart people. It is very frightening and that's why abroad do not want to visit Nigeria. Full of bad evils and all in the name of money Reply

paulsmit at 23-07-2017 01:46 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Nigeria is a bad place. Can you believe that a young man with a good heart to visit his motherland will be killed. Nigeria is honestly a bad Country with many bad and dark heart people. It is very frightening and that's why people and children abroad do not want to visit Nigeria. Full of bad evils and all in the name of money Posted: at 23-07-2017 01:46 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming Nigeria is a bad place. Can you believe that a young man with a good heart to visit his motherland will be killed. Nigeria is honestly a bad Country with many bad and dark heart people. It is very frightening and that's why people and children abroad do not want to visit Nigeria. Full of bad evils and all in the name of money Reply

Patrioti at 23-07-2017 02:15 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Quote from: Afriqueenn on 23-07-2017 10:39 AM Non-ibo wey no fear ibos, dey play with him life.

You, a Yoruba woman allowed your son to visit his ibo father unaccompanied???

I read from other blogs that the woman doesn't even know his family.

She just allowed the man to sweet mouth and deceive her to destruction.

Ibos don't have regard for non ibos, except there's money involved. People wise up!!!

Your hatred towards Igbos may deny you a potential husband from your village because any woman with such a bitter heart like yours towards a whole race can not be a future good mother / wife or even a single baby mama. Posted: at 23-07-2017 02:15 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming Your hatred towards Igbos may deny you a potential husband from your village because any woman with such a bitter heart like yours towards a whole race can not be a future good mother / wife or even a single baby mama. Reply

Afriqueenn at 23-07-2017 09:52 PM (5 years ago)

(f) Quote from: Patrioti on 23-07-2017 02:15 PM Your hatred towards Igbos may deny you a potential husband from your village because any woman with such a bitter heart like yours towards a whole race can not be a future good mother / wife or even a single baby mama.



Hahaha...

I actually got the reaction I wanted.

He pain you ba???Hahahha... He pain am, he wan die.

First of all, all what you typed are your portion, your sister('s') and daughter('s'), in Jesus' name.

Were you dead when freethinker, dynasty and other riff-raffs here always made ethnic slurs on all Non-ibos?-ALL THE TIME!

Be a man, have a taste of your own medicine and stop crying Posted: at 23-07-2017 09:52 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming Hahaha...I actually got the reaction I wanted.He pain you ba???Hahahha... He pain am, he wan die.First of all, all what you typed are your portion, your sister('s') and daughter('s'), in Jesus' name.Were you dead when freethinker, dynasty and other riff-raffs here always made ethnic slurs on all Non-ibos?-ALL THE TIME!Be a man, have a taste of your own medicine and stop crying Reply
bohlah at 23-07-2017 07:56 AM (5 years ago) (m)

An argument between two men on a street in New York city escalated into a violent but hilarious fight which was captured on camera.

An argument between two men on a street in New York city escalated into a violent but hilarious fight which was captured on camera.

The fight broke out on Wednesday morning on Manhattan's Upper West Side. It shows a man in a white shirt with a machete fighting with a black man in a red tank top carrying a trash can. A woman can also be seen in the video standing between them to end the fight but she doesnt succeed.



The fight continues during which the machete-wielding man throws the weapon at the man with the trash can, before running to get in the car with the woman. But the black man yanks him out of the car and they continue fighting and throwing things at each other. The video ends with the man in red picking up his backpack as the other man gets back in the car.



A witness said the fight started when the man in red was crossing the street on his cellphone, and the other man became angry because he thought the pedestrian wasnt paying attention. An argument ensued and the light-skinned man flashed a gun clip and told the man he had a gun. He then allegedly got out of his car as the other man quickly grabbed a trash can for protection.



Police have identified the machete-wielding man as 40-year-old Lewis Roman, of the Bronx. He was caught moments after he drove off and police found the gun clip in his possession.

Roman is facing charges of assault, criminal mischief, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon.



Watch the fight below.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPTW5fO-bl8&feature=youtu.be The fight broke out on Wednesday morning on Manhattan's Upper West Side. It shows a man in a white shirt with a machete fighting with a black man in a red tank top carrying a trash can. A woman can also be seen in the video standing between them to end the fight but she doesnt succeed.The fight continues during which the machete-wielding man throws the weapon at the man with the trash can, before running to get in the car with the woman. But the black man yanks him out of the car and they continue fighting and throwing things at each other. The video ends with the man in red picking up his backpack as the other man gets back in the car.A witness said the fight started when the man in red was crossing the street on his cellphone, and the other man became angry because he thought the pedestrian wasnt paying attention. An argument ensued and the light-skinned man flashed a gun clip and told the man he had a gun. He then allegedly got out of his car as the other man quickly grabbed a trash can for protection.Police have identified the machete-wielding man as 40-year-old Lewis Roman, of the Bronx. He was caught moments after he drove off and police found the gun clip in his possession.Roman is facing charges of assault, criminal mischief, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon.

Post Reply I have been reporting on latest news from Nigeria for almost 10 years now. I report on every possible news area I come across, but always ensure my reports are compiled with dignity and fact to uphold my personal values and duty as a journalist Posted: at 23-07-2017 07:56 AM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero
EU Monitors Watching Kenya Election Preparations

By Sora Halake, Dan Joseph July 21, 2017

Whether Kenya's elections next month turn deadly violent, like the 2007 vote, or remain mostly peaceful, like the 2013 poll, international monitors will be on the ground to see whether the final outcome is trustworthy and fair.

With political tensions running high, it's too early to tell how the August 8 elections might go. But Marietje Schaake, the head of the 2017 European Union Election Observation Mission to Kenya, says the voters she's met with ardently hope there will be no election drama this time around.

"I myself have visited Mombasa, Eldoret and two other regions of Kenya, other than Nairobi, to talk to as many Kenyans as possible about what they see as important elements of this election. The vast majority of Kenyans want nothing more other than this election to be credible, transparent and peaceful," Schaake told VOA's Horn of Africa service in an interview Friday.

HRW has concerns

That's not guaranteed, given that opposition parties have complained of alleged irregularities in the electoral system, and Human Rights Watch released a statement Friday criticizing the conduct of security forces and expressing concern about Kenyans' rights to free expression and assembly ahead of the vote.

Earlier this month, the rights group urged Kenyan authorities to urgently investigate allegations of threats and intimidation between communities in Nakuru County's Naivasha area.

Schaake, a European Parliament member and a politician from the Netherlands, said the EU observers are trying to determine if those concerns are legitimate.

"We hear different opinions from different people and we are assessing the extent to which there is a founding in this or whether there is no reason for concerns," she said.

EU mission has started

In late June, the EU mission deployed 15 two-person teams around the country to begin monitoring the run-up to the elections. They will be joined by more than 100 short-term observers in the days before the vote.

About 20 million Kenyans are registered to vote in the election, now less than three weeks away. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta is running for a second term against seven opponents, most prominently former prime minister Raila Odinga. It was Odinga's loss in the hotly-disputed 2007 election that set off weeks of political and ethnic violence across Kenya, leaving more than 1,100 people dead.

Thousands of other contenders are vying for posts as senators, governors, members of parliament, members of county assemblies and women representatives.

All aspects of campaign being studied

Schaake says the EU observers are watching all aspects of the campaign, including the actions of the media, law enforcement, the parties, and the electoral commission.

"We talk to all kinds of stakeholders representative of political parties, police, and civil society to assess how the election have been organized," she said. "To look at the extent candidates can share their viewpoints. The way in which state resources have been deployed. Whether police and government are acting even handedly."

"We really assess how the legal standards are applied and respected in practice," she added.

Free and fair?

With a team of 130 observers, Schaake acknowledges the EU mission will not be able to monitor all polling stations on Aug. 8.

"We will only share about our observation what we have been able to see with our own eyes," she said. "We are ambitious but we can't be in every town and township in this large and important country."

The EU observers will stay in Kenya until after the election and prepare a final report on whether the poll was free and fair.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






USS Gerald R. Ford Commissioned as Navy's Newest Carrier

By Terri Moon Cronk DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2017  President Donald J. Trump and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis took part in commissioning the USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy's newest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, named in honor of the 38th president, in Norfolk, Virginia, today.

Service members and their families, senior defense and military officials and other dignitaries, including Ford's daughter and the ship's sponsor, Susan Ford Bales, were aboard the warship for the ceremony.

Gerald R. Ford enlisted in the Navy following the attack on Pearl Harbor and was commissioned as an officer in the Naval Reserve in 1942. He served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Monterey and participated in actions in the Pacific Theater, including at Makin Island, Kwajalein and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Ford served for 25 years as a U.S. Representative before his appointment to the vice presidency. He became president in 1974, following the resignation of Richard Nixon.

The ship named for Ford is the lead ship of a new class of supercarriers and the first new carrier design in the Navy since the USS Nimitz was commissioned in 1975. The Ford is also the first aircraft carrier to join the fleet since USS George H. W. Bush in 2009. Ford is expected to be in operation in 2020.

The Navy received the Ford on May 31 after the carrier successfully completed acceptance trials on May 26. It features a new nuclear power plant, a redesigned island, electromagnetic catapults and an enhanced flight deck capable of increased aircraft sortie rates. Ford-class carriers will operate with smaller crews than their predecessors in the Nimitz-class.

'Magnificent Warship'

Mattis called the ship a "magnificent warship [that] joins the best Navy in the world. It is named after a tried-and true member of the Greatest Generation, and that spirit will permeate this ship so long as it sails on the seas, as well as the U.S. Navy spirit of 'We have just begun to fight,'" he said.

Addressing Trump, Mattis said, "Mr. president, you will send this ship in harm's way and [it] will happily sail in harm's way for you, for our nation and for what we stand for."

Trump called the ship an American symbol of power and prestige wherever it sails in the world.

"Wherever this vessel cuts through the horizon, our allies will rest easy and our enemies will shake with fear because everyone will know that America is coming and America is coming strong," he said.

"This ship is the deterrent that keeps us from having to fight in the first place," Trump said. "But this ship also ensures that if a fight does come, it will always end the same way. We will win  we will never lose."

Nation's Strength is its People

Having the best technology and equipment is only one part of the American military dominance, he said. "Our true strength is our people. Our greatest weapon is all of you."

America is fortunate to have warriors who are willing to serve the nation in the greatest fighting force in history, Trump said, adding, "Today, this ship officially begins its role in the noble military history of our great nation."

He implored Congress to pass a defense budget that "provides for higher, stable and predictable funding levels for our military needs, that our fighting men and women deserve  and you will get [it], believe me," Trump told the audience.

At the ceremony's conclusion, Ford Bales gave the order, "Man our ship and bring her to life."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






FSB Was Client Of Russian Lawyer At Center Of U.S. Election Probe

RFE/RL July 22, 2017

Russia's FSB spy agency was a client of the Russian lawyer at the center of U.S. probes into Moscow's alleged attempts to meddle in the presidential election, media reported on July 21.

Russian court documents show that Natalya Veselnitskaya represented a military unit operated by the FSB in a legal dispute over ownership of property in Moscow between 2005 and 2013, AP and Reuters reported.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, is the successor to the Soviet-era KGB intelligence agency and was headed by Vladimir Putin before he became president of Russia.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama last year sanctioned the FSB for what he said was its role in hacking the election.

Veselnitskaya has denied being employed by Russian intelligence services or the government.

She was a central figure in a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York with U.S. President Donald Trump's eldest son, his son-in-law, and campaign manager that has become a top subject of investigation in Congress and at the Justice Department.

She sought out the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and was introduced by a go-between as a "Russian government lawyer" who had information provided by the Russian government that would be damaging to Trump's rival Hillary Clinton.

E-mails show Trump Jr. eagerly agreed to the meeting and brought along Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law who is now a senior White House official, as well as then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Several other Russians were at the meeting, and one of those told AP that Veselnitskaya provided Trump Jr. with a portfolio showing illegal Russian campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee.

Apparently in light of such reports, the special counsel that is investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign asked the White House on July 21 to preserve any records and documents that came out of the meeting.

Committees of Congress have made similar requests and investigators in both branches of the U.S. government are also seeking to interview participants in the meeting.

Veselnitskaya has said she is prepared to testify on what transpired at the meeting, to put to rest what she called "mass hysteria" about Russian meddling in the election.

On July 21, she made light of the reports showing she once represented the FSB in court, saying on Facebook that "You'll be surprised to find among my clients Russian businessmen...as well as citizens and companies that had to defend themselves from accusations from the state."

Veselnitskaya added that she also had U.S. citizens as clients.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-spy-agency-fsb-was- client-russian-lawyer-veselnitskaya-center-investigations -russian-election-meddling-/28631886.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






U.S. Lawmakers Reportedly Agree On Sanctions For Russia, Iran, North Korea

RFE/RL July 22, 2017

U.S. lawmakers say they have reached a bipartisan agreement on a bill that would bring new sanctions against Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Steny Hoyer (Democrat-Maryland), the second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, said on July 22 that lawmakers from both parties had resolved several issues that were holding up the bill, a similar version of which was passed by the Senate last month.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat-New York) said the new sanctions bill is "strong" and he expected it to be passed soon.

"I expect the House and Senate will act on this legislation promptly, on a broad bipartisan basis and send the bill to the president's desk," Schumer said in a statement.

The bill is expected to be voted on as early as July 25 in the House of Representatives.

The Senate will also have to vote on the new bill, which the White House and State Department have voiced reservations about.

The White House had objected to a part of the bill that would require a congressional review if President Donald Trump tried to ease or end the sanctions against Moscow.

Under the new bill, Trump would be required to send a report to Congress outlining why the administration wants to suspend or terminate any sanctions. Lawmakers would then have one month to decide whether to allow such a move.

Trump's optimistic view of future U.S.-Russian relations has led to concerns within Congress that he would reduce or abolish economic sanctions against Russia imposed after Moscow's invasion and illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula as well as Russian support for the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

'Many Transgressions'

Both Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have said they have no intention of ending sanctions against Russia until Moscow reverses course on Ukraine.

Moscow has denied supporting the separatists despite evidence to the contrary.

Members of Congress were also keen to impose sanctions against Russia for its meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which U.S. intelligence agencies say is not in doubt despite Moscow's denials. Trump has also seemed less than convinced about Russian interference.

"Given the many transgressions of Russia, and President Trump's seeming inability to deal with them, a strong sanctions bill such as the one Democrats and Republicans have just agreed to is essential," said Schumer.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she was concerned that adding North Korea in the legislation could lead to delays.

"It is essential that the addition of North Korea to this package does not prevent Congress from immediately enacting Russia sanctions legislation and sending it to the president's desk before the August recess," she said in a statement.

Intense Negotiations

Many lawmakers hope the bill would send a message to President Donald Trump to keep a strong line against Russia.

Senator Ben Cardin (Democrat-Maryland), a ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the deal was agreed to only after "intense negotiations."

He said in a statement that Congress "is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message."

The new sanctions package in the agreed-to legislation would impose mandatory penalties on people involved in Iran's ballistic-missile program and any person or entity that does business with them.

The measure would also apply "terrorism sanctions" to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and put in force an arms embargo.

The European Union said in a statement after reports of the agreement in Congress that sanctions against Russia and Iran should be coordinated with Brussels and that "unilateral measures" undermine the effect of the sanctions.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-lawmakers- agree-sanctions-russia-iran- north-korea/28632600.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Polish Senate Votes To Give Politicians Control Over Courts Despite EU Objections

July 22, 2017

Poland's Senate on July 22 defied the European Union and approved legislation giving political leaders substantial control over the judiciary.

The bill sponsored by the nation's populist ruling party now needs only the signature of President Andrzej Duda to become law. Duda has adhered to the ruling party line up to now.

The 55-23 vote was booed by protesters gathered in front of the Senate building in Warsaw.

EU leaders have criticized the bill for impairing judicial independence and threatening the rule of law. Poland is the largest of the former Soviet bloc states who joined the union after the fall of communism.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling Law and Justice party, argues that the judiciary still functions as it did during the communist era and harbors many judges from that time. Communist rule ended in 1989.

He says the justice system needs "radical changes."

The legislation calls for firing current Supreme Court judges, except those approved by the president, and it gives the president power to regulate the courts.

Prime Minister Beata Szydlo has dismissed the EU criticisms, saying the legislation is an internal matter and the government will not bow to any foreign pressure.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/poland-senate-votes- courts-eu-objections-duda/28632058.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Philippine Lawmakers Vote to Extend Martial Law in Mindanao Region Till Year-End

Sputnik News

15:40 22.07.2017

Philippine lawmakers voted for the extension of the martial law in the southern Mindanao region until December 31, 2017, according to media reports.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Philippine lawmakers approved the extension of the martial law in the southern Mindanao region until December 31, 2017, local media reported Saturday.

On Tuesday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte asked the country's parliament to extend martial law on the island of Mindanao until the end of this year. The primary objective of the extension is to allow the country's forces to continue operations against terrorists in the region unhampered by deadlines, Duterte said.

During the joint session of both chambers of the Congress, the Senate, the upper house voted 16-4 and the House of Representatives voted 245-18, approving the president's request, the CNN Philippines broadcaster reported.

The martial law was declared in Mindanao in May after the outbreak of the conflict between the Philippine security forces and the Islamic extremists, affiliated with the Islamic State terrorist group (outlawed in Russia), including the Maute and Abu Sayyaf jihadist groups.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






One of Turkish tourisms leading tourism brands, Prontotour announced the appointment of Gurkan Erol as its new Deputy General Manager.

Started his career at the company as Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Erol promoted as the new Deputy General Manager of Marketing Department, being responsible of brands marketing, communications work as well as sales, e-commerce, CRM, innovation and customer experience.
Errant US Drone Strike Kills 15 Afghan Troops

By Ayaz Gul July 22, 2017

Afghan Defense Ministry officials have confirmed that Friday's U.S. counterinsurgency airstrike in the southern Helmand province mistakenly killed at least 15 government troops.

The friendly fire incident happened in the Gereshk district where intense fighting was raging between Afghan forces and Taliban insurgents.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri says during the fighting a security outpost was hit by missiles fired by a U.S. drone late Friday afternoon. He told VOA on Saturday the strike left at least 15 security personnel dead and one wounded.

Confusion at security post

U.S. military officials confirmed that local security personnel aligned with Afghan government forces were killed. Officials issued a statement calling the deaths "unfortunate" and pledged an investigation to "determine the specific circumstances that led to this incident."

The clashes in Gereshk erupted Thursday when the Taliban staged a major, coordinated assault to try to capture the key district.

The attack started with three suicide bombers in separate explosives-packed vehicles striking security outposts and enabling the insurgents to overrun several of them.

Speaking to local TOLO television channel, Defense Ministry spokesman Waziri said the security post hit by the drone had also fallen to the Taliban and coordinates were shared with the U.S. military so it could bomb the installation and evict the insurgents.

"But they (pro-government forces) had retaken the post in the meantime. They (Afghan forces) were not wearing uniforms and that was when the unmanned aircraft mistook them with the Taliban and attacked them," Waziri explained.

Claims of a bomber's identity

Taliban sources, meanwhile, claimed that one of the three bombers who carried out Thursday's suicide attacks was the son of Hibattullah Akhundzada, the fugitive chief of the Islamist insurgency.

The sources identified the 22-year-old man as Abdul Rahman, saying he drove an explosives-packed Humvee into the Afghan forces' post in Gereshk.

It was not possible to independently verify the claim, but Taliban sources say Rahman had recorded a video message before going on the suicide mission and it will be released soon.

The Taliban controls several districts in Helmand, the largest Afghan province and a major poppy growing region.

Earlier this week, Afghan forces backed by U.S. air power and military advisers recaptured the Nawa district near the provincial capital of Lashkargah, nine months after the Taliban had overrun it.

The restive Afghan province borders Pakistan and Iran.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Trump Blames New York Times for Ruining Plans to Kill IS Leader

By VOA News July 22, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump criticized The New York Times on Saturday on Twitter for allegedly ruining a U.S. attempt to assassinate Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The president did not provide details or explain how the Times supposedly ruined plans to kill Baghdadi, but his tweet was posted minutes after a Fox News Channel segment about information leaks was broadcast.

A Times spokesman, meanwhile, has asked the White House for details about Trump's tweet, according to a Times statement provided to Politico.

"We have asked the White House to clarify the tweet," the statement said.

Although the report Trump referred to has not been identified, the Times reported Friday that Defense Secretary James Mattis told journalists that Baghdadi was still alive.

"I'll believe otherwise when we know we have killed him. We are going after him," said Mattis, whose on-the-record remarks were also reported by many other media organizations.

The U.S. has placed a $25 million bounty on Baghdadi, who has not been seen publicly since 2014 in Mosul. It is rumored, though, that Baghdadi travels throughout IS-held areas in Iraq and Syria.

Trump has frequently criticized the Times, even though he occasionally reaches out to the newspaper  including earlier this week when he conducted a wide-ranging interview with several Times reporters. His legal team threatened to sue the newspaper in 2016 for its coverage of sexual harassment accusations against him made by several women. No such lawsuit has been filed.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






South China Sea Dispute Smolders as Trump Administration Weighs Approach

By Natalie Liu July 22, 2017

The first six months of the Trump administration saw relatively few confrontations over the territorial disputes in the South China Sea; however, analysts and officials say the lack of public conflict does not mean the issues have disappeared.

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who serves on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and chairs the Subcommittee on Asian Pacific Affairs, told a conference in Washington this week that "China's militarization of the South China Sea is real" and the situation remains a "crisis."

Speaking at the Seventh Annual South China Sea Conference, Gardner described the region as a test for American leadership to deter Beijing's hegemony.

"If the South China Sea is not resolved, what is the next step?" the senator asked.

High stakes for key region

The South China Sea extends more than 3.5 million square kilometers in the western Pacific Ocean. Countries including China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, as well as Taiwan, have certain claims over its sovereignty.

In recent years, China is seen to have taken actions in an attempt to secure its claim to large areas of the South China Sea for military and economic purposes.

The United States has said that it does not take sides in the rival claims but does oppose actions to militarize the region. The U.S. has been sending military planes and ships near contested islands where China has built up military infrastructure, ignoring Beijing's assertions over what it says are Chinese airspace and territorial waters.

The reason so many nations are interested in an otherwise desolate stretch of open ocean is because it is a crossroads for international trade and is believed to have vast oil and gas reserves.

"Whoever controls the South China Sea controls East Asia, whoever controls East Asia controls the world," said Alexander Vuving, an analyst attending the conference.

Vuving, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, compares the sea lines of communication in the South China Sea to arteries in the body. He explained to VOA that they provide a lifeline for the Asian economy and are also critical for military transportation.

Vuving believes Washington should try to halt China's rising sphere of influence, before brokering a potentially peaceful and enduring power-sharing arrangement among the stakeholders in the region.

Robust strategic posture

Ely Ratner, a former Obama administration official who is now a senior fellow in China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, suggests that the Trump administration adopt a much more robust strategic posture. He warned that adopting a policy with a goal of "conflict prevention, reducing tensions" created, in his view, "a risk aversion that has led to a permissive environment for Chinese assertiveness."

Instead, Ratner proposes "a policy based on deterrence, and if deterrence fails, denial."

For this to work, he says policymakers will have to be willing to bear the inherent risks and potential instability of a more deterrence-based policy. He says factions inside the Obama administration favored communication between Washington and Beijing over confrontation.

It is not yet clear to what degree the Trump administration will continue the previous administration's approach. Bonnie Glaser, China Power Project director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. Navy is on track to log 900 ship days this year in the region, up from 700 in 2016.

Ratner, the former White House official, says the notion that China is "unstoppable, escalatory, willing to risk all" is a myth, "quite contrary to our experience over the last several years."

As if to confirm Ratner's assertion, Xue Chen, a research fellow from Shanghai's Institute for International Studies, told the conference that China's late leader, Deng Xiaoping, decades ago reached the conclusion that the South China Sea problem is intractable, that there would be "no way out," only entanglements with sovereignty disputes. Xue said Deng proposed joint development instead.

Strategically ambiguous 'Nine-Dash Line'

Xue went on to say that China has never clarified the nature or extent of what falls within the "Nine-Dash Line," referring to the demarcation line used initially by the government of the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan), then subsequently by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), for their claims of vast areas in the South China Sea.

Instead, Xue said, "there has always been a debate of the value of strategic ambiguity" versus a clear statement within China.

The merit of such ambiguity, Xue said, lies in allowing room for interpretation and maneuvering concerning both China's sovereign rights in the South China Sea, as well as leaving a certain amount of room "for imagination and future cooperation with other claimants."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Trump Helps Commission New Warship, Says Vessel Sends 'Message to the World'

By VOA News July 22, 2017

President Donald Trump helped commission Saturday the USS Gerald R. Ford, a technologically-advanced nearly $13-billion warship that he said sends a "100,000 ton message to the world" and will cause enemies of the U.S. to "shake with fear."

After three years of delays and billions of dollars of cost overruns, Trump officially turned over the first of the next generation nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to the U.S. Navy at Naval Station Norfolk in the southeastern state of Virginia.

"Wherever this vessel cuts through the horizon, our allies will rest easy and our enemies will shake with fear because everyone will know that America is coming and America is coming strong," he said.

The president said the warship serves as a "deterrent that keeps us from having to fight" but added, if conflict does arise, "it will always end the same way. We will win, win, win."

After criticizing the previous administration for "a shortfall in military readiness," Trump called on Congress to "do its job" and provide "stable and predictable funding levels" for the military.

The new carrier will be the flagship of the new class of "super carriers," the first new class in 40 years and the most expensive warships ever built.

Construction of the USS Gerald R. Ford began in 2009 and was scheduled to be completed in 2015 at a cost of $10.5 billion. The Navy said the cost overruns and construction delays were due to the carrier's cutting-edge technology.

The ship will have a lifespan of 50 years and its nuclear power plant will allow it to operate for 20 years without the need to refuel.

The USS Ford is named after the country's 38th president, a lieutenant commander in the Navy during World War II. The warship was christened by his daughter, Susan Ford Bales, in 2013.

The Ford-class of carriers will replace the current Nimitz supercarriers, a class of 10 nuclear-powered warships named after World War II Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.

The Navy said it would cost $43 billion to construct the first three ships in the Ford-class of carriers, including the USS John F. Kennedy, named after the country's 35th president, and the USS Enterprise.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Report: Sessions Discussed Policy With Russian Envoy

By VOA News July 22, 2017

The Washington Post is reporting that Russia's ambassador to the U.S. told his supervisors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters with Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year during the presidential election season, contrary to what Sessions has said.

The Post quoted "current and former U.S. officials" in its story, which said U.S. intelligence agents intercepted communications from Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to his superiors about the meetings.

U.S. President Donald Trump blasted the leak of the highly classified information in an early-morning tweet Saturday, saying the leaks "must stop."

Sessions said in his February confirmation hearing before the Senate that he did not recall having any contact with Russian officials while acting as a Trump foreign policy adviser last year.

In March, news reports revealed that Sessions had met at least twice with Kislyak: once in April 2016, before Donald Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, gave a foreign policy speech, and again in July, on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.

At that time, Sessions amended his earlier comments to say they had met, but had not discussed the Trump campaign in their meetings, and he recused himself from any investigations into Russian interference in the election.

The Post quotes one U.S. official as saying Sessions has provided "misleading" statements that are "contradicted by other evidence." A former official told the Post that the two men had "substantive" discussions, including Trump's positions on issues affecting Russia and what U.S.-Russia relations would look like under a Trump administration.

Post report

The Post reported that "current and former U.S. officials" say Sessions' answers differ from those given by Kislyak to his bosses. Those officials emphasized that the Russian ambassador could have purposely misspoken if he suspected U.S. agents were monitoring his communications.

Contacted for comment, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement: "Obviously I cannot comment on the reliability of what anonymous sources describe in a wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept that The Washington Post has not seen and that has not been provided to me."

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who is attending the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado, was questioned about the Post story late Friday. He said, "I saw the headline. ... I have come to the point where I no longer put any stock in headlines or breaking news."

Kislyak and Flynn

Ambassador Kislyak was a factor in the downfall of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn left his job in February after news reports revealed that he had had conversations with Kislyak about U.S. policy toward Russia. He had said publicly that no such conversations took place.

But the information about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak was based on recordings of phone conversations made by U.S. intelligence agents, giving them proof of what the men talked about. In Sessions' case, the reports are based only on Kislyak's accounts of what was said.

Earlier this week President Trump gave an interview to The New York Times in which he expressed frustration with Sessions for recusing himself from Russia investigations. He also said Sessions gave "bad answers" about his contacts with Russian officials during his confirmation hearing. The comments have fueled speculation that Sessions may be asked to resign.

On Saturday, Trump raised further questions about Sessions' work as attorney general, asking why he had not looked into dealings between associates of failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Russian government and former FBI director James Comey's leaking of his notes.

Despite Trump's ire, Sessions has said he plans to stay in the job "as long as that is appropriate."

VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






North Korea Says South Will Pay 'Harshest' Price for Challenging Missile Tests

Sputnik News

22:00 22.07.2017(updated 00:49 23.07.2017)

South Korea will pay a harsh price for condemning the North's most recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, Pyongyang mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun warned Saturday.

The South Korean National Assembly on July 18 adopted a resolution condemning the July 4 test of North Korea's Hwasong-14 missile, warning that continued provocations by the North could lead to the "permanent extinction" of its leadership.

For that, the North Korean paper alleged, South Korea will "pay a price in the harshest way for daring to challenge our loft system and self-defense measure," Yonhap reports.

Seoul recently asked for high level military and humanitarian dialogue between the two nations, which North Korea blasted as "nonsense."

Instead, it accuses its southern neighbor of only ratcheting up hostility and tension with this resolution and doing nothing to promote unity, let alone unification.

In the meantime, North Korea will continue to perfect their ICBM technology.

"The army and people of the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] DPRK remain unchanged in their will not to flinch even an inch from the road of boosting their nuclear force as long as the US hostile policy and nuclear threat to the latter are not fundamentally removed," the Rodong Sinmun story said.

The Hwasong-14 ICBM appears to have the capability of reaching the US states of Hawaii or Alaska, though with what degree of accuracy is subject to debate. Still, the test demonstrated a jump in North Korea's technological capacity and has some North Korea watchers.

Seoul nonetheless reiterated its call for dialogue with North Korea on Saturday, though its most recent effort appears to have been snubbed.

Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told her British counterpart Boris Johnson over the phone that Seoul intends to continue to push for engagement with North Korea even as it applies sanctions on the regime of Kim Jong-un. South Korea's pressure is only intended to bring the North back to the negotiating table, she said, according to Yonhap.

North Korea is under strict UN sanctions for its continued missile tests and its five nuclear tests.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran Rejects Trump Warning About U.S. Prisoners

RFE/RL July 22, 2017

Iran has rejected demands by the United States that Tehran release Americans detained in Iranian prisons.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said in a statement on July 22 that "any interventionist and threatening statement by American officials and institutions has no effect on the will and determination of the country's judicial system to try and punish criminals and violators of the country's laws and national security."

The comment came one day after U.S. President Donald Trump warned that Iran faces "new and serious consequences" unless all "unjustly detained" American citizens are released and returned.

Trump urged Iran to return Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared more than 10 years ago in Iran, businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer, and "all other American citizens unjustly detained by Iran."

"For nearly forty years, Iran has used detentions and hostage taking as a tool of state policy, a practice that continues to this day with the recent sentencing of Xiyue Wang to ten years in prison," the White House said, referring to a Princeton University researcher who was sentenced by Iran for spying last week.

But Qassemi said Iran's "judiciary, courts, and judges are completely independent" and he added that Tehran has no "new information" about Levinson, who he claims left Iran.

"America should quickly release Iranian prisoners in the country," said Qassemi, claiming that several Iranians have been jailed in the United States in recent years on "baseless and unfounded grounds."

The White House statement on July 21 continued by saying that "Iran is responsible for the care and well-being of every United States citizen in its custody."

"President Trump is prepared to impose new and serious consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens are released and returned."

The warning to Iran came as the White House said it is "redoubling efforts" to bring back all Americans unjustly detained overseas.

Levinson, the former FBI agent, disappeared on a visit to Iran's Kish Island in 2007.The U.S. government has a $5 million reward for information leading to his safe return.

His children told CNN in March that they felt confident Trump would be able to bring their father home.

Tehran has denied having anything to do with his disappearance and has said it doesn't know where he is.

An Iranian court sentenced each of the Namazis last year to 10 years in prison on charges of spying and cooperating with the United States. Family members have expressed concerns about the health of the elder Namazi, Baquer, 80, a retired UNICEF official.

His son Siamak, a businessman, was detained in October 2015 while he was visiting family in Tehran.

Both of the Namazis are dual Iranian-American citizens, but Iran does not recognize dual citizenship and considers all Iranian nationals to be solely Iranian citizens.

That has resulted over the years in the imprisonment of numerous dual nationals upon their return to Iran.

Another dual Iranian-American, Robin Shahini, was detained as he was visiting relatives in Iran last year and later sentenced to 18 years in prison for alleged spying.

His shocked family said all the evidence in the graduate student's three-hour trial was based on Facebook and blog posts supporting the 2009 election protests in Iran.

Iranian authorities announced last week that a court had sentenced Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen and Princeton graduate student, to 10 years in jail on spying charges.

Xiyue was arrested nearly a year ago but his case became public only last week after Iran's judiciary announced his sentence. He was accused of "infiltrating" the country and sending confidential material abroad.

Xiyue was in Iran doing research for his doctorate in late 19th and early 20th century Eurasian history when he was detained.

His wife told The Washington Post that her husband is innocent. She said he was in Iran to learn Persian and do scholarly research.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-warns-iran-faces- serious-consequences-unless-frees -us-prisoners/28631403.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






'We Don't Want Your Bases': Iraqi Vice-President Warns US Army to Back Off

Sputnik News

10:25 22.07.2017(updated 11:06 22.07.2017)

The Iraqi army and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), not the US, should take the credit for the recent liberation of Mosul from the Daesh terrorist group, Iraqi Vice-President Nouri al-Maliki said on Friday.

Iraqi Vice-President Nouri al-Maliki has hit back at US attempts to claim the credit for the recent liberation of Mosul, emphasizing the leading role that the Iraqi army and people's militia played in the operation to free the city of Daesh terrorists.

"They [the United States] say  and I regret this and reject this  that the victory is their achievement because they led this war, but really this is a victory of the Iraqi army. Yes, they supported us with their aviation, but the main credit belongs to the Iraqi soldiers, the people's militia, Iraq's air force," Maliki told RIA Novosti.

Al-Maliki also reiterated Baghdad's gratitude to the People's Mobilization Forces (PMF) for helping to defeat Daesh, and the government's opposition to the establishment of US bases on Iraqi soil.

"The US doesn't have the right to say that people's militia, which is comprised of the sons of Iraq, of whom 20,000 have been killed and wounded, are terrorists. If it weren't for the people's militia, there wouldn't be any Sunnis or Shiites left."

"Iraqi society is against foreign bases on our territory I told the Americans, 'It's not in your interests to return to Iraq in order to establish military bases again,'" al-Maliki said.

Nikolai Sukhov, researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Eastern Studies and Vice-President of the International Middle Eastern Studies Club, told RIA Novosti that al-Maliki's statement is a reflection of an anti-American mood in Iraqi society.

"Such statements are a reflection of prevailing anti-American sentiments in the country, which have remained since the American act of aggression which overthrew Saddam Hussein and plunged the country into chaos."

"Different groups in society may relate to the Saddam regime differently, but many see that over the past decade the country has become fragmented and destroyed. Many people have suffered great hardships, lost loved ones. Anti-American sentiments exist both among Shiites and Sunnis. Being the Vice-President of a country where the majority of people hold anti-American sentiments, he can't say anything else," Sukhov said.

The operation to liberate Mosul was launched in October 2016 and was declared victorious by Iraqi President Haider Abadi on July 9. Mosul, formerly Iraq's second city, was overrun by Daesh terrorists in 2014 and was a key stronghold for the Islamists.

Al-Maliki said that Iraqi forces are still fighting some remaining terrorists and the huge task of rebuilding the city is just beginning.

"The armed forces tried not to destroy the city more than was necessary in order to complete the operation, everyone knew the battle could drag on, eventually it lasted nine months. We could have surrounded the city, but the problem was that its inhabitants would have starved. Frankly, the military losses are huge  about 20,000 dead and wounded in the armed forces and police. The victory is not conclusive; there are still some small pockets in the city where terrorists are hiding and there are sleeper cells in Diyala too," the Iraqi Vice-President said.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






U.S. Didn't Shut Down Anti-Assad Arms Program To Please Russia: U.S. General

RFE/RL July 22, 2017

A top U.S. general confirmed on July 21 that the CIA is shutting down its program to equip and train rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's army, but denied it is doing so to please Russia.

It was a "tough, tough decision" but "absolutely not a sop to the Russians," General Tony Thomas, who is head of U.S. special operations in Syria, said at a national security forum in Aspen, Colorado.

"It was, I think, based on an assessment of the nature of the program, what we're trying to accomplish, the viability of it going forward."

He said some critics of the CIA program had concluded that the rebels had no chance of removing Russian ally Assad from power.

The program began in 2013 as an effort by then-President Barack Obama to overthrow Assad, but produced little success. Thousands of anti-Assad fighters were trained and armed.

The CIA has declined to officially comment on the decision to drop the program, which was originally reported by The Washington Post.

The Post said President Donald Trump made the decision nearly a month ago after a meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

The Post said Trump was aiming to find ways to work with Russia in Syria, where Moscow supports Assad's government.

The newspaper quoted one current U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying that it was a "momentous decision" and that "Putin won in Syria."

Trump has said the main U.S. focus in Syria should be on eliminating the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, rather than opposing the Assad regime. He has previously suggested he might end support for the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army group.

U.S. officials said this week that some of the anti-Assad forces could be absorbed into groups fighting IS that the United States continues to train and supply with arms.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-didnt-shut-down-anti -assad-cia-arms-program-please-russia-general- thomas-aspen-forum/28631840.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Syria, Russia Announce Truce For Area Near Damascus

July 22, 2017

Syria and Russia have announced agreement on a cease-fire in an area that is a stronghold of opposition forces near the capital, Damascus.

The Syrian military command the Russian Defense Ministry said separately on July 22 that a truce would begin in Eastern Ghouta, one of the last bastions for forces in western Syria fighting against troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian army said in a report by the state SANA news agency that after days of heavy air strikes it would "halt fighting in some areas of Eastern Ghouta" from July 22.

But the army said it would "retaliate in a suitable manner to any violation" of the cease-fire.

Activists reported relative calm in Eastern Ghouta on July 22 despite some violations.

Eastern Ghouta is in one of four proposed "de-escalation zones" named in a deal reached in May by allies Iran and Russia, who back Assad's government, and Turkey, which supports the opposition forces.

But the agreement has not been fully implemented due to disagreements on who would monitor the safe zones.

If successfully implemented, Eastern Ghouta would be the second zone in which a cease-fire has come into force.

The first cease-fire for areas in southern Syria was brokered by Russia, the United States, and Jordan.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, a mediator was killed in a second day of fighting between Hizballah forces and extreme Islamic forces on July 22 in the Jurud Arsal area near the border with Syria, officials said.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/syria-russia-announce-truce- for-area-near-damascus/28632604.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Visit Oakland, the citys official destination marketing organization, announced a strong tourism growth and interest from international travelers. In 2016, 3.7 million visitors traveled to Oakland and spent $627 million, up 3.4% from 2015.

Visitor spend has been increasing year after year and has grown by 27% in the last 4 years. Tourism supports 7.1K jobs in Oakland, generating $271 million in total income last year.

Much of Oaklands international tourism growth is an in correlation with European flights coming through Oakland International Airport. Within the last 18 months, OAK has announced nonstop flights to and from London, Barcelona, Paris and Rome, in addition to the existing Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen routes.

As OAKs passenger volume has consistently increased over the past four years, says Bryant Francis, Port of Oakland Director of Aviation. Our rapidly expanding portfolio of international nonstop flights has helped OAK and the East Bay to be increasingly top-of-mind for European visitors to the Bay Area.

To continue its growth in leisure and business travel sectors, Visit Oakland introduced two new marketing programs to solidify Oaklands place nationally and internationally as a leading art and cultural destination.

In continuing to support Oaklands diverse creative community, Visit Oakland announced the inaugural Oakland Art Month in May 2018. Preliminary partners include OMCA, Oakland First Fridays, Oakland Art Murmur, Oakland International Film Festival, East Bay Mural Festival, and the Oakland Symphony.

The goal of the program is to showcase a wealth of incredible arts offerings in Oakland that be enjoyed by the local community and visitors from afar, says Mark Everton, President & CEO of Visit Oakland. By promoting May as Oakland Art Month, Visit Oakland aims to encourage overnight stays to attend several art events during their stay. Furthermore, the profile of smaller events can be raised in part of the larger city promotion.

Additionally, the Oakland Mural Grant program will continue Visit Oaklands efforts to increase the number of public murals for display on the outward walls of buildings within city limits as a way to further enhance the aesthetics of the city, while supporting the incredibly talented artist community within Oakland.

Oaklands art talent was showcased this morning in a live art demonstration by legendary local artist Vogue. His piece will be donated to heART is Oakland, a benefit exhibit that has been showing at Classic Cars West during the month of July. The exhibition is a fundraiser to help keep art and artists in Oakland. Proceeds benefit Safer DIY Spaces which is an Oakland-based coalition of activists, architects, contractors, and artists that offer guidance, financial assistance, and labor to the members of the Bay Areas communities who live and work in non-traditional DIY spaces.
Agreements on Functioning of Eastern Ghouta Safe Zone in Syria Signed - MoD

Sputnik News

11:48 22.07.2017(updated 12:57 22.07.2017)

The agreements on functioning of Eastern Ghouta de-escalation zone in Syria have been signed, the Russian Ministry of Defense said on Saturday.

The agreements, which were signed in Cairo, Egypt, define borders of the de-escalation zone and locations of control powers, according to the statement.

"These documents define the borders of the de-escalation zone, the deployment sites and powers of the de-escalation control forces, as well as the routes for delivering humanitarian aid and clear passage to the population," the ministry said.

The ministry noted that the first humanitarian convoy to the Eastern Ghouta de-escalation zone is expected in nearest time. It will be followed by the evacuation of wounded civilians for East Ghouta.

The documents have been signed in the development of the Astana agreements with the mediation of the Egyptian side, it added.

On July 7, Lavrov announced that experts from Russia, the United States and Jordan agreed on a memorandum on the establishment of a de-escalation zone in Syria's southwestern provinces following the first face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump. The ceasefire came into force on July 9.

Russia, Iran and Turkey are guarantors of the Syrian ceasefire regime. The countries signed a memorandum on the establishment of four safe zones in Syria, which came into force on May 6. The four zones span the northwestern Idlib province and parts of the neighboring Latakia, Hama and Aleppo, the north of the central Homs province, Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, as well as southern Daraa and Quneitra regions.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






The West Piedmont Workforce Development Board announced last week the availability of funds to be used by local businesses to assist in the professional development of their employees.

Employers located in Martinsville, Danville, Henry County, Patrick County and Pittsylvania County are eligible to participate in a program designed to increase the skills of their existing workforce.

The incumbent worker training program provides funding up to 90 percent of the cost of a training program that enables an employee either retain their position, enter a new position, learn new equipment and processes, or result in an increased wage. Employees that complete a training program should also receive a recognized credential.

Lisa Fultz, executive director of the West Piedmont Workforce Development Board is excited about the availability of funds for these programs.

The incumbent worker training program is a valuable tool that can help employees learn new skills and assist employers with enhancing the skills of their workforce without hiring new employees, she said. The program is really a great opportunity for businesses to drastically reduce the cost of professional development through little effort on their part.

Sean Nix, Director of Culture and Engagement with Monogram Foods commented Monogram Foods participation in the Incumbent Worker Training Program has provided essential skill training to our team members allowing us to retain our talent, provide advancement opportunities and remain competitive in the marketplace. Investing in every leader in Monogram has resulted in improved performance, reduced turnover and retention of talent and provided opportunities for advancement. The IWT Program has reduced our need to for external calls to vendors and increased our internal skills and capabilities significantly.

The program requires employers to contribute a percentage of the total training cost. For employers that have less than fifty employees, 90 percent of the cost of training will be reimbursed by the WPWDB. For employers with between 51 and one hundred employees, 75 percent of the training cost will be covered. Employers with more than one hundred employees are required to pay for 50 percent of the training costs. There is no minimum or maximum number of employees that are eligible to participate in the training; however, the majority of employees participating in the training should be have at least 6 months of service with the company.

Fultz stated We anticipate having around $350,000 available for this program. The program is an excellent opportunity to leverage public and private dollars to invest in the development of the local workforce and help employees earn credentials in their field. Employers who are interested in participating should contact the WPWDB for application instructions.

The West Piedmont Workforce Development Board is dedicated to assisting both employers and employees achieve their full potential. The West Piedmont Workforce Development Board oversees several locations throughout the counties of Henry, Patrick, and Pittsylvania that deliver workforce solutions. These include everything from providing additional training and education for potential employees to connecting individuals with employment opportunities within the region.
You have permission to edit this article.

Edit Close
GREENSBORO  Battle Forest Village resident Jim Bishop has a little routine he follows to help him appreciate the Greensboro Urban Loops full impact on his life and times.

He walks down the sidewalk in front of his town house and makes a 90-degree turn to the right.

I turn this way, and this is my neighborhood like its always been, he said one recent morning.

Then he does an about-face and confronts a huge excavator, mechanically genuflecting into the dirt that used to underlay the three-building unit and the parking lot that once occupied this space.

All that is gone now, as the excavator digs a trench that will hold the culvert to help drain the area behind the noise wall that someday will tower above Bishops unit, which otherwise would look out upon an on-ramp of the Urban Loop, where trees used to be.

I use the term 'surreal;' its just surreal, Bishop said, nodding toward the brightly colored excavator as it cranes another load of dirt into the bed of an idling dump truck.

Construction crews are reshaping the landscape before his very eyes into what eventually will become a six-lane superhighway whizzing cars, buses and trucks from one side of the city to another.

Indeed, as Greensboro moves toward the end of the new centurys second decade, road plans with roots in the years immediately following World War II are taking concrete shape at an earth-gobbling pace that Bishop probably is not alone in considering otherworldly.

Just over the hill from Bishops neighborhood, cars could be using by year end the next-to-last section of the Loops western leg  between Bryan Boulevard and Battleground Avenue.

And within just a few months, traffic might well be motoring north and south on the other side of the city, along the eastern Loops next-to-last section from U.S. 70 (Burlington Road) to U.S. 29.

Were thinking that section may be open in the fall this year, maybe October, said Mike Mills of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, noting that the contractor has another year before that eastern segments required completion date. He is just aggressively pursuing it.

Bishops town house looks out on the last section of the Loops western half, from Battleground to Lawndale Drive, which has been under construction since Nov. 7 and slated for completion by Dec. 28, 2020.

Construction crews are doing the basic groundwork now for an interchange at Lawndale, literally in Bishops side yard, that will be very similar to the one at Battleground just a mile or so away.

The final segment

Meanwhile, state transportation officials plan on hiring a contractor next spring to start building what will be the Loops final section, from Lawndale Drive to U.S. 29.

Depending on when that contractor actually begins work on the Loops last leg, the complete, 44-mile circuit around the city could be in full use in just a few years.

"If we let the contract in April 2018, its going to be three-plus years approximately for that entire section, said Mills, NC DOT division engineer for the Greensboro region.

Mills said that to give area residents meaningful access to more of the road sooner, DOT leaders are considering whether to require the new contractor to focus intensively on that last sections link between heavily used Lawndale and North Elm Street, so that stretch could open early.

Summer of demolition, consternation in the eye of the Greensboro's Urban Loop Residents cope, fret and sue as contractors prepare for construction through heavily developed northwest Greensboro.

Original vision

In many ways, the overall project is a testament to foresighted, local planning and city officials tenacity in sticking with their basic vision as they adapted it to new circumstances.

The genesis of the superhighway now under construction dates to a June 1948 document from the city Planning and Zoning Commission that described the Loop as part of a comprehensive thoroughfare system for Greensboro, based on the existing form of the city, designed to meet present and future needs and yet flexible enough to meet any unexpected shifting.

For years, the so-called outer loop now under construction was known locally as "Painter Boulevard," named after a city manager from a bygone era. Local officials envisioned it as a parkway that would be similar to Wendover Avenue, and they left the general public with the impression it would not be as massive or intrusive as the actual project has turned out to be.

But it emerged over time that such a large-scale road required more money than municipal government could muster on its own, which ultimately meant involving the federal government. And the Feds spend big money on interstate and other major highways, not meandering local parkways that provide little benefit from a national perspective.

Better plan

Planners began charting todays route for the new road in the early 1990s, moving the western leg nearer to Piedmont Triad International Airport when they abandoned a controversial, closer-in route that would have sent the western leg through the Guilford College campus.

Taking the high road: Urban Loop's new section towers and tantalizes GREENSBORO  Unless you take a drive down Drawbridge Parkway, the only sign that a major interchange is coming to Battleground Avenue is grade

The Loop received its initial go-ahead from federal regulators in 1995 and the first, 2-mile section of the project opened from U.S. 70 south to Interstate 40/85 in May 2002.

One aim that has remained constant for decades is to keep the Loops upper tier south of Lake Jeanette. Going farther north meant bridging or otherwise impinging on the citys network of water-supply lakes, not a good strategy for gaining project approval from environmental agencies.

Bridge for Greensboro Urban Loop will be among Piedmont Triad's longest The gigantic structures most defining feature could be where it is being built: Across wetlands that drain to streams flowing into Greensboro

But now the project is going through some of the most densely developed areas, and people such as Bishop find themselves affected in ways they never imagined when this new highway was simply a looming, but vague and unformed concept.

Construction costs

In neighborhoods on all sides of Battleground Avenue, Old Battleground Road and Cotswold Avenue, residents are experiencing noise, dust and sweeping changes to what had been a relatively pastoral landscape providing habitat for deer and other wildlife.

Sebastian del Cid, Bishop's next-door neighbor, said the nearby rumbling of heavy construction equipment has become a growling refrain that he can't escape even indoors.

You can feel it, like listening to music that you feel in your stomach," said del Cid. "Thats what its like.

Bishop said he's at once shocked by the uproar and mesmerized by the transformation being wrought by the hard-working construction crews and their machinery.

"They're trying to be as sensitive to our needs as they can," he said, noting that some of the workers seeded a vacant patch of ground across the parking area from his unit after he and others expressed concern it would be left barren and unsightly.

But the impact has not been positive on Bishop's bottom line. Several private appraisals of his property showed that its value had declined from about $117,000 to an average of $39,000, with one low-ball estimate coming back at less than $8,000.

Once the road is completed, he will be so close to the right-of-way that there will essentially be no buffer between where his property ends and state highway land begins.

"My front yard is the buffer," he said.

A sound wall will loom right next to his and del Cid's building, cutting off much of the view even from rooms on the second floor.

It's going to be taller than our building. For about half the year, we will not get any sunshine, Bishop said.

Highway officials discuss Greensboro Urban Loop noise walls A meeting at 7 p.m. today is geared to residents living near the loop's Battleground-to-Lawndale section.

Noise maps available online for Urban Loop's next leg The maps show planned noise walls between Battleground Avenue and Lawndale Drive in Greensboro.

Growing pains

So it should come as no surprise that he and 110 neighboring property owners are suing state DOT for damages beyond what the agency has paid for the developed land and more than 50 units that workers have torn down to make way for the road.

Greensboro lawyer Bruce Ashley, who represents the Battle Forest group, said that a trial is scheduled for December to determine how much loss in property value the new road has cost the residents.

The only issue at trial will be the amount that each of the owners receives, said Ashley, who also represented residents in western Greensboro similarly affected by an earlier section of this new roadway. The amount will be determined individually for each town home owner.

New law limits interest pay to landowners in new highways' path Gov. Pat McCrory has signed into law a transportation bill that critics say unfairly limits payment to property owners, including some of thos

So a new road is taking shape to make traffic flow more smoothly and faster, and possibly to attract new industry and development.

Like the controversy surrounding plans to build Bryan Boulevard to the airport in the late 1980s, the Loop likely will continue to raise hackles in various parts of the community until it's completed, motorists start using it regularly and then everybody wonders how they ever got along without it.

Greensboros Urban Loop likely to drive areas growth The outcome may not be like Raleighs Interstate 540 Outer Loop, but it will ease congestion and open opportunities.

But it's also true that few good things happen without growing pains.

Hopefully, people will get compensated through the court system for some of this, Ashley said of the toll on Bishop and his other Battle Forest clients. "But its hard to compensate fully for all the emotional turmoil they have endured.

Battle Forest home owners win case against Urban Loop (Video) The decision in Guilford County Superior Court means 156 home owners will be paid for losses in property values caused by the Greensboro Urban Loop.
A couple of weeks ago, two groups of religious leaders went to the nations capital.

One group, a mostly white coterie of evangelical ministers, went to the White House and after a lighthearted visit among friends, according to attendee Johnnie Moore, a former senior vice president of Liberty University, they prayed for the president. Personal photographs released of the gathering show the faith leaders laying hands on President Donald Trump with Vice President Mike Pence nearby.

The other was a nondenominational group of faith leaders, including North Carolinas NAACP president, the Rev. William Barber, who were there to protest the Senates plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Barber and other demonstrators were arrested in front of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells office for refusing orders to disperse.

Which group represents the REAL Christians  the prayers or the protesters?

My inquiry is by no means an effort to question the calling of any of the faith leaders. Not my desire. Not my place. Not my reason for posing the question. My measuring stick is based on Romans 8:9, which asks, If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. So which group is displaying the spirit of Christ?

The group of approximately 30 evangelical leaders went to the White House and had a day-long meeting with a White House representative where they discussed, among other things, the Affordable Care Act, religious freedom, criminal-justice reform and pending judicial nominations.

There is no account that during their meeting with 45 they discussed any of the above.

The prayer for 45 was for wisdom that God would protect him and his family and that God would lead him, Moore has been quoted as saying. Besides, praying for the nations leaders isnt anything new, he said, but this time it had more meaning. When we are praying for President Trump, we are praying within the context of a real relationship, of true friendship.

Florida televangelist and megachurch pastor Rodney Howard-Browne called the gathering surreal and humbling and said he felt a great spiritual awakening as he was in the Oval Office.

Those of the evangelical faith, to which my church belongs, believe that Jesus Christ is their savior, that he died on the cross for our sins, that members must be born again and ask God for forgiveness, and that the Bible is the ultimate authority.

Despite this backdrop, these evangelicals, particularly the white members, overwhelmingly support Trump, who has had three wives, admitted to being an adulterer, owned casinos, boasts of kissing and groping women at will, rarely goes to church and, during his presidential campaign, couldnt name a favorite scripture, said hed never asked for forgiveness, once mistook the communion plate as the offertory, and referred to one of the books of the Bible as Two rather than Second Corinthians.

Nowhere in any of the synopses of the meeting with Trump did they mention counseling him about some of his non-Biblical actions that shun the poor, are unwelcoming to strangers in our land, despise wisdom and instruction, deceive others and close his heart to brothers and sisters in need.

It seems the evangelicals have sacrificed all other issues to support a president who promises to repeal same-sex marriage, restrict abortions and bring prayer back to school.

While these morality issues have united the right, they are issues where the Bible says little. Instead, the Bible spends more time providing instruction on love and how to treat the least of these.

The Barber coalition arrived on Capitol Hill with that intent. The group of about 50, including non-religious leaders, went to stand up for the 22 million who would be without health care if the Senate passes its version of the bill to replace the ACA and make drastic cuts to Medicaid.

The senators are preying on the sickest and the poorest in this country, Barber has been quoted as saying. That kind of prayer is hypocritical. Their kind of prayer is the prayer that makes God weep.

Barber has recently started a new organization, the Repairers of the Breach, which, according to its website, is designed to counter the ultra-conservative constructs and will rebuild, raise up and repair our moral infrastructure. More Capitol Hill demonstrations are planned.

So who are the real Christians?

I cant answer that question. Yes, 1 Timothy 2:1-5 does ask us to pray for those in authority, but in Jeremiah 7:16, God tells his prophet whos intent on praying for those gone astray, Dont waste your time praying for these people.  Dont offer to make petitions or intercessions. Dont bother me with them. Im not listening.

What Im more concerned with is where are the people of goodwill who are ready to say enough of this foolishness and this constant drip, drip, drip of ineptitude? Ready to admonish those from the left and right spewing venom and creating division? Ready to protest when kids wearing hoodies or playing with toy guys are killed without question and their killers set free? Ready to say the decision shouldnt be between buying life-saving medications or paying the rent or buying food? Ready to say stop the lies and vicious attacks on the judiciary and the fourth estate? Ready to support a living wage, quality education, pay equity, accessible and affordable health care, clean water and air and sensible gun control?

Be ye Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or agnostic, an immigrant from Syria, Somalia or Yemen, a good ol boy from Alabama or a nerd from Silicon Valley, male or female, young or old, gay or straight and whatever image comes to mind when you think flesh-colored, its time for all of us to say we are people with a spirit to do what is right and just.

We see the need for a moral revival and moral correction, and we will put feet to our prayers. We are the real lower-case christians.
GREENWICH  The town of Greenwich is joining numerous communities across the region with an uptick in stolen cars.

The rising trend in car thefts is seen by experts as a mix of complacency, false confidence in modern car security systems and a new breed of teenaged perpetrators.

Taken together, the new generation of car thieves  youngsters often 17 or younger  are taking advantage of the new ignition systems installed in motor vehicles to take vehicles for joy rides and mayhem, according to law enforcement authorities.

In Greenwich, car thefts are up by 76 percent this year, as compared with the number stolen from January to mid-July in 2016, according to department statistics.

Unfortunately, people are making it easy, by leaving their vehicles unlocked and ready to start, said Greenwich police Lt. David Nemecek.

Often times, with the new push-to-start key fobs, people leave them in the vehicle, said Fairfield Police spokesman Lt. Robert Kalamaris. The end result is that the doors dont get locked, and the car ends up getting stolen once the perpetrator presses the brake pedal and sees the green light illuminate on the start button.

Many of the perpetrators of the recent wave of auto thefts are juveniles. A group of young people arrested in a series of weekend car thefts in Greenwich were between the ages of 14 and 17.

Its juveniles, not adults, doing a lot of this, said Nemecek.

Police in Greenwich say the car thefts are being perpetrated by informal street gangs in loosely organized fashion.

The Greenwich department has added staff and other resources to the auto-theft unit, and there have been advances in regional cooperation among other communities in the area.

Most stolen cars are recovered, according to state data. But theyre often taken for a joyride or a crime spree first.

A lot of our cars end up in Bridgeport, commented Lt. Patrick Lynch of the Ansonia Police Department.

The theft of a car from a suburban driveway is often just the start of a dangerous ride for the driving public, police officers and bystanders. The car thieves are also endangering themselves, police said.

A car driven by a Waterbury man accused of hitting a police cruiser and a police officer before he was shot by a cop in Waterbury in March was stolen from Greenwich. The red Lexus SUV was just one of three cars stolen in Greenwich that weekend that ended up in Waterbury.

In May of this year, police shot Jayson Negron, 15, and Julian Fyffe, 21, who were in a stolen car in Bridgeport. Negron died from his wounds. Its unclear who stole the carthe case is under investigation.

In the past six months, police have linked stolen cars to robberies and at least one drive-by shooting. Stolen cars provide criminals with cover because they cant be traced back to them, police said.

While there has been a regional uptick over the past year or so, the overall rate of auto theft countrywide has dropped since a peak in the early 1990s, data shows.

Motor-vehicle theft rates have fallen nationally from 659 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1991 to around 220 over the past five years, according to FBI statistics. The rate was 148.9 per 100,000 inhabitants in Connecticut in 2015, the last year of reporting statistics.
MASON CITY | Citizens on Saturday helped the Mason City Police Department identify a suspect wanted on several warrants.

At 8:45 a.m. police were notified that Jack Hovenga, 19, no permanent address given, was in the 400 block of South Garfield Avenue. Hovenga, according to a police report, fled the area on foot as cruisers arrived.

At 9:33 a.m., with the help of several residents, police arrested Hovenga after finding him in a utility shed in the 1800 block of Cerro Gordo Way.

Hovenga was wanted for escape from custody and probation revocation. Hovenga also was charged with possession of a controlled substance (meth), possession of drug paraphernalia, and interference with official acts.

Hovenga left the BeJe Clark Residential Facility on June 21. He was taken to the Cerro Gordo County Jail and held on $7,000 bond.
It seems that left field of the largest of two ball fields at Western Middle School is a hot spot of PCB contamination. And the right field foul line is not a place one wants to chase fly balls either. It, too, has exceedingly high levels of the man-made carcinogen.

When we see levels this high, it gets our attention, said Lori Saliby, a supervising analyst for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The alarming findings were first reported earlier this year, but a map prepared by the towns environmental consultants in February and sent by DEEP to an RTM member this month, pinpoints the exact locations of the dirty dirt. PCBs are not buried in a remote corner or lightly used piece of the property; they are right where hundreds of adults and children have stood as they played left field.

I dont know the exact date the town built this field, but it was at least 50 years ago. The field is one of many crafted in Greenwich using large deposits of coal ash and other toxins from the old New Haven Railroad power plant, hard against Cos Cob Harbor.

The power plant is long gone; however, its poisonous legacy seems to grow and grow. The question is how many other playing fields or parks are contaminated with this material. First Selectman Peter Tesei has demonstrated no interest in finding out. During his 2015 campaign, he called soil testing all town-owned fields a fools errand, and has even mocked parents who express concern for the health of their children.

But there is no doubt that parents, or anyone for that matter, should be concerned. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are highly toxic, organic compounds for which there is no known natural source. While one can be tested for it, there is no treatment for PCB exposure.

Exposure does not guarantee any nasty side effects, but research has shown that children whose mothers were exposed to PCBs during the six years preceding pregnancy can suffer cognitive defects, impaired vision and other health issues.

So, we know this is bad stuff and any discovered amount beyond governmental guidelines should be kept out of human contact. Fortunately, the Board of Education seems to take this responsibility seriously. It is running point on the WMS clean-up. Its consultants tested again in early June and have already agreed with DEEP on areas that require further testing.

We are working closely with the Board of Education and its consultants. We are getting the test results and everyone is committed to a fast remediation, Ms. Saliby said.

The same, however, cannot be said for the clean-up operation at GHS. It has been six years since the PCB discovery on Hillside Road, but the town still does not know the extent of the problem, nor has it presented any final plans for remediation.

Im not sure why it has taken the town so long to clean up GHS, or not clean it up rather. From the very first discovery of toxins, town leaders first reaction was to hit the mattresses, meeting in illegal executive sessions and sharing as little information as possible. The school board ceded control over the clean-up to the Department of Public Works.

At Western, the school board feels pressure from parents, students and teachers and has kept the project moving along, especially since January with at least three rounds of testing. If the school board can be faulted for anything here, it is that its website information about the project is out of date.

Tesei, on the other hand, when first hearing about the WMS soil contamination, challenged the validity of the tests. His first reaction should have been to verify the results, not vilify the testers.

The Department of Public Works is not directly accountable to anyone except Tesei, and he has shown no real urgency to get the work done at the high school. It was said, at first, that it would take four summers to complete the work because students and teachers cannot be onsite when the contaminated soil is removed. But weve gone through four summers and more, and the town does not even have a final plan in place. It has, however, spent $4,706,805 with AECOM, the environmental consultants on the job.

There are three ways to remediate PCBs, DEEPs Saliby said. I really cannot comment on what they are doing because we do not know what their final plan is.

GHS has grand plans for improvements like a new lighting system for Cardinal Stadium. I am sure there are other GHS projects waiting for dollars as well. But before any of those go forward, someone needs to take responsibility and get an approved remediation plan in place so the entire campus is once again open to all.

Bob Horton can be reached at bobhorton@yahoo.com.
These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales.
It used to be that Americans recognized government intrusion and recoiled against it, but in the era of terrorism, we've become so accustomed to Uncle Sam watching over us that we hardly take notice when the feds attempt to dig deeper and know more about us.

An example of this new permissiveness can be observed as the White House attempts to obtain voter records from each of the 50 states to support Donald Trump's claim that 3 million votes were fraudulently cast in the presidential election.

Last week the curiously labeled federal Commission on Election Integrity asked for detailed information on every voter in the country. Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale balked initially, but agreed to turn over some information with assurances none of it would fall into the wrong hands. We would rather that Gale would have refused the commission's request, citing concerns about unwarranted intrusion, but for now a court has put a hold on the release of voter info until it determines the legality of the commission's request.

Across the border, our friends in Kansas have a big problem.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is sold on Trump's voter fraud claim and is willing to intrude to whatever degree necessary to uncover the alleged 3 million fraudulent voters. Kobach serves as vice chair of the Commission on Election Integrity and drafted the letter that went to the nation's secretaries of state requesting the voter data.

Kobach wants names, addresses, birth dates, party registrations, voting histories and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.

Some states have refused the request, some have just not responded. Others said they would hand over their voter records.

Americans should be deeply concerned by the commission's inquiry, supposedly in the name of election integrity.

Every American wants honest and fair elections, but the commission seeks information that serves no valid purpose. However, it does provide unethical lawmakers the toehold they need to suppress voters, such as repealing motor-voter registration laws. Gale should retract his approval, and all secretaries of state should refuse to comply, or they'll risk voter privacy and worse, lose trust they've worked hard to earn from voters.

This editorial appeared in the July 13 edition of the Kearney (Nebraska) Hub.
Published on 2017/07/22 | Source

Added the upcoming Korean drama "Queen of Mystery Season 2"'s page to HanCinema database

Advertisement

"Queen of Mystery Season 2" (2018)

Directed by Kim Jin-woo-II

Written by Lee Seong-min-II

Network : KBS

With Choi Kang-hee, Kwon Sang-woo,...

Wed, Thu 22:00

Synopsis

"Queen of Mystery" tells the story of a prosecutor's wife who's always dreamed of being a detective. After actually solving a case, she ends up in an unlikely crime-fighting duo with a young police captain.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2018/02
Estimados amigos,

Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con articulos, analisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas economicos, financieros y politicos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su maximo interes, utilidad y conveniencia.

Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro.

Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras.

There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

No soy alguien que sabe, sino alguien que busca.

Only Gold is money. Everything else is debt.

Las grandes almas tienen voluntades; las debiles tan solo deseos.

Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
We rely on your support to make local news available to all

Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today
Dozens of Crown Heights residents gathered Saturday afternoon outside Summerhill, a new self-described "boozy sandwich shop" on Nostrand Avenue, to protest owner Becca Brennan's decision to advertise a cocktail in front of a "bullet hole-ridden wall" and Forty Ounce Rose in a recent press release.

Brennan, a 31-year-old former attorney and Toronto transplant, has apologized for the promotional blunder, after initially saying she was just being "cheeky" when she decided to photograph a $12 cocktail in front of "bullet holes" in the wall at 637 Nostrand. She has also faced community backlash for saying she would serve the 40 ounce bottles of rose in paper bags, prompting accusations of classism and racism.

On Saturday, incensed residents spoke about the impact of gentrification on their neighborhood, and accused Summerhill of glorifying violence, and for-profit cultural appropriation.

"People of color are not props or backdrops," said Toya Lillard, who is black, and a Crown Heights resident of over 20 years. "If you are new to this community you are duty bound to do some research. To be culturally literate. To know where you are. To know what came before you. It's not our job to inform you or educate you. It's yours."

Summerhill was open for business during the protest, windows flung open to the street. Forty Ounce Rose bottles had been cleared away from the bar shelves.



Inside Summerhill during Saturday's protest (Sai Mokhtari / Gothamist)

About a dozen patrons sat around the bar and at high tables, occasionally speaking with reporters, while Brennan herself mixed cocktails. She did not engage with the crowd outside, even as protesters started a loud chant of "Bye, Bye Becky," using slang for a generic white woman. Speaker after speaker climbed a step ladder outside and called for a boycott, while two publicists, one of whom described himself as "crisis management," took notes.

"I grew up here for 54 years," said neighbor Stephanie Simms, who is black. "I watched Colt 45 being bought. I have drank it in my years. Yes, it was a cheap drink and it was in a brown paper bag, but it destroyed lives. So why is it something that you want to monopolize on?"

"Glorifying violence is not the way to go," added another speaker, who did not provide his name. "I'm a resident of Crown Heights. I'm a black man. I'm offended that people are marketing our hurt, our pain, our struggle. Crown Heights is not on sale."

"I make people like this [bar owner] feel comfortable in this neighborhood, and I get that," said resident Fred Chong Rutherford, one of a minority of non-black speakers. "But all I know is one thing: it's very important to do the right thing."



Sign directed at Summerhill's owner. (Photo by Sai Mokhtari/Gothamist)

Organizers presented Brennan with a list of demands Saturday, including a public, spoken apology or press release; the removal of the "bullet hole" wall; and a commitment to attend meetings of the Crown Heights Tenant Union, a coalition of Crown Heights residents that has protested the proliferation of bars in the neighborhood and challenges landlords who harass tenants to hike rents. Brennan issued a statement to Gothamist last week, saying, "I truly never meant it in that way, but I recognize that it was insensitive." Her publicists passed out copies of a similar statement on Saturday. "I recognize that I have more work to do to continue healing relationships with my neighbors," it stated.

"If she really meant it she would be out here listening to what we have to say," challenged organizer Paola Ayala.

There were moments of tension Saturday, despite organizers' insistence that anyone could address the crowd regardless of their stance on the bar. Midway through the action, a man who identified himself as a Summerhill cook stood up to defend Brennan, but stepped down after protesters shouted over him for several minutes.

"People of color I want you to look around you," said the cook, who is black. He motioned to the diverse crowd, including many young white people. "It's the gentrifiers going off on a gentrifier."

"The 40s, the rose, why are you tying that back into us?" he added. "That ain't my culture. I don't want gun violence tied back into my culture."

Protesters countered that 40 ounce malt liquor and gun violence are inextricably linked to longstanding racist stereotypes, and accused Brennan of crass exploitation. "Don't say, 'Don't tie something to our culture,'" said the demonstrator in the video below. "Half of that shit was pushed on us."

"I'm very aware of one word: Holocaust, right?" she added. "If someone made a wall like a gas chamber and served matzo ball soup, how would y'all feel? You wouldn't be protesting, that shit would be shut down!"

The comment drew criticism from Mordechai Lightstone, a vocal member of the Chabad-Lubavitch community in Crown Heights. Lightstone tweeted that the "casual anti-Semitism" was offensive, and solidified his hunch that Crown Height's large Jewish community was not accommodated at an event protesting symbols that are "an insult to our experience as well."

Throughout the action, a few locals sat in the bar's front window, sipping cold drinks and defending Brennan.

"It's the wrong cause," said Jamal Muhammad, part-owner of a nearby bodega, motioning at the protesters. "We had two shootings on [nearby] St. Marks last year, and none of those bougie people show up."

"I think it's hogwash," added Frank Morris, a commercial landlord on Nostrand Avenue and resident of Crown Heights since 1990.

"From what I've seen, she has young black kids here every day helping them with their homework, young black kids cleaning her windows, and black people coming in here and having a good time," Morris, who is black, added. "This whole thing is overblown."

Tracey Reid, one of Morris's commercial tenants, owns Lionheart National Herbs across the street from Summerhill. She pointed at Morris during her remarks Saturday, accusing him of being complicit in the neighborhood's rapid gentrification.

"For you to rent me a store for 18 years without heat and hot water and to sit here and say you are promoting a new local business is very distasteful," Reid said. "Because you never would have rented a Caucasian woman that store 18 years without water and heat."

Organizer Justine Stephens described Saturday's action as a success. Brennan's publicists took her information and plan to set up a meeting, she said.

"Our list of demands were pretty simple," Stephens added. "They are vague enough where it'swe'll work with you to help you. But at this point it's on her."

This story has been updated.
ABINGDON, Va.  U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine stressed the importance of seeking advice from local health care experts to take back to Washington during a visit Friday to the Highlands Community Services Childrens Campus.

Kaine toured the campus in Abingdon to learn about the mental health services and crisis intervention the facility provides to children in Washington County and Bristol, Virginia.

Today is a little bit of a health care day for me, were [United States Senate] in the midst of this significant health care debate in Washington right now where there will be a pivotal vote on Tuesday, Kaine said. Coincidentally, I had long planned to come to work at the RAM Clinic in Wise earlier today, but I have been hearing about this program [Childrens Campus] that serves children in a very innovative way.  I wanted to see it as this is a different model from what many communities use and its relevant to the discussion about health care were having because so much of these services are paid for by Medicaid.

The senator met with HCS Executive Director Jeff Fox and senior management.

I wanted to come here to hear what theyre [HCS] doing and that will help me help my colleagues make a better case for programs like this, but also hopefully convince them that big cuts to Medicaid are not the smart thing to do.

Since January, Kaine has served on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, whose chairman is Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee.

If we would just get the committee to hear from witness like these folks  experts  have a dialogue, ask questions, offer amendments, debate amendments  vote some up, vote some down  we could go through a process that would improve the situation [as] we are faced with a vote that will worsen the situation if it were to pass.

The Childrens Campus opened March 16. For the past decade, HCS has provided various services to children but never in an isolated space.

The Childrens Campus is a state-of-the-art facility, Fox said. Its proven to be a really valuable resource to the community that will serve this area and community for years to come.

Throughout the past 10 years, HCS has gone from serving 450 to more than 1,800 children in the area, Fox said. One in nine children in the area uses the services.

Additionally, the number of employees has risen to 372 from 125 over the 10-year span.

The programs offered in the facility include the Safety Zone, Interchange: Therapeutic Alternative Schools, prevention and education, Intensive Family Services, EMBRACE Sponsor Homes, School-Based Day Treatment program and a summer camp.

The Safety Zone opened in February. Since October 2013, HCS has served more than 500 kids in the program alone in its various facilities. The Zone offers day treatment, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Children can stay in the facility for approximately 15 days.

The Safety Zone is for those children who are in some sort of an acute crisis  whether its difficulties at home, effects of bullying, domestic violence  and instead of going to a residential facility they can come here, Fox said.

The School-Based Day Treatment program is in 18 schools in the area and focuses on behavior issues and helping children stay in school.

If that doesnt work, they have the option of going to Interchange, Fox said. It is broken into two programs, one for elementary and middle school students and one for older children up to the age of 18.

If the child cannot be sustained they have the option of coming to Interchange.

The main goal is for the child, who can stay up to a year, to go back to their own school.

When the Childrens Campus opened, there were 16 students enrolled in Interchange, with the number rising to 27 by the end of May. HCS expects to reach 40 students by the time the next school year begins.

The summer camp program serves approximately 115 children a day.

Just because the schools stop doesnt mean the students can stop services, Fox said. There are children who need the extra support and structure and we provide it in the summer in a fun environment that doesnt make a break in the care.

A repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) threatens critical federal funding for those battling opioid addiction by ending the Mediciaid expansion and subsidies for the ACA marketplace, according to a HCS news release. Additionally, a repeal of the act would mean more than 2.2 million people with substance disorders and 1.2 million people with serious mental illness would lose some of or all of their coverage.

The Medicaid program is kind of the key pillar to the vote we are having next week. More than 50 percent of recipients of Medicaid in Virginia are kids and then Medicaid provides services in so many different ways that I felt like Okay here is an innovative program that really relies on Medicaid, doing the right thing, we need to have more programs like this, not fewer, Kaine said.

Due to a reporting error, the Bristol Herald Courier incorrectly stated The Safety Zone is open 24 hours a day. That is incorrect, The Zone offers day treatment only. The story has been updated.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a fan of the man in black. Even when my kids were still in car seats, I kept Johnny Cash in near constant rotation. I must admit, I was a little proud they could sing along. In retrospect, hearing them sing, I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die may not have been wise parenting.

Of late, murder has left imagination and increasingly fills our local news. There have been an awful lot of murder stories in the Tri-Cities area over the past couple of weeks. From the murder confession in Chilhowie to the murder trial in Bristol, our paper has been filled with stories about the accused.

I am led to wonder what goes through the collective mind of our community when we hear about someone killing a family member, friend or even a stranger.

What did you think when you heard about the most recent shootings? Did it surprise you or have you, like me, grown accustomed to it?

Like a lot of people across the U.S., many of us have likely become desensitized to violent crimes. Weve become so numb to hearing about it that we give little thought to what it says about us as a community. Furthermore, we tend to create mental separation between ourselves and those who commit those sorts of crimes, and doing so precludes us from seeing their actions as representative of the state of our community.

The fact that we are less empathetic should give a community with a church on nearly every corner some pause. Very often even people of faith, like myself, are absorbed into our cul-tures love for a good murder mystery. But this affinity is a major departure not only from Judeo-Christian values but from what makes a community strong: connection and accountability.

In her 1998 book Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination, Karen Halttunen points out that people once saw murder as a warning sign because murderers are sinners in a community of sinners. In other words, they represent the worst of what any of us could become and are a product of our society. When a murder was committed, it gave people pause because it conveyed something about the communitys health.

Today, however, we often see murderers as, like Halttunen said, an alien monster whose crimes reflect separation from the rest of society. For instance, the news often shows the accused disheveled and shackled, which allows for polite society to distance itself from them.

Dehumanizing murderers makes it easier for a community to deal with a heinous act because it allows us to separate ourselves from them. It perpetuates a problem of pretending that we are not connected to one another. But ours is a small community; many of us are either related or friends with someone who has more than likely been impacted by violence.

Dehumanizing murderers also allows us to ignore what it says about our community. Granted, there are a lot of factors that play into someone becoming a murderer, but community is one of them. After all, they were probably educated in our schools, played in our parks and shopped in the same stores that we do. Perhaps, as Halttunen suggests, it is time that we veer back toward the earlier Puritan sense of the killer who reflected societys sins rather than an alien ogre.

Im not suggesting that our community is to blame for someone elses actions. Nor am I suggesting that we should go easy on those who give in to Cains sin. However, it is time that we start to reflect on what the amount in violent crimes says about us here in the Mountain Empire. It will take some work, but we can and should recover our compassion to strengthen our com-munity.

So, the next time that old Johnny starts singing about a man in Reno, perhaps we ought to consider just how numb it is making us to the real world.
After Parrott's lead disappears, Trone takes 6th District race

Republican state Del. Neil Parrott conceded on Friday after close race. Trone to return as congressman for 6th District.
With only so many minutes to go around, Geronimo makes most of his
HICKORY  This week, I had the privilege of learning and growing alongside of approximately 1,200 of my peers from across North America at the Association for Chamber of Commerce Executives annual convention in Nashville, Tenn. I heard from futurists, consultants, industry colleagues, as well as, subject matter experts aimed to educate, evoke reflection, encourage best practice sharing and even disrupt norms.

One of those speakers was Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and bestselling author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, who served as the keynote speaker during our opening plenary session. His dynamic, witty and highly engaging presentation on word-of-mouth advertising included several takeaways that can be applied across all industries and business size.

Do you remember the infamous hump day camel commercial for Geico Insurance? The ad featured a goofy camel strolling through an office attempting to liven up workers by asking Guess what day it is? Following a few attempts, finally Julie delivers the answer with absolutely no enthusiasm: Its hump day. The camel then erupted into giddy excitement. Every Wednesday, America still cant help but to think about being Happier than a camel on Wednesday! Did you know that by the end of 2013, the year that the ad was launched, it had been shared close to 4 million times on social media? In addition, it was the seventh most viewed ad on YouTube that year having 19 million views. Oh, and by the way, guess when this video was shared most often? You guessed it, on Wednesdays!

So, why did this campaign go viral? Is it just luck or a stroke of genius that some companies, products or services hit the word of mouth jackpot? Jonah Berger has spent about 15 years researching consumer behavior behind our purchasing and sharing decisions. He says its science.

In his presentation last Sunday, Berger described the six primary principles his research concluded that drive what people talk about and share. If one understands the science behind this consumer behavior, one can increase his or her chances in crafting what he calls contagious content and generating some great word-of-mouth for your product or service.

1. Social Currency. People share things that affect how people see them. So, if you create content or a brand reputation that makes someone look better or smarter by being associated with it, the more likely theyll be to share it with others.

2. Triggers. Berger said, top-of-mind equals tip-of-the-tongue. When you think of peanut butter, you think of jelly. Peanut butter serves as an automatic advertisement for jelly. The more were triggered to think about a product or idea, the more well talk about it. For example, a trigger for Corona beer is the beach. Data proves that consumers are more likely to buy Corona beer at the beach. They created this trigger through their marketing messaging.

3. Emotion. When we care, we share. People are more likely to share content that causes their heart rate to increase. This emotion can be positive, utilizing fuzzy feel-goods, excitement or humor, or even negative emotion, with anger or anxiety.

4. Public. Humans tend to follow or imitate one another. Take the I Voted stickers as an example. One is more likely to vote if they see that their friends have voted. People are more likely to seek products or services when they seem to be observably in demand.

5. Practical Value. Humans tend to want to help others. You increase your chances in getting people to talk about you or share if your content is useful. Examples: How-to videos; top 10 lists; life hacks, etc.

6. Stories. You can increase your chances in having others talk about you if you shift your messaging to telling stories vs. sales pitches. No one likes to be sold to, much less seeming like a walking advertisement themselves! They will, however, talk about you if its a part of a broader narrative. Berger described this messaging as a Trojan horse story that carries your brand along for the ride. For example: blogger content, earned content through media relations, or customer experience reviews

I encourage you to reflect upon your current marketing messaging and strategies. How can you incorporate one or several of Bergers principles. Will this guarantee a viral response? Certainly not! However, as I previously mentioned, by understanding the science behind consumer behavior, it will increase your chances in generating some additional word-of-mouth buzz for your brand.

For more on this subject, join me in reading Jonah Bergers book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

Lindsay Keisler is president/CEO of the Catawba County Chamber of Commerce.
Its been a year since famed Indian artist Sayed Haider Razas death on July 23. A legend in the true sense of the word, he popularised Indian concepts and iconography globally and built an impressive legacy of modern art.

He passed away at the age of 94 after a prolonged illness, but his luminous legacy remains undminished, thanks to the Raza Foundation that the artist himself established.

The Foundation was set up in 2001 with the aim of promoting visual arts, poetry and music, among others. Initially, there were only three founding trustees -- Raza, Arun Vadehra (of Vadehra Art Gallery) and poet and critic Ashok Vajpeyi.

At first, Raza did not want his name to be used although he was funding the organisation. It was Vajpeyi who had to convince Raza to allow his name in the Foundations title. He was such a genuine and simple man... It took me three days to persuade him before he agreed, says Vajpeyi, the Foundations current managing trustee.

Poet Ashok Vajpeyi, the Raza Foundations current managing trustee, says it took him three days to persuade SH Raza (in picture) to use his name for the Foundation he was funding . (HT Photo)

Because he was such a towering personality and renowned globally, I thought his name would help it in becoming a brand in itself. It would have perhaps not risen to this height if it was just called by any other name.

Today, the Raza Foundation is one of the most active cultural organisations in the country. Besides organising a plethora of events, discussions, seminars and exhibitions, it also supports individuals and organisations by offering resources and grants.

Its immensely popular Art Matters series  panel discussions on contemporary issues  is a complete sellout. So far 46 editions have been held and it has become an integral part of the Indian culture space and activities.

There are three or four basic aspects of his legacy. One is the physical or artistic aspect, which includes the place where he lived, where he worked, his artworks and books. We have made sufficient efforts to ensure that all of these aspects are preserved, says Vajpeyi.

Artist Arihant Jain, pictured here with his abstract portrait of a cityscape, is among the artists who are taking part in the workshop held to pay tribute to the legendary painter S H Raza in Mandla. (PTI)

Then, there was his willingness to help others. As long as he was alive, he did not allow a single penny from the Foundations fund to be spent on him. We are carrying forward this legacy by giving grants and supporting young artists and institutions promoting arts in the country, Vajpeyi adds.

He also said that the Raza Foundation is playing a particularly crucial role  especially at this point in time. We are living in times when state support for the arts is negligible and corporate support is still to blossom. It is because of this that the Foundations role is all the more crucial, Vajpeyi says.

Raza was born in 1922 in Mandla in what is now Madhya Pradesh. He moved to Montparnasse in Paris at 28 after securing a French government scholarship in 1950. His work on pictorial research won him the Prix de la Critique in 1956.

In the years that followed, he travelled across Europe and widely exhibited his works in France, where he lived for six decades. In 2015, he was conferred the Commandeur de la Legion dHonneur, the highest French honour, for his artistic contributions.

Sculptor Dharm Netam wants to follow in the footsteps of S H Raza. He is taking part in a workshop held on Razas first death anniversary in Mandla. (PTI)

Cut to the present: Nestling in the lap of Narmada river, the picturesque town of Mandla will be soaked in sublime remembrance as it observes the first death anniversary of its famous son. A series of events have been planned on Sunday, July 23, to commemorate Razas memory and perpetuate his legacy.

A unique participatory artist workshop and a concert of nirgun music are among the programmes that have been lined up by the Foundation to pay tribute to the artist, who lies buried next to his father in Mandla.

Terry Pratchett, in his acclaimed novel Reaper Man, famously wrote: No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away. Razas afterlife personifies this. Death hasnt intervened as the rich legacy that Raza left behind lives on and continues to give direction to numerous lives.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more
You made me aware of a feeling that seemed foreign to me, that belonged to others, that I despised. That beautiful feeling of joy, which perhaps could also be mine.

No, thats not a romantic author or a poet expressing his deepest thoughts, but the late artist Syed Haider Raza in one of his letters to Janine Mongillat in 1953. Raza, who died on this day last year at the age of 94, went on to marry the French contemporary artist six years later and lived on in Paris for over half a century.

The letters from the artist, who created works of art with his brush and his words, are scheduled to be published as a book later this year. The letters of love and longing, now in the custody of the Raza Foundation and made available to PTI, are a far cry from the bindu, purush-prakriti and nari concepts in geometric abstract works that propelled Raza to iconic status.

Razas correspondence with his wife (then girlfriend) also reveals the artists emotions and struggles in his early days in France. (HT Photo)

You made me aware of, in all its plenitude, a feeling that I do not know how to describe, and which nevertheless shows itself in all my letters without my speaking about it. You have also made me aware of the exquisite sweetness of some moments, which I have often neglected or destroyed. How to write what they have become to me, I, who is consumed by the days and nights as they came, happy or unhappy, without knowing well the existence of this void, he wrote in one letter.

Raza was born in 1922 in Mandala district of Madhya Pradesh to a forest ranger. He took up drawing at 12 and enrolled at the J J School of Art in Mumbai (1943-47), before moving to Paris to study in 1950 on a French government scholarship.

It was in the famed European city of love that he met Janine, a fellow artist. What followed was an affair to remember. After Razas return to India, the two exchanged as many as 80 letters between 1952-1956 before tying the knot in 1959.

Raza indulged in poetic passionate exaggeration in romantic hyperbole, all truly deep and genuine. He brings the same kind of passion and fury to his love as he did to his art, said Ashok Vajpeyi, close friend and managing trustee of the Raza Foundation.

Influenced by nature from his early childhood, Razas works represent the origins of life and draw on symbols that tribal painters and philosophers have traced, pondered and mulled over for millennia. (HT Photo)

The correspondence with his wife also reveals the artists emotions and struggles in his early days in France.

I am immersed in my dreams. Dreams incessant, sad-if I think, gay-if I abandon myself to the intensity of my pure feelings. I do not search any more, I hope to find. Will there be a new order to my life? I do not know. Consequences-I no longer think of them.

Janine, I wait for the sweet return of smiles, and the end of the agonizing days.

Influenced by nature from his early childhood, Razas works represent the origins of life and draw on symbols that tribal painters and philosophers have traced, pondered and mulled over for millennia.

Although Raza co-founded the Bombay Progressive Artists Group together with F N Souza, K H Ara, M F Husain, H A Gade, S K Bakre and others, Vajpeyi said the artist, in a way, created an alternative modernism without ever making such a claim.

(He created) a trend in which there was celebration, adoration, explanation of life and nature which was rooted in peace and tranquility, in consonance and resonance, in racial memory, in continuum unlike most other forms of the modern which were obsessed with tension, disruption, dissonance, etc. These works are almost like prayers for grace, Vajpeyi said.

Much like his letters, for Raza, life was a beautiful and precious gift, that existed at many levels of imagination and expression. It is complex but with rich essence, the poet added.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more
Saigon by Caroline Guiela Nguyen  whose family fled what is now Ho Chi Minh City in 1956  has been hailed for shining a light on the suffering and sacrifice of Vietnamese emigres, whose fate has long been enveloped in silence in the United States and France.

Despite playing in a small venue at the Avignon Festival in southern France, the near four-hour family saga has had critics reaching both for superlatives and their handkerchiefs.

This is a play like no other, the French daily Le Monde said, comparing its bitter-sweet melancholic nostalgia to Wong Kar-wais classic film In the Mood for Love. The play ends with the line, This is the way we tell stories in Vietnam; with lots of tears. Well, we love these tears that French theatre has been so long deprived of, it added.

Saigon tells the story of the heartbreak and longing of Vietnamese who were torn between France and their homeland when French colonial rule collapsed in the wake of military humiliation at the hands of the nationalists and communists of the Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

The play is framed by two dates  1956 and 1996, Nguyen told AFP.

Foreign Vietnamese

1956 was when the last of the French soldiers and colonists left Vietnam. But many Vietnamese who had French nationality left with them (below decks in steerage). They were called the Viet kieu, literally the foreign Vietnamese, she said.

They would not be allowed back for another 40 years, having to wait until 1996 when the US lifted its embargo against Hanoi. When the teenage Nguyen went back a few years later with her mother she began to see the depth of her loss.

Bargaining with some fruit sellers in a Ho Chi Minh City market, the women could not stop laughing at the quaint way her mother spoke. Her Vietnamese no longer existed, a relic of an all but forgotten past.

Like every one of her 17 cousins who grew up France, Nguyen does not speak Vietnamese. Our parents so wanted to integrate that teaching their children Vietnamese was for them going backwards. They were afraid it would hold up our French.

She remembers the divisions in her own extended family about whether to return or not. Some of my aunts and uncles never wanted to go back, while others longed to end their days there.

Haunted by lost world

Nguyen, who spent two years flying back and forth to Vietnam gathering stories, insisted that her own family history was only a starting point for her play. We gathered testimony but also sounds, images and atmosphere, and from all that our fiction was born.

The play takes place in a Vietnamese restaurant in Paris in 1996. Some of the 11 actors speak Vietnamese and others French. All are haunted by a world that no longer exists.

Growing up, Nyugen said she was always aware of the gulf between Vietnamese parents and their children. Later while researching the play a Vietnamese-born mother told her, My son is my Number One foreigner.

Like the double agent hero of last years Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Sympathizer  whose father was a French missionary priest  Nguyens characters are caught between cultures, between pity and suspicion.

Unlike that scorchingly brilliant satire by her namesake Viet Thanh Nguyen, her subtle, elliptical script eschews politics, even though her own family is almost a case study of French colonisation in Asia. One of her mothers parents was Vietnamese, the other from Pondicherry, a former French outpost in southern India. Her fathers side are pieds noirs, French colonists in Algeria.

Clearly the question of colonisation is always there, but to stop there would be a bit lame, Nguyen said. What interested me was to look at people whose fates have been decided by colonisation, to see what it left in their bodies and in their hearts.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more
Tense Indo-Pakistan ties notwithstanding, the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh has decided to bank on the youngest Nobel laureate and non-resident Pakistani, Malala Yousafzai to inspire and motivate students, especially girls in state-run schools, to fight against odds and continue their studies.

Malalas views and vision through news clippings and photographs have been pinned on notice boards of all government schools of Bhopal. District education office has also instructed teachers to inform the students about her struggle.

Earlier, the Madhya Pradesh government had asked the schools to have posters of Swami Vivekananda, Prime Minster, President, chief minister and B R Ambedkar in prominent places in their buildings.

This is for the first time the school education department has gone global to select a role model for the school students.

District education officer Dharmendra Sharma said, Swami Vivekananda and Ambedkar are heroes of India and students should learn about them. But to draw inspiration they need a person, who has earned his/her name in the present situation.

We saw the data on students drop out and found that compared to boys, more girls leave their studies. Yousafzai who fought a battle against Taliban in Afghanistan and even suffered a bullet injury just to continue her studies will inspire the girls here, Sharma added.

Teachers and students are also happy with this step.

A teacher of Naveen Girls Government School Radha Rani Singh said, This is really inspiring for the girls. When we informed students about it, they were surprised. They are really happy after knowing strength and courage of a girl. With the help of Malala, we are conveying the importance of education very effectively.

A student of a government school Kareena Ahirwar said, I want to be like Malala. I heard her name many times but I didnt know much about her struggle. Now, I know everything about her.

Students Neelam Raikwar and Anjali Iklaneshwar said, She has not only inspired us to continue our study but also motivated us to fight for others.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Actor Kunal Kemmu was only seven when he played the role of a naughty kid, Sunny, in the 1993 film Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke. Today, 24 years after the films release, Kunal recalls how it was to work with actors Aamir Khan, Juhi Chawla and filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt.

I was vacationing in Delhi, when my dad told me about the films offer. At that age, I didnt know who Mahesh Bhatt was or what a director does. I was only familiar with Aamir and Juhis names and their work, says Kunal, who had cut short his trip to start shooting.

A still from the 1993 film Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke, starring Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla.

Reminiscing the first day of his shoot, Kunal says, It was the scene, where Veeru Krishnan was performing Bharatanatyam and we kids, were sitting visibly bored. I met everyone for the first time and had no idea of what was going on. I was just following instructions that this man sitting next to the camera, Mr. Bhatt, was giving.

All praise for Bhatt, Kunal remembers how he pampered him, while giving specific instructions required for the shot. That was the nicest thing about him. He would just tell me, Listen, I want this shot like this, so do it. He would call me duffer and I didnt even know what that meant. On the sets, I used to feel better than home. I used to ask for chips, cold drinks or chocolates and the spot boy would get it instantly.

Kunal Kemmu in a still from 1993 film Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke.

Interestingly, it was during the shooting of Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke when Kunal, for the first time in his life, accepted bribe. Mr. Bhatt had bribed me with a visual video game, which nobody had at that time. My school had organised a picnic to the Esselworld and since the shoot was on, Mr Bhatt told me bunk it. Like a crybaby, I said no to him. Then, he persuaded me by saying, What can I give you for which you will come to the shoot. How about I give you a TV video game? and I instantly gave in, laughs Kunal, adding, The next day, when I saw the kids leaving for the picnic, I was crying and my dad told me,You got into a business deal at this age, so dont crib. So, quite sad, I came to the sets but when I got my TV video game, I was elated. I told my friends, You all went to EsselWorld for one day and I have this video game forever. You will all come to my house to play.

Fun facts:

1. When we were shooting for patchwork, Mahesh Bhatt was not around, so Aamir Khan had taken over. Before a continuity shot, we had all gone out and had paan and came back with our mouths red. Aamir had to wait for 15-20 minutes, so we could finally shoot.

2. The indoors of our house was a set, created outside a house in Juhu. And the terrace shot, where we were shown flying kites in a scene, was a different place.

3. We used to hover around Juhi Chawlas room all the time, making cartoons and sketches. When Id come back tired after playing, shed advise me to conserve my energy.

4. Once while playing with us, Juhi looked at me and said, This one is going to grow and be an actor.

5. There was a convertible car on the sets and all of us [the three kids] would sit at the back and Aamir would take us around for a ride.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
In 2011, I visited Stockholm the first time; photographs of my fathers life with cancer were to be exhibited at the Galleri Kontrast. One evening, after hanging my show, I walked by an exhibition of illustrations by Stina Wirsen, one of Swedens most cherished artists and bestselling childrens book writers. I was in a spin over one work: a small, surly boy, arms akimbo, staring defiantly at the world like a heartbroken tyrant. Grumpy, like one of Lemony Snickets characters, or a Dickensian orphanage bully. I bought the work and it travelled to Mumbai. On a subsequent trip, my gallerist, Mia Klintewall, introduced me to Stina Wirsen. I acquired more works and Wirsens nuanced, complex, elegant pieces cemented my love of Sweden. I travel there twice a year; this piece is drawn from various journeys.

Stina Wirsen is one of Swedens most cherished artists and a bestselling childrens book writer. (Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi)

All for art

One year I was a guest of Sanjoo Malhotra, the charming go-to guru of all things Indian in Sweden. As founder of India Unlimited, he curates key events in India and Sweden related to food, art, cinema, design and business. Malhotras past guests have included Naseeruddin Shah, Amitabh Kant and Pranab Mukherjee. As Malhotras invitee for India Unlimited, founded in collaboration with the Indian Embassy, I was billed in an event with Tarun Tahiliani. Malhotra hosted our talk at top-ticket design space Svenskt Tenn, salon for the niftiest, classic design textiles and utterly refined with pricey objects that can set you back by a mortgage payment.

If the arts sizzle your sabzi, grab the scene this August when the Stockholm Festival hosts India as guest of honour

Tahiliani, the great couturier (with a spry, blazing, Wildean wit) spoke about the shattering loss of his father, traced the dysfunctional rise of modern Indian fashion, and praised the compelling contributions of his sister, Tina, to their business. Afterwards, Tahiliani and I took off for Fotografiska, Swedens most impressive photography museum (artists include Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn). Arriving post dinner, and frightfully late, the museum was shut. So I rang museum director, the visionary Jan Broman, to hazard if he might open up the shows for us. Not only did Broman indulge my reckless request but he also graciously took us through the galleries himself. We recalled an unsettlingly lovely show of Andy Warhol images in drag that Broman had exhibited here (and which had reminded me in earnest of Cindy Shermans retrospective at MOMA). Alongside Fotografiska, I recommend Moderna Museet, the Museum of Modern Art, which has a variegated if overcrowded programme, and the small but spectacular dance museum, Dansmuseet.

Siddharth with couturier Tarun Tahiliani at the top- ticket design space Svenskt Tenn.

If the arts sizzle your sabzi, grab the scene this August when the Stockholm Festival  one of the largest in the world  hosts India as guest of honour. Last year, Malhotra had brought the director of the Stockholm Festival, Claes Karlsson, to my Mumbai home, where the tall, sturdy Swede outlined his exciting programme before guests like Atul and Anju Dodiya, Reena and Jitish Kallat, and Sooni Taraporevala. Zakir Hussain, for instance, will be performing in Stockholm, as will Kathak star Shivani Sethia. There will be a stand-up comic act by Papa CJ, an Indian film festival (but please, spare me the Bollywood), and yoga on the promenade (Mr Modi will beam as I slip smoothly into my All Day Bitch Pose). Since Malhotra is a huge champion of our food, there will be Indian street food, which I imagine will be like Linking Roads tummy-tearing paani puri stalls sans the gratis gastro.

An exhibit at the Dansmuseet, a dance museum in Stockholm. (Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi)

Id attended the Stockholm Festival last year. At one event, they sprayed thousands of white feathers into the sky. As they came cascading over the cool night, we slipped into a dream-like state; it felt like playing bit part roles in a giant performance piece.

The Brunch Insiders view Among the top places to visit is the Kungliga Slottet, the worlds largest royal castle, still used for its original purpose. (Source: Lonely Planet) Clarion Collection Tapto ranks among the top hotels offering good value for money. (Source: TripAdvisor) Coffee lovers can head to Cafe Foam, a contemporary cafe. (Source: Conde Nast Traveller)

A fabulous Swedish day

Deep fried baby herring with mayonnaise and grilled celeriac with bleak roe are among the offerings at Oaxen Krog & Slip restaurant. (Oaxen Krog & Slip)

Speaking of food, few countries enjoy so sterling a rep for their cuisine as reinvented Swedish modern. My friends Agneta Green and her husband Magnus Ek run the finest restaurant in town  Oaxen Krog & Slip (their Michelin stars are well-deserved and reservations are advised). Green has curated a small, smart selection of little hotels under the umbrella of The Hotel Collectors Guide, on point referrals of boutique properties across Sweden. While in Stockholm, I hugely recommend Greens personal handsome house boat, which she operates as a B&B: its so dangerously close to Oaxen youre unable to rest from the tantalising scents wafting from Eks celebrated kitchen.

Now, back to artist Wirsen, who suggested an insiders roll call for a Fabulous Swedish Day for Brunch readers. According to her, a top start is lunch at Gondolen in Slussen, followed by a walk in Sofo, the hipster area at Sodermalm, to rifle through its vintage boutiques, design stores and deck bars. The Swedes have a fabulous, effective water transport system and Wirsen suggests hopping on a boat from Strandvagen near the Grand Hotel (a property I love, go for an evening drink and feel like a rake) to explore the archipelago. Dinner is always dandy at Oaxen or Bakfickan, a restaurant behind the Swedish Opera house in the center.

A property from the Hotel Collectors Guide founded by Agneta Green. (Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi)

In Sweden, my most overwhelming awareness is of liberating, empowering equality: the country energetically works to make every citizen a pleased participant and enabling agent of change, its public system follows through without missing a beat, and its policies on climate change and education are revolutionary. Even as a traveller, theres a sense that when taxes are fairly paid, and political corruption is in check, a country and its constituents thrive.

But these are grander reasons to visit. Go, because like me, you too will fall in love with the beautiful Swedish landscape, its art, its people, its food and you too will return, as I have.

The writer is a bestselling author who contributes to top international publications. He has an eye for design and is honorary director of an arts foundation in Goa, where he curated Dayanita Singh, Roger Ballen and William Dalrymples visual arts debut.

Author of the bestseller, The Last Song of Dusk, Shanghvi is a contributor to publications here and abroad. He lives in Goa, where he serves as honorary director of an arts foundation.

From HT Brunch, July 23, 2017

Follow us on twitter.com/HTBrunch

Connect with us on facebook.com/hindustantimesbrunch
At least 26 chartered accountants have come under the scanner of the ICAI for allegedly helping shell companies, a senior official said.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) is the regulator for accountancy professionals and can initiate disciplinary action against erring members.

The role of (around) 26 chartered accountants with respect to their alleged links with shell companies are being looked into by the institute, ICAI President Nilesh Shivji Vikamsey told PTI.

As the government continues its clamp down on shell companies in efforts to deal with the black money menace, many entities have come under the lens of various agencies, including the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO).

Vikamsey said reference about the 26 chartered accountants came from the SFIO and details about them are being collected.

The ICAI can initiate stringent disciplinary proceedings against members violating norms. The measures can include suspension and even cancelling their registrations.

Shell companies are dubious entities that are generally used for laundering illegal funds.

However, the term shell company is not defined under the companies law.

At ICAIs foundation day function on July 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had sought to send out a strong message against chartered accountants trying to help entities in black money dealings.

Till July 12, the corporate affairs ministry has deregistered more than 1.62 lakh companies that have not been carrying out business activities for long.

The Registrars of Companies (RoCs) have removed 1,62,618 companies from the register of companies as on July 12, 2017 after following the due process under Section 248 of the Companies Act, 2013, Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley told the Lok Sabha on July 21.

Section 248 provides powers to the RoC to remove the name of a company from the register on various grounds, including that the entity was not carrying out any business for two preceding financial years.

Out of the 1,62,618 companies that have been struck-off the register, the registration of 33,000 were cancelled by RoC Mumbai.
Madhya Pradesh police on Saturday booked an upper caste Hindu youth for allegedly killing a cow, a day after he was spared by village elders who asked him to atone for his sin by taking a dip in the Ganges and organising a feast for villagers.

Polices action came after right-wing activists pressured the cow owner Shankar Ahirwar to file a case against the youth, Mohan Tiwari.

The incident happened at Dumbhar village under Baldevgarh police station limits in Tikamgarh district.

Baldevgarh police station officer KB Arya told HT that Mohan had gone to Allahabad to take a dip in the Ganges, and would be arrested on return.

According to sources, Ahirwar had taken his cow to the village outskirts for grazing on Friday. While grazing, the cow strayed into the farm of Bhumani Tiwari, Mohans father.

According to Ahirwars complaint, Mohan allegedly attacked the cow with a sharp edged weapon while trying to chase it away because of which the animal was injured and later succumbed.

However, Bhumani told local media that while shooing away the cow from the field, it got trapped in the metal fence due to which it was injured and died later.

My son didnt attack the cow. My son was chasing it. The cow was injured by the fencing and died, he said.

As the news of the cows death spread in the area, Bhumani urgently called a meeting of the community elders panchayat, which ordered Mohan to go to Allahabad for a holy dip in the Ganges and later organise a feast for the villagers.

According to our Hindu customs, we had to do prayashchit (atone for our sins). So I sent my son to Allahabad for taking a holy dip in Ganges. We will also organise a feast for the villagers later, Bhumani said.

However, on Saturday, activists of Bajrang Dal and Bajrang Sena got information about the incident and persuaded Ahirwar to lodge a complaint. They also pressured Baldevgarh police to lodge a case.

Following the complaint, autopsy of the cow was conducted by a veterinary doctor. We have lodged a case under section 429 of IPC (mischief by killing or maiming cattle) and under section 6 of MP Cow Protection Act against Mohan Tiwari, Arya said, adding that they are also looking into the role of the community panchayat.
It was June 2008, when news broke early in the morning that 38 Greyhound commandos had been killed in a deadly Maoist attack in Odisha. It caught my attention instantly, because the place of the attack  Chitrakonda  was where I had spent much of my childhood in the 1970s. My father, an engineer, was posted there for the construction of what Jawaharlal Nehru had so captivatingly called the temples of modern India  a dam and a hydroelectric power plant.

Chitrakonda was etched in my memory for its rich forests, beautiful mountains and the always fascinating tribal communities . How could such a place of peace and tranquillity turn into a Maoist den? In search of an answer, I travelled there a few months later to find that the place of my childhood had indeed turned into a story of despair.

The electricity and irrigation generated from the project, I learnt, had mostly benefitted farmers and industries in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. The local people and mostly tribal communities suffered double displacement: first to make way for the dam and then for the irrigation canals. Their livelihoods and economic opportunities had shrunk following the success of development and left them with widespread unemployment and edging them towards the Maoists. In several villages, families had turned to illegal cultivation and trading of opium, for which many received protection from the Maoists and the local police. I wondered if Chitrakondas fate would have been different if its many children had a different education story to tell.

The same school that launched and prepared me and my many friends for the bigger world of Delhi and other opportunities is now a run-down ghost of itself. In the years after the completion of the project, when the engineers and the staff brought in from outside were packed up, the state authorities stopped caring for the school. At the time of my visit in early 2009, it had just four full-time teachers compared to the dozen-plus that we had. The classrooms no longer had chairs and tables; black boards were blank; teacher attendance was sporadic; and the most important entry on the schools daily itinerary appeared to be the distribution of the mid-day meals. Clearly, Chitrakondas children had been going to school, but not getting educated.

The situation of Chitrakonda, its people and the ruinous decline of my former school is a good way to understand the risks aspirational India faces today. In allowing a steady and systemic deterioration of its school education system, a veritable ocean of social crisis and potential violence can drown or snuff out other gains.

Across the country, there are hundreds of thousands of schools like mine that have become mere statistics, which babus and politicians can use to ramp up claims on enrollment ratio, literacy rates and progress vis-a-vis the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations.

As we speak, Parliament is debating changes to the Right to Education Act (RTE) and a high-powered government panel is finalising a New Education Policy (NEP) for the country. There already exists a rich body of literature on what an ailing education system can mean for innovation, economic growth and social order. As educationist Prof Krishna Kumar pointed out at a national-level consultation on the NEP last week, it is imperative to ask where and how we went wrong in the past and what are the lessons we learn from those mistakes.

Indias biggest failing has been that the government doesnt spend enough on education. Four decades have passed since a target was set to increase public spending to 6% of the national income. That target remains elusive. Worse, after peaking at nearly 3% in the immediate years following the enactment of RTE in 2009, the share of public spending in GDP has been slipping since 2013.

A significant and sustained spike in public spending is critical to overcoming everything else  from lack of qualified and trained teachers to well-equipped classrooms and monitoring learning outcomes.

What is worrying, and intriguing, however, is that certain influential sections in the government are trying to cook academic evidence to negate the primacy of availability of teachers and classroom infrastructure as being critical to achieving quality education. One out of every two teachers in a government school is a contract employee, half of the teachers are neither qualified nor trained and in one calculation up to 30% of their time is spent on non-education work such as manning election booths and volunteering for polio vaccination campaigns.

Even more worrying is the institutional damage that has been inflicted on the system over the years. Institutions such as the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and its counterparts in states (SCPCR) have been rendered dysfunctional. It has ceased to be a priority for most states to fill up vacancies for cluster resource coordinators and block resource coordinator  the most critical last-mile link in monitoring and managing school education. The office of the education minister is no longer a sought after job in most states. These issues must be addressed for a a meaningful reform of the education system.

Our legislators and policy makers would also do well to bear in mind that three most desirable outcomes are needed from a good schooling system: citizenship training, enhancing economic productivity and social mobility.

An educated populace, in essence, reduces a range of transaction costs by being able to raise the quality of a nations cultural and social life. This is, however, not to suggest that the poorly educated and the illiterate are undesirable as humans. Rather, it is important to acknowledge that those lacking meaningful education are most likely to be left powerless and become victims in any society that is based on choice and informed decision-making.

Follow the author @rajeshmahapatra

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Metro trains in the Capital will run as usual on Monday, with employees of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) calling off their strike.

The ongoing protest by DMRCs non-executive employees was called off today after all the issues raised by the agitating employees were amicably settled following many rounds of meetings and deliberations with DMRCs managing director, Dr. Mangu Singh and other senior officials, said Anuj Dayal, chief spokesperson at DMRC.

In light of the above, the Delhi Metro services will continue as per schedule tomorrow (Monday), he added.

The announcement came after the corporation agreed to the demands of its protesting non-executive employees that included revising their salary slabs. The DMRC has around 9,000 non-executive staff who perform important duties of train operators, station in-charge, traffic controllers, technicians, maintenance and so on.

These employees had been protesting by holding sit-ins at various platforms over the past three days. On Monday, they had threatened to shut all metro services by not reporting to work.

However, the crisis was averted after a series of meetings held over the weekend between the Metros staff council, DMRCs top officials, Delhi government officials and the secretary at the ministry of urban development.

The issue was also deliberated in detail yesterday (Saturday) in a high-level meeting chaired by secretary MoUD, DS Mishra and Delhi chief secretary Dr MM Kutty with DMRCs MD, Dayal said.

At DMRC, the basic pay of non-executive staff varies from Rs 8,000 to Rs 18,500, while that of an executive staff member is above Rs 20,600. For over two years, protesters have been demanding that the slab of Rs 8,000 be done away with and the entry salary of non-executive employees be upgraded to Rs 10,170.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A major milestone in India-Japan relations and the future of the nuclear power in the country was passed by the coming into force of the bilateral civil nuclear agreement. There are more questions than ever about the viability of nuclear power, but in a period of energy uncertainty every country needs as many options at hand as possible. Nuclear may seem expensive in a time of low oil prices and collapsing solar rates, but it remains the worlds most viable source of carbon-free baseload power. International sanctions and Indias own ill-considered nuclear liability law have artificially confined the nuclear option in India. Indias domestic reactors are small and Russian ones are not much larger. Learning how to build reactors in the 2000 MW range was one of the goals of negotiating the Indo-US nuclear deal in the first place.

Japan is the worlds leader in civil nuclear technology  almost every advanced nuclear reactor in the world is dependent on Japanese components. Even reactors that carry a Made in the USA label have reactor cores made by Japanese firms like Toshiba and Hitachi. One of the key reasons that a rush of reactors did not follow the Indo-US nuclear deal was that without a parallel agreement with Japan, no country other than Russia could sell reactors to India. But Tokyo was a difficult negotiator as it combined the technological safeguards of the US with a deep non-proliferation commitment inspired by the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japans initial insistence that India sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was one among many barriers that had to be crossed.

The show is hardly over. The major Japanese reactor firm Toshiba-Westinghouse recently went bankrupt. This is why the new agreement also includes clauses that allow Japan to finance reactor projects in India. Indias poorly drafted liability law continues to be a problem for some other firms.

The Fukushima accident, liability concerns, depressed global energy prices and other issues have clouded the future of nuclear power in India and the world. Nonetheless, the atoms contribution to Indias energy mix remains among the smallest of any major economy. Most countries have found nuclear power a great boost to their economies. China continues to build reactors as fast as it can put them up. Countries that have banned nuclear power, like Germany, have come to regret the decision in an age of climate sensitivity. Nuclear energy is not a promise, but it is an option. At a time when energy is both of rising importance and riddled with uncertainty, India must work to keep the nuclear door open.
Day after Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) commissioner V Umashankar reiterated that an affordable city bus service will be launched in first quarter of 2018 during a public function, residents said they have set their hopes on the project for ending their transportation woes.

Gurgaons public transportation service is in a shambles, as the residents rely on 11 metro stations that mostly cover areas near the Delhi border, cab aggregators such as Uber and Ola and auto-rickshaws plying without meters to get around. On the citys arterial roads, residents have to depend on app-based cabs to reach their destinations.

Residents said the existing bus service is inadequate to meet public demand and the buses are rickety at best.

Many residents said a dedicated bus service, covering major points of the city, is the need of the hour as it will help reduce their transportation costs by a significant extent.

I incur a daily travelling cost of 300 in private cabs, as there is no cheaper mode of transport to my workplace. Such is the extent of my commuting expenses that I have had to cut down on travelling and work mostly from home. I rarely venture out these days. The introduction of a dedicated bus service will not only reduce my monthly expenses, but enable me to travel to more destinations across the city at half the cost that I am incurring presently, Harish Gulati, a resident of Sector 50, said.

Some residents said a public bus service will enable them to travel short distances at a cheaper cost and spare them the hassle of haggling with auto drivers over fare.

A large number of malls, movie halls and shopping centers are located on MG Road, which is barely three km from my house. However, commuting such short distances in cabs is far too expensive. Autos running without meters is the only other alternative, but one has to haggle with auto drivers for 10-15 minutes for a reasonable fare, Sudhir Sachdeva, a resident of Sushant Lok Phase 1, said.

Read I Gurgaon bus service by March 2018, says MCG commissioner

MCG commissioner V Umashankar said the public bus service is on track for a 2018 launch.

Efforts are on to introduce special purpose vehicles (SPVs) in the city. The memorandum of association has been approved by the state government and the articles of association is under consideration and expected to be approved soon, Umashankar said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
At least eight people, including two policemen, have been injured in clashes between Kanwariyas and Khelam villagers, mostly Muslims, in Aonla, in Bareilly district, Uttar Pradesh.

Four people have been arrested and Aliganj station house officer has been suspended for failing to ensure peace. A written clarification has also been sought from him. Additional police force has been deployed in the area and a case has been registered against 250 people for clashes.

According to reports, a skirmish took place when a group of villagers, suspected Muslims, allegedly stopped Kanwaryias. The first skirmish was reported around 7pm (Friday) in which a couple of Kanwaryias were injured, said Bareilly senior superintendent of police Joginder Kumar.

Later, there was an argument over the use of loud music, leading to the clashes. The villagers reportedly pelted stones at the pilgrims from their rooftops.

Subsequently, more Kanwariyas got involved in the alleged clashes. People from both sides were injured, and also the police personnel. Two constables and an S-I (sub-inspector) of a nearby police post received injuries, Kumar said.

The SSP, district magistrate and other officials held meetings with the two groups, asking them to ensure peace.

The locals have agreed to allow Kanwariyas to pass through the village using the same route until an alternate route is marked, said district magistrate RV Singh. The local police have also been told to ensure that Kanwariyas do not play loud music, he added.

Although the Kanwar Yatra concluded on Sawan Shivratri on Friday, some devotees are still offering Gangajal to Lord Shiva in Bareilly.
The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has sought land for two-lane tunnels bypassing Sela  a mountain pass at 13,700 ft  to shorten by almost 7km the road to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, bordering China.

This is in keeping with Indias bid for faster access to the Tibet frontier through the tough terrain of the state in the Eastern Himalayas.

RS Rao, the commander of the 42 Border Road Task Force under BROs Project Vartak, handed over a copy of the approved alignment plan to West Kameng deputy commissioner Sonal Swaroop on July 20.

We have also submitted to the DC a request for initiating land acquisition proceedings so that construction of the tunnels can be taken up on priority, Rao said.

The tunnels, a BRO spokesperson said, would help shave 6.5 km off the 496 km road from Guwahati to Tawang via Bhalukpong on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border. This translates into saving travel time by close to an hour since the present single-lane road has a number of hairpin bends.

Vehicles can move faster when the road widening work under way is done, he added.

Theres a shorter but less used road along the Bhutan border via Orang in Assam and Kalaktang in Arunachal Pradesh.

The gateway to Sela at an altitude of 13,700 ft in Arunachal Pradesh. (Rajib Jyoti Sarma)

The new alignment of the road to Tawang involves 12.37 km and the construction of two tunnels  one 475m and the other 1.79 km long  to bypass Sela and a number of hairpin bends. The altitude of the new alignment will vary between 11,000 and 12,000 ft, Swaroop told HT from district headquarters Bomdila.

The survey for land acquisition will start after the monsoon, she said.

Much of the land in Arunachal Pradesh is community-owned, which complicates the process of acquiring land for government projects. The Sela area is sparsely populated.

Officials do not envisage challenges, particularly after 152 families of Senge, Nyukmadung and Lish villages  all located between Bomdila and Sela  in West Kameng district were given Rs 42 lakh each in April as compensation for land acquired by the army after the 1962 Chinese attack.

The villagers had to wait 50 years to get compensation, but as they say, it is better late than never, state chief minister Pema Khandu had said while handing over the chequee to the villagers.

Villagers of West Kameng and Tawang districts will be entitled for the compensation for the tunnels. Sela is the boundary between the two districts.

Armed forces and district officials did not specify if the existing road  more picturesque from the tourist point of view despite the backbreaking journey  will continue to be used by civilians after the tunnels are made.

First, let the Sela bypass and the tunnels be completed, which is a long time away, a district officer said.

Also in the realm of probability is the train to Tawang after minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha commenced the final location survey for the 378km Bhalukpong-Tenga-Tawang railway in April.

The project, if undertaken, could cost the Indian Railways more than Rs 70,000 crore.

A broad gauge line exists till Bhalukpong, considered the gateway to Tawang about 290 km away.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Congress in Kerala on Sunday suspended its MLA M Vincent from the party post after he was arrested for allegedly raping and stalking a woman, though it defended him saying the case and his arrest is politically motivated.

Though the rape charges and the arrest was part of a political conspiracy, considering the complaint of the woman, the Congress has decided to suspend Vincent from the party secretary post, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president M M Hassan told reporters here.

He would stand divested of the party post till his innocence in the case is proved, Hassan said, adding, Vincent has told the party that he was confident that he would be able to prove his innocence in the court.

The Congress rejected the demand of the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF for the resignation of Vincent and said there was no need for it now.

Party will take a call on that after he is declared guilty by the court, he said.

Terming the arrest as an unusual step, Hassan wanted the police to probe the conspiracy angle to the whole episode.

The charges against the MLA were converted into rape following political pressure exerted by local CPI(M) MLA K Ansalan and some of its local leaders, Hassan alleged.

Hassan also mentioned about media reports on statement of the victims sister that it is a case of political conspiracy and the victim is suffering from mental problem.

Stating that the case and further steps against Vincent was taken in a haste, Hassan said CPI(M)-led LDF government had not taken any action against its worker in Vadakancherry and NCP MLA A K Saseendhran who were facing sexual harassment complaint by women.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) rubbished the Congress charges that political conspiracy was behind the arrest of Vincent and said the government initiated steps as per the law.

CPI(M) State Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the MLA was charged and arrested on the basis of the deposition of the victim, which was very important in such cases.

I failed to understand the logic behind the Congress partys charge that the case is part of political conspiracy, he said.

The LDF government is committed to protect women from any atrocity and would take stern action against persons who indulge in crime against women, he said.

Vincent, representing Kovalam segment in the assembly, was arrested on charges of rape and abatement of suicide under respectively under sections 376 and 306 of the Indian Penal Code.

A Neyyatinkara magisterial court sent him to judicial custody for 14 days.

The incident came to light on July 19 after the 51-year- old woman attempted to commit suicide by consuming an overdose of sleeping pills and her husband filed a police complaint against the MLA, alleging that he used to repeatedly call her over the phone and harasser her.

The police had said on Saturday that the MLA had made more than 900 calls to the woman in the past few months.

The police had questioned Vincent for over three hours at the MLAs hostel after which he was arrested.
The West Bengal government sealed the Siliguri-based office of a Nepali language satellite television channel on Saturday night, a move seen as crackdown on establishments allegedly promoting the public unrest for a separate Gorkhaland state.

Police alleged the ABN News Network, Indias first Nepali TV channel, disobeyed a public servants order and promoted enmity between groups.

The allegations follow the channels coverage of a pro-Gorkhaland rally in which participants carried khukris, the short and curvy Gorkha sword, sources said on Sunday.

People are not allowed to carry the traditional weapon in the restive Darjeeling hills that have been on the edge after chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced the governments decision to make Bengali a mandatory subject in all schools in the state.

The majority of people in West Bengals tea-growing and touristy hill districts speak Nepali and they opposed the move, which reignited the movement for a separate state. The situation deteriorated when three Gorkhaland supporters were killed in police firing on June 17 in restive Darjeeling.

Banerjee later clarified Nepali-speaking students will not have to learn Bengali. But the damage was already done.

The government imposed curfew, banned internet services and deployed additional forces, including the army, to quell the situation. But the tension showed no signs of abating as the region remained shut for the 39th day this weekend because of an indefinite public strike.

The step against the TV channel is criticised as a breach of free speech.

The channel is registered as satellite television channel with the Union ministry of information and broadcasting, said Swapnanil Chatterjee, the CEO.

Policemen entered the corporate office of the channel along Sevok Road on Saturday night, and searched the premises before sealing it.

Darjeelings BJP parliamentarian SS Ahluwalia said he has informed the Union government about it.

There has been no internet or cable TV in Darjeeling hills over the past month. Now, the ABN office has been sealed. I have drawn the attention of the Prime Minister, Union home minister and the information and broadcasting minister, he said.

Police issued a notice, asking the CEO and the companys human resource manager Tulsi Rahaman to appear before an investigating officer.

We intended nothing but to be a neutral and efficient mirror of society. Well be back at your service, said Bijay Chamling, the channels chief managing director.

Government officials refused comments.

Bimal Gurung, chief of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha that is spearheading the statehood stir, said: The state government is trying to suppress the democratic movement through undemocratic and fascist means.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Not happy with bland press briefs doled out by ministries, the Narendra Modi government has decided to scale up its communication paraphernalia to publicise Cabinet decisions.

From roping in influencers and prominent voices who have worked on a particular issue to organising nukkad nataks and putting up hoardings for last mile publicity, sending personalised SMSes, WhatsApp and video messages  the Cabinet Secretariat has directed all central ministries to leverage the range and reach of mass, social and personal medias to aggressively communicate a cabinet decision.

The cabinet secretariat has also amended its handbook on writing cabinet notes and incorporated these new measures, which will now become part of the drill.

Along with their cabinet note, respective ministries will have to send a detailed communication plan with focus on specific target groups, beneficiaries and regions, a May 19 communique issued by the cabinet secretariat reads.

With assembly elections due in several states and parliamentary elections two years away, it is clear that the government does not want to leave anything to chance to showcase its work.

Where the cabinet/CCEA decision furthers the philosophy of the government such as Minimum Government Maximum Governance, Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas, Ek Bharat Shresth Bharatthis aspect may be highlighted by the ministries/departments in their communication plan, the cabinet secretariats note states.

In interactions with his cabinet colleagues, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly said that there was inadequate coverage of important government initiatives, and ministries are not doing much to disseminate information.

With assembly elections due in several states and parliamentary elections two years away, it is clear that the government does not want to leave anything to chance to showcase its work; so the need to rework its communication strategy, said a senior government official who did not wish to be quoted.

Currently, all Cabinet press briefs highlight just the details of the proposal, their possible impact and implementation strategy. But now the communication plan will vary depending on the importance of the decision that has been approved.

It would also be advisable to reach out to influencers who have worked on a particular issue or are influencing voices on the particular issue. For example, on the National Health Policy, tweets and Facebook posts by leading doctors and health experts can have a strong impact, the circular states.

For a social sector scheme, the communication plan will be of a different dimension altogether and may involve a multi-pronged strategy, including using regional language to amplify the message.

When cabinet/CCEA decision affects a particular state/UT, prominent voices and media influencers from state/UT can be reached out to for sharing the salient features of the decisions, the circular states.

For last mile publicity, the ministries have also been directed to write letters to elected representatives of local bodies.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Police arrested four men after an encounter early Sunday morning in Greater Noida in connection with alleged gang-rape of four women and the murder of a male relative of the women in Jewar in May this year.

One of the arrested persons suffered a bullet injury on his leg, while two accused managed to escape.

Police said they went after the suspects following a tip off about the presence of six criminals near Sabota village underpass.

A team of 15 policemen from the Jewar police station along with crime branch personnel cordoned off the area after which criminals opened fires at the policemen. Police seized two country-made pistols and a gun from the site of the encounter.

Police said the arrested persons have admitted that they were behind the heinous gang rape and robbery on May 25. Eight people in a car were robbed, held hostage and four women, in age group 28 to 52 years, allegedly gang-raped by a gang of six robbers on Jewar-Bulandshahr Road. The victims were waylaid in fields adjacent to the road after they stopped the car because two tyres were punctured. A male relative of the women was shot dead.

Police said they managed to scuttle another similar crime the gang had planned. The arrested persons are between the age group of 27 to 45.

Read more: Noida: Villagers protest over lack of arrests in Jewar gang-rape case

The accused were there to commit a similar type of crime like the Jewar gang rape and murder. We had got a tip off about this planning of the gang, said Rajpal Singh Tomar, station house officer, Jewar

The accused used to stay out of Uttar Pradesh and came back only to commit crime, Tomar said. According to the police, there are more people who are part of the gang that operates in various areas of Haryana and UP.

The encounter started at 2:30 a.m. and continued for two hours. Police said the criminals fired more than 20 rounds at them. The police team returned the fire.

Senior superintendent of police, Love Kumar who also reached the spot said, The four arrested men were involved in gang rape of four women and murder of their male relative on May 25 off the Yamuna Express. One of them has received bullet injury in the leg and has been hospitalized. Three others have been taken for questioning.

He said two of the six men managed to escape. The two men taking benefit of darkness fled from the spot after which we launched a combing operation. We are hopeful of arresting them soon, Kumar added.
President Pranab Mukherjee hailed Indias democracy and Parliament during his farewell speech on Sunday when he looked back at his more than 40-year stint in politics.

Mukherjee, the 13th president of India, leaves the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday, making way for his successor Ram Nath Kovind.

Here is the full text of his speech:

1.Honourable Members, I would like to acknowledge my deep gratitude and appreciation to Honourable Speaker and the Honourable Chairman, Rajya Sabha and Honourable Members of Parliament for organizing this farewell ceremony on the eve of my demitting office as the 13th President of the Republic of India.

2.Honourable Members, if I say I am a creation of this Parliament. It shaped by political outlook and persona. Bear with me if I feel nostalgic and indulge myself by going back to the past. On 26th January 1950, the Constitution of India came into effect. In a remarkable display of idealism and courage, we the people of India gave to ourselves a sovereign democratic republic to secure to all its citizens justice, liberty and equality. We undertook to promote amongst all citizens fraternity, the dignity of the individual and the unity of the nation. These ideals became the lodestars of the modern Indian state. The Indian Constitution consisting of 395 Articles and 12 Schedules is not merely a legal document for administration but the Magna Carta of socio-economic transformation of the country. It represents the hopes and aspirations of the billion plus Indians.

3.Sixty eight years ago, after the first general election, the Indian Parliament began its journey representing the sovereign will of its people. Both the Houses were constituted, the first President of the Republic was elected who addressed the first Joint Session of the Parliament and the Indian Parliamentary system rolled out.

Honble Members:

4.When I first entered the portals of this hallowed institution 48 years ago, I was only 34 years old. In July 1969, I came to this Parliament as a member of Rajya Sabha representing one of the six seats from the State of West Bengal. My election to Rajya Sabha took place on 4th July and the first session I attended began on July 22nd, 1969.

5.Honble Members, since then, for 37 years I served as a Member of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Of these, I served five terms as a Member of the Rajya Sabha, elected for four terms from West Bengal and one term from Gujarat, and two terms in the Lok Sabha. My long career has been instructive and educative. I entered Parliament at a time when the Rajya Sabha was full of experienced Parliamentarians and leaders of the freedom movement, many of whom were brilliant speakers: M.C. Chagla, Ajit Prasad Jain, Jairamdas Daulatram, Bhupesh Gupta, Joachim Alva, Mahavir Tyagi, Raj Narain, Bhai Mahavir, Loknath Misra, Chitta Basu and many more. In fact, Bhupesh Gupta was truly a legend in the Rajya Sabha. Dahyabhai Patel and Maniben Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patels son and daughter, represented Swatantra Party in the Parliament. My years in Parliament were further enriched by the wisdom of P.V. Narasimha Rao, oration of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, cryptic one-liners of Madhu Limaye and Dr. Nath Pai, wit and humour of Piloo Modi, poetic discourses of Hiren Mukherjee, razor sharp repartee of Indrajit Gupta, calming presence of Dr. Manmohan Singh, mature advice of L.K. Advani and passionate support of Sonia Gandhi on social legislations.

6.My career as a Parliamentarian was no doubt mentored by Shrimati Indira Gandhi. Her steely determination, clarity of thought and decisive actions made her a towering personality. She never hesitated to call a spade a spade. I remember after the defeat of Congress in the post-Emergency election, we had gone to London in November, 1978. A large number of media persons in a fairly aggressive mood were waiting to ask Shrimati Gandhi questions. The first question that was flung at her was, What have been your gains from the Emergency? Looking at the journalist squarely in the eye, in a level voice, Indira Gandhi replied, In those 21 months, we comprehensively managed to alienate all sections of Indian people. Big silence followed by loud laughter! Not one question was asked after that and the media persons just melted away. And I also learnt an early lesson of acknowledging my mistakes and rectifying them. Self-correction in such situations is always a better option than self-justification.

7.Honble Members, in those days, both the Houses of the Parliament used to reverberate with animated discussions and illuminative and exhaustive debates on social and financial legislations. Listening to the stalwarts for hours and days in Parliament sitting in the Treasury or Opposition Benches, I felt one with the soul of this living institution. I understood the real value of debate, discussion and dissent. I realized how disruption hurts the opposition more than the government as it denies them the opportunity to raise the concerns of the people. I internalized the essence of what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had said (and I quote): There has always to be balancing of change and continuity. The system of parliamentary democracy embodies these principles of change and continuity. And it is up to those who function in this system, members of the House and the numerous others who are part of this system, to increase the pace of change, to make it as fast as they like, subject to the principle of continuity. If continuity is broken, we become rootless and the system of parliamentary democracy breaks down (unquote). I experienced the joy of the enactment of pro-poor and pro-farmer legislations. The recent passage of Goods and Services Tax and its launch on 1st July is a shining example of co-operative federalism and speaks volumes for the maturity of Indian Parliament. To be a part of this system is a unique experience and I am grateful to the people of this great country for giving me that opportunity.

8.I had the privilege of being a witness and a participant in the unfolding scenario of emergence of a great India. An India where 130 crore people belonging to three major ethnic groups  Aryans, Dravidians and Mongoloids  practicing 7 major religions and speaking 122 languages in daily lives live under one Constitution, one flag and one administrative system.

9.Honble Members, not a single part of this vast territory of 3.3 million square kilometers of landmass and islands is unrepresented in the Parliament. 543 persons from the 543 territorial constituencies of this country representing the people in Lok Sabha and 245 persons elected by 29 States and 7 Union Territories make laws, scrutinize orders of the executive and enforce accountability to protect the interests of the people. Each of these 788 voices is important. It is unfortunate that the parliamentary time devoted to legislation has been declining. With the heightened complexity of administration, legislation must be preceded by scrutiny and adequate discussion. Scrutiny in committees is no substitute to open discussion on the floor of the House. When the Parliament fails to discharge its law-making role or enacts laws without discussion, I feel it breaches the trust reposed in it by the people of this great country.

10.Through the instrument of Ordinances, the Executive has been vested with extraordinary powers to make laws to meet exigencies during a time when Parliament is not in session. However, such Ordinances have to be approved by Parliament within six weeks of the next session of the Parliament.

11.I am firm in the opinion that the Ordinance route should be used only in compelling circumstances and there should be no recourse to Ordinances on monetary matters. Ordinance route should not be taken on matters which are being considered or have been introduced in the House or a committee of the House. If a matter is deemed urgent, the concerned committee should be made aware of the situation and should be mandated to present its report within the stipulated time.

Honble Members:

12.It was in July 2012 that my membership in Lok Sabha came to an end when I was declare elected as the 13th President of the Republic on 22nd of that month. Even though thirty-seven years of my life in Parliament came to an end on that day but I still continued to have a tenacious link with this institution, in fact I became an integral part of it, as the President of Republic, as per the Constitution. Article 79 of the Indian Constitution says: There shall be a Parliament for the Union which shall consist of the President and two Houses to be known respectively as the Council of States and the House of the People. In these five years, my principal responsibility was to function as the guardian of the Constitution. As I had said on oath, I strived to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution, not just in word but also in spirit. In this task, I greatly benefitted from the advice and co-operation extended by Prime Minister Modi at every step. With passion and energy, he is driving transformational changes in the country. I will carry with me fond memories of our association and his warm and courteous behaviour.

13.As I retire from the Office of the President of the Republic, my association with the Parliament also comes to an end. I will no longer be a part of the Parliament of India. It will be with a tinge of sadness and a rainbow of memories that I will be leaving this magnificent building today.

14.Dear friends, with a sense of gratitude and a prayer in my heart, I take leave of you. I leave with a sense of fulfilment and happiness of having served the people of this great country through this institution- as their humble servant.

Thank you,

Jai Hind!
Arun Mohan Ghosh, secretary of the Kurseong Bengali Association, attended all the rallies Gorkhaland supporters had organised in the hill town until Tuesday.

But burning of a community hall later that night deeply affected Ghosh and the towns dwindling Bengali population, who for the first time now feel alienated.

The 87-year-old stone and wood structure was the symbol of their presence in the Darjeeling hills and was the permanent venue of the towns only Durga Puja, most important festival of the Hindu Bengalis. Its now reduced to ashes.

The puja was once patronised by the families of freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose and poet Rabindranath Tagore and it had turned 100 last year.

For residents of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong, arson and violence have been a part of life ever since Gorkha National Liberation Front founder Subash Ghising launched a movement in the mid-80s to take forward the century-old demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland.

Durga Puja celebration in Raj Rajeswari Hall (HT File Photo )

I felt so bad that I stopped attending pro-Gorkhaland programmes, said Ghosh who, like other residents of Kurseong, never missed a rally. He was just echoing the general feeling of the community.

Although a number of British-era buildings were vandalised or gutted in these 35 years, the Raj Rajeswari Hall was never touched by anyone. Its destruction this week was apparently a message to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. She wanted to see the single-storey structure restored and even sanctioned Rs 40 lakh for the job.

Renovation of the hall was going on in full swing. Nearly 40 percent of the job was done when the bandh started on June 15. The work got stalled, said Ghosh.

The Bengali Association was formed in 1908 and the Durga puja was started by its members in 1915. The association wanted a permanent venue for the puja and the help came from an unexpected source.

Rai Bahadur Sashi Bhusan Dey, a rich zamindar, had set up a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in Kurseong in memory of his son who died of the disease. When the Rai Bahadur visited Kurseong, local Bengalis sought his help. A philanthropist, he built the Raj Rajeshwari Hall in 1930. A conventional pandal were never again needed for the puja.

Last year, the association decided to have a theme for the puja for the first time to mark the centenary celebration. Mahishasura, the demon goddess Durga slayed, was made out of plastic carry bags to spread awareness about the effects of the chemicals on the fragile ecology of the hills.

The biggest hurdle the puja organisers faced in recent years was lack of manpower as Bengalis now have a minuscule presence in the Darjeeling hills.

There was a time when families of eminent Bengalis such as Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, music composer Salil Chowdury and thespian Shombhu Mitra were associated with this Puja. All these families once had houses and bungalows in Kurseong, said Ghosh.

Shanta Chhetri, former Kurseong MLA and Trinamool leader said, Raj Rajeswari Hall was a heritage property. Its destruction is a huge loss for all the people of Kurseong. The government sanctioned fund for its renovation after I took the initiative. Now its gone. lamented Chhetri.

Dr Sekhar Chakraborty, a physician based in Siliguri said, Nobody can accept this kind of arson. The hall was a legacy. No sane person from any community will support this.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Aparajita Basu was arrested in 2000 on charges of murdering her husband and thrown into Kolkatas fearsome Presidency Jail. Over the next 12 years, she saw facilities for women transform: From a dingy ward with a single fan to an expansive all-women jail where inmates could get food and medicines on time.

The condition of womens prisons in India is abysmal. Read our long-form story exploring the reality of womens prisons.

In the 12 years Basu spent in jail, she lost her father and spent numerous days in court waiting for her case to be heard. She was finally acquitted in 2013. This is her story.

I went to Presidency Jail in June 2000 on charges of murdering my husband. I feared I would never get out.
Indu Sarkar, a film on Emergency, will hurt sentiments of many Congressmen and that is what the present Prime Minister wants, veteran Congress leader M Veerappa Moily said on Sunday.

Indu Sarkar, based on the 1975-77 Emergency period, has evoked strong criticism and protest from the Congress.

The Congresss apprehensions are over the portrayal of party veterans like Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi and other senior leaders in the film.

Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, however, had said he would include a disclaimer in Indu Sarkar, stating that the film is mostly fictional.

Talking to PTI, Moily said the film will hurt sentiments of Congressmen.

It hurts the sentiments of many of the Congressmen and that is what the present Prime Minister wants. Ultimately, it will (hurt) him (Narendra Modi).

All these ruinous activities help in exit of BJP. More and more they do it, more the exit door will be opened for BJP, he said.

The film, featuring Kirti Kulhari in the lead, has also run into trouble with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which has demanded 14 cuts in the movie.

Bhandarkar has been given a security cover by the Maharashtra government in the wake of several protests against the film.

Former Union minister Moily further said a perception was being created that the Congress was not providing a strong opposition to the BJP.

There is no exit door in politics. There is no exit door for Congress but there is always for BJP, said the strongman from Karnataka.

He said the Congress will again form the government in Karnataka under chief minister Siddaramaiah. Assembly election in the state is scheduled to take place next year.
The ministry of civil aviation (MoCA) worked with remarkable alacrity to annul, in less than five hours, its previous order, granting tarmac access at the Patna airport on their own vehicles to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi, MLC, both former chief ministers of Bihar.

Top sources in the ministry told HT the action followed a tip-off given by unidentified sources to the director-general of police (DGP), Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), that Prasad and Rabri were going up to the aircraft without going through the mandatory security procedures.

Taking advantage of the airport VIP access, Prasad and Devi were avoiding pre-embarkation security check before boarding an aircraft at the Patna airport, even though they did not figure in the list of 30 exempted dignitaries, said an official.

READ | Civil aviation ministry scraps Lalu, Rabri VIP access to Patna airport tarmac

The DGP, BCAS, immediately flagged the issue to the MoCA secretary through an email, sent at 6pm on July 21. Thereafter, the ministry worked overtime, and by 10.30 pm the same evening, it had communicated to the BCAS its decision to annul its previous advisory, allowing the couple VIP access, issued on July 30, 2009.

In just about 30 minutes, the BCAS headquarters communicated the information to its regional office at Kolkata, which caters to the Patna airport. The e-mailed order reached the Patna airport director and the chief aerodrome security officer by 11.30 pm, July 21.

Sources said there was also realisation among the officials concerned that even otherwise Prasads airport VIP access privilege should not have continued after he was convicted in a fodder scam case in October 2013, and sentenced to five years in jail.

Sources said, at Patna airport, Prasad and Devi had enjoyed almost the same privilege as one extended to the President, Vice-President, Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India, SPG protectees and the Dalai Lama, who are allowed tarmac access in their own vehicles across India.

Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan and BJP Patna Saheb MP Shatrughan Sinha have been allowed use of airport ferry vehicle, wherever the facility exists. This means they can drive up to the tarmac for boarding a flight or being received while alighting from a flight in a vehicle provided by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The two leaders from Bihar have been granted the privilege on medical grounds.

Again, while the August 1, 2009 order of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) for Prasad and Rabri was open-ended (that is, without an expiry date), that of Paswan and Sinha is reviewed every year before being extended for a maximum duration of one year. The May 23 MoCA order, in case of Sinha, is valid till June 30, 2018.

Sources said even before the July 2009 order, Prasad had been enjoying Patna airport tarmac access as railways minister, since 2005 when the BCAS first allowed him the privilege. The BCAS 2005 order came within 48 hours of the then Patna airport director Atul Dikshit disallowing Prasads vehicle from going to the tarmac.

Thereafter, on July 30, 2009, the MoCA issued a separate letter to the BCAS, advising it to extend the same privilege to Prasad and his wife. The letter followed a change in Prasads status from a Union cabinet minister in 2005 to an MP in 2009.

As such, Prasad continued to enjoy the privilege despite being disqualified as a member of the Lok Sabha from Chapra in October 2013, after being sentenced to five years in jail in a fodder scam case.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Iraqi authorities are trying to trace 39 Indians taken hostage by the IS terrorist group in Mosul in 2014, the war-ravaged countrys embassy said on Sunday.

The fate of these Indians, who were in Mosul when the IS captured the city, is set to come up during bilateral talks between foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and her Iraqi counterpart Al Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Monday.

Regarding the Indian citizens who were taken prisoner by Daesh (IS) terrorist group in 2014, search operations are on and there is high-level coordination between Iraqi and Indian authorities to locate them, the Iraqi embassy said.

But the foreign ministry didnt issue any statement about the missing citizens ahead of the meeting.

India pushed for information about the 39 Indians after Iraqi forces liberated Mosul this July after three years of fierce fighting that left thousands dead and turned millions of people into refugees.

The Indian government sent two delegations to Iraq to check how these people could be traced and rescued. The Iraqi mission reiterated the move.

Other than that, there was little clarity about these Indians.

Ambassador Fakhri H Al-Issa said the embassy has no information about these people.

I dont want to say anything. Sometimes no news is good news. They might be in Badush prison, news agency ANI quoted him as saying.

Hindustan Times published a report that said the prison near the Iraqi city of Mosul is a desolate and abandoned structure that has been unoccupied for weeks, if not months. The place is rigged with landmines.

The families of the missing Indians are set to meet Swaraj again after an interaction a week ago.

The foreign minister assured them on July 16 that we can probably find out the whereabouts of the missing nationals once the fighting stops in Badush and the area is cleared.

Government officials said they are doing everything possible to trace the Indians.

Iraqi foreign minister al-Jaafari will be on his maiden official visit to India. Accompanied by a delegation of senior officials, he will be here from Monday to Friday.

The visit is expected to add impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement, a foreign minister press note said.

India and oil-rich Iraq have been trading partners for long. Iraq is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to India and the volume of bilateral trade between the two countries was nearly US$ 13 billion in 2016-17.

Besides, thousands of Indians visit Iraq every year for pilgrimages to the Muslim holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday called off a road blockade it planned at Theogh, 45 km from Shimla, while the Left-backed Gudiya Nyay Manch went ahead with a symbolic chakka jam.

We decided to suspend the stir since the Himachal Pradesh high court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the probe, said Rakesh Verma, former BJP legislator from Theogh.

It has been learnt from media that chief minister Virbhadra Singh's wife had offered a cheque for Rs 25,000 to the victims family, he added. Verma also held the government responsible for violence that erupted in Kotkhai after the custodial death of Suraj Singh, a Nepalese national, who was one of the six accused in the Kotkhai gangrape and murder case.

Had the police informed the administration well in time about the custodial death, it could have sent reinforcements that could have avoided the situation, he said. Verma alleged that the state government was protecting the culprits and framing innocent people. Government is protecting the influential, while police have indicted innocents, he added.

On other hand, Left-backed bodies staged a chakka jam in Theogh Bazar. Traffic on the main road came to a halt for an hour, but the protesters allowed the movement of emergency vehicles. Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretariat member Rakesh Singha, who addressed the gathering, demanded the dismissal of director general of police Somesh Goyal and Shimla deputy commissioner, holding them responsible for the poor law and order situation.

Our objective behind the protest was to seek speedy justice for Gudiya. Investigating agencies should probe the matter at the earliest, he said, adding that the custodial death had further enraged the public. If one is not secure in police custody, then one can imagine the plight of a common man. Suraj was killed to destroy evidence, he alleged.

CBI registers two FIRs in Kotkhai gangrape, murder case

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday took over the investigation into the Kotkhai gangrape and murder case and registered two first information reports (FIRs).

The first FIR pertains to the gangrape and murder of the 16-year-old school student. The FIR in this case was registered at the Kotkhai police station on July 6 under Sections 302 (murder) and 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code.

The second FIR is related to the murder of Suraj Singh, one of the six accused for the gangrape and murder, in police custody. Earlier, the FIR in this case was registered at the Kotkhai police station under Section 302.
Indian Army on Sunday morning foiled an infiltration bid by killing a militant in North Kashmirs Machhal Sector.

This infiltration bid comes at a time of high cross-border violence between India and Pakistan. Troops guarding the Line of Control noticed suspicious movement and immediately challenged the intruders.

In the ensuing firefight, one militant was killed.

One terrorist has been killed in Machhal sector of Kupwara district of the LoC today where the army has foiled an infiltration bid. defence ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said.

He said the operation is in progress.

(With inputs from agencies)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday hosted a farewell dinner for outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee and presented him a memento on the occasion.

In keeping with tradition, PM Narendra Modi presents a memento to President on the occasion of farewell hosted by him for the President, a Press Information Bureau tweet said.

Hosted a farewell for President Pranab Mukherjee. @RashtrapatiBhvn pic.twitter.com/YeGtwFIetS  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 22, 2017

The dinner was attended by President-elect Ram Nath Kovind, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, senior ministers and various opposition leaders.

Mukherjee will be given a farewell by MPs on Sunday in the Central Hall of Parliament.

Also the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, he was given a farewell by the Chiefs of Staff Committee on Friday.

In a simple function held at the Manekshaw Centre, the President interacted with senior military officers and in his farewell address, extended his best wishes to all members of the armed forces and their families. He also paid tributes to the martyrs and their families for their sacrifices for the nation.
The district jail in Rewari houses inmates four times its capacity, making it the most overcrowded jail in Haryana. A recent report by the prisons department revealed that it has 130 inmates against its capacity of 30.

Overcrowding in Indian jails has often become a problem for both authorities and inmates, with Supreme Court describing the problem as not only tragic but pathetic. Government data of the last five years says more than 30 inmates have died unnatural deaths in Haryanas prisons, though not all can directly be attributed to overcrowding.

Nonetheless, in Haryana, the overall situation is much better as compared to other states. The statistics reveal that total occupancy rate in 19 jails of the state is 98%, yet nine prisons have more inmates than their capacity.

These include prisons in Narnaul, Rewari, Kurukshetra, Rohtak, Jind, Sonepat, Panipat, Sirsa and Bhiwani, where 6,000 inmates are locked up against a capacity of 4,700.

In the Rewari jail, more than 100 inmates are holed up in one barrack alone. Jail superintendent Surinder Dalal said officials usually try to transfer inmates to other jails, but local prisoners request the courts to remain in their home district if they are expected to get bail soon.

In the Narnaul jail, which houses hardcore criminals, 500 inmates are locked up against a capacity of 350. The authorities there complain of problems in management of resources. The extra prisoners have to sleep on the floor. Since this area in southern Haryana already has problem of water shortage, having extra prisoners increases our problem in arranging basic facilities for them, said Vijendra Gaur, deputy superintendent of the jail.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
As the pitch for putting Bihars wobbling Grand Alliance back on rails gathered momentum, Janata Dal (United) on Sunday held its ground maintaining that the responsibility for keeping the alliance intact should be shared equally by all the three allies.

JD (U) general secretary and chief spokesman KC Tyagis clarification came after former party president Sharad Yadav, who had extended support to Lalu Prasad for being targeted by investigating agencies last week, said that the RJD and JD (U) should save the coalition through mutual co-operation.

I want the alliance to continue, said Yadav, hinting that saving the alliance was more important than seeking resignation of deputy CM Tejashwi Prasad Yadav at this juncture. State JD (U) spokespersons have been vociferously gunning for it, though.

Tyagi re-iterated his partys uncompromising stance on corruption. He said that the party had discussed the matter on all forums and the responsibility for rescuing the alliance from the present crisis also rested on its other two constituents, the RJD and Congress.

Chief minister and JD (U) president Nitish Kumar, returned to the state capital on Sunday, but maintained a silence on the outcome of his meetings with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and former JD (U) president Sharad Yadav.

While he was in New Delhi, Kumar also attended the farewell dinner for outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Sharads statement that Lalu and Nitish should find a way out of the present impasse to save the alliance assumes significance against the backdrop that he had earlier tried to impress upon Nitish that Tejashwi was only named in CBIs FIR and not charge-sheeted.

Yadav is learnt to have taken the position that the rift in the GA on the issue was not warranted and efforts should be made to take it forward to the national level in the run up to 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The JD (U) ex-president also held a 40-minute meeting with AICC chief Sonia Gandhi on July 15 to discuss ways to salvage the grand alliance. He had said, using central agencies to selectively target Opposition leaders cannot be condoned.

Admitting that the GA was facing a moral predicament, Tyagi said, the alliance does not belong to a single party. It is the duty of all to make an honest and sincere attempt to tide through the turbulent phase, respecting each others views.

Asked what transpired during Nitishs meeting with Rahul Gandhi at latters residence on Saturday, Tyagi said, it was just a courtesy call. It was intended to send out a message to all the three parties to keep the GA strong for maintaining its shine.

Tyagi also said, both the leaders share a similar view on the issue of corruption and hold that there is no place for such practices in the country. The CM is learnt to have impressed upon Rahul that the challenge to NDA would get diluted by any compromise on this position.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A man from Andhra Pradesh requested the Supreme Court last week to direct the government and the federal bank to let Sri Tirumala Tirupati Venkateshwara temple exchange Rs 8.29 crore of banned banknotes donated by devotees.

Visited by millions, the shrine dedicated to god Venkateshwara in Tirupati is the worlds second richest with assets worth Rs 50,000 crore and an annual income of around Rs 650 crore.

It has several crores of old Rs 500- and 1,000-rupee banknotes stashed in collection boxes for donations. These have become defunct after the government recalled the two high-value notes and temple authorities missed last years December 30 deadline to get them exchanged.

VV Ramanmurthy, a journalist, said in his petition that non-acceptance of the devotees offering to the temple was not only discriminatory but also meant their wishes will remain unfulfilled.

That the pilgrims and devotees offerings made to Lord Venkateshwara Swami was not accepted/redeemed by Reserve Bank of India, due to which about Rs 8.29 crore consisting of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were packed and kept in boxes with Tirumala Tirupati Devastanam, read the petition that advocate Shravan Kumar filed on his behalf.

The Tirupati board runs a string of temples in cities and towns such as New Delhi, Rishikesh, Guwahati, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kanyakumari.

The petitioner said collections at temples in Chennai and Hyderabad are deposited in banks once a week, but it is done once in six months in the other places.

Ramanmurthy contended that not accepting public money for charity and services infringes the devotees fundamental right to practice their religion.

He said the board will be unable to utilise the money for its services. Besides, possession of demonetised money is a criminal offence.

The petition follows the Supreme Courts directive on July 4 to the government and RBI to come up with a policy to offer a window to people who could not deposit their old notes for legitimate reasons before the December deadline.

Another petition with a similar plea was filed by siblings Arushi and Apurv Jain after they found Rs 60 lakh in old notes in lockers of their parents, who died in a road accident nine years ago. They appealed for a window to exchange the money.

The two were given access to the locker this March after they became adults. But the succession court in Saket gave them the permission three months after the deadline to deposit defunct notes ended.

A bench of Chief Justice JS Khehar and Justice DY Chandrachud on Friday took note of the duos plea and asked the finance ministry to file a response within four weeks.

The government recalled 500- and 1,000-rupee notes last November, wiping out 86% of the money in circulation in a cash-driven economy.

Religious shrines reportedly received a surfeit of donations in old notes after the demonetisation exercise was announced. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) that runs most Sikh shrines, including the Golden Temple in Amritsar, had asked its officials not to accept defunct notes after December 30.

In Jammu and Kashmirs Vaishnodevi temple, another popular Hindu pilgrimage site, donations of Rs 1.90 crore in scrapped notes were recorded after the governments demonetisation decision.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The late Indira Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee shared an unspoken bond - not just metaphorically but literally.

The story goes that it was difficult, rather impossible, for any outsider to extract any information he did not want to reveal.

Even Mrs Gandhi would say, No matter how hard one tries, they can never get a word out of Pranab. All they will see is the smoke coming out of his pipe., laughed journalist and long-time friend Jayanta Ghoshal, who has known Mukherjee since 1985, as he remembered the immense faith between the prime minister and her finance minister.

As the 13th president of India leaves the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday, making way for his successor Ram Nath Kovind, old friends recalled with fondness the many anecdotes that marked his long career in politics.

Mukherjee is said to have had loved his pipes, even after he quit smoking years ago.

He never smoked cigarettes, only the pipe. After he was asked to quit smoking for health issues, he wouldnt smoke but would keep the pipe in his mouth, without any nicotine, and chew the stem of pipe, just to get the feel of it, Ghoshal told PTI.

Read more: Modi hosts dinner for outgoing president Pranab Mukherjee, presents memento

A proud owner of over 500 smoking pipes gifted to him by different heads of states and other foreign dignitaries, Mukherjee has donated the collection to the Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum.

His first pipe, Ghoshal said, was given to him by senior Congress leader Debkanta Barua from Assam.

The journalist first met Mukherjee in 1985, at the latters south Calcutta residence in Southern Avenue, as a junior reporter in the Bengali daily Bartaman.

President Pranab Mukherjee signs the visitors book at Hyderabad House on the occasion of the farewell hosted for him by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as President-elect Ram Nath Kovind and Vice President Hamid Ansari looks on , in New Delhi on Saturday. (PTI Photo)

Young and enthusiastic, Ghoshal would accompany the politician on each of his trips to different districts in West Bengal, gaining political knowledge on the way.

He was a very scholarly person. Even though I was only a junior reporter, he would explain things (political science) to me and I would listen to him like a student.

He would also sometimes share anecdotes about Indira Gandhi. He used to miss her a lot, Ghoshal recalled, remembering the days after Gandhis assassination when there was a leadership struggle in the party.

Senior Congress leader and former union minister Shivraj Patil describes his long-time colleague as a man who knew the politics and economics of the country in the best possible manner.

He was one of the senior most members in parliament and he knew very well in what manner a minister should conduct himself. He knew how the Constitution is to be protected without creating problems for the government.

He was one of the best presidents of India, Patil added.

Read more: New President of India Ram Nath Kovind has very big shoes to fill



For fellow Bengali and Trinamool Congress member Saugato Roy, Mukherjee was a lover of old political history and an extremely affectionate and hard working man.

Although it has been long since I split from the Congress, I continue to enjoy his affection. He loved to talk about old political history.

I have known him for 30-35 years and he is an extremely hard working person. When he was the finance minister, I remember how he wouldnt ever leave without meeting the last visitor, Roy said.

Having held several ministerial portfolios in the Indian government, including defence, finance and external affairs, Mukherjee was, as Ghoshal noted, perpetual Number 2.

Becoming the President of India gave him the opportunity to become Number 1, he said.
President Pranab Mukherjee hailed on Sunday Indias democracy and Parliament in particular, delivering an emotional farewell speech at the Central Hall where he urged lawmakers to debate, discuss and dissent but not disrupt. (Presidents speech: Full text)

Mukherjee, the 13th President of India, will leave the Rashtrapati Bhawan on Tuesday when his successor Ram Nath Kovind is sworn in.

I strived to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, not just in word but also in spirit, Mukherjee said, reflecting upon his time as Indias titular head of state that began in 2012.

The President has raised eyebrows last year when he ordered the dismissal of the Uttarakhand government.

Mukherjee spent 37 years as a Congress member in Parliament, where, he said on Sunday, realised how disruption hurts the opposition more than the government as it denies them the opportunity to raise the concerns of the people, the President said.

The monsoon session of Parliament currently underway has seen repeated adjournments, costing of time and money for the House. Both Houses of Parliament have often been marred by protests that have delayed the rollout of key legislation.

When Parliament fails to discharge its lawmaking role or enacts laws without discussion, I feel it breaches the trust reposed in it by the people of this great country, he said.

In addition to disruptions, the President spoke out about Ordinances in particular, calling it a tool that should be used only in compelling circumstances.

Mukherjee shared a story about his mentor, late PM Indira Gandhi, on the importance of self-correction. After the Congresss poll defeat following the Emergency, Gandhi and Mukherjee were in London in 1978 and faced journalists, he said. The first question that was flung at her was, What have been your gains from the Emergency? Looking at the journalist squarely in the eye, Indira Gandhi replied, In those 21 months, we comprehensively managed to alienate all sections of Indian people. I learnt an early lesson of acknowledging my mistakes and rectifying them. Self-correction in such situations is always a better option than self-justification, Mukherjee said.

Earlier, vice president Hamid Ansari recalled how Mukherjee spoke about nurturing pluralism and diversity. He quoted Mukherjee to add that there is room for Argumentative Indian but not intolerant Indian. Ansari said these messages are important in our troubled times. The President too, spoke about the diversity of the country of 130 crore people who, he said, belonged to three major ethnic groups, practicing seven major religions and speaking 122 languages in daily lives.

Not a single part of this vast territory of 3.3 million square kilometers of landmass and islands is unrepresented in the Parliament. Each of the 788 voices of MPs is important, said Mukherjee. His comment assumes significance in the wake of the rise of smaller parties in Parliament.

Mukherjee spoke about his association with PV Narsimha Rao, remember former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee for his oration, Manmohan Singh for his calming presence, and recalled how LK Advani gave him mature advice and Sonia Gandhi was a passionate supporter of social legislations.

In the closing parts of his speech, he praised Prime Minister Modi and said: Ill carry with me fond memories of association with PM Narendra Modi and remember his warm behaviour towards me. He praised the PM for advice and co-operation at every step and added that the BJP leader is working with passion and energy, he is driving transformational changes.

It will be with a tinge of sadness and a rainbow of memories that I will be leaving this building today... I leave with a sense of fulfilment and happiness of having served the country, he said, before finishing his speech with Jai Hind.

Mukherjee will address the nation tomorrow before he demits office.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday expressed concern over the declining amount of time spent in lawmaking, saying Parliament should adequately scrutinise and debate laws before they are enacted.

It is unfortunate that the parliamentary time devoted to legislation has been declining, he said at a farewell function in Parliament attended by vice president Hamid Ansari and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, besides others.

Mukherjee said with the heightened complexity of administration, legislation must be preceded by scrutiny and adequate discussion.

Scrutiny in committees is no substitute to open discussion on the floor of the House. When the Parliament fails to discharge its lawmaking role or enacts laws without discussion, I feel it breaches the trust reposed in it by the people of this great country, he said.

The outgoing president, who will demit office on Tuesday, said not a single part of the country of 3.3 million square kilometres of landmass and islands is unrepresented in \Parliament.

543 persons from the 543 territorial constituencies of this country representing the people in Lok Sabha and 245 persons elected by 29 states and 7 union territories make laws, scrutinise orders of the executive and enforce accountability to protect the interests of the people. Each of these 788 voices is important, he said.
The Janata Dal (United) said on Sunday the meeting between Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was held to call on the Grand Alliance to maintain its strength and unity.

The meeting was just a courtesy call. The ongoing issues in India are known to all. Rahul Gandhi and Nitish Kumars views are similar on the issue of corruption, as both believe that there is no place for such practices in the country, said JD(U) leader KC Tyagi.

Tyagi further said the meeting was held to send a message to all the three parties to keep the alliance strong, and to maintain its shine.

This party does not belong to a single party, but it belongs to all the three parties. Grand Alliance is not in trouble, it is just facing a period of turbulence. Parties should carry out their activity faithfully, he said.

Nitish met Rahul at the latters residence in the national capital on Saturday amid reports of rift in the alliance.

Reportedly, Nitish Kumar attended a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee in the national capital.

The meeting took place amid speculation of growing tension within the grand alliance in the state after corruption charges were levelled against Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad and his family members, including Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav.

The situation saw an escalation after Nitish Kumar extended his support to National Democratic Alliances (NDA) Presidential candidate and now elect Ram Nath Kovind.

The two leaders, reports say, discussed the charges against Tejashwi.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a corruption case against Lalu, his wife Rabri Devi, son Tejashwi and others on allegations of awarding the tender for development, maintenance and operation of hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2006.

Lalu had earlier made it clear that his son Tejashwi Yadav, who is facing corruption charges, will not resign as Bihar deputy chief minister.
The CBI is likely to re-examine the body of the gang-rape-accused Nepalese, one of the accused in the gang-rape-and-murder of a 16-year-old girl in Kotkhai and who died in police custody five days ago, according to sources.

The investigating agency had registered two FIRs on Saturday in the gang-rape-and-murder and the custodial death of the accused after taking over the cases from the state police, and began probe into the cases.

Suraj Singh had succumbed to injuries caused during a scuffle in police lock-up with another accused Rajendra Singh, police had said.

His death triggered violent protests in Kotkhai on Wednesday. The same day, the Himachal Pradesh high court ordered the CBI take over the investigation.

Various Nepalese associations, active in Himachal, have asked the district administration to release Surajs body at the earliest.

However since Wednesday, his body has been lying in the morgue in Indira Gandhi Medical College (IGMC), where doctors had conducted autopsy and confirmed the death by injuries.

So far, no one has come to take the body, a doctor at IGMC said, requesting anonymity.

Sources told HT that reportedly a CBI team will re-examine the body on Monday.

CBI sleuths who split into different teams to probe the gang rape of the teen and the custodial death of the accused Nepalese national, visited different locations and conducted enquiries and investigations.

CBIs forensic experts visited the crime scene in Hilaila village in Shimla districts Kotkhai tehsil and reportedly questioned locals about the antecedents of the six accused  Ashish Chauhan alias Ashu (29), (said to be from an influential political family), Rajender Singh alias Raju (32), Subash Singh Bisht (42), Suraj Singh (29), Lok Jan (19) and Deepak (38)  who have been arrested.

They also questioned the relatives of the 16-year-old girl who died after the sexual assault besides making enquiries about Suraj, who lived in a hut close to a dense deodar forest.

One team worked out the details at crime spot and examined the vehicle used in the crime.

The botched-up investigation by Himachal polices special investigation unit is also under scanner.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj will hold talks with her Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Monday, with focus expected to be on the issue of 39 Indians abducted by the Islamic State three years back from Mosul.

Al-Jaafaris visit from July 24 to July 28 to India comes two weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced liberation of Mosul, the second biggest city in his country, from the IS, which marked a major milestone for the Iraqi security forces.

In their talks, the two sides will to take stock of bilateral relations and explore ways to enhance cooperation in areas of energy and trade.

Iraq has been one of the major suppliers of crude oil to India.

On the visit by al-Jaafari, the external affairs ministry has said the two sides will discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.

The visit is expected to add further impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement, the MEA had said on Friday.

As liberation of Mosul brightened chances of information about the kidnapped Indians, Swaraj, in a meeting with their relatives last week, had said that they might be languishing in a jail in Badush in northwest of Mosul where fighting was going on.

However, a report published in Hindustan Times from Badush on Saturday said the jail now is an abandoned structure and has been unoccupied for weeks.

Minister of state for external affairs VK Singh was sent to Iraq days after the Iraqi PM announced victory in the fight to liberate Mosul.

Swaraj had told the family members that an Iraqi official quoting intelligence sources had told Singh that the kidnapped Indians were deployed at a hospital construction site and then shifted to a farm before they were put in a jail in Badush.

She had said al-Jaafari may bring fresh information about the kidnapped Indians, mostly from Punjab.

The volume of bilateral trade in 2016-17 was nearly $13 billion.

Iraq contributes significantly to Indias energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to us (over 37 MMT during 2016-17), the MEA has said.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is also scheduled to meet the Iraqi foreign minister who will be accompanied by a senior-level official delegation.

Al-Jafaari will travel to Mumbai on July 26 and will be back in Delhi on July 27.
A Tibetan student who self-immolated in an act of protest against Chinese rule in the Himalayan region has died, a doctor said on Sunday.

Tenzin Choeying, 19, succumbed to critical burn injuries in New Delhi a week after shouting Victory to Tibet and setting fire to himself at a university campus in Varanasi.

He died on Saturday days after he was shifted from a Varanasi hospital for specialised treatment, Anil Rai, medical superintendent at Safdarjung hospital, told AFP.

His body will be handed over to the authorities after a postmortem, Rai added.

Self-immolation has regularly been used as a protest against Chinas actions in Tibet.

The International Campaign for Tibet -- which claims 150 Tibetans have self-immolated since since 2009 -- said Choeying shouted Victory to Tibet before setting himself on fire.

Varanasi police, quoting eyewitnesses, said the 19-year-old yelled freedom before dousing himself with kerosene and setting himself ablaze on July 14.

They were investigating the motive behind the suicide, including recent exam failures as being a possible cause for his actions.

China says its troops liberated Tibet in 1951, but many Tibetans accuse the government of religious repression and eroding their culture.

China rejects the accusations and accuses the Dalai Lama, Tibets spiritual leader who lives in exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala, of inciting self-immolations in a bid to split Tibet from the rest of the nation.

Choeying was the youngest of four siblings from a Tibetan family living in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

Tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees live in Indian settlements, the biggest of which is in southern Karnataka state.

A young farmer self-immolated in southwest China in March, the first Tibetan to set themselves on fire in 2017.

Choeying is the not the first Tibetan to set himself on fire in India.

Last year a schoolboy set himself on fire in Dehradun to protest against Chinese rule in the Himalayan region.
Hitting out at Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, National Democratic Alliance (NDA) vice-presidential nominee M Venkaiah Naidu asked Islamabad on Sunday to recall the 1971 war and said aiding and abetting terror will not help them.

Addressing Kargil Parakram Parade in New Delhi, Naidu said terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion and it has unfortunately become Pakistans state policy.

Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them, they should recall what happened in 1971 and should focus on their own country and maintain peace there. Terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion. Pakistan is mixing terrorism with religion. It has unfortunately become Pakistans state policy, he added.

He further said Kashmir is an integral part of India and not an inch of it will be allowed to be taken.

We are a peace loving people, we never attacked any country and this is our specialty. We dont want war, we dont want confrontation, we dont want violence we want to have peace, we also want to have good relation with the neighbours but they should also reciprocate the same. They should remember that Kashmir is an integral part of India and not an inch of even PoK will be allowed to be taken by anybody, the Union Minister said.

He also squarely blamed Pakistan for funding terrorism and influencing the situation in Kashmir.

Ours is a peace loving country. We never want war. But when this highly coveted peace is denied to us, our brave soldiers respond in a befitting manner. We are too strong to lose our focus to countrys development and betterment of the country, he said.

The NDA nominee said on this day we should recall the valour of our brave soldiers and their sacrifices which got us back the Kargil heights.

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was a military confrontation between India and Pakistan that occurred during the liberation war in East Pakistan, from 3 December 1971 to the fall of Dacca (Dhaka) on 16 December 1971.

The war began with preemptive aerial strikes on 11 Indian air stations that led to the commencement of hostilities with Pakistan and Indian entry into the war of independence in East Pakistan on the side of Bengali nationalist forces.
Police on Saturday arrested a woman for allegedly allowing her fiance to rape and torture her three-year-old daughter by inserting needles in her body to practice black magic.

The child died on Friday after she was made a voodoo doll by inserting seven needles in her body by the man, a retired home guard.

Purulia district police superintendent Joy Biswas said the mother was arrested under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 as well under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code.

A district court remanded her to two-day police custody.

The 62-year-old main accuse is still absconding. Police believe he is hiding somewhere in Jharkhand. A police team has been sent there,Biswas said.

The mother of the victim worked as a domestic help at the residence of the accused.

Needles were found inside the girls liver, urinary bladder, kidney, vagina and lower abdomen.

According to sources, the girls mother, after being abandoned by her husband, got involved in a relation with the retired home guard.

The Purulia-based girl was taken to the district hospital after she fell ill on July 11. After doctors there found several marks of injury on her body, she was referred to Bankura Sammilani Medical College Hospital.

From there she was sent to Kolkatas government-run SSKM hospital where surgery was done on Wednesday and seven needles were extracted from her body.

But she eventually succumbed to her injuries around 2.40am on Friday.
GLASGOW  The life had been fading from Grant Zerbe's stunted chickpeas for the better part of a month, and now droughts hot breath was burning through the final green inch of every plant stem.

The Montana farmers worst growing season in 30 years was coming to a brutal end. There are few crops to harvest in the region, and with a lack of food and water, unwanted livestock are headed to auction.

Normally, wed be getting 1,200 pounds to an acre, Zerbe said. The crop would be so thick you couldnt see the ground.

Northeast Montana is experiencing the worst drought in the country. On U.S. Drought Monitor maps, the Montana portion branded "extreme" spans 350 miles. Combined with drought in the Dakotas, Montanas losses contribute to what the U.S. Department of Agriculture expects to be a 64 million bushel loss in wheat production. Durum, a specialty crop for Montana and North Dakota, is expected to be down in bushels 45 percent from last year.

The ground is clearly visible between the scant crop rows of the Northern Plains, right down to the widening cracks in which Hi-Line locals have stabbed rakes and shovels to gauge just how far down the parched earth will open up.

On a recent day, it was 103 degrees. The dirt road to Zerbes farm near Frazer is buzzing with farmers in wind-down mode.

Theres a swather pulling onto the road from a durum field thats just been baled. What should have been a 40-bushels-an-acre crop of high quality pasta grain has been shaved to stubble and cubed into 720-pound feed bales. This durum crop normally wouldnt have been cut before August, but didnt make it to mid-July.

Theres a crop sprayer parked on a hill crest, where Zerbe speculates his neighbor has defoliated a struggling crop so there wont be any volunteers in next years field.

A Subaru station wagon pulls alongside the farmer. Its Zerbes crop adjuster, back to appraise another loss.

Montanas losses are significant. More than 60 percent of the states spring wheat crop is rated poor to very poor, according to the National Agriculture Statistics Service. Last year, a drought-free crop brought $349 million to the state. Lentils, 51 percent of which are rated poor to very poor this year, were a $204 million crop for Montana in 2016. Durum, the kind Zerbes neighbor has baled for animal feed, was a $129 million crop. More than half the states durum crop is in poor to very poor condition.

Weve literally had about two-tenths of an inch of rain this spring, said Travis Nielsen, who raises the wheat for Grains of Montana, his familys Billings-based commercial bakery and restaurant.

Theres been 1.2 inches of rain since April 1 in Nashua, a community not far from land Nielsen farms, making it one of the driest communities in the state.

Nielsen said his family learned the hard way several years ago that stockpiling bread wheat for Grains of Montana is a must. The family tries to keep a two-to-three-year supply on hand. And if that doesnt cover the demands of a commercial bakery that not only bakes for the family restaurant, but also Billings businesses and nationally franchised restaurants, the farmer is ready to turn to the wheat he grows for seed. The Nielsens grow seed wheat on acreage near the Milk River where pivot sprinklers keep alive the plant genetics they depend upon.

The difference between the vibrant green farmland along the Milk River and the dryland farm and pasture acres beyond irrigations reach is stark. The river country radiates green like parchment freshly colored by a well-inked stamp. On the dryland, the green doesnt cover much where crops are planted. In some fields, seeds never sprouted.

There are pasturelands that appear monochromatic in their slate grayish-green, save for a ring of weeds circling the shrinking watering hole.

At the Glasgow Stockyards, ranchers turn up every Thursday to sell off an animal or two, usually a heifer who didnt get pregnant, or a belligerent steer not worth the trouble, or the hay now selling for $180 a ton.

Ranchers will lose the most in this drought, said Ed Hinton, an auctioneer who drives down from Scobey for the weekly sale. Theres nothing like crop insurance for livestock. In times of drought, the U.S. Department of Agriculture opens up grasslands previously off limits for conservation. After that, theres low interest, guaranteed loans.

But the last thing a rancher needs is to borrow money as his cows head to market earlier and often lighter than expected.

The Thursday sale the week before the Fourth of July brought a thousand cattle to the stockyards, Hinton said. At a time of year when a few hundred cattle at a sale is respectable, a thousand is abnormal.

Were in pretty good shape for grass on our place. It hasnt been grazed for years, but my neighbors are not, said Ken Erstad of the Bar L Lazy B near Scobey. Erstad brought 10 steers, two heifers and two bulls to the stockyard last week.

It was 9:30 a.m. and the temperature was approaching 90 degrees already. Erstad emptied his trailer and pointed the truck toward home, 70 miles north.

We have to get home. The air conditioner doesnt work in this truck, he said.

In March, Kermit and Sharon Flom were working a herd of 89 cattle, getting ready for that number of almost double as calving season began. Then, Sharons hip started bothering her and doctors told her shed need a hip replacement.

Retirees who left their town jobs and started out with just two cows 30 years ago, the Floms sold all but 5 head. A month later, the drought hit and they were counting their blessings.

The girl up the hill said this was about the driest weve ever had, Kermit Flom said.

Tanja Fransen, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service station in Glasgow, is the girl on the hill. She put the drought in historical perspective for locals more than a month ago. Shes discouraged anyone from putting stock in a longer-term national forecast that for weeks suggested things would turn around. Theres been a heat dome over the area for weeks with no real chance of moving.

The Floms took the forecast to heart. Kermit and Sharon were seated in the auction gallery waiting for their prized 2,300 pound bull, Bucko, to walk across the show scale. Hes just too big, the Floms agreed.

Too big is enough to get a bull sold during a drought.

Our pasture is just bare ground, theres not a blade of green on it, hasnt been for some time, Kermit Flom said.
The district police on Sunday made a new revelation in the oil scam claiming that crude stolen from Barmer was also being supplied to factories in nearby Jalore district.

Three such factories were sealed and 20,000-litre crude was recovered, said Gagandeep Singla, superintendent of police, Barmer. The police also seized one more tanker involved in oil theft and arrested two prime accused in the case.

Earlier, the police had seized two factories in Barmer and recovered 46,000-litre crude.

Giving details of the latest disclosures, Singla said that a special team, led by sub-inspector Omprakash Bishnoi and assistant sub-inspector Pannaram, investigating the oil scam got a tip-off that crude stolen from Barmer was being supplied to factories in nearby Jalore district. The information was passed to the Jalore police, which formed three teams to locate the factories. Later, a police team from Barmer joined the Jalore police and raided the three factories, one in Sanchore and two in Siwada.

According to the police, when they raided a factory at Bidhani village in Sanchore, they found 20,000-litre crude. Collected sample has been sent to the Cairn laboratory and after getting the report further action will be taken, Singla said. The factory was owned by Manju Construction Company.

Later, a police team raided another factory owned by Kuldeep Transport Company in Siwada. Apart from recovering crude oil from an underground tank, a white colour chemical was also seized from the factory.

Police suspect the accused used the chemical for making diesel.

The police also seized one more factory on Chitalwana Road in Siwada suspecting that the accused stored stolen crude oil there.

Following a tip-off, a police team, led by deputy SP Omprakash Ujjawal, also arrested two prime accused, Panacharam Bishnoi and Dholaram Bishnoi, from the Rageshwari police station area. The police impounded an oil tanker, which was being used to transport crude to a processing unit. The police seized 2,200-litre crude from the tanker.

The accused told the police that they had been stealing crude from the tanker and replacing it with water. The accused were trying to supply the stolen crude to Gautam Singh Rajpurohit in Barmer and some traders in Jaipur when they were caught, the police said.
Officials in button down shirts with walkie-talkies in hand are an unlikely site at Sushilpura Colony near Sodala  a minuscule settlement of mostly Dalit and financially backward families.

Fresh patches of black tar on the pothole-filled road give away the haste with which the local civic body has tried to do some last moment repair work which apparently was not enough.

It was in one of these homes in Sushilpura that BJP president Amit Shah dined with a Dalit family on Sunday, accompanied by several politicos, including chief minister Vasundhara Raje. After rounds of meeting in the party office, Shah left for Sushilpura where he had lunch at the house of BJP Yuva Morcha member Ramesh Pacharia.

On Saturday we came to know Shah will visit our house. It was a moment of pride for us but we didnt do anything extra and treated the BJP president as just another member of our family of seven, said Pacharia.

My mother cooked daal, rice, chapatti, halwa, kheer for the party president, Pacharia said. The menu also had a couple of staple Rajasthani dishes.

Pacharia, who is a booth level BJP worker in the ward, said that the reason that his house was chosen was that he was acquainted with a top-ranking official of the city BJP.

An electrician does some last-minute repair work in Sushilpura before the arrival of BJP president Amit Shah. (Himanshu Vyas/HT Photo)

Shah and the chief minister sat on the floor and ate just like we do. Since we are from the Bunkar community, who are known for their skill of sewing handicraft items, we made plates with leaves for this special occasion, said Vinod Pacharia, brother of Ramesh.

Both the brothers work at the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) and are BJP workers. Shahs visit has put Sushilpura on the map of Jaipur. Most of the houses in this colony are still not legally approved by the government. We hope that this visit makes the administration aware of our problems, said Pacharia.

Social justice minister Arun Chaturvedi said the party selected the house of its booth level worker, Pacharia, based on his active work for the party and not due to his caste or class.

Residents of the colony said that parts of the road leading to Pacharias house were repaired on Sunday. The road was repaired up in several areas and there was heavy security before the visit, said Malaram Yadav, a resident of the colony.

With inputs from agencies
The Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) arrested two smugglers and seized 2.9 kg brown sugar worth Rs 14.50 crore from their possession in West Bengals Darjeeling district, an SSB official said on Sunday.

The narcotic was found during checking at Murarigachh check post in Vidhan Nagar police station area in Darjeeling district bordering Bihars Kishanganj district on Saturday evening.

SSB jawans with the help of West Bengals Narcotics Department sleuths nabbed two smugglers and seized 2.9 kg brown sugar, worth Rs 14.50 crore, deputy commandant of the SSBs 12th Battalion, Kumar Sundaram said at the headquarters in Kishanganj in Bihar.

The smuggler duo, Bhuli Bibi and Budhadev Biswas, natives of Darjeeling, were carrying the contraband consignment to Siliguri to deliver it to a client, he said.

The two smugglers were part of a wide network of drug suppliers in border areas of Bihar and West Bengal, Sundaram added.
They were part of air sorties during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistan wars. Today, these war heroes are leading a campaign for clean energy.

Three retired squadron leaders PK Purushe, AC Kalele and BS Rathode have installed 40 solar panels atop their 14-storey Trishul Cooperative Housing Society (CHS) at Lokhandwala, Andheri, in November last year. The electricity generated from these panels is powering the common areas of the housing society and has helped to reduce the monthly electricity from Rs20,000 to Rs350  a drop of almost 98%. The society spent Rs8.38 lakh to install the solar project

Of the 120 people living in 42 flats, the building houses 20 retired Indian Air Force officers.

Apart from reducing electricity bills, we wanted to leave something behind for the future generations and make them understand the importance of harnessing energy from the sun, said Purushe, who was in-charge of operations across northeast during the two wars.

Prior to the installation of solar panels, the occupants were unsure of their benefit, said Kalele, former pilot in-charge of flying paratroopers.

We are yet to inform the other residents about the 98% drop in the electricity bills. I am sure their perspective will change, he said. We learnt about the benefits of solar from a the residents of a nearby complex and a detailed presentation from the private company that installed ours.

Lights in the staircases, water pumps and common areas in the housing society are powered using solar energy. We are saving more than Rs17,000 a month and expect our annual savings to touch Rs2.4 lakh, said Rathode, former pilot in-charge of an entire fleet of HS748 aircrafts.

Refraining from burning coal and fossil fuels to generate electricity, the 10 kilowatt (KW) solar system atop Thrishul society has polycrystalline panels. These panels, spread across 1,000 sq ft, generate about of 40 kilowatt hour (kWh) electricity per day. A city house with two bedrooms on average uses 8 to 10 kWh electricity daily.

On a sunny day, the power generated can be as high as 63kWh. And can drop to 15kWh per day during the monsoon season, said Sishir Garemella, founder and chief executive officer, Sunvest Energy Private Limited, the company that installed the solar panels. We hope that solar panels will become a consumer product on every rooftop in Mumbai in the years to come.

The renewable energy source will not only benefit the residents, but even areas in the city where electricity is inadequate. A net metering system has been installed at the building, which allows surplus power generated by solar panels to be transported back to the grid. Also, the society can ask for power in case of a shortfall and will be charged by the power supplier only for the net usage.

Besides saving electricity, the society has been segregating 10kg of dry and wet waste for the last four years before sending to the city dumps. In addition, the society has planted 20 fruit trees on its premises.

We salute the war veterans for protecting us in the past and setting and an example with this initiative. Stalwarts like them will be seen as role models by generations to come, said a senior official from the state government.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
On the eve of the state legislatures monsoon session, the opposition parties have presented a disunited front with both the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) planning to adopt different strategies to corner the state government.

For the first time since 2014, both the parties took separate press conferences before the monsoon session, which starts on Monday. This split in the main opposition parties is likely to give a clear advantage to Devendra Fadnavis-led government just when it was anticipated that the state would be put on the mat over issues such as the farm loan waiver. If this split affects the floor co-ordination between the parties during the session, it will give the state government an opportunity to duck important issues.

The NCP was upset with the Congress move as they it as breaking the unity of the Opposition. The Congress leader of Opposition wrote to the speaker of the House on various issues they will take up in the House without consulting us. This gives an impression that they dont need us, said NCP legislator Sunil Tatkare. He said despite being in touch with Congress leaders over the last three days, nobody has given them an encouraging response.

The NCP will counter the state government in association with the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP). On the other hand, the Congress said the NCP wanted to pursue its own agenda. The NCP is an independent party and they wanted to talk about some issues on their own, said Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, opposition leader of the assembly. However, we support each other in the assembly, he added.

The Congress will lead the front with the Samajwadi Party, Lokbharti and the Peoples Republican Party.

However, both the Congress and the NCP are planning to target the state government on similar issues. The loan waiver is a sham. Farmers have not got anything till now, said both the parties. They also demanded a high level investigation in the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scam and also condemned the deteriorating law and order situation.

The state seems to be quite relieved on the situation. A united opposition is always a headache and now since they have split, it is an advantage for us, said a senior minister from the state assembly. The last budget session hardly functioned as it was paralysed by the opposition demanding loan waiver for farmers.
After a week of heavy rain, the 10-foot-high chimney of an old bakery collapsed on five labourers in Jogeshwari (West) on Saturday night, said the police. Three labourers were killed and one critically hurt.

The Oshiwara police said the incident took place at 10 pm at the Aqsa Bake & Bite bakery on the southbound stretch of SV Road near Bank of Baroda.

As the labourers were homeless, they would sleep at the bakery after their work was completed, said the police.

Kismat Shakur Ali, 24, and Jitendra Harijan, 24, died before there were admitted to a hospital. Teji Murari Bhargav, 22, died while he was being treated at Hindu Hruday Samrat Balasaheb Thackeray Trauma Care Municipal Hospital. The police recorded a case of accidental death.

Raju Bhargo, 20, suffered serious head injuries and is currently critical. Another labourer, Haji Mula Islam Mansoori, 45, suffered minor injuries.

The bakery was built more than 30 years ago. The civic bodys report will tell us if the building was dilapidated. We will take action after we receive the report, said an officer from the Oshiwara police station.

Bilal Khan and Akil Khan, who own the premises, had rented it to men identified as Aslam and Javed.
With the demand for diploma engineering courses dwindling in the past few years, the Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education (MSBTE) has decided to make the curriculum more suited to industry needs.

As part of the new I Scheme curriculum, which will replace the existing G Scheme curriculum from the upcoming academic year, the state board has introduced a mandatory six-week internship in the last year of the diploma. The students will also receive hands-on training throughout the three-year course by working on mini projects.

The curriculum provides for industry-relevant skills to the students. It will focus more on practical training than theoretical knowledge, said Vinod Mohitkar, secretary, MSBTE. He added that declining number of students in diploma programmes was one of the considerations while designing the new curriculum.

So far, the theory aspect of engineering has been the major component of all diploma programmes. Industry apprenticeship was limited to the institutes offering sandwich pattern programmes, where two semesters of industrial training was sandwiched between classroom teaching.

I scheme is an outcome-based curriculum pattern, with specific sets of goals defined for the each programme. It follows a variation of choice-based credit system (CBCS), which allows students to choose from a list of subjects. The students can specialise in an area of their choice, said Mohitkar.

The board has also decided to prepare learning resources such as lab manuals and sample question papers, to ensure uniform and effective implementation of the curriculum.

Gopakumaran Thampi, principal, Thadomal Shahani College of Engineering, said that the new curriculum has been designed to encourage students to join the industry, instead of opting for higher education. Many students treat the diploma as a stepping stone for a degree course. The curriculum will ensure that the students intuitively learn skills required in the industry, rather than seeking knowledge, he said.

HT, on Saturday, reported that, in the last two years, the number of students applying for diploma courses has dipped by 38%, as the students increasingly prefer pursuing degree engineering after junior college or joining a vocational courses at an Industrial Training Institute.

Thampi believes that the board will have to do more than just revise the curriculum if it wants more students to join polytechnics. The diploma holders are looked down upon in the society. As a result, most of the students opt for degree engineering. The board needs to glamourise and market diploma programmes and explain their importance in nation building, he said.

How I Scheme curriculum was developed

Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education (MSBTE) had begun the exercise to revise the curriculum in October 2015, when it convened a meeting of around 60 industry experts in Pune to gauge their expectations from diploma holders, in terms of knowledge skills and attitudes.

The National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research (NITTTR), Bhopal was appointed as an education consultant for this project.

MSBTE, then, prepared two separate questionnaires to seek inputs from industries and alumni of polytechnics in the state.

The feedback from around 300 industries and several alumni were collected, tabulated and analysed, using statistical tools.

The requirement of industry were prioritised in terms of various categories of subjects such as basic science, engineering science, engineering technology, core technology and applied technology.

Based on this data, the structure of 18 engineering diploma programmes, including mechanical, civil, computer and electrical engineering, were developed.

The final drafts were further fine-tuned after running them by industries again.

Fewer takers for engineering diploma

This year, the states directorate of technical education (DTE) received around 65,406 applications, 185 less than 80,000 applications received in academic year 2016-17.

A similar rate of drop - 20% - was witnessed between 2016-17 and 2015-16, when close to a lakh students had applied for the diploma courses.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Farmers outfits in Maharashtra will restart their protest to demand a blanked loan waiver and implementation of the Swaminathan commissions recommendations across the state by staging rasta roko on August 14. The commission has suggested 50% minimum support price (MSP) to be given to farmers for crops over and above the input cost. They have also appealed to Maratha outfits for their support.

The decision was taken in a meeting of the steering committee, apex body of the all the farmers organisations, held on Sunday after conclusion of an awareness march at Pune. The awareness march (Janjagruti Yatra) was started from July 10 to tell people about the alleged injustice being done to farmers.

We have decided to take our agitation forward by holding rasta roko on August 14. This agitation will be held across the state with full vigour, said Ajit Nawale, coordinator of the steering committee.

Nawale added that they have also asked Maratha outfits to raise the farmers issue during their silent march, which will be held in Mumbai on August 9.

He said legislators Bachchu Kadu, Jiva Pandu Gavit and Jayant Patil, who support their agitation, will raise the issue of blanket loan waiver during the monsoon session of the state legislature starting on Monday. Raju Shetti, farmers leader and Swabhimani Paksha chief, said they will intensify the agitation if the government wont accept their demands after August 14.

The awareness march was carried out through 26 districts and 14 big rallies were held. Reacting to this, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said some people want to prolong an issue and thats why they use such means. The farmers of the state will show them their place, Fadnavis said.

A day after the state government announced a Rs34,000-crore farm loan waiver, the steering committee of the farmers outfits rejected the offer on grounds that it was incomplete. They have given the government time until July 26 to fulfil their demands, failing which they plan to resume their agitation.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The papers which showed the transfer of forest land from Aarey Milk Colony to Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) were lost during the Mantralaya fire in June 2012, the state government has said in its response to a query under the Right To Information Act.

The reply has a mistake in the date  June 21, 2016.

In June, environment group Vanashakti had released documents that showed that the forest department had demarcated 20.76sqkm of Aarey Milk Colony as unclassed forests of the SGNP. HT had reported this on June 11. Aarey, one of the last remaining green lungs in the city, is under threat from development activities. There is a proposal to build a car-shed for Metro 3 over 33 hectares of Aarey. Work on this was stalled after the National Green Tribunal stayed it, following a petition from from Vanashakti and Aarey Conservation Group, a citizens forum.

Vanshakti, in an RTI query to the states revenue department in May, asked for a copy of the letter and other documents that show the transfer of land from Bombay Milk Scheme (now Aarey) to the national park in 1969.

The governments reply to the application said: According to your query, we want to inform you that all the documents in this office were destroyed during the fire that broke out in Mantralaya on June 21, 2016. However, since the area in question is on government land, the district collector has been notified of the states decision. Hence, to ensure that you get your response, we have forwarded the query to the Mumbai suburban collectors office.

Vanshakti, which had obtained documents about the land transfer from the state forest department, had submitted an affidavit to NGT on February 17, saying that tracts of Aarey were transferred to SGNP when the park was expanded. This meant that the land in Aarey, a forest land, could not be diverted for projects. The document from July 1980 that states 2,076.073 hectares of land was transferred to SGNP.

Despite submitting RTIs to a number of departments, it is mysterious that not only the revenue department, but all others that are supposed to have a copy of this correspondence are not revealing the details, said Stalin D, director, Vanashakti, adding that it was a big cover-up and indicates a possible land scam.

Meanwhile, when HT contacted the Mumbai suburban collector regarding the issue being forwarded to him by the revenue department, he refused to comment.

The next hearing is listed for July 24 at NGT, Pune.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Maharashtras law against social boycott came into force on July 3. Human rights activists have been quick to use the legislation they have been campaigning for. They have filed several cases under the law, which seeks to punish perpetrators of excommunication, a punishment that is often used by khap panchayats, or caste associations, and religious groups, to persecute individuals and families who question their authority.

Though it is the only such legislation in force, the Maharashtra Prohibition of People from Social Boycott (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2016, is not the first such law the country has seen.

Bombay, which included Maharashtra, Gujarat and parts of Karnataka, had a similar law. In November 1949 the provinces legislature passed the Bombay Prevention of Excommunication Act. While social boycott is a practice across religions and castes, the law was challenged only by the Dawoodi Bohras, a sub-sect of the Shia community and a mercantile group which is concentrated in the western states of the county.

The communitys spiritual head filed a petition against the law, saying that it violated his Constitutional rights. He argued that the power of excommunication was one of the tools with which he managed the affairs of his sect and that the law violated his right to practice his religion. The Bombay High Court upheld the constitutional validity of the law but in 1962, a bench of the Supreme Court struck down the act saying that its provisions violated Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution (relating to freedom of practice of religion and right of denominations to manage their religious affairs).

There was another attempt by Maharashtra to end persecution in the form of excommunication. In 1953, the state tried to enact a law prohibiting social boycott. Somehow the law got stuck after it got permission from the lower house (of the state legislature) and it never took off, said Hamid Dabholkar of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, a group campaigning for an anti-superstition law.

Hamids father, rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, the founder the group, had started the campaign for the social boycott law before he was murdered in August 2013. The campaign had started one and half months before his brutal assassination. A pregnant woman was strangulated by her father in Nashik and our workers explored the reasons for the murder, said Dabholkar. We found that the woman was in an inter-caste marriage and her family was being tortured by the Jaat Panchayat.

The activists organised protest meetings at Nashik and Latur in August, demanding a law to prosecute offenders. The last such gathered was held on August 19; the next day Dabholkar was murdered. The campaign for the new law continued.

Even in the absence of a law specifically targeting social boycott cases, the activists used sections under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to prosecute offenders. Once we started the campaign many families approached us with complaints and we had nearly 200 complaints. We could use IPC sections (in the absence of the social boycott law) to provide justice in some cases. There was judicial intervention, said Dabholkar.

In the two weeks that the law has been in force, the group has filed three cases  two in Pune and one in Mumbai  under its provisions. Cases are across all sections: all communities and castes. There is no rural-urban divide, said Dabholkar.

In India, where most families live their lives dictated by customs and social laws laid out by their caste and religious group, social boycotts can be devastating. Punishment for transgressing can include exclusion from caste and religious gatherings, public humiliation, debarment to places of worship, rejection of marital alliances within the group and even denial of funeral services in community-run burial and cremation grounds.

The new law will not just punish perpetrators of social boycott; it will also persecute community groups that run kangaroo courts.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
I was born and raised in Havre and have spent a significant amount of time recreating in the Upper Missouri River Breaks area of Montana. I recall the robust public process that the Breaks went through 16 years ago. The drastic changes that are being proposed for our national monuments could cause irrevocable harm to these wild places. This action is out of touch with Montana values as reflected in a recent poll, which showed that 77 percent of Montanans support the Upper Missouri Breaks and other existing monuments.

Changes to the national monument system will have huge consequences for families and small businesses, like mine, who work in and enjoy the wild spaces of our national monuments.

I am the co-founder and program director for the Montana Wilderness School (MWS). We provide empowering expeditionary wilderness courses to kids that foster personal growth and cultivate a conservation ethic through connecting with remote landscapes and wild places. MWS is an authorized outfitter and guides youth on 15-day canoe expeditions through the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. As the Department of Interior reviews certain national monuments, I ask Secretary Ryan Zinke to remember future generations, and think deeply about the type of nation you want to leave for future Americans.

When Zinke was in Whitefish late last month, he said that his likely recommendation will be to leave the Missouri Breaks as is.'' This is good news if he stays true to his word. The possibility of shrinking or changing the management of the Breaks would have massive negative impacts on Montana and especially on MWS. Shrinking the Breaks  as Zinke recommended for the Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah  would forever damage one of MWS best classrooms for outdoor learning.

Zinke and our entire congressional delegation often speak openly about the importance of outdoor recreation and the influence it has upon their lives. Based on these statements, its a safe assumption that they all understand the importance of getting youth outside. Studies show kids are now spending about half as much time outdoors as they did in the 1990s. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average American boy or girl spends as few as 30 minutes in unstructured outdoor play, but more than seven hours each day in front of an electronic screen. These two facts are a stark reminder of the separation between our youth and the outdoors. And research by the Montana State Parks Office suggests that a lack of access to public lands is the No. 1 factor that keeps Montana youth from enjoying the outdoors.

On our last expedition to the Breaks, our students followed in the canoe wake of Lewis and Clark, full of anticipation and wonder about what would be around the next river bend. Dont take that sense of awe and adventure away from our kids; dont rob them of the opportunity to develop perseverance and challenge themselves in wild Montana.

Leave the Breaks and all our national monument designations in place to protect these wild and historic landscapes for future generations. Two of our elected officials  U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and Gov. Steve Bullock  have already publicly expressed their support of leaving the Breaks unchanged. If you want these wild places to remain protected, please contact U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, Tester and U.S. Congressman Greg Gianforte and request they hold Secretary Zinke to his pledge of keeping the Upper Missouri River Breaks as it is  a national monument.

Josh Olsen is the co-founder and program director of the Montana Wilderness School, and a professional ski patroller at Bridger Bowl. He lives in Bozeman.
The Samta Nagar police have arrested a man from Uttar Pradesh for allegedly blackmailing a 26-year-old woman from Kandivli and trying to extort Rs1 lakh from her. He was brought to Mumbai on Saturday. The man threatened the woman, saying if she failed to pay the money he would upload her morphed pictures. According to the police, the woman lives with her husband in Kandivli. The accused used to work for the womans husband in a private company.

He left the city a year ago and started living at his native place in Azamgarh.

He was a Facebook (FB) friend of the woman and would often chat with her over family matters. Recently, he messaged her that he needed money. She did not reply to him, which prompted him to morph her Facebook pictures, said a police officer. He sent the morphed pictures to her and demanded Rs1 lakh. He even sent his bank account number to her and threatened if she would not deposit the money, he would circulate her pictures on social media, added the officer. After discussing the matter among themselves, the couple registered a complaint with the Samta Nagar police station.

After the complaint police started investigation and found the residential address of the man, who was arrested from Azamgarh, added the official.

The accused was brought to Mumbai on Saturday morning and produced in the Borivli court. He is in police custody till July 24, said Vinay Rathod, deputy commissioner of police (zone 12). It seems that he has tried to cheat other women too. We have seized his mobile phone, said another officer.

READ

Mumbai teen files extortion case against social media friend

Mumbai man posing as Income Tax officer arrested for extortion
After Ashish Shelar, a Member of Legislative Assembly from Bandra, took to Twitter last week to say that seasonal diseases like leptospirosis were on the rise in suburbs, doctors in the city said quite the opposite.

While warning the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on July 18, Shelar tweeted, H1N1, leptospirosis, dengue on the rise. Requested @MCGM_BMC and all relevant agencies to actively tackle and spread awareness.

But doctors in Bandra said there is no unusual spike in leptospirosis. Dr Pradip Shah, head of the department of medicine at Fortis Hospital, said he has not come across any patient who has been tested positive with leptospirosis this monsoon.

This year, more people are getting infected by H1N1 virus and not leptospirosis. Last year, out of all the reported cases of fever, around 50%-60% were tested positive for dengue, 20% for malaria and 2.5% for typhoid, leptospirosis and hepatitis, said Shah.

Dr Prahlad Prabhudesai, consultant chest physician at Lilavati Hospital, said they had come across one person who had leptospirosis around three weeks ago and the patient recovered from the illness. The reason why not too many incidents of the infection have been detected this year could be that the city hasnt experienced severe water logging yet, said Prabhudesai.

Leptospirosis spreads when a person with a wound comes in contact with water or soil contaminated by the leptospirosis bacteria, which is found in the urine of infected animals (which includes cattle, dogs, goats and rats).

While eight people died of the disease last year, the BMC said this year has seen three leptospirosis deaths and no specific trend has been observed as the incidents have been sporadic. However, in 2015, the worst affected wards were P South and North (Goregaon/Malad) and R South and North (Borivli/Dahisar). In 2016, total 267 cases of the disease were detected but till July 15 this year, 76 such cases have been found in the city.

Rajan Naringrekar, insecticide office, BMC, said they have poisoned around 1,29,764 rat burrows in the city from January 1 to July 15 to ensure that infection of leptospira through rats is reduced. People need to follow a 4D model when it comes to rats to stay safe this season  deny entry, deny shelter, deny food and destruction of burrows, said Naringrekar.
Debit and credit card fraud cases rose to 367 till July 16 this year from 248 in the same period last year  a hike of 48%, revealed statistics provided by the Mumbai police. The rise is not the only worry for the Mumbai police.

The detection rate has also dropped in the same period. As many as 34 people were arrested this year compared to 36 people last year.

A senior police official said most of these cases were related to vishing  a type of cybercrime wherein callers posing as bank officials trick people into sharing their card details.

The number of cases could have been higher had the police not discouraged a few victims from registering complaints, said a source.

For example, Hemlata Verma from Versova, a cybercrime victim, was turned away after she approached the police to file a complaint earlier this year. The plea of Ramesh Ghanekar, a factory worker who lost Rs79,000 in cyber fraud, met the same fate.

I lost Rs79,000 in December 2016 to vishing. I unwittingly shared my card details. I went to the police at least three to four times but they did not register my complaint. The police official said it was tough to recover the money and arrest the suspect, who was from another state. He blamed me that I should not have shared my card details.

Advocate Vicky Shah said, Banks and police are doing their jobs but a user needs to be careful. You cannot blame the bank or police. People need to vigilant. You should never share your one-time password.

Mumbai bizman shares card details, loses 30,000

A 37-year-old businessman from Mahim lost Rs30,000 after an unidentified caller posing as a bank official tricked him into giving his card details on the pretext of getting him a new one.

According to the Mahim police, a first information report (FIR) was registered on July 19. The incident took place at 3pm on June 30 when he was at home. The fraudster called him up posing as an official from a private bank.

He introduced himself as Raj Malhotra and said that the bank was offering a new credit card free of cost and that his old credit card would have to be renewed. Malhotra then asked the businessman to share his 16-digit number and one-time password (OTP), which were used to withdraw Rs30,000.

The businessman called on his banks landline and got his card blocked.

He also approached his bank which asked him to visit the local police station to register a complaint.

An official from the Mahim police station said, We have informed the cyber police about the case and will take their technical help arrest the caller. We have spread a lot of awareness on vishing cases but people still end up falling prey to the crime.
A 34-year-old Mumbai woman leading a group of bikers was run over by a truck on Sunday as she tried to avoid a pothole on the Jawhar-Dahanu highway.

Jagruti Viraj Hogale, who was part of a womens-only biker club and hailed from Bandra, was on way to Jawhar, popular for its waterfalls, for a weekend getaway, police said.

At around 9am, she tried to overtake a truck near Vaiti village, 100km from Mumbai. It was raining heavily and she did not see a pothole, which she tried to avoid at the last minute.

She swerved her motorcycle to the left but was crushed by the truck, Kasa assistant police inspector Jayprakash Gute said.

By the time Hogales friends, who were behind here, reached her, she was dead, he said.We registered a case under section 304 (a) (negligent driving) against Hogale. She should have shown better judgement while riding her bike. Had she swerved to the right, she probably could have been saved as she was wearing a helmet, he said.

Hogale is survived by her husband Viraj and nine-year-old son Harshit. She was a member of the Bikerni Motorcycle Club that was started in 2011. One of the groups most active members, she made several trips to Leh and Ladakh.

Upkeep of roads, or lack of it, in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra becomes a talking point every rainy season as potholed roads often turn into death traps.

The Brihanmumbai Muncipal Corporation, better known by the abbreviation BMC, has come under fire for failing to perform its job.

Recently, a former TV anchor, Kanchan Nath, was killed when a tree fell on her. Her husband plans to sue the BMC for negligence.
The arrest of a 32-year-old man with around 2kg of drug methaqualone at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport has led to suspicion that he was working for a syndicate, said an officer of Air Intelligence Unit (AIU). The value of the seized drug was Rs2 crore, said the customs department.

Suresh Kumar Nagaraja from Chennai was arrested early on Saturday. He was to take a flight to Kuala Lumpur. We grew suspicious because he was carrying just one bag, which we decided to scan, said the officer.

A sniffer dog, Urny which is trained to detect drugs, found something suspicious in the bag.

Upon examining the bag, the police found that the drugs were hidden in a cavity made of cardboard. Nagarajan was off loaded and questioned which revealed that more people were involved. Nagarajan is a carrier, who stayed in a hotel in Dongri. He booked his flight tickets from there, said the officer.

The AIU is investigating the source of the drugs and whether it was meant for his handler in Kuala Lumpur.

Sources revealed that there are strict anti-drug laws in Malaysia where the crime can be punished with death.

AIU suspects that the Nagarajan may have smuggled drugs earlier too. Last week, Nagarajan and his handler visited Mumbai and stayed in the same hotel in Dongri. He has been sent to judicial custody.

On March 26, AIU arrested a woman for carrying 4.9kg of methaqualone.

Unconvincing answers nail two fliers with gold valued at 1.2 crore

The Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) on Saturday arrested two Indian-origin women from Singapore and Malaysia at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) for trying to smuggle gold worth Rs1.2crore . The gold weighed more than 2kg. A man who was waiting outside the airport was also arrested.

The smuggling bid came to light when one of the passengers told officials that she came from Singapore to India for shopping. They were not taken in.

The two women were identified as Santaletchmi Superamaniam, 41, from Malaysia, and Magisvary Jairaman, 59, from Singapore. They arrived from Singapore at 3pm.

We asked Superamaniam about the purpose of her visit. She told us that it was shopping. We didnt find it convincing, said a senior officer.

Superamaniams questioning revealed that she was accompanied by another woman. Subsequently, Jairaman was intercepted, which led to more seizure.

The passengers were wearing jewelry on their waist and on their hands to avoid suspicion, said the officer.

The passengers revealed that a man was waiting outside the airport to collect the gold from them. He was picked up by a team outside the airport. The women are mere carriers and each were to be paid 500 Singapore dollars, said the officer.

The trio was produced before a holiday court on Sunday that has remanded them to judicial custody.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Marine Drive police on Saturday arrested a man for allegedly flashing a woman in Churchgate. After being produced in the magistrate court, the accused pleaded not guilty and said he was only fixing the zip of his trousers which had come undone.

According to the Marine drive police, the 30-year-old woman works as a lecturer. She was leaving from her college in Churchgate and initially felt that someone was following her.

However, she did not pay much attention and kept walking.

Minutes later, a man overtook her and flashed her. She then raised an alarm and the passers-by rushed to her aid. They caught the man and handed him over to the Marine Drive police.

The 39-year-old man works as a waiter in a south Mumbai hotel and is a native of Raigad. A first information report (FIR) was registered against him under section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code.

He was produced before a magistrate court and remanded to judicial custody before being granted bail.

A police officer said the man could be speaking the truth and it could be case of misinterpretation.
Maharashtras largest public medical facility, Sir J J Hospital, reported its first cadaver donation this month after the family of a 38-year-old brain-dead patient from Jalgaon, Sangita Mahajan, donated her body.

The liver from the cadaver was transplanted to a 68-year-old end-stage organ failure patient at Jupiter Hospital,Thane, while the corneas were retained by JJ Hospital for transplants.

Doctors from the hospital said that Mahajan had met with an accident on July 17 while she was shopping in a market. After treatment for three days at a local hospital, she slipped into coma, and her relatives moved her to Sir JJ Hospital for further treatment.

The doctors, after an initial check-up, informed the family that Mahajan is brain-dead and asked if they would like to opt for cadaver donation. Surprisingly, the family, was impressed with Medical Education Minister Girish Mahajans appeal to people to opt for cadaver donation and agreed to donate heart, kidney, liver and corneas, said Dr TP Lahane, dean, JJ Hospital.

The heart and kidneys couldnt be used as the organs were not fit to be transplanted. The corneas were transplanted in two patients, a 60-year-old man and a 48-year-old woman.

The doctors were so excited that even head of the departments of concerned specialties, along with their teams were present throughout the night till the donation process was complete. We will now try to increase the frequency of donations at the hospital, Dr Lahane added.
A day after 57-year-old yoga teacher and former Doordarshan anchor Kanchan Nath lost her life after a tree fell on her in Chembur, her husband accused the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) of criminal negligence and said he will take legal action against civic body.

In February this year, the owner of the plot had approached the BMC to cut the tree. The civic body inspected and decided on pruning some of the branches of the dead tree instead of cutting it. The owner even paid for the pruning. If only the BMC had paid heed to the application and cut the dead tree, I would have not lost my wife, Rajat Nath, Kanchans husband told HT.

A resident of Naths building, on condition of anonymity, said following Kanchans death, the BMC had taken up tree pruning exercise on war footing in the area. But two days after the tree fall, no BMC official had visited the area.

Kanchan lost her life early on Saturday morning, after being in a coma for two days.

The 57-year-old was returning home from her yoga classes when the tree fell on her. Watch

She is survived by her husband and two children, a daughter and a son.

Locals said several complaints were made to BMC about dangerous and dead trees in the neighbourhood.

Read: 57-year-old yoga teacher dies in Mumbai after tree falls on her head

My wife was going to visit her daughter in Bangalore, who is nine-months pregnant, to take care of her, said Rajat Nath, grappling with the sudden loss.

He said it will give the family some peace if the BMC accepts responsibility for this accident.The grieving husband said he wants the BMC to also undertake a drive to cut and prune all the dangerous trees in the city so that no more innocent lives are lost.

He told HT on the phone, The person responsible for this negligence should be penalised. I want to take action against the BMC for this act through proper channels.

A resident of Naths building, on condition of anonymity, said following the incident, the BMC had taken up tree pruning exercise on war footing in the area.

It was a tragic accident and if there is negligence on part of any BMC official, action will be taken against them, said Vishwanath Mahadeshwar, Mayor, Mumbai.

Following the incident on Thursday, I raised the issue of dangerous and dead trees in the area with the ward officer. Lots of money is spent on pruning of the trees, but there is no accountability. I will raise the issue again in the general body meeting, said local BJP corporator, Asha Marathe.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
swapnil.rawal@hindustantimes.com

The Shiv Sena launched yet another scathing attack on its ally the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) through its mouthpiece Saamana on Sunday. In an interview to the newspaper, party chief Uddhav Thackeray attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and accused him of centralising power.

In a chat with Sena Member of Parliament and executive editor of Saamana Sanjay Raut, Thackeray attacked Modi over his style of functioning, demonetisation, Good and Services Tax (GST) and the PMs poll pitch acche din. The acche din are only limited to government advertisement; the ground reality is completely different. Do we have true democracy in the country if all affairs are going to be run according to the wishes of the Prime Minister? He is centralising power, instead of decentralising it. He is taking away the independence of the states, Thackeray said.

Thackeray, who has been a staunch critic of demonetisation, said the move has not yielded anything positive, instead, it has affected the livelihood of people. Around 15 lakh people lost their jobs because of demonetisation. This means around 60 lakh people were directly affected. You should give them jobs now. How are you going to balance Start-up India, Make in India programmes with such colossal job losses?  Thackeray asked.

He also slammed the state government over the farm loan waiver. Thackeray said the government should table the list of 36 lakh farmers, who were going to get the benefit of the waiver in the upcoming Monsoon session. He said the party would continue its dhol bajao andolan (protest by beating drums) to turn the heat on the government over implementing the loan waiver.

Interestingly, the Sena chief said he shares a cordial relationship with Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. There was no personal animosity between me and the current chief minister. My relation with him is really good. Often, he has accepted the suggestions I have given. He is putting forward views of his party, I am representing the people of the state. The difference is only that, he said.

The two parties share an uncomfortable relationship ever since 2014 Assembly polls where they contested independently. Earlier in 2017, the BJP and the Sena parted ways for the Mumbai civic elections. Sena, which is the junior partner in the central and state governments, has never missed an opportunity to speak up against the BJP and the prime minister. Reiterating his stand, Thackeray said he and his party will continue to speak up whenever they disagree with the decision of the BJP in the state and at the Centre. I want to explain my stand here. Whenever I say something or Sena speaks, we are considered anti-government. I am not anti-government. I am merely on the side of the people, he said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A five-year-old boy, Ayush, died after he was allegedly beaten up in school and later denied treatment at the Super Specialty Paediatric Hospital and Post Graduate Teaching Institute (SSPHPGTI) in Sector 30 on Sunday morning.

A high-voltage drama was witnessed at the child hospital as the boys parents alleged that he died because of the doctors negligence. They alleged that the doctors had demanded money and did not attend to the child when they were unable to pay.

The parents alleged that on July 19, Ayushs first day at a private school in Chotpur village of Phase-3, he was beaten up by a teacher. They said that Ayush refused to go to school again.

He told us that a teacher hit him on the head. Next day, we noticed swelling on his head and he had fallen ill. Ayush was admitted to the child hospital in Sector 30 on the evening of July 20. My husband could not pay the charges and doctors did not attend to my child properly, said Neetu, Ayushs mother.

Ayush died at 5.30am on July 23 in the hospital, which angered the family. They filed a complaint with the Phase-3 police, but an FIR is yet to be lodged.

An official from the school management said that they are ready to pay the hospital charges and extend their help to the parents.

A police officer at Phase-3 police station, Yogender Kumar, said,The body has been sent for a post-mortem examination and we are awaiting the reports. No case has been registered yet.

SHO Avnish Dixit was not available for comment despite repeated attempts.

Meanwhile, the chief medical superintendent, SSPHPGTI, DK Singh, said, The boy died because of status epilepticus, which causes swelling of the head. Moreover, the findings did not suggest he was beaten up. He must have been suffering from this problem already. This is a sudden attack on the human body.

He also said that the patient was being attended to and charges collected are deposited with the states treasury. The charges being demanded were not unofficial. Moreover, the hospital issues a bill for payment, said Singh.

Ayushs father Ashok Pal works in a garment manufacturing unit in Noida and the family shifted to the city from Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Cover politics, immigration, health care, national security, agriculture, banking, campaign finance, the military, LGBTQ equality and pretty much anything else for long enough and the road will intersect with Sen. John McCain.

Hes often described as a fixture, and after 35 years in Washington, D.C.  two terms in the House and now his his sixth in the Senate  the description fits.

McCain has been a regular visitor to the Arizona Daily Star over the years, meeting with news reporters and the Editorial Board to give updates when Congress was in recess and when he was running for re-election.

The Stars editorial department has endorsed McCain for re-election in the Senate, although not for president. Weve agreed with him, and criticized him strongly, too. Hes done the same.

These interviews have been a chance to ask McCain questions about Arizona concerns, and theyre often wide-ranging conversations that also encompass national and international matters. Weve had fiery disagreements with the Republican senator, but have always respected his passion and knowledge of global affairs.

But the times we think about now, with the news that McCain has an aggressive brain cancer, are those moments when the policy talk gave way to a glimpse of John McCain the man  how he accepted a compliment on hosting Saturday Night Live in 2002 by promising to do a song and dance number the next time he visited the Star, and his glee at being offered two kinds of cake at an Editorial Board meeting a few years back. (You have to try both, he said, and we agreed with him.)

Or the long, quiet pause he took to gather himself as he talked about the 2008 presidential election, when he spoke about a fellow veteran hed known well.

It is human nature to search for a lesson when faced with bad news or a tragedy, and McCain has become an example of why affordable, accessible medical care is so crucial for everyone.

No one, not even John McCain, who survived more than five years of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, is exempt from illness or disease.

McCains diagnosis is also a stark reminder that no matter what we believe, what political position we take, what job we have, how much wealth we possess, or how hard we work, each of us is a single person facing life the best we know how.

We join with Arizonans in sending our thoughts to McCain and his family. And, senator, the next time you visit the Star, well bring the cake.

This editorial was written by the Arizona Daily Star editorial board.
A 20-year-old former air hostess was allegedly raped by a friend for around three months at her residences in sectors 27 and 45. A case has been registered at Sector 39 police station and investigation initiated.

Ajay Kumar Singh, the station house officer of Sector 39 police station, said,We have registered a case of rape but have made no arrest. The case is being investigated to verify the allegations levelled in the complaint. The woman and the accused knew each other and the matter has to be thoroughly probed.

The police said that the woman is a resident of Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh and was employed with a private airline. She left her job six months ago to pursue a course in international commerce management in a Delhi college.

The woman, in her complaint, alleged that the accused, who is 22-years-old, initially stalked her when she went to a gym in Sector 45. He learnt her details and sent a request of Facebook, which the woman accepted after frequent exchange of messages, the police said.

The woman and the accused developed a friendship, and the accused also befriended the womans 13-year-old brother. The accused also used to visit the womans residence.

The woman stated in her complaint, I thought he is a nice person as my younger brother developed a good bond with him. He wanted to have a physical relationship with me but I always refused. Over a period of time, we became friends and he too stayed in his boundaries.

The woman alleged that the accused had visited her home in May with a soft drink, to celebrate the victory of a relative in an election, which was laced with sedatives. The woman alleged that she and her brother became unconscious.

He raped me and I was unable to resist. I woke up in the midnight and called him to inquire about the incident. He said that he had left the house after providing the soft drink. When I threatened him of lodging a complaint, he threatened that my pictures would go viral. I got scared when I saw the pictures.

She further stated, I was shocked to see the pictures, which were taken by someone else. After that, he continued to rape me. Even after I shifted my residence to Sector 27, he continued to visit me. There are marks on my body as I tried to resist his attempts. I wanted him to marry me as I was constantly being blackmailed.

The woman said that she had also called the father of the accused and told him that his son should marry her, but he had replied that he would get her married to someone else.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Security in the bicameral Bihar legislature during the forthcoming monsoon session starting July 28 is being suitably enhanced, following the stunning discovery of a suspected powder explosive in the house of the Uttar Pradesh assembly.

Nobody will be allowed on the campus without a valid pass and everyone will be thoroughly frisked, said Vidhan Sabha speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary, while appealing to the legislators to cooperate fully in maintaining proper security.

I am confident all will cooperate as security is being tightened for their own well being, said Choudhary.

An official said security in the assembly at the time of session was three-layered. The first one is at the main entrance, second layer at the inside gate and the third one at the entrance of the assembly building. Before the start of the session, sniffer dogs are pressed into service. Inside the assembly, marshals take charge, he explained.

The speaker said that security would be bolstered by thorough frisking of anyone going in with baggage or packets. Unauthorised persons, even if accompanying legislators, will not be allowed.

On Wednesday, there will be a meeting to factor in all aspects.of security. Though security is generally enhanced during the session, this time we will discuss extra measures that may be taken in the wake of the UP assembly alarm, even if it was an isolated case, said DGP PK Thakur.

Thakur said that anything related to security of the members of the state legislature during the session would get top priority. We will look into all the aspects and suggest what else could be done to improve the security set up further, he added.

According to sources, quick response teams (QRTs) may also be placed at strategic places. Besides, there will be security checks at all the other entry points to the assembly premises. Additional body scanner machines and hand-held devices may be used for thorough checks.

Earlier this month, there was furore in UP following the recovery of white explosive powder from inside the assembly premises. Later, while appealing to legislators for cooperation, UP CM Yogi Adityanath had announced the government decision to ban even mobiles inside the hall.

Sources said that the Speaker would take a call on further security measures at Wednesdays meeting with top police officials.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Incessant rains in the city since the past one week have caused the Pune Municipal Corporation to take immediate safety measures. With the irrigation department discharging water from Khadakwasla Dam into Mutha river, the civic administration has asked citizens to stay away from using the roads on river bed. Police have barricaded all entry and exit points to river bed as a precautionary measure.

Fire brigade has been put on alert while police force has been deployed near the river bed to control the crowd of curious citizens. People have been asked not to park their vehicles on the river bed road. A large number of people were seen on bridges to watch the swollen river.Irrigation officials decided to increase water discharge in view of consistent heavy rainfall in catchment areas of four dams---Khadakwasla, Panshet, Varasgaon and Temghar. Water discharge from Khadakwasla dam, the first in current monsoon, was 2,000 cusecs on Friday. Discharge was gradually increased and it was almost 13,981 cusecs on Saturday evening.

Special squads have been deployed on Sinhgad road as citizens are expected to visit the Sinhgad fort on Sunday. Police have also been deployed to control the crowd near Khadakwasla dam. The civic administration and police are monitoring the situation on other flood-prone areas in the city. .

Water discharge from Khadakwasla dam began from 2,000 cusecs on Friday morning. It was 5,500 cusses water on Saturday morning, 9,000 cusecs at noon, and 13,981 cusecs by evening.

ALERT CALL

Pune Municipal Corporation has appealed to citizens to contact the disaster management cell on 02025501269, 02025506800/1/2/3/4 in case of any assistance. These numbers are active round the clock. Citizens can also dial police control number 100.
Under the head of retirement benefit fund undergraduate students in the affiliated colleges of Panjab University (PU) have been asked to pay Rs 1,940 for session 2017-18, says the fresh circular issued by the dean college development council (DCDC) on the fee/fund/ charges of undergraduate classes of the affiliated colleges.

This has been corroborated by the Panjab University (PU) annexure. Student organisations at the Panjab University plans to hold a protest against the authorities on Monday.

Sources from the PU said this subhead has been there since 2004-2005 session, when it had started with an amount of Rs 400-500 per student. Contributory provident fund (CPF) on total salary, leave encashment and gratuity were the three expenses for which the fund was to be used for the retiring staff.

Sources said this fund was revised in the session 2010-11 during the time when Keshav Malhotra was the associate dean colleges. The fund under the head of retirement benefit was increased to Rs 1,500.

This was meant only for the non-government colleges since the liabilities of the government colleges were met by the state government.

This system of charging students under the retirement benefit head, was implemented after approximately 300 teachers had filed retirement cases in the court since the colleges had failed to give them those benefits after their retirement.

Jagwant Singh, president of the Punjab and Chandigarh college teachers union (PCCTU) said, There was a rider along with this system that separate accounts will be maintained by each of the college to collect this fund for the teachers benefits. However, most institutions are not even following the regulations.

He added, Had the periodical instructions been carried out, assessments could have been made to see if the fund raised is adequate, more than required or less than required. Since this fund was earmarked for a specific purpose, why has there been no inspection or analysis to check if colleges are following the norms.

Jagwant had even written to the vice-chancellor as a senator to at least have a periodic inspection in the colleges after every four years but so far it hasnt been done.

PU registrar Col GS Chadha (retd) however said, This is not applicable for PU campus students. This is not a new fund head created by PU in recent times but every year repeat circular is sent by the office of DCDC. It's applicable to only non-government colleges. This fee was approved by PU for affiliated colleges, which was to be kept aside by the colleges to meet liabilities of retirement benefits of teachers, said Col GS Chadha (retd).

Box: City colleges

DAV College, Sector 10

SD College, Sector 32

MCM DAV, Sector 36

Guru Gobind Singh College for Women, Sector 26

Sri Guru Gobind Singh College , Sector 26

Dev Samaj College for Women, Sector 45

Dev Samaj College, Sector 36

Strap PU-affiliated colleges Fund was introduced in 2004-05 session when it was Rs 400-500 per student; in 2010-11 session it was increased to Rs 1,500
Moving forward to strengthen the second line of defence along the India-Pakistan border, the Punjab Police have deployed additional force that is patrolling the area in light machine gun (LMG)-mounted vehicles, equipped with night-vision devices.

Sources said an alert has been sounded along the border recently.

Though the top police officials are silent over the alert, they assert the force is now fully prepared as a second line of defence and much more equipped to counter any challenge, as compared to its preparedness at the time of terror attack in Dinanagar two years ago.

The border belt from Pathankot to Amritsar is witnessing a sudden spurt in movement of the Punjab Police personnel these days. Additional director general of police (ADGP-border) Harpreet Singh Sidhu is currently on tour in the border region to inspect the security arrangements being put in place.

Other senior police officials, including inspector general (IG-border), deputy inspector general (DIG) and senior superintendents of police (SSPs) of border districts are also making regular visits to the border.

It is also learnt that security forces are on alert due to rainy season as anti-national elements may use water channels to sneak into the Indian territory.

An HT team that visited the region spotted hightened movement of police vehicles patrolling on roads leading to the border. At some places, newly acquired bullet-proof Scorpios and tractors are also stationed.

Talking to HT on the police preparedness as the second line of defence along the border, IG (border range) Naunihal Singh said, We are fully prepared. We have bullet-proof Scorpios, tractors, night-vision devices and bullet-proof nakas. Also, additional police personnel have been deployed near the border. All the key establishments along the border are covered.

He added, We are also writing to the government for more additional forces that can be deployed in the border region to further strengthen the second line of defence.

Asked if a specific alert has been sounded along the border, the IG said, Alerts are often sounded in the border region. These alerts can be with regard to smuggling activities as well. ADGP (border) is himself visiting the area to see the police arrangements along the border.

To a question, he said the Punjab Police are now definitely better equipped to take on any challenge than they were at the time of Dinanagar attack.

Notably, when the Dinanagar police station was attacked by heavily armed terrorists two years in July 2015, former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal had said that the Punjab Police will prepare itself as second line of defence along the border.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Chandigarh

Congress Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa would on Monday submit a plea to Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan to bring a privilege motion against minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj for misleading the nation, Parliament and families of 39 Indians, mostly Punjabais, who were abducted in Iraq in June 2014.

Sushma has lost all credibility. The media has nailed her lies by going up to Badush and showing that the jail, where Swaraj said the Indians were lodged, lies in ruins. I have spoken to my party leadership to move a breach of privilege motion against her, Bajwa said while speaking to the media here on Saturday.

Again mooting that an all-party delegation be sent there to know the ground reality, Bajwa said if media can reach there, why cannot parliamentarians. I volunteer to be a part of this delegation. Minister of state for external affairs, General VK Singh (retd), should accompany us. The government has made this an unending story. Without providing a shred of evidence on the missing Indians, it is sticking to falsehood, he said.

Around 40 Indians, majority of them Punjabis, were abducted by the ISIS from Iraqi town. One of them, Harjit Masih from Gurdaspur district had managed to escape. He claimed to have witnessed the massacre of the other 39 Indians. However, Harjits version was rejected by Swaraj claiming that she had confirmed from six sources that these people were alive.

Sushma can decide not to reveal the sources but she can at least clarify to families about their whereabouts. They have met her umpteen number of times to know about their kin, he added.
Alleging a cover-up in the Canadian governments decision to close its investigations into the brazen threats issued in April by pro-Khalistani groups to chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, the Punjab Congress has urged the Union government to take up the matter with the Canadian Prime Minister.

The ministry of external affairs (MEA) should seek Canadian PM Justin Trudeaus intervention to ensure that those guilty of using the countrys soil to issue open and violent threats to the Punjab CM are not allowed a free run, state Congress leaders Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria and Ramanjit Singh Sikki said, demanding to know the status of the frivolous case filed against Amarinder by a radical body, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), to prevent him from visiting the western nation.

The Canadian government told the ministry of external affairs that there was no threat to Amarinder. In a communication to the Indian authorities, Canadas department of foreign affairs, trade and development has stated that the investigation had been conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The RCMP investigation has determined that there is no evidence of direct physical threat made towards Amarinder. It further stated that there was not sufficient evidence to file criminal charges or proceed against anyone.

The Indian high commission in Canada had lodged a formal complaint to global affairs-Canada (Canadas foreign office) in April following a threat publicly issued to Amarinder by pro-Khalistan elements during a Baisakhi Day event in British Columbias Surrey city. The threat was part of the hate speeches made by Sikh radicals operating out of Canada. Videos of the Baisakhi Parade in Surrey on April 22 were sent to the Canadian foreign ministry as proof.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Congress called for activation of all international diplomatic channels to pressure the Canadian government to take steps to check the proliferation of anti-India forces on their soil. Canada should be asked to reopen the case and get it independently investigated in the interest of justice and fair play, and to ensure that its land is not used for divisive propaganda and spread of hatred, demanded Congress MLAs.

In a statement, Punjab Congress leaders said it was evident that a proper inquiry had not been carried out in the case. India had also raised objections to the public display of Khalistan floats with images of slain separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other terrorists, pictures of AK-47s and photographs of former and serving army and police officers who are on the hit list of Sikh radicals. Reports said the Canadian provincial police and security agencies were present when all this happened.

It was strange that despite all this happening right under their nose, the Canadian authorities had failed to find sufficient evidence against the perpetrators trying to whip up anti-India and anti-Amarinder passions, said the Congress leaders.

The rabble-rousing propaganda of the Khalistani supporters active in Canada has been continuously growing since more than two years now, the Congress leaders said, recalling that Amarinder was forced to cancel his Canada visit last year following the frivolous complaint and case lodged against him by the SFJ.

(With IANS inputs)
Krushna Abhishek doesnt like to be known as a standup comedian. He prefers calling himself an actor who does comedy. And Krushna gives a damn when people compare him with rival comedian-actor Kapil Sharma, because he believes that there is nothing worth comparing between the two.

 I never compare myself with Kapil. We have totally different styles. Kapil just gives one-liners, I do performances. Lets be practical and genuine. Does he perform for one hour in his show? I perform for one hour. Thats the difference between us, says Krushna.

The actor says that standup comedy was never his thing in the first place, so he has no reasons to be insecure. People say that I have problem with Kapil but its not true. I never wanted to be a stand-up comedian. Its just that I did so much comedy that I went into the zone of stand-up comedy, he says.

Actor- comedian Kapil Sharmas show also airs on the same channel as Krushnas Abhisheks The Drama Company.

Krushnas new show The Drama Company has also entered the same channel as Kapils show. How will he build a bond with the audience? People are bored of actors getting interviewed. If you want to see actors getting interviewed, then you would watch Koffee with Karan. The questions you ask the stars also get repetitive. So we had to be different. We thought why not bring theatre to television, Krushna says. The show will start with a play. Guests will act in it. And later, there will be fun interactions, he shares.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Citing non-availability of sufficient evidence, the Canadian government has told India that there is no threat to Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and has concluded its investigation into the matter.

In a communication to the Indian authorities, Canadas department of foreign affairs, trade and development has stated that the investigation had been conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Sources in the ministry of external affairs (MEA) in New Delhi told IANS that Canadian authorities, in the communication, has said that the RCMP investigation has determined that there is no evidence of direct physical threat made towards Amarinder Singh.

It further stated that there was not sufficient evidence to file criminal charges or proceed against anyone. The Canadian government said that in view of the findings, the investigation had been concluded.

The Indian high commission in Canada had lodged a formal complaint to Global Affairs-Canada (Canadas foreign office) in April following a threat publicly issued to the Punjab chief minister by pro-Khalistan elements during a Vaisakhi Day event in British Columbias Surrey city.

The threat was part of the hate speeches made by Sikh radicals operating out of Canada. Videos of the Vaisakhi Parade in Surrey on April 22 were sent to the Canadian foreign ministry as proof.

Indian authorities had also objected to the public display of Khalistan floats with images of slain separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other terrorists, pictures of AK-47s and photographs of former and serving army and police officers who are on the hit-list of Sikh radicals.

MEA sources said Canadian authorities were cautioned about the anti-India propaganda of the Khalistani elements as India was anticipating trouble. The Canadian foreign ministry, responding to the early warning, said it would take necessary action.

However, the Khalistani elements were allowed to have a free run and even issued threats on loudspeakers to Amarinder Singh in front of hundreds of people from the Indian community who participated in the April 22 parade. The Canadian provincial police and security agencies were present when all this happened, the sources told IANS. Amarinder Singh on Friday again stressed the need for Canada to rein in the radical elements, who were trying to use Canadian soil to spread strife and divisiveness in India.

The Punjab CM raised the issue with Jalandhar-born Canadian MP Rameshwar Singh Sangha, who met him in New Delhi on Friday.

Such elements, including Khalistani supporters, could not have any impact on the Canadian political environment but they could influence the people of India and vitiate the atmosphere here, Amarinder Singh pointed out.

The Canadian government should crack down on these forces and ensure that they do not have a free run on social media and other public platforms, the Chief Minister added.

The Amarinder Singh government had, in April, cold-shouldered visiting Canadian defence minister of Indian-origin Harjit Singh Sajjan as he travelled to various places in Punjab.

He had refused to meet Sajjan, the first Sikh to be the defence minister of a Western country, accusing him and other ministers of Punjab origin in the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of links to radical elements demanding a separate Sikh state of Khalistan.

No minister or senior officer of the Punjab government went to welcome Sajjan or even accompany him during the visit. Amarinder Singh made it clear that he would not meet any Khalistani sympathisers.

He was annoyed with the Canadian government since April last year when he was denied permission to visit that country, which has a sizeable Punjabi diaspora, in the run-up to the Punjab assembly elections. A radical organisation, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), had complained to the Canadian government against the visit.

The Congress leader had to cancel his trip after being told by the Canadian authorities at the last minute that he could not be allowed to visit the country for holding political rallies and meetings. The visit was aimed at wooing influential non-resident Indian (NRI) groups in Canada.
Thousands of revellers danced through the streets of Berlin on Saturday, many of them waving rainbow-coloured flags, as they promoted lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in a Christopher Street Day parade.

A participant waves a rainbow-coloured flag at the Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin on July 22, 2017. (AP Photo)

Costumed participants take part in the Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin on July 22. In background the Victory Column. (AP Photo)

Participants wear "Stop transphobia" stickers during Berlin's annual Christopher Street Day (CSD) gay pride parade on July 22. (AFP Photo)

Music blared out from trucks as people wearing multicoloured flowers round their necks, bright bows in their hair and costumes including a wedding dress, a candelabra and a Donald Trump mask made their way through the city.

Revellers take part in the annual Gay Pride parade, also called Christopher Street Day parade (CSD), in Berlin. (REUTERS)

A participant at the annual Gay Pride parade in Berlin. (REUTERS)

The annual parade comes several weeks after Germanys parliament backed the legalisation of same-sex marriage in a historic vote, bringing the country into line with many other European nations including France, Britain and Spain.

Gays and lesbians all around the world are celebrating the Christopher Street Day (CSD) gay and lesbian pride parade. (REUTERS)

A participant holds up a placard featuring a likeness of Russian President Vladimir Putin with make-up during Berlin's annual Christopher Street Day (CSD) gay pride parade on July 22. (AFP Photo)

Same sex marriage is a step in the right direction but there is still a lot to do, said Samuel Monars-Bellmont, one of the revellers.

A participant wears an elaborate headpiece while standing on a float during Berlin's annual Christopher Street Day (CSD) gay pride parade on July 22. (AFP Photo)

Participants ride in a "Love is Love" float during Berlin's annual Christopher Street Day (CSD) gay pride parade on July 22. (AFP Photo)

Christopher Street Day commemorates the riots that broke out in New York in 1969 after police raided a gay bar -- an event seen as a turning point for the gay rights movement. It has been celebrated in Germany since 1979.
Samantha Owens of Decatur was inducted in to the Benedictine University Sigma Beta Delta chapter.

* * *

Liam Bechtold of Decatur was elected secretary of National Residence Hall Honorary Louis V. Hencken Chapter. He is a residential student leader at Eastern Illinois University Housing and Dining Services.

* * *

Jacklyn Shan of Olney was awarded an Illinois CPA Society scholarship. Shan attends Eastern Illinois University.

* * *

Area students receiving Lakeview College of Nursing scholarships include:

Charleston: Gareth Miller

Shelbyille: Katelyn Duckett

Mattoon: Kyle Gesell

Oakland: Cody Meyer

Tuscola: Megan Ramirez, Cody Shelmadine.

* * *

The Herald & Review welcomes announcements of Central Illinois college students making news. Items are published the Life section as space is available in the order it is received. Send information to Campus News, Herald & Review, 601 E. William St., Decatur, IL 62523. Information must contain a phone number for verification.

An earlier version of this story had the incorrect amount of the scholarship awarded to Jacklyn Shan of Olney. This version has been corrected.
Pakistans embattled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has admitted before the Supreme Court, hearing a money laundering case against him, that he had obtained a permit to work in a company in the UAE while rejecting the allegation that he had concealed his employment.

In a written reply submitted in the apex court on Saturday through his counsels -- Khawaja Haris, Amjad Pervaiz and Saad Hashmi -- Sharif said his employment with the Capital FZE and obtaining of work permit for it had been mentioned in his nomination papers submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) during the 2013 general election.

A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted by the apex court to probe the offshore business dealings of the Sharif family in 1990s in its report said that the prime minister was the chairman of Capital FZE and he had also obtained a work permit from the UAE government for the purpose.

The prime ministers lawyers had initially denied that Sharif was the chairman of any offshore company.

In his fresh reply, Sharif told the Supreme Court that his son, Hassan Nawaz, was the owner, director & secretary and the authorised signatory of the Capital FZE.

Nawaz Sharif is not a shareholder, or director or secretary of Capital FZE, according to the reply.

The premier was only a ceremonial office holder in 2007 when he was in exile and had nothing to do with the running of the company or supervising its affairs, it said.

The Iqama (work permit) and the prime ministers employment with the Capital FZE is reflected in the copies of his passport annexed with the nomination forms submitted to the ECP before 2013 election. Being no separate column in the nomination forms for any such information to be provided by the candidate contesting the election Nawaz Sharifs passport copies were annexed, the reply said.

A six-member JIT was set up in May by the apex court with the mandate to probe the Sharif family for allegedly failing to provide the trail of money used to buy properties in London in 1990s.

The JIT has recommended that the reports Volume-X should be treated as confidential as it contains the details of correspondence with other countries.

So far Sharif has refused to quit, calling the investigators report a compilation of allegations and assumptions.

The apex court is likely to announce its verdict in the sensitive Panama Papers case against Sharif in the coming week. Sharif and his cabinet members have been alleging for weeks that conspiracies are being hatched to oust Nawaz Sharif. They openly blamed the military establishment and judiciary behind the plot for Sharifs ouster.
Pakistan has received a Russia-made Mi-171E non-combat helicopter, the second such chopper delivered to the country this year, indicating growing ties between Islamabad and Moscow, a media report has said.

The Mi-171 is a civilian variant of the Mi-17 military cargo helicopter that is already in service in the Pakistan Army. The second helicopter was ordered by Pakistans restive Balochistan province.

I am confident the convertible Mi-171E handed over to the customer will perform decently when accomplishing any missions, whether in passenger and freight carriage or in medical, search and rescue operations, Chief Executive Officer of Russian Helicopters Andrei Boginsky was quoted as saying by the Russias TASS news agency.

In the case of a medical emergency, the chopper can be used as an ambulance as it has the capacity to carry 14 stretchers if seats are replaced.

Russian Helicopters made the helicopter supply contract with the government of Balochistan province in December 2016.

The helicopter was built in the convertible option. The helicopter cabin can be converted from a freight one to a VIP cabin with 13 seats and a flight attendant at customers option within the short period.

Mi-171E can carry up to 27 passengers and up to four tonnes of cargo inside the cabin or on the external suspension in its transport version. Three points for direct deployment provide quick landing of paratroopers and rescuers when the helicopter is hovering, it said.

The Mi-17 is widely used across the world due to its reliability and ability to operate in all climates and could be used by the provincial government to transport cargo or passengers or as an emergency response aircraft.

Russian Helicopters has sold Mi-171E helicopters to several countries, including China.

In March, for the first time, a high-level Russian military delegation had visited Pakistans restive tribal region along the Afghan border to get first-hand information of the situation in the former strongholds of the militants.

Balochistan has also been facing insurgency by Baloch nationalists and Islamist militants.

Earlier this year, on February 13, a blast took place near the Saryab Bridge in Karachi killing two personnel of the bomb disposal squad and leaving 11 injured.
Naked, covered in white clay mud, and with his penis wrapped in leaves, Abongile Maqegu, 20, sits in a hut in South Africa recovering from his circumcision -- a traditional ritual that can prove fatal.

For Maqegu, it has been a gruelling initiation test that marks his arrival as an adult, and the pain is an essential part of the experience.

You must go through that pain to show that you are a man, he told AFP outside the coastal village of Coffee Bay about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Umtata in Eastern Cape province.

We dont even think of (getting) a medical circumcision because it is the easy way out. We laugh at those who go to hospitals.

Maqegu is one of thousands of youths from the Xhosa ethnic group attending this years annual winter initiation schools across Eastern Cape province.

After his foreskin is cut off by a tribal elder using a knife, he is kept in the small thatched rondavel hut with two other initiates for up to four weeks, with a bush doctor present at all times monitoring their wounds.

The initiates are allowed no contact with women, and spend their time playing cards, applying mud and stoking the smoky fire to try to keep warm.

If you go to hospital you are weak, you are not a man. Your wound must not be treated with Betadine (disinfectant), Maqegu said.

There is special traditional medicine for that and it heals fast.

Secretive ceremony

He revealed tree leaves tied like a bandage around his genitals, which are also covered in a traditional healing ointment and held to one side by string.

The ritual is revered and guarded by the Xhosa people, but the unhygienic conditions -- and abuse by some initiation schools -- exacts a heavy toll.

Khanyisile Mapope, 18 years old, walking through the bush during a traditional initiation process, in a rural hut in the Coffee Bay area in Umtata, South Africa. (AFP Photo)

At least 11 youths have already died during this southern hemisphere winter in Eastern Cape, according to provincial officials, while the government says several hundred have died nationwide in initiation schools since 1995.

Often the cause is infection from a botched circumcision, which can lead to penis amputation surgery.

Circumcision has also been demonstrated to be a powerful weapon in the fight against HIV, by helping to protect men from the AIDS virus.

But specialists -- meeting in Paris from Sunday for a four-day forum on HIV/AIDS -- remain worried about botched operations and poor hygiene.

Other risks include dehydration or maltreatment by initiation leaders, who conduct the secretive circumcision rituals deep in the mountains.

Recognised as a man

In another grass-thatched hut, 200 metres away, sitting on a reed mat, is 20-year-old Fezikhaya Tselane, who has just returned from his circumcision rites in the remote bush.

As he nurses the sore wound, his bush doctor sits close by, surrounded by dirty pots, plates and empty beer bottles strewn over the floor.

I have been waiting for this day. All my brothers have gone through this process, Tselane told AFP, entirely covered in white mud, which is meant to ward off evil spirits as well as preserve body warmth.

In our Xhosa culture, if you dont go through traditional circumcision you are not recognised as a man.

Now I can marry, have my own house and kids and not depend on my parents.

Fezikhaya Tselane (L), 20 years old and Khanyisile Mapope (R), 18 years old, looking out from a door during a traditional initiation process, in a rural hut in the Coffee Bay area in Umtata, South Africa. (AFP File Photo)

Mxolisi Dimaza, chairman of the Eastern Cape provincial health committee, said authorities were determined to curb injuries and deaths in the initiation schools.

This year a considerable amount of resources were made available so that we do not experience many more deaths, he told AFP after his recent field visit to several initiation sites.

However, there are still problem areas where we have illegal initiation schools. These are where the school itself is not registered and the initiates are often below 18 years old.

The province has hired 35 4x4 vehicles to patrol initiation practices in a region of steep hills, dirt roads and rough tracks.

It has also passed a law setting out a minimum age of 18, and establishing a registry of accredited bush doctors and schools. From the age of 16, boys can be circumcised with their parents permission.

Medical risks

Dimaza appealed for any initiates suffering from infections or ill-health to go immediately to hospital, adding that parents should not feel social pressure for their children to have traditional circumcisions.

It is our culture -- but if the parents want their child to have it medically, we dont object, he said.

The tradition has become tainted in recent years by commercialisation, with some bush doctors charging large amounts of money, while some initiates have been found to be as young as 13.

Fezikhaya Tselane (R) 20 years old, and Khanyisile Mapope (L) 18 years old, sitting down covered with blankets during a traditional initiation process, in a rural hut in the Coffee Bay area in Umtata, South Africa. (AFP File Photo)

Initiation ceremonies have also spread to other provinces such as KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga, boosted in part by UN-backed information that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually-acquired HIV infection by 60%.

For one bush doctor, proper care should mean that initiates are able to experience the ritual in a safe and deeply spiritual manner.

You have to be careful and take good care, otherwise the wound gets sceptic, said Lukholo Marhenene, 21, who has been nursing initiates for three years.

You must change the leaves often and keep the wound clean and dry.

During the month I will be attending to him, he stays in the hut. Only his father and other boys who have already gone through initiation are allowed to visit.

After two weeks, we slaughter a goat to appease the spirits.
Clad in emerald green kurta and white pyjamas, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau performed pooja at the BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir in Toronto and said how deeply Canada values the special relationship with India.

Trudeau, who wore sandals as he often had to go barefoot while rituals were in progress at the temple on Saturday, was accompanied by the spiritual guru of the BAPS Swaminarayan sanstha, His Holiness Mahant Swami Maharaj.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greets people as he visits the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Hindu temple. (AP)

The relationship between our two countries is truly a special one. Its a relationship our government and our ministers both deeply value and actively cultivate, Trudeau said at an event to celebrate the temples 10th anniversary, which was attended by more than 7,500 devotees.

He said he wanted to recognise the importance of the bond between Canada and India. The more than one million Canadians of Indian origin have made countless contributions to our national fabric.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Toronto Mayor John Tory (left) at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir to celebrate the temples 10th anniversary. (AP)

Trudeau participated in the abhishek ceremony in the main temple and also the aarti officiated over by the mahant. At one point, he turned to the guru and said, Please keep Canada in your prayers.

The event served as an outreach by the premier to the Hindu community in Canada, and two federal cabinet ministers, Navdeep Bains and Kirsty Duncan, were present.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Hindu temple in Mississauga, Ontario on Saturday. (AP)

Also present were over half-a-dozen MPs, as well as ministers of the provincial Government of Ontario. It also featured Toronto Mayor John Tory and Indias high commissioner to Ottawa Vikas Swarup.

I myself have great memories of my many meetings with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi, said Trudeau, who recently met his Indian counterpart on the margins of the G20 summit in Hamburg.

When the temple was originally consecrated in 2007, the inauguration celebration had featured Trudeaus predecessor Stephen Harper.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks as he visits the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir. (AP)

Trudeau, who started his remarks with Jai Swaminarayan and then a kemcho, said the temple perfectly represents modern, diverse Canada.

In fact, he pointed out, as travellers arrive at Canadas largest airport, Torontos Pearson International, this temple is among the first landmarks they see.

He pointed out that the temple, which was constructed without the use of steel, was built according to principles outlined in ancient Hindu scripture. It is without a doubt one of Canadas architectural wonders with its intricate stone and wood carvings.

The temple is considered Canadas first traditional Hindu place of worship.

The Canadian PM also pointed out the temples dashabdi or 10th anniversary coincides with Canadas the 150th year of Confederation.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The US Congress is poised to approve tough new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea this week after reaching a compromise deal, which the White House indicated Sunday it could support.

In mid-June, the Senate overwhelmingly passed tough sanctions on Moscow and Tehran, but the text stalled in the House of Representatives, until agreement was reached on Saturday.

The House is now set to vote Tuesday on a bill that targets Russia -- for its alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election and its annexation of Crimea -- as well as Iran and North Korea, for its recent ballistic missile tests.

Initially, Trump resisted the legislation, which would prevent him from unilaterally easing penalties against Moscow in the future -- effectively placing him under Congresss watch.

But faced with near-total consensus among Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the White House blinked.

We support where the legislation is now, and will continue to work with the House and Senate to put those tough sanctions in place on Russia until the situation in Ukraine is fully resolved, new White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABCs This Week news program.

The original piece of legislation was poorly written, she added.

Her boss, communications director Anthony Scaramucci, said it was still up to Trump whether or not to sign the measure into law.

My guess is that hes going to make that decision shortly, Scaramucci told CNN, introducing a bit more doubt as to Trumps intentions.

Even if Trump were to oppose the measure, Congress could overturn it with a two-thirds majority of both houses.

If he vetoes the bill, we will override his veto, Democratic Senator Ben Cardin told Fox News Sunday.

Once the House approves the compromise bill, the Senate will vote again, likely before the summer recess begins in August.

In Europe, the unilateral move by the US Congress does not sit well.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission said the draft legislation appeared to be driven primarily by domestic considerations.

Sanctions are at their most effective when they are coordinated. Currently our sanctions regimes are coordinated, she added, expressing concern that any new US measures could have unintended consequences.

House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy alluded to those concerns, saying the text, which has not yet been made public, would help bolster the energy security of our European allies by maintaining their access to key energy resources outside of Russia.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

When her parents fought - and they fought often - Abhidnya Ghuge always had the henna shrub to make her feel better.

This was during the 1970s and '80s in what is now Mumbai, India, before the city became Westernized. Ghuge doesn't remember anyone owning a TV then, even her family's many educated friends.

A sensitive girl, she was encouraged to draw, and she made her own ink from the plant in her family's back yard, pulling the leaves and grinding them into a paste on a stone, then using a toothpick to make designs on skin.

Years later, living in the U.S., Ghuge (pronounced GOO-gay) was still making henna patterns as doodles on paper.

More recently, she has been using them in contemporary art, starting with large, hand-cut woodblocks that she uses to print paper plates by the thousands, to be rolled and inserted into chicken wire. The organic forms she creates have become a signature, and small museums across the country are inviting her to create installations with them.

"Changing Perspectives," Ghuge's solo show at the Galveston Arts Center, is built around an installation made from about 5,000 paper plates.

More Information Abhidnya Ghuge: 'Changing Perspectives' When: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, noon-5 p.m. Sundays, through Aug. 20 Where: Galveston Arts Center, 2127 Strand, Galveston Info: Free; 409-763-2403, galvestonartscenter.org See More Collapse

Two days before the opening, a trio of volunteers was helping Ghuge roll the thin plates and stuff them into a wire form that hung in a snaking oval from the ceiling. Curator Dennis Nance popped in, wishing he had time to join them.

"I find her work really sincere," he said. "It's taking this humble material and really transforming it."

Paper plates became Ghuge's material of choice after a death. Two deaths, really.

'We are all disposable'

Before becoming an artist, Ghuge was a dermatologist.

She pursued that career to be obedient, to support her mother and brother after her parents divorced. Her brother was handicapped, suffering all of his life from what she suspects was encephalitis. His disease was never diagnosed.

"Back then, India was in the dark ages medically," Ghuge said, referencing the early 1990s. "We didn't even have a CT scanner in the hospital."

During her time at medical school, Ghuge married Dr. Raghavendra Ghuge, and they had a son. Then, suddenly, her brother died. He was 29.

Ghuge's mother urged the young couple to move to the U.S. so they could put their medical knowledge to better use.

They obliged and landed in Detroit for Raghavendra's residency, then the tiny East Texas town of Henderson, near Tyler, where they built his practice and added a daughter to their family.

Between raising the kids and helping out at Raghavendra's office, Ghuge never returned to her own medical practice. When she finally had a window to return to school, she chose to start over and study art.

She was in the midst of her undergrad studies when the second unexpected death happened: The 14-year-old son of a dear friend, a boy the same age as their son, Advait, fell from the roof of his school and died instantly.

Ghuge paused here in her story. It's still hard for her to tell. She swallowed hard, fighting back tears.

At the time, she and Raghavendra were preparing to buy a home in Tyler, living in a condo and eating supper from paper plates, when the call came from India. It made her feel like life was as disposable as the paper plate in her lap.

"We are all disposable," she said. "But what you do between the time you are made and the time that you die is more important than the place you are born or how you die."

She began making sculptural forms with the white paper plates she had around the house, aiming to transform them into something with more lasting value.

It was a start, but that work still felt empty.

Ghuge was also thinking about the value Westerners place on life.

In India, where the population is more than 1.3 billion, "life is not important. Especially the life of a girl or a woman," she said. "I wanted to show that every life is important.  What I wanted to create was, how do I put life into the paper plates?"

As luck would have it, she was learning printmaking techniques and creating woodblocks in the art studio at the University of Texas at Tyler. She could see a life cycle in that process - trees become wood, wood becomes paper and, with art, she was returning some kind of life to the dead paper.

Wisely, she ignored the advice of a professor who thought her woodblock patterns should look more "American."

"I am American now, assimilated in the culture," she said, "but I spent over two decades in India, and the henna design will never leave me."

The value of work

Henna patterns contain universal truths, based on nature and its repetitions, a paradigm that extends to human bodies.

Organic patterns are everywhere inside us, Ghuge said: An ear is like a chambered nautilus. Brain arteries look like tree branches and so on. And so she began printing her plates with henna-inspired patterns.

She began turning them into installations because she also wanted to give viewers an experience that might make a difference in their lives, even if it was just a moment of respite from the craziness outside art centers.

"There is enough sadness in the world, and enough artists making work about that," she said. "I wanted to have a space-altering installation that would create a positive energy."

Ghuge spent about six months creating the elements of the Galveston installation: about three months to carve the woodblocks, then another three to print the 5,000 plates, run them through a press in her Tyler studio and seal them. This time, for the first time, she also hand-dyed the plates first, submerging then in liquid for a few days, putting a watery blue layer under the henna-inspired prints.

Miraculously, they didn't disintegrate. Ghuge uses the cheapest plates she can find, not to be frugal but because, she said, "That is how we start: We are simple and noncoated."

Her labor-intensive process is as purposeful as everything else in her art.

"The other thing I saw when I came into this culture was that people did not want to work hard. They sit on the couch, eat chips, order pizza," she said. "Where I came from, everything was hard work, everything was hand-made, and everything was valued."

Enlisting help from the community and volunteers emphasizes that "labor is appreciated."

Ghuge can't imagine making art that isn't rich with metaphoric possibilities.

"I don't have any choices that are just, it was cool, so I used it," she said. "Maybe I'm just too serious. I should lighten up. But I feel like I am cheating the viewers if I just do something frivolous. They take time to come and see my work. So I give them my best."

It took artist Abihnya Ghuge about three months to carve the woodblocks, then another three to print the 5,000 plates, run them through a press in her studio and seal them.
Opioid prescription rates peaked in 2010 and have fallen steadily since then, a good sign in the public campaign to combat the addiction crisis sweeping the nation.

That was the big headline from a new analysis released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Buried deep in the report, though, was a detail that may surprise Texans who have grown used to reading about the state's various public health shortcomings: Texas doctors, according to the CDC, hand out far fewer addictive painkillers than most other states. In parts of the Midwest, the Florida Gulf Coast, Appalachia and even the Pacific Northwest, per-capita opioid prescription rates are more than double the rate recorded in Texas.

That news comes a month after the CDC released another report that found Texas recorded fewer opioid-related hospitalizations than nearly any other state.

So, what's with the disparity?

"As with much of the variation across states, we aren't sure," said CDC spokeswoman Courtney Lenard. "Texas has had lower opioid prescribing than most of the U.S. for many years. It also has had lower drug overdose death rates than most states. One factor might be that, prior to widespread use of electronic prescribing, Texas was one of only a few states requiring use of serialized prescription forms for Schedule II drugs."

For a better understanding of what's happening here, the Chronicle reached out to Dr. Asim Shah, the vice chair for community psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. As the chief of psychiatry at Ben Taub Hospital and the director of community behavioral health for Harris Health System, he oversees the county's largest outpatient mental health provider and is on the front line of treating the opioid epidemic in Houston.

As usual, Shah said, the data tells only part of the story. (For example, would you believe poor access to health care in Texas might be one factor keeping people from getting their hands on dangerously addictive opioids?)

Below is a transcript of our chat, lightly edited for length:

Hixenbaugh: Why are fewer opioids prescribed in Texas compared to, say, Appalachia?

Shah: There are a couple theories to explain that. First, when you look at the general map of the country, more of the opioid crisis is seen in the northeast, in an area where demographically you see a whiter population. Why is that? Traditionally, for whatever reason, the opioid crisis has not affected the Hispanic populations as much. (The CDC estimates whites are four times more likely to die from a drug overdose compared to Hispanics, and although it's not clear why, experts have some theories.)

In addition, the climate is a possible factor, believe it or not. Arthritis is a much bigger problem in colder places, so it may be that weather has a role to play in the disparity. Texas is hot, and hot weather does not cause that particular pain syndrome, which is a major driver in opioid prescriptions.

H: Does Texas' high uninsured rate play a factor here?

S: Right. Texas has one of the highest rates of uninsured people. It's practically impossible to get on Medicaid in Texas unless you make less than $5,000 a year or if you are pregnant or are on dialysis or something. So, there's a certain percentage of the population that doesn't have access to the doctor.

The problem is, people who are on pain medications or who are addicted, they somehow come up with the cash, just like people who are addicted to cocaine somehow find money to buy cocaine. So, just because it's not being prescribed doesn't mean people are not using it.

H: Reading these CDC reports gives the impression that the opioid epidemic is not as significant in Texas. Is that accurate?

S: No, I think if you read the latest report, they say the opioid crisis is still there everywhere. It's way more than in the 1990s, but it has dipped a little bit in the last few years between 2010 and now. And it is less in Texas as compared to Ohio and those areas.

Part of the reason it has dipped is we have made it more difficult to get prescriptions of the most common pain medicine, which is Vicodin (aka Hydrocodone). In the past, it was easy for doctors to call in Vicodin to a pharmacy, which didn't leave a paper trail. Now they cannot. Now they have to have a triplicate prescription for Vicodin, and that has contributed to this reduction.

H: Last month, CDC released another report that showed opioid-related hospitalizations were lower in Texas than almost any other state. Did that surprise you?

S: Well, that sounds like good news, but one big reason for that is there are not a lot of facilities to treat addiction in Texas, so these patients aren't being hospitalized. It's not that they don't need hospitalization, but we in Texas don't have any place to hospitalize them. That is not a blessing. Instead we deal with them in a non-hospital setting or in an outpatient setting.

H: Based on what you see in your clinic every day, is the opioid epidemic just as bad in Texas as in the Midwest or other parts of the country?

S: It is not as bad here, but it is still a problem. The numbers are way higher in the northeast than in Texas. It doesn't mean we don't have a major problem. We do see it every day.

Several things have been done to address the problem in recent years. There's been so much publicity of this crisis, including celebrity deaths, that doctors are now very aware that these are serious prescriptions. The other thing, in Houston in particular, has been the DEA going after the pill mills that pushed these prescription drugs into the community. And as I mentioned, now you have to write an actual prescription, instead of just calling in. There are more checks and balances today than a few years ago.

All of these things combined have had a positive impact, but it's still a very difficult situation.

___

Mike Hixenbaugh writes about health care and medicine for the Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Send him tips at mike.hixenbaugh@chron.com.
Every day in hospital obstetric units all over the world, brand new parents tell stories which will be told again and again. Most of the time, there are congratulations all around with a smattering of laughter and tears. But if you listen between the lines, you realize that what you are really hearing is the sound of parents constructing the story of their child.

Every child has a story which includes major, enduring elements like his familys cultural background and minor, temporal elements like the snowstorm that struck the night his mom went into labor. All of the ingredients come together in the tale of a person who is unique in all the world.

In my work, I have had the happy privilege of meeting many new families. Through these precious encounters, I have heard stories about how this childs ancestors may have planted some promise in him, such as the baby with long fingers whose parents hope he will be a pianist like his grandfather. I have learned about the parents value system as they name their baby after some giant in their faiths history. I have admired parents dedication as they tell about the agonizing moments of wondering if their baby would be OK following a crisis in his delivery.

The birth story that parents concoct about the events surrounding their childs birth is really just one chapter in what will be this childs life history. The birth story wont be the first installment. There will be earlier ones about family members who came before him whose stories will be forever interwoven into his: Great-grandparents who fought in World War II, grandparents who remember watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, and aunts and uncles who speak sadly about seeing two planes crash into the Twin Towers.

Even more, this childs story will join those personal stories of his family. She will feel akin to her uncle who fell out of a tree and broke his wrist when the same fate befalls her. She will take pride in knowing that she won the sixth grade spelling bee just as her mom did before her.

He will love hearing his story told and retold by those who love him. Listening to the story of himself gives a child the clearest possible message that his existence matters. Our remembering the details and feeding it back to him reminds him that his life has meaning and that he belongs to a family who recognizes that meaning in him. My friend and colleague Dr. John Hornstein of the University of Southern New Hampshire says that a childs understanding of his own story is almost as important to his development as love.

In our family, when we celebrate someones eighth birthday, someone is sure to begin a sentence this way: Well do I remember eight years ago today! And the memories of that first day of life follow, exactly as they have on seven birthdays before. But each year we can add new memories that have become the newest installment in this serial.

Of all the stories that we read or tell our children, none are as beloved as these. These true stories starring our own dear ones offer evidence aplenty that their lives have given us much to celebrate indeed.

The story of his life is what a child takes with him into adulthood. When we verbalize his experiences, they take up permanent residence in his opinion of himself. His story (and our own, as well) will continue to impact the future as he lives out his remaining chapters.
Astros

The Astros won the World Series. What's next?

The champions face many questions. Will Dusty Baker and James Click get new contracts? How about free agents like Justin Verlander?
On the day the Islamic State overran the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014, it laid claim to one of the greatest weapons bonanzas ever to fall to a terrorist group: a large metropolis dotted with military bases and garrisons stocked with guns, bombs, rockets and even battle tanks.

But the most fearsome weapon in Mosul on that day was never used by the terrorists. Only now is it becoming clear what happened to it.

Locked away in a storage room on a Mosul college campus were two caches of cobalt-60, a metallic substance with lethally high levels of radiation. When contained within the heavy shielding of a radiotherapy machine, cobalt-60 is used to kill cancer cells. In terrorists' hands, it is the core ingredient of a "dirty bomb," a weapon that could be used to spread radiation and panic.

Western intelligence agencies were aware of the cobalt and watched anxiously for three years for signs that the militants might try to use it. Those concerns intensified in late 2014 when Islamic State officials boasted of obtaining radioactive material, and again early last year when the terrorists took over laboratories at the same Mosul college campus with the apparent aim of building new kinds of weapons.

In Washington, independent nuclear experts drafted papers and ran calculations about the potency of the cobalt and the extent of the damage it could do. The details were kept under wraps on the chance that Mosul's occupiers might not be fully aware of what they had.

Iraqi military commanders were apprised of the potential threat as they battled Islamic State fighters block by block through the sprawling complex where the cobalt was last seen. Finally, earlier this year, government officials entered the bullet-pocked campus building and peered into the storage room where the cobalt machines were kept.

They were still there, exactly as they were when the Islamic State seized the campus in 2014. The cobalt apparently had never been touched.

"They are not that smart," a relieved health ministry official said of the city's former occupiers.

Why the Islamic State failed to take advantage of their windfall is not clear. U.S. officials and nuclear experts speculate that the terrorists may have been stymied by a practical concern: how to dismantle the machines' thick cladding without exposing themselves to a burst of deadly radiation.

More certain is the fact that the danger has not entirely passed. With dozens of Islamic State stragglers still loose in the city, U.S. officials requested that details about the cobalt's current whereabouts not be revealed.

They also acknowledged that their worries extend far beyond Mosul. Similar equipment exists in hundreds of cities around the world, some of them in conflict zones.

"Nearly every country in the world either has them, or is a transit country" through which high-level radiological equipment passes, said Andrew Bieniawski, a vice president for the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative who once led U.S. government efforts to safeguard such materials.

"This," he said, "is a global problem."

- - -

The worries began within hours of the Islamic State's stunning blitz into Iraq's second-largest city.

As TV networks showed footage of triumphant terrorists parading through Mosul's main thoroughfares, intelligence agencies took quiet inventory of the vast array of military and material wealth the Islamist militants had suddenly acquired. The list included three Iraqi military bases, each supplied with U.S.-made weapons and vehicles. It also included bank vaults containing hundreds of millions of dollars in hard currency, as well as factories for making munitions and university laboratories for mixing chemicals used in explosives or as precursors for poison gas.

U.S. officials also were aware that the Islamic State had gained control of small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium - the remnants of Iraq's nuclear projects from the time of Saddam Hussein's presidency - as well as some relatively harmless radioactive iridium used in industrial equipment.

But a far bigger radiological concern was the cobalt. Intelligence agencies knew of the existence in Mosul of at least one powerful radiotherapy machine used for cancer treatment, one that could potentially provide the Islamic State with a potent terrorist weapon.

Outside experts were becoming aware of the threat, as well.

In 2015, the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit organization in Washington that monitors global nuclear threats, began conducting research to answer the basic questions: How many machines were in Mosul? Where were they deployed? And exactly how powerful were they?

The group obtained documents showing that two different medical centers in Mosul had obtained cobalt-60 machines in the 1980s. Other records showed that at least one of the devices was in active use as recently as 2008, and in the following year Iraqi officials had sought replacement parts, including new cobalt-60 cores, for both.

From the records, the institute's experts could draw broad conclusions about the cobalt inside the machines. In a draft report written in November 2015, research fellow Sarah Burkhard calculated that the radioactive cores, when new, contained about nine grams of pure cobalt-60 with a potency of more than 10,000 curies - a standard measure of radioactivity. A person standing three feet from the unshielded core would receive a fatal dose of radiation in less than three minutes.

The institute quietly shared its findings with U.S. intelligence and military officials in late 2015 but declined to publish its report, fearing that Islamic State occupiers would benefit from the information. The Washington Post became aware of the report last year but agreed to a U.S. government request to delay writing about it until after Mosul's liberation.

Because cobalt-60 decays over time, the potency of the Mosul machines' 30-year-old cobalt cores would have been far less than when the equipment was new, but still enough to deliver a lethal dose at close range, the report said.

David Albright, the president of the institute, noted that groups such as the Islamic State have long discussed the possibility of using such material in a dirty bomb, a simple device that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive debris across densely populated urban terrain. Such a bomb would probably not cause large numbers of casualties, but it can be enormously effective, he said, as a weapon of terrorism.

"The worst case would have been the Islamic State widely dispersing the radioactive cobalt in a city, causing panic and an expensive, disruptive cleanup," said Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and former U.N. weapons inspector. "There would likely not have been that many deaths, but the panic could have been profound, leading to the emptying of parts of the city as residents fled, fearful of the effects of radiation."

- - -

There was one question that U.S. officials and private researchers could never conclusively answer during the months of Islamic State occupation: Where was the cobalt exactly?

In strife-torn Mosul, there were no publicly available records about the city's two radiotherapy machines since 2008, when one of them was mentioned in a scholarly article. The last known addresses were a teaching hospital and a cancer-treatment clinic, both on the western side of the city, in neighborhoods that were heavily contested by Islamic State fighters and were among the last to fall to Iraqi liberators.

Finally, recently, Iraqi officials offered an explanation, saying that both machines had been in Mosul throughout the Islamic State's occupation, but not in the places where the terrorists might have thought to look for them. They had been placed out of commission for several years because of a lack of parts and had been put in storage in a building owned by the University of Mosul, somewhere in the city's eastern side.

They were still there when health officials from Nineveh province went to look for them after that sector of the city was secure, said Laith Hababa, a physician and head of the provincial health ministry.

The machines are now in secure storage and "weren't used by Daesh," Hababa said, using a common Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

U.S. officials and nuclear experts expressed relief over what, by all accounts, had been a near-miss. Some speculated that the terrorists never learned of the whereabouts of the machines, although that explanation seemed unlikely, given the terrorists' efficiency in looting university buildings across the city.

Albright said the task of removing the cobalt cores may have been viewed as too difficult or too risky. Or maybe the group's commanders were just too busy, especially during the later months of the occupation, as government troops closed in.

"Its leaders were preoccupied elsewhere," Albright said, "and [perhaps] did not learn about the sources in Mosul, or have a chance to think through the opportunities."

Leaders of the Islamic State and al-Qaida are known to have sought materials for a dirty bomb, a threat that has added urgency to efforts by U.S. agencies and private groups to improve security for machines with heavy concentrations of cobalt-60, or other radioactive elements such as cesium-137, which comes in a powdery form that is even easier to disperse.

The machines are a necessary fixture in many cancer clinics around the world, but in Western countries efforts are underway to replace the most dangerous models with new technology that cannot be easily exploited by terrorists, said Bieniawski, the former Energy Department official. His organization, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, has raised money to try to speed up the transition, but for now, he said, older machines such as the ones in Mosul are commonly found in developing countries where the risk of theft or terrorism is greatest.

"The ones we see overseas are in the highest category - the highest levels of curies - and they are also portable," he said. "They are exactly the ones we are most worried about."

- - -

Morris reported from Beirut. Mustafa Salim in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.
A Houston man is on the hook for $65,000 in child support for a child that's not his.

Gabriel Cornejo, 45, took a DNA test proving a child his ex-girlfriend had 16 years ago was not his.

The test was too late. In 2003, a child support court in Houston ruled that Cornejo owed his ex-girlfriend child support because, she claims, there was no way he wasn't the father.

HARD STOP: Rule denying car registration to parents who don't pay child support generates $1.17 million

(Story continues below...)

Now Playing: A man in Texas is on the hook for $65,000 in back child support payments for a daughter who is not his own. According to Texas family code, payments accrued before a paternity test still must be paid. Video: New York Post

At the crux of why Cornejo must pay up is Texas' family code, chapter 161, which states, even if you're not the biological father, you still owe child support that accrued before the DNA test proves you're not the father, Cornejo's lawyer Cheryl Coleman told Chron.com.

"I've researched the records and found that there is an issue with the service where they served him back in 2002," Coleman said. "There are some anomalies with how this case handled by the attorney general's office. He was never served with those documents in 2002 when the actual paternity petition was filed against him."

In further support of why Cornejo is on the line for the child support is a claim from the ex-girlfriend that the child support started coming out from Cornejo's paycheck without his objection.

'There were three garnishments of $31 each when he worked at a dealership. He's never gotten a letter from the state of Texas," Coleman said. "At issue is he's still not the father. Nobody is disputing that. The mother is not disputing that."

DON'T FORGET: New tool to penalize late child support payment

Cornejo is now married and has three children.

A request for comment has been placed with the lawyer representing the ex-girlfriend.
AUSTIN - A controversial and mostly conservative agenda continued to steamroll through part of the Texas Legislature on Saturday.

In an unusual early Saturday morning series of meetings, three committees of the Senate passed out nearly a dozen bills aimed at fulfilling Gov. Greg Abbott's 20-item wish list that the called the Texas Legislature back into session.

More restrictions on abortions, a bill blocking city tree ordinances and clamps on the amount cities and counties can raise property taxes were among the slew of bills that cleared their only committee stops Saturday. That follows a busy Friday, where other abortion restrictions and a new version of the bathroom bill also progressed.

But while the bills continue their sprint through the Senate, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has vowed to be Abbott's "wing man," the House led by Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, hasn't committed to passing any of the bills and has already called most of the agenda "manure."

The most important issue to Abbott - property tax reform - was one of the items that took center stage Saturday.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, presented his new legislation that would bar cities and counties from raising the effective property tax rate more than 4 percent without triggering a voter referendum. Now, cities and counties - which vehemently oppose Bettencourt's proposal - can raise that rate 8 percent before being subject to a possible rollback election.

Bettencourt bristled when critics called the 4-percent limit a cap. He said it is not a cap and still gives the cities and counties a chance to go higher if they can convince the voters.

"Here's the key thing, you got a case, take it to the public," Bettencourt said.

Bettencourt said cities and counties - because of increasing home values - have seen a surge in extra revenue. Yet, that hasn't stopped them from continuing to raise tax rates to collect even more money from homeowners and businesses. He said if cities and counties were being fair to taxpayers, they would have been cutting tax rates. He singled out cities like Houston and San Antonio. He showed charts that indicated Houston city tax revenues grew nearly 27 percent from 2013 to 2016 and in San Antonio it went up 35 percent. During that same time, the city tax bills on average grew 24 percent in San Antonio and nearly 25 percent in Houston.

"The bottom line, property taxes grew 2.3 times faster than median incomes," Bettencourt said.

Numbers questioned

Bettencourt said if the bill becomes law he estimated that the average homeowners would get a $30 to $100 decrease on their tax bills each compared to what it would have gone up by if the Legislature does nothing.

But city and county governments say Bettencourt's numbers are cherry picked and overstate the savings if his bill does become law. Because of the way the bill is crafted, Bill Longley of the Texas Municipal League told the Senate's government reform committee that only people living in 35 of Texas' 1,200 cities will see any real impact. And even in those affected cities, the tax decrease won't be noticeable to taxpayers because of other tax increases like from school districts. Yet, he said those cities that are affected will be hurt in their battle to provide services in growing communities.

"We take exception to the notion that this will provide meaningful property tax relief," Longley said.

Longley accused the Senate of trying to override local control.

His testimony triggered an angry response from Sen. Van Taylor, R-Plano, who called Longley's logic "staggering" because he was arguing it would have little impact on property tax bills, yet would devastate cities.

"I'm amazed that you're able to spin it that way," Taylor said.

Longley also triggered ire from Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, gave Longley and the Texas Municipal League a 2-minute tongue lashing for its political tactics in fighting the rollback rate legislation. Bettencourt joined in later, bristling at Longley calling the rollback rate limit a "cap" on cities.

Abortion coverage

Longley was far from the only person on the losing end of debates in the Capitol on Saturday. Dozens of people argued futily against a bill to require health insurance plans from government exchanges, via Obamacare, to not include abortion procedure coverage. Groups that help low-income women pay for abortions said the legislation will create new financial hardships on the people they serve.

"This would just make it even harder for people to be able to afford their abortion," said Nan Kirkpatrick for the Texas Equal Access Fund.

Houston resident Laila Khalili, who works with the non-profit Lilith Fund, which also provides financial assistance for women who seek an abortion, also testified. She said she knows there was almost no chance of stopping the legislation but felt compelled to testify anyhow to send a message.

"We won't lay down without a fight," Khalili said. "We're here not just to take a stand for ourselves but for our clients."

Tree ordinances

But Texas Right to Life and other supporters of the abortion language said the legislation is critical to helping make sure people who oppose abortion are not paying for them through tax dollars that support government exchanges.

"I, as a citizen and a taxpayer and an insurance consumer, don't want to pay for the abortion of others," said Elizabeth Graham, Director of Texas Right to Life.

In another hearing to block cities from imposing tree ordinances on private property owners, Austin resident Ryan Rosshirt called that hearing and others over the weekend unnecessary.

"This is a waste of time for the citizens of Texas," Rosshirt said.

But supporters of the restraints like Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, said ordinances that make people pay the government a fee to cut down a tree are in their nature a kind of government taking and should be regulated by the state. If a city wants a tree removed for the good of the community, the government should be compensating the homeowner he argued.

Teacher bonuses

Later, the Senate Finance Committee easily approved a plan to provide bonuses for school teachers and a plan to offset health care costs for retired teachers. Senate Bill 19 would provide nearly $200 million for teacher bonuses - another Abbott priority - starting September 2018. It also puts another $121 million into a health insurance program for retired teachers.

The stage is set for another busy day in the Capitol on Sunday when three Senate committees will debate alleged voter fraud related to mail-in ballots, restrictions on how union dues are collected and set regulations on cities related to annexations.
Dallas will soon be one of the first major cities to have a trio of women leading its top law enforcement agencies.

But all three hope that someday their gender won't be news.

"This job is about skill. It's about the ability to lead," said Ulysha Renee Hall, Dallas' future police chief. "I bring that. I don't think it matters what gender I am."

When she starts in September, Hall will be Dallas' first female top cop. She joins Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez and Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson.

The sheriff knows what it's like to be first. She was the first openly gay Latina sheriff in Texas when she was elected in 2004.

"Any time there is a first or a different, all eyes are on them," Valdez said, "so the normal little mistakes that would normally be unnoticed will probably be noticed."

But, Valdez pointed out, women are increasingly joining law enforcement.

40 years 0f changes

When she started 40 years ago, "it was rare to see a woman out on patrol. ... Now it's not that uncommon anymore."

The most important part is Johnson said she's excited that the top three law enforcement officials, including her, are well-qualified.

"When you look at us three women, you're looking at the fact you have three qualified, capable people," Johnson said. "That's what's exciting. Not so much that we're women but that we are capable people."

Though female leaders in law enforcement aren't unheard of, it's less common for minority women to end up as police chief. Hall and Johnson are both black.

Hall has said there are benefits to having a woman as a leader.

"We kind of do it a little different, a little better, a little bit more nurturing by nature," Hall said Wednesday after she was named Dallas' next chief. "We add that special something to law enforcement that truly, truly calms that savage beast."

The attitude in Dallas, where 80 percent of the police force is male, has generally been welcoming toward the new chief.

"They picked a very good candidate," Michael Mata of the Dallas Police Association said after the announcement. "I think it's great she happens to be a female."

About a dozen women already hold high-ranking positions in the Dallas force as deputy chiefs and majors.

Even in smaller cities, more and more women are rising in the ranks.

Powerful message

Those who monitor the status of women in law enforcement say Hall's arrival in Dallas this September will send a powerful message.

"I'm not aware of any other cities that have these three top criminal justice law enforcement positions," said Kathy Spillar, who co-founded the National Center for Women and Policing.

She said she hopes young women who are thinking of pursuing careers in law enforcement will see Hall's position as a role to aspire to.

The center advocates adding more women to law enforcement's ranks, citing research that shows female officers are viewed as more trustworthy because they appear more approachable than their male colleagues.

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice show only 2 percent of police officers in the 1970s were women, and most of them held clerical positions. By 2013, the percentage of female officers had increased to 13 percent, the department said in a report.

"Many women encounter a 'brass' ceiling and are unable to rise to supervisory positions despite their qualifications," the 2013 report said. "Many women do not even try to reach these positions because of fear of oppression from male co-workers."

Dallas Morning News staff writer Tristan Hallman contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on sweeping sanctions legislation to punish Russia for its election meddling and aggression toward its neighbors, they said Saturday, defying the White House's argument that President Donald Trump needs flexibility to adjust the sanctions to fit his diplomatic initiatives with Moscow.

The new legislation would sharply limit the president's ability to suspend or terminate the sanctions - a remarkable handcuffing by a Republican-led Congress six months into Trump's tenure. It is also the latest Russia-tinged turn for a presidency consumed by investigations into the Trump campaign's interactions with Russian officials, including conversations between Trump advisers and Russian officials about prospective sanctions relief.

Now, Trump could face a decision he hoped to avoid: veto the bill - a move that would fuel accusations that he is doing the bidding of President Vladimir Putin of Russia - or sign legislation imposing sanctions his administration has opposed.

"A nearly united Congress is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies," said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, "and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message."

The bill aims to punish Russia not only for interference in the election but also for its annexation of Crimea, continuing military activity in Ukraine and human rights abuses. Proponents of the measure seek to impose sanctions on people involved in human rights abuses, suppliers of weapons to the government of President Bashar Assad in Syria and those undermining cybersecurity, among others.

The agreement highlighted the gap between what Trump sees as the proper approach to a resurgent Russia and how lawmakers - even Republicans who broadly support Trump - want to proceed. While Trump has dangled the possibility of negotiating a deal to lift sanctions, Putin's top objective, the congressional response is to expand them.

The White House did not respond publicly to the legislation. But two senior administration officials said they could not imagine Trump vetoing the measure in the current political atmosphere, even if he regards it as interfering with his executive authority to conduct foreign policy.

But as ever, Trump retains the capacity to surprise, and this would be his first decision about whether to veto a significant bill.

Congress has complicated his choice because the legislation also encompasses new sanctions against Iran and North Korea, two countries the administration has been eager to punish for their activities.

There are still hurdles to clear in a Capitol where the Republican majorities have been reticent to confront Trump. Some party leaders were silent about the agreement Saturday, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Others took care to note the misdeeds of all three countries being targeted.

In a statement from two California Republicans - Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, and Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee - the lawmakers said, "North Korea, Iran and Russia have in different ways all threatened their neighbors and actively sought to undermine American interests."

They added, "The bill the House will vote on next week will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions."

A sanctions package had stalled in the Republican-led House for weeks after winning s support in the Senate last month. Democrats accused Republicans of delaying quick action on the bill at the behest of the Trump administration, which had asked for more flexibility in its relationship with Russia and took up the cause of oil and gas companies, defense contractors and other financial players who suggested that certain provisions could undercut profits.

The House version of the bill includes a small number of changes, technical and substantive, from the Senate legislation, including some made in response to concerns raised by U.S. energy companies.

Those tweaks - and the addition of North Korea sanctions to a Senate package that included only Russia and Iran, months after the House approved sanctions against North Korea by a vote of 419-1 - helped end the impasse.

The House version of the bill was set for a vote Tuesday, according to McCarthy's office.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

BERLIN - A German girl who ran away from home after converting to Islam has been found as Iraqi forces liberated the northern city of Mosul from Islamic State extremists, German and Iraqi officials said Saturday.

She is reported to be in good health and will be interrogated next week by Iraqi officials.

The 16-year-old teenager, identified only as Linda W. in line with German privacy laws, is getting consular assistance from the German Embassy in Iraq, prosecutor Lorenz Haase said from the eastern German city of Dresden.

Three Iraqi intelligence and investigative sources confirmed that the German teenager, who was apprehended in the basement of a home in Mosul's Old City earlier this month, was Linda W.

'Too stunned'

The girl is in good health, the Iraqi officials said, adding that on the day of her arrest she was "too stunned" to speak but now she is doing better. They said she had been working with the ISIS police department.

Linda W. theoretically could face the death sentence, according to Iraq's counter-terrorism law. However, even if she is sentenced to death in Iraq, she would not be executed before the age of 22.

Photos of a disheveled young woman in the presence of Iraqi soldiers went viral online last week, but there were contradicting reports about the girl's identity.

The German teenager had married a Muslim Arab she met online after arriving in the group's territory, the Iraqi officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information was not public. They said Linda W. was one of 26 foreigners arrested in Mosul since the retreat of the extremists there.

So far, the young German has not made any statement. The officials said she is being held along with other foreign women at a prison near Baghdad's airport. Starting next week, she'll be investigated by the Iraqis, who will bring in German interpreters for the interrogation since she does not speak much Arabic.

No arrest warrant

Haase, the German prosecutor, said the girl ran away from her family home in Pulsnitz in eastern Germany last summer. It's not clear yet whether she will return to Germany, he said.

"We, as the public prosecutor's office Dresden, have not applied for an arrest warrant and will therefore not be able to request extradition," Haase said. "There is the possibility that Linda might be put on trial in Iraq. She might be expelled for being a foreigner or, because she is a minor reported missing in Germany, she could be handed over to Germany."

The 26 foreigners found in Mosul included two men, eight children and 16 women, the Iraqi officials said.

Some of those arrested were from Chechnya, and the women were from Russia, Iran, Syria, France, Belgium and Germany.

In addition to Linda W., the Iraqis found three other women from Germany, with roots in Morocco, Algeria and Chechnya.
AUSTIN - Thirty years ago, following a bribery scandal involving a former speaker of the House, lawmakers banned members of the Texas Legislature and statewide officeholders from accepting campaign contributions during the regular biennial session.

A couple of years later, during a special session, a poultry magnate seeking favorable support for a bill ignited another scandal when he handed out $10,000 checks to legislators on the floor of the Senate. In response, lawmakers made it illegal to accept campaign contributions in the Capitol.

But no law against accepting contributions during special sessions exists, a loophole the size of the Lone Star State itself, especially in what promises to be a contentious and controversial 30-day gathering as various interest groups seek to influence officeholders.

"It doesn't really make sense, does it?" said Andrew Wheat, research director for the nonprofit watchdog group Texans for Public Justice. "You would think that if it is wrong during the regular, then it's wrong during the special."

Gov. Greg Abbott, who already is sitting on a $41 million campaign fund and who called for the special session to push through his conservative vision for the state, is aggressively seeking contributions. His campaign solicited donors with a midnight deadline on the opening day of the special session.

"A very generous group of supporters is so excited about the kickoff of Governor Abbott's re-election they have offered to DOUBLE MATCH every online contribution through July 18!" Abbott campaign aide Jordan Root wrote in an email. "Your contribution can make the difference! Contribute $25, $50 or $100 and see it DOUBLE MATCHED to become $75, $150 or $300!"

The Abbott campaign also used the special session as a reason why contributors should pour more money into the governor's coffers.

"During the next 30 days, lawmakers are going to tackle important issues to Texans from out-of-control local regulations to skyrocketing property taxes to runaway state and local spending," campaign aide Mary Ruegg wrote in an email blast a day after the special session convened. "Contribute right away if you support Governor Abbott's special session agenda." The sentence contained a link to a web site where contributions can be made.

Abbott spokesman John Wittman said: "Regardless of special session or not, the governor makes decisions on what is in the best interests of the state, not those who support his campaign. The most important standard is to avoid any conflict of interest and follow the letter and spirit of the law. That is being done."

The ban on regular session contributions - which begins 30 days before the session and ends after the governor's deadline to veto bills - is a rare brake on campaign giving in a state that doesn't have caps on contributions to statewide officials and legislators.

B B B

The Legislature's leaders - Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus - pointedly have announced they would not be accepting contributions during the special session. Others have taken the opportunity to replenish their campaign accounts after the regular session black-out on accepting contributions.

State Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, held a fundraiser last Tuesday, the first day of the special session, at the Austin Club, a private venue three blocks from the Capitol. Sponsors included three powerful lobbyist firms - the Graydon Group, Focused Advocacy, and Blackridge.

State Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, raised money Thursday afternoon, also at the Austin Club. A small group gathered in the club's ornate Medallion Room, including state Sen. Royce West, a Dallas Democrat first elected to the Senate in 1992. Donors to Miles could be a "champion" for $10,000, a "host" for $5,000, a "sponsor" for $2,500 and a "friend" for $1,000. A web portal for contributions features a thermometer with a $100,000 goal.

"I called my office and told them to check the ethics on that, to see if we can do that, and they said it's legal," said Miles, a former House member who succeeded Democrat Rodney Ellis when he ran successfully last year to become a Harris County commissioner. "I'm a freshman senator, and you always want people to think I'm worthy based on the work that I did during the regular session."

The conflicting rules open the door for a potential scandal, public interest groups say.

A lobbyist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a legislator recently invited him to a fundraiser and then mentioned a topic - now a special session bill backed by Abbott - that the lobbyist has worked on to get passed. The legislator said it should be passed during the special session. The lobbyist, who did not attend the fundraiser, said he was alarmed by the legislator talking about a fundraiser and an upcoming legislative vote in the same phone call.

Unless there are leaks, the public largely will be in the dark about the role of money during the special session. Legislators and statewide executive officeholders are not required to disclose their contributions until the special session ends, which is set for Aug. 16. The filing deadline is within 30 days of the session's adjournment. It's unclear whether Abbott would call a second special session or a string of them if legislators do not enact enough of his 20-topic agenda.

B B B

The Senate and House should adopt a rule that would extend the regular session ban on accepting campaign contributions to this special session, said Tom "Smitty" Smith, former director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer and environmental group.

"Otherwise, we will have another chapter in the sordid saga of government for and by the donors," he said.

It's unclear how much fundraising will occur and whether it will consist of fundraisers or contributions that legislators receive way below the radar.

Lobbyists and campaign aides said fundraising usually is slow in late July and August because legislators and statewide executive officials face a midyear deadline to file campaign finance reports with the state Ethics Commission. The deadline this year was July 17.

The ban on accepting contributions extended beyond the May 29 end of the regular session. That's because legislators in 2003 passed a bill that became law to lift the ban after the deadline for the governor to veto bills passes, which was June 18.

Lt. Gov. Patrick, a Houston area Republican, decided to not accept campaign contributions during the special session in part to avoid "distractions," said Allen Blakemore, Patrick's campaign consultant. Patrick had a campaign fund balance of nearly $17 million as of June 30, Blakemore added.

"He's not asking anybody to 'please join me and do the same thing,' " said Blakemore, who also is a lobbyist. "It's something we can do, and this session does cover a lot of issues. It's just to avoid any appearances, avoid giving anybody a chance to write an ugly story or say something bad."

As a state senator, Patrick collected $22,579 in contributions during the three special sessions that Gov. Rick Perry called in 2013. Patrick's campaign did not receive any contributions during special sessions in 2009 and 2011.

Straus announced his decision in a Facebook post last Tuesday that said: "State law prohibits legislators from accepting campaign contributions during regular sessions of the Legislature. I have also decided that I will not accept campaign contributions during the special session that began today."

Asked about the reason for the Speaker's decision, Straus spokesman Jason Embry said, "Speaker Straus wanted to stay consistent with the regular session and show that he is entirely focused on issues like improving education, helping retired teachers and reducing the property-tax burden."

Straus, a San Antonio Republican, did not receive campaign contributions during special sessions in 2009 and 2011, but his campaign hauled in $326,703 during three Perry-called special sessions in 2013.

Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, called 12 special sessions - which ranged from two days to the maximum of 30 - and his campaign netted $5.1 million.

The Legislature in 1987 enacted the ban on campaign contributions during the regular session. Action came after House Speaker Billy Clayton was indicted for allegedly accepting a bribe of $5,000 in cash during an FBI sting operation. A jury acquitted Clayton of corruption charges in 1980.

During a 1989 special session, poultry magnate Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim made national news when he handed out $10,000 checks on the Senate floor to nine of the 31 members. Pilgrim said the checks - distributed two days before a vote on a workers' compensation bill that he had an interest in - were campaign contributions, not attempted bribes.

In response to the public outrage, legislators approved a bill to ban the acceptance of campaign contributions in the Capitol.

B B B

Austin attorney Randall "Buck" Wood, a former executive director of the Texas office of Common Cause who in the 1970s helped pass major open meetings and records laws, said some legislators asked him after the Pilgrim furor to craft legislation to prohibit campaign contributions during special sessions.

But Wood said he couldn't find a way without unwittingly picking winners and losers. For example, if the governor calls a special session close to a primary or general election, a ban would affect incumbents in hotly-contested seats. Their opponents would not be prohibited from collecting contributions.

In 2009, the House approved a bill to extend the prohibition on accepting campaign contributions during regular sessions to special sessions.

The bill died in a Senate committee after lawmakers questioned whether it could hurt House members vying to fill a vacancy in a Senate seat.

Last Friday, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Frisco, filed a bill to extend the contribution ban to cover special sessions, from when the governor calls one until adjournment. The penalty for making or accepting such a contribution would be the same as the current one for regular sessions - a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail, a maximum $4,000 fine or both.

Fallon's bill would apply to contributions made or accepted starting Dec. 1, and it's also not eligible for a vote unless Abbott adds the topic to his special session agenda.
Police interviewed the 44-year-old victim at Decatur Memorial Hospital around 11:12 p.m after he had shown up in the emergency room with a bullet wound to his buttocks. Sgt. Timothy Maxwell with Decatur Police said the victim had been involved in a dispute with the suspect's mother when the suspect intervened and shot him at an address in the 1400 block of East Olive Street.
Political observers and parents of teenagers both know that nothing good ever happens after midnight. So you can't help but worry about Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick summoning the state Senate to a 12:01 a.m. meeting Thursday morning.

Patrick used those wee hours to get a jump-start on the bizarre, bottom-of-the-barrel issues that Gov. Greg Abbott has placed on the special session agenda. First up: bathrooms. Legislators' ability to tag bills with a 48-hour delay was tossed out the window and, on Friday morning, the state Senate began hearings on the nationally infamous regulations against transgender Texans.

Meanwhile, the adults in the room are trying to stop this rush to enshrine discrimination in our laws.

Top Texas business interests like AT&T, BNSF Railway, Facebook and Google are lobbying, begging, pleading with Patrick and Abbott not to pass top-down bathroom bills that will do little more than bully transgender Texans over their potty habits. The Texas Association of Business is launching a million-dollar media blitz against the bills. IBM took out full-page ads in major newspapers and plans to send executives to testify in Austin.

They'll probably get a friendly reception in the state House, but don't look for any CEOs to speak during the Senate hearing. Why?

The titans of Texas industry have little interest in talking to a group of lawmakers who refuse to listen, the Quorum Report's Scott Braddock reported over Twitter.

That's not the way to change minds. CEOs need to show up, in person, and make the fights personal.

Pro-growth politicians have long served as the core of our state's politics. Once as conservative Democrats, and then as moderate Republicans, business interests always sat at the center of the Texas political spectrum. Now they're struggling to stay on the radar. House Speaker Joe Straus represents the last of their lot.

Instead, the Legislature is being driven by a desperate need to appease the tiny sliver of voters who turn out in the Republican Party primary. The agenda in those elections is set by the likes of Steve Hotze, who once advocated a forced exodus of gays and lesbians from Houston, or Empower Texans chairman Tim Dunn, who wants to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. Corporate leaders' once-secure position in the Texas politician hierarchy is now being challenged by a mishmash of haters and hucksters. And each passing primary introduces a new litany of partisan cudgels specially crafted to drive the few remaining business Republicans into the wilderness.

The regular session provided little in the way of effective campaign tools. Don't expect to see any election season mailers touting the most recent state budget, which relied on a property tax hike of nearly 14 percent. So now Texas must endure a special session spent hammering away at local control, rural school districts, abortion rights and, yes, transgender Texans.

This effort to radically reshape our state's politics leaves little room for the corporate interests who want to maintain a conservative status quo. For the first time in 11 years, Texas fell out of the top two spots for business-friendly states in CNBC's annual survey of executives. The unemployment rate is higher than the national average for the first time in nearly a decade. We're 39th in growth. Economic output has been flat as the Gulf Coast prairie even as our population continues to grow.

Meanwhile, business leaders don't think it is worth their time to show up at the Texas Senate. How long until that disdain expands to the rest of the state?

The only reason Abbott needed to call a special session was to pass sunset legislation that prevents the automatic retirement of five key state agencies, including the Texas Medical Board. The rest is fodder for campaign consultants. Nothing good is going to happen between now and sine die.
A little context is critical here.

It would be too easy to dismiss Donald Trump's Commission on Electoral Integrity as superfluous evidence of the intellectual erosion of the Republican Party. As a Twitter observer who styles himself LOLGOP quipped last week when the commission held its first meeting: "All the evidence in the world won't get the GOP to accept climate change but no evidence is necessary to stop black people from voting."

And yes, the hypocrisy is staggering. Scientific consensus, Miami Beach flooding, record heat and a chunk of ice the size of Delaware breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf are not enough to convince President Dumpster Fire and his party to get serious about climate change. Meantime, a few dubious anecdotes of voting irregularities get us a presidential commission furrowing its brows over a "problem" that does not exist.

But the truth is, hypocritical is the least bad thing this is. Which brings us back to context.

Consider, for instance, the rise over the last 10 years of photo ID laws, putatively designed to keep ineligible people from voting. Never mind that this happens only slightly more frequently than Darth Vader dances the Macarena. Never mind, too, the alarms raised by observers who point out that poor people are less likely to have - or be readily able to obtain - such IDs.

Further context is found in the Supreme Court's 2013 evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. The VRA, enacted to fight the systematic denial of the ballot to African-American voters, required states that had engaged in this practice to get federal permission before changing their election laws. The Republican appointees on the court united to strike this provision down.

Still more context: the ongoing resistance in Republican states like Florida, Kentucky and Iowa to allowing ex-felons to vote. Mind you, having once served time does not exempt you from a duty to pay taxes, but in many places, it does rob you of the right to have a say in how those taxes are spent.

It is no mystery who these and other restrictions are designed to hurt. After all, the populations most likely to be affected, including African-Americans and the poor, are those most likely to vote for Democrats. But if deductive reasoning is not enough to sway you, there's also the fact that a Republican is occasionally impolitic enough to admit the chicanery outright.

As in a party official from North Carolina who bragged in 2013 that the state's photo ID law would keep "lazy blacks" and others from voting. "The law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt," Don Yelton told "The Daily Show."

In a sense, you can't fault Republicans for this. The GOP is built on appealing to the anger and resentment of older, straight, white, Christian voters. What do you expect the party to do when faced with a rising electorate of rainbow colors, ages, religious philosophies and sexual identities? Change? Broaden? Be serious.

It is only mildly hyperbolic to describe what is happening here as a soft coup - the theft of legitimate power by illegitimate means. The GOP has inflicted calculated violence on a core American creed that says we all have a voice and all our voices deserve to be heard.

Apparently, that's something Republicans no longer believe. And this new panel cannot help but have a chilling effect on non-GOP voters - precisely what it is intended to do. Too bad the party is not serious about ferreting out threats to the integrity of our elections.

It would not have to look far.

NOTE: In a recent column, I misstated the year of Philando Castile's death. He was killed in 2016.

Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
The brief history of tech-enabled ridesharing is not really a story about transportation but a story of clashes with regulators. Uber and Lyft vs. cities and courts.

Municipalities have tried to ban ridesharing companies but have mostly given up. Courts have disagreed on whether the companies' drivers should count as contractors or employees. More fights are ahead.

Ridesharing's growth was first seen as cannibalizing demand for taxis or rental cars, but the next strategy for growth appears to be competing directly with public transit. Consider Lyft Shuttle, which started last month. It offers fixed-route, fixed-price pooled service - just like a bus. It's tailored toward urban professionals who commute to job centers. (Service is available only in San Francisco and Chicago right now.)

If these companies can profitably poach the ridership of high-demand transit routes, they will. Which then raises important questions: If ridesharing firms can operate more effectively and efficiently than public transit agencies, should the government get out of the transit business and let private companies provide better service at a lower price? Or should government subsidize or outsource, rather than operating its own transit services? Or should government adopt the companies' best ideas - perhaps new or different routes with different types of vehicles - and then ban the private sector from offering competing services?

If governments do none of the above, then lost ridership and revenue would further strain the budgets of public transit agencies. This would aggravate the social equity concerns inherent in an emerging two-tiered transit system.

Private-sector competition to public services raises these sorts of concerns because the companies' agenda is simpler: to make money. Public services strive toward solvency, but also seek to meet public policy needs, like providing transit access for poor neighborhoods.

Consider an example from outside the transportation world: What if a Silicon Valley firm created a service to compete with U.S. Postal Service's first-class mail? At the moment it costs 49 cents for a stamp that allows the sender to mail a letter anywhere in the U.S. But presumably it doesn't actually cost 49 cents to get a letter from New York City to Philadelphia. The post office overcharges for mail along those shortest, busiest routes, to subsidize the far higher expense of conveying a letter from, say, rural Alaska to rural Puerto Rico. When it comes to mail, dense urban areas subsidize rural ones.

If a startup decided to replicate the service but only in dense urban areas, and at a lower price, it might initially be seen as an innovative new growth company. But as the company got bigger and bigger it would cut into the revenue of the USPS, destroying its ability to overcharge urban areas in order to undercharge rural areas. Perhaps USPS service in rural areas would become more expensive or less reliable. Either would draw the attention of rural politicians concerned that their constituents were being excluded from the service.

Perhaps to avoid regulation, the company would then offer rural service but at a much higher price to offset the higher operational costs. It would be sound business logic, but it would not address the politicians' concern. The other option would be for the company to raise its rates in urban areas, so it could charge the same rates in rural areas. Suddenly its prices would look very much like those charged by the USPS in the first place.

These are the dilemmas that await ridesharing companies and governments. What will be the impact on transit agencies as ridesharing firms, and in the future firms that operate fleets of autonomous vehicles, offer competing services? What will the societal and political response be if these services are mostly offered in wealthy, dense communities at the exclusion of poorer and/or rural ones?

One possibility is that government will mandate minimum levels of service in all communities where ridesharing firms are allowed to operate. Maybe in exchange for agreeing to such an arrangement, large incumbent companies would be offered licenses denied to other companies. We'll have traded the taxi medallion system for a new entrenched regulatory regime.

To date, ridesharing regulation has been about tearing down old laws to make way for disrupters. The next battles may end in a more familiar standoff, by creating a new highly regulated regime.

Sen is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a portfolio manager for New River Investments in Atlanta and has been a contributor to the Atlantic and Business Insider.
The following are excerpts from reports generated by the Houston Police Department:

Pearl E. Preheim, 69, of 5198 Tyrone Road at Houston, was cited for failure to yield resulting in an accident after a two-vehicle accident July 5 at U.S. 63 and Highway 17.

Norman E. Vandivort, 88, of 888 Hawthorne Street in Houston, was cited for failure to yield resulting in an accident after a two-vehicle accident July 3 at Highway 17 and Hamrick Avenue

Joanna L. Fox, 23, of 211 S. Grand Ave., Apt. 101, in Houston, was arrested July 11 for having an active Texas County warrant for multiple drug charges. An officer made the arrest in the Texas County Jail lobby after being advised Fox was there. She was unable to post $75,000 bond and was jailed.

Alex J. Collins, 28, of 329 Ozark St. in Houston, was arrested July 15 for having an active City of Houston warrant for possession of drug paraphernalia.
Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print.

Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition.

If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create.
RanieriMeloni via Getty Images

The European refugee crisis is proving to be one of the biggest moral tests and political stalemates of our generation.

Save the Children's rescue ship searches the Mediterranean for stricken vessels, in the hope of stopping people from drowning.

Advertisement

Every day we face the same five questions. We thought we'd take the opportunity to answer some of these concerns. Because although we don't have the answers to world peace, we are sure that what we're doing is saving lives.

STOP PICKING UP MIGRANTS AND FERRYING THEM TO EUROPE!

We are not a ferry service. We do not communicate with traffickers or people smugglers. We work under the coordination of the Italian Coast Guard and respond to distress calls only if instructed by them.

Our sole mission is to save the lives of people, particularly children, who are escaping violence, persecution and extreme poverty. We save people from drowning and if we stopped, the death toll would only increase further.

This was proven in 2014 when EU rescue funding was cut, only for smugglers to use the same dangerous routes, leading to multiple horrifying shipwrecks in 2015, with up to 800 victims in just one capsizing.

Advertisement

YOU'RE ENCOURAGING MIGRATION!

When you cut the rescue ships, the death toll spikes, but people keep coming.

The presence of search and rescue does not mean more people will cross, it simply means those who do are more likely to survive.

This Oxford University study found crossings remained roughly the same with or without rescue vessels present. But when rescue capacity was low, deaths at sea were highest.

STOP BRINGING TERRORISTS TO EUROPE!

The Italian authorities screen and register everyone we rescue, and it's their job to manage all security-related issues. When we carry out a rescue we provide a comprehensive report of the number of people rescued. When our vessel arrives in Italy there is a second check with the Italian Coast Guard to verify these numbers.

BUT THEY'RE MAINLY ADULTS WITH BEARDS!

This is increasingly a children's issue. The number of children taking this route rose 76% in 2016 while the number of children travelling alone more than doubled, according to the UN Refugee agency. No child should drown in search of a better future.

We work in the countries children are fleeing, like Syria and Iraq, and try to advise them of the dangers of migration along the route.

Advertisement

With 93% of the children rescued travelling alone, children urgently need protection as they are extremely vulnerable to trafficking, abuse and exploitation.

SEND THEM BACK TO LIBYA!

Libya cannot be considered to offer a safe place. If returned to Libya, refugees and migrants are at risk of being detained, where conditions are widely seen as inhuman and people have reported being beaten, whipped and hung from trees. We have heard countless reports of women and children suffering physical and sexual violence. Families might be forcibly sent back to countries where they've already fled persecution, war, rape, torture and exploitation.

By the time they reach the Mediterranean, many children will have endured unimaginable horrors, may be injured or traumatised, in need of support, which is simply not available in Libya.

So what now?

Some of the things we see and hear on board Save the Children's rescue ship are unimaginably gruesome. We patch up peeling limbs that have been chemically burned from fuel spills in the dinghies. We worry many women are victims of gang rape in Libya. We help find foster families for orphaned babies whose mothers have drowned trying to escape ISIS. We pick up dead bodies found floating at dawn. Nameless, helpless humans.

But sometimes it's words that sting the most. The Vos Hestia team hoped that people had moved away from language like "hoards" and "cockroaches" when referring to actual human beings. Historically, we've seen similar hateful language from the Nazis when referring to Jewish people, as well as on Hutu radio stations in Rwanda in the 1990s, referring to the Tutsis. Both were calling for genocide.

Advertisement
DECATUR  Decatur Housing Authority Director Jim Alpi doesnt have a background in pest control, but hes learned more than he ever wanted to trying to keep bed bugs out of the agency's properties.

Its a problem of epic proportions, Alpi said. Theyre something were continually dealing with.

Alpi said when the DHA first started seeing bed bugs, it contracted pest control companies, but now the DHA keeps someone on staff at all times with a pest control license and does the treatments itself.

We used two or three different companies and had limited success, Alpi said. And the expense was very high.

Once nearly eradicated in the United States, the small, flat, brown bugs with a big bite are menacing cities from coast to coast as they scurry back in alarming numbers. Macon County is not immune.

The bugs are everywhere, and treating them is not only financially and physically difficult, but the stigma attached to an infestation can be the cruelest bite of all.

Like most professional pest control companies, DHA uses a variety of methods, including chemicals, such as diatomaceous earth, and heat treatment. With heat treatment, heaters are brought into a unit, which is warmed to a temperature of above 120 degrees for several hours, killing the bugs.

We evaluate each situation to determine the right course, Alpi said.

Alpi said glue traps are placed throughout multifamily to help monitor if theres a bed bug presence, and tenants are asked to report them immediately and are given a checklist of what they need to do if bed bugs are found. This means primarily drying any clothes on high heat, then washing them, drying them again and sealing them in plastic bags for a minimum of two weeks.

Kathy Wade, Macon County Health Department director of environmental health, said the majority of calls her office has received are from high-rise apartment buildings, and the DHA has three of those. Alpi said the high-rise with the worst bed bug issues is the Lexington, 1221 N. VanDyke St.

Stephen Brilley has lived at the Lexington for 17 years, but never saw a bed bug until this year.

I got them big time, Brilley said. I have plastic on everything. Theyve come in and sprayed, and Ive gotten rid of a bunch of clothes. Theyll be gone for a couple days, then theyre back  Im still seeing those little ones. Ill squeeze them and blood comes, and and Im like, damn, they got me. Getting rid of them is hell.

Brilley said when the bed bugs first invaded his apartment, he experienced bad bites, though theyve subsided since the treatments. Brilley said hes scheduled to stay in an extra apartment at the Lexington  a converted game room  while the DHA treats his apartment again. But theres a waiting list.

I dont know, there might be four or five people ahead of me, Brilley said.

Alpi said the DHA has had plenty of success with its methods, but the Lexington has had the most recurrences.

We try to treat adjacent, above and below an area when we find them, but weve had re-infestations there, Alpi said. If we use the heat method, we do move the resident overnight into another unit where they can sleep overnight and then go back. But we have enough equipment to treat one unit at a time. Were trying to do that two days a week. If there are more residents than that who need it, it can cause some delay.

Theres just no easy solution, and I dont know that anyone knows the answer. Id love to find a silver bullet, but I havent found it yet.

Beating bed bugs

Tina Rice is the property manager at Wabash Crossing and said bed bugs are something her staff deals with in the apartment complexs 471 units. Rice said vigilance is the best policy.

I dont have bed bugs in 471 units, but were in and out of those units all day, and all my guys carry a spray bottle full of alcohol, Rice said. They wear gloves when they pick up furniture. We find mattresses sitting outside and not every one of them has bed bugs, but we treat every one of them exactly the same.

Rubbing alcohol containing at least 91 percent alcohol is effective at killing bed bugs on contact, and is one of many preventative measures that can be taken to make sure those who suspect they may have come into contact with bed bugs.

We work hard to make sure we dont get them, said Scott Fisher of Scotties Pest Control in Decatur. If you come out of a house and your booties are ripped, you have the rubbing alcohol out spraying yourself down.

Fisher has been in pest control 38 years but never saw a bed bug until seven or eight years ago. Now, Fisher said he performs two bed bug jobs a week.

Tim Husen, entomologist and technical services manager with pest control company Orkin, said some simple inspection can catch bed bugs early enough that they dont become as pricey an infestation.

Theres no way to guarantee you wont get bedbugs, but if you regularly check the locations in your home where bed bugs hide, you can catch them early, Husen said.

Because bed bugs are capable of surviving for long periods of time between feedings, during the day they hide seams of mattresses, box springs, bed frames, dressers, tables, cracks and crevices, behind wallpaper, electric outlets, or under any clutter or objects around a bed. Check for any blood staining on mattresses, which is also a sign of infestation.

Hotels are a prime source of bed bugs. Nearly every source said the best practice for staying in hotels is to walk in, place luggage in the bathtub, then check around the bed, under the edges of the mattress, and in the curtains.

I even tap the headboard and outlets, just to make sure, Irons said.

Wade said many hotels now use mattress encasements that bed bugs cant get through. The encasements, usually made of vinyl or polyurethane, keep bed bugs from escaping the mattress, eventually starving them, and also keep bed bugs from invading the mattress.

Alpi said the DHA furnishes mattress encasements. Fisher and Wade also recommended encasements, with Fisher saying to make sure to purchase an encasement and not just a mattress cover.

Like Rices staff at Wabash Crossing, most hospitals and home health care staff are now taking precautions. Robyn Reising, Decatur Memorial Hospital chief nursing officer, said all patients are assessed when theyre admitted to the hospital.

If suspicion or confirmation of bed bugs is identified during the assessment, the patient is isolated and treated, Reising said in a statement. Once the patient is treated, they are moved to another room so that an experienced pest management professional can inspect and treat the original room as needed.

HSHS St. Mary's Hospital was contacted for this article, but declined an opportunity to comment.

Rice said, so far, the precautions are working for employees at Wabash Crossing.

I have a staff of 25 to 30, and  knock on wood  no one has ever taken them home, Rice said. I think the key is getting past the panic and fear. Theyre there, but its not, Oh my gosh, theyre everywhere.

The stigma

Few people wanted to share their stories of bed bugs, and some that did refused to give their names. In fact, several of those attending coalition meetings who spoke up at the June meeting attended by the Herald & Review asked not to be included in the story, or didnt return multiple phone calls for comment on the issue.

Brilley said he knows of Lexington residents who have bed bugs but wont admit it and said friends and family have started avoiding him.

Its really turned people against me  my mom and dad, my friends  nobody will come to my apartment, Brilley said. And I dont even go to peoples houses now.

But the stigma surrounding bed bugs that isnt necessarily an accurate portrayal of the problem.

Theyre not something to be ashamed of, said Richelle Irons, Director of Neighborhood Services for the city of Decatur. Theyre not specific to low-income, or to unclean environments. Thats a myth. We know stories of white-collar professionals who stay in 5-star hotels bringing them home. People who travel are the ones more likely to spread them. Bed bugs dont discriminate. They dont care.

But, in some ways, the bed bugs lack of discrimination is the scariest thing about them. While theyre most likely to be found in hotels and high-rise apartments, they can be anywhere.

We certainly dont want people to panic and think everywhere they go theyre going to run into bed bugs, said Dianna Heyer, Macon County Health Department administrator. But they are a nuisance and something the public should be aware of.

While anyone those without the means to afford treatment are often stuck with them.

The thing about bedbugs is since they dont spread infectious disease so theres no funding out there for helping families get rid of these, Heyer said. A lot of clientele cant afford it. Theyre already facing a number of socioeconomic issues, so theyre going to be more impacted by it. Unfortunately, I havent found any grants out there yet that will cover the cost.

Fisher admitted if he had bed bugs, hed struggle affording to get rid of them. He said the standard is three treatments at $250 to $1,000 per treatment, depending on the size of the dwelling.

I could afford one or two treatments, but that third one would cripple me, Fisher said. And I know I wouldnt want them. Knowing the bugs are coming after you when youre sleeping? That mentally wears you out.

Irons said it is fortunate that many lower-income people live in public housing, which can afford to pay for pest control.

Wabash, the Decatur Housing Authority  they serve low-income clientele and they have the resources to get rid of them, Irons said. Its a drain, but at least they can do it.

Rice agreed, but said she feels for those trying to furnish their apartments.

The worst thing is you have someone trying to get on their feet and someone gives them a sofa and a bed, and you have to be the bad guy who comes in and tells them, You have to get rid of everything, Rice said.

Wade said until the financial aspect is addressed, bed bugs arent going anywhere.

Thats the problem everyone runs into, whether its property managers or actual residents themselves, Wade said. Its so costly to treat them, so it grows and grows.
Eli "Paperboy" Reed was one of last year's performers.

Shire City Sessions Returns to Pittsfield on Monday

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  The Shire City Sessions are back.

The weekly concert series takes place over the next three Mondays at the First Street Common. The concerts bring original live music to the Berkshires, and fills up what tends to be an uneventful night of the week.

"There is a little bit of a hole in the cultural scene when it comes to original music," said Alan Bauman, who founded the concert series in 2015 to bring in national and regional music talent to tackle that issue.

It began in the parking lot of the Shire City Sanctuary the first year. Last year, it moved to the Common and worked in tandem with the Shakespeare in the Park, using the same set, over the course of four weeks. It drew some 300 people to the concerts, which Bauman said has a "family-friendly" atmosphere.

"It really fills in for the dark night of Shakespeare in the Park," Bauman said.

Bauman's company, Compuworks, underwrites the program along with Blue Q, Interprint, and Greylock Federal Credit Union. With those donations, the concerts are free to the public while providing money to book the bands.

Chris Hantman from Sounds and Tones Records did the booking this year. The lineup includes Drew Angus, Born Without Bones, and Vunderbar.

"We knew we wanted stuff that was family friendly and we wanted bands doing something unique," Hantman said.

Particularly, the record company was seeking an array of different genres and sounds. After booking those three acts, they booked local talent that matches somewhat to the headliner.

"Each show was different we wanted that vibe to continue," Hantman said.

Drew Angus kicks off the first night. Angus was a runner up in "American Idol" and will be playing with a full band. Hantman said he brings a "unique folk sound" to the stage.

Born without Bones brings a more rocking sound, with what Hantman describes as indie rock with a mix of punk. And, Vunderbar is another unique rock band which recently took the stage at Boston Calling.

"They've been a band we've been a fan of for a long time," Hantman said.

Sounds and Tones Records focuses primarily on producing records and merchandise for bands but has started to get into the promoter business for local events. The company books bands for shows on its own and this year book the lineup for the Colegrove Park Concert Series in North Adams.

"We do it because we want to build a great music community in the area," Hantman said. "We're really excited and we're always open to help people book things."

The shows start at 6 p.m. and this year the city is taking on a stronger role in the management of the event. The city's Office of Cultural Development is helping with coordination, which was somewhat needed after one of the original organizers moved away. The Zion Lutheran Church is once again providing a location for the show to go on should it rain, which it did multiple times last year.

But the series is cut down by one show. Bauman said last year there were four shows and Shakespeare in the Park had to leave its set up for an additional week for that show. Shire City Sessions has cut that additional week to better coordinate with that program.

Also this year, the organizers "simplified" the event and won't be featuring the food trucks as it had in the past and instead limiting the food vendors. But, local brewery Wandering Star will still be on hand selling beer.
Sunday, July 16

A sizzling week starts with storms

A funnel cloud was spotted along the Macon County-DeWitt County border south of Clinton as a strong storm system moved through the region. Downed trees and flooding also were reported.

The storm started a week that include high temperatures, with heat index values surging past 100 degrees. The National Weather Service put an Excessive Heat Warning in place through Saturday.

More mild temperatures are expected this week, with highs in the mid-80s.

Monday, July 17

Hometown honors military member

Flags lined streets and hundreds turned out in Assumption to honor Capt. Joe Smith, who was shot down and killed in April 1971 over Cambodia. He was 25. His remains were found in 2016.

A funeral mass was at St. Marys Catholic Church in Assumption, with burial at St. Marys Catholic Cemetery.

The price that our freedom demanded didn't allow you to come back, said Smiths former wife, Elaine Mills, who has since remarried. We pray for peace ... welcome home, Joe, welcome home.

Tuesday, July 18

Racist graffiti found

Authorities are investigating racial slurs painted on the Rock Springs Conservation Area trail in Decatur.

The Decatur Park District painted over the graffiti, which appeared on support columns for a large pipe.

Its unclear when the vandalism took place. The site is near Fairview Park.

"We strive daily to provide a great quality of life, and we don't want ignorance being visual to the park. It's not who we are," said Park District Police Chief Ed Culp.

Wednesday, July 19

Mattoon cold case seeking leads

The Coles County Sheriff's Office is seeking information about a cold case dating to 1974.

Linda Shriver, 23, of Mattoon, was abducted and strangled.

The investigation was reopened as cold cases are being reviewed by the department.

Lt. Christina Stephen said investigators will re-interview everyone who was questioned at the time.

Anyone with information is asked to call (217) 348-7332.

Thursday, July 20

Childrens Museum to expand

The Howard G. Buffett Foundation is donating $3 million to the Children's Museum of Illinois for a new exhibit on public safety officers.

Heroes Hall is planned as a 7,000-square-foot expansion to the South Country Club Road building, which opened in 1995.

Buffett, the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is a former executive for Archer Daniels Midland Co. who has provided funding for numerous projects in the Decatur area. He also has been an auxiliary deputy for the Macon County Sheriffs Office.

Friday, July 21

Rauner: Give me school funding bill
Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Theres not much thats dignified or delicious about taking a shot of tequila. Sprinkling grains of salt onto your hand from a bottle thats sticky for reasons you dont want to think about. The awful, harsh flavour as the shot hits your tongue and attacks your tastebuds. And the mouth-twisting lemon to erase any trace of the drink, simply proving that tequila is totally disgusting.

But, surely, tequila cant be all bad. If Mexico gave us guacamole, burritos and chocolate, tequila isnt the issue here. Its the drain water posing as tequila that the rest of us are drinking giving the decent stuff a bad name. There must be types of tequila that dont have the flavour of the aftertaste of vomit. There must be a way to consume it without having to mask it with salt and lemon.

Recommended Tequila could help you lose weight

The first mistake most of us make is drinking tequila that isnt produced using 100 per cent agave sugar. Tequila is made from the fermented juice of the agave plant. Its a long old process: first the plants take eight years to mature. The plants core is then distilled. Similarly to champagne, only the drink made in Mexico can be rightly called tequila.

The tequila that first arrived in the UK and Europe was mixto tequila. This means that only 51 per cent of the sugars came from the agave plant, the other 49 per cent came from other sources like grain or sugarcane, explains Eduardo Gomez, director of Mezcal and Tequila Festival London. Usually these tequilas were low quality. The hugely popular gold tequila was coloured with caramel which causes that horrible hangover the morning after.

When selecting a tequila, avoid anything aged above four years, says Andrei Talapenscu, head bartender at Pullitzer in Amsterdam. Arm yourself with a few key terms: Blanco describes tequila two-months-old or less; Reposado is that which is between two and 11 months; Aneja is tequila aged between one to five years; and Extra Anejo a minimum of three years.

Recommended Top bartenders reveal the easy cocktails you need to learn how to make

After the four-year mark not much happens to it, and evaporation from the barrels makes the process very costly. So, lets stick to Blanco, and have it the Mexican way, suggests Talapenscu.

Taking shots of tequila is the next faux pas to leave behind, adds Andy Kerr, the co-owner of Londons Discount Suit Company bar. Treat it like a sipping whiskey or rum. Nose it gently with small sips and let it open up for you. Use a tasting glass or wine glass to really open the flavours up. The best atmosphere to try it is when youre relaxed with mates. It doesn't have to be in a shot but shots are still definitely allowed!

Cocktail lovers, says Gomez, should try Bloody Marys with tequila instead of vodka. Or swap a G&T for a Paloma, served with tequila and grapefruit soda rather than tonic served over ice.

Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Show all 12 1 /12 Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures Cocktails of the Movies - In pictures

Tequila and tacos goes hand in hand, adds Josh Rooms, the bar manager of Cartel in Battersea, which stocks 70 types of tequila. Anejo go incredibly well with slow cooked beef marinated with chipotle chillies, tomatoes, white onion and cooked with chorizo.

Still, even these top bartenders have had some fun with a few shots of cheap mixto.

I remember my first experience with a cheap 'tequila-flavoured spirit', says Talapenscu. We had back-to-back shots and an attempt to play pool which turned into a sword fight using the pool cues. Im pretty sure I lost the fight and ended up sleeping on the beach that we were on.
This story was produced by the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch.org, a nonprofit, online news website that collaborates with Iowa news organizations to produce explanatory and investigative reporting. The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) added Wisconsin-focused content to this version and distributed it to additional news organizations.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Some of the BBC's most high-profile female personalities are preparing to revolt if their demands to tackle the gender pay gap are not met.

Household names including presenters Clare Balding, Victoria Derbyshire and Angela Rippon are among more than 40 women to have signed a frank open letter to Director-General Tony Hall, urging him to correct this disparity over gender pay, which they say has been known within the corporation for years.

One Show host Alex Jones, the Antiques Roadshow's Fiona Bruce and Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis have also added their backing to sorting out pay inequality now, rather than by Lord Hall's self-imposed 2020 timescale.

It comes after documents setting out the pay for staff on more than 150,000 showed a sizeable gap in the earnings of the corporation's most well-known male and female presenters and actors, with Radio 2 presenter Chris Evans topping the list on more than 2m, while the highest paid woman was Strictly Come Dancing's Claudia Winkleman on between 450,000-499,999.

In the letter, the signatories say they will be prepared to meet Mr Hall so that future generations of women do not face this kind of discrimination.

It reads: The pay details released in the Annual report showed what many of us have suspected for many years...that women at the BBC are being paid less than men for the same work.

Compared to many women and men, we are very well compensated and fortunate. However, this is an age of equality and the BBC is an organisation that prides itself on its values.

You have said that you will 'sort' the gender pay gap by 2020, but the BBC has known about the pay disparity for years.

 Chris Evans revealed as BBC's highest earner

We all want to go on the record to call upon you to act now.

Wimbledon presenter Sue Barker, Today programme journalists Mishal Husain and Sarah Montague and BBC Breakfast regular Sally Nugent are among those to have added their names to the list.

Correspondents including Katya Adler and Lyse Doucet have also backed the move to end discrimination against women.

The letter adds: Beyond the list, there are so many other areas including production, engineering and support services and global, regional and local media where a pay gap has languished for too long.

This is an opportunity for those of us with strong and loud voices to use them on behalf of all, and for an organisation that had to be pushed into transparency to do the right thing.

We would be willing to meet you to discuss ways in which you can correct this disparity so that future generations of women do not face this kind of discrimination.

Speaking at the launch of the annual report, Lord Hall said there was more to do on how the licence fee was spent.

He said: At the moment, of the talent earning over 150,000, two thirds are men and one third are women.

Is that where we want to be? No. Are we pushing further and faster than any other major broadcaster? Most certainly.

We've already set a clear and strong target for what we want to achieve by 2020: we want all our lead and presenting roles to be equally divided by men and women.

This is already having an impact - of the top talent we have hired or promoted in the last three years, more than 60 per cent are women.

A senior Conservative source said Theresa May also backed action to reduce the gap between male and female pay.

He said: As Mr Hall has said, it has thrown up some interesting information with regards to the gender pay gap that he wants to see tackled. We also want to see it tackled.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA 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

We think that in order for that to happen, this is a very important tool and we would like to see the BBC continue to publish it.

A BBC spokesman said: We have made significant changes over the last three years but need to do more. Mr Hall has pledged the BBC will go further faster.

Across the BBC, the average pay of men is 10 per cent higher than women. The national average is 18 per cent.

We are committing to closing it by 2020 - something no other organisation has committed to doing.

The BBC's workforce has been hired over generations and this is complex and cannot be done overnight.

We are, however, confident that when these figures are published again next year they will show significant progress towards that goal.

Mr Hall meets staff all the time and will of course meet individuals to hear their thoughts as we work to accelerate change.

Press Association
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Family and friends of a young man who died after being chased and apprehended by police are calling for justice, amid fears community anger over his death could spill over into violence.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is investigating officers' contact with Rashan Charles, known to friends as Rash, during an incident at his local 24-hour shop in Dalston in the early hours of Saturday morning.

A Metropolitan Police officer pursued him on foot after they attempted to stop a car on Kingsland Road at 1.45am. A statement from Scotland Yard said Mr Charles went into a shop, where he was seen trying to swallow an object.

CCTV footage of the incident, which has been widely circulated on social media, shows Mr Charles walking into a shop before an officer runs in after him. He is grabbed by the officer who tries to take him out of the shop.

After a struggle, he is seen being tackled to the ground and the struggle ensues. It continues for more than a minute, during which another uniformed man intervenes to apparently help the officer hold the 20-year-old to the floor.

According to a statement from the IPCC, Mr Charles "became unwell" and first aid was provided by a police officer, police medics and paramedics. He was then taken to the Royal London Hospital, where he died shortly afterwards.

The incident marks the second police-related death in London in just over a month.

Rashan Charles died after being detained by police in Dalston, London, on 22 July (Supplied)

Family members and friends of Mr Charles, who grew up in Dalston, are now demanding justice, with some saying if action is not taken against the officer and the citizen who intervened, protests are likely to take place.

We want justice for Rash, and for everyone else who has been dying at the hands of police, Kaspala, a close friend of Mr Charles who had known him nearly all his life, told The Independent.

His family want the police officer and the civilian involved to be taken to court. Rash was unarmed and he was not resisting arrest. He could not have possibly done anything that should lead to what happened.

I just don't understand the whole taking him down to the ground and choking him and handcuffing him. Trading a life for a conviction is completely wrong.

Asked what could happen if justice was not seen to have been brought, the 20-year-old said: To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if a riot occurred.

This is not the first incident where this has happened. A similar thing happened with Edson just a few weeks ago. Police are using their authority and taking it to another level.

Khai, another friend of Mr Charles, who lived on the same street and described him as a guardian to young people in the area, said he and his peers had even less trust towards the police following the death of his friend.

People dont trust the police anyway  and now there will be even less trust. I just want justice for his family, otherwise I can definitely see something like the 2011 riots happening again, he said.

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

Pauline Pearce, known locally as the Hackney Heroine or Mama P after remonstrating with rioters in 2011, said: Rash was a young youth who was well known on this estate and around this area, and he was well-loved.

Despite the fact that theyre saying he was a drugs dealer - whatever the situation - he didn't need to be a dead drugs dealer."

She argued that even if he had been involved in some form of criminal activity, Mr Charles should never have been "so harshly dealt with", describing the situation as "too much".

He could've been sitting in the police station waiting for his case. He could've been sitting in the prison cell waiting for his case. But instead hes now someone whos waiting in a morgue waiting to be buried, waiting for an inquest," she said.

There are many ways they could have arrested this young boy. They didn't need to have him so harshly dealt with. Rash should still be alive, he should still be alive today."

Ms Pearce added: Maybe he did end up being one of the statistic kids on the streets selling drugs, but it's because the Governments taking away all the funding from the communities.

Its a bigger picture. Its not just a boy who got killed. Its a bigger picture, so fix the little things so the big things dont happen. Because this is too much. Its unreal."

Chief Superintendent Simon Laurence, the Metropolitan Police's borough commander for Hackney, said IPCC investigators had viewed footage from officers' body-worn video cameras.

There is likely to be speculation over the next few days regarding what led to this man becoming ill, so I would encourage people to keep up-to-date with the IPCC's statements, he added.

All police officers are fully aware that they will be asked to account for their actions - officers are not exempt from the law and we would not wish to be.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Gay men will be allowed to donate blood three months after having sex rather than a year, under equalities reforms announced by the Government.

Transgender people will also be able to choose their legal sex more easily as part of the shake-up announced by Education Secretary Justine Greening.

Fears over infections being passed on through donations from gay men led to an outright ban at the height of the Aids epidemic, but that was cut to 12 months in 2011.

The new guidelines, which campaign groups have been calling for, are in line with improved NHS testing measures, which can establish whether someone has a blood infection such as HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C or syphilis within three months.

LGBT rights activists, who want to get rid of the blanket deferral period entirely, have hailed the shift in policy as a major step towards a fair and equal system.

Ms Greening, who is also equalities minister, said the Government was building on the progress on tackling prejudice made in the 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality.

 UK's longest-surviving HIV patient speaks out

This Government is committed to building an inclusive society that works for everyone, no matter what their gender or sexuality and today were taking the next step forward, she said.

We will build on the significant progress we have made over the past 50 years, tackling some of the historic prejudices that still persist in our laws and giving LGBT people a real say on the issues affecting them.

Recommended Government set to make it easier for gay men to give blood

Reforms making it easier for transgender people to choose their sex legally by removing the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and speeding up the bureaucratic process will be consulted on in the autumn.

Ms Greening said she wanted to cut the stigma faced by trans people, who have to provide evidence that they have been in transition for at least two years before they can apply to legally change their gender.

It comes after Prime Minister Theresa May earlier this week indicated she was preparing to reform the Gender Recognition Act, saying that when it comes to rights and protections for trans people, there is still a long way to go.

Suzanna Hopwood, a member of the Stonewall trans advisory group, said: Reform is one of the key priorities in our vision for removing the huge inequalities that trans people face in the UK. The current system is demeaning and broken.

Its vital that this reform removes the requirements for medical evidence and an intrusive interview panel, and finally allows all trans people to have their gender legally recognised through a simple administrative process. Thats what well be calling for during this consultation, and Im looking forward to seeing the law change soon after."

The Government accepted the recommendations of the advisory committee on the safety of blood, tissues and organs (SaBTO) on changing the deferral periods for blood donations from gay men.

LGBT+ rights around the globe Show all 9 1 /9 LGBT+ rights around the globe LGBT+ rights around the globe Russia Russias antipathy towards homosexuality has been well established following the efforts of human rights campaigners. However, while it is legal to be homosexual, LGBT couples are offered no protections from discrimination. They are also actively discriminated against by a 2013 law criminalising LGBT propaganda allowing the arrest of numerous Russian LGBT activists. AFP/Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Brunei Brunei recently introduced a law to make sodomy punishable by stoning to death. It was already illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison AFP/Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Mauritania Men who are found having sex with other men face stoning, while lesbians can be imprisoned, under Sharia law. However, the state has reportedly not executed anyone for this crime since 1987 Alamy LGBT+ rights around the globe Sudan Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal under Sudanese law. Men can be executed on their third offence, women on their fourth Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Saudi Arabia Homosexuality and gender realignment is illegal and punishable by death, imprisonment, whipping and chemical castration Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Yemen The official position within the country is that there are no gays. LGBT inviduals, if discovered by the government, are likely to face intense pressure. Punishments range from flogging to the death penalty Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Nigeria Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal and in some northern states punishable with death by stoning. This is not a policy enacted across the entire country, although there is a prevalent anti-LGBT agenda pushed by the government. In 2007 a Pew survey established that 97% of the population felt that homosexuality should not be accepted. It is punishable by 14 years in prison Reuters LGBT+ rights around the globe Somalia Homosexuality was established as a crime in 1888 and under new Somali Penal Code established in 1973 homosexual sex can be punishable by three years in prison. A person can be put to death for being a homosexual Reuters LGBT+ rights around the globe Iraq Although same-sex relationships have been decriminalised, much of the population still suffer from intense discrimination. Additionally, in some of the country over-run by the extremist organisation Isis, LGBT individuals can face death by stoning Getty

Ethan Spibey, founder of the FreedomToDonate group that has campaigned for reform, said: "Todays announcement from the Government marks a world-leading blood donation policy for gay and bisexual men and the other groups previously restricted.

Im so proud that the work of FreedomToDonate and our supporters will help ensure more people than ever before are allowed to safely donate blood.

I began this campaign because I wanted to repay the donor who saved my granddads life after a major operation and this announcement means Im closer than ever to doing that, with the invaluable help of our team of volunteers, and the charities and organisations FreedomToDonate represents.

Ruth Hunt, Chief Executive of Stonewall, said the changes were welcome but that it was merely a stepping stone on the path to a more inclusive system.

Changes to the blood donation rules are welcome. However, while this is an important move, its vital that this is a stepping stone to a system that doesnt automatically exclude most gay and bi men, she said.

We would like to see individualised risk assessment, and are encouraged that the Government and NHS Blood and Transplant Service are committed to exploring how to do this.

Stewart McDonald MP, who co-chairs the all party parliamentary group on blood donation that led on the Parliamentary Inquiry said: I am delighted at this monumental change in blood donation policy, which will ensure more people than ever before can donate blood and increase blood stock whilst always maintaining its safety and integrity."

Additional reporting by PA
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A girl has received outpourings of sympathy after she received a 150 fine from her local council for setting up a lemonade stand outside a festival.

Andre Spicers daughter was selling cups of lemonade at the end of her street in London's Mile End, as hundreds of people were attending Lovebox festival in nearby Victoria Park.

But within 30 minutes of setting up, four council enforcement officers approached her table and read from a legal letter informing her that, because the operation did not have a trading permit, it would incur a 150 fine.

Businesses have since stepped forward with offers to harness the five-year-olds entrepreneurial spirit by providing space for a new stand.

Borough Market tweeted her father Mr Spicer: In all seriousness, would your daughter like to sell some lemonade at Borough Market? We'd love to make that happen for her.

She has also been invited to the Friends of Mile End Park Annual Community Fair, while Redhead Day UK 2018 has offered to make her guest of honour at their ginger festivities.

Her family tweeted: Dozens of festivals, markets and businesses have offered us an opportunity to set up a lemonade stand.

We hope theyll extend the invitation to others whod love to make a stand.

Children could sell home-made lemonade, hand-drawn comics or vegetables they have grown.

Young people could do more than sell things, like sharing films or music theyve created, or gaining support from their local club.

We learn through doing.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters

Mr Spicer, the girls father, is a New Zealander who teaches organisational behaviour at Cass Business School in London.

In his Telegraph column about the fine, he compared the way children are brought up now with his own childhood, when his business instincts were allowed to thrive.

When I was growing up, my brother and I were able to wander miles from home without adult supervision.

We were encouraged to sell things to raise money for clubs we were part of, by selling biscuits, we learned about maths, communication and basic business skills.

Tower Hamlets Council has apologised for the incident, saying: We expect our enforcement officers to show common sense, and to use their powers sensibly.

This clearly did not happen.

The fine will be cancelled immediately and we have contacted Mr Spicer and his daughter to apologise.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry have revealed details of the final conversation they had with their mother almost 20 years after her death.

Their final words with her were exchanged in a brief phone call on the day she died that now weighs heavily on Williams mind, he said in a new interview.

In a documentary about Diana, Princess of Wales, the brothers speak of their lasting regret at how short their final chat with their mother was, with Harry confessing it is something he will regret for the rest of my life.

William was 15 and Harry 12 when their 36-year-old mother was killed in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997, with the image of the two young princes walking behind their mothers coffin at her funeral one of the most enduring of the 20th century.

But looking back at the life of the princess, whose death 20 years ago shocked the world, Harry, now aged 32, said to myself and William she was just the best mother ever who brought a breath of fresh air to everything she did.

In the programme documenting Dianas personal journey, her campaigns supporting the homeless, Aids victims, and banning landmines, and her death, Harry reveals he has cried just twice for his mother  once at her funeral and on another occasion that he would not disclose.

Diana with her sons in April 1992 (PA)

William  who at 35 is now just a year younger than Diana was when she died  described the very good time they were having at Balmoral, the Queens private Scottish home, where the royal brothers were playing with their cousins when their mother called.

William, interviewed with his brother at Kensington Place for the ITV documentary, said he spoke to his mother first.

Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know, see you later ... f Id known now obviously what was going to happen I wouldnt have been so blase about it and everything else.

But that phone call sticks in my mind, quite heavily.

Asked if he remembers what his mother said, William replied I do, but did not disclose details of the conversation.

Harry then took his turn to talk to their mother.

It was her speaking from Paris, I cant really necessarily remember what I said but all I do remember is probably regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was, he said.

A picture from Dianas personal photo album of her William. She was pregnant with Harry (Kensington Palace)

Looking back on it now, its incredibly hard, Ill have to sort of deal with that for the rest of my life. Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum, how differently that conversation would have panned out if Id had even the slightest inkling her life was going to be taken that night.

On what would have been Dianas 56th birthday, 1 July, William, Kate and Harry, joined by Prince George and Princess Charlotte, attended a service to rededicate her grave at her childhood home, Althorp House, where she was buried on an island.

Harry, who has spoken publicly about his own mental health battles, said: The first time I cried was at the funeral on the island and probably only since then maybe once. So theres a lot of grief that still needs to be let out.

Dianas vey public marriage break-up with Prince Charles was a defining moment in her life, and the documentary features the moment when, in December 1992, the then-Prime Minister John Major announced to the Commons the couple had agreed to separate.

Previously unseen family photos of the royal brothers taken by their mother are shown in the programme with William and Harry filmed trawling through the albums compiled by their mother.

The Diana theories in full Show all 10 1 /10 The Diana theories in full The Diana theories in full 243791.bin Getty The Diana theories in full 243788.bin Getty The Diana theories in full 243804.bin Getty The Diana theories in full 243807.bin Wikipedia The Diana theories in full 243808.bin Getty The Diana theories in full 243812.bin Getty The Diana theories in full 243792.bin Getty The Diana theories in full 243799.bin Reuters The Diana theories in full 243794.bin Getty The Diana theories in full 243814.bin Getty

In lighter moments, they discuss her sense of humour with Harry saying: Our mother was a total kid through and through, when everybody says to me so she was fun, give us an example, all I can hear is her laugh in my head.

Reflecting on the 20 years since his mothers death, Harry said: It has been hard and it will continue to be hard, theres not a day William and I dont wish that she was still around and we wonder what kind of mother she would be now, and what kind of a public role she would have and what a difference she would be making.

Diana never saw her work to help outlaw landmines come to fruition as she died before the international treaty to ban the military weapons was signed.

But Harry described how he found letters on the subject dated the day of her death, but never sent: About a month ago I found a whole series of letters. Letters that she was supposed to top and tail that were dated 31st of August that were sitting on her desk here.

She knew exactly what needed to be done, she was writing letters to certain people to say right, this is what needs to happen in order for this whole tidal wave to change.

The documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy will be screened on ITV on Monday at 9pm.

Press Association
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Friends of a 20-year-old man who died after being chased and apprehended by police in London have described him as a gentle and caring person who and acted as a guardian for younger people in the community.

Rashan Charles, known to friends as Rash, died after being followed and tackled to the ground by a police officer in a Dalston shop in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The Metropolitan Police said he was spotted trying to swallow an object. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has launched an investigation into the death.

Recommended CCTV shows police throw Rashan Charles to ground in shop before death

Friends say Mr Charles was a much-loved member of the community and a good father to his baby daughter, Remiya.

Jada, Remiyas mother, told The Independent he was a caring and generous father who was close to his family and always sought to help people.

Rash came to look after Remiya a few times a week. He was such a caring and generous dad. He was always buying her things, and he always gave food to the beggars on the street, the 19-year-old said.

(Amina Patterson)

I saw him the day before he died. He was fine. He came to look after Remiya. Im just so shocked.

Khai, a friend and neighbour of Mr Charles who lived on the same road, described him as a guardian to younger people in the area.

Speaking outside Yours Locally the day after his friends death following his arrest at the 24-hour store, Khai said: Rash was always making sure everyone was all right. He was a guardian to younger people in the area.

He was a family man who looked after his brothers and sisters  and loved his baby daughter. Ive spoken to his sister and she has just been crying. She wasnt the same age as him but he was like her twin.

Another neighbour, Jamal Fahim Ali, 19, said: He was like an older brother to me, like a protector. Hes been there for me since I was a young age.

I remember the first time I met him. I was seven years old and got lost right here near this shop. He walked me all the way back to my house.

He was friendly to everyone. Like an older brother to all of us. Everyone had respect for him, and he had respect for us.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA 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

A friend of Mr Charles, Amina Patterson, 18, said he had a good heart, saying: This should never have happened to him. Rash had a very good heart.

When I found out yesterday I just didn't believe it. No one expected this to happen to Rash.

Pauline Pearson, dubbed the Hackney Heroine after video of her remonstrating with local people during the London riots went viral, said Mr Charles was a darling who helped people in need.

She said: A girl has told me how, when she was 13, Rash took a whole gang of boys off her who were trying to attack her. And its because of him that they stopped.

He comes and knocks my door in the morning and asks Mama P, Im going to the shop do you want anything? He was a darling.

The problem is, some people are handed a silver platter in life, and some people are handed a pile of s***. And Rash is one of those who were handed s***. So what happens? He loses.

An elderly man who lived close to Mr Charles, but who asked not to be named, described the 20-year-old as nice, gentle and shy.

He said: Whenever Rash saw me, hed say Hello Uncle. He was such a gently guy. I saw him just the other day. I cant believe this.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A British man is fighting for his life after being shot in the Philippines just days before his wedding.

Tarek Naggar, 44, is said to be critically injured and in intensive care after being attacked during a robbery on the island of Cebu.

The Sunday Herald reports that Mr Naggar - from Milngavie in East Dunbartonshire but recently living in Sweden - was gunned down while sitting outside a bar in the capital, Cebu City, in the early hours of Thursday with his fiancee Angie and best man Chris McLaughlin.

Three men on a moped are believed to have pulled over and demanded the Scot hand over his wallet. When he refused, one of the assailants pulled out a gun and shot him in the chest.

The men are believed to have fled the scene with Mr Naggar's wallet containing credit cards and the local money he was carrying, equivalent to less than 10.

Mr McLaughlin told the Sunday Herald that Mr Naggar, who was due to get married on Saturday in front of 150 guests, was operated on to remove a bullet lodged in his lung and is now on life support.

 Martial law declared in South Philippines as government battles Isis-linked militants

His fiancee is a local woman and the couple were reportedly intending to move to Thailand where she had arranged a job teaching English. Mr Naggar is said to have travelled extensively and to have met his wife-to-be in Sweden.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has been in touch with his next of kin and various authorities in the area.

A spokeswoman for the FCO said: "We are assisting a British national who was shot during a robbery in Cebu, and are in touch with local authorities."

The Philippines has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world, and Cebu city, which has a population of two million, is one of the most dangerous places. The political situation in the country is also volatile after President Rodrigo Duerte announced his war against the drugs trade last year.

More than 4,000 people accused of selling or even taking illegal drugs are believed to have been killed by vigilantes, including off-duty police officers on the orders of the controversial President.

Additional reorting by PA
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Any period of transitional arrangements between Britain and the EU over Brexit must have concluded by the next general election, Liam Fox has said.

The International Trade Secretary suggested a period of 24 months for any transition but said it must be time-limited.

The staunch eurosceptic ministers demand appears to stem from fears amongst Brexiteers that a transitional period could be used to stop Brexit by any incoming government elected in 2022.

I want to leave the European Union at the end of March 2019. Once we have done that, once we have fulfilled our promise to the British people we can look to see what we are going to do in terms of making that a smooth transition for our businesses to give them maximal certainty and to cause minimal disruption, he told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show.

Frankly, having waited for over 40 years to leave the European Union, 24 months would be a rounding error, whether thats 23 or 25 is not a huge deal, nor is it an ideological one, its about the practical issues we would face: for example getting any new immigration or customs systems into place.

He continued: I think we would want to get it out of the way before the general election, I dont think we would want to have it dragging on. I think its perfectly reasonable to have a transition that would make it as smooth as possible. I think thats what businesses would want us to have in Britain and what our investors abroad would want to see.

A transition period is a suggested time during which Britain remains subject to some EU regulations or within jurisdiction of some EU institutions before fully leaving, to allow businesses and government to adjust to the new state of affairs.

Brexit Secretary David Davis this month accepted the need for a transition period, but there is apparent dispute in the Cabinet about what shape it should take.

Chancellor Philip Hammond said any period should be dictated by economic logic and could last for an extended period, while Mr Davis has said Britain will be outside the customs union by 2019.

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

Downing Street claims the Cabinet are on the same page, however.

Business group the CBI suggested that the UK should remain entirely in the single market during a transition period  a suggestion rejected by ministers.

Mr Fox is currently in the United States conducting preview trade talks, laying the ground for a deal after Britain leaves the EU.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

UK ministers say they are committed to resettling up to 3,000 children and families from the Middle East and North Africa, in addition to the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme.

Local authorities across the country are currently supporting more than 4,000 unaccompanied asylum seeking children, they said.

Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis said: We are committed to fulfilling our commitment under the Dubs scheme as soon as possible and ensuring that children arrive in the UK safely. This is just one aspect of a much wider response. We have committed to resettling 23,000 people directly from regions of conflict and last year we granted protection, or another form of leave, to over 8,000 children.

Recommended More than 100 child refugees missing in UK

"We are grateful for the support Scotland and Wales have provided and we have made clear our intention to extend the National Transfer Scheme to the rest of the UK so their local authorities can fully participate.

We believe the most vulnerable children are in the conflict zone around Syria and the best way to help them is by resettling refugees directly from the region. This is how we can stop traffickers and smugglers from exploiting vulnerable people and children.

The Government has previously been accused of dragging its feet over the issue of allowing Syrian refugees into the country, although public opinion on how many the UK should take remains bitterly divided.

The latest announcement comes as the Independent reveals more than 100 vulnerable refugee children are believed to have gone missing in the UK in the past year after being smuggled in by people traffickers operating in Calais.

Press Association
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of rowing back on a promise he made on cancelling all student debt, despite not having ever made the supposed plege.

The partys manifesto pledged to scrap university tuition fees altogether, making him popular with young people despite criticism from other quarters. But the manifesto made no mention of an amnesty on existing debt to the Student Loans Company, which currently stands at 76bn.

In a pre-election interview with The Independent, Mr Corbyn said he was looking at ways to reduce the tuition fee debt of former university students, but did not make a firm commitment.

Recommended Jeremy Corbyn backs BBC women presenters in gender pay gap dispute

Asked about the perceived unfairness of his pledge to cancel tuition fees of 9,000 a year from 2018 while leaving those who went to university in the past decade burdened with huge debts, he said: I appreciate that and we will look into that effect.

Weve not got a policy or proposal on it. There wasnt time between the announcement of the election and the publication of the manifesto but I do understand that point and Im entirely sympathetic to it.

Asked about the issue in separate interview with NME, the Labour leader elaborated, adding: There is a block of those that currently have a massive debt, and Im looking at ways that we could reduce that, ameliorate that, lengthen the period of paying it off, or some other means of reducing that debt burden.

 Labour would take Britain out of the EU single market, Corbyn says

I dont see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the 9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after. I will deal with it.

I dont have the simply answer for it at this stage  I dont think anybody would expect me to, because this election was called unexpectedly, we had two week to prepare all of this  but Im very well aware of that problem.

Mr Corbyn was criticised after an appearance on the Andrew Marr Show where he admitted he was unaware of the size of the student loans debt when he said he would deal with it".

Recommended Corbyn got away with incoherent policy because he was expected to lose

The Labour leader, who is currently ahead of a beleaguered Theresa May in the opinion polls, insisted: What I said was we would deal with it by trying to reduce the burden of it.

We never said we would completely abolish it because we were unaware of the size of it at the time.

Universities minister Jo Johnson said in response: "Jeremy Corbyn and his top team made a welter of outlandish promises to young people during the election - including the abolition of student debt - that they are now shamelessly abandoning."

In the past week the Education Secretary, Justine Greening, claimed Labour had not been honest with young people and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith accused Mr Corbyn of treating students as election fodder.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty

Mr Corbyn said Labour will make a statement to clarify the matter in the near future following the revelation by Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner that cancelling all historic student debt would cost an eye-watering 100bn.

Ms Rayner accused Tory MPs of wilfully misrepresenting the partys policy on student debt.

Much of the debt is expected never to be paid off as graduates pay make repayments through the Inland Revenue over many years on a sliding scale according to their income.

Tuition fees were first introduced under the Blair government in 1998, set at 1,000 and with poorer students exempt. Campaigners at the time warned they were bound to increase  which they did, first to 3,000 a year and then to 9,000 a year under the coalition Government, sparking angry protests.

At his partys manifesto launch, Mr Corbyn accused the Tories of holding back students and graduates by saddling them with debt that blights the start of their working lives.

He said: Labour will lift this cloud of debt and make education free for all as part of our plan for a richer Britain for the many not the few.

We will scrap tuition fees and ensure universities have the resources they need to continue to provide a world-class education. Students will benefit from having more money in their pockets, and we will all benefit from the engineers, doctors, teachers and scientists that our universities produce.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said the current cohort of students will graduate with an average debt of more than 50,000. Mr Corbyn said before the election that Labour would fund higher education through an increase in corporation tax and national insurance, which he said would cost around 8 billion a year.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair ruled out backing the deselection of Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour MP, a former party chief whip has said.

Baroness Armstrong, who served as chief whip from 2001 to 2006, said activists in Islington North had approach the Labour leadership during that time and hoped to deselect Mr Corbyn  but been rebuffed.

The then-Prime Minister was very clear that he would not support such a move to oust the MP, the Labour peer insisted.

She told BBC Radio 4s Westminster Hour: I had a couple of folks from Jeremys constituency come to see me and say, People are a bit upset with Jeremy always being against the Labour government  what if we try to deselect him?

But she advised them: You will get no support from the leadership, so dont bother.

She added: The Prime Minister was very clear about that when Jeremy was a backbench MP. And he was right; we shouldn't have worked to deselect him. But I hope that Jeremy will now reflect on that, and I hope that he will be absolutely determined to make sure it doesn't happen under his watch.

 Tony Blair admits Jeremy Corbyn could become Prime Minister

The claim comes amid a discussion within Labour about whether local party members should have more power over selecting the partys candidate in their seat.

Opponents say sitting MPs have a personal mandate from the electorate, and should not have to face additional selection measures to backed by Labour resources and activists.

Those who want to change the rules say the parliamentary party should more reflect the views of the leaders and the membership  after years of criticism and briefing by MPs against Mr Corbyn peaking at a no-confidence vote last year.

Under the Labour rulebook, MPs currently have to face a trigger ballot by party members, though this rule was suspended by the partys national executive at the most recent election.

The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy has proposed an amendment to this rule to make members powers stronger, though it says the proposal stops short of mandatory reselection of MPs at every election.

In 2007, party leadership did however back the deselection of rebellious MP Bob Wareing, the Labour member for Liverpool West Derby.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA

A toxic war between the factions in the party has led to claims that opponents of the leadership will face being deselected or forced out.

Baroness Armstrong said: I know MPs where basically there is a process of harassment, where at every meeting they are criticised, they are challenged, they are told that they dont represent the people in the room. And all this is meant to do is grind them down, wear them down, and get them to believe they shouldnt be in the Labour party any more.

The real issue is, can you make sure that sectarianism doesnt rule? And at the moment in some areas, it is ruling. And Jeremy has the opportunity over the summer and at party conference to make it absolutely clear that he is not going to lead a narrow sectarian faction, hes going to lead a broad church that is tolerant. And the real test for Jeremy is, is he up to it?

Additional reporting by Press Association
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Liam Fox has been accused of behaving like a tinpot dictator after condemning the BBC for what he claimed is biased reporting of Brexit.

The International Trade Secretary has written to the corporations Director General, Lord Tony Hall, to seek a meeting to discuss what he alleged was the BBC wilfully ignoring positive stories about Britain's exit from the EU.

"I cannot recall a single time in recent times when I have seen good economic news that the BBC did not describe as 'despite Brexit', he wrote.

There is a clear pattern of unbalanced reporting of the EU economy and the work of the Department for International Trade, Dr Fox added in the letter.

The cabinet minister, a vocal Brexit supporter, highlighted the BBCs decision not to cover statistics on annual foreign direct investment released by his department and said the corporation had declined to interview him about a recent trade visit to Paris.

I understand that the BBC cannot cover every story and I appreciate too that, despite its best efforts, the corporation cannot always guarantee total impartiality, he wrote.

However, I believe that we are now seeing a clear pattern of unbalanced reporting of the UK economy and, when it comes to the work of my department, evidence of the corporation wilfully ignoring positive economic data when we publish it.

Earlier in the month Dr Fox told MPs: It does feel like some elements of our media would rather see Britain fail than see Brexit succeed.

What experts have said about Brexit Show all 11 1 /11 What experts have said about Brexit What experts have said about Brexit Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond The Chancellor claims London can still be a world financial hub despite Brexit One of Britains great strengths is the ability to offer and aggregate all of the services the global financial services industry needs This has not changed as a result of the EU referendum and I will do everything I can to ensure the City of London retains its position as the worlds leading international financial centre. Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Yanis Varoufakis Greece's former finance minister compared the UK relations with the EU bloc with a well-known song by the Eagles: You can check out any time you like, as the Hotel California song says, but you can't really leave. The proof is Theresa May has not even dared to trigger Article 50. It's like Harrison Ford going into Indiana Jones' castle and the path behind him fragmenting. You can get in, but getting out is not at all clear Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Michael OLeary Ryanair boss says UK will be screwed by EU in Brexit trade deals: I have no faith in the politicians in London going on about how the world will want to trade with us. The world will want to screw you  that's what happens in trade talks, he said. They have no interest in giving the UK a deal on trade Getty What experts have said about Brexit Tim Martin JD Wetherspoon's chairman has said claims that the UK would see serious economic consequences from a Brexit vote were "lurid" and wrong: We were told it would be Armageddon from the OECD, from the IMF, David Cameron, the chancellor and President Obama who were predicting locusts in the fields and tidal waves in the North Sea" PA What experts have said about Brexit Mark Carney Governor of Bank of England is 'serene' about Bank of England's Brexit stance: I am absolutely serene about the  judgments made both by the MPC and the FPC Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Christine Lagarde IMF chief urges quick Brexit to reduce economic uncertainty: We want to see clarity sooner rather than later because we think that a lack of clarity feeds uncertainty, which itself undermines investment appetites and decision making Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Inga Beale Lloyds chief executive says Brexit is a major issue: "Clearly the UK's referendum on its EU membership is a major issue for us to deal with and we are now focusing our attention on having in place the plans that will ensure Lloyd's continues trading across Europe EPA What experts have said about Brexit Colm Kelleher President of US bank Morgan Stanley says City of London will suffer as result of the EU referendum: I do believe, and I said prior to the referendum, that the City of London will suffer as result of Brexit. The issue is how much What experts have said about Brexit Richard Branson Virgin founder believes we've lost a THIRD of our value because of Brexit and cancelled a deal worth 3,000 jobs: We're not any worse than anybody else, but I suspect we've lost a third of our value which is dreadful for people in the workplace.' He continued: "We were about to do a very big deal, we cancelled that deal, that would have involved 3,000 jobs, and thats happening all over the country" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Barack Obama US President believes Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU: "It is absolutely true that I believed pre-Brexit vote and continue to believe post-Brexit vote that the world benefited enormously from the United Kingdom's participation in the EU. We are fully supportive of a process that is as little disruptive as possible so that people around the world can continue to benefit from economic growth" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Kristin Forbes American economist and an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England argues that the economy had been less stormy than many expected following the shock referendum result: For nowthe economy is experiencing some chop, but no tsunami. The adverse winds could quickly pick up  and merit a stronger policy response. But recently they have shifted to a more favourable direction Getty

His latest intervention led the Liberal Democrats to accuse Dr Fox of behaving like a tinpot dictator.

Alistair Carmichael, the partys Chief Whip, said: "This is a blatant attempt at intimidating the BBC and undermining the independence of our media.

"The BBC shouldn't be bullied into publishing government propaganda and has rightly stood its ground.

"Liam Fox is acting like a tinpot dictator. He can't blame the media for his inability to deliver on all the trade deals promised by the Brexiteers."

A BBC spokesperson said: No organisation takes coverage of the economy more seriously.

We do not recognise the characterisation of our coverage outlined in the letter, but the BBC is always happy to talk with politicians as we always do on a regular basis.

Mr Foxs claims come just weeks after Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the House of Commons, was lambasted for saying UK broadcasters should be more patriotic in their coverage of Brexit.

"It would be helpful if broadcasters were willing to be a bit patriotic," she told BBC Newsnight. "The country took a decision, this Government is determined to deliver on that decision."
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Eight suspected illegal immigrants have been found dead inside a truck parked behind a Walmart store in Texas, authorities say.

A ninth victim died later in hospital after being rescued alongside around 30 others. Many were suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion in the trailer, which lacked air conditioning or a water supply, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said.

The discoveries were made after a Walmart employee was approached for water by one of the travellers who had managed to escape from the vehicle in the early hours of Sunday.

Twenty people were airlifted to seven hospitals and their conditions were "critical to very critical", Mr Hood said. Eight others were admitted to hospital in a less serious condition. The people range from school-age children to adults in their twenties and thirties, he said.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said many of the those who survived would suffer severe permanent brain damage.

Firefighters and paramedics arrived on the scene shortly after midnight, Mr Hood said. Officials determined that the truck had reached over 100F (37.7C).

Officials investigate a truck that was found to contain 38 suspected illegal immigrants and eight dead bodiesin San Antonio (EPA)

The temperature in San Antonio reached 101F (38C) on Saturday and didn't dip below 90F (32C) until after 10 pm.

[The passengers] were very hot to the touch, Mr Hood said. Each one of them had heart rates over about 130 beats per minute.

Some of the travellers scattered into the surrounding forest when authorities arrived, according to reports. Officials are now trying to identify the dead and locate those who fled. San Antonio police said the case has been transferred to federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Thomas Homan, ICE acting director, condemned the horrific crime in a statement on Sunday morning.

By any standard, the horrific crime uncovered last night ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished," he said. "These networks have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for those they smuggle."

A hearse sits in the car park of a Walmart supermarket in San Antonio, where eight people were found dead in a tractor-trailer loaded with at least 30 others on 23 July (AP)

In a statement released by ICE, US Attorney Richard Durbin vowed to identify those responsible.

These people were helpless in the hands of their transporters, he said. Imagine their suffering, trapped in a stifling trailer in 100-plus degree heat. The driver is in custody and will be charged.

Authorities declined to identify the driver, who was driving a Pyle Transportation truck. Brian Pyle identified himself to The Washington Post as the owner of the company, but said the driver operated largely independently.

[The driver] had my name on the side and I pay for his insurance. He makes his own decisions, buys his own fuel, Mr Pyle said, adding that he had no idea what the man was transporting.

Authorities say the driver could face federal and state charges.

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

"[This] is not an isolated incident, the San Antonio police chief warned. This happens quite frequently ... Fortunately there are people who survived, but this happens all the time.

This is not the first time suspected illegal immigrants have died while being transported into the country. In one of the deadliest cases on record in the US, 19 immigrants locked inside a truck died in Victoria, Texas, in 2003.

President Donald Trump has vowed to make human trafficking a priority in federal immigration enforcement, claiming the problem is not talked about enough. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, has championed the cause, leading a roundtable discussion on the issue at the White House and helping unveil an international human trafficking report.

But immigrants rights advocates say Mr Trumps crackdown on immigration will only make the problem worse, forcing victims of human trafficking to stay silent for fear of being deported.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Three schools in Texas are reintroducing corporate punishment for bad behaviour.

Staff will be able to use a wooden paddle to beat disobedient students in Three Rivers Schools District, which educates children from four to 18 at its elementary, junior and senior high schools.

The child will receive one paddling for each misdemeanour, such as not following rules in the classroom or not obeying teachers.

When parents enrol their children, they will be asked whether they consent to the use of corporal punishment. Only children whose parents agree will receive it.

If the parent is not comfortable with it, that's the end of the discussion, Three Rivers Independent Schools District Superintendent Mary Springs told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

The policy was pitched to the board by the elementary schools campus behaviour co-ordinator, Andrew Amaro. He hopes it will be a more effective deterrent for the four to 12-year-olds in his care than simply a detention.

 Indian woman 'beaten with hockey sticks by in-laws over dowry demands'

Mr Amaro was paddled as a schoolboy and says it worked on him, he said.

It was an immediate response for me. I knew that if I got in trouble with a teacher and I was disrespectful, whatever the infraction was, I knew I was going to get a swat by the principal.

Only certain members of staff  behaviour co-ordinators and the principal  will be permitted to use the paddle.

Three Rivers six-strong board of trustees approved the policy unanimously.

The school will track the number of paddlings doled out, in order to evaluate the policy.

"We will look at how many discipline referrals were made compared to last year and how many times [corporal punishment] was administered," said Ms Springs.

"If it reduces the number of discipline referrals, then that is a good thing."

The National Association of School Psychologists defines corporal punishment as "the intentional infliction of pain or discomfort and/or the use of physical force upon a student with the intention of causing the student to experience bodily pain so as to correct or punish the student's behaviour.

Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education Show all 10 1 /10 Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 1. University of Oxford Rank 2016-17 Getty Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 2. University of Cambridge Rank 2016-17 AFP/Getty Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 3. Imperial College London Rank 2016-17 Getty Images Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 4. University College London Rank 2016-17 Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 5. London School of Economics Rank 2016-17 Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 6. University of Edinburgh Rank 2016-17 Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 7. Kings College London Rank 2016-17 Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 8. University of Manchester Rank 2016-17 Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 9. University of Bristol Rank 2016-17 Top 10 universities in the UK according to the Times Higher Education 10. 10. University of Warwick Rank 2016-17 University of Warwick via Facebook

In 2016, the then-US Secretary of Education John B King Jr. wrote to state leaders asking them to ban corporal punishment in schools, after an investigation found that 110,000 American schoolchildren receive it every year.

In the short term, being physically punished makes students more aggressive and defiant, defeating the policys aim, King wrote. Moreover in the long term, such students are more likely to suffer mental health issues and substance abuse.

No school can be considered safe or supportive if its students are fearful of being physically punished.

"School-sponsored corporal punishment is not only ineffective, it is a harmful practice, and one that disproportionally impacts students of colour and students with disabilities," Mr King wrote.

"This practice has no place in the public schools of a modern nation that plays such an essential role in the advancement and protection of civil and human rights."

Current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has not revealed her stance.

Fifteen US states, predominantly the southern ones, permit corporal punishment, according to NPR. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia prohibit it, while seven neither permit or prohibit it.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

President Donald Trump has privately expressed doubts about Russian meddling in the US election, the incoming White House Communications director has revealed.

Anthony Scaramucci, who recently replaced Michael Dubke as head of White House communications in a dramatic White House shakeup, told CNNs Jake Tapper that someone called him recently to express ambivalence on the possibility of Russian hacking.

Pressed on who that someone was, Mr Scaramucci responded, The President.

"He called me from Air Force One and he basically said to me, 'Hey, you know, maybe they did do it, maybe they didn't do it', Mr Scaramucci said.

He added that the President told him that even if the hacking did occur, it would be impossible to tell, given the Russian actors degree of sophistication.

The FBI, CIA and NSA have determined with high confidence that Russian actors meddled in the US election, releasing damaging information on Hillary Clinton and spreading false reports via social media to aid Mr Trump's camapaign. Recent reports indicate Russian actors may also have accessed poll workers software in as many as 39 states.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

The President, however, has been noncommittal on the subject. On a recent state visit to Poland, Mr Trump told a crowd that nobody really knows for sure whether the hacking occurred.

"I think it very well could be Russia but I think it could very well have been other countries," he said at a press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda. "I think a lot of people interfere."

Nevertheless, the White House maintained that Mr Trump raised the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin at their first face-to-face meeting since the US leader took office. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Mr Trump raised the issue multiple times in a meeting with Mr Putin at the G20 summit earlier this month.

Mr Putin reportedly denied any involvement in the hacking attempts.

Mr Trump has also voraciously denied any involvement with the hacking himself, calling accusations of collusion a hoax, and the investigation into his campaign a witch hunt.

Mr Scaramucci similarly denied such accusations on Sunday, defending Mr Trumps eldest son, Donald Jr, for meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer during the Trump campaign.

"The kid took a nothing meeting, he said of the President's 39-year-old son.

Mr Trump, the spokesman added, has yet to reach a decision on a bill imposing sweeping new sanction on Russia. The House is slated to vote on the bill next week.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Both Democrat and Republican leaders in the US Congress have agreed on legislation to punish Russia for election meddling.

The new legislation would effectively prevent Donald Trump's from unilaterally lifting any sanctions on Moscow, which he previously said he needed to do for the sake of diplomacy between the two nations.

While the US President could veto the bill, doing so would fuel suspicion he is too supportive of Vladimir Putin's federal republic.

 Donald Trump: 'A US president has complete power to pardon'

The legislation, which will be voted on by the House of Representatives on Tuesday, would allow new sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea in 2014 as well as its alleged meddling in the US election.

Although Moscow has consistently denied any wrongdoing, US investigators are currently looking into whether there was any collusion between members of the Trump campaign and US officials.

The bill would also include sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said he saw the sanctions proposal as "highly negative," the state-run news agency RIA reported.

Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Show all 22 1 /22 Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Donald Trump's international Presidential trips French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump talk as they leave the Army Museum at Les Invalides in Paris AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Donald Trump arrive for the group photo at the G7 Taormina summit on the island of Sicily in May 2017 Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Mr Trump was pressed on the subject at the G7 summit in Italy Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump gives a speeech at the Warsaw Uprising Monument on Krasinski Square Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May during a ceremony at the NATO headquarters before the start of a summit in Brussels, Belgium Reuters Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic is seen to the right of Donald Trump at a Nato summit in Brussels REUTERS Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Pope Francis meeting with US President Donald J. Trump EPA Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Pope Francis poses with US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump arrives at Palazzo del Quirinale ahead of the meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella Ufficio Stampa Presidenza della via Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump is seen during a joint press conference with the Palestinian leader at the presidential palace in the West Bank city of Bethlehem AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas meets US President Donald Trump PPO via Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with US President Donald Trump prior to the President's departure GPO via Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands after delivering a speech at the Israel Museum AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump lay a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance as White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump watch on during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem accompanied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu GPO via Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump takes his seat before his speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia Reuters Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, US President Donald Trump and US First Lady Melania Trump look at a display of Saudi modern art at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud take part in a signing ceremony at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips King Salman presents Donald Trump with The Collar of Abdulaziz al-Saud Medal at the Royal Court Palace on 20 May AP Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump is welcomed by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud upon arrival at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk on the South Lawn prior to their first foreign trip Getty Images

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, said: "Given the many transgressions of Russia, and President Trump's seeming inability to deal with them, a strong sanctions bill such as the one Democrats and Republicans have just agreed to is essential."

He went on to say the Senate would act on the legislation "promptly, on a broad bipartisan basis and send the bill to the President's desk."

On Saturday, Mr Trump tweeted to say he had "complete power" to issue pardons.

He said: "While all agree the US President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS."

The Washington Post recently reported that Mr Trump had inquired about the authority he has as President to pardon aides, relatives or even himself in connection with the widening investigation into Russian interference in the election and whether any Trump associates were involved.

No crimes have been committed, Mr Trump maintains.

On Saturday morning, Mr trump sent a flurry of 10 tweets, commenting about pardons, former presidential rival Hillary Clinton, his son Don Jr, health care, the USS Gerald Ford, the attorney general and other issues.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Donald Trumps personal lawyer has taken to the airwaves to defend the Presidents claim that he has the power to pardon himself from a crime.

Clearly the constitution does vest a plenary pardon power within the presidency, attorney Jay Sekulow told ABCs George Stephanopoulos, adding that it was not something the White House is considering currently.

Whether it applies to the president himself I think ultimately would be a matter for the court to decide, if it were ever to come into existence, he continued. But from a constitutional legal perspective you cant dismiss it one way or the other.

The presidents unilateral power to forgive criminals has long been acknowledged under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. The power of the president to pardon himself, however, has not been as extensively tested.

Mr Trump set off the debate over this possible power on Saturday with a controversial tweet.

While all agree the US president has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us, Mr Trump wrote, in what many considered an indication that he may attempt to pardon himself or those close to him.

On Sunday Mr Sekulow denied that the White House had any interest in the subject, saying the presidents power to pardon himself is not an issue were concerned with or dealing with.

Incoming communications director Anthony Scaramucci, however, told CNNs Jake Tapper he had discussed the issue with Mr Sekulow. In a subsequent appearance on Fox News Sunday, Mr Scaramucci said he had also discussed the matter with the President himself.

Im in the Oval Office with the President last week and we were talking about that, Mr Scaramucci said. He says he brought that up, but he doesnt have to be pardoned, theres nobody around him that has to be pardoned.

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

Several members of Mr Trumps inner circle have faced legal scrutiny in recent months over allegations of improper contact with Russian officials. His son Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Vice President Mike Pence have all recently secured lawyers, though none have been formally charged with a crime.

Mr Trump himself has secured legal representation in the investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia. Along with Mr Sekulow, the President has brought on attorneys Ty Cobb and Marc Kasowitz to represent him in the Justice Department probe.

The Washington Post reports that this legal team is now looking into ways to undercut the Justice Departments special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, in his investigation. Close advisers said the President and his team have discussed the extent of his power to pardon aides, family members, and even himself.

The legal team is also reportedly compiling a list of Mr Muellers alleged conflicts of interest, in an effort one Republican described as laying the groundwork to fire the prosecutor.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington who became a household name amid allegations of Kremlin meddling in the US election, is officially leaving Washington.

The Russian embassy announced his resignation via Twitter, writing, Ambassador S.Kislyak has concluded his assignment in Washington, DC.

The post will be temporarily filled by Minister-Counselor and Deputy Chief of Mission Denis Gonchar while the Kremlin confirms a replacement. Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Antonov is slated to take over the position, but his nomination has yet to be approved.

Mr Kislyak has previously served as Russian ambassador to Belgium and permanent representative of Russia to Nato in Brussels. He has worked for the Russian Foreign Ministry since 1977.

The 66-year-old diplomat, who was appointed ambassador to the US in 2008, has developed a much higher profile in recent months, thanks to the intrigue surrounding his home country and the Trump administration.

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

Days before the embassy announced his departure, for instance, The Washington Post reported that US intelligence had intercepted conversations between Mr Kislyak and Moscow concerning US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The intercepted communications purportedly reveal that the ambassador and Attorney General had discussed campaign-related matters, including issues important to Moscow, over the course of the Trump campaign. Mr Sessions, the former senator from Alabama, has previously claimed he met with Mr Kislyak only in his capacity as a US legislator.

Mr Sessions has already recused himself from the Justice Departments Russia probe, after failing to reveal multiple meetings with Mr Kislyak over the course of the campaign.

Sergey Kislyak worked hard during the election campaign to reach out to members of the Trump team (Getty)

Mr Kislyak also played a role in the downfall of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who stepped down after it was revealed that he had misled the Vice President and others as to the extent his conversations with Mr Kislyak.

One of those conversations, it was recently revealed, included Mr Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The two men met Mr Kislyak at Trump Tower in December 2016 to discuss setting up a private back-channel for communications between Washington and Moscow, The New York Times reports.

Mr Kushner failed to include this meeting in his initial security clearance paperwork, but later disclosed it, along with several other phone calls with the ambassador.

The Russian government denies any interference in the US election, and Mr Trump has decried any accusations of collusion as a witch hunt.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Saturday Night Live (SNL) has said goodbye to Melissa McCarthys portrayal of Sean Spicer after his resignation as White House press secretary.

The show paid tribute to Spicey, with a hilarious montage of some of McCarthys best moments in the role.

McCarthys portrayal of the former press secretary received acclaim from fans across the globe, with many taking to social media to express their disappointment it has now come to an end.

The show marked the end of the character and posted a video montage on Twitter with the caption Spicey out.

Mr Spicer had a difficult relationship with the media and after a tumultuous start to the year he became a national target of ridicule.

He had previously spoken out about his portrayal on SNL and said McCarthy had gone over the line.

There were a couple of parts that were funny but there was a lot of it that was over the line. It wasnt funny. It was stupid or silly or malicious, he said on Fox News.

Mr Spicer resigned suddenly from his White House post, citing concern with Donald Trump's decision to hire Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director.

"It's been an honour and a privilege to serve [President Donald Trump] and this amazing country," he tweeted after the news that he had resigned was released. "I will continue my service through August."

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Trump had reportedly asked his press secretary to stay on but Mr Spicer told the President that the appointment of Mr Scaramucci was a big mistake and he could not continue.

Mr Scaramucci, a Wall Street financier and long-time supporter of Mr Trump, will replace Mike Dubke, who resigned amid the fallout from primarily Russia-related scandals.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Attorneys investigating Russias alleged election meddling see money laundering accusations levied against Donald Trump's campaign manager as a potential way to get him to cooperate with the investigation.

Sources with knowledge of the investigation say that developing a potential case against Paul Manafort could be key to getting him to cooperate in the probe into whether there was collusion between the campaign and Russian sources, according to Reuters.

They did not indicate whether money laundering evidence had been uncovered.

Special Prosecutor Robert Muellers team is taking a look at Mr Manaforts financial and real estate records in New York. Theyre also taking a look at his role in Ukrainian politics.

Mr Manafort bought three properties in New York between 2006 and 2013  including one apartment in Trump Tower  and paid for them in full. He later took out mortgages on the properties. That kind of tactic can be used to attempt to keep the source of the cash secret, according to a former US law enforcement official. Reuters didnt have any independent evidence showing that Mr Manafort had actually bought those properties with that intention.

Its unclear if the investigators have that kind of information, either, but individuals with knowledge of the investigation say that it is seen as critical to fully fleshing out the investigation.

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

If Mueller's team can threaten criminal charges against Manafort, they could use that as leverage to convince him to cooperate, one source said.

Mr Manaforts people said that the allegations are off the mark.

Paul Manafort is not a cooperating witness. Once again there is no truth to the disinformation put forth by anonymous sources and leakers, Jason Maloni, a lawyer for Mr Manafort said.

The news comes after it was discovered that Mr Manafort had attended a meeting alongside Donald Trump Jr, and Donald Trumps son-in-law Jared Kusher, at Trump Tower to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. An individual setting up the meeting noted in an email to Mr Trump Jr that the dirt was being made available as a part of the effort on behalf of the Russian government to support Mr Trumps campaign.

The White House and Mr Trump Jr say that it was appropriate to take the meeting, and that they did not receive the promised damaging intelligence on Ms Clinton.

Whatever the case, the Mueller investigation appears to be taking concerns that the meeting indicates collusion seriously. Following reports of the meeting, investigators requested that the White House retain any and all documents between the Trump campaign and Russia.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

More than 200 sheep fell to their deaths after being chased off a cliff by a bear.

The sheep belonged to a farmer in Couflens, France and were frightened off when the predator attacked one of its flock.

After the predator attacked the first sheep, the other 209 ran away in a panic, according to the Guardian.

The sheep fell off a 200 metre-high cliff, situated on the border of France and Spain, while trying to make an escape.

The bodies of 169 sheep were discovered at the foot of the cliff in the Spanish village of Lladdore, and the others were found in France.

Bear fur was spotted on one of the sheep and analysis will now take place to ascertain what happened, according to Europa Press.

The bears have been reintroduced to the region after becoming extinct in the area over the past 30 years

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

More than 130 sheep died in similar bear-related incidents in the previous year and local farmers have raised concerns about the predators attacking their livestock.

Pastoralism  which protects biodiversity and keeps the mountains alive  is not compatible with the reintroduction of large predators, the local branch of the French farmers federation said.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Israel is playing with fire and risking a major crisis with the Arab and Islamic world, the Arab League has warned.

The warning came after Israel sent extra troops into the occupied West Bank as violence erupted over Israels installation of metal detectors at entry points to the shrine, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

A spate of violence has seen a Palestinian attacker stab three Israelis to death on Friday, with three Palestinians killed hours before.

 Trump says he will fight for peace deal between Israel and Palestine

Jerusalem is a red line that Muslims and Arabs cannot allow to be crossed ... and what is happening today is an attempt to impose a new reality on the Holy city, Arab League secretary-general Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in a statement.

The Israeli government is playing with fire and risking a major crisis with the Arab and Islamic world.

Arab League foreign ministers will hold emergency talks in Cairo on Wednesday, the group said in a statement.

The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Getty Images The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child

On Friday, several thousand Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in Jerusalem after noon prayers. Three Palestinians were killed and several dozen wounded after protesters burned tyres and threw stones and firecrackers. Israeli troops responded with live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Later on Friday night, a 20-year-old Palestinian identified as Omar al-Abed jumped over the fence of the Halamish settlement near Ramallah and entered a home, surprising a family that was celebrating a new grandchild during their traditional Sabbath dinner and stabbing three Israelis to death.

A neighbour, an off-duty soldier, heard the screams, rushed to the home and opened fire, wounding the attacker. TV footage showed the floor tiles drenched in blood, and officials called it a massacre.

Medics evacuate an Israeli woman who was injured during a knife attack (Reuters) (REUTERS)

On Sunday, Israel installed new security cameras at the entrance to the sensitive holy site, as officials began indicating it was considering alternatives to the metal detectors that set off a weekend of violence and raised tensions.

Israel set up the new security measures last week after Arab gunmen opened fire from the shrine, killing two Israeli policemen.

It said they were a necessary measure to prevent more attacks and were deployed routinely at holy sites around the world. But Muslims alleged Israel was trying to expand its control at the Muslim-administered site and have launched mass prayer protests.

Major General Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Israeli defence body for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel was open to alternatives to lower the tensions.

The only thing we want is to ensure no one can enter with weapons again and carry out another attack, he said. Were willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors as long as the solution of alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack.

Palestinian protesters hurl stones towards Israeli troops during the violence (Reuters)

However, the top Muslim cleric of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, told the Voice of Palestine radio station he demanded a complete return to procedures that were in place before the initial attack at the shrine.

In a statement, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem said they affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation.

Disputes over the shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, have set off major rounds of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations in the past.

Palestinians run from tear gas shot by Israeli forces after Friday prayers on a street outside Jerusalems Old City (Reuters/Ammar Awad)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced he would freeze ties with Israel on all levels until the new security measures were removed. Halting security coordination with Israel would have far-reaching repercussions and could sharply raise tensions.

But Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman said the security ties are more beneficial to the Palestinians anyway, and while Israel can live without them the Palestinians would suffer.

The United Nations Security Council plans to meet on Monday to discuss the bloodiest spate of Israeli-Palestinian violence for years. Sweden, Egypt and France requested the meeting to urgently discuss de-escalation in Jerusalem.

Additional reporting by agencies
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Two Jordanian men have been shot dead and an Israeli man wounded near the Israeli embassy in Amman.

Jordan's public security directorate said Jordanians had entered a residential building in the embassy's heavily fortified compound to carry out carpentry work before the incident.

A statement did not say what triggered the shooting, which initially wounded three people, or who was responsible.

Two Jordanians later died, including a doctor living in the building, according to the Hala Akhbar news site.

Reports in local media said the Israeli man was in an "unstable" condition in hospital, with large numbers of security personnel deployed at the scene.

There was no immediate confirmation from Israeli authorities because of a gagging order imposed by the government.

The incident comes after days of rising tensions in the region over Israel's decision to install metal detectors at entrances to the al-Aqsa mosque, which occupies one of the holiest sites in both Islam and Judaism. Muslims call the site Haram al-Sharif while Jews consider it to be the holy Temple Mount.

Several thousand people demonstrated on Friday in Amman and in cities and refugee camps across Jordan, which is the Islamic custodian of the site.

Many of Jordan's 7 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The detectors were installed after two Israeli policemen were shot dead by three Arab-Israeli gunmen on 14 July.

The move sparked a series of violent clashes and led Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority President, to halt security co-operation with Israel.

Other regional leaders warned that the clashes in Jerusalem could spread to other parts of the Middle East.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President, said: "No one can expect the Islamic world to remain unresponsive after the humiliation Muslims suffered with the restrictions at the Noble Sanctuary."

Arab League secretary-general Ahmed Aboul Gheit said: "Jerusalem is a red line that Muslims and Arabs cannot allow to be crossed ... and what is happening today is an attempt to impose a new reality on the Holy city.

"The Israeli government is playing with fire and risking a major crisis with the Arab and Islamic world."

Israel has so far refused to back down over the increased security measures at the al-Aqsa mosque.

Tzachi Hanegbi, the minister for regional development and a senior member of the ruling Likud party, told Army Radio: They will remain. The murderers will never tell us how to search the murderers. If they [Palestinians] do not want to enter the mosque, then let them not enter the mosque."

Additional reporting by agencies
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A school in Australia is permitting students as young as 15 to have a smoking break at lunch and other recess periods.

Carolyn Blanden, principal at The Warakirri College in Sydney, said she believed that relaxed rules would encourage the children to keep attending school.

At my school you can come with bright blue hair and metal in your face, Ms Blanden told Australia's Daily Telegraph.

And if you need to have a smoke, that's OK too.

One student from Warakirris Blacktown campus told News Corp that the previous smoking ban was one of the reasons she did not attend school.

Ms Blanden defended her decision, saying she would rather her students smoke cigarettes, with all the health risks it involved, rather than have them floating around the streets or in detention.

The principal has previously worked at expensive fee-paying private schools but says her current job is the most rewarding work I think Ive ever done.

Many of the schools students are from broken homes, with many parents either in jail or battling drug addiction. Under their curriculum, Warakirris students can study three subjects per year rather than six for two years.

The school is similar to an adult learning environment, with no fees or uniforms. There is a gym and students are allowed to leave the campus grounds when not in class.

Many of the children who graduated Year 10 (age 14-16) in 2016 were the first in their families to achieve a Record of School Achievement (RoSA).

Warakirri College is an initiative of MTC Australia, a registered charity that supports the school so students do not pay fees. The name means to stand or grow in an Aboriginal Australian language.

Is smoking still defensible? Show all 4 1 /4 Is smoking still defensible? Is smoking still defensible? 619889.bin PA Is smoking still defensible? 619890.bin Getty Images Europe Is smoking still defensible? 619891.bin Getty Images Europe Is smoking still defensible? 619892.bin Getty Images

It caters to students aged between 15-22 and there are a small number of refugee students who have missed out on formal education for several years.

Nathan Collins, 15, who had dropped out of school because of being bullied, has returned to education thanks to Warakirris encouragement. Youve got a lot of freedom, he told the Blacktown Sun. Youre not always trapped in a box.

The teachers are all really laid back and nice to you. Theres more one-on-one time. The other kids are not distracting you and mucking up.
When he was growing up on his family's 500-acre beef farm three miles outside the Co Fermanagh town of Lisnaskea, Maurice Kettyle believed he was destined to become a vet. But life had other plans about how the farmer's son would bring home the bacon.

During a gap year from studying veterinary medicine, Kettyle moved into the meat industry "by semi-default": while working on the farm, he was asked by two meat processing plants, including one now part of ABP - owned by beef baron Larry Goodman - if he was interested in procuring livestock for them.

The work was too lucrative to resist and he soon found himself working internationally. "I started earning nice money on commissions," he says.

Meat factory in Sudan

By the age of 26, Kettyle was running a meat factory in Sudan, where nomadic cattle grazed along the banks of the Nile.

But on his return to Northern Ireland three years later, Kettyle had grown weary of the mass meat market where Irish beef had no "brand recognition" abroad.

So he sought out a new direction and clinched a job as a sales manager for Avondale Foods. There, he became familiar with the needs of clients such as Marks & Spencer, Dunnes Stores and SuperValu.

Kettyle says: "The more I learned, the more I realised there was a niche market for an Irish brand of beef. It just wasn't right that Irish beef was going to Scotland, being branded as Scottish and sold to London restaurants as prime Scottish beef.

"By working at Avondale and understanding the retail and restaurant side, I figured out that there was a break in the chain: farmers knew about factories and factories knew wholesalers but wholesalers didn't know restaurants. I decided to go right to the end-consumer - the restaurant."

The eureka moment

Kettyle's eureka moment prompted him in 2003 to create Kettyle Irish Foods, a craft butchery brand that now sells hand-selected cuts of dry-aged meat directly to retailers - including M&S - and to more than 700 restaurants across Ireland, the UK and Europe, 28 of which are Michelin-starred.

By marrying his veterinary training with his farming background and knowledge of the meat industry, Kettyle set out to collaborate with the small farmers supplying his business in Lisnaskea on his standards of animal husbandry, nutrition and slaughter procedures for grass-fed animals raised around the island.

He could then give chefs what they wanted - consistent quality and unusual premium cuts of meat from his nose-to-tail butchery approach.

"Every chef wants their own cut of meat and they don't want it to be same as that sold in the restaurant next door," Kettyle says.

The fledgling business's unique selling point was its dry-ageing facility at its Lisnaskea factory. The only purpose-built facility in Europe, it boosts the flavour of the meat, tenderises it and ensures it doesn't shrink when cooked.

Salt and moss-aged beef

Kettyle Irish Foods also added a salt-and-moss ageing "cave", or chamber, that uses bricks made from salt from the Irish Sea, seaweed and carrageen moss to dry-age the beef.

Kettyle says: "People didn't really understand dry-ageing in 2004 and it seemed quite a niche. But that year I joined up with some star chefs coming on the scene, like Paul Rankin and Michael Deane in Belfast, Ross Lewis in Chapter One in Dublin, and began supplying them and restaurants like The Lanesborough in London and Guilbaud's in Dublin. As chefs moved through, the word started to get around and the trend started to evolve."

As Kettyle Irish Foods began to expand, it took on Pallas Foods as a partner to distribute its products all around the island. It also increased its product range from dry-aged beef to include Lough Erne lamb, Fermanagh free-range chicken, seaweed-cured bacon, and naturally reared Irish rose veal. Employee numbers swelled from three at the outset to a current 75 people.

By 2011, the company had supplied ribs of beef from a farm in Co Wexford for the state dinner held in honour of Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Ireland. Two years later, Kettyle Irish Foods won a contract worth 1m (1.14m) to supply dry-aged beef to affluent Gulf markets such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

'We needed a lot of cash'

But it hasn't all been plain sailing for Kettyle. Just as the company was in growth mode, the global credit crunch hit in 2008. "There was a lack of available credit but there was still demand for our product and we were growing fast," the 46-year-old says. "We needed a lot of cash."

Into the vacuum stepped Dungannon-based fresh meat processor Linden Foods, which acquired a majority stake in Kettyle Irish Foods. Linden, along with Wexford-beef supplier Slaney Foods, is part of the Linden Food Group, which itself is owned by the Northern Irish agribusiness co-op Fane Valley. In June, Fane Valley and Goodman's ABP announced they would extend their joint-venture relationship to include Linden Foods, with ABP taking a 50pc stake in the company.

Kettyle is also mindful that a hard Brexit may pose a challenge for the Fermanagh company. The business is about 12 miles from a border once marked by checkpoints and watchtowers during the Troubles. The possibility of another frontier that would hamper the free movement of goods and subject them to World Trade Organization tariffs would affect agriculture and the food industry the most, according to commentators.

"We don't really know what's going to happen and you can only prepare yourself by hedging your bets," Kettyle says.

To do so, he has been entering new markets like Dubai, Singapore and Macau and, over the medium-term, plans to export to the Philippines, Vietnam and the US.

"In America, the market is very driven by grain-fed meat and consumers are becoming much more health-conscious, so there's demand for grass-fed meat from Ireland," Kettyle says.

Another avenue for securing the business's prosperity is innovating to cater to changing food trends, such as by embracing other Irish flavours in a bid to gain an edge in the market.

Guinness Burger

In April, Kettyle Irish Foods linked up with Diageo to launch a high-end beef burger laced with Guinness flavours (albeit alcohol-free). The Kettyle Guinness burger, which is being sold both fresh and frozen in two, four, eight and 20-unit packs, has been rolled out to retailers and hospitality venues across Ireland and other parts of Europe. It's also for sale at the Guinness Storehouse, which, with 1.7m visitors last year, is Ireland's biggest paid-for tourist attraction.

Kettyle says: "Brexit wasn't an impetus for the venture - it was in progress long before the referendum. But the Guinness brand is a hell of a lot bigger than us, so the Guinness burger is a benefit with Brexit coming down the road."

The product also taps into the millennial market for artisan food products that are sustainably and locally produced and have an interesting back story.

The pitch to this generation of 21- to 35-year-old consumers was evident at the launch of the burger. It was held at the Open Gate Brewery, a bar at St James's Gate selling Diageo's small-batch experimental brews. Guests were given a bespoke craft apron and served a four-course tasting menu, with Instagram-friendly dishes such as Kettyle malt-cured meats with crusty sourdough bread and spiced cabbage salad, all teamed up with the Open Gate Amarillo Pilsner.

Kettyle says the burger is among a variety of products from his craft butchery business that will likely be combined with Guinness in the future over the next two to three years.

"Hopefully that will strengthen our case on the global market," he says.
John O'Brien, from Lyre East in Co Waterford, got out of finishing livestock for the meat factories two years ago because there was "no margin" for him, and now he is happily "making a profit" selling overwintered stores during the springtime.

"You'd never make a living out of finishing unless you have scale," says John (57). "The margins are too tight what with the cost of winter fodder, meal and getting rid of the slurry."

Instead, he now fattens up around 130 stores on his 40-acre farm between Cappoquin and Mount Melleray - "I can wave at the monks on a clear day" -and on an additional 60 leased acres nearby. He also continues to transport livestock and pigs to meat factories for local farmers.

"Farmers will always buy stores in the springtime when all that grass is in front of them and that gives me my margin," he says.

Expand Close John O'Brien Photo Sean Byrne / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp John O'Brien Photo Sean Byrne

"Sometimes I only get home at midnight on the livestock side of the business but the pigs have to be moved during daylight hours as they go straight to slaughter. The pigs lose weight if they are left in lairages overnight," he explains.

The transportation side of his farming enterprise was much larger 10 years ago when he employed some 22 staff in a thriving company which went under once the Cappoquin poultry companies dropped into examinership, leaving behind very substantial unpaid invoices.

"I was expanding and when the collapse came, I was caught in the middle. That was a depressing time, especially having to tell the staff who had been with me for years that their jobs were gone. But they have all got new jobs since so that's good," he says.

But he is back on the road and back in the fields.

John farms on his own while his wife Ann works in Glanbia. Their three children - Christopher (33), Linda (30) and Shane (28) - are all working off farm.

Christopher, who graduated in mechanical engineering is "managing director and a bit of a shareholder" of a haulage company in Australia - a job John likes to describe as "walking around with a briefcase". Shane works with his brother in the fleet maintenance section of the company. Linda works as a specialist nurse with the HSE.

Expand Close John O'Brien Photo Sean Byrne / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp John O'Brien Photo Sean Byrne

John's main off-farm interest revolves around vintage tractors and vintage-tractor events raising money mainly for local charities dealing with issues like dementia, cancer and depression.

He is behind next month's Mount Melleray Community Silage weekend where local women will draw the silage from 100 acres around the abbey. "The women competing don't have to use vintage tractors in this events. They can use whatever machine they feel comfortable with," John emphases.

And the monks on the hill will be playing an important role in the next family celebration when the "man with the briefcase" - Christopher - will get married to his Australian teacher girlfriend, Amy, at the end of September.

It has been 60 years since the last wedding was celebrated by the monks at Mount Melleray and these nuptials are sure to be some day out.

Brother Shane is returning for the wedding with his Limerick-born girlfriend Vicky.

John is expecting the pair to stay put after the celebrations - no doubt to help with the stores and the transport business.
Mount Briscoe Organic Farm is set to host the inaugural 'Mount Briscoe Rare and Traditional Breeds Show' on Sunday July 30 near Daingean, County Offaly.

The event aims to showcase and promote Ireland's native and traditional breeds in cattle, horses, sheep, pigs and goats. It also hopes to raise awareness about endangered heritage breeds of livestock.

Founder Margaret Edgill says many of Ireland's traditional livestock breeds have been replaced with more "improved" breeds in modern animal agriculture.

She says this has happened at the expense of a massive loss in genetic diversity.

Worldwide it is estimated that around one domesticated livestock breed is lost to extinction every month.

The Kerry, Irish Moile (Maol), Dexter cattle, Irish Draught horse, Connemara pony, Kerry Bog Pony and Galway sheep currently range from endangered to 'minority' on the Department of Agriculture's watch-list.

"Our rare breeds need to be showcased and celebrated. Show's like this are very important to show support for our agricultural heritage," said Margaret, who started breeding Irish Draft horses a decade ago.

Two years ago, the organic and Hereford suckler farmer bought two Irish Moiled cattle and started showing them as a hobby.

"Why Irish Moiled? Their docile nature, their uniqueness, their disposition - you simply can't help but love them. They truly do have a personality. I call my two girls Coco and Chanel, plus this year's heifer calf is 'Mount Briscoe Chantal' in keeping the French theme," she said.

"At one stage recently there were just 35 Irish Moiles left, they were scarily low in numbers, thankfully they have now come off the watch-list as endangered," she said.

The show, supported by the Irish Rare Breeds Society, will take place on her family's 32 hectare holding and is an opportunity for livestock conservation organisations' members, breeders, farmers, fans, and sponsors to advocate for conservation of heritage breeds in agriculture.

"The Mount Briscoe Rare and Traditional Breeds Show will give an opportunity to learn about biodiversity in agriculture and sharing information about heritage breeds. We are hoping it will become an annual event," she said.

The show schedule is available on www.mountbriscoe.ie and breed classes include Registered Irish Draught, Registered Connemara Ponies, Irish Moiled, Hereford and Shorthorn cattle, Jacob, Suffolk and Galway sheep. Postal entries close July 19, online July 26. Displays from Kerry Bog Pony, Dromineen, Dexter, Old Irish Goat, Hampshire Down will also feature.
Nama has sought to explain a near 1m difference between figures it supplied to Independent TD Mick Wallace for fees received by a Belfast-based financial consultancy for insolvency work, and information provided to him by finance minister Paschal Donohoe, saying that the money had been "deducted" by the firm rather than paid to it.

Responding to Wallace's questions in November 2015 on the agency's sale of its 5.4bn Northern Ireland loan book, codenamed Project Eagle, Nama's head of public affairs, Martin Whelan, said RSM McClure Watters had been paid some 60,000 in fees over the previous five years. The figure now appears to have grossly underestimated the amount Nama actually paid to the Belfast-based firm.

Replying to a parliamentary question last week from Wallace on the fees paid by Nama to insolvency practitioners, finance minister Paschal Donohoe confirmed that RSM McClure Watters had in fact received 1,038,306 during between 2011 and 2015 - or 978,306 more than the figure Nama provided to Wallace.

A breakdown of the payments shows that RSM McClure Watters received 268,680 in 2011; 156,553 in 2012, 253,009 in 2013; 274,534 in 2014 and 85,530 in 2015.

Asked to account for the difference, a spokesman for Nama said "The amount of 60,000 to which reference was made in the correspondence of November 2015 with Deputy Wallace comprises fees paid directly by Nama to RSM McClure Watters. In the case of receiverships, fees are normally deducted by receivers from asset-disposal proceeds and from asset income and therefore do not require direct payment by Nama to receivers. The amount of 1,038,306 includes all such fee deductions from disposal proceeds and asset income in addition to the 60,000 paid by Nama."

Wallace had sought information in 2015 on Nama's specific "interactions" with David Watters, the founder and then managing partner of RSM McClure Watters, as part of his inquiries into the events leading up to Nama's sale of its 5.4bn Northern Ireland loan book, code-named 'Project Eagle' to US private equity giant, Cerberus. The deal remains the subject of an investigation by the UK's National Crime Agency. Watters is considered to be one of the key architects along with businessman Frank Cushnahan and Belfast lawyer, Ian Coulter of Tughans, of the original idea for Nama to sell its Northern Ireland loan book in a single sale. All three men deny any wrongdoing.
Everyone was greatly exercised during the week about where the 178m to refund water charges was going to come from. The source of the funds wasn't at all obvious from reading the Summer Economic Statement by finance minister Paschal Donohoe.

Of course he provided the answer by saying it would come from savings or unspent money across various departments. It is deeply ironic that one of the country's biggest infrastructural needs is water, yet the state will use unspent allocations for infrastructure handing back money to people.

They will get it back into one pocket but it will have to come out of another pocket in time if we are ever to fix our creaking, leaking, inadequate water network.

Aside from 178m in water refunds, the Government's mid-year review raised a much bigger question.

Never the mind the water refund money, where are we going to get the 64.2bn the government reckons we will spend running the country in just four years' time.

Bear in mind we spent 54bn last year. So it is planning to spend an additional 10bn keeping the lights on and building infrastructure in 2021.

But don't panic. It is all going to come flooding in the door of the Revenue Commissioners through a massive boost in tax receipts - apparently. The budgeting from the Department of Finance assumes tax receipts will hit 62bn in just four years from now.

To put it in perspective, tax receipts last year were 47.8bn. So they are expected to rise by a massive 13.2bn per year between 2017 and 2021.

This is all predicated on the economy continuing to grow at a reasonable pace.

Let's assume it does. The Government's budgeting is based on tax receipts increasing by 28pc in just five years. Given that the Government is talking about cutting the tax burden, it beggars belief that tax receipts will increase by that much.

Unemployment is already below 7pc. How many more tax-paying jobs can be created in the next four years to generate all this additional tax? Corporation Tax is likely to come under pressure from changes in the US and the impact Brexit will have on key sectors. Even if we were to take in an extra 13.2bn per year in tax, the budgeting is based on the Government increasing spending by just 10bn. Somehow the government of the day is going to embrace fiscal discipline in a way that sees it take in all this extra money but only spend a portion of it.

This stretches credibility to say the least. The longer term fiscal assumptions in the mix look less like prudent household budgeting and more like fantasy Family Fortunes.

Bord na Mona finds its very own bog hole in Liverpool

Bord na Mona landed in a big bog hole with its purchase of Liverpool-based horticulture group White Moss. The state company went to great lengths during the week to emphasise its 1.2bn future energy investment programme but one couldn't help but notice the sludge it got stuck in across the water.

Bord na Mona bought White Moss Horticulture Ltd for 12.1m last Christmas. Seven months later it announced a massive 14m hit made up of professional fees, costs and write-downs because regulatory compliance issues had arisen with White Moss.

White Moss sells compost using recycled green waste mixed with peat and the regulatory breaches at the company's two Liverpool plants resulted in 1.4m in inventory written-off, along with professional fees associated with resolving the issue of a further 2m.

The whole sorry mess is heading for the courts as Bord na Mona has taken a legal action against the previous owners who sold the company in December 2016.

Irrespective of the outcome of that case, Bord na Mona was very enthusiastic about grabbing the opportunity it believed White Moss presented.

Bord na Mona has a massive 34pc market share in the UK in the growing media products sector. It is a good solid performance. With Brexit coming, it needed an opportunity to originate more of that product in the UK to mitigate possible currency or trading risks. Quite sensible.

White Moss looked like that opportunity. But the business was no great shakes. In the 12 months to August 2016, it reported a sharp increase in turnover from 8.5m to 10.3m. But excluding one-off hits, it still lost nearly 200,000. So they bought a company with a turnover of around 12m, that lost money last year, and paid 12.1m for it.

Its balance sheet had zero attributed for goodwill. As soon as Bord na Mona bought it, the state company lobbed in a goodwill value of 10.7m, which has now been written down just months later.

Bord na Mona said the goodwill was attributable to the "profitability and development opportunities associated with the complementing and enhancing of White Moss's production and distribution channels."

Bord na Mona obviously reckoned it was a great deal and it was on the pig's back. Instead this looks more like a slow roast. Shortly after the acquisition it had to make provisions of 5.4m against inventory and plant capacity issues.

Was a business that, excluding exceptionals, lost money last year, worth 12.1m? Bord na Mona obviously thought so and even agreed to pay the previous owners a further 2.2m if earnings targets were reached by August 2017.

Well that certainly ain't happening. According to the state company's accounts, White Moss reported a net loss of 1.2m in the first three months of 2017. That loss excludes goodwill impairments. But all is not lost despite the balance sheet hit of 14m on a 12m acquisition. Valuations conducted on land and buildings, as well as plant and machinery at White Moss, support Bord na Mona's view that they are worth over 7.2m.

Meanwhile, Bord na Mona has agreed a process with the UK environment authority and all new product is fully compliant.

Outgoing Bord na Mona chief executive Mike Quinn said he remains confident of "ultimately achieving a positive outcome which will validate our strategic intent in acquiring the business."

So it will all be OK in the end then Mike?

Why ride just one boom when you can ride two?

The housing market is getting boomier and boomier. Good news if you are a home builder, developer or a landlord. It isn't so good if you are trying to find a place to rent or buy.

It is even turning into good news for hotel group Dalata, which has decided to change tack on its Tara Towers Hotel. Instead of a big refurb job, it will knock down the old hotel, build a new four-star Maldron and 70 residential units. Property really is back when hotel companies, in a massive hotel boom, get into residential development, albeit through a partner.

The Irish Residential Properties REIT has received a strong buy recommendation from Goodbody Stockbrokers partially on the back of a push into developing more properties instead of just acquiring them and renting them out. Rent caps do not apply on new builds and IRES is expected to make around 8m on its Maple development of 68 apartments in Dublin. According to Goodbody average rents have grown by 7.4pc in the year to May and "this growth supports further rental and NAV upside".

So with no end in sight to rising rents and rising house prices, Pat McCann of Dalata sees scope to get in on the housing boom too. Why not ride two booms instead of just one?
'As first revealed in this column, high-flier Domhnal Slattery (pictured) and his wife Elaine are moving to the Shrewsbury Road house previously owned by developer Sean Dunne and Gayle Killilea.' Pic. Robbie Reynolds

It's so nice to get a neighbourly welcome to your new home, especially when you've shelled out 5.6m for your swanky pad with one of the best addresses in Dublin.

As first revealed in this column, high-flier Domhnal Slattery and his wife Elaine are moving to the Shrewsbury Road house previously owned by developer Sean Dunne and Gayle Killilea.

Expand Close British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was painted in an unflattering light in Donegal. Photo: AP / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was painted in an unflattering light in Donegal. Photo: AP

Far be it for me to suggest the well-heeled residents of the exclusive Dublin 4 address weren't fond of the previous owners, but they are very pleased with the latest additions.

Slattery, who also owns a semi-detached house on nearby Ailesbury Road, is planning to give the house known as Ouragh a facelift. He will demolish and upgrade the facade of the home, which some already had some significant upgrades during Dunne's time.

The Shrewsbury Road Residential and Environmental Protection Association has dashed off a letter to the council endorsing the plan.

The association is chaired by fellow Rich List regular Michael Maughan, who with his wife Gemma, owns a chunk of the Gowan Group. Former Smurfit director Peter Gleeson is honorary treasurer, while Carl McCann of Total Produce is honorary secretary.

The association writes that it is "passionate about protecting the unique character and quality of the area". "We are pleased to welcome a new family and therefore support this planning application".

AIBs Pym paints a scary image of Boris Johnson

AIB chairman Richard Pym gave one of the most entertaining speeches at last weeks MacGill Summer School in Donegal, where the great and the good gave their tuppence-worth on the challenges facing Ireland.

Pym participated in the discussion (moderated by yours truly) on whether or not Irelands infrastructure is ready for Brexit.

Pym clearly has no love for the Brexiteers.

Speaking of their vision for post-Brexit arrangements he said: They want to buy something that isnt for sale and hasnt even been invented. Pym said he has a recurring nightmare about Marshal Ferdinand Fochs railway carriage, where the armistice to end World War I was signed, being dusted off for a British surrender. Boris Johnson, sitting where representatives of the French government sat in June 1940, enjoying his cake with his afternoon tea; looking like Billy Bunter with cream on the end of his nose. A frightening image indeed.

* * * * *

Interesting to note some familiar names for and against a proposed housing development in Donabate, Co Dublin.

Tilberry Ltd has applied for planning permission to build 151 mainly two-bed duplex apartments outside the town. Developer Bernard McNamaras sister-in-law is a director of Tilberry and all the shares in the company are controlled by Michael B Namara, the name of the construction company in which he was so prominent during the boom.

One of a number of objections lodged to Fingal County Council comes from former Fine Gael minister Senator James Reilly. He, and others, point out that the local area plan does not envisage such a high-density development for the particular lands. He supports the building of new housing on appropriately zoned land in Fingal, he wrote. But there is serious concern, Reilly wrote, that a new road proposed under the Tilberry plan will be used for many years for construction traffic to gain access and egress to the large landbank adjacent to this proposed development.

Paddy Power Betfair needs to take a punt on expansion

It hasnt been a great few weeks for Paddy Power Betfair, with the merged entity being downgraded by Investec on Friday. Shares are now down to pre-merger levels.

A smaller broker, Numis, also gave a downbeat assessment of the companys prospects last week.

Said the broker: Maintaining historic growth rates against increasingly onerous regulation and improved competition may require M&A or capital returns to support earnings.

The company, which is headed by Breon Corcoran, has enjoyed considerable success in Australia, but tighter regulation Down Under isnt helping growth prospects.

Said Numis: We suggest that international diversification is required, with only 17pc of revenues from outside the UK, Ireland and Australia. Not only should this mitigate regulatory risk but low market shares suggest considerable growth opportunity.

Sounds like its time for Paddy Power Betfair to take a punt on some new markets.

* * * * *

The Smithwicks name has long been associated with the drinks business and members of the famous beer-brewing family from Kilkenny continue to push out their new craft beer business.

The original red ale was bought by Guinness back in 1965 and is now under the ownership of Diageo, which closed the Kilkenny brewery in 2012.

Members of the Smithwick family are having some success with Sullivans ale (they cannot use the family name commercially), which can be bought in select bars around the country.

New documents show that they have recently completed a new fundraising, with almost 190,000 poured into the company, Sullivans Craft Brewery.

Investors come from as far afield as Florida and as close to home as Kilkenny.

According to the company website, the ale is made the way real Irish beer should be brewed  by local experts, by hand, in small batches.

Surely not a dig at Diageo?
Oil and gas explorer United Oil & Gas has successfully raised 3m and completed a reverse takeover of Senterra Energy.

The Sunday Independent understands the fundraising was oversubscribed and the shares will return to market, having been suspended pending the completion of the deal, within weeks.

United Oil & Gas - run by Tullow Oil and Providence Resources veteran Brian Larkin - declined to comment.

The company has an interest in the Waddock Cross field at Essex in the UK. The field was previously in production and United is mulling opportunities to re-start production on foot of new data.

It also recently agreed a deal to take a stake in an exploration project in Italy.

In May, Larkin told the Sunday Independent that the company was looking to build its portfolio and evaluating options in a number of regions.

"We wouldn't rule out Africa or South America, we have experience there. Our model is to identify low-cost, low-risk licenses which have near-term activity. At present, the most attractive assets have been in the UK and Europe," he said.

"We'd like to build an oil company with a range of assets, production, development and exploration. But, our job is to deliver value, if at some stage, an offer came along that made sense to monetise a single license or sell the whole company, then ultimately you have to look at that," Larkin said.

United was set up by Larkin, who has held production, development and exploration roles at Tullow Oil and commercial and finance positions at Providence Resources, and technical director Jonathan Leather, who has worked for Tullow and Shell.

A note circulated by Optiva Securities, which becomes broker to United Oil & Gas on completion of the Senterra deal, said Optiva analysts "believe that United is poised to accelerate significantly the development of an exciting European-focused oil and gas business".

"Further expansion of the company will likely focus on assets within stable political and fiscal regimes and management is keen to leverage off its contacts within the industry to gain access to early divestment opportunities and avoid auctioned transactions."

In relation to Waddock Cross, the analysts said "reassessment of existing 3D seismic data has indicated that two wells to probe the crest of the field...have the potential to boost production significantly by 2018/9".
Every year thousands of companies are born and thousands die. The process of creative destruction in all economies makes this inevitable, and in many ways healthy.

But economists have traditionally had a bit of a blind spot about the nuts and bolts of the process. Despite the central role firms play in economic activity, the dismal science has not paid enough attention what makes people start companies, how many startups there are, how companies grow and evolve, and how they die.

That, thankfully, has been changing in recent times, even if there is still a long way to go. The relatively recent interest in the company activity is to be seen in the rise of "business demographics". The surveys of businesses are to the corporate world what the census is to wider society. Both provide invaluable insights into their respective worlds.

Most national statistical agencies in developed countries have only begun publishing figures on corporate demographics in the 21st-century. Irish figures date from 2008.

Ireland's statisticians in recent weeks have published their latest batch of business population figures. Europe-wide figures have also been published over the past few weeks. They make for fascinating perusal.

Among the standout facts on a comparative basis is Ireland's low rate of startups. In 2014, the most recent year available for all countries, Ireland ranked behind every other country in the EU bar Belgium. In order to avoid clutter, the graphic on startup rates below shows only the rich western European countries. It would look even worse for Ireland if the former Communist countries, which tend to have higher rates of new business formation than the richer economies, were included. The average startup rate across the EU 28 is half as high again as Ireland's.

Frances Fitzgerald, officials in her Department of Enterprise, Innovation and Employment and anyone else who makes claims about Ireland's supposedly high level of entrepreneurialism might want have a look at the hard data before perpetuating that myth in speeches and other public utterances.

The latest CSO figures are most up to date than the EU-wide data. As of 2015 there were a quarter of a million active companies in Ireland. What is striking about the trend is how little it has changed over the past decade. In 2008, just as the economy began to crash, they were almost the same number of firms. Despite brutal trading conditions, there was no big upsurge in company wind up during the recession - the peak to trough decline in the number of active companies registered in Ireland fell by a mere 2.4pc.

Nor did the startup rate change by much over that time.

If there is any good news in the figures it was that 2015 recorded the largest number of startups, at 18,000 since records began in 2008. That pushes the startup rate (measured as the number of firms established in that year as a percentage of the total number of active firms) to 7.3pc, up from 6.8pc in 2014. Let's hope it is the beginning of a trend.

Before looking at startups in more detail, it is worth highlighting an eye-catching figure: one-in-five Irish companies are in the construction business. That is the joint-highest among the 28 countries. The unusually large proportion of firms accounted for by the building trade is all the more eye-catching given the large number of company closures - the net number is down more than 10,000 - since 2008. It makes the acute under-supply of housing all the more perplexing.

After the construction sector, the second-largest industry by number of firms is the distribution business. As of 2015 there were almost 47,000 individual companies in the wholesale and retail and trade. In third place were "professional, scientific and technical" firms (40,000) and in fourth place was transport and storage (25,000). The hospitality sector accounted for the fifth-largest share of companies in 2015 (18,000).

If the stock of existing companies by sector in 2015 does not show a hypermodern economy, startups by sector are a little more encouraging, notwithstanding the fact that the building trade accounted for far more new businesses than any other sector (a quarter of the total).

The second-biggest startup sector was the "professional, scientific and technical" category. While the economy might need more builders, over the longer term the productivity growth which really drives standards of living higher comes in sectors which are innovative. The building trade internationally is notoriously un-innovative. Science-focused firms are, almost by definition, at the other end of the innovation spectrum. That 3,000 new ones were created in 2015 can only be positive. The only cloud to that silver lining is the 2,500 firms in the sector were wound up in the same year.

Technology is another sector that is ripe with opportunity. Startup activity in the "information and technology" category has been on the rise, but does not stand out. There were 1375 new tech businesses started in 2015. That was only mid table in terms of the 13 sectors the statisticians give data on.

As regular readers of this column will know, it is a bugbear that we are not more honest with ourselves about our entrepreneurialism. Getting more people to think about starting their own businesses can only be of benefit in the short and long term. It won't be easy to achieve, but accepting that we have a problem is the first place is surely the first and most essential step in addressing it.
How likely is it that bosses will suddenly refrain from checking the social media profiles of potential recruits or existing staff? According to the most recent clarification of EU privacy law, employers can't look at the Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts of employees.

Or rather, they can look. But they can't take the contents of the posts into account except in strictly-defined work-related circumstances. The same goes for existing staff.

This was confirmed by an opinion from the 'Article 29' working group of European data protection authorities. And what they say usually goes.

Predictably, Irish employers are crying foul. Some say that EU data privacy law forbidding social media checks on employees is "unworkable".

"It isn't hard to see where a prudent employer might find some information on objectionable, questionable or unlawful views or practices or activities of a potential employee online and be potentially held liable for them later," said Neil McDonnell, chief executive of the small business group ISME.

"Take a truck driver. If that person posts photos of themselves getting drunk the night before a job, isn't that relevant? Because if the employer sees that but they don't act on it, they're sure to be liable in the case of an accident."

The rules do allow for some social-media monitoring of staff, such as in the case of checking sites like LinkedIn to make sure that former personnel aren't employed by rivals after signing non-compete clauses. Similarly, if a person applying for the position of a specialised marketing assistant regularly uses their social media profile as a 'vlogging' platform, this might logically be looked at by a prospective employer.

But in general, the social media monitoring ban is a restating of the law that will hit employers like a cold wind.

"Employers should not assume that merely because an individual's social media profile is publicly available they are then allowed to process those data for their own purposes," said the guidance statement from Europe's 'Article 29' working party. "A legal ground is required for this processing, such as legitimate interest."

Just in case there was any doubt as to its application in Ireland, a spokeswoman for the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, Helen Dixon, affirmed the rules' validity here.

"Simply because a profile is public does not mean that a prospective employer is entitled to view it," said the spokeswoman, who added that Ireland is part of the 'Article 29' working group.

Will employers pay much heed to this?

Big corporations may have to, with more accountability and potential audit trails facing them.

But what about small companies? How likely is it that bosses in small firms or startups will refrain from doing discreet searches on smartphones or non-work PCs?

Employer representatives openly question the practicality of the rules.

"I don't believe we have yet got to a point of fair and reasonable balance between the right to employee privacy and the civil responsibility of the employer," said ISME's McDonnell.

A spokeswoman for Ibec, the employers' group, said that the organisation was "examining" the rules.

Clearly, the data privacy law is trying to guard against is a situation where company bosses decline to hire someone because of a political opinion or a lifestyle the person may have which has no bearing on their work competence.

With social media activity reaching ubiquity among adults under 40, there has never been so thorough a climate for investigating every aspect of a person's character publicly online.

Indeed, many companies even boast about how they are obsessed with recruiting people that "fit" their "values". Clues as to a job candidate's character often extend to questions about out-of-work interests. Research into new recruits is getting deeper and deeper.

This is especially so in tech companies, which idealise a type of job candidate right down to their likely personal interests.

"People are perfectly entitled to have a private life," said Daragh O'Brien, founder of data privacy specialist firm Castlebridge. "Employers who are snooping on staff through social media today are running a risk unless they have clear disclosure policies."

O'Brien thinks that if bosses cavalierly ignore such interpretations of EU privacy law, they leave themselves open to significant legal action from employees.

"I would expect to see aggrieved staff sending access requests looking for disclosure on data processed about them, including around who visited their LinkedIn or Facebook pages," said O'Brien. "It works both ways."

Lest anyone forget, the EU's long-awaited General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law next May is set to harden data compliance fines and penalties for employers. Under the new law, fines of up to 20m or 4pc of a company's annual revenue can be administered by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.

There are other bits of interest in the new rules, too.

The Article 29 guidance says that potential employees cannot be required to "friend" the employer online for the purposes of a social media search. And staff cannot be required to use a work-associated social media profile as their default presence online, even if their job is as a spokesman for the organisation.

It's the first time that a set of work-related social media demarcation rules has been so clearly enunciated.

But among the thousands of small firms around Ireland, this seems like a long road to full compliance.

Ireland is not known as a country of particular transparency. Company bosses may think that a discreet search on a smartphone about a potential recruit will never be discovered. So while the new rules represent a noble aim (and, now, the law), it's another question as to whether they will actually be observed.
IFG chief executive John Cotter has said uncertainty over potential sanctions from the UK tax authorities is "distracting" from the company's performance.

The financial services group issued a profit warning on Friday, citing uncertainty about the level of sanctions it will face on foot of an investigation by UK tax authorities HMRC.

Some clients of James Hay, a retirement and wealth-planning business owned by IFG, had invested in Elysian Fuels, marketed as a biofuels play.

Around 500 James Hay clients invested a total of 55m in the scheme. The shares were later valued at zero by the scheme's marketer Future Capital Partners.

IFG has said James Hay only acted as pensions administrator on the investment, and did not advise investors on the scheme.

In April it received a notice from HMRC looking for a "sanction charge" of 1.8m. On Friday the company warned investors that the final cost of the issue to the company is unknown, with discussions with HMRC continuing.

It said the issue probably would not be resolved by the time it reports interim results next month.
Amidst the roaring panoply of diving Stukas, sinking boats, dead and half-drowned soldiers that form the compelling backdrop to Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, one figure provides a small oasis of humanity, and calm. A boatman called Dawson, the skipper of a tiny fishing vessel, has set sail from the southern English coast with a crew of just two - his son Peter, and a local lad called George.

They're bound for Dunkirk, where upwards of 400,000 mainly British and French soldiers have been stranded by Hitler's advancing armies and, if not rescued, will shortly be overwhelmed. The chances of success seem slim, and while the two young men chatter excitedly, Dawson eyes the horizon grimly and mutters "we're sailing into war".

Who better than Mark Rylance to portray this soft-spoken boatman, a hero in the making who would probably blush at the mention of that word. Though we learn little about Dawson outside his present predicament, Rylance's performance made me suspect he might be a veteran of the trenches, a man who knows exactly how repulsive combat really is but is nevertheless puttering doggedly straight towards it.

From time to time he stares at his son and seems sorry about what the boy will shortly experience. With Rylance, you always get something more, something deeper, than the script or story has given him.

Expand Close Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall

On screen he tends to cut a mournful figure, speaking quietly, his eyes aglow with untold sadness. In person, however, it's another matter entirely. He's affable, sprightly, and as we shake hands even bursts briefly into song. He's been called the greatest actor of his generation by everyone from Sean Penn to Steven Spielberg, but doesn't seem one for airs or graces. He was knighted last January for his services to theatre, but everyone's under orders not to call him 'Sir'.

His character in Dunkirk, he tells me, "represents hundreds of civilians who took part in the evacuation. There was even a man in a canoe, I read about him in my research. They looked down from a destroyer and saw this guy in a canoe, and they said what are you doing here and he says, 'well, I've got one spare seat in the back'."

Though the British would subsequently be mocked for treating a humiliating defeat as a victory, there was something miraculous about the evacuation of Dunkirk. Seconded by the Royal Navy, a hastily assembled flotilla of over 700 fishing boats, yachts and small pleasure craft crossed the English Channel in the early summer of 1940 to help rescue British and Allied soldiers stranded on the beach.

The Luftwaffe were picking them off, and bombing larger ships attempting rescue. The entire Expeditionary Force seemed doomed, and had they perished so, too, would Britain's hopes of averting invasion, and defeat. Somehow, this ragtag coalition of rescuers managed to save 340,000 British and Allied soldiers, and Christopher Nolan's film compellingly captures the drama and desperation of this unique event. It's a movie that really has to be seen on the big screen.

"When myself and Chris first met," Rylance recalls, "we talked a lot about the difference between television and cinema, and how TV drama has upped its game and provides such lengthy, novelistic insights into character and plot. There's a lot of things television can do now that are very competitive for film-makers. But I think Chris is right to make this an experience you can't have at home, and to really focus on the beauty of a 100-minute visual distillation of an event."

Focus is the word that best describes Nolan's approach to the monumental task of realistically recreating the evacuation of Dunkirk. Remarkably, in this day and age, he avoids CGI entirely, using real vintage boats and fighting planes, models for the crashes, thousands of extras for the beach scenes and creating stand-up models of soldiers and vehicles to create an illusory multitude.

Shot mainly on hand-held and mounted Imax cameras, his drama's logistics were inspired by that famous line from Churchill's speech, "by land, sea and air". Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden play Spitfire pilots battling Stukas and Messerschmitts, Fionn Whitehead and Harry Styles are among the unfortunate soldiers stranded on Dunkirk beach, and Tom Glynn-Carney and Dublin actor Barry Keoghan play Rylance's helpmates on the little boat.

"Chris was keen that we would have a day on the boat before we started shooting," Rylance says, "so we flew over to Dunkirk, and we went out and powered out right along the 'mole', the pier they used to get out to the bigger boats where the water was deeper, and it was remarkable that it was still there, crumbling and old, and really spooky to be on old battlefields. And then we turned right and went on a few hundred yards along the beach, and you're aware that beneath you are the remains of the boats and of the poor people that were on them, so you're acting on a kind of graveyard of the event that you're depicting.

Video of the Day

"I remember my wife and I walking on the beach and looking across towards England and imagining what it must have felt like to be left there, because although they got most of them back, they eventually had to leave some, and how desperately lonely and sad they must have felt."

Almost all of Rylance's scenes take place on that plodding launch, whose wooden deck seems like a sort of stage.

"Chris had them fit a rudder at the back of the boat so that I wouldn't have to be in the cabin all the time, and everyone could move around, come and go. It was a grand old 1930s boat they found, with a kind of London bus engine underneath the floorboards, and wonderful old cranking gears. They didn't actually let me drive it, other than on the way out in the morning, because there were men in the water and lots of old boats around us, so it required someone very deft to steer the thing."

Rylance, Tom Glynn-Carney and Barry Keoghan would "meet every morning and just talk about what had happened and how much time did we think had elapsed since our last scene, so that we would be together in our attitudes and our level of boredom during those long hours of slowly puddling across the Channel".

Keoghan, he believes, is a special talent. "He's wonderful, very instinctive and natural. He's come, I think, pretty literally off the street, raised by his gran, and walked into a youth theatre thing or something. He's come through without being cluttered up by too much training, or all these ideas of how he should be - he's just really present.

"I wasn't a good film actor when I was young," he adds. "I was much too conceptual about it, much too cluttered up with ideas of what I should be doing."

Born in Kent but mainly raised in America, Mark Rylance made his name on the London stage. After training at RADA he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and by the late-80s was being lauded for his portrayals of Romeo and Hamlet. In 1987, Steven Spielberg offered him a key role in his upcoming war film, Empire of the Sun. It must have seemed like his big break but after thinking long and hard about it, Rylance turned it down and accepted a season at London's National Theatre instead.

He now feels he was lucky he said no. "I had a lot to learn," he says, "I still do." Rylance went on to make his name as a sublime Shakespearean actor, and in the mid-1990s become the Globe Theatre's first artistic director. But his appearances on film and television were very rare, until a couple of years back. Fittingly, it was Spielberg who tempted him back in front of the cameras to play a mild-mannered Russian spy in his very accomplished 2015 Cold War drama Bridge of Spies.

When I interviewed Rylance a few years back, he spoke with dread of awards ceremonies and the idea of turning acting into a competition. Shortly after we spoke, he was nominated for and won an Oscar for Bridge of Spies. Did he manage to enjoy the experience in the end?

"I wasn't gonna go actually," he tells me, "I was in a play and I thought, you know, why should I cancel any evening of that to go to this thing. But I owe Steven such a lot, and I really love him, he's a dear, dear man. Surprisingly you know, he feels that he's not thought of as an actor's director, and only one other person's ever won an Oscar in all of his films, which is Daniel Day Lewis in Lincoln.

"Steven said of course I understand if you don't want to come but if you do it would mean a lot to me, so that's why I gave him a big hug when I won - I wanted people to see that it was for him."

Since then he and Spielberg have collaborated on the charming 2016 blockbuster The BFG, and will work together again next year on the gambling drama, Ready Player One.

Even more excitingly, Rylance seems set to reprise his extraordinary portrayal of scheming Tudor courtier Thomas Cromwell in a sequel to the acclaimed TV drama Wolf Hall.

"Hilary Mantel's writing it," he tells me, "Peter Kosminsky's waiting for it, so hopefully it will happen. I tend not to look forward too much to things, but I'm looking forward to playing Cromwell again. I have Catholic friends who feel like I've whitewashed Goebbels, but there you are!"
Q: Since Michigans Upper Peninsula is attached to Wisconsin, how did Michigan end up with that land?

A: Michigans ownership of the Upper Peninsula has very little to do with Wisconsin, which only became a territory one year before Michigan gained statehood, but rather a border dispute with Ohio led to the UP becoming part of Michigan.

According to the Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, Michigan acquired the UP as a result of the Toledo War. Ohioans and Michiganders fought over a 468-square-mile strip of land  called the Toledo Strip  that each state believed was its land.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established a borderline between what would become Ohio and Indiana and the Michigan Territory from the southern tip of Lake Michigan across the Lower Peninsula. The original survey of the land didnt accurately place the line, which led to the war.

When Michigan applied for statehood in 1833, Ohioans in Congress blocked its admission until the territory accepted the Ohio-preferred state border.

The debate lasted years, according to the DMVA, but a paper from Michigan State Universitys Department of Geography listed the war as only taking place in 1835.

The Toledo War involved more saber-rattling and one-upmanship than it did shooting and blood-letting, according to the DVMA. The only casualty the DMVA listed was that of a Michigan sheriff who was stabbed by an Ohioan during a tavern fight.

In June 1836, an act of Congress would allow Michigan into the Union, providing it accepted the Upper Peninsula  more than 16,000 square miles of land that was later found to have abundant iron ore and timber  instead of the Toledo Strip.

After an attempt to appeal to the American people for the strip, Michigan conceded and gained its statehood in January 1837, just seven months after the Wisconsin Territory was established.

 Shelley K. Mesch
A heron waits for his next catch in the Blackwater River

Pastor Ivanildo, Esther and Lucimar Alexandre moved to the town from the central Brazilian state of Goias. Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

This is his domain and he waits and watches for hours at a time. Then without warning he extends his long neck to savour the delights of the Blackwater river. In the early morning, the heron swooshes to his spot near the bridge in Fermoy as the town wakes and the flowing river swirls around him.

The Blackwater, for so long a threat to this historic town with its unique architecture, is not just the feeding ground for the heron but an asset to be harnessed.

In 2014 a state-of-the-art flood defence system was installed at a cost of almost 38 million.

The swollen, powerful Blackwater raged through the town the following winter but was contained. By taming the beast, new opportunities have spawned.

Expand Close Pastor Ivanildo, Esther and Lucimar Alexandre moved to the town from the central Brazilian state of Goias. Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Pastor Ivanildo, Esther and Lucimar Alexandre moved to the town from the central Brazilian state of Goias. Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

"This river has it all. Great for rowing or canoeing and great for fishing," explains Paul Kavanagh.

He's the secretary of the Fermoy Regatta - one of the oldest of its kind in the country. Indeed, Fermoy is the only regatta in Ireland where spectators can watch the races from the start to finish line.

Last month hundreds flocked to the riverbank on a sun-kissed Sunday. Between licks of ice-creams they cheered on their rowers. With a race every three minutes over a 10-hour period some 200 contests took place.

Along the river families picnicked as the sun bounced off the water and the unmistakable sound of GAA commentary could be heard coming from a wireless. Next year they're planning a two-day event.

Paul told Review: "We've 200 members in our rowing club and we've seen a significant upturn in interest in rowing here."

Incidentally the famous O'Donovan brothers of Skibbereen won their very first race at a regatta in Fermoy.

Expand Close Brothers Denis and Ned Fitzgerald, Fitzgeralds Butchers, Pearse Square, Fermoy / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Brothers Denis and Ned Fitzgerald, Fitzgeralds Butchers, Pearse Square, Fermoy

The Accommodation question

The river's reputation is golden amongst rowers but many feel more needs to be done to use this incredible asset to attract visitors. There are talks of a new, and much-needed, riverbank walk.

Finding a place for the weary traveller to rest their head is an issue though. While the town's Grand Hotel is iconic, it's limited in size. The award-winning Abbeyville House is a local gem but it too can only cater for so many. Indeed, with only 42 beds on offer across the town it's no wonder locals lament the lack of an adequate facility this summer.

The common line: "Sure you can't even have a wedding reception in the town. Everyone heads off to Cork (34km away) instead of spending their money in Fermoy."

The town was badly hit during the economic nosedive. Health insurer BUPA Ireland withdrew in 2007. The Quinn group acquired BUPA but in 2009 moved all 300 jobs to a new site in Little Island. The company would eventually become Laya Healthcare. In 2008 FCI Ireland, a French manufacturing company, left town with 240 jobs lost.

A former garrison town, Fermoy struggled to swim through choppy waters. The scars of those years still exist - too many derelict buildings, a lifeless IDA Park and empty business premises.

Expand Close Ringside seats: hundreds lined the Blackwater River last month for the Fermoy Regatta / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Ringside seats: hundreds lined the Blackwater River last month for the Fermoy Regatta

In October 2006, the Fermoy bypass opened. Some local traders feared the reduced traffic would diminish returns.

A Bypass boon

But Orla Mellerick, who operates an optician's and two pharmacies in the town, told me that, if anything, the bypass has helped the economy of Fermoy.

"It actually keeps the local traffic local. Because people don't want to pay toll charges every time they need some shopping," she tells me as sunned locals pop into to her pharmacy for some after sun lotion. It's been a scorching week by the Blackwater.

Orla grew up on Patrick Street in the town.

"There were five children in our house and we lived above the pharmacy. The street was buzzing. Today I can almost count on one hand how many families live on the higher floors of their buildings. It's amazing when there's a shortage of rental properties in Irish towns that above-business living is not more popular. So, once it hits six o'clock, the town centre empties."

In 2014, following storm damage, Orla re-opened her business in a building previously used as a furniture shop. It was recently named 'Retail Excellence Pharmacy of the Year' for 2017.

Across the street Dave Ryan walks me through his soon-to-open new restaurant. Passers-by try to catch a glimpse of the new place when the door opens to let me in.

Above the sound of drilling and banging, Dave explains that 'Hannas' will be an 80-seat restaurant and deli. It's the latest venture in Fermoy by the Tipperary native.

"We've invested over half a million so we think it'll have a major impact in the town and hopefully act as a catalyst for other businesses too," he says.

Dave should know.

A Community effort

His Amber service station on the northern edge of the town has been a roaring success, employing 90 people, as was the Centra store he previously owned in the centre of Fermoy.

Both Orla and Dave are members of the Fermoy Forum, a new community group hoping to enhance 'the economic social and environmental development of Fermoy town.' It works alongside groups such as the Fermoy Enterprise Board and plans to organise new festivals and events.

It's a sign of the new energy being channelled into Fermoy.

Young families such as the O'Connors are excited by plans to maximise all that their town has to offer.

Kealan, an electrician and well-known athlete, and his wife Jenny, a nurse, live in the centre of Fermoy in a home they converted over a decade ago.

"Everything we need is here," explains Kealan.

"Our daughters Kate (11) and Meabh (8) are involved in so much and love their town. They, like us, feel very proud of it. Like Kate is involved in Cubs and Meabh with the Fermoy Ladies GAA club - there are 80 different clubs in the town and there's a great sense of community here. Jenny and I travelled before we settled down and we can tell you, hand on heart, we couldn't imagine living anywhere else."

In February, the new state-of-the-art Gaelscoil de hIde primary school building opened in Fermoy following a high-profile campaign by parents and a major new building project is near completion at Colaiste an Chraoibhin, one of three local secondary schools.

"As far as educational facilities go, Fermoy is top notch," explains Barry Fitzgerald.

Traditional Tastes

He's just finished stuffing lamb hearts with breadcrumbs at the family butchers he runs with his father Ned and Uncle Dinny.

Two weeks ago, Barry's wife Julie gave birth to their third child, Con. If the new dad is tired he's not showing it.

"Sure, there's no time to be tired. We just finished renovating the shop here and we've loyal customers to serve."

I ask Barry if he's always wanted to be a butcher in Fermoy?

"I never really gave it much thought. I've been at it since I left school - 23 years ago. Working here has given me a great understanding of the town. It's always been a farming area with good meat and, despite the fact a lot of supermarkets have opened here in recent years, we understand what people in Fermoy want. They've traditional tastes - if you asked some of the lads in the supermarket for a stuffed heart or an ox tail they'd give you some look."

But for all the traditional trappings, Fermoy has changed dramatically over the years too.

Over a fifth of the town's population is non-Irish. Around 750 Polish people live here and 130 Brazilians - with many working in Kepak Meats in nearby Watergrasshill.

Lina Rimgale from Lithuania tells me she was one of the first "foreigners" to arrive.

The pharmacist's assistant came in 2002 having secured a work permit for Dave Ryan's supermarket.

"There was just a few of us Lithuanians and Belarussians. I planned to stay for a while and return home but I met my husband Rajmondas here. He actually comes from the same town as I do in Lithuania but I didn't know him. So I travelled all this way to meet and marry a man from my own town!" explains the mother of two boys who says she's always felt welcome in Fermoy.

An Integration Challenge

Pastor Ivanildo Alexandre and his family moved from the central Brazilian state of Goias. Every Sunday morning, he and a group of around 30 people, mostly Brazilian, members of the Manna Church, meet at the site of an old bakery where they pray, celebrate and sometimes eat together.

"This is a peaceful country, Irish people are quiet. We try our best to help others and fit in. I would say most Brazilians don't necessarily feel part of the Fermoy community. Perhaps they work here but their head, and heart, is back in Brazil. I try to encourage them to embrace where they are now and be part of this community," explains Ivanildo in a half-Brazilian, half-Cork accent.

His daughter Esther (23) works in the Silver Pail ice cream dairy. She tells me: "I don't feel we are 'acceptable' to everyone - I'm not sure why. Irish people either seem to love us or ignore us, there's no in-between. But despite that we enjoy living in Fermoy and are always eager to meet new people."

Integration is happening in the town, but at a relatively slow pace. At least 15 businesses are owned by non-Irish nationals and there are over 30 nationalities represented. It's hoped new cross-community initiatives can help foster greater bridge-building for the betterment of all.

As Noel McCarthy, who owns the 'Carry Out' off-licence, and is a local county councillor, tells me: "At least 50 percent of my customers are non-Irish and they're always a pleasure to deal with. I stock Polish, Brazilian, Czech and Slovak beers. I've made friends with so many and they're great neighbours."

At the Moorepark Teagasc Food Research Centre on the edge of Fermoy, Dr. Tom Beresford tells Review: "We have researchers here from across the globe. From Sri Lanka and Nepal to Mexico and South Korea. Many bring up their families in the area or in Cork City just half-an-hour away. Moorepark is recognised as an international leader in animal, grassland and food research and we're delighted to have such a multicultural workforce."

Fermoy finds itself at something of a crossroads then, as it looks to its future. All signposts point to progress if the town's feet are willing to walk that way. Like the heron on the Blackwater, this summer there comes a time when every town must make a splash and secure its catch... That time for Fermoy is now.

@GrahamJClifford

Fermoy Fact box

Population: 6,585

Employers: The Moorepark Teagasc Research Centre. Over 400 people employed permanently, on contract work or as PhD research students.

Attractions: The Blackwater River, Corrin Hill (where legend has it the druid Mogh Ruith is buried under a cairn) and Glensheskin Woods in neighbouring Kilworth.

Claim to fame: In 1916 Thomas Kent was marched across the bridge into Fermoy by British troops before his execution at Cork Prison. In 2016, it was renamed the 'Thomas Kent bridge'. Aerial scenes from 1966 war film The Blue Max were filmed near Fermoy, with the nearby Blackwater viaduct featuring on screen.

Famous sons and daughters: John Stanislaus Joyce (1849-1931, right): The father of writer James Joyce.

Patrick Rice (1945-2010): Human rights activist in Argentina and former Catholic priest.

Mike Ross: Ireland rugby prop comes from neighbouring village of Ballyhooly.

Michael Flatley: Has his Irish home at Castlehyde just outside Fermoy.

Peter Kelly (aka Franc, left): Wedding planner and event designer lives in Fermoy.
From undercover house-hunting live on Snapchat to blogs and good-old fashioned advice, university student unions across the country are doing their best to help students during the dreaded annual accommodation hunt this summer.

Independent.ie spoke to these young student leaders about the special initiatives they are putting in place to help students find suitable places to stay for the upcoming academic year.

UCD go undercover on Snapchat

No contracts, up front deposits and one bathroom between 15 people... These are some of the discoveries that UCD Students' Union made on their new Snapchat series 'House Hunters', which seeks to highlight the terrible housing options for students in Dublin.

The series began last week and was the brain child of UCD Campaigns and Communications Officer, Barry Murphy. He wanted the students' union to "put themselves in the shoes of students "and show how dodgy the market can be."

Barry told Independent.ie of the "deplorable conditions" that he encountered during the series, where he visited potential accommodation while filming it 'undercover' for Snapchat.

"One place was 750 a month to share a room with two strangers and had no contract. Another place had one tiny bathroom between 15 people and a press in the bathroom where kitchen appliances were stored," said Barry.

The series so far has shown that living conditions in the houses were sometimes very dirty and many of the landlords were forceful when it came to deposits.

"A lot of the time they would want the deposit upfront. They'd want 500 or more straight away or drop the deposit just so you would give them the cash and tell you that the ATM was just down the road. The houses wouldn't have been cleaned either," he said.

Barry said that the Students' Union are worried that First Year students and international students with little knowledge of the competitive market will fall into the trap of living in these places.

"There's no regulations and house viewings are so competitive. There would be 30 or more at one viewing, so you'd be worried about some students who may feel under pressure," he added.

The students' union have already published four Snapchat house-hunting stories and plan to publish more in the coming weeks. They hope that the more students that view the videos, the more students will lobby Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy to demand that living conditions improve for students.

"Snapchat was the best student platform to get this out on as it's the most used app by 15-20 year olds. We've had a lot of engagement so far and encourage everyone who sees the stories and who wants to do something to write to Minister Eoghan Murphy," he said.

Read More

Expand Close UCC Students' Union / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp UCC Students' Union

'Digs' blogs up and running

UCD and Trinity College, Dublin launched a joint initiative with DAFT.ie this week to encourage homeowners to rent a room to students for the next academic year. The initiative is tax-free, as long as the homeowner doesn't earn more than 12,000 a year from the rent. UCD Campaigns and Communications Officer Barry Murphy hopes that this will help relieve the market.

"We're just trying to put more beds out there for students. There's no regulations at the moment and the market is dodgy with bad value for money. This would really help students in need to get accommodation near the college," he said.

Last year DCU Students' Union launched their successful accommodation blog where homeowners offering rooms for rent can advertise to students.

The blog is up and running for the upcoming academic year and while DCU Vice President and Welfare Officer Podge Henry said digs are not usually students' first choice, they have received a positive reception so far.

"We started the blog last year and students found it very handy. There was no real space out there to access digs. It's specifically just for digs and no other form of accommodation," he said.

"To advertise we have strict guidelines and forms and pricing and we make sure the homeowner and student sign a proper agreement."

CC Students' Union President Martin Scally added that students in Cork should visit their dedicated accommodation Facebook page or Welfare officer if they are having accommodation issues.

"We have a Facebook page which is a bit like a buy and sell initiative. It allows UCC students to post rooms available. There's four of us in the union who are administrators of it.

"You must be a UCC student so sometimes, if we're unsure, people can come to us with their student card to prove they're a UCC student."

'Rent Book' to battle Galway gridlock

With NUIG and GMIT, Galway city currently has a student population of more than 26,000.

NUIG Students' Union President Lorcan O Maoileannaigh said that it's not unusual for students in NUIG to commute from county towns as they cannot find suitable student accommodation in the city.

"More and more students are commuting from the likes of Connemara and Ballinasloe and I am aware of one student who got the train in from Ennis every morning as they could not find accommodation in Galway city and in turn had to live at home and take the hour and 15 minute train twice a day everyday into college," he said.

"The fact that hostels are advertising student accommodation is a clear indicator that there simply isnt the accommodation there to support the student population at this time."

As well as providing advice about accommodation to students and potential first years, NUIG also has their own student 'Rent Book' which acts as a bible for students around rental issues.

"We publish our own 'Rent Book' which answers all of the typically frequently asked questions and we encourage students to get in touch with us if they need any further clarifications," Lorcan added.

Expand Close NUIG Students' Union President Lorcan O Maoileannaigh / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp NUIG Students' Union President Lorcan O Maoileannaigh

National Strategy kicks off

Union of Students Ireland President (USI) Michael Kerrigan thinks that the National Strategy for Student Accommodation, which was launched this week by Education Minister Richard Bruton is a positive long-term step but not helpful to students currently struggling.

"It's a positive long-term strategy as there will be more beds coming on stream and shows that the government are finally realising that there is a student-related accommodation crisis in Ireland. Unfortunately in the next couple of years it won't get any better," he said.

The USI's sister site, homes.usi.ie and the Finance and Accommodation guide which were launched in 2016 provide helpful hints and tips to students on how to avoid dodgy landlords and rental agreements.

"It especially helps first year students and international students who may not know what areas and prices are best," he said.

Kerrigan also added that he doesn't feel that the high quality student accommodation complexes that have recently opened are doing the housing crisis any favours.

"If you can afford them well and good but the vast majority of students can't afford them. They're not helping the crisis and are not an option for most."
15/8/2015 Anna Kern who has just received 575 points in the Leaving Certificate at home in the Knocklisheen Centre in Meelick, Co. Clare 4 kms from Limerick at the desk where she studied which also is used as a food preparation area. Photo Liam Burke/Press 22

Student Anna Kern, who was awarded a place at the Royal College of Surgeons while living in direct provision, has said that living as an asylum seeker "strongly affects your mental health and social connections with others".

The Ukrainian student achieved 575 points in her Leaving Cert when she was studying at Colaiste Nano Nagle, Limerick in 2015.

She studied five hours a day in a one-room house to achieve her dreams of studying physiotherapy and was awarded a place at the Royal College of Surgeons.

The college waived the 25,000 a year fees that Anna (20) would have had to pay as a non-EU international student, after her inspiring story received a lot of media attention.

Now halfway through her four-year course, the aspiring physiotherapist told Independent.ie that while she's enjoying her course, she feels bad for other students in direct provision who haven't been as fortunate.

She said: "I love my course. It's very intense but it's what I wanted. It's so rewarding. However, I feel bad for those in direct provision who haven't been as fortunate as I have been.

Expand Close 15/8/2015 Anna Kern who has just received 575 points in the Leaving Certificate at home in the Knocklisheen Centre in Meelick, Co. Clare 4 kms from Limerick at the desk where she studied which also is used as a food preparation area. Photo Liam Burke/Press 22 / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp 15/8/2015 Anna Kern who has just received 575 points in the Leaving Certificate at home in the Knocklisheen Centre in Meelick, Co. Clare 4 kms from Limerick at the desk where she studied which also is used as a food preparation area. Photo Liam Burke/Press 22

"It would be great if they had the opportunity to study and implement their skills in real life. Not being able to work, study or contribute is very frustrating for asylum seekers."

Anna escaped the conflict in Ukraine in 2013.

She travelled to Ireland with her mother Lyndmyla, a trained nurse, brother Andriy (16) and sister Olga (12).

Her family live in a direct provision centre in Knockalisheen, on the outskirts of Limerick City.

Anna's mother worked as a nurse in a children's hospital in Ukraine and she's hoping to get a permission to remain in Ireland so that she can work.

"She's hoping to get a job as a registered nurse and continue her career in Ireland," explained Anna. "She wants to help people get better and contribute to Irish society."

Her brother Andriy did his Junior Cert this year and is considering entering veterinary medicine after his Leaving Cert. Her sister Olga loves music and art. She's a member of the CBS Pipe Band in Limerick and aspires to become a dentist when she leaves school.

Anna told Independent.ie that she's happy they have settled in Ireland but she says the family faced some initial challenges when they first moved here.

Expand Close INSPIRATION: Anna Kern was offered a place at RCSI after scoring 575 points in her exams / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp INSPIRATION: Anna Kern was offered a place at RCSI after scoring 575 points in her exams

She said: "Irish people are kind, honest, well-mannered and tolerant. They are ready to help you. And I enjoy living in a society that cares about me. It's heartwarming that I found great friends in Ireland.

"But one of the main challenges asylum seekers face when [they come to Ireland] is learning English. It's very hard to communicate. You simply cannot ask for directions, you cannot explain your problem to the doctor, you cannot ask for the bus timetable... it is very frustrating.

"When we arrived to the country, English courses were offered one or two times per week, which is definitely not enough to communicate with native speakers. If you wanted to have more classes per week, you have to wait about half a year because of a long waiting list. By the time you get your place, you could be moved to another city."

It has also been hard for the young student to break down some prejudices people have about asylum seekers and said that life in direct provision is "socially isolating".

"Being a student in direct provision can make you feel socially isolated. You cannot stay with your friends after school to enjoy your time because [you have to catch] the last bus to the centre and it seems other people are scared to come to the centre as well.

"You usually make friends with people who live in the same centre and feel isolated from the rest of the society. Often children and teenagers in direct provision try to avoid talks 'Where do you live?' with their friends because of the prejudice and fear that the relationships will get worse or be ruined. It strongly affects your mental health and social connections with others.

"People think that refugees or asylum seekers came to Ireland to avail of social welfare payments and not contribute to the society. [But they] are willing to work and pay their rent, bills and expenses if they are allowed to. Unfortunately many stay in direct provision for years, not being allowed to work or educate themselves, losing their skills.

As she works enters the second half of her physiotherapy course, Anna has faced some issues in her direct provision centre in Dublin. Loud noises at night keep her awake and she has found herself falling asleep in some of her lectures.

Expand Close Anna Kern from Colaiste Nano Nagle, Limerick / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Anna Kern from Colaiste Nano Nagle, Limerick

Her grades have suffered and she's worried that she may not do as well in her exams as she had hoped. It's made her feel "anxious and frustrated".

But she said that she is determined to achieve her goals and hopes that she will be granted refugee status before she finishes her studies.

"I hope I get my status before I graduate so that I can work, that's my wish."
A heroic RNLI crew embarked on a massive 14-hour rescue mission to rescue three people after their yacht ran into difficulty halfway between Irish and English coasts.

The yacht's emergency beacon alerted Falmouth coastguard in the UK shortly before 9.30am on Saturday morning.

Sennen Cove lifeboat and the Coast Guard helicopter from Newquay in England were also dispatched to the scene, but stood down when the Ballycotton RNLI lifeboat from Cork and the Irish Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 117 arrived.

Ballycotton RNLI Coxswain Eolan Walsh said that although the yacht was taking on water, its three inhabitants were not in serious danger.

The vessel was taking in water but they managed to get it under control themselves. But due to shortage of fuel and the prevailing winds, they were having some difficulty, he told Independent.ie.

The RNLI crew set about towing the yacht to land, but could not exceed speeds of 5 knots while doing so. Generally the Ballycotton lifeboat travels at 25 knots.

The two vessels travelled approximately 60 miles to the Cork Coast, where the yacht could sail itself into harbour, with the operation spanning 14 hours in total.

Mr Walsh explained that yachts frequently cross the stretch of water during the summer months and that the area is no more dangerous than any stretch of sea.

The route is particularly popular for sailors crossing from France to Ireland.

Roughly speaking, where they were was where the British and Irish waters meet. From my understanding its a French yacht. My understanding is that they were coming from France, Mr Walsh said.
An Irish student nurse who was seriously injured in Thailand has returned home after a freak quad bike accident.

Ciara Twomey's family has thanked everyone who helped raise over 80,000 to bring her home and pay for her treatment, saying: "There is no way to fully express our gratitude to each and every one of you."

The student nurse, who is from Bantry in Cork, suffered severe injuries and will need reconstructive surgery.

Ciara was brought home to Cork earlier this week and her thrilled family have thanked everyone who helped her in their hour of need.

In a statement on their Fund and Seek page, they said: "From the bottom of our hearts we cannot thank you all enough for your generosity and support over the last two weeks.

"Without your help we would not have been able to bring Ciara home to Cork so quickly and efficiently."

Read More

They said on Saturday that they have turned off the donations appeal on that page and also on a GoFundMe profile that was raising money to help Ciara.

They said: "Ciara is back home safe and being looked after very well in hospital. Take a bow each and every one of you that made this happen! "At the last count you have raised over a staggering 80,000.

"This money made it possible for Ciara to return home accompanied by a specialist paramedic team, who oversaw Ciara's every medical need on that long, arduous flight home.

"Not only did they take excellent care of Ciara but also of her mum and uncle. To these three fabulous men, we can never thank them enough.

"It will also ensure Ciara will be able to access the best medical care to make a full recovery."

They have spoken about the resilience Ciara's shown and provided an update on her progress.

They said: "Ciara is an amazing young woman who has shown such strength of character, far beyond her 20 years.

"Even though now the road may seem long, we have no doubt she will come through this in time with love and support of her family, friends and doctors.

"We salute you Ciara, wish you every success in your recovery and can't wait to celebrate properly when the dust settles."

Read More

They continued to thank everyone who held fundraisers and also to their family and friends who supported them through their ordeal.

Ciara's family has also praised her friends, who were enjoying the dream holiday with her when the accident happened.

They said: "To every young person still in Thailand (you should) be so very proud of yourselves.

"We cannot imagine the difficult and traumatic task you all had on your young shoulders. You showed strength of character beyond your years. "You quickly got Ciara safely off that island all while remaining as calm as could be expected...

"The goodbyes were tough but it's only for a short while. We sincerely hope ye try and enjoy the remainder of your trip and we know that's want Ciara wants too."
The ants do not pose a physical risk, but can carry harmful bacteria should they come in contact with food and surfaces.

The recent humid weather has caused a spike in the number of flying ant infestations across the country  and it's the worst influx in recent memory according to experts.

Flying ants are always a problem when temperatures are higher and the warmer weather also coincides with mating season for the insects.

Michael Deehan of Effective Pest Control, in Dublin, told Independent.ie, this is the worst influx of flying ants that he has encountered in recent years.

"We're always busy in July and August with these ants but this has been the worst in the last few years. The last two or three weeks we have been inundated with calls from people looking to get rid of them. Conservatories are the worst for them," he said.

Tomas Murray, Ant Biologist and Ecologist at the National Biodiversity Data Centre in Waterford, explained why we are currently seeing a massive increase in ants in homes at this time of year.

"It's the ideal time of year for them and the high point of their life cycle. It's a climatic trigger. It happens at this time of year, after the solstice, if it's the right temperature and when there's warmth and humidity," he said.

"All the ants swarm at this time and they spread to other parts of the country to wherever those conditions are."

Mr Murray also explained that this time of year was mating season for the ants and the reason they travel in swarms.

"They mate at this time of year and everything in the swarm eventually dies except the queen and she will go to hibernate underground for the winter."

He recommended that the best way to prevent ants invading your home is to "plug the point of entry".

"They'll only come if they know there is food, so cover all exposed food. They're very difficult to get rid of, so block them at the point of entry," he said.

Not all ants are pests however.

"There's 23 different species of ants in Ireland and sometimes they are pests but they are useful to soil turnover and nutrition and aeration," Mr Murray said.
The change of routine that summer brings for many may allow a little more time for relaxed pottering in the kitchen. It's a chance, perhaps, to immerse oneself in cooking and baking projects, to try out pickling and fermenting, to rethink patterns of shopping and cooking that may have become stale, or simply to add a few new dishes to the repertoire.

Amongst the cookbooks that have come my way over the past few months, one that caught my eye was Caravan: Dining All Day (Vintage, approx. 28).

New Zealanders Miles Kirby, Laura Harper-Hinton and Chris Ammermann are behind the Caravan restaurants credited with bringing all-day-dining culture from the other side of the world to the UK. There are branches of Caravan in London - in Exmouth Market, King's Cross and Bankside, near the Tate Modern, and the shtick is that the food is "well-travelled".

By that, the Caravan folk mean that they like to take their customers on a culinary journey that weaves its way around the world, showcasing flavours and inspiration from their home country and their global travels. Their menus are full of fresh produce, bold flavours and what they call "magpie influence" - the freedom that comes with not tying themselves to any particular style of cuisine or geographical region.

The recipes tend to use vibrant and healthy ingredients with bold flavours, with an emphasis on grains, vegetables and interesting ingredient combinations.

Among the recipes that I'm looking forward to trying are sweet potato and chorizo croquettes with saffron mayonnaise, one of Caravan's signature dishes, which would not be out of place as a 'snack' at any casual fine-dining restaurant. Spiced roasted cauliflower, harissa and pomegranate yoghurt; aubergine puree with preserved lemon gremolata and poached eggs; and chargrilled lamb cutlets and chermoula sound great too.

I also liked the look of fried brown rice with Brussels sprouts, fried eggs, greens and chilli, and a cherry and walnut tart that is seasonal right now.

As well as its food, Caravan is known for great coffee. The book includes a chapter on the sourcing and roasting of its beans, along with instructions for making the perfect brew. Later this year, Caravan will open a retail roastery and coffee education centre in a restored 8,500 sq ft Victorian warehouse in Kings Cross, London, its most ambitious undertaking to date.

Bites...

BRUNCH BEATS

Expand Close The Exchequer / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The Exchequer

The Exchequer in Dublin has launched an Electric Brunch on Saturdays from 12-4pm that's as much a social experience as it is a meal, with Dublin's best DJs and killer cocktails. Eggs royale - smoked salmon, soda bread, hollandaise - is new to the menu. See theexchequer.ie

NAVARRA COMES TO ELY

Expand Close Ely wine bar / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Ely wine bar

Next Friday, July 28, Ely Bar & Brasserie in Dublin's IFSC hosts a dinner to showcase the wines of the Navarra region of Northern Spain. The menu will feature dishes created by head chef Ryan Stringer paired with wines selected by wine manager Ian Brosnan. Tickets 60 from elywinebar.ie

A FEW SUNDOWNERS

Expand Close Hook Lighthouse / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Hook Lighthouse

Hook Lighthouse on Hook Head, Co Wexford, is offering Sunset Tours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays until the end of September, finishing at the top of the tower with panoramic views, Prosecco, mead or tea, canapes, Ballyhack smoked salmon and homemade desserts; (051) 397055
Orla Tinsley: This drug is not a cure for CF, but it is one hell of a start. It is slowly and surely changing my life. RONAN LANG

Drug trials are tricky things. You have to work hard to get on them, you have to work hard to stay on them and you can tell next to no one about them. It's now almost a year since I began treatment in what I believe is one of the most important trials in medical history. The results, which were published earlier this month, have proven that 22 years of hard work, investment and research has paid off.

The combination of the drugs Lumacaftor and Ivacaftor for people with cystic fibrosis who have the double delta F508 gene, was found to decrease infective exacerbations by 30-40pc. This means the 1,100 of us across Europe, North America and Australia who were lucky enough to be on the drug trial have required dramatically less hospitalizations in the past 11 months.

After living with a degenerative illness for 27 years, this type of change is life-altering. There is now more time for life, for adventure, for love and for all those things any person could want.

Cystic Fibrosis is a genetically inherited disease that affects everyone differently. It mostly affects the lungs and digestive system but as it progresses it becomes much more complex. While it is possible to have a normal life in many aspects, because the degree of illness is different for everyone, the end result is usually the need for a life-saving double lung transplant which many people die waiting for.

The results of the Vertex Pharmaceuticals trial is an exhilarating injection of real hope for all those dealing with CF across the world. Personally, the scientific results matched up with how I had been feeling for the past 11 months.

There were two divisions of the trial, which were each then divided in three. Patients participating took one drug - Ivacaftor - and either a low or high dose of another drug - Lumacaftor. Patients in the third group received a placebo. After 24 weeks, lung function had improved in all four groups taking the combination drugs. Lung function fell a little in the placebo group. The study found the drugs reduced infections from 30-40pc meaning less time in hospital and a better quality of life

Until now all medications for CF were essentially treated the symptoms of the illness. The combination of Lumacaftor and Ivacaftor changes the outcome at a cellular level and by lessening infections and the need to be hospitalised it changes the progression of the illness.

I started the drug trial in August 2013. Participants were chosen by strict medical criteria and signed legally binding contracts. Only close family and friends could know, any deviation from this could jeopardise everyone's place and the study's outcome. It was an exhausting experience but one I was determined to see through.

After my first dose I recorded everything I felt physically. I was waiting for the big change, but it didn't come. Still I began zipping around, as though enamoured with new life, which I now understand was most likely what is called 'the placebo affect'. I wanted so badly to believe I was on the real deal that I imagined I was. The entire experience was like living in a bubble of precaution and perfect planning because of the drug taking time schedule. There was no room for error.

A month later, while leaning over to pick something up off my bedroom floor, a searing pain shot through my chest. A trip to the hospital confirmed a lung collapse, as can happen in CF.

This meant total lock down and hospitalisation. It also meant one of two things was happening, either the revolutionary drug would not work for me, to the extent that it would make an actual difference, which was a devastating thought. Or, I was on the placebo. I still don't know for sure.

What I do know is this. The determination to stay positive while facing the reality that the miracle may not be for me was hard work. But, of course, attitude is half the battle. My friends and family and medical team during this time really helped me stay positive. The only option was to take life into my hands and plan for the future. I applied for a Creative Writing course at Columbia University in New York that January. I wrote my application while being treated for severe flu with a consistently sky high temperature.

The thought of New York was my lifeline. The many cups of tea and great encouragement from the ward nurses and my medical team certainly helped too. I got the application in just before the deadline with twenty-nine minutes to spare. Five days later, the temperatures stopped. Soon after, the new stage of the trial started. Now everyone, including me, would be on some unknown dosage of the actual drug.

It was in March as my birthday came around that I realized I was still out of hospital. Not only was I out of hospital, I felt well. That same week I got a call from Columbia University offering me a partial scholarship to study on the course of my dreams.

My mind was blown at the new possibilities. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But by May I was still well. In June, I travelled across Europe in constant 20-degree heat to speak at the European Cystic Fibrosis Conference. For the first time in adulthood the heat did not affect me. Instead of becoming breathless after 48 hours in heat, I felt normal.

On a train in the middle of Germany I found myself crying with happiness. This was a real miracle of life, one that would not be reversed. I could take this new life with me on my adventure to Columbia and wherever I went after that. Things that were so uncertain before seemed within reach. And there was something else too, something immeasurable by science, best described as a consistent sturdiness in the body, a strength that wasn't there before that is there now. Maybe too it is that great hope that so often as a child my Dad would tell me about. He would remind me a cure was coming and that I had to stay well and fight hard to be ready for it. This drug is not a cure for CF but it is one hell of a start.

The new drug is slowly and surely changing my life. I don't know for how long it will last, whether it will continue to work or perhaps I will plateau and remain at a certain level of wellness. Whatever happens I am grateful and thankful for this miracle every day. The cycle of infection that has caused my late teenage years and adulthood to need hospitalisation every six to eight months has been broken.

Both professionally and socially I can commit to things. I stopped using a calender a few years ago because I always felt like I was missing out. A few months ago I went out and bought one and now it's hanging in my kitchen.

For just under 80,000 people with Cystic Fibrosis worldwide this new drug means new possibilities. Studies for second-generation correctors are getting under way.

Things can only get better for people with CF worldwide. For people with Cystic Fibrosis in Ireland who have watched the awareness levels and incredible support and understanding of Ireland's most common genetically inherited illness rise over the past ten years, this drug is nothing short of a miracle.

It should take eight months to be approved by the FDA and EMA. Cost negotiations will start which will be watched closely by CF advocated worldwide. Here in this time and space all things are possible for a brighter and better future.

*If you would like to support Orla's journey to Columbia University please visit here: www.friendsoforlat.com
The father of a newborn who died days after contracting neonatal herpes has urged people to be aware of the dangers the virus can pose to vulnerable babies.

John Wills and his wife Louise tragically lost their first-born daughter Eibhlin just 12 days after she was born in 2015 after her organs began to fail. A post-mortem revealed that baby Eibhlin died after being exposed to the herpes simplex virus (HSV-1), also known as oral herpes or the cold sore virus.

Expand Close John and Louise Wills lost their daughter Eibhlin (pictures) to the herpes simplex virus in 2015 / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp John and Louise Wills lost their daughter Eibhlin (pictures) to the herpes simplex virus in 2015

After her death, Eibhlin's mother Louise was tested for the virus, and was found not to be a carrier. John and Louise believe that Eibhlin came in contact with the virus early on in her life in the National Maternity Hospital, which devastated her major organs before she became symptomatic.

In recent days, Iowa mum Nicole Sifrit made the headlines when she warned other parents of the dangers of exposing newborns to the herpes virus, after she sadly lost her daughter Marianna to the virus. The mum claimed that the baby was kissed by someone who had a cold sore, which led to her contracting the virus that ended her life.

Since her death, Eibhlin's father John, from Rathfarnham in Dublin, has become passionate about raising awareness of neonatal herpes in Ireland, which although rare, has had a devastating effect on his family.

"The reason we decided to go public so soon after losing Eibhlin was because there is little or no knowledge about neonatal herpes, even amongst doctors. But cases like Marianna's and of course our own tragedy show that it can happen, even if cases of this are rare.

"In our case it's important to say, Eibhlin didn't get the virus through a kiss. It was something she picked up very soon after she was born in the National Maternity Hospital. We know this because Louise and I both tested negative for the virus.

"Eibhlin was our first child. She was very much wanted and when she died it was awful, it felt unreal," he said.

Expand Close American mum Nicole Sifrit made the headlines last week after she sadly lost her daughter Marianna to the virus. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp American mum Nicole Sifrit made the headlines last week after she sadly lost her daughter Marianna to the virus.

In Ireland, neonatal herpes simplex is not a notifiable disease, which means that statistics are not kept and the number of children who have died from the virus in Ireland is unknown.

Statistics from the US have found that there are 33 cases of neonatal herpes in every 100,000 births, while in the UK the figure is between 1 and 17.5 cases per 100,000 births.

John and Louise have set up an awareness page "Remembering Eibhlin" and one of the couple's main aims to to have the virus recognised in the list of notifiable diseases in Ireland. This would mean Irish medical professionals would not have to rely on statistics from our American or British counterparts, but instead have relevant statistics to help prevent neonatal deaths from the virus in Ireland.

"In Ireland, neonatal herpes simplex is not a notifiable disease, which means that there are no statistics to reflect how many outbreaks of this virus or how many deaths have occurred because of infection.

"We hope that we will shortly have a meeting with Minister Simon Harris to discuss some of the aims of the Remembering Eibhlin campaign.

"If neonatal herpes simplex was a notifiable disease here, we would have the same accurate statistics as they do in places like Australia, the UK and the USA, which is what we have to base a lot of our knowledge on because we don't have our own statistics."

Expand Close Since her death, Eibhlin's father John has become passionate about raising awareness of neonatal herpes / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Since her death, Eibhlin's father John has become passionate about raising awareness of neonatal herpes

"The fact of the matter is that in Ireland we just do not have the same awareness in other countries. I have a friend who welcomed a baby in the US. He would be a sufferer of cold sores. He was given the advice he needed, not to kiss the baby, to cover up the cold sore, and to use anti viral creams from the onset."

John also hopes the campaign will encourage a change in Irish policy surrounding the virus. While Eibhlin died of herpes simplex virus 1, or oral herpes, herpes simplex virus 2 (genital herpes) also threatens the health of newborns.

According to foreign statistics 85pc of babies who have died of neonatal herpes simplex have been infected with type 2, and John hopes that Eibhlin's campaign will encourage a change in policy also.

"At the moment, Irish mothers aren't screened for herpes in pregnancy which in our view is problematic. Based on statistics from abroad, 85pc of neonatal herpes cases are passed from mother to baby during birth. Mothers may not tell their physician that they have the virus but by screening, this could be picked up during pregnancy," he said.

"The National Maternity Hospital has been supportive in the wake of Eibhlin's death and have put into place a number of changes to prevent this happening to somebody else."

The dad said there is some comfort in working towards a better awareness of the virus that took his daughter's life.

"The reason we were so determined to go public with our own story was to prevent the same tragedy happening to somebody else. That no other baby could contract this virus.

"Many of my friends have said we've done what we needed to do in terms of raising awareness. I'm not one to stay quiet. In grief you can easily get into depression and sadness, and I certainly did, but you can also build from that. If you can help someone else from going through the same thing, if we can make this a notifiable disease and bring this to life it is worth it."

"When you've gone through something like that, it does put things into perspective. Like when you're stressed or worried about something, you think back to that awful time after losing her and think, this is nothing compared to that."

"For us we left the hospital with a beautiful normal baby, but it all changed so quickly."

For more information on neonatal herpes simplex visit www.rememberingeibhlin.org

Precautions parents should take when it comes to the herpes simplex virus

If you suffer from genital herpes simplex, let your physician know.

Avoid direct contact with young babies if you are suffering from a cold-sore

If you suffer from herpes simplex, use anti viral creams
Italy's Cinque Terre gets hot and crowded but simply must be seen, says Arlene Harris.

Set the Mood

The sky is cornflower blue, fishing boats bob about on iridescent water and the pastel hues of higgledy-piggledy houses contrast prettily with a dark grey cliff face.

I'm in Cinque Terre, the stunning World Heritage Site on the edge of Italy's Ligurian Sea. The name (which translates as 'five lands') denotes the five tiny villages which attract upwards of 2.5 million visitors a year to their mix of winding cliff paths, cobbled streets, picturesque harbours, terraced vineyards and, of course, clusters of colourful houses.

Riomaggiore, Monterosso, Corniglia, Vernazza and Manarola are uniquely different yet all share the same, otherworldly beauty. Locals go about their daily business almost oblivious to the hordes of visitors peering into shops and homes and spreading themselves out along the beachfronts.

Guilty Pleasure

Expand Close Guilty pleasure: Paper cones filled with calamari and white fish / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Guilty pleasure: Paper cones filled with calamari and white fish

Having undertaken the mammoth task of climbing the cliff path from Riomaggiore to Monterosso (the famous Via dell' Amore, or Path of Love, between the two villages was closed), we arrived hot, thirsty and hungry and followed our noses to Il Bocconcino (Strada Provinciale 38) - a fried-fish stand which, judging by the queues, seemed worth the wait.

Paper cones filled with calamari, a selection of white fish and a few token fries proved to be the most delicious lunch we had ever tasted. At 7 a head, it was more expensive than many places in the region, but we certainly weren't complaining.

Cheap Kick

The Cinque Terre rail card is a surprisingly good value at 16 per adult (29 for two days; 41 for three). The day pass allows you to hop on the train at La Spezia and get on and off at various villages as you like throughout the day or evening. It also covers bus travel (in the midday heat, a bus from the station to the hilltop village of Corniglia is a must), guided walks and Wi-Fi in all the villages.

Another pleasant surprise was the abundance of water pumps providing cold drinking water free of charge at regular intervals.

Top Tip

Expand Close Cinque Terre rail line / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Cinque Terre rail line

Cinque Terre is beautiful but a victim of its own success, with visitors flocking here in droves. Local authorities are working towards a scheme to reduce tourist numbers in a bid to preserve the beauty and atmosphere of the place. In the meantime, avoid the crush by taking a trip in late spring or early autumn.

Insider Intel

Finding a room in Cinque Terre during high season can be difficult and expensive - an alternative option is to stay in La Spezia, a 15-minute train ride away. Levante Residence is a short walk from the station, offering spacious apartments with breakfast on the communal terrace and a recommendation for the best local pizzeria (laspeziaresidence.com; rooms from 120 per night).

Glitches

The mountain 'path' from Riomaggiore to Monterosso is not for the faint hearted. The tourist information centre needs to offer clearer advice - there is no handrail, not much by way of step, and the hike over the cliff takes at least an hour. Be prepared!

Get me there

The closest airport to Cinque Terre is Pisa - to which both Aer Lingus (aerlingus.com) and Ryanair (ryanair.com) fly from Dublin.

Train tickets from Pisa to La Spezia cost from 9 (trainline.eu) and Cinque Terre adult train passes cost from 16 per day (7.30 per child); more at cinqueterre.it.

Read more:
Premium

Radio review: If you want to be annoyed in a good way (and who doesnt?) theres always Liveline

It is now clearly understood in social media and the traditional kind, that theres much to be gained by annoying people. An angry listener or viewer or reader is the one you want, as their rage can drive engagement, and all that stuff. What is less clearly understood, is this may not necessarily be a bad thing  it can be a good thing.
Premium

Gene Kerrigan Opinion Fr Sean Sheehy is the voice of Irelands dead and unmourned past

At first, it seemed a bit mad. A bishop and a priest squaring up for a bout of ecclesiastical fisticuffs. A turbulent priest in Listowel, Co Kerry, took to the altar and spouted out of him about gays, contraception, abortion and transgender matters. He left us in no doubt that he alone has the courage to denounce this sinful carry-on.
Premium

Mary Kenny Opinion If men want to yammer on about sport, then let them  it helps them connect emotionally

I was travelling on a train from Dublin to Cork, and near me sat two Dublin men. Throughout the entire journey they managed to keep up a fluent dialogue about English football teams. From Aston Villa to Sheffield Wednesday, from Crystal Palace to Manchester City the conversation flowed eloquently. I was in awe at the minutiae of their knowledge and expertise. And if the topic of their discourse lacked a certain variety, it was nonetheless better than sitting in sullen silence, or glued to their phones.
This photograph released by Kensington Palace, from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, shows the princess and Prince Harry on holiday and features in the new ITV documentary 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy', which airs on ITV at 21.00hrs on Monday 24th July. The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Photographs of the Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry as children have been published for the first time to mark a new documentary about Diana, Princess of Wales on the 20th anniversary of her death.

A sun-kissed image showing Diana hugging Harry while the pair are on holiday, is just one of the poignant pictures that are featured in the programme.

In the ITV documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, William says to Harry about the photo: "This one here, I thought you'd like to see - quite a special picture - the two of you which I thought was quite sweet."

The photo shows Harry apparently wearing just trunks and sitting down with his legs up against his chest while his mother's arm is wrapped around his neck.

Expand Close This photograph released by Kensington Palace, from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, shows the princess holding Prince William whilst pregnant with Prince Harry, and features in the new ITV documentary 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy', which airs on ITV at 21.00hrs on Monday 24th July. The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp This photograph released by Kensington Palace, from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, shows the princess holding Prince William whilst pregnant with Prince Harry, and features in the new ITV documentary 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy', which airs on ITV at 21.00hrs on Monday 24th July. The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Harry joked about the image saying: "I just remember having the skinniest legs, and still do."

The pictures are taken from Diana's personal photo albums which were recently discovered by her sons who are seen flicking through them during the programme.

Expand Close This photograph released by Kensington Palace, from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, shows the princess and Prince Harry on holiday and features in the new ITV documentary 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy', which airs on ITV at 21.00hrs on Monday 24th July. The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp This photograph released by Kensington Palace, from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, shows the princess and Prince Harry on holiday and features in the new ITV documentary 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy', which airs on ITV at 21.00hrs on Monday 24th July. The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Harry admits "part of him" did not want to look at them but he was also waiting for the right time to sit down with his brother and go through the pictures.

Another of the featured photographs shows Harry sat on the seat of a picnic bench while William sits directly behind him on the table.

And a third image shows a pregnant Diana holding a toddler William on her hip as the pair pose for the picture.

In the 90-minute programme William said: "She loved taking pictures, it was so nice. She captures some really good portraits of people, you kind of get a snapshot of the personality quite quickly.

Expand Close This photograph released by Kensington Palace, from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, shows Prince William and Prince Harry sitting on a picnic bench together and features in the new ITV documentary 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy', which airs on ITV at 21.00hrs on Monday 24th July. The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp This photograph released by Kensington Palace, from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, shows Prince William and Prince Harry sitting on a picnic bench together and features in the new ITV documentary 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy', which airs on ITV at 21.00hrs on Monday 24th July. The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Video of the Day

"The funny thing is there is not that many of her, as she is always taking pictures of us."

The documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy will be screened on ITV on Monday
If there's an ultimate U2 song to propose to 'Without or Without You' is probably it and one concert goer took full advantage by proposing as the band sang it live at Croke Park on Saturday night.

Aaron Maher and his Glaswegian girlfriend Fiona Robertson were among the fans who flew in to Dublin from abroad for the gig.

"I love U2 and Aaron had surprised me with tickets on our anniversary," reveals Fiona. "We flew in from Dubai to go to the gig but had problems getting the tickets delivered so we didn't think we were going to get to go at all."

Fiona had no idea that Aaron had planned to propose so when he got down on bended knee during With or Without You she was shocked.

"I was on a buzz when we finally made it there and was completely gobsmacked when he pulled out that wee box!" she says.

"The poor boy was crapping it in case security found it and opened it when we were coming in! Surprise would have been blown then!"

Fiona says she's delighted Aaron gave his phone to people behind to video.

"It's amazing to be able to watch it over and over again because I was so surprised at the time, I just started to cry. I don't think I even got to properly say thank you to the people watching and filming so I'd like to say thanks to them. I don't even remember their names!"

She adds, !"I'm so unbelievably over the moon and still buzzing from the whole experience. I only went to see my favourite band live. I could never imagine it would end up the best night of my life so far."

Expand Close Aaron Maher proposes to Fiona Robertson as U2 sing 'With or Without You' at Croke Park. PIC: YouTube / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Aaron Maher proposes to Fiona Robertson as U2 sing 'With or Without You' at Croke Park. PIC: YouTube

Video of the Day

Video permission Lovin Dublin - Video Article click here
Gay men will be allowed to donate blood three months after having sex instead of a year under equalities reforms announced by the UK government.

Transgender people will also be able to chose their legal sex more easily as part of the shake-up announced by Education Secretary Justine Greening.

Fears over infections being passed on through donations from gay men led to an outright ban at the height of the Aids epidemic but that was cut to 12 months in 2011.

Medical advances mean the time limit will now be reduced again under plans for the NHS in England.

Ms Greening, who is also equalities minister, said the UK government was building on the progress on tackling prejudice made in the 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality.

"This government is committed to building an inclusive society that works for everyone, no matter what their gender or sexuality and today we're taking the next step forward," she said.

"We will build on the significant progress we have made over the past 50 years, tackling some of the historic prejudices that still persist in our laws and giving LGBT people a real say on the issues affecting them."

Reforms making it easier for transgender people to chose their sex legally by removing the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and speeding up the bureaucratic process will go out to consultation in the autumn.

Ms Greening said she wanted to cut the stigma faced by transpeople, who have to provide evidence that they have been in transition for at least two years before they can apply to legally change their gender.

It comes after British Prime Minister Theresa May earlier this week indicated she was preparing to reform the Gender Recognition Act, saying that "when it comes to rights and protections for trans people, there is still a long way to go".

Suzanna Hopwood, a member of the Stonewall trans advisory group, said: "Reform is one of the key priorities in our vision for removing the huge inequalities that trans people face in the UK. The current system is demeaning and broken.

"It's vital that this reform removes the requirements for medical evidence and an intrusive interview panel, and finally allows all trans people to have their gender legally recognised through a simple administrative process. That's what we'll be calling for during this consultation, and I'm looking forward to seeing the law change soon after."

The UK government accepted the recommendations of the advisory committee on the safety of blood, tissues and organs (SaBTO) on changing the deferral periods for blood donations from gay men.

Ethan Spibey, founder of the FreedomToDonate group that has campaigned for reform, said: "Today's announcement from the government marks a world-leading blood donation policy for gay and bisexual men and the other groups previously restricted. I'm so proud that the work of FreedomToDonate and our supporters will help ensure more people than ever before are allowed to safely donate blood.

"I began this campaign because I wanted to repay the donor who saved my granddad's life after a major operation and this announcement means I'm closer than ever to doing that, with the invaluable help of our team of volunteers, and the charities and organisations FreedomToDonate represents."

Alex Phillips, blood donations policy lead at the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: "We're pleased to see a further reduction in the deferral period for men who have sex with men and we welcome this progress.

"However, we urge the government to invest in gathering more robust scientific evidence on the risk of transmission of blood-borne viruses from men who engage in oral sex with men.

"We know from clinical and epidemiological experience that the risk of HIV from oral sex is extremely low, but this review has missed the opportunity to gather the robust evidence needed to update the policies."
CHICAGO  When it comes to diversifying Americas teaching corps to better reflect the increasing number of Hispanic students, theres a big question: If Latino public school students rarely see a Hispanic teacher, how will they ever come to see teaching as an attractive profession?

Its not a trivial concern.

While theres no specific research data showing that Hispanic students receive an outsized benefit from having teachers with the same background, studies confirm a positive link between teachers of color and the academic achievement of all students.

And a recent study found that low-income black students who have at least one black teacher in elementary school are significantly more likely to graduate from high school and consider attending college.

But while the benefits to an increasingly diverse student body are easily imaginable, one aspect about recruiting more teachers of color is rarely spoken about: How challenging it is to actually be a Hispanic teacher in a teaching corps that is overwhelmingly white (only 8 percent of all teachers are Hispanic).

For starters, becoming a teacher is expensive.

Not only do you need to earn at least a bachelors degree but, depending on your state, you must take a battery of general and content-area tests, each of them costing a nice chunk of change. The capstone test  called the edTPA and now the standard for certification in 16 states, including Wisconsin  requires a high-quality video-taking device, video editing skills and super-fast internet access to create and upload an extensive submission.

This is in addition to 15 to 20 weeks of unpaid mandatory student teaching during which youd have to be crazy to try to work elsewhere  if your university even allowed it  regardless of how dearly you needed the income.

And, as if that werent enough of a mountain to climb, for those altruistic souls devoted to teaching in low-income schools where the majority of students are black or Hispanic and the pay is likely to be low, the Trump administration is threatening to end the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which helps teachers who take on these extra-difficult teaching assignments.

Then there is the actual experience of being a teacher in a school with few or no other teachers of color  its not always easy.

Ive been blessed to teach in schools chock full of absolutely caring, devoted, selfless and hard-working teachers and administrators who would do practically anything to ensure the academic success of all their students.

But even in such environments of pulling out all the stops to make sure all kids progressed, there were still obvious ways in which white students were seen as academically ready to thrive while black and Hispanic students were considered lesser  too poor, too devoid of resources at home, too far behind peers or otherwise too downtrodden to succeed.

At best, some of these students of color were given extra resources and attention by adults, though sometimes these efforts were tinged with pity. At worst, some kids  even as young as first grade  were simply written off as unsalvageable.

Throughout my years in education Ive been at meetings where such students were referred to as stupid or hopeless.

Their parents were savaged as being clueless, unhinged or having been purchased by a spouse as a mail-order bride from a foreign country. In one case, my presence was not enough to hold the tongue of a teacher who suggested that a male Hispanic students career trajectory would peak with becoming a janitor.

But this behavior pales in comparison to the impact minority teachers can make.

It may sound trite, but there is relief and even pure joy when minority students experience having a teacher who shares their culture.

A more diverse teacher corps is not a panacea  the single most important factor in student achievement is the quality of the teacher regardless of race or ethnicity.

But if more Hispanic college students can be recruited into teaching through a variety of supports and incentives, the way in which struggling students are perceived in schools can slowly begin to change.

Teaching is not easy or particularly lucrative, relative to other highly skilled professions. But walking into a classroom and being a living, breathing example of all the possibilities that a good education can open up offers its own rewards.
Israel has installed new security cameras at the entrance to a sensitive Jerusalem holy site

Israel's security cabinet has met to review a decision to install metal detectors at a contested Jerusalem holy site.

The meeting comes after a week of escalating tensions with the Muslim world, mass prayer protests and Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The ministers met amid mounting controversy at home, with some critics saying the government had acted without sufficiently considering the repercussions of introducing new security measures at the Holy Land's most sensitive shrine and the epicentre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a possible spillover of the tensions, a Jordanian man was shot to death and an Israeli wounded in a violent incident at the Israeli embassy in Amman on Sunday evening, a Jordanian security official and a news site linked to Jordan's military reported.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

The metal detectors were installed a week ago, in response to an attack by Arab gunmen there who killed two Israeli policemen.

Muslim religious leaders alleged Israel was trying to expand its control at the compound under the guise of security, a claim Israel denied.

On Sunday, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, an outspoken supporter of the security measures, for the first time raised the possibility that the metal detectors might be removed, provided an alternative is found.

He said security measures at the 37-acre esplanade, with eight entry gates for Muslim worshippers, were insufficient before the shooting attack.

"We need different security measures and means for checking (those entering) there," he told Israel TV's Channel 2.

Mr Erdan said it is "certainly possible that the metal detectors will be removed" if police recommend a different security programme, but added that he is currently "not aware of such a programme".

Muslim leaders signalled earlier on Sunday that they would reject any new proposal that leaves additional security measures in place.

The top Muslim cleric of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, told Voice of Palestine radio that he demands a complete return to the security measures before the shooting attack.

In a statement on Sunday, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, of which he is a part, said they "affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation".

Disputes over the shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, have set off major rounds of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations in the past.

On Friday, several thousand Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in Jerusalem after noon prayers - the centrepiece of the Muslim religious week.

Three Palestinians were killed and several dozen wounded after protesters burned tires and threw stones and firecrackers.

Israeli troops responded with live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Late Friday night, a 20-year-old Palestinian stabbed and killed three members of an Israeli family in their home in a West Bank settlement.

The victims were identified on Sunday as Yosef Salomon, 70, and his adult children, 46-year-old Chaya and 35-year-old Elad.

The elder Solomon's daughter-in-law escaped to a separate room to shelter her young children.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack as "an act of terror, carried out by an animal who was incited with unfathomable hatred".

At his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Mr Netanyahu said the killer's home would be demolished swiftly in retribution and those who incited and glorified his act would be dealt with.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed that an earlier decision to freeze ties with Israel on "all levels" also included a halt to security co-ordination.

Mr Abbas has said the freeze would remain in effect until the metal detectors have been removed.

Security co-ordination, largely aimed at a common foe, the Islamic militant group Hamas, had been a constant in frequently hostile Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Ending those ties could quickly escalate tensions.

Mr Abbas has co-ordinated closely with Jordan, the Muslim custodian of the shrine.

Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel and the two countries co-operate in the battle against Islamic militants in the region, but frequently clash over Israeli policies at the Jerusalem shrine.

Jordan's official ties with Israel remain deeply unpopular in the kingdom, which has a large Palestinian population.

On Friday, thousands marched in the capital Amman in an anti-Israel protest.

On Sunday evening, a Jordanian man was shot and killed and an Israeli wounded in still unclear circumstances at the Israeli embassy in Amman, according to the news site Hala Akhbar, which is linked to the Jordanian military.

The site said the Israeli was in an "unstable" condition.

AP
Flames rise behind a vacant house as a firefighter works to halt a wildfire near Mariposa, California (AP)

Firefighters have slowed the spread of an aggressive wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes in a rural area of California near Yosemite National Park, officials said.

The blaze burning for a week has scorched just over 118 square miles of dense brush and dead trees in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Many residents were allowed to return, but flames continue to threaten about 1,500 homes in Mariposa County.

The fire was 40% contained, but officials said it could take crews another two weeks to fully surround it.

"They are still out in front of an uncontrolled fire, but the fire isn't moving at 30mph.

"The fire is crawling along," fire spokesman Brandon Vaccaro said on Saturday.

Flames spared Mariposa, a historic Gold Rush-era town, but more than 60 nearby homes and about 64 other buildings were destroyed.

Nearly 4,500 firefighters fought the blaze using air tankers and fleets of helicopters and bulldozers.

The fire grew by up to 47 square miles a day at its peak.

However, by the weekend, the growth rate was slowed despite dry, blistering weather, Mr Vaccaro said.

The smoke blurred the scenic vistas of Yosemite National Park, about 35 miles west of the fire.

Tourists expecting the grandeur of falls and granite peaks instead saw hazy grey silhouettes.

Some roads remained closed, but Mariposa, with a population of about 2,000, was coming back to life.

Steve Valdez was back at work on Saturday at a hardware store despite losing his home of 17 years to the fire.

"There are people out there who depend upon us to get power, to get water, to get their equipment fixed," he said.

Mr Valdez, 60, and his wife had 20 minutes to grab a few photographs, bills and some family Bibles before they fled the encroaching flames.

When they returned, only the home's chimney was still standing. They plan to rebuild.

The fire was one of more than a dozen that have ravaged California in recent weeks.

To the south, officials have finally lifted all remaining evacuations in a stubborn fire burning for more than two weeks in the mountains of Santa Barbara County.

The blaze, which destroyed 16 homes, has not grown in size for several days.

AP
BROWNTOWN  When I bake a batch of muffins, its always something I share with others. Home bakers like me quickly bond in the sharing of what comes out of our ovens  we love watching someone enjoy that first bite. Collaboration and community cooks up over cookies.

Unfortunately, the state does not share that same cooperative priority of home bakers, and it does not share a commitment to championing new food entrepreneurs. Rather, Wisconsin crumbles your baking business dreams before you even have a chance to say chocolate chip.

Have you ever baked something in your kitchen, given it to friends and had someone say, This is so good you should sell this! Thanks to cottage food laws in almost every state, home bakers can quickly become food entrepreneurs and sell certain non-hazardous food products to the public made in their home kitchens, often with few regulations or governmental entanglements.

But in Wisconsin, politics and industry influence have quickly burned your right to earn an honest livelihood. We have been working to get Wisconsins cottage food laws expanded to catch up with the rest of the country and include baked goods via the Cookie Bill. While this bill has had broad-based support, passing in the Senate multiple times, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has failed to bring the bill to the Assembly floor for a vote. Fun fact: The Wisconsin Grocers Association has close ties to Speaker Vos, according to CBS Sunday Morning. Wisconsin also had the most restrictive cottage food law in the country. Coincidence? I think not.

When the Legislature refused to change the law, my farmer friends  Kriss Marion and Dela Ends  and I successfully took things to the judicial branch. We sued the state because Wisconsins ban on the sale of home-baked goods is unconstitutional and reflects the influence of big industry groups such as the Wisconsin Bakers Association who are apparently threatened by mom-and-pop competition.

A victory in favor of home bakers came when Judge Duane Jorgenson in Lafayette County ruled on May 31 that this ban is indeed unconstitutional and that the primary effect of this ban is to protect established businesses from competition. The Wisconsin Constitution protects the right to earn an honest living, and we are pleased the court agrees.

So why then havent you seen new baking entrepreneurs popping up across the state since the judge ruled in our favor? Because Wisconsin has been defying the judge and fighting this ruling ever since. The state falsely claims the judges ruling only applies to the three plaintiffs: Dela, Kriss and me. The key ingredient in the states claim is nuts. Let me be clear that our trio of baking plaintiffs took on this legal challenge to benefit all bakers in Wisconsin. Unlike the well-funded special-interest groups, we cook up collaboration and think way beyond ourselves.

Do your job, Wisconsin. Get out there and let the judges ruling that the ban on the sale of home baked goods is unconstitutional stand. Stop spending our tax dollars to fight a ruling in favor of small business in Wisconsin. Start working for us, your citizens, and truly exemplify the message that our state is open for business.
Turkey's president has waded into the diplomatic crisis gripping Qatar and four other Arab nations.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country has deployed troops to Qatar, travelled to Saudi Arabia at the start of a three-country Gulf tour aimed at helping break the impasse.

Mr Erdogan is the fifth high-level visitor from outside the Gulf to try to resolve the dispute since it erupted on June 5.

The top diplomats of the UK, France, Germany and the United States have all been through already, underscoring the depth of concern the crisis is causing well beyond the region.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties and transport links with Qatar in early June, accusing it of supporting extremists. Qatar strongly denies the allegation and sees the dispute as politically motivated.

The quartet insisted Qatar accept a tough 13-point list of demands to end the rift, including shutting down news outlets including Al-Jazeera, cutting ties with Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, limiting ties with Iran and expelling Turkish troops stationed in the country. Qatar refused, arguing that the demands were an effort to undermine its sovereignty.

Fellow Gulf country Kuwait has attempted to mediate the dispute, so far without success. Mr Erdogan will meet with Kuwait's ruler after his Saudi visit.

Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said in his first public comments on the dispute late on Friday that Qatar is prepared to engage in dialogue, but that any resolution to the crisis must respect its sovereignty and that any terms cannot be dictated from outside. He also reiterated his country's commitment to fighting terrorism.

The anti-Qatar quartet has shown little sign of backing down.

UAE minister of state for foreign relations Anwar al-Gargash responded to the emir's speech on Twitter saying that while dialogue is necessary, Qatar must review its policies because repeating its previous positions only "deepens the crisis".

Britain's top diplomat welcomed the Qatari leader's comments, however, and said his country will continue to work towards finding a solution.

"We hope that in turn Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain respond by taking steps towards lifting the embargo. This will allow substantive discussions on remaining differences to begin," Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said.

AP
The Republican-led House is to vote on a sweeping Russia sanctions package that defies the White House by demanding Donald Trump gets Congress's permission before lifting or easing penalties against Moscow.

Politicians are scheduled to consider the sanctions package as early as Tuesday, and the bill could be sent to Mr Trump before Congress breaks for the August recess.

The legislation is aimed at punishing Moscow for meddling in the presidential election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats announced on Saturday that they had settled lingering issues with the bill, which also includes stiff economic penalties against Iran and North Korea.

The sanctions targeting Russia, however, have drawn the most attention due to Mr Trump's push for warmer relations with President Vladimir Putin and ongoing investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign.

"North Korea, Iran and Russia have in different ways all threatened their neighbours and actively sought to undermine American interests," according to a joint statement by California Republicans Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, and Ed Royce of California, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman.

The bill the House will vote on, they said, "will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions".

But the bill's pending passage by the House and Senate puts Capitol Hill on possible collision course with Mr Trump.

The White House has objected to a key section of the bill that would mandate a congressional review if Mr Trump attempts to terminate the sanctions against Moscow.

Top administration officials have said the provisions infringe on the president's executive authority and may tie his hands as he explores avenues of cooperation between the two former Cold War foes.

If Mr Trump were to veto the bill, he risks sparking an outcry from Republicans and Democrats and having his decision overturned.

Indeed, the sanctions review was included in the bill because of wariness among lawmakers from both parties over Mr Trump's affinity for Mr Putin.

Eliot Engel of New York, the top ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Mr Trump has been unwilling to respond seriously to Russia's belligerence, "leaving Congress with the urgent responsibility to hold Vladimir Putin accountable".

Mr McCarthy had pushed to add the North Korea sanctions to the package. The House had overwhelmingly passed legislation in May to hit Pyongyang with additional economic penalties, but the Senate had yet to take up the bill.

The Senate last month passed sanctions legislation that targeted only Russia and Iran.

Congressional aides said Senate Republicans may resist adding the North Korea penalties, but it remained unclear whether those concerns would derail the legislation.

Although the legislations has widespread support, the bill stalled after clearing the Senate more than five weeks ago due to constitutional questions and bickering over technical details.

The House and Senate negotiators addressed concerns voiced by American oil and natural gas companies that sanctions specific to Russia's energy sector could backfire on them to Moscow's benefit. The bill raises the threshold for when US firms would be prohibited from being part of energy projects that also included Russian businesses.

Mr McCarthy and Mr Royce said other revisions resolved concerns that the sanctions could have unintentionally complicated the ability of America's European allies to maintain access to energy resources outside Russia.

AP
A day heavy in green Indian equity markets saw a day, heavy in green, today. Nifty 50 ended, up by 321.5 points. Sensex ended, up by 1181.34 points. Top Gainers today were HDFC, HDFC Bank, Infosys. Top Losers ... November 11, 2022 | 11-11-2022 3:43 pm

In early trade, Rupee rises 71 paise to 80.69 / $ Early on Friday, the rupee strengthened 71 paise to 80.69 against the dollar as investors' attitudes were bolstered by easing US CPI data and a decline in the dollar index. Forex traders claime... November 11, 2022 | 11-11-2022 2:24 pm

Sensex zooms over 1,100 pts; Nifty above 18,300; IT index top contributor Domestic benchmark indices in the fast lane today led by IT and Metal stocks outperforming. Both the Sensex and Nifty benchmarks were nearly 2% higher amid positive global cues. On the se... November 11, 2022 | 11-11-2022 2:00 pm

NIBE receives order of Rs11.88 crore from Goa Shipyard; Stock slips 1% Nibe Limited stocks in focus as the company announced the receipt of purchase orders. As per the regulatory filing, it has received two purchase orders dated November 08, 2022 from G... November 11, 2022 | 11-11-2022 12:53 pm

Ashoka Buildcon receives provisional certificate for NHAI road project; Stock up 2% Ashoka Buildcon Limited has informed the declaration of October 26, 2021 as the Commercial Operation Date (CoD) for its Hybrid Annuity Mode (HAM) Project of National Highways Authority of ... November 11, 2022 | 11-11-2022 12:26 pm
A brand named Aurosa from Czech Republic is facing flak for introducing beer for women. The beer, which comes in pink bottle, is touted to be the first beer for her and a representation of a woman's strength and a girls tenderness".

elegance is timeless #premiumbeer #beerforwomen #lifestyle A post shared by Aurosa (@aurosa_official) on Jun 11, 2017 at 10:19am PDT

But wait, what was the beer we women drank before first beer for her was introduced? Did it represent a mans strength and a boys tenderness? Or was it just for men and was never meant for us?

The brand (obviously) started facing flak on social media, where people called out the entire campaign as stupid. A twitter user sarcastically tweeted, How can my weak womanly hands possibly cope with holding the weight of a pint glass?", whereas Jess Devenport tweeted, Honestly, the only #BeerForHer I'd be interested in is one where women don't get blamed for what happens to them once they've drunk it.

How can my weak womanly hands possibly cope with holding the weight of a pint glass? @MelissaCole #beerforher https://t.co/M8Ta0l7JYp  Liz Chambers (@LizRMChambers) July 12, 2017

The Aurosa website says, the beer is designed for ladies. Martina Smirova, entrepreneur Aurosa tried to defend the brand saying Aurosa #BeerForHer was created to support, encourage and connect women in their everyday life, all while signifying that their feminine nature does not have to be compromised.

We never intended to take part in sexism, feminism or the like, she added. In response to the criticism, Aurosa posted a status to its Facebook page, saying beer, wine or any alcohol has no gender.

Head....desk  This is not ok. Best reevaluate my beer stash incase it's unsuitable  #beerforher https://t.co/djCKK3Txt6  Charlotte Farringdon (@charliegeorge1) July 13, 2017

However, the beer industry is largely dominated by men. And culturally, even as more women enter the industry as brewers, pub owners and drinkers, beer can still pretty much feel like a masculine affair, the company said.
Game of Thrones season 7 has arrived, and the looks like the fun has just begun. In the first episode itself, we have seen the Dragonstone episode that sent chills down our spines. Already, a lot of theories about the next episode are doing the rounds, and people are also taking guesses as to who will die next and who will kill who.

GoT has been one of the few fantasy drama series that has never shied away from killing its favourite characters. After all, the show is all about who wins and who gets killed.

The GoT fever is so high that contributing to the theories, scientists have predicted who is most likely to die this season using a mathematical model.

Twitter

"I am probably not alone in wondering which of my favourite characters are going to meet their ends, and which will live on to the next season," said Milan Janosov, PhD candidate at Central European University in Hungary.

Here are his predictions as who is most likely to die in Game of Thrones season 7 in increasing order.

1. Tyene Sand -- the illegitimate daughter of Prince Oberyn Martell

hbo.com

2. Daenerys Targaryen

fsmedia.imgix.net

3. Grey Worm -- commander of Daenerys's Unsullied army

ytimg.com

"Game of Thrones is a complex world in which social position and true friends seem to be quite important, so I quantified each character's social interaction patterns using the tools of network science. I then predict their fate using machine learning methods," he said.
An Indian-origin doctor is set to become the youngest physician to start work at a hospital in England. Arpan Doshi, who is just 21 years and 335 days old, graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree from the University of Sheffield on Monday - and is due to start work as a junior doctor in York next month.

Facebook

He will beat the previous record of the youngest doctor to start work in the UK by 17 days.

"I didn't realise I was the youngest person to qualify until a friend checked on the internet. I haven't even told my parents yet but I know they will be very proud," the Sun quoted India-born Doshi as saying.

Doshi studied in a school in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, until he was 13. Then his mechanical engineer father, Bharat Doshi, got a job in Aix en Provence as part of an international project, and the whole family moved to France.

He started applying to universities just weeks after his 17th birthday and despite a rejection from one university, three others offered him places. The University of Sheffield was so impressed with his credentials that they gave him a scholarship worth 13,000 pounds.

Facebook

He received financial support from his parents, took up part-time jobs as a lunch supervisor at a local school and in the careers service to fund his degree. "My dream is to become a heart surgeon but it is a very competitive field. It is not really a surprise I have ended up as a doctor," he said.

The previous youngest doctor to qualify was Rachael Faye Hill, who received her medical degree from Manchester University when she was 21 and 352 days in 2010.

Arpan Doshi is now set to overtake that record when he starts his two-year training as a junior doctor at York Teaching Hospital in August.
Few fighting words are quite like the Right to Work.

Meet sheet metal worker Fighting Bob Slamka.

It was the threat of Wisconsins Right to Work law that prompted Slamka, of Madison, to go to the state Capitol in December 2014 to protest at hearings and in the halls and offices of legislators. The law, which ultimately passed, prevents collective bargaining agreements from requiring workers to pay union dues.

Slamka never said he was speaking for his union. He said he made it clear he was speaking as a citizen. But his union wanted to control its own message and was angry at Slamka for straying from the unions strategy. Soon after, this proud, dues-paying union member of 31 years started to take heat from his Local 18 President Patrick Landgraf.

He accused me of misrepresenting the union, Slamka says.

At a later protest at the Monona Terrace, Slamka said he noticed some AFL-CIO leaders telling other members not to follow Slamka. That had to hurt a guy who carries his union label inside his heart.

Slamka tried to run for president of his local against Landgraf in the summer of 2015. He lost but alleges his union rigged the election. The Department of Labor investigated with no finding of wrongdoing.

Landgraf told investigators he appointed his financial secretary to run the election. But Slamka contended the union constitution required an independent judge and two others to preside over the election, and he said that didnt occur.

Landgraf didnt return my calls, and an attorney for the union told me the election issue had been resolved.

After the election, Slamka continued to speak up at meetings, and eventually his union bosses had enough of him. In March 2016, the union kicked him out, accusing him of conduct that was detrimental to the organization. Slamka had interfered with and diminished the business manager, according to the union.

Slamka vehemently denies the charges. Soon after he was out of the union, the work dried up, and he thinks he was blacklisted. In 2016, Slamka worked three weeks for a union contractor and 10 weeks for non-union contractors.

This proud union brother is now fighting for his basic right to work. After Slamka was able to finally land a job at Zien Mechanical, laying sheet metal, the company foreman was pressured by Local 18 to fire Slamka, according to the foreman, Mike Krebsbach. The foreman said he was told at a union meeting that the leaders found out Slamka was hired by Zien Mechanical.

After Krebsbach acknowledged it was true, the business manager for the union said, You know what to do, according to Krebsbach, also a union member. The company foreman told them he didnt do the hiring and firing there.

Later, Krebsbach said the union went to the contractors owner to pressure him to fire Slamka.

The owner said to put their request in writing, and when the union guy refused, the owner said no,  Krebsbach said.

After that, according to Krebsbach, Local 18 demanded its union labels back so they couldnt be placed on the company products. There were a few bad words exchanged, Krebsbach said.

Then the story gets darker. Before Slamka was kicked out of the union, he said he heard a union organizer bragging that four former union guys were hired away from a non-union contractor. This came at a time when 53 union workers were waiting to be called for work. Thinking that was odd, Slamka went to the non-union contractor involved and said he was told that three of the four guys were paying COBRA (the cost of maintaining previous health insurance) because they knew Local 18 would reimburse that cost using union heath care trust funds. Thats illegal, according to a Madison labor attorney.

So Slamka filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, which he believes was the ultimate reason the union got rid of him.

Krebsbach said he was recently told by an investigator with the Employee Benefits Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor that the matter was now under criminal investigation. The same investigator told me it is EBSA policy not to confirm or deny investigations.

As for true-blue union man Bob Slamka, he is prepared to have National Right to Work lawyers help him get his union membership restored. The irony is that National Right to Work is famous for helping people get out of their unions.
A 65-year-old Pakistan national has been arrested on charges including of drug-peddling, police said on Sunday.

twitter/ani

Mohammed Yunus, from Karachi, was arrested from a lodge in Ervadi, in the Ramanathapuram district in Tamil Nadu.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Rameswaram town in the district to inaugurate a memorial for former president late APJ Abdul Kalam on July 27.

wikimedia

When he was arrested on Saturday, he neither had a passport nor a visa. He was carrying 2,500 in Pakistani Rupees and 3,000 in Indian currency, the police said.

During interrogation, it came to light that he had come to Tamil Nadu illegally by a boat from Sri Lanka.

After travelling to several places, including Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu allegedly in search of a contraband substance, he had come to Ervadi, Q branch district police, which deals with national security, said.

bccl/representational image

Two others from Ervadi, who had allegedly promised to get him the drug, have also been arrested, they said.

The Pakistani national was produced before a magistrate at his residence in Paramakudi and was remanded to judicial custody.

He is being taken to the Puzhal Central Prison in Chennai, which has a separate cell to house foreigners.
Union human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar has said that the vernacular question papers of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)  the all-India examination for entrance to medical colleges  will be a mere translation of the question paper in English.

bccl/representational image

This year, the CBSE had set different sets of questions for students appearing for the examination in different languages, with students complaining that the vernacular papers, including the one in Bengali, were much tougher than the English and Hindi papers.

When asked by the HRD ministry why different sets of questions had been set, CBSE  the examination conducting body  had cited security problems given the sheer number of candidates and the large number of languages involved if it resorted to translations.

bccl/representational image

The HRD ministry appears to have shot down CBSE's argument. "From next year, there will be mere translation of papers so that such problems do not arise," Javadekar said. He was speaking at a symposium here.

He also set to rest speculations on the introduction of a common engineering examination on the lines of NEET from next year, clarifying that no decision had been taken yet.

bccl/representational image

"We are waiting to see the final result of NEET. The One Nation One Test in Engineering is at a discussion stage now," he said.

Bengal and Tamil Nadu had opposed the proposal, citing central over-reach in education, which is a state subject. Govt to bring detention policy in classes 5 and 8: HRD minister Prakash Javadekar said the Centre will soon introduce a detention policy for students in classes 5 and 8.

bccl/representational image

"In a proposed bill to be passed in Parliament, power has been given to the states to have exams for students at fifth and eighth standards in March. If students fail, they will be given one last chance to appear in an exam in May." Javadekar said 25 states have already given consent to the move. The past policy to have no detention from class 1 to class 8 has only affected the students, he added.
One of India's major two-wheeler manufacturers, Bajaj Auto Ltd (BAL), is likely to announce acquisition of the European performance motorcycle brand - Ducati.

At the company's annual general meeting on Thursday, Rajiv Bajaj, managing director of BAL, told shareholders that the company is close to settle a new alliance.

Reuters

"We are very close to finalising a very promising alliance. It's not certain that it will happen, but if it happens, it will open up enormous possibilities for the company," Rajiv said.

He also told that if things go in the ballpark, an official announcement will be made within the next two weeks. However, any Bajaj official declined to name the brand that the company is in talks with.

Around a month back, Harley-Davidson and Bajaj were reportedly in talks with Volkswagen group to take possession of its Audi-controlled Ducati motorbike brand. The reports also suggested that there are numerous other groups bidding for its acquisition, including the Indian manufacturers - Hero MotoCorp and Royal Enfield.

Reuters

A recent update on Reuters news agency suggests that Italy's Benetton family seeks to make Ducati motorbikes Italian again. "Ducati has received several tentative bids with the Benetton family's investment vehicle Edizione Holding valuing the Monster motorbike maker at $1.2 billion," one of the sources told Reuters.

At the same time, an Italian news website reported that KTM AG, 48 per cent of whose equity stakes are owned by Bajaj Auto, is closing in on the Ducati brand.

AutoPortal

So, the possibility of Bajaj closing the deal to acquire Ducati and announce another iconic international brand under its umbrella is rather high.

The Pune-based auto major is already making good use of the technology provided by its Austrian partner in making advanced motorcycles at an economical cost. Now, it will be interesting to see how the performance brand Ducati gels with the Indian automaker, if the acquisition is concluded successfully.
Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) has turned out to be the most trusted and reliable satellite carrier of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). It has not just launched 209 satellites of 28 countries since May 1999, the vehicle has also placed 48 Indian satellites in their respective orbits till now.

bccl/representational image

After its first copybook launch in October 1994, PSLV has built a reputation of being a highly versatile spacecraft with 39 consecutive successful missions till June this year.

Among all foreign satellites launched by the PSLV till now, the heaviest so far was the 400kg TeLEOS earth observation satellite of Singapore on December 16, 2015. Among the others heavyweights hauled to space by the PSLV are Italy's Agile satellite (352kg), equipped with scientific instruments on April 23, 2007 and Israel's reconnaissance (spy) satellite TecSAR (295 kg) on January 21, 2008.

bccl/representational image

The vehicle has been a commercial hit earning the space agency global fame for several landmark missions. The vehicle was used for launching the cost-effective Chandrayaan-1 (lunar) mission in 2008 and Mars mission in 2013.

Speaking to TOI on PSLV's track record, Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar said, "We are progressively trying to improve PSLV's features and capabilties with each launch. Today with ability to provide multiple capabilities, it has attracted the attention of many satellite operators and they are looking for an opportunity to make use of PSLV for their launch." The chairman said, "PSLV has been very versatile as it has launched satellites in lower orbit, geo-stationary transfer orbit, lunar orbit and also Mars orbit."

bccl/representational image

With the successful Mars mission, India became the first Asian country to reach the Red Planet and accomplished the mission in the first attempt itself. Several countries, including China, supposedly more advanced than India, had attempted the Mars mission but failed. In February this year, PSLV achieved another milestone when it (PSLV C37) made history by placing a record 104 satellites in their desired orbits, breaking the previous record held by Russia (37 satellites) and the earlier record of the US (29).

Launching dozens of satellites in different orbital slots is an extremely complex manoeuvre. However, PSLV proved its mettle. The vehicle's latest multiple launch was on June 23 this year when PSLV C8 carried with it India's surveillance satellite Cartosat-2E along with 29 nano foreign satellites.

bccl/representational image

PSLV was originally developed by Isro to launch Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites. However later, it was used for a variety of missions. The vehicle launched different kinds of satellites, including surveillance satellites like Cartosats, the country's first multi-wavelength space observatory Astrosat and navigation satellites (IRNSS). Known for charting an incredible trajectory, PSLV is, therefore, called the workhorse of Isro's space programmes.

The PSLV was first launched on September 20, 1993. The first and second stages performed as expected, but an altitude control problem led to the collision of the second and third stages at separation, and the payload failed to reach the desired orbit.

ap/representational image

Dr K Sivan, director of Thiruvananthapuram-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre told TOI, "The first launch of PSLV in 1993 was unsuccessful. However, data collected from this failed mission was used to take all corrective measures for subsequent missions.

After the 1993 setback, PSLV has never seen failure as all subsequent launches till now have been successful. Proving its versatility, PSLV had carried payloads not only to the low-earth orbit (350-400 km altitude) but also to the furthest Mars orbit (Mangalyaan travelled 650 crore km from the Earth for over 300 days to reach the Red Planet's orbit)."

"PSLV, however, will not be used for Chandrayaan-2 as Isro is planning a heavier payload carrying a lunar rover to Chandrayaan this time. Therefore, GSLV is the preferred choice. But PSLV is definitely being readied for the Aditya mission (solar mission in 2019)," Dr Sivan added.
Even though the government, last week, had hinted that the 39 Indians who were abducted in Iraq were safe, the fresh reports coming from the war torn region suggest that their fate remains uncertain as no information has been gathered about them so far.

ap

According to Times Of India report, Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj met the relatives of the workers, mostly from Punjab, last week and said that the government had received information that the workers were probably in a jail at Badush near Mosul.

A media report from Badush said on Saturday that the jail now was no more than an "abandoned structure that has been unoccupied for weeks, if not months".

afp

"An official who quoted intelligence sources told Gen Singh that they were deployed for a hospital construction and then in a farm. From there, they were sent to a jail in Badush. There has been no information since then," Swaraj had been quoted as having said by PTI on July 16.

MoS V K Singh had been sent to Erbil to trace the missing Indians immediately after news broke out that Mosul had been freed by IS. MEA on Saturday did not react to reports that the Badush jail no longer existed.

afp

However, speaking on the search operation of 39 missing Indians in Iraq's Mosul, BJP president Amit Shah said in Jaipur, "the government is not misleading anybody. The search is on." Iraq's ambassador to India

Fakhri H Al-Issa did not respond to queries from TOI on the issue. He was, however, quoted as having said a few days ago to news agencies that Iraq had no knowledge about the whereabouts of the construction workers and that it was possible that they had been taken to Syria.

afp

"We really have no information about what really happened to them. The border between Iraq and Syria was open for long and it is possible that the captives might have been transferred to IS-controlled areas in Syria," said Al Issa.

afp

Al Issa also said that his government is cooperating with Indian authorities over the issue. It is likely to again come up next week when Iraqi foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari pays his first official visit to India from July 24-28 at the invitation of Swaraj.

The government's information in the past has been based on intelligence received from foreign countries and from its sources in Iraq. It must be said here that there has never been any conclusive information to prove that the Indian workers were dead. For a while, when there was no information available, the government had maintained that there was nothing to prove that they were dead, or even alive.

reuters

Swaraj had said last year, including in Parliament, that the government had no proof of their killing other than the statement of a man, Harjit Masih, who had escaped from the captivity of IS.

Masih had claimed that all 39 Indians had been killed. In her annual press conference last year, Swaraj questioned Masih's claim saying two heads of states in the Gulf region told her, PM Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee that the Indians were alive.
Assange

: 'CIA Not Only Armed Syrian Terrorists -It Paid Their Salaries'

By Chris Menahan

July 23, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Wikileaks' Julian Assange is continuing his attempt to " take down America any way he can " by accurately reporting the truth.



Saturday on Twitter, Assange highlighted an article from Thursday where the Financial Times noted how many Syrian rebels are getting salaries from the CIA.



Assange said they "buried the lede":

Financial Times buries the lede. CIA not only armed Syria's insurgents--it paid their salaries. pic.twitter.com/4elGBCZ60h  Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) July 22, 2017

URL for the above: https://t.co/jOhKeJfguu  Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) July 23, 2017

At the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday, CIA director Mike Pompeo said, "WikiLeaks will take down America any way they can and find any willing partner to achieve that end."







Assange responded:

What sort of America can be "taken down" by the truth? https://t.co/OU5g3cKcwM  Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) July 21, 2017

To be fair, leaking is a major problem. Specifically, the leaking by deep state cronies who are working overtime to overthrow our democratically elected president. America's massive spy apparatus -- which was supposed to be used against foreigners -- is instead being used by the deep state to sabotage our own democratically elected president.



Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.  Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 14, 2017

It's understandable Pompeo doesn't want the CIA to be leaking like a sieve, but let's look at some of these recent leakers.



 Bradley Manning leaked information on US war crimes in the neocon war in Iraq.



 Snowden leaked information on the US spying apparatus being used domestically against Americans rather than against foreigners as promised.



 Reality Winner was a stupid little girl who should have never been hired if the government still had basic standards and wasn't more interested in hiring in the name of "diversity" rather than ability. When you have a "multicultural" society filled with wildly different people with wildly different interests, getting "loyalty" from the diverse bunch you hire is simply never going to happen.



Very few young people have any sense of loyalty to our deep state because it doesn't represent their interests. We're not living in the America of the 1940's and 1950's where Americans were largely united in the fight against communism and were more than happy to execute leakers like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

This article was first published by InformationLiberation -

See also - Syria requests compensation from US over destruction wrought by war

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

Watch Abduljabbar Akidi the commander of FSA stand with ISIS fighters and say that they are his brothers. US was arming those people!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/CfnoaMMLKZ  Bassem (@BBassem7) July 23, 2017
Home CIA-backed Fighters Killed Or Wounded 100,000 Syrian Soldiers



What the demise of the CIAs anti-Assad program means



By David Ignatius July 23, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - What did the CIAs covert assistance program for Syrian rebels accomplish? Bizarrely, the biggest consequence may be that it helped trigger the Russian military intervention in 2015 that rescued President Bashar al-Assad  achieving the opposite of what the program intended. Syria adds another chapter to the star-crossed history of CIA paramilitary action. These efforts begin with the worthy objective of giving presidents policy options short of all-out war. But they often end with an untidy mess, in which rebels feel they have been seduced and abandoned by the promise of U.S. support that disappears when the political winds change. One Syrian opposition leader highlighted for me the danger for his rebel comrades now: The groups that decided to work with the U.S. already have a target on their back from the extremists, but now will not be able to defend themselves. The demise of the Syria program was disclosed by The Post this week, but its been unraveling since President Trump took office. Trump wanted to work more closely with Russia to stabilize Syria, and a program that targeted Russias allies didnt fit. The White Houses own Syria policy remains a hodgepodge of half-baked assumptions and conflicting goals, but thats a subject for another day. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter The rise and fall of the Syria covert action program conveys some useful lessons about this most delicate weapon in the United States arsenal. To summarize, the program was too late, too limited and too dependent on dubious partners, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It was potent enough to threaten Assad and draw Russian intervention, but not strong enough to prevail. Perhaps worst, the CIA-backed fighters were so divided politically, and so interwoven with extremist opposition groups, that the rebels could never offer a viable political future. Thats not to say that the CIA effort was bootless. Run from secret operations centers in Turkey and Jordan, the program pumped many hundreds of millions of dollars to many dozens of militia groups. One knowledgeable official estimates that the CIA-backed fighters may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years. By the summer of 2015, the rebels were at the gates of Latakia on the northern coast, threatening Assads ancestral homeland and Russian bases there. Rebel fighters were also pushing toward Damascus. CIA analysts began to speak that summer about a catastrophic success  in which the rebels would topple Assad without creating a strong, moderate government. In a June 2015 column , I quoted a U.S. intelligence official saying, Based on current trend lines, it is time to start thinking about a post-Assad Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin was warily observing the same trend, especially after an urgent visit to Moscow in July that year by Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani , commander of Irans Quds Force and Assads regional patron. Putin got the message: He intervened militarily in September 2015 , decisively changing the balance of the Syrian war. What Trump did in ending the CIA program was arguably just recognizing that ground truth. This article was first published by The Washington Post - See also - Syria requests compensation from US over destruction wrought by war The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
The al-Aqsa Metal Detectors Aren't A Security Measure





Israel has been using the pretext of security to quietly continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.



By Diana Buttu

July 23, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Yesterday, thousands of Palestinians came to Jerusalem to perform the most simple, most peaceful act: prayer. Palestinians - Muslims and Christians, women and men, young and old - prayed in the streets after refusing to enter through the new metal detectors and barricades erected by Israel in front of the al-Aqsa compound. Israeli forces, armed with live ammunition, stun grenades, sound bombs, water cannon and tear gas, came prepared to kill.

And they did: by the day's end Israeli forces and armed settlers had killed three young Palestinian men and injured more than 450 others , some of them very seriously. Israeli forces even raided a Palestinian hospital in an attempt to arrest those injured by their weaponry.

Israel claims that the metal detectors are necessary for Israel's "security" following an incident last week in which two armed Israeli officers were killed. These metal detectors are not about security, but rather about deliberately attempting to bar Palestinians from their places of worship. Contrast, for example, Israel's recent stance towards the Temple Mount Faithful - a group of Jewish extremists who have openly announced that they seek the destruction of the al-Aqsa compound in order to build a Jewish temple in its place.

Yet, while openly advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the destruction of Muslim holy sites, the Israeli government continues to allow this group to enter the al-Aqsa compound (including with arms) under the guise of "freedom of religion".

In 1990, this group attempted to lay a cornerstone for a Jewish temple at the compound triggering protests in which some 20 Palestinians died .

The demand for freedom of religion for Palestinians - the ability to worship without the interference of Israel's armed forces - is conveniently ignored. The metal detectors must be viewed in their proper context: as another of Israel's settler-colonial acts of erasing us, the indigenous population, erasing our homes, our culture and our religious sites and replacing us with settlers.

No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter

For his part, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is happy to see Jerusalem erupt in violence. Facing a corruption investigation for a submarine scandal, Netanyahu is refusing to remove the metal detectors so as to ensure that attention is deflected from this deal and instead focused on violence. You see, in Israel, "security" sells - it ensures votes and ensures that corruption charges are deflected.

To be clear, no Palestinian wants to see their holy sites turned into places of armed conflict. But using the guise of "security", Israel has ensured that we, Palestinians, live as prisoners in our homeland.

In the name of "security," Israel expropriates Palestinian land. In the name of "security", Israel builds Israeli-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land. In the name of "security" Israel demolishes Palestinian homes and schools and in the name of "security" Palestinians are besieged in Gaza , forced to live without electricity, adequate medical supplies or water and even barred from accessing the sea.

And, when Palestinians are gunned down by mass murderers, as they were in the 1990s in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein, in the name of "security", Palestinians - and not Israelis - are subject to increased security restrictions. In short, Israel seeks to turn Jerusalem into Hebron: blocked off from Palestinians, with convenience for Israeli Jews taking precedence over Palestinian rights. So as Israel continues to gun down Palestinians, who will provide security to Palestinians?

This security will not come from the current unelected Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas , who spent four days in China as Palestinians were barred from accessing al-Aqsa compound and as Gazans suffered under a siege that he has openly supported. Nor, of course, will it come from a silent international community that only knows how to wring its hands and meekly condemn Israel.

Rather, Palestinians will continue to bravely stand and defend themselves, bowing down only to the God they worship and never to Israeli diktats.

Diana Buttu is a Palestinian lawyer and analyst who served as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team from 2000 to 2005.

This article was first published by Al Jazeera -
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) Privacy Statement
Syria Summary - Consolidating The West - Marching East

By Moon Of Alabama

July 23, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - There were no major changes in the situation in Syria since our last post . Several smaller steps have further consolidated the position of the government of Syria and its allies while the positions of its enemies continue to deteriorate.



Source: Fabrice Balanche/WINEP - bigger (with legend)

In the north-west Idleb governate and the city of Idleb saw new infighting between Ahrar al-Sham and al-Qaeda in Syria under its current moniker Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Ahrar, historically also an al-Qaeda offspring, was supported by Qatar and Turkey while al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al Nusra aka HTS) was said to have support from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Rudiments of local CIA paid Free Syrian Army gangs are intermixed with these. Their primary task was to collect supplies from the CIA in Turkey and to distribute those to their friends in al-Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham.

The spat between Qatar and Saudi Arabia mostly ended their interest in their proxies in Syria. The Trump administration decided to end the CIA support program for its FSA proxies in the north-west (but not for others elsewhere). This was a significant change of the situation for each group.

After losing their paymasters the local FSA gangs melted away. Ahrar held on to the border crossings with Turkey and collected "taxes" for everything that went through them. Al-Qaeda in Syria needed money. It attacked Ahrar al-Sham to eliminate the competition and to gain control over the only income source left. Last week al-Qaeda overran nearly all Ahrar al-Sham positions. It managed to capture and hold the Bab al-Hawa border station with Turkey. Taxing all trucks going through is a very significant sources of money . Al-Qaeda will now feed off all im- and exports between the Idleb area and Turkey. Ahrar al-Sham is practically done. It lost most of its weapon and ammunition storages and several subgroups left to join with al-Qaeda in Syria.

In an effort to support Ahrar al-Sham Turkey transferred some of its Syrian proxies from the Euphrates Shield area it holds north-east of Aleppo towards the Turkish side of Idleb border station. But those forces are too few and too little motivated to take up al-Qaeda in Syria. Ahrar is now too depleted and weak to win and control Idleb. The Turkish move was too little too late. Idleb is now for most parts consolidated al-Qaeda territory.

The usual "expert" propagandists have long claimed that Ahrar and Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had no longer anything at all to do with the original al-Qaeda. But today al-Qaeda central published a letter that asks both of these groups to stop there infighting. What will those propaganda goons make out of that?

South from Idleb a pocket of various insurgent groups (Ahrar, al-Qaeda, ISIS) controls the mountains around the Lebanese city of Arsal right next to the border with Syria. In June several Lebanese army personal were killed in the area. The Takfiri insurgent groups are a continuing danger to Lebanon as well as to Syria. Several offers for their transfer to Idleb were rejected.

Last week a united front of Lebanese and Syrian forces started to clean up the pocket and to eliminate all insurgents in area. The Lebanese army took control of Arsal city and will protect it against infiltration. About 5,000 Hizbullah fighters were allocated to attack the insurgents within Lebanon while 3,500 Syrian army personal will mop them up from the Syrian side. The Syrian air-force provides support within Lebanon and Syria. The Hariri government of Lebanon (a Saudi puppet) as well as the U.S. have agreed to the operation. So far it ran without a hitch. After several losses on the first day Hizbullah gained significant ground (see map below) during the last two or three days. Nearly half of the insurgent area is already under control and it will not take long for the rest to be liberated. Those insurgents who do not want to get killed and give up their fight may be send to Idleb where they can join the infighting between their brothers.



bigger

The U.S. and Russia had agreed on a deescalation zone further south next to the border with Israel and Jordan. While Israel was consulted on the issue it later voiced disagreement. The Israeli government wants a permanent U.S. forces in the area to cover the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan height. Neither the Trump administration nor the U.S. military have any interested in such a costly entanglement. Israel has long paid, supplied and supported Takifiri groups in the area. It gave them fire support whenever they were in fighting the Syrian government forces. The deescalation agreement foresees the supervision of the deescalation area by Russian military policy. That regime will be installed during the next few weeks and further Israeli shenanigans in the area will become difficult. Russia will react harshly against any interference with its troops' task.

No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter

In the north-east the Kurdish YPG is the U.S. proxy forces for the fight against ISIS in Raqqa. When the YPG submitted to U.S. command was told (video) to rename itself and became the "Syrian Democratic Forces". It is still the same anarcho-marxist cult that it was before. It is still the same group that is killing Turkish soldiers within Turkey. The U.S. military believes that it can sustain the support for the group and continue to occupy the north-east of Syria after ISIS is defeated:

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last month left open the possibility of longer-term assistance to Kurdish YPG militia in Syria, saying the United States may need to supply them weapons and equipment even after the capture of Islamic State's Syria stronghold of Raqqa.

The U.S. plan to split up Syria and Iraq after ISIS is defeated is still in force. But neither the Turkish nor the Iraqi nor the Syrian government will allow the consolidation of a U.S. protected Kurdish minority in east-Syria that they all see as a threat to their sovereignty:

The question remains: how can new Kurdistan states survive with four countries surrounding it (Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran), all determined to do everything to neutralise a future Kurdish state in Mesopotamia and/or Bilad al-Sham? The Kurds really believe they can rely on two US and one British military bases in Kurdistan Iraq and on Saudi Arabia monies, and on six US military bases in the north of Syria to impose their state?

The YPG/SDF has already huge difficulties to defeat ISIS in Raqqa. There is little progress but the losses are considerable. Last week it had to discontinue its attack and wait for fresh forces to arrive. Raqqa is only a medium size city but with many high-rise buildings and a still significant population. Bombing support by the U.S. and heavy artillery shelling will be requited to eliminate ISIS from the city. This may well take several additional months. The city will be destroyed and the attacking Kurds will have high losses. There will be many civilian casualties. All this for a city that even after ISIS is defeated will never submit to Kurdish control and will eventually fall back to the Syrian government. One wonders how the political leadership of the YPG will justify this costly effort when questioned by its constituency.

On the southern bank of the Euphrates the Syrian government forces have now encapsulated the SDF forces around Raqqa. They make continues progress towards Deir Ezzor where a Syrian government forces is still under siege of ISIS.



Source: Weekend Warrior/@evil_SDOC - bigger

The Syrian government attack against ISIS around Deir Ezzor will come on multiple axes. But there are still some 80 kilometers to go and even though the area is mostly an empty semi-desert ISIS commandos are still active there. Only last week some 25 Syrian soldiers were killed in one ISIS commando attack at the T-3 pumping station near Palmyra.

The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was interviewed (video) by some (know-nothing) journalist of NBC. He rejected the claims of a stop of CIA support to the insurgents (25:20):

I understand that the US supports much more groups than just the ones, which were announced as being left without the American weapons.

Lavrov also warned against any thoughts of establishing permanent U.S. bases in Syria.

This article was first published by

Moon Of Alabama

-
1,800 Nigerians illegally residing in Saudi Arabia have been evacuated by the Federal Government.

Already, no fewer than 198 persons, including women and children, returned to the country aboard a Med-View Airline jet.

It was learnt that 198 Nigerians arrived the Aminu Kano International Airport at about 10 am on Saturday.

Officials of the National Emergency Management Agency in Kano State received the first batch of the returnees.

The Consulate General of Nigeria in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Yahya-Sani, who led the illegal immigrants to Nigeria, told journalists at the airport that the Federal Government sponsored their return to Nigeria.

According to him, the illegal migrants voluntarily reported to the Nigerian embassy for deportation to Nigeria in compliance with a three-month evacuation notice by Saudi authorities, which will expire on July 24 (Monday).

Yahya-Sani said the returnees were not deported, but that they voluntarily accepted the amnesty offer granted them by the Saudi authorities for illegal immigrants to leave the country.

They decided on their own to return to Nigeria. The Saudi authorities offered amnesty to all illegal immigrants to leave the country within three months, he said.

Arriving with their personal effects, the official handed over the returnees to NEMA officials at the airport, who documented their return before they subsequently departed to their respective hometowns and villages.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress ( APC ) are concerned about the crises rocking the ruling party, which have taken over at least 12 state chapters of the party.

It was gathered on Saturday that the fear of the party leaders increased on July 12 when the Supreme Court delivered a judgment, which resolved the factional crisis in the opposition Peoples Democratic Party.

It was learnt that at a meeting of its governors and the National Working Committee on Wednesday in Abuja, the APC decided to speed up its reconciliation process.

A leader of the party, who confided in our correspondent, noted that less than two years to the 2019 elections, the APC had not resolved crises in about 12 of its state chapters.

He listed the states as Gombe, Borno, Bauchi, Ondo, Kogi, Kaduna, Kano, Niger, Plateau, Ogun, Lagos and Enugu.

The party chieftain, who craved anonymity, said the APC had not been able to resolve the crisis in its Gombe State chapter since the 2015 governorship election was concluded

He stated, The state chapter of the party has been in turmoil since we lost the governorship election to the PDP in 2015. Trouble began during the 2015 primary election. The party broke into two factions with one led by Magaji Doho and the other by Karu Ishaya.

They are backed by two prominent leaders  former governor and now senator, Danjuma Goje, and former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives and also a senator, Usman Nafada.

It was gathered that the governorship ambition of Senator Abu Kyari, (Borno North) was the basis for the crisis in the Borno State chapter as this had put him on collision course with the state Governor, Kashim Shettima.

In Bauchi State, investigations showed that relationship between the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, and other Abuja-based political office holders from the state on one hand, and Governor Mohammed Abubakar was not cordial.

In Ondo State, our correspondent learnt that the crisis, which led to the election of Rotimi Akeredolu, as the governor of the state has not been resolved.

The pre-election crisis which made a leader of the party, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, to demand the resignation of the partys national chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun has worsened.

The battle for the control of the soul of the APC in Kogi State has pitted Governor Yahaya Bello against most members of the state chapter of the party. More pronounced is his spat with the Senator representing Kogi West Senatorial district, Dino Melaye.

Bello is being accused of pushing for Dinos recall from the National Assembly. The Prince Tony Momoh-led fact finding and reconciliation committee has since submitted its report and recommended that the governor should be more accommodating.

It was also learnt that in Kaduna State, the rift between Governor Nasir El-Rufai and the Senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District, Sheu Sani, had polarised the state chapter of the party.

Also, the crisis of confidence between Senator Musa Kwankwaso who was governor of Kano State and his successor, Abdullahi Ganduje, had polarised the state chapter of the party.

The crisis over the choice of Solomon Dalung as Minister from the state without governor Simon Lalungs input had not been resolved in the Plateau State of the party,

In Niger , it was learnt that the State governor, Sani Bello is embroiled in a battle of wits with some federal lawmakers from the state over the control of the party structure in the state.

Investigations showed that the Federal lawmakers were unhappy with the manner in which the APCs candidates emerged for the local government council elections.

In Ogun State, SUNDAY PUNCH gathered that although Governor Ibikunle Amosu is controlling the party executive, the governorship ambition of a Lagos based senator, Olamilekan Adeola, (Lagos West) was creating tension in the party as the governor was said to be opposed to him.

Similarly, the Lagos State chapter of the party has also not known peace since the party held primaries to elect flag bearers for the local government council elections. Some party members have called for the expulsion of the APC National Legal Adviser, Muiz Banire (SAN) for daring to contest the process leading up to the emergence of APC candidates for the polls.

The Enugu State chapter of the party is also having leadership tussles of its own with two factions claiming ownership of the APC structure in the state.

It was, however, gathered that the APC had concluded plans to resolve all the crises before the end of the year.

Investigations showed that its NWC had decided to henceforth liaise with the partys governors while taking critical decisions affecting the party.

Towards this end, the party leadership agreed to ensure that governors received copies of all communications emanating from the National Secretariat to state party chairmen/executives.

The partys National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi told SUNDAY PUNCH on Saturday that the partys leadership is not sleeping on its oars in its bid to resolve all outstanding issues.

Abdullahi said, These issues are very important to us whether we like it or not, we have to resolve them. And we are also aware that time is of the essence; we are doing everything to resolve them

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
The All Progressives Congress has reportedly won the council election held in all the 20 Local Government Areas and the 37 Local Council Development Areas on Saturday, according to reports coming in from the polling units.

Early results released by the Lagos Televisionshowed that the APC took several LGAs and LCDAs including Ojokoro, Eti Osa, Lagos Island, Badagry Central, Onigbongbo, Odiolowo/Ojuwoye, Ikorodu West, Ejigbo, Ikeja, Ikorodu, Epe, Lagos Island East, Badagry West, Surulere, Ikorodu Central, Ikoyi/Obalende, Agboyi-Ketu, Eredo and others.

Some of the results from the LGs and LCDAs showed the ruling party winning. In Lagos Island LG, APC won with 14,692 votes while PDP got 925 votes, with the Labour Party taking third place with 1211 votes. APC also won in Ikoyi-Obalende LCDA with 7112 votes, PDP got 756 votes while LP got 542 votes. In Eredo LCDA, APC received 10910 votes while PDP got 737 votes. The victory continued for the ruling party in Epe LG with the APC getting 21401 votes and LP getting 948 votes. APC emerged victorious in Lagos Island East LCDA with 9060 votes while PDP got 1128 votes. In Badagry West, APC swept the LCDA with 5300 votes leaving PDP with 935 votes. Similarly, in Ejigbo LCDA, APC won 4876 votes while PDP won 1079 votes. In Ikeja LG, APC got 6191 votes while PDP won 990 votes. APC won Ikorodu West LCDA with 3068 votes while PDP got 555 votes.

In Agboyi-Ketu LCDA, APC got 10,701 votes, while PDP got 1,759 votes. Other results were being awaited as of the time the paper went to bed.

The APC had earlier won both the chairmanship and councillorship elections in Ward A6, Polling Unit 033 located in Ogunmodede College, Papa Epe, where the State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode voted.

At the end of counting of the votes cast, the results showed that the APC polled a total of 299 votes for the chairmanship election as against one polled by the Labour Party and zero vote polled respectively by the Peoples Democratic Party and Accord Party.

For the councillorship election in the unit, the APC polled a total of 293 votes as against one polled by Labour Party and zero polled by PDP. In the second polling unit in the ward, APC polled 298 votes for the chairmanship election as against zero vote polled by the PDP and Labour Party.

Ambode, on Saturday said local government elections would engender participatory governance and revive belief in the electoral process at the third tier of government.

Ambode noted that the election in Lagos State came six years after the last one was conducted.

I am happy that this election is coming at my own time. The whole idea is for us to evolve a process where the citizens come out and believe in a process that is credible. When the people see credible election at the local government level, they will be excited to participate because they know that it is credible, peaceful and without violence. That is what we have been preaching. Lagos is too cosmopolitan for us not to have a credible election.

We need to enhance democracy in the country and we can only do it by what we are doing today.

He said adequate security measures had been put in place to ensure that voters cast their votes in a peaceful atmosphere and forestall any breakdown of law and order.

So far, so good, from the reports I have received from all the other parts of Lagos State, we are pleased with what is going on. I believe strongly that it will be peaceful throughout, Ambode added.

Also speaking, the All Progressives Congress chief, who is also the Balogun of Epe, Chief Lanre Razak, said the party believed in strengthening democracy, adding that the conduct of the election would develop the political process.

The member of the Lagos State House of Assembly representing Epe Constituency II, Segun Olulade, who cast his vote at the RCM Primary School, Ejinrin, Epe, commended Lagosians for coming out to vote despite the downpour. He noted that the peoples participation in the election would deepen democratic values.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
72-year-old Actor John Heard, who played the role of Peter McCallister in hit 90s movies Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, was reportedly found dead in his hotel room.

Though the cause of his death has not yet been made public, however TMZ reports that the police was called to the actors Palo Alto, California hotel room for a medical emergency, but Heard was pronounced dead on arrival.

The actor who was recuperating in the hotel after undergoing a minor back surgery on Wednesday at Stanford Medical Center, was married to actress Margot Kidder for less than a week in 1979.

His only surviving child, John Matthew Jack Heard, was conceived with ex-girlfriend, actress Melissa Leo.

John Heards role as Peter McCallister in Home Alone shot him to fame. He also went on to star in A-list films like Big, Beaches, Gladiator, and Pelican Brief. Heards last movie role was in the 2016 drama, So B. It.
The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB ), Nnamdi Kanu might be facing more trouble than what he expected in trying to win over states to his side.

The leaders of the various ethnic nationalities in Benue and Rivers state have asked Nnamdi Kanu to steer clear of their lands in his bid to expand the territory of his proposed Biafra Republic beyond the five states in the Eastern part of Nigeria.

Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra alleged that an agent of the Federal Government, whose name he did not disclose, offered him while in detention, to secede with the five Igbo states but that he rejected the offer because it did not constitute the complete territory of Biafra.

Kanu had while addressing leaders of an Igbo civil society coalition said, They gave me Biafra in prison with only the five Igbo states; I said no, I want Benue and Rivers states inclusive.

But prominent indigenes of the ethnic groups in Benue and Rivers states, which he is seeking to annex, described the Biafran agitator as a jester.

For instance, a retired police chief, Abubakar Tsav, said Kanu must be suffering from mental ailments to utter such utterance.

He said, I think the man has some mental problems. What is the connection between the Tivs, the Idoma and the Igbo? I think the man needs to see a psychiatric doctor because something is wrong with him.

He is not well because nothing connects the Tivs, the Idoma to the Igbo. How can he say he wants Benue State to be part of Biafra? He should stay where he is and carry on with his madness. We are not ready to be part and parcel of his madness

Other prominent indigenes of Tiv, Idoma and Igede, the three major ethnic groups in Benue State who also lashed out at Kanu included, a first-class traditional ruler in Tivland, the Tor Sankera, Abu King Shuluwa; a former Minister of Interior, Abba Moro; a former Minister of State for Education, Professor Jerry Agada and former Economic Adviser to former president Olusegun Obasanjo, Professor Ode Ojowu.

King Shuluwa described Kanu as a man with little intelligence who dared lumped Benue as part of Biafra.

He said, His level of intelligence is in question, else, how dare him to annex Benue as part of Biafra territory. In fact, if you are looking for more people to be part of your territory, does common sense not say you should have a talk with them?

Moro corroborated the monarchs submission stressing that the Igbo language, culture and tradition are clearly different from those of the three tribes in Benue State.

He said, Benue is not part of Biafra, we do not have any relationship with Biafra in genealogy, culture and by colonial creation, Benue is part of the north.

Agada on his part, warned the Indigenous People of Biafra and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra to stop laying claims to Idoma land as part of their territory.

Also in Rivers State, Ogbakor Ikwerre, a body of the Ikwerre Ethnic Nationality in Rivers State also disagreed with Kanu on his demand that Rivers State must be part of Biafra.

President-General of Ogbakor Ikwerre Cultural Organisation, Worldwide, Professor Simeon Achinewhu, told SUNDAY PUNCH that Biafra failed in the past because there were attempts by the former Biafran leader, late Odumegwu Ojukwu, to force unwilling minority groups into Biafra.

The President, Ijaw Youth Council, Eric Omare, asked Kanu to have a rethink about the territory of the Biafra of his dream and restrict it to the states of the South-East.

Omare said, The Ijaw nation has said it times without number that the South-South especially the Ijaw are not part of Biafra territory.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Comedian Seyi law in a new interview with Sunday Scoop has described Kemis constant attack on his daughter as bullying.

Recall the comedian and the controversial journalist got involved in a horrid social media drama, after Kemi alleged that Seyis daughter, Tiwa is Obese and diabetic.

Seyi immediately fired back at the blogger and described Olunloyo as someone whos hating on his daughter. Then, some persons mediated in the online battle and both parties seemed to sheathe their swords. But days later, Olunloyo made another post in which she insisted that Tiwaloluwa wasnt healthy and that a relative of Seyis wife in London had told her that Tiwa indeed had Type 1 diabetes.

However, Seyi refuted Olunloyos claims in an exclusive chat with Sunday Scoop. He said,

This is just a case of a person who has refused to seek help. It is obvious that Kemi has decided to bully my daughter. Bullies usually fight people who are within their age bracket and people who have the same body size as them. For her to attack my daughter only means that she is unwell. Who bullies a young child? Never have I seen someone her age bully a child as young as my daughter who is barely a year old. I have decided to ignore her rants. She also made some obnoxious claims about my daughters health. But when youre a man that wakes up every day, knowing the only reason your daughter visits the hospital is to take her vaccines, you have every reason to be grateful to God.

Speaking further, he said,

According to her, there was an article in which I said I rejoiced she was sent to prison. But its apparent she only read the headline of the article, and not the body. She did not even know that I was pleading on her behalf. I will keep celebrating my daughter and having wonderful times with my wife.

On the veracity of Olunloyos claims that his wife, Staceys relative informed her (Olunloyo) that Tiwa has Type 1 Diabetes, Seyi laughed it off.

That doesnt even make any sense. For the records though, my wife does not have any relative in the United Kingdom, he said.

Explaining the only physical interaction they had before the online battle of words, Seyi said,

Prior to her rants online, I only met her once. That was during a Glo Lafftafest show in Ibadan when she came backstage to interview me; that was all.

Seyi also maintained that his wife isnt bothered by Kemis rants.
US president Donald Trump has declared that the most advanced aircraft carrier to join the US Navy, the USS Gerald R Ford, will cause America's enemies to "shake with fear" whenever they see it.

Mr Trump gave a speech at the commissioning ceremony for the 100,000-tonne, 12.9 billion dollar (9.9 billion) warship, in which he praised the US military and the American labour that went into building it.

Mr Trump said at the event in Norfolk, Virginia: "I hereby place United States Ship Gerald R Ford in commission. May God bless and guide this warship and all who shall sail in her."

He was followed by Susan Ford Bales, the ship's sponsor and daughter of the 38th president, whom the ship honours.

She said: "There is no-one, absolutely no-one, who would be prouder of the commissioning of this mighty ship than the president of the United States, Gerald R Ford.

"I am honoured to give the command: 'Officers and crew of the United States Gerald R Ford, man our ship and bring her to life.'"

Mr Trump arrived aboard the carrier's steamy flight deck by the Marine One presidential helicopter and was greeted by defence secretary Jim Mattis and other officials.

Mr Trump, who visited the carrier in March to promote his plans for a military build-up, told Time magazine this year that the Navy should revert to using steam catapults to launch fighter jets because some of the state-of-the-art systems and technology aboard the USS Ford "costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it's no good".

Construction on the USS Ford started in 2009 and was to be completed by September 2015 at a cost of 10.5 billion dollars.

The US Navy has attributed the delays and budget overruns to the ship's state-of-the-art systems and technology, including electromagnetic launch systems for jets and drones that will replace steam catapults.

The warship also has a smaller island that sits farther back on the ship to make it easier and quicker to refuel, re-arm and relaunch planes, and a nuclear power plant designed to allow cruising speeds of more than 30 knots and operation for 20 years without refuelling.

The vessel completed sea trials in April but still faces a battery of tests at sea before becoming operational and ready for deployment, work that is expected to cost nearly 780 million dollars (600 million) and take more than four years to complete, according to auditors.

The USS Ford is named after the country's 38th president, who rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the Navy during the Second World War. After military service, Mr Ford was elected to the House of Representatives, serving Michigan until he was tapped by then-president Richard Nixon to become vice president.

Mr Ford became president after Mr Nixon resigned during the Watergate scandal.

Docked at Naval Station Norfolk, the USS Ford will eventually house about 2,600 sailors, 600 fewer than the previous generation of aircraft carriers. The Navy says that will save more than four billion dollars (3 billion) over the ship's 50-year lifespan.

The vessel was built at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

AP
Business-climate rankings have evolved over the past 10 years into a cottage industry that states and often politicians use to spotlight their marketplaces and puff out their chests as proof of their economic prowess.

A University of Iowa economics professor recently released a report that he hopes puts those rankings in proper context, and not just as justification for state economic, regulatory, social and tax policies that he says can cause more harm than good.

Peter Fisher, the research director for the Iowa Policy Project, operates www.gradingstates.org, which includes a report titled The Real Path to State Prosperity.

Fisher said his website presents serious and authoritative critiques of these attempts to measure business climate or economic competitiveness.

I also identify state policies that promote long term growth and broadly shared prosperity that feature public investment in education and infrastructure, he said.

The report and the website include North Carolina among the states where caution is warranted, according to Fisher.

Before House Bill 2, the transgender restroom legislation, hijacked North Carolina for more than a year  being repealed in March 2017  former Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, tried to stake his re-election bid on what he called the Carolina comeback.

Economists, however, tend to believe states and their politicians are limited in what they can do to grow their economy outside how the national economy is performing.

In July 2016, cable news network CBNC raised North Carolinas rank from ninth to fifth even though the state ranks 30th for quality of life, its worst category, largely because of the non-inclusiveness (HB2) that is enshrined in state law.

There are, Fisher said, fundamental problems with these rankings. They attempt to combine a wide variety of measures into a single index number.

The indexes rarely use valid research to determine what goes into the index, and with how much weight, he said. The result is an arbitrary index number that may bear little relation to a states prospects to achieve growth and prosperity.

The danger is that a particular score or ranking can be used to justify state policies that may actually harm rather than help a state to grow and prosper, Fisher said.

He cited as an example state legislatures with a single-minded focus on business- and income-tax cuts.

The prime example, Fisher said, is the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

Legislators passed, and Brownback signed, legislation in 2012 that slashed income taxes, a move that was supposed to provide an immediate and lasting boost to the economy.

However, Fisher said, the legislature ended this drastic social experiment in June when it overrode Brownbacks veto and enacted a bill to roll back most of the tax cuts.

Since 2013, North Carolinas Republican-controlled legislature has reduced the states corporate tax rate from 6.9 percent in 2013 to 3 percent in 2017  the lowest in the country for states that have a corporate tax rate.

There are plans to reduce the rate to 2.5 percent by 2019.

The 2017-19 state budget  which became law when the legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Coopers veto  includes $1 billion in other tax cuts that the nonpartisan legislative staff determined will create a budget shortfall of more than $1 billion in two years and by $1.4 billion in 2021.

Republican legislative leaders downplayed the potential for the gap, saying their spending plans would limit or prevent it from occurring. Some Democratic legislators and left-leaning advocacy groups have criticized the state for putting too much emphasize on building up the rainy day fund over meeting current educational and health-care needs.

It is hard to find a reputable economist who will argue that tax cuts pay for themselves, Fisher said.

Instead, they erode the states ability to maintain a quality education system. That may explain why the CNBC ranking of North Carolina on the education component of its index fell from an average of 15th in 2011-2013, to 30th in 2015-2017, he said.

In the long run, the state is shooting itself in the foot if it continues to cut business taxes, which are already among the lowest in the country on many measures, at the expense of education, working training, infrastructure or investments that enhance the quality of life, Fisher said.

In the post-HB2 economic environment, Fisher stresses that state growth occurs more often with states that emphasize educational spending.

One thing that is pretty clear from research on state growth over a long period is that states with a more educated workforce have seen greater gains in income, he said. The key to rising incomes and wages is increased productivity.

States play an important role, Fisher said, through investments in public infrastructure, in technological innovation at public universities and other institutions, and in workers through the education and training systems and through better health care.
Gov. Roy Cooper has signed into law three bills sponsored by Forsyth County Republican legislators that focus on airport stormwater utility fees, a study on statewide telemedicine usage and dyslexia accommodations required of schools.

House Bill 275, with Rep. Debra Conrad as primary sponsor, exempts airports from paying city and county government stormwater utility fees specifically on their runway and taxiway properties.

The exemption comes with the condition that airports certify to the municipalities they are using the savings to attract businesses to their facility.

The law goes into effect Jan. 1.

Greg Turner, assistant Winston-Salem manager, said the law would reduce the citys stormwater revenues by $46,000 per year from Smith Reynolds Airport. He said those revenues are separate from general tax revenues.

I anticipate we will need to ask City Council to approve a rate increase in part to address this revenue reduction, but also to provide enough funding for anticipated stormwater projects, Turner said. The only source of funding for this program is the stormwater fee.

Forsyth County Manager Dudley Watts said the county does not regulate stormwater.

Neither Mark Davidson, the top official at Smith Reynolds, nor Kevin Baker, top official at Piedmont Triad International Airport, could not be reached for how much in fees their respective airports will gain for business recruitment efforts.

Investing in our airports for infrastructure will be a major business recruitment tool, Conrad said when asked about how much of an impact the fees could be for Smith Reynolds. With a global economy, we need to have more overseas direct flights originating out of North Carolina.

PTI is receiving $7.12 million each for the fiscal 2017-18 and 2018-19 state budgets. The money could be spent on capital improvements or to pay debt services or other finance costs and expenses on revenue bonds and notes issued by airports.

House Bill 283, with Rep. Donny Lambeth as primary sponsor, requires the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a telemedicine standards policy by Oct. 1.

The law represents a one-step-back approach for legislators, who want to put telemedicine and other digital services on equal insurance coverage and reimbursement footing with other health-care services.

I believe the study will help bring back a plan and address some of the concerns I heard from the legislators that will make it easier for an ultimate passage, Lambeth said.

Demand for telemedicine has grown in recent years, with the service particularly aimed at individuals who live in rural areas and/or who have difficulty getting to an urban hospital.

There is a high level of interest in telemedicine to help meet the needs in rural North Carolina, particularly as our population ages, Lambeth said.

An amendment to HB283 by Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth, requires DHHS to study the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact and its impact on the delivery of psychology services via the telemedicine model. The compact represents what some states have done to bridge the gap between what health insurers will and wont pay for telemedicine.

DHHS would be required to file a report, a proposed telemedicine policy and a recommendation to the Joint Legislative DHHS oversight committee.

House Bill 149, with Conrad as primary sponsor, requires the State Board of Education and local education boards to develop tools for ensuring policies and procedures are developed for students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia and dyscalculia. The bill became law Thursday.

It is important to be able to identify students with these learning disabilities early, so they can have the most fulfilling education possible, Conrad said.

The bill was inspired by a Forsyth County couple, Neil and Penny Auchmuty, and their advocacy for their dyslexic son, Payne, who was identified as dyslexic around the age of 7 or 8, after teachers wrote home to say he was having trouble with reading.

HB149 is important to my family because we see it as a step forward toward dyslexic students not having to go through the misunderstandings that Payne had to go through in the public school system, Penny Auchmuty said.

The bill requires the state education board to include a specific definition for dyslexia within its policies for learning disabilities.

It requires  beginning in the 2017-18 school year  that teachers and other school personnel receive continuing training on identifying students with dyslexia and dyscalculia, and developing assistance strategies. The state education board is required to make available online information on dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Local school boards would be required  also beginning in the 2017-18 school year  to review their diagnostic tools and screening instruments for learning disabilities to see if they are age appropriate.
Q: Will we see the August solar eclipse here and if so, how do we protect our eyes and watch?

S.P.

Answer: Yes, assuming the skies are clear, Winston-Salem should get a good view of the eclipse on Monday, Aug. 21. It wont be the full eclipse here, though, but a partial one  though with 95 percent obscuration, that still means that at its peak, 95 percent of the sun will be covered.

The path of totality, the 70-mile-wide zone in which people will see a total solar eclipse, is where the moon will completely cover the sun. That path cuts through a narrow portion of far-southwestern North Carolina and mostly through South Carolina, which are likely to be busy tourist destinations that day.

In the Winston-Salem area, according to Eclipsewise.com, the eclipse will be visible starting about 1:12 p.m., reaching its maximum coverage at 2:41, and ending about 4:03.

We have created a direct link to that sites page about the Aug. 21 eclipse at tinyurl.com/eclipseNC; there, you can also look up the times for other cities in our readership area and elsewhere in North Carolina.

According to Morehead Planetarium, this will be the first total solar eclipse in the 48 contiguous states since 1979, and the first total solar eclipse visible from the Carolinas since 1970.

More than 50 locations in North and South Carolina will have Carolinas Solar Eclipse parties, including the Kaleideum North on Hanes Mill Road in Winston-Salem and Greensboro Science Center in Greensboro. More information on the Kaleideums event can be found at downtown.kaleideum.org/programs/solar-eclipse-party-kaleideum-north/.

As for how to look at the eclipse safely, youre right, you do have to be careful and use special-purpose solar filters, such as eclipse glasses, hand-held solar viewers and pinhole projectors.

With one exception, it is never safe to look directly at the sun without a special-purpose safe solar filter, according to the American Astronomical Society. That exception is during totality, when the moon completely blocks the dazzlingly bright face of the sun.

In other words, people here in the Triad will need special glasses. Even people in the path of totality should be careful, since totality is fleeting, lasting at most 2 minutes 40 seconds, according to the AAS. Most of the time during the two-plus-hour eclipse (and the whole time if youre outside the path of totality), youll be watching the partial phases, during which filters are always required for looking directly at the sun.

Looking at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun through dark sunglasses or any other unapproved filter is a recipe for serious and potentially permanent eye injury.

The AAS has a web page explaining how to view a solar eclipse safely, which you can read at eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/safe-viewing. NASA has a site with more information and tips at eclipse2017.nasa.gov/safety.

Also, in mid-August, the Journal will run an informational page with more details about the eclipse. That page will also give instructions on how to make your own viewer.

And the Kaleideum also has special glasses for sale in its gift shop currently for $2 each.
The sun is setting, but the night is still steamy. Its Friday p.m., and people are ready to kick off the weekend, but outdoor activities are a sweat-inducing prospect. What to do when sitting at home isnt an option?

Fortunately, there are a lot of cool Friday night choices throughout the city. And as an added bonus, the variety of activities allows for as much  or as little  participation as desired.

Taste of Art 

Glass on Glass

The accoutrements of the evening include cutters, running pliers, multicolored glass pieces and heat-activated glue at the Taste of Art  Glass on Glass workshop Friday night, and the pre-work table setup was still life inspiration for the work to come. With Sawtooths exposed brick walls and wooden beam architectural elements as a backdrop, the soon-to-be mosaic artists took their places at the table, ready to create.

Ive always wanted to do something here at Sawtooth, said Leslie Acree, attending with her husband, Will. So when I got the email about the classes on Friday night, we decided to come and make a mosaic piece.

Anne Wade is no stranger to the evenings selection of materials, but said she was looking forward to broadening her knowledgebase.

I work in glass and have a glass studio in Reidsville, but Ive never worked with mosaics, Wade said. My husband actually gave me this class for a birthday present.

Sawtooth offers a variety of Taste of Art classes, all designed to introduce participants to new tools and techniques. Instructor Sue Smith said that the mosaic class allows individuals to express their creativity however they choose.

Some students do an abstract design and others cut pieces that look like objects and create a scene, Smith said. They can create whatever comes into their minds.

Smith, a self-taught glass artist, started out just like the people who come to her classes.

Fifteen years ago, my best friend wanted to take a stained glass class and didnt want to go alone, so thats how I got started, Smith says, laughing. People are often surprised that this is not a difficult art form; its very free-form and not regimented.

Karen Miller and her friend, Jessica Moffatt, readied their tools for the evenings work.

Shes visiting from Oklahoma, Miller said. This is something artistic and fun to do on a Friday summer night.

Lisa Sigmon brought her daughter, Heather, to the Taste of Art session.

Its all about everything art for her, Sigmon said, smiling at her teenager. This is a great way to try something new.

Fun Friday concert series

A welcome early evening respite, the air-conditioned room encouraged audience members to relax during Friday nights concert at The Shepherds Center. A summer pastime for music lovers, the concert series is a free community event offered by an organization that offers services to enhance the quality of life for many seniors in the community.

The Shepherds Center is a national nonprofit that supports and promotes successful aging, said Susan Meny, the Vital Living program director for the Winston-Salem Shepherds Center. These concerts are just one part of what we do for the community.

Train Wreck was on the stage for Fridays performance. A group of retirees who decided to start performing together after their work obligations were complete, Train Wreck entertained the audience with bluegrass tunes, a genre described as music of the melting pot of America at its most inclusive.

Bluegrass has its roots in the traditional music of the Irish, Scottish and English immigrants to the Appalachian region of America, stated officials of The Shepherds Center. With the addition of music of African-Americans, the bluegrass sound created an entirely new genre of American Country Music.

Buskin Out opened the concert. Represented by elementary-agers Savy McDonald and Rachel Baynes on Friday, Buskin Out serves multiple purposes, according to Keets Taylor, program assistant at The Shepherds Center.

How many of you played an instrument when you were young? Taylor asked the audience, watching as dozens of hands went up in response. And how many of you are still playing?

Buskin Out is a group of young folks who play violin, she continued. Their parents are using every strategy they can to keep their kids playing!

In addition to the concerts, activities at The Shepherds Center include book clubs, yoga, dance, bridge and Ask the Doctor interactive sessions, as well as daily topical events. Meaningful Monday is a health and education series, and Travel Tuesday is a local tour outing where participants visit places like Brasstown Craft Chocolates and The Olio glass studios. Way Back Wednesday is a program focused on local, world, ancient and current history, and Thought-Provoking Thursday is a lifelong learning series that focuses on varying topics. The Fun Friday concerts round out the schedule.

We typically have between 60 and 100 people at every concert, Meny said. People come out and enjoy the music and we get to showcase local talent.
President Donald Trump marked six months in office Thursday, leaving some people confidently satisfied with his work, some frustrated by what they consider a lack of progress and others shaking their heads.

Winston-Salem residents have both trumpeted his triumphs and complained of shortcomings, vehemently divided on the Republican president and his administration thus far.

Ed Broyhill: I still

have faith

Its been six months since Ed Broyhill attended Trumps inauguration in Washington.

And he is as confident in the president as he was that day, he said.

I continue to be a very strong supporter of President Trump, said Broyhill, who also attended the Cabinet dinner and inaugural ball. Unfortunately our country is faced with a lot of problems and threats from different angles, but I still have faith.

Broyhill said one of the reasons he supports Trump is because he continues to change the status quo and challenge monopolies.

Of all the presidents Ive loved and respected, Republican and Democrat alike, Donald Trump has a different style that is unique, Broyhill said. He can alienate the opposition, but at the same time, hes found a campaign style and message that has galvanized support. Thats what won him the election.

He said he is impressed with the way Trump has been trying to get the economy back on track and his hires of people of a high skill level.

I think, with most presidents, theres a learning curve, Broyhill said. Donald Trump will regain his popularity over the next four years, I can assure you that.

Jim Ferree: Total chaos

When it comes to such issues as health care, military spending and climate change, Jim Ferree and the president dont see eye to eye.

Id give Trump an F-plus (grade), very disappointing, the Winston-Salem resident said. Id put him at the very bottom of our presidents below Richard Nixon.

Ferree said that Trump has hurt Americas reputation worldwide and that the country is no longer considered a world leader in many areas, especially where climate change is concerned.

He thinks its all a joke or a hoax by the Chinese, said Ferree, a retired member of the U.S. Army. Instead of presidential vacations and Secret Service agents camping out at Trump hotels, American resources should be put to better use, Ferree said.

We could use those resources to do something more, like helping the poor and poverty-stricken, he said. Trump is looking out for himself and his billionaire friends.

Ferree said Trumps first six months have been frustrating and disappointing, but, in his eyes, not unexpected.

Its about what I expected  total chaos, he said. Trump hasnt done one thing to help America since hes been in office.

Jim Rorie: Seeing some sunshine

Trump has stayed true to his word, Jim Rorie said, creating jobs just as he promised.

Overall Im very pleased with Donald Trump, he said. I think everyones seeing some sunshine where it used to be pretty dismal.

Rorie, a private investigator, said he is already seeing the effect of more jobs.

Trump has also made strides in other areas, like border security, Rorie said, although some things are coming along slower than he would like, to no fault of Trump.

I feel like politics as usual is taking its toll on his agenda and what he promised to get done, he said. I dont feel let down at all by Donald Trump.

In his first six months, Trump has also had to wade through a lot of nonsense and has been constantly bombarded by silly Russian stuff, Rorie said, adding that Trump has done well all things considered and he hopes to see him continue that trajectory.

Hes obviously a smart man or he wouldnt be where hes at today, Rorie said. I would truly love to see another four years of Donald Trump after this term.

Geraldine Zurek: Trail of broken promises

From allegations of Russian meddling in U.S. affairs to frequent vacations, Trump is barking up a dangerous tree, Geraldine Zurek said.

Trump is disengaged and so easily distracted by tweeting about his personal vendettas, Zurek said.

She said allegations of Russian interference in U.S. elections and conflicting stories have cast doubt on the reliability of democracy and American voting procedures.

She said she believes that there may have been Russian involvement and that it bothers her greatly.

His hardcore supporters dont see that. To them the only thing that matters is Muslims and Mexicans, she said. As long as he keeps hammering out that rhetoric and xenophobia, theyll keep supporting him.

It makes her angry that Trump is leaving a trail of broken promises, Zurek said. She called his behavior around the world an embarrassment.

I still wake up some mornings and say, How is this man still president of the United States? she said. I have pride in my country, but I certainly dont have pride in my president.
The news of the Moravian Music Festival returning to Winston-Salem this year was music to the ears of many a music-lover.

For the first time since 2003, the week-long festival will be back in Winston-Salem July 23-29 to celebrate the citys Moravian roots.

Its very exciting to have the festival back in Winston-Salem and weve received a lot of positive feedback, said Erik Salzwedel, business manager for the Moravian Music Foundation. No matter what your interest in music, theres something for everyone.

The 25th festival will feature workshops and evening concerts in venues around the city, but will be focused mainly in Old Salem and Home Moravian Church.

The festival highlights the treasure trove of early American Moravian music held in the Archives and promotes new compositions and hymn-writing as well.

Moravians are very prolific and active in music, even in the early days, Salzwedel said. Each year, were premiering new works of Moravian composers, which is really the exciting part.

The roughly 300 participants will come from far and wide to attend the festival with patrons from South Africa, Germany, Canada and several states.

People of all skill levels are included, from novices to masters who have been playing their instruments for 60-plus years, Salzwedel said.

We dont exclude anybody just because they took up an instrument last year, he said. Were all there for the same reasons: improving music skills, and, even more, improving personal connections.

Workshop attendees will perform in a few of the evening concerts, which include a festival concert band, trombone choir, handbell choir and chamber ensembles.

Each night of the festival presents an opportunity for the public to enjoy some of the musical talent.

Among the evening performers will be Salem Band, which is the oldest continuous mixed wind ensemble in the country.

Established in 1771, the band will play a variety of music at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 25, on the square in Old Salem.

They were insistent on having the performance outdoors in the square, so that will be a special experience for the many folks from out of town, said Eileen Young, the bands conductor and music director.

The bands show will include polkas, swing, South Pacific and the North Carolina premiere of a new composition from composer Jeff Whitsett.

Its such a charming environment and a fun and unique community, Young said. I think it will be a thrilling performance.

Salzwedel said the festival will alternate every four years between two of the countrys biggest Moravian centers: Winston-Salem and Bethlehem, Penn.

The first Moravian Music Festival was held in 1950 and has been held in Winston-Salem nine times.

The festival will kick off Sunday with a lovefeast, attended by the mayor.

Theres so many opportunities for quality performances all week long, Young said. You just cant beat it.
Group exhibitions are held fairly often in local galleries and other visual-art venues. Most such shows tend to be scattershot affairs made up of stylistically wide-ranging pieces about a variety of different subjects and concerns.

The exceptions, generally welcome by comparison, are group shows organized around timely or otherwise thought-provoking themes. Such is the case with the current exhibitions at two galleries in the Downtown Arts District.

The show at Artworks Gallery is Fight or Flight, titled after the acute-stress response automatically triggered in humans and other animals when experiencing an attack, threat or other event instinctively perceived as harmful. Mature, introspective adults learn to recognize and monitor this instinct in themselves, although in some instances it can still be overwhelming.

Open to all dues-paying members of the cooperative group that runs Artworks, the exhibition encompasses a range of approaches to the theme. Several of the artists chose to include works that interpreted it literally, with imagery directly related to flight and/or combat.

Among the latter are Marion Adams, Seth Moskowitz and E.O. Ted Hill. In Adams drawing, a flock of strikingly stylized, flying bluebirds is set off against a stark white ground. Moskowitz takes a more impressionistic approach in a pair of prints depicting broad-winged birds flying across wooded landscapes.

The sparely outlined figure in Hills drawing titled Flight suggests a winged humanoid thats more ominous than angelic. And the Crows in his collaged drawing of that title are treated so abstractly theyre almost unrecognizable.

Cemetery statuary depicting angels has often figured in Kim Varnadoes photographs, including the one she contributed to this show. Set off against a pallid blue sky, the winged angel statue wields a sword, so the image engages themes of both fight and flight.

Diane Nations is one of several artists who have treated the shows theme metaphorically, in her case as an allusion to spirituality. Her two mixed-media collages complement each other in this respect. The one titled Shamans Battle  a reference to spiritual combat  augments a pair of stylized figures, superimposed one on the other, with feathers, jewelry charms and painted passages. The other, Flight of the Goddess, appropriates a pair angelic figures from European medieval art to reference spiritual transcendence.

Collage is also Mona Wus chosen medium for this exhibition, in contrast to the printmaking mediums she most often employs in her work. Multiple images of gesturing hands serve as emblems of striving and creativity in her collage Reach for World Peace, which also includes imagery from Tantric Buddhism and Japanese Kabuki theater, along with texts clipped from magazines, seemingly at random.

The shows most provocative works are those that use the theme as a departure point for political statements. Among artists who chose this option are Owens Daniels, whose documentary images of public demonstrations supporting the Moral Mondays and Black Lives Matter movements are complemented by two large-format studio photographs with related themes.

Two of Perviz Heyats contributions to the show pay homage to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. These take the form of glossy, poster-style compositions juxtaposing portraits of the two black leaders with newspaper headlines, quotations from their writings and silhouetted figures representing political demonstrators and police.

Cindy Taplins usual medium is painting, but for this show she tried her hand at embroidery, with effective results that critique gun violence in one case and misogyny in the other. Her All American Sampler is an ornamental pillow embroidered with the names of towns that have become known as the sites of deadly mass shootings, along with statistics on the number of dead and wounded in each such incident. For her assemblage titled Back When America Was Great, Taplin embroidered misogynistic remarks made by contemporary American politicians and displayed them in tiny ornamental frames. She mounted these on a shelf augmented with related objects including pink-yarn-covered clothes hangers, doubtless intended as emblems of surreptitious abortion  the only kind that would take place if womens reproductive rights were outlawed.

Lets see some ID

The politics of identity has emerged as a central theme in the work of many contemporary artists. Delurk Gallery capitalizes on this development in its current invitational show simply titled Identity, featuring art about humans, culture, history and gender.

As with the show at Artworks, its a theme that drew a range of responses from the exhibiting artists. Among the most complex pieces on view is Naomi Greenbergs painting titled Its All in Spin Baby. Its array of cogs, gears, bones, puzzle pieces, scientific instruments and other components including a nude woman appear to be floating freely against a background depicting the nighttime sky with the spiraling Milky Way galaxy in the center. This works thematic implication is that our identities are dependent on and inextricably connected with the larger cosmic drama.

Tyler Pennington acknowledges death as the great equalizer of identity in his drawing titled Postmortem Identity. Its images of human body parts  an eye, a brain, a heart, and a hand with exposed muscle tissue surrounding a larger skull  are rendered in a style that recalls antique medical illustrations.

The idiosyncratic self-portrait that Chad Beroth contributed to the show is painted in a photo-realistic style that contrasts sharply with most of his works previously exhibited at Delurk. It depicts him shirtless and barefoot, crouched and delicately balanced on a large, red ball imprinted with a white, five-pointed star. The title, American Kestrel, references the meticulously detailed bird of prey evidently about to land on his nose.

These are just a few of the works in a show thats further enlivened by drawings and other works on paper by Ernest W.X. Bell, Holland Berson, Jodi Hoover and Page Turner.
JURIST Guest Columnist Louis Rene Beres of Purdue University, in part one of this two part series, discusses how Higher Law supports the prospective impeachment of President Trump

The legality of the Constitution, its supremacy, and its claim to be worshipped alike find common standing ground on the belief in a law superior to the will of human governors.  E.S. Corwin, Th e Higher Law Background of American Constitutional Law

The Natural Law (Higher Law) is absolutely binding, and overrules all other laws.  A.P. dEntreves, Natural Law



Introduction

Soon, because of his increasingly obvious debilities and wrongdoings, US President Donald Trump could face more-or-less authoritative calls for impeachment. Should this happen, virtually all corresponding legal focus would doubtlessly be directed toward the US Constitution, its expressly pertinent provisions, and also to certain allegedly relevant US Congressional deliberations, Supreme Court decisions, and historical records. Nonetheless, as the United States was unambiguously established upon a core jurisprudential architecture of Natural Law, or Higher Law, this critical foundation could then also merit close scrutiny as an auxiliary impeachment standard.

Such scrutiny and corollary elucidations are prospectively useful if (as should be expected) certain or even all Congressional anti-impeachment elements should choose to rely upon narrowly legalistic interpretations of Article II, Section IV, presidential removal guidelines. As things now stand, the specifically codified criteria for any considered presidential impeachment (Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.) are exceedingly brief and manifestly terse. It follows that the provision of a significantly broader jurisprudential background proposed here could sometime prove markedly helpful.

I.

To begin, the underlying principle of a Higher Law is not just any principle. It is, rather, one of the most enduring and utterly canonic principles in the legal development of the United States. Revealed in both the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution, it rests squarely upon the willing acceptance of certain notions of right and justice that obtain because of their own intrinsic merit.

Such basic notions, as the widely celebrated Blackstone himself declared, are nothing less than the eternal, immutable laws of good and evil, to which the creator himself in all his dispensations conforms; and which he has enabled human reason to discover so far as they are necessary for the conduct of human actions.

When Jefferson set to work on drafting the actual Declaration, he drew freely upon Aristotle, Cicero, Grotius, Vattel, Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, and Locke ( Second Treatise of Government ). Asserting the right of revolution whenever government becomes destructive of certain unalienable rights, the Declaration of Independence posits a natural order in the world whose immutable laws are external to all human will and which are discoverable through disciplined applications of human reason.

Although, by the eighteenth century, God had withdrawn from any immediate contact with humankind, and been transformed into Final Cause or Prime Mover of the universe, Nature was still conveniently available to provide for an apt substitute.

Reflecting the uniquely decisive influence of Isaac Newton, whose Principia was first published in 1686, all of creation could now be taken as an expression of divine will. Reciprocally, the only true way to know Gods will was to first discover the Law of Nature. In essence, Locke and Jefferson had deified nature and denatured God.

What, exactly, was this always underlying Law of Nature? It was, as Jefferson learned from Locke, a source of Reason: according to Lockes Second Treatise:

The state of nature has a law to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men A criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed on one, declared war against all mankind.

As Reason is the only sure guide to what God has given to humankind, it then becomes the only credible foundation of true law. This Lockean and Jeffersonian idea of a transcendent or Higher Law is manifest not only in the Declaration of Independence but also in the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment, in stipulating that the enumeration of certain rights in this Constitution shall not prejudice other rights not so enumerated, reflects the belief in a law absolutely superior to any will of human governance.

This vital conviction runs continuously from ancient times, especially traditional Jewish Law, up to the present moment.

The Fragments of Heraclitus attest to the antiquity of a Higher Law: For all human laws are nourished by one, which is divine. For it governs as far as it will, and is sufficient for all, and more than enough. Such Heraclitean dicta, offered somewhere around 500 B.C.E., entered into later Stoic philosophy, and described a genuinely universal and expectedly rational law.

In 442 B.C.E., Sophocles explained the idea of true law as an act of discovery, thus challenging the superiority of human rule-making in Antigone . Exploring the essential conflict between claims of the state and those of the individual conscience, this drama has since been taken to represent the incontestable supremacy of a Higher Law over all man-made law. Later, in the nineteenth century, Henry David Thoreau, noting that men live with too passive a regard for the moral laws, explicitly cited Antigone as a suitably stirring example of civil disobedience.

Building upon Platos theory of Ideas, which sought to elevate nature from the transient sphere of contingent facts to the higher realm of immutable archetypes or Forms, Aristotle advanced in his Ethics the concept of natural justice. Quoting the Antigone , he argued importantly that an unjust law is not a law. This idealistic position, of course, stands in stark contrast to the instrumental opinion of the Sophists that justice is never anything more than an expression of supremacy, that it is merely what Thrasymachus cynically calls, in Platos Republic , the interest of the stronger.

Apropos of President Donald Trumps current presidency, this crude brand of Realpolitik is now also the acknowledged philosophic underpinning of present-day US foreign policy.

Much earlier, the Stoics, whose legal philosophies arose on the threshold of the Greek and Roman worlds, regarded nature itself as the supreme legislator. Applying Platonic and Aristotelian thought to the hopefully emerging cosmopolis, they had defined this nascent order as one wherein humankind, by means of its established capacity to reason, can commune directly with the gods. And since this definition required further expansion of Platos and Aristotles developing notions of universalism, the Stoics effectively articulated a further division between lex aeterna, ius natural, and ius humanum.

Lex aeterna is the law of reason of the cosmos, the logos which rules the universe. As an emanation of cosmic reason, human reason rules the lives of men. It follows that natural law partakes of eternal law, though it has a more limited range of application. Unlike the more elitist conception of Plato (and, to a certain extent, even Aristotle), the Stoic idea of an innate right reason presumed no divisions between peoples.

Instead, in linking all persons with the cosmic order, it established the essential foundations of an authentic universality.

Cicero, in De Republica , defined the state as a coming together of a considerable number of men who are united by a common agreement about law and rights and by the desire to participate in mutual advantages. This definition sheds light on the problems surrounding positivist jurisprudence, a legal philosophy that values a states edicts as intrinsically just and obligatory. In a justly famous passage of De Republica , one well known to Jefferson and other Founders, Cicero set forth the still classic articulation of Natural Law:

True law is right reason, harmonious with nature, diffused among all, constant, eternal; a law which calls to duty by its commands and restrains from evil by its prohibitionsIt is a sacred obligation not to attempt to legislate in contradiction to this law; nor may it be derogated from nor abrogated. Indeed, by neither the Senate nor the people can we be released from this law; nor does it require any but oneself to be its expositor or interpreter. Nor is it one law at Rome and another at Athens; one now and another at a late time; but one eternal and unchangeable law binding all nations through all time

Part 2 of this piece discusses Higher Law as applied to President Trump.

Louis Rene Beres, an Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University, received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1971. Dr. Beres is a widely published author on the topics of philosophy and jurisprudence, and his writings have appeared in books, monographs, and law reviews. Dr. Beres is an international expert on nuclear weapons and has also served as a security consultant for the US and Israeli governments.

Suggested citation:Louis Rene Beres, President Trump, Impeachment, and the Higher Law: Part I, JURIST  Academic Commentary, July 23, 2017, http://jurist.org/forum/2017/07/Beres-president-trump-impeachment1.php

This article was prepared for publication by Sean Merritt, an Assistant Editor for JURIST Commentary. Please direct any questions or comments to him at commentary@jurist.org
JURIST Guest Columnist Louis Rene Beres of Purdue University, in part two of this two part series, continues his discussion on how Higher Law supports the prospective impeachment of President Trump

II.

What is to be done when positive law (which now includes US Constitutional law) is at variance with true law? The Romans had proposed a remedy. They incorporated into their statutes a contingency clause that man-made law could never abrogate those obligations that are inherently right or even sacred. On several occasions, Cicero and others invoked this clause, or jus, against one statute or another.

In this way, the written law of the moment, never more than an artifact of the extant civic community, always remained correctly subject to right reason.

Later, St. Augustine reaffirmed that temporal law must conform to the unchangeable eternal law, which he defined as the reason or will of God (ratio divina vel voluntas Dei). Aquinas continued this tradition of denying the status of law to prescriptions that are inherently unjust (lex iniusta non est lex). Human law, he wrote meaningfully in the Summae , has the quality of law only insofar as it proceeds according to right reason; and in this respect it is clear that it derives from the eternal law. Insofar as it deviates from reason it is called an unjust law, and has the quality not of law, but of violence.

The concept of a Higher Law, later to figure so importantly in the jurisprudential development of the United States of America, was widely integrated into medieval thought. According to John of Salisburys Policraticus , There are certain precepts of the law which have perpetual necessity, having the force of law among all nations and which absolutely cannot be broken. Recognizing the idea that all political authority must be intrinsically limited, John noted that the prince may not lawfully have any will of his own apart from that which the law or equity enjoins, or the calculation of the common interest requires.

Viewed against the pertinent backdrop of the current US president  now, correctly analogous to the medieval prince discussed by John of Salisbury  such perpetual law must necessarily prohibit any presidential executive placement of personal interest over the discernibly common interest of the United States. Natural Law, inter alia, exists to frustrate political injustice, a vital function that could soon become material to any authoritative launch of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Natural Law doctrine was reaffirmed and secularized by Grotius. Reviving the Ciceronian idea of Natural Law and its underlying optimism about human nature, Grotius is credited with liberating this idea from any remaining dependence on ecclesiastical or Papal interpretation. Building upon the prior speculations of the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria, who had proclaimed a natural community of humankind and the universal validity of human rights, Grotius fashioned a conceptual bridge from the Christian Commonwealth of the Middle Ages to a brand new interstate society.

In this connection, he strengthened the idea of a universally valid Natural Law transcending in obligation all human law, including the cumulative law of any single sovereign state.

Unlike Machiavelli and Hobbes, Grotius consciously did not reduce law to any presumed will of a prince or of a separate state. Rather, while recognizing such will as a properly constitutive element within the wider international legal order, he also understood that the binding quality of human edicts must always be derived from an overriding totality of natural imperatives. Hence, he proceeded to reject raison detat as a just cause for war, a purposeful rejection that may soon no longer resonate helpfully in President Donald Trumps United States.

This brings us directly to the conveyance of Natural Law ideas into American political theory, a transmittal that was preeminently the work of Lockes Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690). The specified American duty to revolt whenever governments commit a long train of abuses and usurpations flows from Lockes seminal notion that civil authority can never extend beyond the securing of humankinds natural rights. Regarding any considered excursions into US presidential impeachment, the particular motto that Jefferson chose for his seal was, Rebellion to Tyrants Is Obedience to God. As for the right to pursue happiness, which Jefferson drew directly from Burlamaquis incorporation into natural law, it had literally nothing whatever to do with todays contemporary celebrations of materialism.

Nor could this right have any bearing on any currently contemplated US presidential impeachment proceedings. Though happiness was viewed by Jefferson (in deference to Pufendorf and Locke) as a welcome condition to be achieved as a direct result of humankinds overriding commitment to Reason, left unspecified were any corresponding or expressly corollary presidential obligations.

Above all else, the Declaration of Independence implemented a social contract that sets limits on the power of any government. Its central purpose, therefore, was to articulate a set of universally valid constraints upon all secular political authority. Moreover, as justice, which is based on natural law, binds all human society, the rights described by the Declaration of Independence could never be reserved only to Americans.

Instead, by ready deduction, these rights must perpetually extend to all human societies, and can never be abrogated by any positive law.

This applicable theory of a Higher Law, which could assume have its useful place in any forthcoming impeachment proceedings that would concern evident Trump Administration disregard for worldwide human rights, is based on clarity, self-evidence, and coherence. Its validity, therefore, can never be shaken by any presumed imperatives of geopolitics, or even by partisan domestic politics. As noted by the Swiss scholar Emmerich de Vattel in the 1758 edition of The Law of Nations (a work in which several American fathers of independence discovered important maxims of political liberty): No agreement can bind, or even authorize, a man to violate the natural law.

Vattel had prudently cautioned that only a strict obedience to higher legal obligations can ever produce a virtuous and thereby safe and prosperous state: One would have to be very ignorant of political affairs not to perceive how much more capable a virtuous Nation is of forming a happy, peaceful, flourishing and secure state, respected by its neighbors and formidable to its enemies. Going forward with any US House of Representatives impeachment proceeding, even Vattels earlier wisdom could sometimes have its proper philosophic place.

III.

In the end, Higher Law expectations of the American political tradition are never self-enforcing. Defied again and again by transient political elites, they can only be sustained where individual citizens act (as does Antigone before Creon) according to conscience. Why has every man a conscience, asks Thoreau in his foundational American essay on Civil Disobedience .

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

Where are such conscientious men (and women) to be found? Certainly not, says Thoreau insightfully, among the commonly esteemed good citizens. These mass men and women serve the state not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.

Placing themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones, they are frequently incapable of making any essential moral distinctions. This incapacity is easily enough recognized today, where so many of our citizens remain unable to recognize the brutally stark differences between conspicuous US presidential wrongdoing and legally correct presidential behavior.

Could the United States still create the conditions for a conscientious corporation though the enhanced education of an informed citizenry? From Rousseau to the present, this has been the preferred path of virtually all democratic theory. Rousseau believed that law and liberty could best exist in a city-state of properly educated voters like Geneva. As he stipulates in Book III of the Social Contract :

First, a very small state where the people can be readily got together and where each citizen can with ease know all the rest; secondly, great simplicity of manners, to prevent business from multiplying and raising thorny problems; next, a large measure of equality in rank and fortune, without which equality of rights and authority cannot long subsist; lastly, little or no luxury  for luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary.

But the contemporary United States is not at all like Geneva, and Rousseaus idea that (even under very specified conditions) a majority can be trusted with what is really best for The People is too-often mistaken. Now, the dangers of the general will have been made particularly manifest not only in the exploits of Robespierre and Napoleon, but also in the stunningly inauspicious selection of US President Donald Trump. Whether this selection shall soon lead to proper efforts at essential removal is still unclear.

In any event, Rousseaus deification of The People actually points toward the very opposite of our own Higher Law tradition. The Genevan made The People sovereign; for us, ultimately, sovereignty must come to reside in The Citizen. As Thoreau had understood, apathy, complacency passivity and moral cowardice are the inevitable qualities of the mass of men and women. Hope, therefore, lies only in those still-thoughtful individuals whose primary allegiance is directed toward properly overriding and universal laws; that is, not in the presumptive good citizen, but rather in the indispensable wise minority.

What is the real task of this body of enlightened persons, one which could in fact represent a true and distinct majority? Thoreau speaks truthfully of civil disobedience, one still possible act of counter-friction. Now confronted with an American president who might bring unparalleled harms to the United States  today, such harms could even include the onset of a catastrophic nuclear war  he would urge, as he once did about other policy deformations (see Civil Disobedience ),: Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

Here, however, we have been exploring more particularly jurisprudential remedies to the Trump Presidency; specifically, Constitutionally-based impeachment proceedings. Should this species of remediation soon be selected and undertaken (structurally, there could be no other proper legal remedies, as the Supreme Court has made plain that presidential impeachment is always a non-justiciable question), those identifiable Members of Congress most closely involved with drafting and refining the pertinent Articles of Impeachment might usefully avail themselves of these now examined Higher Law arguments. This is the case because (1) the Constitution of the United States is firmly constructed upon certain antecedent principles of Natural Law; and because (2) these core legal principles are ultimately made binding upon all citizens and government officials as a fully authoritative Higher Law.

Louis Rene Beres, an Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University, received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1971. Dr. Beres is a widely published author on the topics of philosophy and jurisprudence, and his writings have appeared in books, monographs, and law reviews. Dr. Beres is an international expert on nuclear weapons and has also served as a security consultant for the US and Israeli governments.

Suggested citation:Louis Rene Beres, President Trump, Impeachment, and the Higher Law, JURIST  Academic Commentary, July 23, 2017, http://jurist.org/forum/2017/07/Beres-president-trump-impeachment2.php
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) [official website] released a report [text] on Friday welcoming a program, almost five years in the works, to register undocumented Afghans living in Pakistan. UNHCR estimates that between 600,000 to one million undocumented Afghans, currently living in Pakistan, will be now able to receive Afghan Citizen (AC) cards. The cards will identify the holder as an Afghan Citizen, and will legally protect them from arbitrary arrests, detention or deportation under Pakistan Foreigners Order [text, PDF]. The AC cards will allow Afghans to stay in Pakistan until they can be issued documents such as passports by the Government of Afghanistan. This program is a part of Pakistans Comprehensive Policy on the Repatriation and Management of Afghans, which was passed [UN press release] by the Pakistan Cabinet [official website]. The program was formally launched on July 20th, and UNHCR spokesperson Duniya Aslam Khan notes it to be a significant step [that] will help regularize the stay for many Afghans at a time when return to their home country may not be possible.

As the rights of refugee and migrant populations emerged as one of the most significant humanitarian issues around the world, the relationship Pakistan has had with Afghan refugees remained tenuous. In April, the UN reported that cash incentives for Afghan refugees to leave Pakistan were still going to be provided, even though the amount of the incentives was being reduced [JURIST report]. The amount was originally slated at US $400 and then reduced to US $200; despite these cuts many refugees are continuing to register for repatriation. In February, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] reported that Pakistan authorities have driven nearly 600,000 Afghan refugees back into Afghanistan [JURIST report] since July 2016. HRW also claimed that among those forced out of the country were 365,000 lawfully registered refugees. The use of citizenship as a method to deny or allow the influx of refugees into a country has been widely used. In June, the US Supreme Court [official website] ruled unanimously that naturalized citizens may not be stripped of their citizenship status [JURIST report] based on false statements that were immaterial to becoming a citizen. In May, a Canada federal court ruled [JURIST report] that certain provisions of the Citizen Act [text] violate principles of fundamental justice under the Canada Charter of Rights and Freedoms [text]; the Citizen Act was passed in 2014 and had made eligibility requirements for immigrants seeking citizenship stricter than in the past.
Thank you for listening to KAJO and KLDR. We really do appreciate that!

Since my father, Jim Wilson, founded KAJO in 1957, you could say that I literally was "raised on radio". My first memories are of going to visit my dad when he was behind the mic at KLAD in Klamath Falls, OR. We moved to Grants Pass when I was five and shortly thereafter, dad founded the venerable `ol AM 1270. My heroes have always been DJ's... and I am fortunate to have known every announcer who has ever been on KAJO in its entire history, dating from the summer of `57. It is an honor to be counted in that crew... and, have we ever seen some interesting guys and gals during that time! I made my on-air debut in the summer of `68. For the most part, I've been on the air continually since that time... with a couple of partial detours. I joined the navy right after high school and spent two years active duty and a bunch of years in reserve. Another very interesting detour was an appointment to the Oregon State Legislature in 1998 and two subsequent reelections. I took a hiatus at the end of 2002 and returned to the family business. Radio is SO much fun... One highlight of my career was going through the process of adding KLDR to the fold back in 1991 and getting an opportunity to do contemporary radio on FM as a morning jock. Those were heady years indeed! In 2014 I again felt the call to return to the State Legislature and have been serving proudly as a right minded voice for Southern Oregon ever since.

I am married to Malinda and have been since summer of `72, and we have two adult children, J.L. and Lora. J.L. is the owner of a longtime lobbying and public affairs firm in Salem, Public Affairs Counsel. Lora is a marriage and family therapist with a practice in Salem. They are both married to great people... J.L.'s wife is Heather... and Lora's husband, Greg. We also have grandchildren Abigail, Ruby, and Ava Wilson, Tyler Johns, Ashlynn and Johnny Withers and Samson Goodenough.

My hobby is motorcycles. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of miles I have ridden since the summer of `68, but it has been too many to count. My old Harley and I are slowing down and I am happy to be getting interested in travel trailers. Malinda and I have really enjoyed this hobby over the last several years and there is more to come, I trust! Malinda and I are very active in the ministry at River Valley Church and enjoy having our bibles close at hand. We don't just carry them, we believe them. Life without Jesus Christ would be useless to me.

Again, thank you for your interest in our stations. Our desire is to be a "city on a hill" in our community. Please let us know if we can do more to serve you. Thank you!
Since its inception, Grants Pass Broadcasting has been a singular presence in Southern Oregon. KAJO and KLDR radio stations, informed by the Christian faith of its founders and many of its employees, consciously reflect Jesus Christs exhortation in Matthew 5.

The story of Grants Pass Broadcasting begins with the birth of Jim Wilson on January 3, 1926. Wilson, the founder of KAJO, was a product of particular time and place in America: the Depression-era, river-bottom farm communities of central Oklahoma, where Jim lived until he was 18 years old.

Jim grew up in a large, neatly bisected family: brothers Clarence, Claude and Carl came first; Maxine, Jim, and Evelyn arrived some years later. Although Jims father brought in a little cash by maintaining a rural mail route, farming provided the Wilson family a meager living through the 1920s and 30s. Some years, the cotton crop would yield, other years  not so much. The difficulty of it all made a lasting impression on Jim.

The elder brothers were largely grown and gone from the farm before the younger siblings came of age. Jim was stuck at home, as he liked to say, sandwiched between two sisters. The farm work was back-breaking and Jim longed for a profession out of the weather and with fewer callouses!

After graduation from Bearden High School in 1943, Jim left the farm against his parents wishes and hitchhiked to Portland, Oregon. He wanted to join the U.S. Navy, but was disqualified due to childhood middle and inner ear injuries inflicted by primitive medical care. Jim joined his brother, Carl, who was living in Portland, and took a job welding Liberty Ships at Swan Island.

While in Portland, Jim noticed a broadcasting school advertisement on the back of a matchbook. He had always been a wit, much to the dismay of his parents and sisters. He decided to check this new opportunity out. He completed the coursework and returned to Oklahoma to work for his brother, Clarence, who had become active in building and operating radio stations throughout the West and Midwest. Clarence and his business partners -- the money men -- would build a new radio station that Jim would manage for a couple of years before moving on to the next freshly-built station. While working in McAlester, Oklahoma, Jim met a local girl, Patricia Burks, who became his wife. Patricia gave birth to a son, Carl, in McAlester in 1952.

Jim briefly flirted with television, but soon hit the broadcasting trail again with Pat and Carl in tow. The next radio assignment took Jim to Hays, Kansas. After 18 months or so in Hays, the little family moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Jims fortunes began to turn in Klamath Falls. He was making great money, selling advertising for the station, and enjoying his time on the air. He began to think that he just might be able to make it on his own. One day while selling advertising in downtown Klamath Falls, he encountered an appliance salesman representing a national brand. The man asked, Whats a guy like you doing here? You should be in Grants Pass -- its a great town and theres only one radio station.

Well, that strangers name is lost to history but he had quite an impact on Grants Pass without ever knowing it. Jim Wilson was about to go into business for himself.

Jim originally started the business with two partners, one of whom was one of the money men previously mentioned. It took from 1957 to 1972 for Jim to buy out his business partners and fly on his own. However, from the opening day of August 15, 1957, Jim didnt exactly fly solo.

Back in Hays, Jim had learned that his long-time friend, Elzie Parker, had also gotten into this new thing called radio. What a strange coincidence that was! Jim called Elzie back in Arkansas and asked that he join him in Oregon. As legend goes, Elzie said yes without even asking about pay. These two set Grants Pass on its ear for decades, weaving hilarious stories of childhood in that Oklahoma bottom land. Their stories resonated with the working-class depression kids who comprised so much of Grants Pass and Josephine County.

Jim and Elzie established KAJO as a station that the community could count on through thick and thin, come blazing fires or fearsome floodwaters. The station was a vanguard, protecting and caring for the community. Grants Pass Broadcasting added KLDR-FM in 1992. Jims sons, Carl and Matt played a key role in managing the radio stations throughout the 1980s and well into the 2000s.

As KAJO nears its 60th anniversary on August 15, 2017, Carl remains the managing partner, along with his mother, Patricia. Although the elder generation is gone, (Jim passed away in early 2005), the radio stations still bear the mark of the founder. Carl is the first to say, Im just caretaking and growing what the founders built.

The Wilson family thanks the Grants Pass and Josephine County community for the tremendous support these past six decades. The family is also deeply grateful for the many wonderful and talented people who have been part of the work of bringing a unique brand of community radio to the airwaves.
Updated Josephine County Election Returns Reveal Better Turnout, But No Changes





The Josephine County Clerk's Office has updated the unofficial results from Tuesday's general election, showing increased turnout but no changes. According to the Clerk's Office at the end of business on Thursday, the voter turnout in Josephine County was 54.75%. Out of 69,725 registered voters, 38,175 people had cast ballots. The victor in the race for Josephine Commissioner Position #1 is John West, who holds a 56.47% to 43.02% margin over Brian DeLaGrange. Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel will keep his badge after defeating challenger Jonathan Knapp by a count of 68.68% to 30.97%. The race for Grants Pass City Council Ward 1 has tightened, but it appears Rob Pell has kept his seat on the panel by a 50.17% to 49.21% tally over Clint Scherf. Dwayne Yunker will replace Curt Collins in Ward 3 by a 68% to 31.33% margin and Council President Joel King has held off Ward 4 challenger Molly Nichols by a 56.65% to 42.89% tally. Josephine County voters overwhelming defeated the proposed seasonal sales tax to fund law enforcement, with 82.48% saying "No" and just 17.52% saying "Yes." Grants Pass voters similarly clobbered proposed amendments to the City Charter that included monthly stipends to council members and the mayor, while Cave Junction voters strongly supported amendments to their City Charter. Josephine County voters also approved code amendments that prohibit psilocybin manufacturing and service centers outside the City of Grants Pass. Cave Junction voters approved a two-year moratorium on psilocybin businesses in that city. ...Read more

ODVA Director Reflects on Service of Korean War Generation on Veterans' Day 2022





The following is a Veterans Day message from Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs Director Kelly Fitzpatrick: "Each year, our nation sets aside Veterans Day to remember all the men and women who have defended our liberty through their honorable military service. American cities big and small celebrate with ceremonies across the nation to honor their service and their sacrifice. We are proud to note that even in the wake of devastating and destabilizing world events like the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrations that honor our nation's veterans were among the first to return to full strength. The value that we as Oregonians and Americans place on honoring and showing gratitude toward those who have served and sacrificed to protect our freedoms and way of life is immense. This year, while the Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs continues to honor all veterans of all eras, we are paying tribute to one particular era of our veteran community: Oregon's Korean War veterans. Though this war it is referred to as the "Forgotten War," we in Oregon have never -- and will never -- forget the extraordinary and heroic veterans who fought for freedom in the Korean War. In 1950, our nation was weary of war after years of global conflict. Yet, 1.5 million Americans -- including 60,000 Oregonians -- left their family and friends and their homes to help defend our nation's friends and allies halfway around the world, in a place they had never been and on behalf of a people they had never met. The world is a better place because of these men and women. Our duty as a nation and people is to remember and honor them, and to always strive to live up to the ideals for which they served and sacrificed." ...Read more
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to form
276 Shares Share

As an American internist and expatriate in the Netherlands, I still follow the unfolding U.S. health care drama. Critics of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) are numerous, including doctors, patients, policy experts, and the former top U.S. health administrator  even President Barack Obama. The Dutch and other developed nations must be wondering (again), Why cant America pull it together and provide everyone access to basic health care?

Some of the debates seem like old news. While 2010 marked the beginning of reform that made tangible progress implementing some features already existing in other countries, BCRA appears to be un-learning principles that found a progressive and free nation. Non-evidence-based policy-making reigns, and there also appears to be a heavy individualist, capitalist hand behind BCRA. Such a mindset alone is not problematic, but when applied in a way that increases human suffering, preventable illness or death and decreases the populations overall well-being, then the government seems to be failing its people.

So, perhaps current U.S. policymakers could learn a thing from the more social-oriented Dutch mindset, embracing the necessity of taking care of ALL of its people. Ill concede no health care system is perfect, but there are positive features of many, frequently founded on the easy-to-say-but-hard-to-do philosophy that access to health care is a human right, not a privilege. After all, the health of our communities and neighbors define our families living and working environments, so shouldnt it be in the interest of all to be healthy and happy?

So lets see how American and Dutch coverage compare:

1. Mandatory health insurance. In insurance, individual purchasers buy into a shared risk pool, whether for your car, health, pet or even personal liability (this one being a unique Dutch insurance market). The objective: you pay into the pool when you are well, and then receive contracted services when the unexpected happens. Then, if its needed, youre protected (insured) against potentially high health care expenses. Strangely, the BCRA regresses, moving from individual mandate to mandatory six-month non-insurance penalty when insurance lapses for too long.

The Dutch government says this about their own version of an individual mandate: The health insurance system in the Netherlands is based on the principle of social solidarity. Together, we all pay the overall cost of health care. Everyone contributes, for example, to the cost of maternity care and geriatric care. It doesnt get much simpler or clearer.

2. Basic health services.Preventive health services (e.g., cancer screenings) are basic services for both Americans and the Dutch, as are emergency care, hospital stays, medically indicated surgeries, medication prescriptions, and labs. Interestingly, the Affordable Care Act covers routine vaccines and birth control, but only Dutch supplemental insurance covers these. Both countries offer adult dental and vision supplementary insurance. But the Dutch might have it better, as fertility treatment, disability, elder care and some therapy services are also basic services; fertility treatment is expensive and uncovered in the U.S., and the other elements depend on various factors; U.S. free markets for health insurance means also astounding complexity. To note, premiums for basic services is comparable in each country (about $112/month). The Dutch have been doing this for slightly longer, since the Zorgverzekeringswet of early 2006. Sadly, if BCRA passes, basic services would sunset by December 2019. In the Netherlands, basic services will actually expand in January 2018.

3. Pre-existing conditions. If you know you have a pre-existing chronic condition, then you can still access affordable health care without penalty in the U.S. and in the Netherlands. If BCRA passes, this will tragically undo this previous success in American health care. Dutch health insurance is prohibited from such behavior. Everyone has a right to essential medical care, even if their condition is caused by an unhealthy or reckless lifestyle. Meaning? Human (health) rights are not optional.

4. Maternity and reproductive care. For now, the U.S. and the Netherlands are fairly, although not precisely, similar here. I dont have children myself, but as a female physician who has seen female patients in difficult situations, its inexcusable to marginalize such a large part of the population. As is, without BCRA, maternity health is diminishing: millennial women face a higher maternal mortality rate of 19.2 per 100,000 compared to 7.5 for baby boomers. For Dutch moms, that number has dropped from 12 per 100,000 to seven, between 1990 and 2015. Plus, U.S. childbirth costs are high and vary widely.

I also believe that the American perspective on pregnancy, maternity care and childbirth differs from the Dutch paradigm. The Dutch are more holistic and home-oriented, or at least non-hospital-oriented, and dont treat pregnant women as disabled. This is not to say that there is a right way to bear or birth a child, but its admirable that there is more systemic support when it comes to Dutch perinatal care. Finally, its not possible to mention womens health without also mentioning Planned Parenthood, which cares for nearly 2.5 million people. Thats the same as the populations of Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam combined!

5. Wheres the social good? De-insuring about 22 million Americans, reducing womens health coverage, increasing insurance costs for older and sicker Americans, and giving money saved as tax cuts to the wealthy stunts the advancement of a civilization. Adding insult to injury, BCRA was crafted secretively by an all-male committee, stripping stakeholders of the ability to weigh in (ahem, women). For a country known for freedom, liberty and democracy to behave so opaquely is disappointing in the least.

So, Dutch health care perhaps is far from perfect. But as a healthy young resident of the Netherlands, I value paying into the system because I realize Ill need health care someday. In the meantime, Ill be glad my friends, colleagues and future patients can maintain their own valuable health and lives.

If youre an American expat, you can still make your voice heard.

Tiffany I. Leung is an internal medicine physician. This article was originally published on June 27, 2017 in Dutch Review.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
DUBAI, July 23 (Reuters) - Dubai's stock market outperformed a quiet region in early trade on Sunday as Islamic finance firm Amlak jumped for a second straight day in very heavy trade.

The Dubai index added 0.6 percent as Amlak surged 8.0 percent to a four-month high of 1.21 dirhams and was the market's most active stock, accounting for nearly a quarter of turnover.

It rose above its 200-day average, now at 1.14 dirhams, for the first time since February. On Thursday, it had soared 14.3 percent.

Traders attributed the rise to last week's announcement by real estate developer DAMAC that it was partnering with Amlak to sell second homes to customers. However, the partners gave no financial details, and many investors piled into the stock just because it had momentum. DAMAC rose 1.3 percent early on Sunday.

Abu Dhabi's index fell 0.3 percent as Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank dropped 0.7 percent. It reported a 10.4 percent fall in second-quarter net profit to 1.01 billion dirhams ($275.2 million); three analysts polled by Reuters had on average forecast 1.11 billion dirhams.

Qatar was flat as Gulf International Services , the most active stock, rose 1.44 percent. But the banks which led last week's rally stalled, with Qatar National Bank edging down 0.1 percent.

Qatar's stock market has regained almost all of the losses it suffered after the country's diplomatic crisis with its neighbours erupted on June 5. At the weekend, Qatar's emir called for dialogue but gave no clear sign of a fresh initiative to end the crisis; United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said Doha needed to change its policies before a dialogue could occur.

Saudi Arabia's index was also flat after half an hour. Alinma Bank , the most active stock, rose strongly for a third straight day after reporting better-than-expected second-quarter earnings last week; it added 2.0 percent.

Arabian Shield Cooperative Insurance surged 3.8 percent after reporting second-quarter net profit more than doubled from a year ago. Arab National Bank climbed 1.3 percent after reporting a 4 percent rise in quarterly profit.

But Yamamah Cement dropped 1.5 percent after disclosing that second-quarter profit plunged to 12.2 million riyals ($3.3 million) from 116.3 million riyals; sales also fell sharply.

(Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Toby Chopra)
Members of the Young Women's Christian Association fly paper airplanes, chanting their support of the halt on construction of reactors 5 and 6 at the Shin Kori Nuclear Power Plant in Ulsan on June 7. / Korea Times photo by Jeon Hye-won





Chang Moon-hee, senior research advisor at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute Yun Sun-jin, professor at Seoul National University's Graduate School of Environmental Studies Whang Joo-ho, professor at Kyung Hee University's Department of Nuclear Engineering Kim Yearn-min, professor at the University of Ulsan's Department of Industrial Engineering

By Park Jae-hyuk

Since the temporary suspension of the construction of reactors 5 and 6 at the Shin Kori Nuclear Power Plant in Ulsan, a fierce controversy has arisen over an ad hoc committee that will determine the future of the two reactors.

The nine-person committee will soon select 200 to 300 jurors, who will have a three-month discussion to decide whether to suspend the construction permanently or to resume it.

Participants of a roundtable meeting organized by The Korea Times showed different opinions on the upcoming decision over the nation's energy policy  a laymen's jury will come up with the conclusion.

"Experts will participate in the procedure as well," said Prof. Yun Sun-jin at Seoul National University's Graduate School of Environmental Studies. "The jury will make their decision after listening to the experts. Citizens will be able to watch the discussion on television and to ask about the grounds of each of the expert's claims via social media."

Chang Moon-hee, a senior research advisor at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, was skeptical of Yun's prospects.

"I doubt that citizens could make a scientific decision in three months. It is too short a time for them to judge, unless the jury consists of technical experts," he said. "Considering that the debate on spent nuclear fuel has yet to end either, I'd rather suggest the ad hoc committee gauge public opinion for more than a year."

Prof. Kim Yearn-min at the University of Ulsan's Department of Industrial Engineering refuted Chang's arguments, citing a 17-person Ethics Commission in Germany that decided to phase out nuclear power after an eight-week discussion following the Fukushima incident.

"This is a matter of life, rather than a matter of technology. More than 3 million people are facing the risks of damage to their wealth and health," Kim said. "Technical experts have distorted the truth about nuclear power."

Within a radius of 30 kilometers of the Shin Kori complex, there are more than 3 million residents. They would be vulnerable to radiation if an accident occurred at the nearby nuclear plant.

Yun regarded the three months as a compromise to avoid further disputes over cost issues.












Park Ki-dong,

Korea Gas Safety Corp. CEO

By Lee Hyo-sik

The head of Korea Gas Safety Corp. (KGS) has decided to resign amid the growing scandal over alleged recruitment irregularities.

The public company, which oversees the safety of the nation's natural gas infrastructure, said Sunday that there will be a farewell ceremony for CEO Park Ki-dong at its headquarters in Eumseong, North Chungcheong Province, Monday.

Park, who became CEO in December 2014, told employees Saturday that he will leave five months earlier than his three-year tenure, which was due to end in December.

Park is expected to tender his resignation to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy after the ceremony.

He is the second head of state-run enterprises affiliated with the ministry to quit before his term ends. Korea Gas Corp. CEO Lee Seung-hoon, energy policy adviser to former President Park Geun-hye, left on July 20.

Park's abrupt departure comes several days after the prosecution raided KGS headquarters and his residence, confiscating computer files and documents. Investigators from the Cheongju District Prosecutors' Office even searched his vehicle.

The raid came after the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) asked the prosecution to investigate allegations that between 2015 and 2016, KGS manipulated job applicants' interview scores.

BAI has been carrying out the probe since receiving a tip-off in April, and recently referred the case to prosecutors to find out why some applicants were given undue favors.

BAI alleges that Park was involved in the illicit activity.

Investigators plan to summon and question Park and recruiting managers to check whether they interfered in the firm's recruitment process.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Kyungil University in Yangsan, North Gyeongsang Province, Park joined KGS in 1980. Throughout his 38-year career, he has served in various posts.

He was the first CEO promoted from within the company in its 40-year history.
By Yi Whan-woo

Japan does not plan to provide information about conscripted Korean laborers this year on one of its UNESCO World Heritage sites, although this is against a promise made to UNESCO to ensure its listing, according to the diplomatic sources, Sunday.

Citing an official at Nagasaki city government, the sources said Tokyo does not have a plan to set up an information center and address the forced labor of Koreans on Hashima Island.

Administered by the city government, Hashima Island is one of the 23 Meiji-era industrial sites that won World Heritage status in 2015 for illustrating Japan's rapid industrialization as the first non-Western nation.

Once a densely-populated coal-mine, Hashima Island is also among the seven of the 23 sites that were notorious for slave labor of an estimated 60,000 Koreans during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule.

Japanese Ambassador to UNESCO Kuni Sato promised relevant measures to address exploitation of Korean workers as a condition for the 23 sites to win World Heritage status in 2015.

"The city government claims it will act accordingly when it gets instructions from the central government," a source said. "And it also claims that it has not received any instruction regarding the information center although the matter should be dealt with jointly at the central and local government levels."
By Yi Whan-woo



The Moon Jae-in administration has begun internal discussions on whether it is possible to replace the 1950-53 Korean War armistice with a peace treaty, sources said Sunday.



The talks follow a proposal from a presidential advisory panel -- the administration's de-facto transition committee -- that Moon lay the groundwork for peace on the Korean Peninsula.



Sources said the Office of the Korean Peninsula and Security Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will lead the discussions.



As part of a five-year policy roadmap, the committee said it was necessary to forge an agreement with North Korea on its complete denuclearization by 2020, President Moon's fourth year in office.



The committee also advised offering help to the North in freezing its nuclear program in advance; while signing a peace treaty when the program enters "the final phase for complete denuclearization."



"The government should work closely with the United States and maintain international cooperation to reach its joint goals of denuclearization and peace," a source said.



The formal ending of the war will be impossible should North Korea keep its nuclear program.



However, critics say the Moon government is taking an unrealistic approach to resolve the nuclear issue when the North is refusing all proposals for dialogue from the South, and the U.S. is strengthening sanctions against it.



They said Pyongyang appears to be unwilling to engage in dialogue and Washington seems to be against accelerating inter-Korean dialogue without its consent.



"The peace treaty with North Korea must follow as part of steps to build a peace network," said Paik Hak-soon, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute. "And we'll need to convince the U.S. and North Korea as well as China."



If signed, the peace treaty will replace the 1953 armistice agreement, which the U.S., on behalf of the United Nations, signed with North Korea and China. South Korea was not among the signatories.



The Kim regime has remained silent over the Moon administration's offers last week to resume talks between both sides' militaries and Red Cross agencies.



It is speculated that Pyongyang is either reluctant to talk with Seoul for the time being or is trying to make the South desperate in order to "gain bargaining power" in any possible dialogue.



Analysts note that the White House has shown opposition toward inter-Korean military talks, saying the current conditions are "clearly far away from where we are now."



Speaking on condition of anonymity, an expert said South Korea "appears to be misinterpreting" the joint statement issued between Moon and U.S. President Donald Trump after their June summit.



The statement states that President Trump supported South Korea's "leading role in fostering an environment for peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula" and also Moon's "aspirations to restart inter-Korean dialogue on issues including humanitarian affairs."



"The Moon government must be interpreting the joint statement too broadly, thinking that it can play a leading role on any issues that can influence inter-Korean unification," the expert said. "But to my understanding, Washington wants Seoul to consult in advance and refer to its view before making any decision on security on the peninsula. Seoul's plan for inter-Korean peace may irk Washington as did the proposal for inter-Korean military talks."




The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of Energy Suhail Mohamed Faraj Al Mazrouei, left, and UAE Ambassador to Korea Abdulla Saif Alnuaimi speak at a press briefing at the Hotel Shilla in Seoul on July 19. /Yonhap



By Rachel Lee

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of Energy Suhail Mohamed Faraj Al Mazrouei says it depends on Qatar whether four Arab nations cut ties with the country, which has been accused of supporting extremism and terrorism.

At a press briefing at the Hotel Shilla in Seoul on July 19, the minister said the four nations  the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain  hoped to solve the situation diplomatically and called for Qatar's responsible behavior. The minister visited Seoul for talks with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha.

The four countries said earlier this month they would cut ties with Qatar, claiming Qatar supported terrorist groups. They issued a 13-point ultimatum, which Qatar said was "unrealistic." The list included shutting down the Al Jazeera news network and downgrading relations with Iran.

Al Mazrouei blamed Qatar's irresponsible behavior for the leak of the 13 demands, saying it has undermined serious mediation.

The demands were agreed on by the Emir of Qatar during the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting in 2014, the minister said.

He said the four Arab nations will take all necessary action within international law to protect themselves.

Al Mazrouei and Kang met at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul earlier in the day and discussed ways to cooperate in the energy sector.

Korea and the UAE established ties in 1980 and have cooperated closely in sectors, including construction, defense and culture, especially after the two established a strategic partnership in 2009.

The nations signed a deal to set up a joint venture to operate four nuclear reactors under construction in Bakarah last year. Under the deal, the UAE's nuclear operator and the Korea Electric Power Corporation, the prime contractor for the UAE's first nuclear plant, will set up the venture to operate the reactors for the next 60 years, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

The World Green Economy Organization (WGEO) recently launched a global forum  the Smart & Sustainable Cities Platform  with a ceremony in Seoul. The Dubai-based organization chose Seoul because it has become a leading example of a green economy, organizers said.

The WGEO was set up by Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum in October 2016 and is supported by the United Nations Development Program.
By Rachel Lee



The Peruvian Embassy and Defense and Air Attache Martin Gonzalez Leon hosted a reception to mark the 76th anniversary of the immolation of national hero Captain FAP Jose Abelardo Quinones Gonzales, Great General of the Air of Peru and Peruvian Air Force Day, at the Ministry of Defense of Korea Army Club in Seoul on July 21.



Peruvian Ambassador Jaime Pomareda Montenegro, military and diplomatic authorities and civilians attended.



A message from the General Commander of the Peruvian Air Force was read, in which he greeted and congratulated all Peruvian Air Force personnel and remembered Quinones' sacrifice at the age of 27.



The General Commander also exhorted his personnel to remember this feat, and the teachings of detachment and love for his homeland that Quinones left.



Gonzalez highlighted the memory of Quinones, as the ultimate hero of Peruvian aviation, who died on July 23, 1941 in Quebrada Seca, when he was hit by anti-aircraft fire when he flew his plane into machine-gun fire.



The Peruvian government declared him a national hero and instituted the Peruvian Air Force Day.



Gonzalez also pointed out that people who died in the service of their homeland had made it possible for today's Air Force to have highly qualified personnel committed to fulfilling their assigned mission, always respecting the principles of personal integrity, vocation of service and professional excellence.



The ambassador emphasized the importance of this celebration, which had a national and international presence, helping to strengthen ties at different levels as was this case with Korea.



He also highlighted the co-production of 20 KT-1P training aircraft, as well as various academic programs in which Peruvian Air Force officers and cadets are involved with the University of Defense Korea, Joint University of the Armed Forces, Korean Air Force Academy, and Korean Defense Language Institute.



Peru also participates in activities such as the ROKAF Academy International Week, the Korean Technical Coordination Group and the Safety Management Group conferences.








By Rachel Lee



E-commerce experts from Korea and Cambodia have gathered in Phnom Penh to discuss ways to boost cooperation.



The ASEAN-Korea Centre organized the "Capacity Building Workshop for Expanding Business Opportunities in E-Commerce" earlier this month to share Korea's e-commerce development strategies and business practices and contribute to the development of e-commerce in Cambodia. The Ministry of Commerce of Cambodia co-hosted the event.



"As more and more businesses are moving away from traditional offline stores and going online, electronic commerce has increasingly become an important part of doing cross-border business," ASEAN-Korea Centre Secretary General Kim Young-sun said.



"To align itself with this fast-changing trend, the Cambodian government recently adopted the Cambodian ICT Masterplan 2020, seeking to enhance its e-commerce legislation, policymaking, financial networks and logistics."



Experts and business representatives from the two countries talked on topics including an "Overview of Korea's E-Commerce Development Strategies," "Policies and Opportunities in Cambodia's E-Commerce Industry" and "How to Enhance Cross-border E-Commerce."



The Korean side included representatives from the Korea International Trade Association, the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), the Changgong E-Commerce Laboratory and Kyungpook National University.



Starting this year, the ASEAN-Korea Centre has developed its capacity-building program, formerly the Product Development Workshop, into the Trade Facilitation Workshop that covers wider areas important for the acceleration of trade, such as the ASEAN-Korea free trade agreement.



It organized the "Trade Facilitation Workshop for Brunei Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises" on July 19 to enhance competitiveness of Bruneian food companies by introducing smart technologies and to further strengthen business partnerships between Brunei and Korea.



The "Capacity Building Workshop for Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Cross-border E-Commerce" will be held in Seoul in August, the organization said.



The ASEAN-Korea Centre is an intergovernmental organization established in 2009 to promote exchanges among Korea and the 10 ASEAN member states.








By Rachel Lee



The Embassy of Colombia hosted a ceremony on July 17 to mark the handing over of the pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance (PA).



Diplomats from the embassies of Chile, Peru, Mexico and associate member countries of the PA attended.



The PA is an initiative of regional integration in Latin America officially established on April 28, 2011.



The organization's objectives are to achieve "deep integration" of the four nations through the free movement of goods, services, capital and people. It also seeks to strengthen trade links with all countries, but in particular with those of the Asia-Pacific, the embassy said.



Korea has been an observer of the PA since June in 2013.



"Periodically, the four member countries' heads of state gather to review the PA'sprogress and to determine where the integration mechanism needs to move forward," an embassy spokesperson said.



"During the 12th summit of the PA held on June 30 in Cali, the pro tempore presidency held by Chile for one year was officially handed over to Colombia." The pro tempore presidency changes annually in alphabetical order among the four member countries.



At the Cali summit, the presidents highlighted the PA's achievements, including the Framework Agreement of the Alliance that came into force on July 20, 2015, and its trade protocol on May 1, 2016, that created a free trade zone.



They also emphasized the increase in the number of observer states to 52, the advances in the preliminary framework for cooperation with ASEAN and the holding of informal dialogue with APEC.



The presidents also announced the incorporation of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore as associated states, leading to a new free trade agreement among the countries through negotiations that will begin officially in September.












German Ambassador Stephan Auer, left, with BMW Korea CEO Kim Hyo-joon, after receiving a BMW i3 electric vehicle at the ambassador's residence in Seoul on July 20. The ambassador said Germany was introducing electric vehicles as part efforts to reduce carbon dioxide to tackle climate change. / Courtesy of BMW Group Korea
By Choi Ha-young





Ha Sung-yong

Suspicions are growing that former Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) CEO Ha Sung-yong, the central figure in a widening corruption investigation, may have had a close relationship with ousted former President Park Geun-hye and her loyalists.

In June 2015, Ha appointed an aide of an unnamed pro-Park lawmaker as an executive in charge of the KAI's aircraft maintenance project, the Hankook Ilbo reported Sunday.

The aide reportedly was tasked with lobbying pro-Park lawmakers for the KAI.

On Thursday, Ha resigned as the KAI chief following allegations that he created a slush fund by inflating costs for aircraft manufacturing and bribed pro-Park politicians with the money. The prosecution suspects that since 2012, when Park was running in the presidential race, Ha provided illegal funds to this faction.

He donated 10 million won ($ 8,900) to Park in 2012; 4 million won to a conservative lawmaker in 2014; and 5 million won to another conservative lawmaker in 2016. The two lawmakers are categorized as core pro-Park politicians. The former one was a member of the National Assembly National Defense Committee in charge of supervising KAI.

In 2013, Ha was appointed by Park, the disgraced president who was ousted over the massive corruption scandal. President Park visited the KAI headquarters in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province in December 2015 to encourage staff, followed by Ha's reappointment in 2016.

The prosecution is chasing the source of this political support funding taking into account that Ha may have collected the money illicitly, by inflating aircraft development costs and receiving "rebates" from subcontractors.

According to the Political Fund Law, money relevant to certain organizations is not allowed to be used to fund politicians. Furthermore, the prosecutors are looking into the suspicious flow of 5.2 billion won worth of certificates purchased by the KAI, which were possibly used to bribe high-ranking military officers.

Since taking office in May, President Moon Jae-in has repeatedly vowed to eradicate rampant corruption in the arms industry. On July 16, the state auditor announced that the military bought Surion utility helicopters from the KAI and put them into operation despite crucial defects in them. Around 1.3 trillion won was invested in the project.

Rep. Kim Jong-dae from the Justice Party recently alleged that Park's senior secretary Woo Byung-woo interfered with the state auditor's inspection. "Park once gave exceptional compliments about the Surion project, and this might have been out of a political calculation," Kim said in a radio interview last Tuesday.

In addition, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), the nation's arms procurement agency, is suspected of having attempted to cover up the Surion defects in pushing for its deployment.

Following the allegations, DAPA chief Chang Myoung-jin, who allegedly directed the deployment, resigned. Chang, who was a schoolmate of former President Park at Sogang University, was appointed to the post by her.
By Park Si-soo



A senior reporter with a major South Korean newspaper has received a suspended jail sentence for sexual harassment.

Seoul Central District Court said Sunday that the reporter, 51, surnamed Ha, was sentenced to six months' jail, suspended for two years. He was ordered to carry out 120 hours' social contribution and receive 40-hours of anti-sexual crime education.

He was indicted in February for kissing the cheek of a woman who was sleeping at a public spa in Seoul.

Judge Lee Sang-hun said the verdict took into account that Ha "settled the case with the victim, confessed, regretted his wrongdoing and has no criminal record."
By David T. Jones





Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin recently had their first meeting in Germany. How ironic to have American and Russian presidents meeting in Germany to solve the world's problems.



North Korea was only a passing topic previously, but the missile launch on July 4 has raised the ante.

Most of the session was to be photo ops, but now it has been upgraded to a full "bilateral" meeting which will allow each man to "measure" the other.

Trump is instinctive and tries to develop rapport with those he meets and wants to influence. Putin, the KGB-trained officer/agent handler can flow with a conversation to ingratiate himself or at least to keep an open door.

Even his harshest opponents and enemies concede that Putin is operationally adroit and does very well on low cost, long shot bets.

Last year he pulled out the disinformation playbook and let some of his junior varsity agents play "reindeer games" with the U.S. election. Some pieces from Snowden, some items to Wikileaks, and hits on the Democratic National Committee as an easy fluffy sheep ready for sheering.

Putin's win on his $2 long-shot, twin double in the U.S. election was doubtless a surprise. He may not have gotten the grand prize, lifting of sanctions, but he has the consolation of the USG devoting absurd amounts of prime policy energy to Trump's putative Putin connections. And Hillary Clinton ended in the Kremlin's figurative dumpster.

A distracted American is easier to deal with if you are a KGB-trained operative now functioning as head of state.

So, what next for Putin? He and President Xi just met in Moscow with their own plan for bilateral trade.

For Russia, the easily available low cost, high potential rate of return bet would be on Pyongyang and Dear Young Leader. Putin does not have to change any North Korean behavior to win. All he must do is pot stirring and adding some resources and assistance to Kim Yong Un to keep him disconcerting the U.S., South Korea, China, and Japan.

Nuclear and missile technology of varying vintages?

Coal and oil? Not a problem.

Russia has ships for transport and/or a land border making transport easy to hide.

Deniability? It's just private Russian citizens doing sort of legal deals under UN sanctions.

Cybercrimes? Just a few young gamers swapping tips and strategies.

There is even potential profit for Putin/cronies. North Korea exports some commodities that might be marketable, but the real cash cow would be North Korean labor. Pyongyang's crews work on projects from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg and at many points in-between.

Timing is good. Secretary Tillerson's effort to get the Chinese to force North Korea to stop its nuclear and ballistic missile programs has gone nowhere. The Americans are on their heels.

A discreet Russian approach that gives the Dear Young Leader a back door from his conundrum will be welcomed. And Putin can do it on the cheap.





The writer is a retired U.S. foreign service officer based in Washington D.C. Write to jonesdt2002@yahoo.com.
By Arthur I. Cyr



One of the largest icebergs ever recorded, estimated to be about the size of Delaware, has broken off from an ice shelf in Antarctica. The event, including dramatic pictures, provides a magnet for media.



Project MIDAS, based in Britain, monitors such developments. Scientists there testify that the iceberg is not a direct result of human action, though the wider context includes rising temperatures.



The good news is that the United States now is an effective leader in addressing polar and other climate challenges, a direct legacy of Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama administration. More surprising, current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also is notably active, despite the formal U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accords.



In May, Tillerson participated with other leaders representing Arctic nations in a conference in Fairbanks Alaska. The Arctic Council, created in 1996, is comprised of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S.



Following President Donald Trump's announcement withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris agreement, Tillerson continues to support climate management cooperation, possibly including a new agreement. More than climate is involved. Melting polar ice is revealing enormous mineral deposits previously unavailable. This is changing political dynamics both within and between nations. China is now a major investor.



Russia spearheaded by President Vladimir Putin is providing international leadership. In September 2013, the Third International Arctic Forum was held in the far northern town of Salekhard. The meeting coincided with release of a report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Putin emphasized Arctic environment protection combined with orderly investment. A fourth such meeting was held in March this year.



In 2010, the Russian Geographical Society hosted two Arctic conferences, followed by others. Investors along with scholars and government representatives are involved.



Historically Britain has been an Arctic leader, but now Russia is increasingly assertive there, with a vital stake. Others along with China and Russia seek the enormous natural resources involved.



Conflicts over territorial jurisdiction multiply as more northern territory is freed from the ice and snow. Disputes have aligned Russia against Canada and Denmark regarding control of the Lomonosov Ridge, most of which is in international waters.



Other nations involved in such disagreements include Finland, Iceland, Sweden and the United States. Under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a nation can claim resources beyond a 200 mile limit if a direct continuous continental shelf can be established.



Regarding leadership, the U.S. government was disengaged. When John Kerry became secretary of state, this changed dramatically. Tillerson may be pursuing a similar path.



Longer-term history is also encouraging regarding Antarctic and Arctic cooperation. International Polar Years were held in 1882-1883, 1932-1933 and 2007-2009.



The first two inspired the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-1958, during the Cold War. American leadership was instrumental in launching and completing this global, intergovernmental research and policy enterprise. Discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belts was one of numerous IGY scientific achievements.



Demilitarization of Antarctica, proposed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was another beneficial byproduct. This facilitated international cooperation among scientists which went on despite the intensity of the Cold War, and continues. Undeniably, Eisenhower's initiative laid the foundation for much more publicized Soviet-U.S. strategic arms agreements, including the partial test-ban treaty of 1963 and the SALT treaties of 1972.



International organizations play a sustained role in technical engagement as well as leadership. Environmental challenges today are global, and so is U.S. influence.







Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of "After the Cold War." Contact acyr@carthage.edu.




By Andrei Lankov





As the summer comes, so too arises the opportunity for the Republic of Korea to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its democratic transformation. While officially the ROK always portrayed itself as a liberal democracy, for all practical intents and purposes it became such only as the culmination of several events reached critical mass in the summer of 1987, an event most often described as a revolution in the minds and imaginations of nearly all Koreans.

When the ROK was officially founded in August 1948, it professed an allegiance to the principles of liberal democracy as understood at the time. However, this commitment was to a large extent theoretical. The first ROK President, Syngman Rhee, a life-long independence activist, was certain that any Korean democracy should include him as an unchallengeable and, essentially, irreplaceable head of state and powerful ruler.

Lasting twelve years, from 1948 to 1960, Rhee's administration was a time of relatively soft authoritarian policy somewhat similar with what is commonly observed in many states of the Middle East. While he was willing to use force against the radical, often Stalinist Left, Rhee could be severe when dealing with his opponents. Major opposition figures were jailed or even executed, elections were heavily interfered with, and a personality cult of Syngman Rhee was introduced  several degrees less than the Kim family cult in North Korea, to be sure, but not entirely dissimilar.

In April 1960 Syngman Rhee was overthrown by a popular revolution. He was replaced by a regime known as the Second Republic' which was probably Korea's first honest experiment with democracy. It did not go well, though: the system began to slide into a chaos. Just a year into the experiment, a group of military officers, led by General Park Chung-hee staged a successful coup that would bring strong-man authoritarianism to the ROK for nearly three decades.

Many public intellectuals nowadays blame Park for single-handedly derailing the trajectory of liberation in the ROK. There is a revisionist school of thought, however, less sympathetic to this recrimination.

In any case, by the dictators' standards General Park behaved with some constraint during the first decade of his rule, and his regime could be described as a semi-democracy. However, in 1972 the country quickly began to change into a characteristic military dictatorship. At the same time, a very successful economic policy of the Park regime would make South Korea the fastest growing economy in the world, and helped to transform the country from a poor backwater to an economic powerhouse within a generation.

In October 1979 Park Chung-hee was killed by his intelligence chief whose motivations remain unclear to this day. Park was succeeded by another military general, Chun Doo Hwan. The transition was marked by massive pro-democracy rallies (sometimes referred to colloquially as Seoul spring') which culminated in a popular revolt in the southern city of Gwangju, brutally suppressed by government forces. Chun Doo-hwan survived these challenges and remained in power until 1987.

Ultimately, the military dictatorship's grasp on the country was slowly weakened by what the generals (and many others) saw as the greatest achievement of the military regimes  record-breaking economic growth. This development fundamentally changed South Korean society. A nation of semi-literate peasants remade itself into a nation of highly-skilled workers, engineers, business leaders, medical doctors and professionals. This new, educated, and ambitious middle class were not willing tolerate what their parents saw as normal or, at least, acceptable: censorship, repressive government, lack of political participation. They wanted democracy.

Faced with pressure from below, Chun Doo-hwan decided to step down in 1987, selecting yet another general, Ro Tae Woo, to take his place. Under the constitutional arrangement at the time, the election of an appointed successor was nearly guaranteed. The wholly transparent and blatantly obvious intentions of the military elite to keep themselves in power generated massive outrage among the new middle class, students, professionals, and labor activists.

Outrage culminated in June the same year, in a monumental public protest known as the June Democracy Movement.' As many as 700,000 people took to the streets and demanded change  a number which remained unsurpassed until the recent rallies against President Park Geun Hye, daughter of Pak Chung-hee, in late 2016 and early 2017.

The protests worked. In late June 1987 the government gave in, conceding to direct and competitive elections, a relaxation of censorship, and other steps towards democracy. Thus, the ROK became a democracy, not only in name, but in practice. Just three decades later, it is not only the most mature democracy in Asia, but a leading example for the entire region.





Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
Maeil Dairies Vice President Cho Sung-hyung, fourth from left, poses with Shin On-han, third from left, president of the Korea Population and Health Welfare Association (KoPHWA), after signing an agreement to create a friendly workplace for expectant mothers, at the KoPHWA office in Seoul, July 12. / Courtesy of Maeil Dairies



By Lee Hyo-sik

Maeil Dairies will actively take part in the nationwide campaign to raise the birthrate by making its workplace better for pregnant employees.

One of Korea's leading dairy product makers has become the first company to sign an agreement with the Korea Population and Health Welfare Association (KoPHWA), which has been promoting the creation of a friendly corporate atmosphere for moms-to-be.

On July 12, Maeil Dairies Vice President Cho Sung-hyung signed the agreement with KoPHWA President Shin On-han, pledging to initiate a wide range of programs for pregnant women. The company also plans to encourage male employees to more proactively participate in childcare.

"Raising the country's record-low birthrate and creating a good environment for childrearing are one of the most critical issues facing Korea," Cho said. "Maeil will take the initiative in making the workplace more caring for expectant mothers. We will also launch programs to enable workers to strike balance between family and work so that male employees can spend more time with their family."

It will launch an online and offline campaigns to create a friendlier social environment for pregnant women, and prompt employees and customers to be more considerate to them in public places.

Since 1975, Maeil has been running a class for moms-to-be to provide accurate information about childbirth and childrearing.

In May, it invited 28 prospective parents from among employees and customers to its two-day learning camp in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province.

One of the baby camp participants was quoted by the company as saying that "At the camp, my wife and I spent quality time with other couples and learned lots of useful information about raising a child. I haven't been able to spend much time with my wife so it was a good opportunity for me to connect with her."

A Maeil spokesman said the participants were highly satisfied with the baby moon camp.

"The Hongcheon camp was our eighth event. Given enthusiastic responses from the participants, we will hold more camps in the coming months," he said.

In addition, Maeil has introduced flexible working hours and other programs to help pregnant women and working mothers do their jobs.

As part of its corporate social responsibility activities, the dairy firm donates baby formula and other products to low-income families and promotes breastfeeding.
See how Catholic Church Converts 20,000 Buddhists per year in Sri Lanka

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lttlCs7WoZ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llIpBM61mkA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkPg3GZPY0o -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 11/06/07)

T HE INQUISITION: A Study in Absolute Catholic Power - Arthur Maricle -Full Story- (znet.com - 04/06/07)

Adding fuel to the fire.

LA PEIRIS -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 08/08/07)

The battle saga and soap opera between Mr. Prasad De Silva and Mr. Sumith Perera ! By Mahinda Karunaratne -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 07/08/07)

Reply to Prasad on Unethical conversion and Christian fundamentalism By Sumith Perera -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 05/08/07)



Reply to Mr.Sumit Perera Prasad De Silva -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 04/08/07)



3rd reply to Prasad Sumith Perera -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 03/08/07)



RE: Attacking the Christian community in our motherland-Repy to Mr. Sumith Perera Prasad De.Silva -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 02/08/07)



RE: Attacking the Christian community in our motherland. Sumith Perera -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 01/07/07)



RE: Attacking the Christian community in our motherland-Repy to Mr. Manoj De Silva Prasad De.Silva -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 31/07/07)



RE: Attacking the Christian community in our motherland Mr. Sumith Perera

Prasad De Silva -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 30/07/07)



RE: Attacking the Christian community in our motherland. Sumith Perera -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 27/07/07)



Rebuttal to Attacking the Christian community in our motherland From Prasad De. Silva By Manoj De Silva a Sinhala Buddhist -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 26/07/07)



Attacking the Christian community in our motherland. Prasad De.Silva -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 25/07/07)

The Story of Ananda and the Christian Evangelists

By Bodu Pubudu Foundation, Panadura

Mr Ananda Fernando, an ex-Police officer, is residing at 8/4, Samudra Mawatha, Panadura. He is 54 years old, married, and living with his wife and two sons. Ananda hails from a respectable family from Moratuwa, and the former MP for Nuwara Eliya, Mr T William Fernando was his uncle. Ananda's caring wife, Asoka, is the daughter of a well respected educationist, the retired Principal Mr M M M Fernando of Panadura, and a grand daughter of the legendary K T Cornalis Peiris Loku Iskole Mahaththaya, one of the Head Masters of Upadhyaya Vidyalaya, the first ever Sinhala Buddhist School in the country to be registered with the Government. With the above family background, both Ananda and Asoka had naturally been brought up in a strong Sinhala Buddhist environment. They are very good Buddhists and maintain a very close rapport with the temple of the area, Abhaya Karunaratne Mudalindaaraamaya of Welipitiya, Panadura. -Full Story- (geocities.com - 26/07/07)

Unethical Craft of conversion-Francois Gautier

Unethical Craft of conversion-Francois Gautier Posted May 1, 2006

Author: Francois Gautier Publication: The Pioneer Date: April 26, 2002 I was born and brought-up a Christian. I believe that Jesus Christ is an Avatar of Love, and that now more than ever, specially after the 11th September terrorist attacks on America, we need his message of compassion, charity and kindness for one another. Many Christians have taught the world that the first precept of Christ is to look after the deprived and the needy: Missionaries, such as Father Ceyrac, a French Jesuit who has lived for more than 60 years in Chennai, have understood this principle, tending to the poorest sections of this society, while respecting their culture (Father Ceyrac, who speaks fluently Tamil and Sanskrit, often quotes from the Upanishads). Unfortunately, there has crept in the purity of the early Christianity an exclusiveness, a feeling of sole proprietary right over God. This exclusiveness, this feeling amongst Christians, that "we are the only true religion, and all other gods are false gods", has had the most catastrophic and bloody consequences: Millions have been killed in the name of Christ, entire civilisations, such as the Atzecs and Incas, have been wiped-out, "to bring them the word of Jesus". Even Christians have savagely murdered each other, whether in France or England. One would have hoped that this intolerance, this fanatical and militant drive to convert, forcibly or otherwise, pagans to the "True" God, had ceased in this new millennium of "enlightenment". Unfortunately, it is not so. For nearly three centuries, India has been the target of a massive conversion drive. It is even more so today, as Christianity is dwindling in the West: -Full Story- (christianaggression.org - 26/07/07)

Conversion: Unethical and otherwise - A Buddhist view By Ven Dhammika, The Island, July 15, 2004

As a Christian who has become a Buddhist I have been observing the current conversion controversy with some interest. I have read with dismay the reports of churches being burnt and of pastors being manhandled. Such behaviour is not just shameful, if probably does more harm to Buddhism than any missionary could ever do. Further, people who do such things are breaking the law and should be dealt with by the law without fear of favour. -Full Story- (crusadewatch.org - 26/07/07)

Unethical Conversions

By Brindley Jayatunga -Full Story- (lankaweb.com - 26/07/07)

Professor Y. Karunadasa and Venerable Chandawimala on  The political monk in contemporary Sri Lanka: a Blessing or a Hindrance

-Full Story- (buddhistdoor.com - 26/07/07)

THE POLITICS OF CONVERSION: A PERSONAL REFLECTION

By Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana Associate General Secretary for Interfaith Relations, National Council of Churches, USA -Full Story- (ncccusa.org - 26/07/07)

E X A M I N I N G C H R I S T I A N E V A N G E L I S M I N S R I L A N K A A N D S O U T H A S I A

-Full Story- (geocities.com - 26/07/07)

My Experiences with the Pentacostal

By Mukesh -Full Story- (geocities.com - 26/07/07)

Christian conversion in Buddhist Sri Lanka

By Kamalika Pieris -Full Story- (geocities.com - 26/07/07)

Eastward, evangelical soldiers! -Full Story- (The Frontline - 21/02/05)

Their Other "Dirty" Linen: Evangelism's Quest to Conquer the World

by S. R. Welch -Full Story- (secweb - 23/09/04)

Christian Evangelism: Whither Decency?

By Harendra De Silva

. -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 23/09/04)

Conspiracy against Buddhism

Mohan Silva . -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 22/09/04)

Forcible Religious Conversion

Ananda Samaraweera -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 02/08/04)

Mrs Bandaranaike's courage

Ananda Samaraweera -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 02/08/04) Some Analogies to Illustrate the Unethical Nature of Conversions Waruna Fernando,Mount Waverley Australia -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 23/07/04)

Fundamentalism: Slavery of the Mind "God is great."

By Jonathan S. Coolidge -Full Story- (geocities.com - 23/07/04)

ARCHBISHOP OF COLOMBO SAYS NO TO ANTI-CONVERSIONS BILL -Full Story- (misna - 19/06/04)

Are Forcible Religious Conversions Part of Fundamental Human Rights?

Sunny Mendes -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 20/06/04)

Norway in a hurry to meet Thamil Selvan , and the Archbishop against the anti Conversion Bill

By Charles Perera -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 20/06/04)

Unethical craft of conversion

Francois Gautier -Daily Pioneer-Apr 26, 2002

-Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 20/06/04)

Proselytism and International Law -Full Story- (Geocities - 20/06/04)

CATHOLIC BISHOPS' CONFERENCE OF SRI LANKS Statement by the Catholic Bishops Conference in Sri Lanka on the Proposed Anti-Conversion Legislation.14th January 2004 -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 20/06/04)

Christian conversion in Buddhist Sri Lanka

-Full Story- (hvk - 20/06/04)

Communication and Proselytism

-Full Story- (religion-online.org - 20/06/04)

Make yourself a LEGALLY ORDAINED MINISTER within 48 hours for only $29.95

Minister Charles Simpson has the power to make you a LEGALLY ORDAINED MINISTER within 48 hours!!!BE ORDAINED NOW!As a minister, you will be authorized to perform the rites and ceremonies of the church!! WEDDINGS,FUNERALS,BAPTISMS,FORGIVENESS OF SINS,WANT TO START YOUR OWN CHURCH?? -Full Story- (IIS Ministries - 02/02/04)

Unethical conversion violates the UN convention on the right of the child

Buddhist Christian Religious Tensions Need To be Objectively Resolved! Periscope-Global Sinhala Village For LankaWeb -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 28/01/04)

Unethical craft of conversion Author: Francois Gautier Publication: -Full Story- (hvk - 26/01/04)

Fear grips Sri Lankan Christians -Full Story- (The Hindu - 17/01/04)

Sri Lanka vows tough action against hate attacks on churches -Full Story- (Khaleej Times - 17/01/04)

IGP directs probe on child sex by Christian fundamentalists in Sri Lanka -Full Story- (The Daily News - 15/01/04)



C H R I S T I A N E V A N G E L I S M I N S R I L A N K A -FOCUS -

The Convention on the Rights of the Child -UNICEF

Full text of the Convention-UNICEF

If you like to take part in the action group please e-mail c/o info@lankaweb.com




RANIL'S MOU WITH PRABHAKARAN

Is Ranil Chasing Peace or Dollars or Both? what role Ranil played in the 1983 pogrom"?

SRI LANKA Government forces Non-state armed groups -Full Story- (HRW - 29/01/04)

Sri Lanka may be heading for a Sinhala-Buddhist version of Hindutva -Full Story- (Hindustan Times - 27/01/04)

Chandrika asks Tamils not to 'mortgage destiny' to LTTE -Full Story- (Hindustan Times - 24/01/04)

UNICEF urges Tamil Tigers to stop recruiting child soldiers in Sri Lanka . -Full Story- (UNICEF - 23/01/04)

Call to increased action for Sri Lanka's war affected children . -Full Story- (UNICED - 23/01/04)

Lankan alliance promises parliamentary form of Govt .-Full Story- (Hindustan Times - 21/01/04)

US sheds inhibition, opts for direct contact with LTTE -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times- 19/01/04)

President's term of office

by Dr. Reeza Hameed -Full Story- (The Sunday Observer - 11/01/04)

Has Ranil Lost His Direction In The Peace Process? Periscope-Global Sinhala Village For LankaWeb -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 09/01/04)

JVP lashes Ranil for getting USA to intimidate masses -Full Story- (The Daily Mirror - 06/01/04)

View from Colombo: Government debts still exceed GDP -Full Story- (The Gulf News - 15/12/03)

Tigers 'still enlisting' children -Full Story- (The Asian Tribune - 11/12/03)

SRI LANKA: Opportunity Lurks under Crisis of Troubled Nation -Full Story- (IPS - 15/11/03) Hit the brakes! Form a National Govt.!

by Dayan Jayatilleka

-Full Story- (The Island - 09/11/03)

Sri Lankan leaders are parting ways on a contentious issue

Kuldip Nayar The writer, a former Indian High Commissioner to the UK and a former Rajya Sabha MP. -Full Story- (The Gulf News - 09/11/03)

President offers Govt of national reconciliation Full Text -Full Story- (The Daily News - 08/11/03)

There was no emergency, says President's office -Full Story- (The Hindu - 08/11/03)

Sri Lankan developments pose dilemma for India JN Dixit New Delhi, -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 08/11/03)

SRI LANKA IN CRISIS AGAIN -Full Story- (The Hindu - 07/11/03)

War clouds mass in Sri Lanka - again -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 07/11/03)

The Sacking of Three Ministers and Suspending Sri Lanka's Parliament Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka Inc (SPUR )-Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 06/11/03)

LTTE wants its way and Norway -Full Story- (The Island Midweek Review - 05/11/03)

Devolution to whom? The Tamil people .-Full Story- (The Island - 05/11/03)

Fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day -Full Story- (The Island Editorial - 05/11/03)

N othing federal about this -The Hindu Editorial

-Full Story- (The Hindu - 04/11/03)

LTTE says India cannot dictate framework for solution -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 04/11/03)

Tiger demands: Beyond the federal paradigm

By Dayan Jayatilleka -Full Story- (The Island - 04/11/03)

Abomination! by S.L.Gunasekara,President Sinhala Jathika Sangamaya -Full Story- (The Island - 04/11/03)

LTTE proposals go beyond devolution- CBK -Full Story- (The Island - 04/11/03)

`No provision for pluralistic democracy in LTTE proposals' -Full Story- (The Hindu - 04/11/03)

INTERIM GOVERNMENT PROPOSALS THAT DEMANDED VIRTUAL INDEPENDENCE AND THE LIONS SHARE OF SRILANKA

Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles -Full Story- (The Lankaweb - 03/11/03)

IA Proposals of LTTE - a Deed for an ethnic Real Estate without encumbrances Dr Nath Amarakone President - ESP -Full Story- (The Lankaweb - 03/11/03)

LTTE proposal, just old wine in new bottle . -Full Story- (The Indian Express - 03/11/03)

'LTTE peace proposal threat to Indian security' -Full Story- (The Indian Express - 03/11/03)

LTTE demands full control over North-East -Full Story- (The Hindu - 03/11/03)

Coming closer to crunch time By H. L. D. Mahindapala -Full Story- (The Lankaweb - 31/10/03)

The Maneater -Full Story- (The Indian Express - 19/08/03)

OPEN LETTER TO THE VISITING US CONGRESSMEN -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 05/07/03)

An open letter to HE President

A Highly dismayed former supporter of Chandrika and PA -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 30/07/03)

Reinventing the Sri Lankan State or creation of two states?

By Gamini Weerakoon Editor -Full Story- (The Island Editorial - 28/10/03)

India, Sri Lanka to conclude Defence Pact 'at the earliest' -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 22/10/03)

India keeps door open for defence pact with Sri Lanka -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 22/10/03)

Behave like a 'regional power', Lankan commentator tells India -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 17/10/03)

India tenacious about seeking Prabhakaran's extradition: Sinha -Full Story- (Deepika Global - 15/10/03)

Sri Lanka's president on Tuesday threatened to dismiss the country's prime minister and cabinet -Full Story- (iht - 15/10/03)

Ethnic Clashes Intensify in Eastern Sri Lanka -Full Story- (oneworld - 15/10/03)

"Avi Thopeya Bima Apeya" - SU Ready to go to Wan-Ela. -Full Story- (Spur - 14/10/03) SU Ready to go to Wan-Ela.

Sri Lanka Nationalist Party Vows To March On Rebel Camp -Full Story- (DJ - 14/10/03)

The regime change scenario: Another 56?

" We shall not allow the UNP to raise its head for the rest of history. " - Anura Bandaranaike at Nittambuwa , Sept. 29th

-Full Story- (The Island - 05/10/03)

India rushed ammunition to Lanka to meet crisis: Report -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 30/09/03)

Torn between Govt and LTTE, Annan rethinks Lanka visit -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 29/09/03)

Lankan Muslims arming against LTTE: Chandrika -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 25/09/03)

Inside the elusive mind of Prabakaran -Full Story- (The Island - 23/09/03)

Will Ranils strategy work? -Full Story- (The Island Editorial - 23/09/03)

TN plans action under POTA against union ministers -Full Story- (The Times of India - 19/09/03)

I am not afraid of arrest: Kannappan -Full Story- (The Times of India - 19/09/03)

If Mahanayakas fail alternative measures a must  Ven. Omalpe Sobhita -Full Story- (The Island - 18/09/03)

US Urges Sri Lankan Rebels to Abandon Terrorism -Full Story- (VOA - 18/09/03)

Prabhakaran eludes even the highest foreign emissaries -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 17/09/03)

CBKs comprehensive letter to Ranil Dont conceal truth regarding Trinco security -Full Story- (The Island - 17/09/03)

Angry India cancels Navy chief's visit to Lanka -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 16/09/03)

LTTE supremo Prabhakaran never trusted India -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 16/09/03)

Inauguration of "Eelam Police" HQ considered significant -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 10/09/03)

SLFP split to force Lankan president to align with JVP -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 09/09/03)

Electoral pact with SLFP possible: JVP . -Full Story- (The Sunday Island - 08/09/03)

Intelligence failed to crack messages on Rajiv's killing -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 07/09/03)

Lanka army will not fire first at LTTE -Full Story- (The Times of India - 06/09/03)

President, PM must act now to stop LTTE build-up in Trinco  JVP -Full Story- (The Island - 05/09/03)

Kadirgamars crime -Full Story- (The Island Editorial - 05/09/03)

A General Election, the only solution -Full Story- (The Island-Editorial - 25/08/03)

umaratungas party slams Norway, Japan over Lanka peace bid -Full Story- (The News - 25/08/03)

Adrian Hamilton: Today's terrorists, tomorrow's leaders -Full Story- (The NZ Herald - 22/08/03)

LTTE squads in Colombo to kill Chandrika -Full Story- (The Times of India - 21/08/03)

The Maneater -Full Story- (The Indian Express - 19/08/03)

Kumaratungas party slams Norway, Japan over Lanka peace bid -Full Story- (The News - 25/08/03)

Adrian Hamilton: Today's terrorists, tomorrow's leaders -Full Story- (The NZ Herald - 22/08/03)

LTTE squads in Colombo to kill Chandrika -Full Story- (The Times of India - 21/08/03)

Osama squads to fight the LTTE -Full Story- (The Times of India - 20/08/03)

The international safety net By Durand Appuhamy . -Full Story- (The Island - 20/08/03)

The Maneater -Full Story- (The Indian Express - 19/08/03)

Trincomalee poorly defended: Sri Lankan Navy -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 11/08/03)

LTTE-UNDP bid to oust Indian de-miners fails -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 11/08/03)

LTTE blamed in latest political killing -Full Story- (The Times of India - 11/08/03)

The policies advocated to 'Regain Sri Lanka'

By Dr. H. N. S. Karunatilake -Full Story- (The Island - 11/08/03)

Sri Lanka: Rights Groups Say LTTE-linked Killings Continue with Impunity -Full Story- (hrw.org - 08/08/03)

Britain has not done enough to contain LTTE activity  Lord Avebury -Full Story- (The Island - 05/08/03)

The LTTE cannot be trusted - Lord Avebury -Full Story- (The Island - 05/08/03)

PRIYATH LIYANAGE ON A CAMPAIGN TO DEMAND APOLOGY TO THE TAMILS FROM THE SINHALESE IN SRI LANKA : -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 02/08/03)

Sri Lanka's Tigers say ready for war - to push peace " -Full Story- (PTD - 29/07/03)

Army-LTTE face-off likely -Full Story- (The Hindu - 03/07/03)

LTTE violated U.N. law of the sea: monitoring mission -Full Story- (The Hindu - 30/06/03)

Sri Lanka president's party says fresh fighting in two weeks Friday, -Full Story- (ptd - 28/06/03)

Peace talks could be revived if given power: LTTE -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 25/06/03)

Offer more powers, we will revive talks: LTTE -Full Story- (The Times of India - 25/06/03)

SLFP 14th Convention at Nittambuwa Only 10 days ammo left to fight LTTE, says CBK -Full Story- (The Island - 24/06/03)

Mandate for an Interim Administration?

S. L. Gunasekara President, Sinhala Jathika Sangamaya -Full Story- (The Island - 24/06/03

Fatal Strategies of Failed Negotiators by Durand Appuhamy -Full Story- (The Island - 24/06/03)

Tigers blamed for police killing -Full Story- (BBC - 24/06/03)

Lankan Navy followed Rules of Engagement in sinking LTTE vessel: Experts -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 23/06/03)

LTTE's roadmap to Eelam threatens to balkanise India: Lankan analyst -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 22/06/03)

Snared in Eelam trap - set in Oslo, clamped tight in Tokyo -Full Story- (The Island - 22/06/03)

Tigers demand overhaul of Norway's peace bid, reject Sri Lanka overtures -Full Story- (Ptd - 22/06/03)

The LTTEs Roadmap to Eelam -Full Story- (The Island - 22/06/03)

Armitage Says Sri Lanka Peace Would Be "Tremendous Signal For the World" (Speaks with Japanese and Sri Lankan media in Tokyo following donor's conference) (2640) -Full Story- (usinfo - 13/06/03)

"Lanka will soon be a sovereign shel", Kadirgamar

Norwegians - 'salmon-eating busybodies' -Full Story- (BBC - 31/05/03)

Body blow to peace process -Full Story- (The Deccan Herald - 31/05/03)

Hon. Kjell Magne Bondevik Prime Minister of Norway Re: Statement in Tokyo re Peace Process in Sri Lanka - Reuters Report May 27,2003 -Full Story- (The LankaWeb - 31/05/03)

Stamp Out Tamil Tiger Terrorist Gun Running - Help Sri Lanka Eradicate Tamil Tiger Terrorism-Letter to the Prime Minister of Thailand (31 May 2003) issued by the World Alliance Patriotic Organisations -Full Story- (spur - 31/05/03)

Interim admin. demanded by LTTE is nothing but Eelam  JVP -Full Story- (The Island - 27/05/03)

Chandrika puts Govt. on notice -Full Story- (The Hindu - 25/05/03)

LTTE sets tough condition for attending Tokyo conference

(a) fully autonomous,

(b) completely controlled by the LTTE and

(c) entirely outside the present constitition of Sri Lanka. -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 21/05/03)

Rocca given proof of LTTE ceasefire violations -Full Story- (The Hindu - 14/05/03)

Hon. R. Wickremesinghe, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka

& Prime Minister's Reply (The LankaWeb - 13/05/03)

Lanka will soon be a sovereign shell, warns Kadirgamar -Full Story- (The Island - 09/05/03)

Senior US Diplomat in Sri Lanka for Talks on Reviving Peace Process -Full Story- (VOA - 12/05/03)

Lanka political crisis threatens to scuttle peace bid -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times - 12/05/03)

Lanka will soon be a sovereign shell, warns Kadirgamar -Full Story- (The Island - 09/05/03)

Sri Lanka: The Judiciary and Human Rights .-Full Story- (The Asian Tribune-19/02/03)

'FM radio will be used to destroy Tamil Nadu.' . -Full Story- SRI LANKA: The National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka Has Used Its Powers to Bite the Victims and Not the Perpetrators ASIAN CIVIL SOCIETY FORUM 2002 - -Full Story- An Indian perspective On the current Peace Process

.-Full Story- (The Island - 21/11/02)

The transformation of terror? . -Full Story- (Asia Times - 25/09/02)

How Tiger terrorism paid off for Tamils -Full Story- (Sydney Morning Herald)

The Developing Situation in the Nothern and Eastern Provinces -Full Story- (LankaWeb - 11/09/02)

Sri Lanka, rebels must disarm in tandem: Report -Full Story- (Times of India - 10/05/03)

Sri Lanka's government makes offer to Tamils -Full Story- (GoAsia Pacific - 30/04/03)

Sri Lankas peace talks: the devil is in the details By Somar Wijayadasa, Former Representative of UNAIDS United Nations, New York -Full Story- (The Island - 20/04/03)

SRI LANKA: Peace process under grave threat?

Presenter/Interviewer: Karon Snowdon

Speakers: J.C. Weliamuna, Executive Director of the Colombo Chapter of Transparency International; Paul Harris, journalist and writer on Sri Lankan affairs . -Full Story- (ABC Net - 19/04/03)

Lanka, Tamil rebels must show results at peace talks -Full Story- (The Times of India - 11/04/03)

Tamil Tiger demo in Geneva to press homeland demand -Full Story- (The Asian Tribune - 11/04/03)

Chandrika conveys `concerns' about peace talks -Full Story- (The Hindu - 11/04/03)

Reflections on Anandasangarees interview -Full Story- (The Island - 11/04/03)

Sri Lankan President rejects truce monitor ruling on Chinese trawler attack -Full Story- (Xinhuanet - 09/04/03)

Sri Lankan president accuses Scandinavian truce monitors of bias -Full Story- (ptd - 09/04/03)

It must be SLMM

by Nalin de Silva -Full Story- (The Island - 09/04/03)

Looking beyond the peace talks -Full Story- (The Frontline - 31/03/03)

A troubled course -Full Story- (The Frontline - 31/03/03)

Troubled waters -Full Story- (The Frontline - 31/03/03)

Concerns in Mannar .-Full Story- (The Frontline - 31/03/03)

Child Conscription and Peace: A Tragedy of Contradictions . -Full Story- ( The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) - 20/03/03)

Lets have Prabakarans Peace Monitors! The Island Editorial . -Full Story- (The Island- 20/03/03)

Truce monitors accuse Tigers of reneging on promises -Full Story- (The Asian Tribune- 03/03/03)

Lanka PM warns LTTE of breaking cease-fire -Full Story- (Times of India - 02/03/03)

Local cease-fire monitor obtains bail for LTTE abductors of schoolgirls .-Full Story- (The Island - 24/02/03)

Call LTTE's bluff .-Full Story- (The Island - 24/02/03)

Balasingham's View on MOU (In Sinhala).-Full Story- (Divaina-19/02/03)

U.S. Slams S.Lanka Rebels Over Arms Smuggling .-Full Story- ( Reuters-13/02/03 )

Chandrika hints at sacking defence minister .-Full Story- ( The Times of India-12/02/03 )

President's Hajj message Peace we strive for must safeguard democratic rights - President -Full Story- ( The Island-12/02/03 ) .

LTTE should permit full check on child recruits - President's spokesman .-Full Story- ( The Island-12/02/03 ) .

Will Peace be more expensive than war? . .-Full Story- ( The Island-12/02/03 )

Suicide bombing blunts Sri Lanka peace momentum .-Full Story- ( The Times of India-11/02/03 ) .

No request from Tigers to leave trawler, say monitors on board Defence, SLMM differ over explosion .-Full Story- ( The Island -09/02/03 ) .

Red alert in Lanka after suicide bombing .-Full Story- ( The Deccan Herald-09/02/03 ) .

Govt expands political links with LTTE

-Full Story- ( The Island -09/02/03 ) .

Chandrika doubts LTTE after suicide blasts .-Full Story- ( The Times of India-08/02/03 ) .

Tigers using a truce to smuggle weapons: Sri Lanka president .-Full Story- ( ptd -08/02/03 ) .

LTTE Blast: Peace process suffers a jolt -Full Story- ( The Hindu -08/02/03 ) .

Chronology of Sri Lankan suicide blasts -Full Story- ( ptd -08/02/03 ) :

Ranil advocates 'step-by-step' approach for talks -Full Story- (The Hindu- 19/08/02)

Serving democracy or themselves? . -Full Story- (The Island- 18/08/02) .

Peace: How committed are the negotiators? . -Full Story- (The Island-Editorial- 17/08/02)

Sri Lanka Nixes Independent Homeland . -Full Story- (world news- 16/08/02)

Lanka stalemate may drag on . -Full Story- (The Hindustan Times- 16/08/02)

Sri Lanka Lifts Ban on Tamil Rebels . -Full Story- (VOA- 16/08/02)

Sri Lanka to lift rebel ban . -Full Story- (BBC- 16/08/02) .

Tamils, Sri Lanka Set Date for Talks . -Full Story- (World News- 15/08/02)

Sri Lanka makes key concession to Tigers ahead of talks . -Full Story- (ABC - 13/08/02)

Sri Lanka Allows Rebel Boats Free Movement on East Coast -Full Story- (VOA - 13/08/02)

LTTE interim govt okay: Lanka minister -Full Story- (Deccan Herald- 13/08/02)

Lanka may head to snap polls -Full Story- (Daily Star News- 13/08/02)

Chandrika rejects govt demand to shed dissolution power Lanka power struggle deepens .-Full Story- (The Deccan Herald- 11/08/02)

Tamils setting up courts, says Sri Lanka president .-Full Story- (Guardian - 11/08/02)

Chandrika rejects Lanka PM's demand. - (The Hindustan Times- 11/08/02)

"Colombo not in a hurry" - Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister, Tyronne Fernando .-Full Story- (The Hindu- 10/08/02) '.

Sri Lanka president defies PM .-Full Story- (BBC - 10/08/02)

PA to form govt. when 113 MPs agree .-Full Story- (The Island- 10/08/02)

Sri Lanka's president defies government demand .-Full Story- (LankaWeb - 10/08/02)

Chandrika rules out fresh polls .-Full Story- (The Hindu- 10/08/02) .

Snap poll threat in Sri Lanka .-Full Story- (The Deccan Herald- 09/08/02)

Lanka govt may ammend constitution -Full Story- (The Times of India- 09/08/02) .

Kumaratunga may lose power to dissolve parliament .-Full Story- (The Times of India- 09/08/02) .

Sri Lankan talks 'next month' .-Full Story- (BBC - 09/08/02) "

Peace Talks Likely in September Between S.Lankan Government, Rebels .-Full Story- (The People Daily- 09/08/02)

PM issues ultimatum to President .-Full Story- (The Island- 08/08/02)

Sri Lankan Opposition `working to topple Govt.' .-Full Story- (The Hindu- 08/08/02)

Lanka ruling party may serve ultimatum to Prez on snap poll -Full Story- (Southnexus - 07/08/02) .

Chandrika, govt locked in constitutional battle . -Full Story- (The Times of India- 06/08/02) .

"Coup Document", UNP fabrication - President's office . -Full Story- (The Island- 06/08/02)

Presidential putsch or political paranoia?

-Full Story- (The Island- 06/08/02) .

Political standoff deepens in Sri Lanka . -Full Story- (The Times of India- 06/08/02) .

Sri Lanka state media allege bid to oust PM . -Full Story- (msnbc - 05/08/02)

Tamil Tigers capture soldier . -Full Story- (bbc - 05/08/02)

TV claims spy camera cost only Rs. 445,000 . -Full Story- (The Island- 05/08/02)

Kumaratunga begins talks on ethnic issue- (The Times of India- 27/07/02)

Bush supports peace moves in Lanka- (Times of India - 26/07/02)

Lankan minister speaks in favour of Vaiko- (The Times of India-22/07/02) "

`Produce thousands of Vaikos' - (The Hindu -22/07/02) .

Don't belittle Tamil struggle, says Nedumaran- (The Hindu -22/07/02) .

Smiles that conceal the worries- (The Economist -19/07/02)

-CHIEF MINISTER JAYALALITHA THROWS THE GAUNTLET TO THE LTTE TERRORISTS- ( SPUR -19/07/02)

No signs of thaw in Lanka-LTTE standoff - (Times of India -19/07/02)

Indian MP remanded over Tiger support- (BBC - 13/07/02)

Lanka's Tamil alliance flays Vaiko's arrest- (Times of India - 13/07/02)

Chandrika's party casts doubts over peace talks- (Times of India - 22/06/02)

People's Alliance warns of drift in peace process- (The Hindu - 22/06/02)

JVP urges Ranil to reconsider lifting of ban on LTTE- (The Times of India-18/06/02) .

Unarmed LTTE rebels cross over to Lanka's northern islands - (The Times of India-18/06/02) .

Sri Lankan Peace Talks Likely to Be Further Delayed Peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and separatist - (Xinhuanet-17/06/02)

Lanka revives 'dormant' accord - (The Deccan Herald-17/06/02)

Extradition call a threat to Sri Lanka peace deal - (smh-13/06/02)

Sri Lankan Tamil Rebels to Shun Peace Talks: Leftist Party- (The People Daily-13/06/02) .

India asserts demand for Prabhakaran's extradition operational - (Southnexus-12/06/02)

India reaffirms Sri Lanka backing - (BBC-12/06/02) .

Lanka evasive on LTTE chief's extradition- (The Times of India-12/06/02) .

Sri Lankan peace in limbo - (The Times of India-12/06/02)

Lanka PM evasive on Prabhakaran's extradition - (The Hindustan Times-11/06/02) .

Lankan peace hinges on India' - (The Daily Star News-11/06/02)

Muslim party wants to 'share' administration with LTTE - (The Deccan Herald-10/06/02) .

Don't get caught in LTTE trap warns Malwatte Mahanayake- (The Island-10/06/02) .

India has not stopped us from talking to the LTTE: Ranil- (The Hindu-09/06/02) .

Sri Lanka Seeks Indian Support for Peace Bid - (The Teheran Times-09/06/02) .

Sri Lanka says to lift rebel ban 10 days before talks - (yahoo -07/06/02)

Lanka PM relents - (The Hindustan Times-07/06/02)

Lanka to lift ban on LTTE after PM's visit to India - (Times of India -06/06/02)

Talks with LTTE to focus on interim admin: Ranil - (Times of India -06/06/02)

Sri Lankan Buddhists call for peace - (The Japan Times- 04/06/02) .

Lankan peace process hits snags again- (Deccan Herald - 02/06/02)

Lanka hopes peace will bring economic rewards- (Times of India - 02/06/02)

Delayed peace process irks Chandrika - (Times of India -01/06/02)

S. Lankan President Wants Core Issues in Agenda for Peace Talks- (The People's Daily-29/05/02) .

Lanka President opposes interim deal with LTTE- (The Times of India-28/05/02) .

Agenda for Lanka peace talks more important than fixing date: Norway - (The Deccan Herald-28/05/02) .

Six months of terrorist dominance confirms 'RANILTA BEHA' - A.A.M.NIZAM MATARA. ( The LankaWeb -22/05/02)

Lanka may lease out oil tanks to IOC - ( The Times of India -20/05/02)

Lankan PM lacks power to implement ceasefire: LTTE - (The Times of India-18/05/02) .

India's ban extension a wrong move: LTTE - ( The Times of India -18/05/02) "

Sri Lanka peace talks to begin in June: Wickremesinghe- (Yahoo-18/05/02) "

Stop this 'Peace War' - (The Island 18/05/02)

Major ceasefire crisis averted- (The Island-18/05/02)

LTTE casts shadow over peace talks- (Times Of India -17/05/02) . Monitor human rights, says Lankan peace group- (NDTV-15/05/02)

Sri Lankan Opposition Legislators Pledge to Safeguard Sovereignty- (Xinhua-15/05/02)

India differentiates between Tamil rights and terrorism- (The Island Editorial-16/05/02) .

Talks between LTTE, govt may be delayed: Paper- (The Times of India-16/05/02) .

Tamil paper rules out early talks with Sri Lanka - (The Ireland-16/05/02) .

No assurances to LTTE on interim administration: Ranil.- (The Deccan Herald-14/05/02) .

No deal with LTTE without people's consent: Ranil - (The Hindu-14/05/02) .

S.Lankan PM Says No Assurances Given to Tamil Rebels- (The People's Daily-14/05/02) .

Fresh hurdles plague Lankan peace process- (NDTV -13/05/02) .

Ranil to brief Vajpayee on peace process- (Times of India -13/05/02) .

Tamil rebels skirting 'core' issues: Kumaratunga- (southnexus -11/05/02)

LTTE pressure on TNA MPs to resign? - (The Island-11/05/02) .

Barbarians at the doors of Parliament - (The Island-11/05/02) .

Lankan govt says it has no plans to repeal Pota - (The Times of India-09/05/02)

Sri Lankan Defense Minister Wary of Truce Pact Criticism - (Xinhuanet-09/05/02) .

India offers 'expertise' at talks - (The Hindu -08/04/02) .

Opposition upset over possible ADB-LTTE agreement on A9 road rehabilitation- (The Island -08/04/02) .

Tamil MPs to lobby PM for repeal of terrorism act- (The Dawn -08/04/02) .

The LTTE- The metamorphosis appears, as of now, to be more opportunistic than genuine . (Outlook India-07/04/02) .

Norway to double truce monitors in Sri Lanka - (The Times of India-06/04/02) . .

S.Lankan SLFP Party Opposes Forming Interim Administration- (People Daily -05/05/02) .

Lanka leaders fight over peace process- (Hindustan Times -05/05/02) .

S.Lankan SLFP Party Opposes Forming Interim Administration- (People Daily -05/05/02) .

President Kumaratunga says truce threatens Sri Lanka security- (Yahoo-05/05/02) .

Ranil trying to cut deal a with LTTE: Kumaratunga - (The Times of India-04/05/02) .

Chandrika warns against "division of country"- (The Hindu-03/05/02) .

Navy steps up patrols after blast of suspected Tiger craft - (yahoo-03/05/02)

Navy recovers 'ammo' from LTTE vessel- (Island-03/05/02)

Wickremesinghe plays down clash - (The Hindu -03/05/02)

Chandrika scornful, Ranil defends peace efforts- (Deccan Herald-03/05/02)

Complaints flood Sri Lanka committee- (BBC-03/05/02)

Chandrika blasts SLMM for freeing LTTE boats .-Full Story- (The Deccan Herald-02/05/02) .

Ranil has Abdicated to Prabhakaran- By Hassina Leelarathna From Sri Lanka Express ( Sri Lanka Express -01/05/02)

. Denial on Pottu Amman to avoid Indian reaction? - (The Hindu-30/04/02)

Lanka acts to avoid antagonising India- (Gulf News -29/04/02) .

No Tamil homeland- (Hindustan Times -29/04/02) .

Ranil rejects LTTE's state demand- (Times of India -29/04/02)

Civilians of Ampara-Batticaloa complain to Norway about LTTE extortion in East - (The Island -25/04/02) .

Plight of EP Tamils: Who governs the Amparai and Batticaloa districts today? - (The Island -25/04/02) .

Lanka govt under fire from Opposition- (The Times of India-25/04/02) .

President's brother joins protest against - (ptinews-25/04/02) .

Talks with LTTE on 'one nation' theory basis - (The Times of India-25/04/02) .

GOVERNMENT BARRICADES ROAD TO THE TEMPLE TREES AND THREATENS THE JOURNALISTS NOT TO COVER THE PROTEST MARCH - (The LankaWeb-24/04/02) .

PRIME MINISTER BANS STATEMENT OF BUDDHIST PRELATES- (The LankaWeb-23/04/02) .

Sangha opposes Tiger de-ban - (The Island - 22/04/02) .

Deproscription - (The Island Editorial- 22/04/02) .

All Senior Buddhist Monks and Laity Reject MOU, Warn Against LTTE Intentions, and Future Disasters- (The LankaWeb - 21/04/02) .

Sri Lankan president and India tread softly on peace - (yahoo - 22/04/02) .

Centre not to interfere in Lanka-LTTE talks- (The Times of India- 22/04/02) .

Ranil to brief Vajpayee on peace process- (The Times of India- 22/04/02) .

Don Juan (Ranil) Wicks admits LTTE arms smuggling, and shamelessly praises the terrorists. - A.A.M.NIZAM MATARA (The LankaWeb-20/04/02)

LTTE calls for delay in peace talks - (The Times of India-19/04/02) .

Weaken Tigers before talks, say Marxists . (The Gulf News-19/04/02) .

Chandrika warns Ranil against flirting with LTTE - (The Times of India-18/04/02)

The Sama Samajist wisdom - (The Island Editorial-18/04/02)

Lanka: quest for peace or buying time- (yahoo-15/04/02) "

Sri Lankan Govt Considers Lifting Ban on Tamil Rebels - (Xinhuanet-15/04/02) .

Lanka: quest for peace or buying time- (yahoo-15/04/02) "

Lankans unsure about Tiger's stripes- (The Times of India-14/04/02) .

Reading the 'latest' from the LTTE: It's either Eelam or it's Eelam - By Malinda Seneviratne (The Island-13/04/02) .

Gulf News says: Nothing new- (The Gulf News-14/04/02) .

Ranil sees change in LTTE, considers lifting ban - (The Hindu-14/04/02) .

Government 'living in a dream world' - (The Gulf News-14/04/02) .

'Prabhakaran extradition is being pursued' - (The Economic Times-13/04/02) .

Reading the 'latest' from the LTTE: It's either Eelam or it's Eelam- By Malinda Seneviratne (The Island-13/04/02) .

US tells LTTE to give up armed struggle- (The Times of India-13/04/02) .

India says Sri Lankan rebels still terrorists- (yahoo-13/04/02) .

Hopes for early end to civil war take a dip - (The Gulf News-13/04/02) .

Sri Lanka sees silver lining in Tiger demands to end bloodshed - (yahoo-12/04/02) .

Lanka PM praises Pirabhakaran - (The Hindustan Times-12/04/02) "

India unimpressed, Sri Lanka sees hope - (The Hindustan Times-12/04/02) .

LTTE chief Prabhakaran sticks to guns on separate state- (yahoo-11/04/02)

Govt. allows LTTE to run buses- (The Daily Mirror-12/04/02) .

Tigers violated truce agreement-SLMM - (The Daily Mirror-12/04/02) .

No public transport on A9 yesterday- (The Island-09/04/02)

Jaffna Road opening may be put off - (The Hindu-08/04/02) .

Power for LTTE - (The Hindustan Times-06/04/02) .

Expulsion of Muslims from north a 'blunder':

LTTE- (The Times of India-06/04/02) .

Sri Lanka's Ceasefire Monitoring Mission Chief to

Meet Tamil Rebel Leaders- (The People's Daily-06/04/02) .

Security reports by Army still withheld

-Ceasefire violations:- (The Island-06/04/02) .

Sri Lanka to set up parliamentary panel to oversee truce - (PTI News-05/04/02) .

In war-torn Sri Lanka, truce holds `day by day' - (The Chicago Tribune-05/04/02)

No plans to offer bases to US Navy: Lanka - (The Tims of India-04/04/02) .

Colombo to discuss transfer of power to north-east - (The Hindu-02/04/02) .

Muslims wary of Lanka peace efforts - (The Times of India-01/04/02) .

Sri Lankan Tamil Rebels Set Condition for Peace Talks - (Xinhuanet-01/04/02) .

LTTE demand interim council ahead of talks - (The Times of India-01/04/02) .

Talks to focus on interim govt - (The Hindustan Times-01/04/02) .

Trinco likely to be major target if Tigers go back to war

Prabhakaran wants 10,000 cadres for "final battle" - (The Island-31/03/02) .

Tigers spell out conditions for talks - (The Gulf News-31/03/02) .

Tigers manoeuvre to keep rivals out of politics - (The Gulf News-31/03/02) .

Thailand Capital to host talks - (The Bangkok Post- 30/03/02) ''

Prabhakaran agrees to direct talks - (The Daily News- 27/03/02) .

Don't force the pace, LTTE warns Ranil - (The Hindu- 23/03/02) .

LTTE declares Trincomalee Eelam capital - (The Hindustan Times- 20/03/02) .

UNHCR says Sri Lanka still fragile - (BBC- 20/03/02) .

"The demand for an independent Eelam could not be given up before the government agreed to give the Tamils a political structure equal to it "-Karikalan - (The Hindustan Times- 19/03/02)

Surrendering Democracy and Rewarding Terrorism

The Memorandum of Capitulation (MoC)

Sri Lanka Marxists, Buddhists protests peace bid - (msnbc- 19/03/02) ''

A SINHALA PM RAISES SINHALA LION IN JAFFNA! - By Prof. Hudson Mclean (Lankanews- 18/03/02) .

LOOSING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR - (Lankanews- 18/03/02) .

Nation under Subjugation - (LankaWeb- 17/03/02) .

US, Lanka in talks on military cooperation - (The Times of India- 17/03/02) .

US Assistant Secretary of State: LTTE must prove it's not terrorist group - (The Sunday Observer- 17/03/02) .

Holding a brief? - (The Island Editorial- 15/03/02) .

Promises galore as Ranil visits Jaffna - (The Times of India - 15/03/02) .

Sri Lanka president has reservations over peace bid - (yahoo- 07/03/02) .

Kumaratunga keen to join hands with Ranil - (ndtv- 07/03/02) .

Revisiting the MoU - (The Island- 06/03/02) .

Confidence Deflating Measures - (The Island- 06/03/02) .

Eric the Viking: Deconstructing Solheim - (LankaWeb- 05/03/02) .

AGREEMENT WITH THE LTTE AND NORWAY - COMEDY OF ERRORS CONSUMMATED - By K.M.M.B.Kulatunga P.C., Retd. Judge of the Supreme Court

-Full Story- (LankaWeb- 04/03/02)

Peace but not at cost of security, says Lankan PM - (The Deccan Herald- 05/03/02) .

Prabhakaran traps the Norwegians - (The Island- 04/03/02) .

Monitor the monitors - (The Island- 04/03/02) .

LTTE's salvo against Chandrika - (The Hindu- 04/03/02)

Tigers flay Chandrika for opposing truce pact - (The Deccan Herald- 04/03/02) .

Sri Lanka minister sees ceasefire critics silenced - (yahoo- 03/03/02) .

What's wrong with this picture? - (The Island- 03/03/02) .

Kumaratunga slams Norway, wants truce reviewed -( yahoo - 02/03/02 ).

JVP burns copy of ceasefire accord Colombo -( The Gulf News- 02/03/02 ).

'Norway's role undermines Lanka's sovereignty' Sri Lankan President Chandrika -( The Times of India- 02/03/02 ).

Sri Lankan president urges review of landmark ceasefire -( Yahoo - 02/03/02 ).

Truce Agreement With Tamil Rebels Threat to Sovereignty: S.Lankan President -( The People's Daily- 02/03/02 ).

Kumaratunga calls for review of ceasefire ( yahoo - 01/03/02 ).

Chandrika resents truce -( The Gulf News- 01/03/02 ).(Full Story)


TWO EMISSARIES FROM UK AND FRANCE TWIST THEIR PURPOSE OF VISIT TO SRI LANKA. Malin Abeyatunga Mr. Gordon Brown the UK PM sent his Foreign Minister Mr. David Milliband to Sri Lank with the message to Sri Lanka to call for a ceasefire. French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sent his FM Dr. Bernard Kouchner with the same mission asking GoSL for a ceasefire. In fact both Milliband & Bernard (Mills & Berns- like Mills & Boon fantasies) visited Sri Lanka expecting to raise the question of Ceasefire with the President and his Ministers. Even before Milliband stepped into Sri Lanka, he had been voicing his opinion from UK that GoSL should call for a cease fire immediately with the intention of giving breathing space for Prabhakaran to escape. Ditto with French FM Dr.Bernard Kouchner. However, after coming to Sri Lanka this is what Mills & Berns said at a press conference after meeting the President Rajapaksa and our FM Rohitha Bogallagama according to print media quote No one was here to call a ceasefire to save Prabhakaran but we are here to discuss the protection of civilians that was our absolute and paramount interest. The LTTE should stop fighting, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Secretary of State David Miliband told at a press conference at the Foreign Affairs Ministry yesterday. What a great twist of the purpose of their visit by both within 14 hours of their departure from UK. If UK and France took this stand at the outset condemning LTTEs inhuman act of holding Tamil civilians as hostages and demand that LTTE releases the Tamil civilians in their captivity instead of using them as human shield immediately, I am sure that GoSL would have welcomed them many months back and not once but many times. Mr. Milliband very cunningly says Quote Our concern was about the civilians, held by the LTTE in the No Fire Zone and other civilians in the IDP camps, Miliband said.Unquote. Let us hope that both Mills & Berns stick to their words and take appropriate action in their own country against the LTTE apologists and activists ( just to remind Bernard that LTTE activist shot dead a French cop a couple of months back) who are marauding the streets in London and Paris and continue to raise funds for LTTE in front of their own eyes. The best that UK and France can do to help Sri Lanka is to adopt the ban of LTTE to its last word and bring the law breakers into justice in their countries. However, I could not stop laughing when I read that Mills & Berns mentioned that both are in agreement that the French and British Governments have stood with Sri Lanka during the 25 years of conflict and will continue to stand by Sri Lanka in the future. With all due respect for Milliband for twisting the interest and purpose of his visit, we cannot agree with that statement as be they Conservative or Labour Governments they still continue with their double standards one for the Muslims and One for The Tamil Terrorists. Whilst LTTE was a banned terrorist organization in UK, their ideologist late Anton Balasingham was treated like a VIP and not as a terrorist. His wife Adele Balasingham who was once the leader of the women suicide squad continues to live in UK with the generosity and hospitality of the UK governments. Whilst LTTE was a banned organization, UK allowed LTTE fronts to raise funds in schools, churches, allowed to commemorate Mahaveer day to propagate LTTE terrorism and other LTTE events without any objection from the UK politicians but patronage from some of them and without any obstruction from the British Law enforcement authorities for carrying out LTTE activities on UK soil. Millions of pounds were raised on UK soil to fuel the LTTE killing machine. So how can he say that he stood with us during the last 25 years? May be he is referring to mollycoddling the LTTE terrorists. Milliband would have been just an uninterested teen when illegal LTTE activities were happening on UK soil but, Sri Lankan majority has not forgotten the patronage given to LTTE terrorists and its supporters by the UK governments albeit Milliband playing a different tune now. Same goes with French Politicians too. Paris was the hub of LTTE international activities with their head office in Paris. All funds to procure illegal arms, drug trafficking, human cargo smuggling to and from Paris/London were operated through LTTEs international head quarters in Paris which was once administered by Lawrence Thilagar. It is alleged that this function has now been handed over to K.Pathamnathan (infamously known as KP) with so many aliases by Prabhakaran and KP is a wanted criminal by Interpol. France allowed LTTE to have their own satellite TVS, Radio Stations and other propaganda activities without any reservations, vigilance or surveillance. This is how the French Governments stood with us for 25 years in this conflict. Sri Lankan majority has not forgotten this either. The President, his Ministers of GoSL, various organizations both in Sri Lanka and overseas have been telling the western world including UK and France which have a strong LTTE supportive base that over the last four months that LTTE is holding Tamil civilians as hostage and using them as human shield. But none of the countries wanted to listen to the actual situation in the North. Both the western print and electronic media who may be receiving perks from filthily rich LTTE never highlighted LTTE atrocities committed to their own people by forcibly keeping in their captivity. Instead, they continued with barrage of unsubstantiated accusations against the GoSL and its armed forces for human rights violations. There were Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and alike INGOs and NGOs who thrive on trouble spots in the world who fed inaccurate information to the biased media. Until last week neither UN Secretary General nor the western countries with vested interests asked LTTE to release the civilians holding as human shield. Until last week, they did not want to believe that LTTE is holding thousands of Tamil civilians as hostage. After a spell of almost four months, only last week that the UN Secretary General Ban-ki-Moon has woken up from slumber and has requested (not demanded) LTTE to release the Tamil civilians held as hostage which LTTE never heeded to that cry. Even on the eve of Millibands departure to Sri Lanka, Gordon Brown was playing the song Calling GoSL a ceasefire. The UK politicians Simon Hughes, Kith Vaz and their gang acting like patrons for British Tamil Forum continue to request the GoSL to ceasefire in order to give oxygen to dying LTTE. However, as Milliband promised, we expect change of heart from Mr. Milliband , Mr. Gordon Brown and Dr. Bernard Kouchner to take necessary action against LTTE activities and activists in their respective countries once they get back home. We all are watching you very closely whether you all are acting as promised. We also acknowledge with gratitude the donations made by the UK government and the French Government (with a field hospital) to improve the conditions of the IDPs in the welfare centers. I am sure that Mills & Berns would have observed how skillfully the welfare centers are being handled while fighting a war at the same time. Some foreign humanitarian organizations in the west and some western countries expect five star comforts provided to them which is humanly impossible when you are dealing with not hundred but almost 200,000 IDPS.


GMT

Graphics by Srian Bulathsinghala

Recent LTTE bomb was ``built with TNT which was financed over a German account.''(The Daily News)

British Tamils fund war in Sri Lanka(The Times - UK)

LTTE's Indian Links and Rajiv Gandhi Assassination

Rajiv Gandhi Assassination(India Today)

The mother of all apologies

"The biggest international misadventure in Asia since the end of the war the IPKF military putsch into Sri Lanka. Diametrically opposed to every tenet of Indian foreign policy till then, this move by Rajiv Gandhi was not merely a blunder; it was a sin because the Prime Minister chose to be double-faced about it."Manmohan Singh

Facts since revealed, in particular by the Jain Commission's halfway-house report, have shown that the same Prime Minister who despatched India's brave soldiers to fight in the jungles of Jaffna was simultaneously maintaining intelligence-level contacts with the LTTE. This led to giving an advantage to the LTTE while keeping our own soldiers on a tight leash an extraordinarily treacherous line for a country's prime minister to adopt against his own military men. (The Indian Express-21/01/98)

LTTE's India links were far more dubious than are made out to be(The Indian Express)

Merchandising a murder(The Indian Express)

The Amnesty report - The critics must come with clean hands(Sri Lanka News-01/12/97)

50 or 60 LTTE boys got training in the first batch at Dehra Dun, India.(The Indian Express -12/12/97)

"Rajiv said he would secure Eelam for Prabhakaran"(The Indian Express-13/12/97)

Skeleton's in the Delhi cupboard(The Island -13/12/97)

Jain Commission Report(The India-today -15/12/97)

Jain writes: "Training (for LTTE in India) was for self defence" (The Indian Express-14/12/97)

Tamil Tiger deal cost Gandhi's life (The Sunday Times-UK-13/12/97)

"We were helping the LTTE to the hilt but I did not open my mouth." V.P.Singh -Former Prime Minister of India (The Indian Express-22/12/97)

Indians Planned for a Grenada-type intervention in Sri Lanka(The Indian Express-31/12/97)

Doughnut Shooting-Police Silent on Gang link(Toronto Star-1/01/98)

Student was innocent victim in Doughnut shop slaying(Toronto Star-1/01/98)

'The Temple of the Tooth is a part of the world's heritage: it was not just Sri Lankan, nor just Buddhist; blasting that is: a brutal and malign act, says Prince Charles(The Island-07/02/98)

The LTTE has failed miserably and shattered the dream of Valvatiturai democracy.(Sri Lanka News-07/02/98)

European Union condemns Kandy bomb attack(Island-07/02/98)

Traditional inventory of Tamil grievances(The Island-11/02/98)

Who is a traitor?(The Island-11/02/98)

Prof. C. Suriyakumaran and the national question(The Daily News-12/02/98)
TERRORISM

LTTE a 'global threat'

P rof Peter Chalk of Rand Corporation, the Washington-based think-tank, has said that the LTTE threatens not only the domestic stability of Sri Lanka and India but also the security of the international system as a whole. In a recent study done for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and published as Commentary No: 77, Prof Chalk has said that the activities of the LTTE "octopus" include movement of refugees, arms transfers, terrorism, money laundering and drug-trafficking, all "by-products" of the militant group's insurgency in Sri Lanka. Activities of this sort conducted by various terrorist groups have repeatedly demonstrated the potential to disrupt national and international security in the post cold-war period, especially in the globalised world of today, the expert, who is attached to the Queensland varsity, has said.

Raja joined the LTTE at the age of 11 and underwent extensive training. Recounting an attack on a Muslim village, he described how he held a child by the legs and bashed its head against a wall and how he enjoyed hearing his mother screaming. He said they deserved to die.

Children in South Asia -Amnesty International Index (04.01.1998) summary of extract from page 38

NUMBER OF SUICIDE ATTACKS BETWEEN 1980 - 2000



The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and in India 168 Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait and Argentina 52 Hamas in Israel 22 The Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) in Turkey 15 The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel 8

Source: Jane's Security

In June this year, the LTTE's clandestine Voice of Tigers radio said 217 suicide bombers known as "Black Tigers" were among some 17,211 of their fighters who have died since the first rebel was killed in November 1982.

SIMALARITIES BETWEEN US ATTACKERS AND LTTE

Both are terrorist organisations.

Both use Suicide bombers, people to kill them self.

Both leaders are cowards, hiding in an unknown place.

Both attacked innocent civilians

Both used the airline schedule to plan their attack, the LTTE use the schedule to attack most of the aircrafts on ground the other to launch simultaneous attack.

Both targeted the country's economy

The LTTE attacks the Buddhist

Bin attacks the Christians

Both attacked the very foundation that gave training to them. The LTTE killed Rajiv Gandhi and is destabilizing India leave alone the region,

Bin attacked the USA who trained him and nearly missed killing Bush.

Both call themselves freedom fighters and kill anyone who opposes them.

Prabakaran's Aliases:The " great leader", "saviour of the Tamil people", "main representatives of the Tamil people"

Bin -Aliases: Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin, Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin, the Prince, the Emir, Abu Abdallah, Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, the Director, the Liberator of all Muslims from Satan.

LTTE in INDIA

Centre not to concede LTTE plea - (The Hindu - 20/01/02)

Swamy warns Sri Lanka against talks with LTTE - (The Hindu-12/01/02) .

LTTE won't be allowed to use Indian soil for talks: Swamy - (The Indian Express-12/01/02) .

PM requested not to allow LTTE presence in TN - (The Hindustan Times-12/01/02) ".

India rejects LTTE plea for venue - (ndtv-12/01/02) .

DMK misgivings over LTTE bid - (The Hindu-12/01/02) .

CPI(M) warns Govt. against accepting LTTE request - (The Hindu-12/01/02) .

Emerging norms for conflict resolution - (The Dawn-12/01/02) .

Don't throw away the trump card - (The Island-12/01/02) .

Peace Talks: Extremism and the level of compromise. - (The Island-12/01/02)

Stay away from pugmarks - (The Hindub-12/01/02) .

TREATING TAMIL TIGERS AS DESPICABLE PARIAHS THE TIMES OF INDIA SAYS THEY SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED INSIDE THEIR COUNTRY - (The LankaWeb-12/01/02) .

THE HINDU CHARGES THE FASCIST TERRORISTS OF THE LTTE ARE SEEKING RESPECTABILITY DESPITE THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM - (The LankaWeb-12/01/02) .

LTTE in CANADA

Terror Suspects Who Fear Being Deported Await Supreme Court Ruling - (The Washington Post- 14/01/02)

Ruling will help Canada eject terrorists

Supreme court: Collecting money for foreign bloodshed not a right here - (The National Post- 13/01/02) .

Staying terrorists - (The National Post- 13/01/02) .

Court sets rules for deporting terrorists Protected from torture: Suspects must prove risk is 'substantial' to stay in Canada - (The National Post- 13/01/02) .

Court OKs deportation - (canoe - 13/01/02) .

Canada: dangerous refugees can be deported - (smh - 13/01/02) .

Focus on Terrorism



Statement on Redesignation of Foreign Terrorist Organizations - (US Gov- 11/10/01) .



E-Petition -Ban the LTTE Terrorists from Canada -Sign the petition- (Gopetition)

'Terrorism' becomes a question of semantics - (The Asian Timesb- 07/10/01)

Powell Extends Measures on Terrorist Groups

For 'Other' Americans, A New Kind of Terrorism - (The Washington Post- 04/10/01) .

FOREIGN RELATIONS CHAIRMAN OF US CONGRESS SAYS HE KNOWS ALL ATROCITIES PERPETRATED BY THE TERRORISTS IN SRI LANKA - (LankaWeb - 29/09/01) .

AIR WING LEADER KILLED WAS SPECIALICING IN SUICIDE BOMBING BY MICRO LIGHT AIRCRAFT - (LankaWeb - 29/09/01)

Statement by United States Charge d' Affaires Lewis Amselem at Memorial Ceremony for Victims Of Terrorism - (US Embassy-27/09/01) .

Osama hand in glove with LTTE - (Times of India - 25/09/01)

TWO THIRDS OF ALL SUICIDE BOMBINGS IN THE WORLD ARE BY TAMIL TIGERS SAYS TERRORISM EXPERT - (LankaWeb - 21/09/01) .

The LTTE rides high in Norway while Lanka gets torn apart "Prabhakaran's entry to Norway will be considered" (Published in 1998 by the Sunday Times) -(The Sunday Times - 1998).

DEATH - TRUMP CARDS -- List of Terrorists(The Times-(UK)-20/10/99)

VELUPILLAI PRABHAKRAN -Terrorist of the Mellennium

PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT - FISHERMAN

NUMBER OF DEATHS -90,000

YEARS ON THE RUN -16

NUMBER OF MEN - 10,000

DANGER TO SOCIETY- 8/10

-full story-(The Times (UK)-20/10/99)
By PTI: Washington, Jul 23 (PTI) Digital holograms - 3D images recorded using lasers - may be our best bet for finding alien life, scientists say.

No probe since NASAs Viking program in the late 1970s has explicitly searched for extraterrestrial life. Rather, the focus has been on finding water.

Saturns icy moon Enceladus has a lot of water, but even if life does exist there in some microbial fashion, the difficulty for scientists on Earth is identifying those microbes from 790 million miles away.

advertisement

"Its harder to distinguish between a microbe and a speck of dust than youd think," said Jay Nadeau, research professor at California Institute of Technology in the US.

Enceladus has enormous geysers, venting water vapour through cracks in the moons icy shell, regularly jet out into space.

When the Saturn probe Cassini flew by Enceladus in 2005, it spotted water vapour plumes in the south polar region blasting icy particles at nearly 2,000 kilometres per hour to an altitude of nearly 500 kilometres above the surface.

Scientists calculated that as much as 250 kilogrammes of water vapour were released every second in each plume.

Since those first observations, more than a hundred geysers have been spotted.

Water blasting out into space offers a rare opportunity, said Nadeau. While landing on a foreign body is difficult and costly, a cheaper and easier option might be to send a probe to Enceladus and pass it through the jets, where it would collect water samples that could possibly contain microbes.

Some strategies for demonstrating that a microscopic speck is actually a living microbe involve searching for patterns in its structure or studying its specific chemical composition.

"Looking at patterns and chemistry is useful, but I think we need to take a step back and look for more general characteristics of living things, like the presence of motion," he said.

To study the motion of potential microbes from Enceladuss plumes, Nadeau proposed using an instrument called a digital holographic microscope that has been modified specifically for astrobiology.

In digital holographic microscopy, an object is illuminated with a laser and the light that bounces off the object and back to a detector is measured.

This scattered light contains information about the intensity of the scattered light and about its phase - a property that can be used to tell how far the light travelled.

With the two types of information, a computer can reconstruct a 3D image of the object - one that can show motion through all three dimensions.

To study the technologys potential utility for analysing extraterrestrial samples, researchers obtained samples of water from the Arctic, which is sparsely populated with bacteria.

With holographic microscopy, Nadeau was able to identify organisms with population densities of just 1,000 cells per millilitre of volume, similar to what exists in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, such as subglacial lakes.

advertisement

That low threshold for detection, coupled with the systems ability to test a lot of samples quickly (at a rate of about one millilitre per hour) and its few moving parts, makes it ideal for astrobiology, Nadeau said. PTI MHN MHN

--- ENDS ---
Dear Liz: I went back to school in 2002 to get my teaching credential. I took out several student loans and set up a repayment plan upon graduating with automatic deduction out of my checking account. Several years ago, the IRS started garnishing my bank account stating that there was a lien but I never received any other type of indication what was going on.

After contacting the IRS, we found that someone took out a fraudulent student loan using my former married name. I also got my credit reports, which showed the loan. I was able to get the signed loan documents from the U.S. Department of Education but now the department does not respond to my certified letters or phone calls.

Im at a loss at what to do at this point. I filed a police report and notified the credit reporting agencies. Im out almost $10,000. Is there any other advice you could give me?

Advertisement

Answer: First, follow up with the credit bureaus to make sure the fraudulent loan has been removed from your credit reports. Consider setting up credit freezes at all three bureaus to reduce the chances of being victimized again. The Identity Theft Resource Center at www.idtheftcenter.org has more information to help you protect yourself.

Getting the actual loan dismissed and your money back is a more difficult task. You may be able to have the loan erased under whats known as a false certification discharge, but qualifying for that isnt easy, said Jay Fleischman, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in student loan problems.

Its not enough to have a police report. Youd need to identify and file a lawsuit against the thief. If you can get a court judgment against that person, you would provide the Education Department with that as well as proof of your identity and possibly signature samples from the approximate date of the loan.

Even if you did everything necessary to prove eligibility for discharge, the department could still deny it if you received any benefits from the loan  if it paid any costs of your education instead of someone elses, Fleishman said.

At this point, you may need to hire an attorney familiar with identity theft issues. You can get referrals from the National Assn. of Consumer Advocates at www.naca.net.

Do your homework before shopping for a house and make sure you can afford the mortgage. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

The road to homeownership should be paved with skepticism

Dear Liz: My husband is 46 and I am 43. We have been living in Las Vegas for six years. We are aware that we missed out on buying a home a few years ago. Are we chasing a dream or do you think that we might have another chance to buy a house in the next few years? I am also very concerned about another recession. Some websites forecast one in 2018.

Answer: Some websites forecast the end of the world in 2016. And 2015. And 2014. And so on.

Recessions, by contrast, are pretty much inevitable but theyre not really predictable. You shouldnt try to time your real estate purchases hoping to avoid, or take advantage, of the lower prices they might bring.

In general, you need to be a lot more skeptical about what you read and what youre told if you want to be a homeowner and not get fleeced.

Everyone involved in real estate transactions  as well as in most other financial transactions  may have an incentive to mislead you or at least not tell you the whole truth. Thats why its so important to do your own research and make your own decisions.

Heres just one example. A lender will tell you how large a mortgage it will give you, but that doesnt necessarily mean you can really handle that loan. You may have other goals, such as retirement, that you wont be able to achieve if you take on a too-large payment.

The best time to buy a home is when you want to be a homeowner, youre financially ready to do so and you can afford to stay put for several years, because it can take a few years worth of appreciation to offset the costs of buying and selling a home (not to mention moving costs).

You also should make sure you have a healthy emergency fund  three months worth of expenses is a good start  to handle the inevitable unexpected expenses that arise when you own a home.

Liz Weston, certified financial planner, is a personal finance columnist for NerdWallet. Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or by using the Contact form at asklizweston.com. Distributed by No More Red Inc.
Everything you want to know about Black Lightning, Supergirl, Arrow, Flash and the rest of the CW lineup

Cress Williams, Christine Adams, Nafessa Williams and China Anne McClain from the television series Black Lightning. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The traditional CW block of Comic-Con panels added a new show this year. Black Lightning joined Supergirl, DCs Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash and Arrow for a three-plus-hour extravaganza touting the networks super-heroic TV slate.

The new kid on the block, Black Lightning brought a level of social awareness to the proceedings that most of the fantastical other shows didnt particularly touch on (this year, at least). The show is grounded in family and community, specifically black families and black communities, and according to the showrunners it will not shy away from addressing the concerns that are current.

Yes theres a problem with police brutality and we will get into that. Theres also a problem with us killing each other, said Salim Akil, one of the executive producers of the series alongside Mara Brock Akil. They were joined on the panel by lead actor Cress Williams, who plays the titular character, and his TV daughters China Anne McClain (playing Jennifer Pierce) and Nafessa Williams (Anissa Pierce), and his TV ex-wife Christine Adams (Lynn Pierce).

Black Lightning follows Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightnings real-life persona), who is a man wrestling with a secret. He has the superhuman power to control electricity but gave it up for his family and others. But when his family is threatened hell have to don the suit and use his powers again. Fun side note, his daughter (McClain) exhibits special powers as well.

Whats going to make this so fun for the writers and others is that this is going to come from an authentic black male voice, Salim said. I think this character will give back to the culture. Black culture specifically, but American culture.

The biggest challenge was accepting that this black man was running around town in this suit. Thats the easiest way to get shot, Salim said as the audience laughed. "[The show] is about balancing out when he uses his powers [and] how he uses his powers and why.

Another Black Lightning surprise was the announcement that James Remar and Damon Gupton would be joining the cast.

Salims closing remarks circled back to representation, and the desire to give little kids the opportunity to choose between being Batman or Black Lightning for Halloween -- highlighting the fact there should be a choice.

Heres a breakdown for the rest of the CW panel:

Supergirl

(Jevon Phillips / Los Angeles Times)

- Katie McGrath (Lena Luthor) is now a series regular, and her character immediately makes an enemy of a powerful person.

- We will get to see Martian Manhunters father.

- Supergirls sister Alex popped the question to her girlfriend at the end of last season. Exec Jessica Queller is happy that they get to portray a relationship that is emotional, modern and honors the love between these two women.

- Melissa Benoist wants a puppy on the show. David Harewood wants the Martian to get drunk and sing karaoke.

DCs Legends of Tomorrow

- Last season the Legends were the only game in time, so to speak, but now Rip Hunter will head a group that can help fix time alongside the heroes..

- Neal McDonoughs Damien Darkh will return.

- A new character, Zari, joins the cast. Shes a hacker from the future played by Tala Ashe who will butt heads with the positivity of Ray (Brandon Routh).

- There will be a character called Fireshine. Its a Freaky Friday situation for the Firestorm duo where Victor Gabler will most likely be the physical manifestation of the hero instead of Franz Drameh.

- There have been conversations with Matt Ryan about Constantine coming on the show.

- They are having an 80s episode in which they investigate Ray Palmers childhood.

The Flash

Tom Cavanagh, Grant Gustin and Candice Patton on the Flash panel. (Jevon Phillips / Los Angeles times)

There was a sneak peek of exclusive footage from Season 4. The whole cast was once again present for the panel. Exec Todd Helbing, Keiynan Lonsdale, Jessie L. Martin, Candice Patton, Grant Gustin, Tom Cavanaugh, Danielle Panabaker and the always-popular Carlos Valdes.

- Jesse L. Martin was happy he got to work with Victor Garber on the musical episode. As a New York kid, that means a lot.

- The Thinker is the new big bad for this season, and will be played by Neil Sanderlands from The 100.

- Gypsys (Jessica Camacho) father will be showing up, and hell be played by Danny Trejo.

Arrow

- Responding to the inquiry of why the island was blown up, producer Wendy Mericle said: Were good at blowing things up. Thats what we do.

- Exec producer Marc Guggenheim: We are going to see a different Oliver Queen. The last five years have really changed him.

- Stephen Amell on his characters changes: To start on episode 116 and be able to do fun, new stuff has been great.

- Katie Cassidy, who played Black Canary, on returning: So excited to be back. It feels like I never left. Its been pretty easy getting back in the swing of things.

- There will be a super group of villains, including one played by Michael Emerson, though we dont know who he is or who theyll be.

- Amell has apparently mentioned that hed like to see a Supernatural"-"Arrow crossover, so a member of the audience asked him how that could possibly happen.

- The character Richard Dragon will be among the villains this year as well.

- One of the first questions from the audience centered on the identity of the mysterious vigilante from last season. The only reveal from Guggenheim was that the character is someone we already know.
By PTI: (Eds: Updating with reax)

Coimbatore/Chennai, Jul 23 (PTI) Rebel AIADMK MLA V C Arukutty today joined the Chief Minister K Palainiswami-led faction, two days after expressing displeasure over being sidelined in the camp of former chief minister O Panneerselvam.

Arukutty, among the first legislators to rally behind Panneerselvam after he revolted against the party leadership in February last, met Palanisamy in Salem, about 160 km from Coimbatore, and joined the AIADMK (Amma) party.

advertisement

The development was seen as a morale booster for the ruling faction, though the Panneerselvam camp sought to play it down.

The MLA, representing Kaundampalayam in Coimbatore, said he had been sidelined of in the Panneerselvam camp and had no other option but to join Palaniswami faction after talking to the people of his constituency.

"It is for the welfare of the constituency, as development projects will not come there if I continue to oppose the government," he said.

Reacting to the development, former minister and senior leader in AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma) camp K P Munusamy said "he has gone there out of selfishness."

Arukuttys earlier decision to back Panneerselvam was a result of peoples clamour for it, he told reporters in Chennai.

Now, however, only the legislator had walked away to the Palaniswami camp leaving the "conscience of the people with us," he said.

Declining to answer a question if pressure was mounted on Arukutty allegedly by the government in respect of a police case, he said there was nothing much to talk about the legislator.

"It is not a subject to discuss. We do not want to make any allegation against Aarukutty since he has gone there," the former minister said.

Arukutty was the first MLA to come out openly in support of Paneerselvam when most legislators in Coimbatore district were camping in Koovathur resort.

He had on July 21 come out in the public expressing displeasure at the way he was being treated in the Panneerselvam camp and indicated he might go back to the ruling faction.

Panneerselvam had the same day quipped, "Arukutty came on his own and he has now left on his own."

Both factions of the AIADMK have staked claim to the partys symbol and flag with the issue pending before the Election Commission.

The ruling faction had earlier appealed to all those who left the party to come back to its fold. PTI NVM VGN VS IKA

--- ENDS ---
Lowriders and other cars have turned out in force this summer for cruising events on Whittier Boulevard in East L.A., a reminder of decades past when drivers would congregate to show off their wheels and parade down the boulevard.

But history appears to be repeating itself  with officials looking once again to enforce cruise control.

Last month, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a motion, introduced by Supervisor Hilda Solis, to look into enforcement for non-permitted cruising events.

Advertisement

Solis said upward of 2,000 cars have turned out for cruising events, disrupting bus service and shutting down Whittier Boulevard and surrounding streets, despite a 1997 ordinance that prohibits such events.

I understand that there are people who like to do that, I get it. But there are venues to do that where its safe and people dont get hurt and everything can be monitored, Solis said. Im responsible for the safety of the residents, and I dont see that happening when 2,000 cars converge.

Violations at these events have included driving under the influence, parking in bus lanes and disabled parking stalls and blocking business driveways, according to Solis. The events have also displaced officers from their normal patrols, she said.

The county counsel, Department of Public Works, Sheriffs Department and California Highway Patrol were asked to report back with plans to deal with the events, including amendments to the county code to assist with enforcement efforts.

The 1997 ordinance defines cruising as the driving of a motor vehicle two or more times within a six-hour period, in a particular direction, past a traffic control point so established on a portion of any street identified as subject to cruising controls by signs posted at the beginning and end of the controlled roadway.

This has been on the books for some time, Solis said. All Im saying is now that businesses and residents are complaining, I have to look into it. Im not just reacting to something that came out of nowhere.

Whittier Boulevard at Arizona Avenue is jammed with traffic and pedestrians crossing the street. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Eli Garcia, one of the organizers of the cruising events, denied that thousands of cars have turned out. Garcia said these events have been ongoing since 2015, with enforcement action beginning only in the last two months.

At the last event, on June 24, the CHP and Sheriffs Department were waiting and pulling over cars, Garcia said. Authorities said cars would be impounded if they were caught driving once more past the same point, he said.

Organizers have tried to pick up trash after events and have reached out to business owners to try to address complaints, Garcia said. When advertising events, organizers have called for no burnouts or drinking, he added.

Garcia said he was hoping to find a compromise, either by limiting cruising events to once every few months or possibly charging attendees to help fund the police presence.

The 37-year-old La Puente resident said he remembers going to the boulevard as a kid and seeing all the lowriders, old cars and the family atmosphere.

Its like a way of life for us, Garcia said. It did die out for maybe 15 years or so.  Weve started bringing it back and now all of a sudden Hilda Solis doesnt want anything to do with it.

On June 24, the CHP responded to a request for service regarding cruising on Whittier Boulevard. Forty-seven officers were assigned to fixed locations and to do roving enforcement along Whittier Boulevard, according to CHP public information officer Gina Jojola.

We do not have the resources from our area office only to handle that amount of enforcement needed to make the community safe, Jojola said. We pull from all our other area offices so we dont compromise our ability to provide the highest level of enforcement out there  These are major operations.

Twenty-four citations were issued for violations including unlicensed drivers, drivers not using seat belts and vehicle violations. Four vehicles were impounded, Jojola said.

Thousands have turned out for these events, Jojola said. Some of the blame is being placed on word spread over social media.

These unsanctioned events have brought Whittier Boulevard to a literal standstill due to the far-reaching attraction of thousands of drivers  some as far away as the Bay Area  to these events as a result of social media, Jojola said in an email.

Its become a highly publicized event with a magnitude that the local area, especially Whittier Boulevard, cannot handle, Jojola said.

Theres good people that have amazing cars. But then youve got that 10% that want to show off and they want to just tear down Whittier Boulevard, Jojola said.

Sheriffs Lt. Samuel Arellano said the department has mostly dealt with concerns over spectators congregating in parking lots of local businesses.

I think in the past it was a regular event and then it kind of went away for several years.  I want to say probably in June we started to experience a few cruising events, there havent been that many, Arellano said. Not like in the past, in the 80s when it was very popular.

Eddie Torres, president of the East L.A. Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and a resident of East L.A., said the issue came to his attention about three months ago, when his brother couldnt go to CVS because the boulevard and parking lots were filled with cruisers.

Torres expressed concerns over what he says is an unsafe situation and a drain on resources.

The budget for the county sheriffs and the highway patrol, theyre not a bottomless pit, Torres said. Those budgets came out of taxpayers dollars and state funds, and were depleting them on unnecessary action  Its a waste of our valuable resources and only going to hurt us in the long run.

Whittier Boulevard has long been a popular playground for cruisers and bikers, as shown in this 1979 file photo. Recent events have caught the attention of officials who want to curb non-permitted events. (Larry Armstrong / Los Angeles Times)

The history of cruising dates back decades. In September 1979, barricades went up on Whittier Boulevard in East L.A. along the mile stretch between Atlantic Boulevard and Eastern Avenue. That stretch gained national attention thanks to the movie Boulevard Nights.

Authorities at the time called the boulevard a war zone, because of gang-related violence that had erupted around cruising, according to a 1979 Times article. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 p.m. to 5 a.m., all vehicles were barred along that stretch. It is unclear how long it lasted.

In a 1986 Times article, authorities said almost every stretch of the 14-mile boulevard, from the Orange County line to East Los Angeles, has had a cruising problem at some point. Conflict between cruisers and police has continued over the years.

Now, as then, cruisers have no plans to go quietly.

Were still planning on doing cruises. Before we just do it and piss them off, Im trying to do some type of dialogue with them, Garcia said. At the end of the day, nothing is going to stop us. Were still going to go cruising. Were just going to be shifting from place to place to place, and I think thats more dangerous.

Eli Garcia with his car during the Torres Empire Los Angeles Super Show, a lowrider event and auto exhibition at the L.A. Convention Center. (Christina House / For The Times)

brittny.mejia@latimes.com

For more California news, follow @brittny_mejia

ALSO

O.J. Simpson is a sociopath, a narcissistic liar, a murderer, a thug, a kidnapper, a robber, Fred Goldman says

Large shark seen off Coronado beach prompts warning

Massive Detwiler fire near Yosemite National Park is 40% contained

UPDATES:

4:11 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from an East L.A. resident.

July 24, 12:05 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details from the California Highway Patrol.

This article was originally published July 23 at 10:30 a.m.
Four days after The Times published a story about drug use by the then-dean of USCs medical school, the university announced it was moving to fire Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito and said it was outraged and disgusted by his conduct.

USC Provost Michael Quick said the university decided to act because it had been shown extremely troubling information that same day about Puliafitos behavior. Quick provided no details. But he said it was the first time we saw such information firsthand.

I know many people wanted us to act on allegations and hearsay, but we needed actual facts, Quick wrote in a letter to the faculty.

Advertisement

It remains unclear when top USC officials first learned about the allegations involving Puliafito. But The Times made repeated inquiries over the last 15 months about Puliafito, in some cases describing information reporters had gathered about the dean.

More than a year of questions

USCs leaders never responded to the inquiries. Numerous phone calls were not returned, emails went unanswered and a letter seeking an interview with USC President C.L. Max Nikias to discuss Puliafito was returned to The Times by courier, unopened.

Only after The Times published its report Monday did USC address the matter publicly. By Friday, officials deplored Puliafitos conduct and said they had engaged a law firm to look into the administrations handling of the matter.

Medical ethicists said USC had a duty to look into allegations about Puliafito immediately, even if they were incomplete or uncorroborated. A prompt internal investigation was necessary, they said, regardless of whether the university decided it could answer The Times questions.

Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a Georgetown University professor of biomedical ethics, said the need for a swift inquiry was especially pressing because of Puliafitos role as an overseer of faculty members, clinicians, students and research grants. These professionals are held to a higher moral standard than other persons, he said.

The allegations are so serious, he could put patients at risk, said Art Caplan, founding head of the Division of Bioethics at New York Universitys Langone Medical Center. I would say if youre not going to fire him outright because youre waiting to get confirmation of the facts, I would be at least moving to suspend him and figure out whats going on here.

Do you have information about USCs former med school dean? We want to hear from you 

The Times report, published Monday, described in detail how Puliafito kept company with a circle of criminals and drug addicts and used methamphetamine and other drugs while serving as dean of the Keck School of Medicine. The article cited photos and videos reviewed by The Times that showed Puliafito and his friends, who were in their 20s and 30s, partying in 2015 and 2016.

The images include some in which Puliafitos companions are seen holding drug paraphernalia during an after-hours visit to the deans office at USC.

The campus of the Keck School of Medicine of USC. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

An abrupt resignation

One member of Puliafitos circle was a 21-year-old woman who overdosed in his presence at a Pasadena hotel three weeks before he abruptly quit as dean in March 2016, in the middle of the spring term.

USC has not said whether the incident was related to Puliafitos resignation.

After stepping down as dean, the Harvard-educated Puliafito, a renowned eye surgeon, remained on the Keck faculty, continued to accept new patients and represented the university in public as recently as last weekend.

On Tuesday, a day after The Times report was published, Nikias said in a letter to the campus community that USC would examine and address the accounts but also suggested the school had not determined whether they were true. His statement did not say whether the university had known about the details before the article was published.

Our university categorically condemns the unlawful possession, use, or distribution of drugs, the president wrote. We are concerned about Dr. Puliafito and his family and hope that, if the articles assertions are true, he receives the help and treatment he may need for a full recovery.

On Friday, Nikias released a strongly worded statement, saying we are outraged and disgusted by this individuals behavior. The same day, Quick told the faculty that Puliafito had been barred from the campus and from any association with USC.

The Times investigation began with a tip about the Pasadena hotel incident. Paramedics rushed the woman, Sarah Warren, to a hospital, where she recovered. A police report said officers found methamphetamine in the hotel room. No arrests were made.

A witness to the incident told the newspaper of phoning Nikias office, giving two employees an anonymous account of the overdose and demanding that USC take action against Puliafito.

Phone records reviewed by The Times showed the witness made a six-minute call to Nikias office on March 14, 2016, 10 days after the overdose. The tipster said he did not expect a call back but had told the USC employees he would go to the media if action wasnt taken.

Last week, Puliafitos successor as dean, Dr. Rohit Varma, told a gathering of scores of students that USC had found no evidence, particularly, of that phone call. Varma told the students that Puliafito had appeared drunk at off-campus events and had sought treatment for alcoholism. He said details in the story came as a shock.

The Times first contacted USC about Puliafito the month after the overdose. In response, Puliafito said in an April 20, 2016, email that he resigned as dean to take a position in the biotech industry. He never again replied to interview requests or written questions.

In May 2016, The Times left a phone message and sent an email to USCs senior vice president for university relations, Thomas Sayles. The email said, without going into detail, that the newspaper was aware of the circumstances preceding Puliafitos resignation and wanted to hear from USC about how it dealt with the matter. Sayles did not respond.

The next month, USC hosted a catered reception for Puliafito on a sun-splashed lawn at USCs health sciences campus in Boyle Heights. As dozens of Keck employees looked on, Nikias praised Puliafitos contributions to the school as dean.

The Times continued to gather information about the overdose. In a November 2016 email, a reporter asked to interview Nikias and Quick, saying an upcoming story would examine in detail the off-campus events that preceded Dr. Puliafitos resignation. Again, there was no reply.

A sealed envelope unopened

Last January, a reporter visited Nikias San Marino home. He was away, and the reporter gave a note for him to Nikias wife. The note was in a sealed envelope; it similarly asked Nikias to speak to the reporter about the events surrounding Puliafitos resignation.

The next day, the envelope was returned unopened to The Times by courier, with a letter of complaint from Brenda Maceo, USCs vice president for public relations and marketing. The letter said the reporter had crossed the line by visiting the Nikias home.

USC President C. L. Max Nikias released a statement Friday saying we are outraged and disgusted by Dr. Puliafitos behavior. Repeated requests for comment by him over the last 15 months went unanswered. (Thomas Meredith / For The Times)

The Times did more reporting. On March 2 of this year, the newspaper emailed an interview request and a list of questions to Nikias. It said a reporter had learned of the witness call to Nikias office. The email also said that the hotel room where the young woman overdosed had been registered to Puliafito and that meth was found in the room.

Attached to the email was a recording of the 911 call a hotel employee made to report the apparent overdose. On the recording, Puliafito is heard identifying himself as a doctor and saying the woman was his girlfriend. He told the 911 dispatcher that the woman had a bunch of drinks and shes sleeping.

When the dispatcher asked if she had taken anything else, Puliafito said, I think just the alcohol. A police spokeswoman later told The Times the woman had overdosed on the same drugs found in the room  methamphetamine.

Nikias did not respond to the March 2 email. Two reporters visited his office that day to ask for an interview. Nikias chief of staff, Dennis Cornell, told them, The president will not be speaking to The Times on this matter.

This month, Nikias did not reply to a final email from The Times requesting an interview before the newspapers investigation was published.

Ann Fromholz, a Pasadena lawyer and USC law school alumna who has conducted hundreds of workplace investigations, said its common for employers to launch investigations prompted by anonymous tips or inquiries from outside institutions.

Even though the employer doesnt know the details of the complaining party, they are nonetheless obligated to investigate and determine if misconduct occurred, Fromholz said.

A deliberative and careful manner

As outrage over the Puliafito revelations grew, Quick on Wednesday wrote the USC faculty a memo attempting to explain the universitys actions.

I want to reassure you that all along we have taken this matter very seriously, that we made what we felt were the best decisions we could make, as swiftly as could be done in a prudent and thoughtful manner, and given the information that we had at any given time, he wrote.

Responding to those on campus who asked why the university didnt take unilateral actions against Puliafito, the provost said it followed the rules.

If any of us were in a similar situation, we would want the university to follow its established processes in a deliberative and careful manner, he wrote.

On Friday, Nikias announced that former federal prosecutor Debra Wong Yang would lead a thorough investigation into both Puliafitos conduct and the universitys response.

Nikias said that in this process of examination, USC officials would look to improve ways in which we could have recognized the severity of the situation sooner.

He called on all USC employees to cooperate fully and swiftly with the investigation.

Yang is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a firm with close ties to USC.

The firms managing partner, Kenneth M. Doran, is a graduate of USCs Gould School of Law and a former chairman of its board of councilors. He has also been a prominent fundraiser for the school. Gibson Dunn was cited on the USC law school website in 2014 for achieving 100% participation by USC alumni at the firm in a fundraising drive.

Yang represented USC when it faced a wrongful-death lawsuit in 2012 filed by the parents of two graduate students who were slain off-campus. The suit was dismissed in 2013.

Yangs profile page on the Gibson Dunn website says she has worked as an adjunct professor at the USC law school. She last taught classes there in the late 1990s, according to a USC spokesman.

USC declined to comment further on Saturday, saying in a statement it is imperative to let the inquiry by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher run its course so as to not impede its progress or cloud the recollections of those who may have information to share. Our priority now is to obtain a clear picture of exactly what happened and to ensure the well-being and trust of our students at USC, the patients at the Keck School and our entire university community.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

adam.elmahrek@latimes.com

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

Times staff writer Harriet Ryan contributed to this report.

ALSO

Steve Lopez: USC bosses flunk the leadership test amid shocking allegations about former medical school dean

Police union examines incident at Pasadena hotel involving a former USC dean after an officer is disciplined

Drug allegations involving former USC medical school dean are probed by Medical Board of California

Former USC medical school dean no longer seeing patients; Pasadena police discipline officer
John McCain: In the July 21 Section A, an article about Sen. John McCains bipartisan appeal referred to congressional scholar Norman Ornstein as being with the Brookings Institution. He is with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

LAPD officer: In some copies of the July 22 Section A, an index item referring to an article in the California section about the LAPD officer at the center of a scandal surrounding the departments cadet program said that he had pleaded not guilty to charges of sex with a 15-year-old. As the article itself correctly said, he was charged with sexual assault, but he did not enter a plea. His arraignment was delayed.

If you believe that we have made an error, or you have questions about The Times journalistic standards and practices, you may contact Deirdre Edgar, readers representative, by email at readers.representative@latimes.com, by phone at (877) 554-4000, by fax at (213) 237-3535 or by mail at 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. The readers representative office is online at latimes.com/readersrep.
Claremont McKenna College has suspended three students for a year and two others for a semester for blocking access to a campus event to protest a speaker known for defending police against Black Lives Matter activists.

The action, announced last week, arises out of an April 6 demonstration during which students and others ignored temporary barriers and blocked entrances to the Athenaeum and Kravis Center, where author and commentator Heather Mac Donald was scheduled to speak.

Many participants chanted black lives matter and black lives  they matter here.

Advertisement

At the time, campus officials and security decided not to make arrests or force the estimated 250 protesters to disperse. Instead, Mac Donald spoke before a handful of observers while the college live-streamed the event. Her 30-minute talk also was made available for later viewing.

College President Hiram E. Chodosh quickly vowed to take disciplinary action. It was not an empty threat.

A college investigation included the review of available video and photographic evidence and witness interviews to identify 12 Claremont McKenna students as potential participants in the blockade, according to the college. Officials ultimately charged 10 students with violations of college policy. Of these, five received the suspensions, two were placed on probation and three were cleared.

The students have not come forward or been publicly identified, but their supporters said the students exercised free speech rights in a non-violent manner. Moreover, officials gave no indication at the time that the students status in school would be in jeopardy as a result, they said.

Four of the suspended students were seniors and had their degrees revoked pending completion of the suspensions, actions that affected their ability to compete for jobs that require a college degree, said Nana Gyamfi, co-founder and lead organizer of the L.A.-based group Justice Warriors 4 Black Lives.

Other affected students face the loss of financial aid because of the disciplinary action, which could leave them unable to complete their degree programs, Gyamfi said.

She accused the college of overreacting to a minor incident and of setting up students for discipline through a protest that authorities were fully expecting and prepared for.

Universities should be places where students learn about the power and limitation of civic engagement and this completely shuts that down with the hot-button issues of our current time, she said. You dont have to be a student to find that concerning.

In May, nearly 800 signed an open letter to college officials expressing concern over the criminalization of the students.

The college has defended its review, saying that students had an opportunity to be heard, pose questions, ask for further investigation, and raise objections throughout the process.

The cases were decided by a three-member review panel consisting of a faculty member, another staff member and a student. The findings also reduced the estimated crowd size to 170.

In its statement, the college quoted a past commencement speech of Chodosh: If we are to cherish free speech, we must support and hear the speech with which we most disagree.

The election of Donald Trump as president has sparked a wave of campus activism directed at the appearances of outspoken conservatives, especially those supporting Trump. In February, UC Berkeley authorities canceled a speech by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Two hours before Yiannopoulos was to speak, more than 1,500 people had gathered in protest. Some smashed windows and set a small fire.

Mac Donalds books include last years The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe. She has criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, whose supporters have denounced her.

Claremont McKenna is one of seven affiliated Claremont Colleges, and the school said it also turned over evidence involving students enrolled at the other campuses. Those schools have announced no plans to take action, but Claremont McKenna has provisionally banned four students from non-academic activities on its grounds.

howard.blume@latimes.com

@howardblume

ALSO

Mammoth Lakes area hit by swarm of hundreds of tiny earthquakes

Inmate found dead in Orange County cell; death is latest incident to roil jail system

USC moves to fire, ban from campus former medical school dean over egregious behavior
The last customers had left, and Alfredo Trevino was closing up the bar on Dec. 17, 2001 when two men in ski masks walked in and began stabbing him.

When it was over, Trevino lay dead on the floor of La Cita, the bar he owned in Boyle Heights, his body pierced with 104 stab wounds. The assailants had also beaten Trevino, a 71-year-old Mexican immigrant, with the cash register but had not taken the money.

On Trevinos back, carved with a knife, was a symbol resembling a W. On a bloodstained bar napkin was another message: a sketch in red ballpoint pen of a skull with two knives through it, framed by the words Feliz Navidad.

Detectives interviewed witnesses and sent a piece of latex glove worn by one of the assailants for DNA testing. But the slaying remained unsolved.

Advertisement

La Cita, which played ranchero music and drew a crowd dressed in cowboy outfits, was taken over by Trevinos son, who spruced up the interior and changed its name to the Whitt, after its location on Whittier Boulevard.

**

Through a political career that included a two-term stint on the Los Angeles City Council, Greig Smith moonlighted as an unpaid police officer.

His compensation was the excitement of the chase.

He initially worked a patrol car in the San Fernando Valley, but then-Chief William Bratton did not view that as an appropriate assignment for a city councilman, Smith said.

For years, Smith worked as a screener for cold case homicides, deciding which cases were worthy of further review. Then, his boss offered him an unprecedented opportunity: If he went to detective school, he could join the elite Robbery-Homicide Division and become a cold case investigator. No reserve officer in the Los Angeles Police Department had ever worked as a detective, let alone in such a prestigious assignment.

In January 2012, the Trevino file landed on Smiths desk.

The first step was to check for a DNA match. Sixteen years ago, DNA testing was both primitive and expensive, and detectives were allowed to submit only a single item per case, Smith said.

Los Angeles Police Department Reserve Officer Greig Smith looks over the murder book for Alfredo Trevino. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

More than six months later, the results came back: a piece of bloody latex glove contained DNA matching that of a prison inmate named Hugo Lara, who was serving time for a robbery.

The chances of another Latino male possessing that same DNA: 1 in 4.2 quadrillion.

But who was Lara, and why would he want to kill Trevino? Who was the other stabber, and who was a third man who stood lookout? A coroners investigator determined that two different knives were used in the attack.

Smith tried to find the witnesses who had spoken to detectives years ago. One, a waitress who was in the bar during the stabbing, was dead. Another, the assistant bar manager, mentioned a fatal shooting that had occurred at La Cita almost exactly a year before Trevino was killed.

The bar was known to be a hangout for the White Fence gang, which controlled that area of Boyle Heights. In December 2000, three White Fence members got in a fight, and the bars unofficial bouncer shot them, killing one and wounding the other two.

Gang culture dictated that someone had to pay for the bloodshed, LAPD Officer Mario Morales said at Laras preliminary hearing in August 2016.

The W carved into Trevinos back, matching the White Fence gang sign, spoke to retaliation. Even though Trevino was not involved in the shootings, it was his bar, and he had allowed the bouncer to be there.

If they dont retaliate, theyre seen as being weak, said Morales, who was a gang officer in Boyle Heights for eight years.

Still, where did Lara fit in? Now 44, he worked as a car painter until he was arrested for the robbery in 2007.

In a jailhouse interview, he told Smith that he occasionally frequented La Cita. He belonged to a different gang, El Sereno Locke Street, that was friendly with White Fence, and he had painted the cars of White Fence members.

It is unknown why Lara would have done White Fence such a large favor. But gangs sometimes enlist nonmembers to commit murders so police will have a harder time solving the case, Morales said at the preliminary hearing.

In December 2015, Lara was charged with murder in Trevinos slaying.

Earlier this month, as his trial approached, Lara struck a deal with prosecutors, pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter, guilty to committing a gang-related crime and guilty to using a deadly weapon. At a sentencing hearing on July 31, he is expected to receive 22 years in prison.

Smith is still working to identify the second stabber and the lookout, as well as whoever may have ordered the hit.

Just to say I put somebody in jail, really for life, and to be able to bring closure to a family that never thought it would happen  its a great feeling, said Smith, 68, who usually works for the LAPD one day a week.

**

Alfredo Trevinos was a classic immigrant success story.

After serving in the Korean War, he came to California, saving money he earned working at factory jobs until he could open a restaurant. Blancas in East L.A., which seated 100, was named after one of his five children.

Alfredo Trevino was likely killed as retaliation for a shooting at his bar that killed a gang member, an LAPD officer said. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

He became increasingly prosperous, buying properties and supplying jukeboxes and pool tables to local bars. He eventually sold the restaurant and bought La Cita, stopping by every day to tend bar and manage the place.

After running the bar as the Whitt for 16 years after his fathers death, Trevinos son sold it a few months ago.

Trevinos daughter, Blanca Trevino, said Smith kept her updated on the investigation and made her feel like someone cared about what happened to her father.

Wow, somebodys actually working a case thats in East Los Angeles, Trevino said. Its not somebody famous, but they actually care about this.

cindy.chang@latimes.com

For more news on the Los Angeles Police Department, follow me on Twitter: @cindychangLA

ALSO

Sex, joy rides and car chases: Scandal in LAPD youth cadet program sparks alarm and calls for reform

USC received more than a year of questions about former medical school deans conduct before scandal broke

As cruising returns to Whittier Boulevard, officials look to decades-old restrictions
A massive wildfire burning near Yosemite National Park that forced the evacuation of thousands of residents last week is now 40% contained, officials said Sunday.

The Detwiler fire erupted Monday east of Lake McClure in Mariposa County and has burned more than 75,000 acres and uprooted residents and businesses in communities throughout the region, according to Cal Fire. Most of the evacuation orders have since been lifted.

Advertisement

The wildfire, which produced plumes of smoke that spread as far as Idaho, destroyed 120 structures, including 60 homes, officials said. For four days, workers and families in Mariposa  a historic gold mining town in the region  were forced to evacuate.

Many residents were allowed to return to their communities on Friday, while more evacuation orders were lifted Saturday evening, officials said. The fire is burning about 20 miles west of Yosemite.

Cal Fire spokesman Brandon Vaccaro said he expects full containment of the fire in about two weeks.

carlos.lozano@latimes.com
The Orange County district attorneys office is investigating the jailhouse death of a 27-year-old man convicted of car theft who was sharing a cell with a man charged with two murders.

In the latest incident to roil the countys jail system, Danny Pham was found dead in his cell July 3, a few days shy of completing his 180-day sentence.

Phams attorney Michael Guisti said in an interview Saturday that Marvin Magallanes, an Anaheim man accused of killing two homeless men, was placed in Phams cell. Guisti said reliable sources told him that Magallanes had killed Pham.

Advertisement

Efforts to reach the district attorney Saturday were unsuccessful.

These cells should be checked on periodically and they hadnt checked on him in probably more than an hour, Guisti said. Obviously someone doesnt die at the hands of another when youre supposedly being watched over.

Magallanes has not been charged in the jailhouse death. Guisti did not know how Pham died.

An administrative investigation was launched and five sheriffs department employees were placed on paid leave following the inmates death, said Lt. Lane Lagaret, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriffs Department.

Lagaret said he could not confirm whether the five employees are deputies. He emphasized that the departments investigation into the employees is administrative and is not part of the district attorneys probe of the inmates death.

The district attorneys investigation into Phams death was first reported Friday by the Orange County Register.

When Phams family spoke to him shortly before his death, Guisti said, he appeared in good spirits as he prepared to be released. He said Pham had been in cosmetology school before entering jail.

Guisti said he will file a lawsuit Monday against the sheriffs department on behalf of Phams family.

The jails are patrolled by deputies as well as non-sworn correctional services assistants. Lagaret would not answer questions about Phams housing assignment, citing the ongoing investigation.

I think the deputies do an outstanding job on a day-to-day basis classifying inmates, and we house them where they are as safe as possible, Lagaret said.

There are cameras within the Orange County jails, Lagaret said, but he could not confirm whether any devices would have been recording in the area of Phams cell.

Thats part of the investigation, he said.

Phams death came about a week after the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California issued a 104-page report alleging inhumane and unsafe conditions in the Orange County jail system. In conjunction with the report, the ACLU called on Sheriff Sandra Hutchens to resign.

The ACLU  which spent two years examining complaints and conducting interviews inside the jails  reported that deputies instigated fights, were verbally abusive, used excessive force, and failed to adequately address the medical needs of inmates.

In particular, the report noted that inmate-on-inmate assaults rose 47% from 2010 to 2014 and that the attacks were sometimes tied to guards inciting violence or failing to intervene in fights. Guards also failed to conduct consistent floor checks to supervise inmates, the report alleged.

The ACLU also claimed that too many people suffering from mental health issues were being housed with the general population, as opposed to being assigned to mental health beds.

Court records show Magallanes had a pending mental competency hearing Aug. 15 in a death penalty cases involving the separate slayings of homeless men on Oct. 27 and Jan. 25.

How long did it take for deputies to intervene while Pham was being killed? Usually if there is a fight going on in the jails, it gets fairly loud in there, said Esther Lim, director of the ACLU of Southern Californias Jails Project and an author of the report.

Obviously an error occurred, and the error happened on the part of the Sheriffs Department, she said.

Hutchens, just after the ACLU report came out, disputed some of its findings, saying that inmates are given adequate medical and mental health care. She also criticized the ACLU for not contacting her department for what she says would have been correct information to include in the report.

Within hours after the reports release, Hutchens announced she would not seek reelection and would retire at the end of her term next year, but she insisted the decision had nothing to do with the ACLUs findings or calls for her to step down.

Lim said unfortunate events like Phams death are an indicator that the Sheriffs Department needs independent civilian oversight.

The Orange County Office of Independent Review has been vacant since March 2016, when its director resigned after criticism from county supervisors that the oversight group hadnt done enough to expose a jailhouse informant controversy.

The office had been created in 2008 in response to outrage over the killing of John Chamberlain, an inmate beaten to death in 2006 by other inmates at the Theo Lacy jail, which is supervised by the Orange County Sheriffs Department.

A grand jury found that Chamberlain was beaten and sodomized by fellow inmates for about 50 minutes while deputies in charge of supervision were napping, watching television or sending text messages.

maya.lau@latimes.com

andrea.castillo@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

ALSO

Man arrested in connection with sexual assaults in Beverly Hills

Claremont college suspends students for demonstration against pro-police speaker

USC moves to fire, ban from campus former medical school dean over egregious behavior
Two years ago, an unusual matter came before my court: a petition for posthumous bar admission brought by the descendants of Hong Yen Chang, a native of China. Chang came to America in 1872 at age 13. He graduated from the Phillips Academy, Yale College and Columbia Law School, and passed the bar exam. But in 1890 my court denied him a law license because the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited him from becoming a citizen, then a prerequisite for bar membership. In 2015, my court admitted Chang to the bar, calling his exclusion a grievous wrong that denied our society the important benefits of a diverse legal profession.

For most of our nations history, Asians were excluded from the legal profession. But much has changed in recent decades. From 1985 to 2005, Asian Americans were the fastest growing minority group in the bar. Today. there are more than 50,000 Asian American lawyers, compared with 10,000 in 1990. More than 7,000 Asian Americans are now studying law, up from 2,300 in 1986.

And yet, Asian Americans have made limited progress in reaching the top ranks of the profession. Although Asian Americans are the largest minority group in big firms, they have the highest attrition rate and rank lowest in the ratio of partners to associates. Asian Americans comprise 6% of the U.S. population, but only 3% of federal judges and 2% of state judges. Three out of 94 U.S. attorneys in 2016 were Asian American; only four out of 2,437 elected district attorneys in 2014 were Asian American.

Advertisement

These data may partly reflect Asian Americans relative newcomer status and lack of seniority in the legal profession. But there are other challenges as well.

Although Asian Americans are regarded as having the hard skills required for competent lawyering, they are often thought to lack soft skills.

A new study that a team of Yale law students and I co-authored, which included a national survey of more than 600 Asian American lawyers, found that Asian Americans identify lack of access to mentors and contacts as a primary barrier to career advancement. Notably, 95% of our survey respondents had no parent with a law degree. Law is unfamiliar terrain to many Asian American families, including mine. The first lawyer I ever met was my congressman, the late Robert T. Matsui, who sponsored me to be a page in the U.S. House of Representative. If it werent for Bob, Im not sure I would have considered law or become a judge.

In addition, over half of our survey respondents said they sometimes or often experience implicit discrimination in the workplace. Some reported incidents in which colleagues or court personnel did not recognize them as lawyers. Female attorneys, in particular, reported being mistaken in court for the translator, court reporter, paralegal, client or even a clients girlfriend.

Although Asian Americans are regarded as having the hard skills required for competent lawyering, they are often thought to lack soft skills. Our survey respondents said they are perceived as hard-working, responsible and careful, but not as empathetic, assertive or creative. Asian Americans are stereotypically the worker bees in law firms; many struggle in promotion processes that involve subjective criteria such as likability, gravitas and leadership potential. As one survey respondent said, Somehow I am the only one staying back to cover the team assignments when the others went out for yoga and wine.

Our study also found that few Asian Americans went to law school in order to gain a pathway into government or politics. Compared with other racial or ethnic groups, Asian Americans gravitate toward law firms and business settings, and they are least likely to work in government early in their careers. Few become top prosecutors, elected officials or judges.

Greater penetration into public leadership roles is critical if the growing number of Asian American attorneys is to translate into greater influence throughout society. With issues such as immigration, education, voting rights and national security in the headlines, the quality of our public policies depends on everyone having a seat at the table, including Asian Americans.

Public service is also important to dispelling the stereotype of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners. Bob Matsui was 6 months old when he and his family were incarcerated at Tule Lake as part of the internment of people with Japanese ancestry during World War II . Despite that experience, or perhaps because of it, Bob entered public service and left no doubt about the love and loyalty he felt toward his country.

There is no single way to create a more inclusive legal profession. But the first step is awareness. Asian Americans have often been neglected because of their small numbers, and monitoring progress is essential in law firms and other institutions where lawyers work.

Beyond that, senior attorneys of all ethnic groups can be more intentional in mentoring Asian American colleagues. In addition to Bob, I have been fortunate to have mentors from various backgrounds, including the two federal judges for whom I clerked. The common denominator was that they took a sustained interest in my career and were willing to use their wisdom, contacts or clout to help me.

We also have to change perceptions of the roles that Asian Americans can play in our society. Having watched countless episodes of the television series Law & Order, I am struck that this popular portrayal of the American justice system never seemed to cast an Asian American as an attorney or a judge. The only regular Asian American character was a forensic scientist.

It is a chicken-and-egg problem: Given societal perceptions, it is difficult for many Asian Americans to envision themselves as leaders in law; without more Asian Americans becoming leaders, it is difficult to change perceptions.

Despite these challenges, Asian Americans have made huge strides in law and they are poised for more breakthroughs. The pool of legal talent among Asian Americans has never been greater. President Obama appointed 20 Asian Americans to the federal bench  more than all the Asian Americans who had previously served as federal judges in U.S. history  and President Trumps first successful federal appeals court nominee, Amul Thapar, is of South Asian descent.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor, a trailblazer in the law, once wrote: In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. Building the path to leadership for lawyers of all backgrounds, including Asian Americans, must be part of the unfinished work of the legal profession.

Goodwin Liu is a California Supreme Court justice.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
Kamala Harris works to forge relationship with Central Valley

Sen @kamalaharris talking grapes with Fowler Packing Co president Dennis Parnagian in the fields outside metro Fresno pic.twitter.com/smVuRfbSpQ  Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) July 5, 2017

The drought may be over in the minds of urban Californians, quite literally washed away by huge accumulations of rain last year that filled reservoirs and left the states mountains covered with snow even now.

But the farmers and others in the Central Valley, veterans of multiple drought-and-flood cycles, know the reprieve is only temporary. On Wednesday they pressed new U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris to work to ensure a more reliable source of water for the nations most bountiful farming region.

This area is drying on the vine, Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, told Harris during a roundtable with Central Valley officials.

A long-term solution can only come through federal and state action to protect the areas water supply, he said.

Jason Phillips, chief executive of the Friant Water Authority, said recent rainfall had done little to stem problems caused by nearly a decade of drought.

A canal that runs from Fresno to north of Bakersfield sunk in some places as much as 2 feet in two years, he said, wreaking havoc on a system that operates on the force of gravity.

We cannot get all the water to our growers, he said.

The meeting between Harris and nearly two dozen agriculture and water officials was meant to ease what is typically a fraught relationship between the states Democratic leaders  all of whose power bases are in metropolitan areas  and the mostly Republican Central Valley powers that traditionally look at them with skepticism.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has worked for two decades to aid the agricultural industry  at the roundtable, several nodded as Harris referred to the senior senator as an incredible warrior for the area.

But Harris predecessor, former Sen. Barbara Boxer, was allied more with environmental groups that have fought dams and other water systems. As a result, she was viewed negatively by many here.

Harris was intent Wednesday on persuading the Central Valley representatives of her interest in places beyond her base in Alameda and San Francisco counties.

They, on the other hand, worked to convince her to be more in the Feinstein mold on issues important to the area  from reliable water to immigration programs to environmental protections that take into consideration the areas needs.

President Trump was highly popular in much of the Central Valley, apart from Fresno County, which leans Democratic because of its metropolitan shadings. But some issues important to the valley cut in politically unorthodox ways.

Republicans here are more concerned than those elsewhere with passing a plan that would give legal status to immigrants, on whom agriculture depends. With undocumented workers worried about deportation, and the border tightening to those not yet here, the labor supply has already shrunk, farmers said.

Theyre out there working, being productive people, said farmer Joe Del Bosque. They work hard for us, and we have nowhere to reach.

Del Bosque said he recently held a training session for new workers. Of the 200 people who showed up, only a handful were born in the United States, he said.

Environmental regulations prized by Democrats elsewhere are often frowned on by some party members here and blamed for the areas water difficulties.

Several of the participants lobbied Harris for her support of dams that have long been under consideration by federal and state officials, particularly the Temperance Flat Dam, which would be constructed on the San Joaquin River.

Harris offered no assurances on the topic to the group on Wednesday. Afterward, speaking to reporters, she also did not take a position.

One of the things that were going to have to figure out ... is what is the right solution for that, she said of a plan to construct the Temperance Flat Dam and several others. Is it going to be about the building of dams? Is it also going to be about looking at  also looking at  other sources of renewable and sustainable reliable sources?

Both sides signaled they did not expect an alliance on all fronts. But Harris said she would serve as an advocate for farmers during the crafting of a new farm bill and other measures before the Senate.

William Bourdeau, executive vice president of the politically influential Harris Farms, told the senator he wished the majority of her supporters who reside in urban areas would have a better understanding of the risks and challenges of farming.

We need somebody to explain the symbiotic relationship we have, he said.

I agree with you completely, she replied.
Californias congressional races are pivotal to Democratic efforts to flip the House, and there are already more than 60 candidates in more than a dozen battleground districts for the 2018 election.

It is 16 months before the 2018 general election and candidates have until March to file to run for Congress. But it isnt unusual for them to start campaigning so early in order to try to advance to a general election runoff by securing one of the top two spots in the June primary. It gives them plenty of time to raise the more than a million dollars often required to win.

Advertisement

Many of the challengers recently filed their first financial reports, and political insiders and donors are looking closely for indicators of who has fundraising ability. A strong early fundraising figure can deter potential rivals or draw support from the national political parties. Weak fundraising can encourage new opponents to enter the race.

We looked at dozens of early campaign finance reports so you dont have to, and heres what we learned:

Some incumbents are already sitting on lots of cash as opponents line up to challenge them

Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine)

Walters has drawn half a dozen Democratic challengers already, and her robust fundraising figures show the two-term Republican is gearing up for what could be an expensive fight in a district that chose presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by 5% in November. Walters was reelected with 58.6% of the vote.

In the second quarter of 2017, Walters raised $701,696, more than any other battleground incumbent in California. That leaves her with a war chest of more than $1.1 million.

Two opponents, Katie Porter and Dave Min, appear particularly competitive in the 45th Congressional District, having raised $311,570 and $304,208, respectively, in their first three months. Both will have to quickly catch up to compete with Walters. Ron Varasteh, a candidate who lost to Walters last year, has more than $253,785 despite raising virtually no money this year. His money comes mostly from a $250,000 loan he gave himself.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton)

Royce, who won in a district where Clinton trounced Donald Trump by nearly 9%, is facing five opponents, most of them Democrats.

Only two of his competitors have reported raising any money so far: pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran, who raised $273,148, and education consultant Phil Janowicz, who received $180,284. Those are significant sums considering both announced their runs within the last few months.

But they have a long way to go to catch up to Royces $3.1 million, bolstered in part by years of running in a safe Republican seat in which he didnt have to spend much. Despite the enthusiasm for Clinton, Royce won by nearly 15 points in November.

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock)

Of Denhams eight announced opponents, only investor Josh Harder reported raising more than $100,000. Since jumping into the race in early May, Harder brought in $403,589 and had $374,972 on hand at the end of the quarter.

Denham didnt raise much more over the same period ending June 30: He reported taking in $498,237 during the second quarter.

But Denham still has more than $1 million in the bank in case Harder mounts a competitive challenge and things get ugly. As a frequent Democratic target, he may need it: Clinton won by about 3% in this district in November, the same margin by which Denham beat Democratic challenger Michael Eggman.

Eggman, who isnt running again, has launched a political action committee with the intent of ousting Republican incumbents, including Denham. Democrats also have a slight voter registration advantage in the 10th District.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford)

Valadaos Central Valley district looks especially attractive to Democrats on paper: Clinton won by more than 15%, and Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 46% to 29%.

But Valadao has stayed hyperfocused on local issues, especially water policies important to his agricultural constituency, and sidestepped many of the controversies in the Trump-Clinton fight last year. He ended up winning by more than 13% over attorney Emilio Huerta, son of labor rights icon Dolores Huerta, who has filed to run against Valadao again.

But Huerta has barely raised any money in the weeks since hes announced, reporting $35,828 in fundraising and just $110,584 cash on hand at the end of the quarter. Valadao, on the other hand, raised $339,140 and ends the quarter with a healthy $565,899 in the bank.

These incumbents are showing lackluster fundraising, and their opponents could catch up fast

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa)

About 10 people have filed to run against 15-term Rohrabacher in his coastal Orange County district, and at least two of them have reported big hauls.

Real estate businessman Harley Rouda, a Democrat, has built up the largest war chest with

$177,974, nearly half the

$406,616 Rohrabacher had in the bank by the end of the quarter. Biotech firm chief executive Hans Keirstead was close behind with

$135,396.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (Don Leach / Daily Pilot)

Rohrabacher hasnt had a particularly tough race in years and hasnt built up a multimillion dollar cushion like other incumbents. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) is hosting a fundraiser for him at the end of the month.

Biding his time in the wings is former Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh, who is sitting on

the $546,915 he raised last year when there were rumblings that Rohrabacher might retire. But he hasnt announced plans to challenge Rohrabacher and only raised $2 last quarter.

Rep. Steve Knight (R-Palmdale)

Knight is the only incumbent were watching closely who has a smaller war chest than Rohrabacher. Los Angeles Countys last remaining Republican congressman reported having $433,301 in the bank at the end of June.

Labeled by an analyst last year as the most vulnerable incumbent in California, Democrats have targeted his seat in Los Angeles and Ventura counties with no success. Knight won by 6% last year even though Clinton won the district by nearly 7%.

Hes drawn five challengers for 2018. Two have posted strong early fundraising numbers: Repeat opponent Bryan Caforio had

$175,635 on hand, and Katie Hill was just behind him with

$173,299.

One of the most at-risk incumbents has two well-funded opponents

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista)

Issa had the closest reelection race in the country last year he won by fewer than 1,700 votes against Democrat Doug Applegate  and he is bracing for another tough fight.

Issa had a big fundraising quarter, bringing in $455,207. He had $671,529 at the end of the month.

Applegate, who quickly filed for a rematch, has raised a significant chunk of money so far: $281,143 in the second quarter, leaving him with $262,729 in the bank.

But a new opponent, environmental attorney Mike Levin, has been raising money quickly since announcing his bid March 8, leaving him with $416,345 cash on hand, the most of any congressional challenger in California. Levin also reported $63,232 in debt, owed mostly to consultants and a voter canvassing firm.

Challengers in districts that are lower priorities for the national parties have struggled to raise money

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare)

Democrats are looking at Nunes Central Valley district as a secondary battleground, but they face a steep climb. Trump beat Clinton by nearly 10% in his 22nd District, and Nunes won his last election by a whopping 35%.

Rep. Devin Nunes (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, stepped away from leading the House investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election after watchdog groups accused him of mishandling classified information. It hasnt slowed his fundraising: He raised

$479,522 last quarter, more than any incumbent in a battleground district, and has nearly $3.5 million in the bank.

Andrew Janz, a Fresno County prosecutor, is the only opponent who has reported raising any money, and its not much: Janz had $40,839 as of June 30.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine)

Hunters suburban San Diego district has been a stronghold for Republicans for decades. He succeeded his father to represent the area, but news that the FBI is investigating Hunter on allegations of misusing campaign funds put the seat on Democrats radar.

Hunters most recent campaign finance report shows $152,859 in spending and $114,412 in debt to seven law firms in the San Diego and Washington areas. The spending amounts to more than the

$155,625 Hunter brought in during the same three-month span, but he does have a solid

$617,575 in the bank.

Seven people have filed to challenge Hunter, with two Democrats taking an early fundraising lead. Former Navy SEAL Josh Butner has

$114,846 in the bank, and

public affairs consultant Ammar Campa-Najjar has

$122,664 on hand.

Democratic incumbents in battlegrounds are in good financial shape overall

The National Republican Congressional Committee has its eyes on flipping a few California seats as well, but the challengers who have come forward havent been able to raise much.

In Northern Californias 7th District, Rep. Ami Bera has $617,852 in the bank, and neither of his opponents has filed campaign reports yet. Bera narrowly won reelection in 2016 with 51.2%.

In San Diegos 52nd District, another often targeted seat, Rep. Scott Peters has $1.7 million in the bank. He won in 2016 with 56.5%. His opponent, Republican lawyer Omar Qudrat, has $96,376.

Santa Barbara freshman Rep. Salud Carbajal has $867,688 on hand as he tries to hold the coastal seat. The only Republican challenger, civil engineer Michael Woody, reported only a $5,000 loan he made to his campaign.

Although hes often the focus of National Republican Congressional Committee press releases, Rep. Raul Ruiz of Palm Desert has $1.6 million stored, and no opponents yet.

Times staff writer Lauren Rosenblatt contributed to this article.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire and @cmaiduc on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics

ALSO:

Jolted by Trump, Orange County Democrats see a shot at victory on GOP turf

Issa was Obamas toughest critic. Heres why hes suddenly sounding like a moderate

Updates on California politics

UPDATES:

11:54 a.m.: Updated with information about the top-two primary in June.

This article was originally published at 12:05 a.m.
Palaniswami's faction enjoys the support of the majority of the AIADMK MLAs in the Tamil Nadu Assembly.

By Pramod Madhav: Kavundampalayam MLA Aarukutti has left the AIADMK Puratchi Thalaivi Amma, the party faction headed by former Chief Minister O Pannerselvam (OPS), and joined Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami's (EPS) camp, the AIADMK Amma.

Aarukutti said he wasn't given enough respect.

Palaniswami's faction enjoys the support of the majority of the AIADMK MLAs in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. The Panneerselvam camp, however, is backed by 12 MPs.

advertisement

After former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's death, the AIADMK split into two camps, each of which received its new name ahead of the now-cancelled RK Nagar bypoll.

Recently, both AIADMK camps extended support to President-elect Ram Nath Kovind ahead of the presidential polls, and have backed former Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu's candidature for the vice-presidential elections.

(With inputs from PTI)

ALSO READ

S Gurumurthy to India Today: Lust for power will keep AIADMK together

Panneerselvam, MK Stalin back Kamal Hassan over discord with AIADMK

ALSO WATCH

Latecomer TTV Dinakaran not allowed to meet Sasikala in prison

--- ENDS ---
Trump promotes sons Justice with Judge Jeanine interview President Trump promoted via Twitter an interview with his son Eric Trump just before it aired Saturday night on Fox News Justice with Judge Jeanine. Eric Trump on @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews now!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 Eric Trump called into the show to defend his father from criticism prompted by the first government shutdown in more than four years, as well as a series of Womens March events that saw protesters in dozens of cities take to the streets to oppose the presidents policies. .@EricTrump joined me over the phone from Mar-a-Lago ! pic.twitter.com/Hro3TzUW52  Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) January 21, 2018 Speaking to host Jeannine Piro  who is reportedly an old friend of the presidents  Eric Trump offered effusive praise for his father, ticking off glowing statistics to illustrate the strength of the U.S. economy and gains against Islamic State fighters overseas. My fathers working like no ones ever worked before to bring back this country and to fulfill his promise to make America great again, said the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He also repeated a sentiment recently expressed on Twitter by his father: That Democratic lawmakers forced a government shutdown on the anniversary of the presidents inauguration in a bid to distract from his achievements. You look at this whole government shutdown, and the only reason they want to shut down government is to distract and to stop his momentum, Eric Trump said. I mean, my father has had incredible momentum. Hes gotten more done in one year than arguably any president in history. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump tweets: a perfect day for all Women to March President Trump hailed the nationwide Womens March gatherings Saturday. On Twitter, the president called it a perfect day for all Women to March, seeming to imply that those taking part were celebrating his administrations accomplishments: Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Participants in the marches across the United States were actually seeking to deliver a powerful rebuke to Trumps policies and mount a crucial mobilization for this years midterm elections. But Trump continued to tout his administrations unprecedented success in tweets sent later in the day: Unprecedented success for our Country, in so many ways, since the Election. Record Stock Market, Strong on Military, Crime, Borders, & ISIS, Judicial Strength & Numbers, Lowest Unemployment for Women & ALL, Massive Tax Cuts, end of Individual Mandate - and so much more. Big 2018!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The Trump Administration has terminated more UNNECESSARY Regulation, in just twelve months, than any other Administration has terminated during their full term in office, no matter what the length. The good news is, THERE IS MUCH MORE TO COME!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 In addition to the roll call of major American cities where womens marches took place  including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta  protesters also raised their voices in suburbs and small towns, reflecting the aim of coalescing a broad-based movement on the anniversary of Trumps inauguration to oppose the presidents stance on immigration, healthcare, racial divides and an array of other issues. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump calls shutdown a present from Democrats By Associated Press President Trump is blaming Democrats for the government shutdown  tweeting that they wanted to give him a nice present to mark the one-year anniversary of his inauguration: This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present. #DemocratShutdown  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 That comes after Senate Democrats late Friday killed a GOP-written House-passed measure that would have kept agencies functioning for four weeks. Democrats were seeking a stopgap bill of just a few days in hopes that would build pressure on Republicans, and they were opposing a three-week alternative offered by GOP leaders. Democrats have insisted they would back legislation reopening the government once theres a bipartisan agreement to preserve protections against deporting about 700,000 immigrants  known as Dreamers  who arrived in the United States illegally as children. Trump on Saturday accused Democrats of holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration: Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Cant let that happen!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Democrats are laying fault for the shutdown on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and have struggled with building internal consensus. In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans to Congress in November in order to power through this mess: Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border. They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation: For those asking, the Republicans only have 51 votes in the Senate, and they need 60. That is why we need to win more Republicans in 2018 Election! We can then be even tougher on Crime (and Border), and even better to our Military & Veterans!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 #AMERICA FIRST!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The stopgap spending measure won 50 votes in the Senate, including five from Democrats. Although the House and Senate were in session Saturday, it was unclear whether lawmakers would take any votes of consequence. Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon for a fundraiser at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he intended to mark the inauguration anniversary. But he remained in Washington and ended up scrapping his plans to attend the Saturday fundraiser. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump tweet casts doubt on likelihood of averting shutdown President Trump appeared to cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching a deal to avert a government shutdown Friday night in a tweet. Trump also sought to blame Democrats for what would be the first shutdown since 2013. His message came just hours before the midnight deadline by which lawmakers must pass a measure to fund government agencies, or some operations will cease. Not looking good for our great Military or Safety & Security on the very dangerous Southern Border. Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Despite last-minute negotiations Friday between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Congress remained deadlocked over a spending bill and the federal government was headed toward a shutdown at midnight. Senate Democrats  joined by some GOP deficit hawks and immigration allies  were set to filibuster a stopgap funding bill approved by the House on Thursday. A Senate vote was planned for 10 p.m. Eastern, and even White House officials predicted it would fail. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Lisa Mascaro. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump signs surveillance law after confusing tweets By Associated Press President Trump on Friday signed a bill into law to renew a foreign intelligence surveillance program, announcing his action in the latest in a series of confusing tweets about the spy program: Just signed 702 Bill to reauthorize foreign intelligence collection. This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2018 Trumps tweet on Jan. 11 created chaos in the House just before it voted to reauthorize what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He linked the intelligence program to a dossier that alleges his presidential campaign had ties to Russia. That caused people to wonder if he didnt support the program that allows U.S. spy agencies to collect intelligence on foreign targets abroad. Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Obama administration officials improperly shared the identities of Trump presidential transition team members mentioned in intelligence reports. Democrats say there is no evidence that happened. Shortly before the House vote, and after conferring with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump did an apparent about-face. This vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land, he tweeted. We need it! Get smart! In his tweet announcing that he had just signed the bill, Trump wrote: This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! There are no obvious links between the dossier Trump spoke of, which includes salacious but unsubstantiated allegations against him, and the reauthorization of the spying program, or between the program and Trumps oft-repeated claims that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

In tweet, Trump suggests that Pennsylvania trip is a political one The White House press office was once again forced to walk back a tweet from President Trump on Thursday morning after he described a trip to Pennsylvania later in the day as a political one  a statement that would force the Republican Party, not taxpayers, to pay for the journey. The White House had said Trump was going to an industrial equipment company outside of Pittsburgh to highlight the good economy and new tax cuts, making it an official, policy-oriented event. It was widely assumed that the trip had a political cast  the area is holding a special election to fill a congressional seat vacated by a Republican who resigned. Trump, by his tweet, seemed to confirm that politics was the whole purpose: Will be going to Pennsylvania today in order to give my total support to RICK SACCONE, running for Congress in a Special Election (March 13). Rick is a great guy. We need more Republicans to continue our already successful agenda!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 Trump later shared via Twitter a pair of video clips of his speech at H&K Equipment, in which he touted the tax cuts he signed into law just before Christmas and tried to turn the conversation back to his accomplishments after weeks dominated by distractions, including questions about his mental health and comments about immigration that some considered racist: Departing Pittsburgh now, where it was my great honor to stand with our incredible workers, and to show the world that AMERICA is back - and we are coming back bigger and better and stronger than ever before! pic.twitter.com/kWPgylqFzj  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 AMERICA will once again be a NATION that thinks big, dreams bigger, and always reaches for the stars. YOU are the ones who will shape Americas destiny. YOU are the ones who will restore our prosperity. And YOU are the ones who are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! #MAGA pic.twitter.com/f2abNK47II  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 The Republican National Committee, rather than the White House, is supposed to pay for political travel so that taxpayers are not financing party activities; for trips that combine policy and politics, parties have split the cost under past presidents. Neither the RNC nor the White House responded to emails sent Thursday asking who would pay. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement later Thursday suggesting that taxpayers would foot the bill. She insisted that Trump would be conducting government business while in Pennsylvania. Read More This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump tweets praise of Bob Dole after awarding him Congressional Gold Medal By Associated Press Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole knew the art of the deal before President Trump published the 1987 book of the same name. The two shared a stage under the Capitol dome Wednesday as Dole, 94, accepted Congress highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his World War II service and decades of work in the House and Senate. Trump later praised Dole in a tweet, attaching to his message a video composed of clips from the ceremony: Today, we witnessed an incredible moment in history  the presentation of Congress highest civilian honor to our friend, and true AMERICAN HERO, Bob Dole. #CongressionalGoldMedal pic.twitter.com/qNQqDLRmCk  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2018 At the ceremony, the president saluted Dole as a patriot and gave tribute to Doles struggle as a veteran who worked his way back from a grievous shoulder wound he suffered in Italy. He knows about grit, said Trump. But it was Doles penchant for working across the aisle that earned him his latest award, according to the legislation. Bob Dole was known for his ability to work across the aisle and embrace practical bipartisanship, reads the legislation Trump signed in September. Some of the awards 300 recipients include George Washington and Mother Teresa, according to the Congressional Research Service. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump touts report that seeks to link terrorism cases with immigration By Joseph Tanfani The Trump administration on Tuesday released a report attempting to link terrorism with migration, arguing that it was evidence of the need to dramatically reshape the nations immigration system. New report from DOJ & DHS shows that nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born. We have submitted to Congress a list of resources and reforms....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 ....we need to keep America safe, including moving away from a random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based. https://t.co/7PtoSFK1n2  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The report, ordered by President Trump in an executive order last year, said that 75% of the 549 people convicted of terrorism charges since 9/11 were born outside the U.S. Administration officials called that a sign that the U.S. needs to scrap its policy of family preferences for visas, which they call chain migration, and a diversity visa lottery program. But the report did not specify how many  if any  of the convicted terrorists entered the country through those means. It also did not detail how many of the convictions were related to attacks or plans in the U.S. versus overseas and how many involved people who went to fight overseas for the Islamic State or another terrorist group. Those details were not available, officials said. The report, due last year, is being released in a highly charged moment in the immigration debate, as Trump and some Republicans in Congress seek tough new border and immigration measures in return for a deal protecting the 690,000 people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump also fired off a pair of tweets on the topic earlier Tuesday: We must have Security at our VERY DANGEROUS SOUTHERN BORDER, and we must have a great WALL to help protect us, and to help stop the massive inflow of drugs pouring into our country!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The Democrats want to shut down the Government over Amnesty for all and Border Security. The biggest loser will be our rapidly rebuilding Military, at a time we need it more than ever. We need a merit based system of immigration, and we need it now! No more dangerous Lottery.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The focus of our immigration system should be assimilation, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition that his name not be used. He said the nation should give priority to potential immigrants who speak English, who have an education and those who are committed to supporting our values  not family members of people already here. The official said the timing of the report was coincidental. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump tweets welcome to president of Kazakhstan By Associated Press President Trump said Tuesday that he and the president of Kazakhstan are united in a shared determination to prevent North Korea from threatening the world with nuclear devastation. Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed North Korea along with other issues during meetings at the White House. Today, it was my honor to welcome President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to the @WhiteHouse! pic.twitter.com/TerYFZViax  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 Trump said Kazakhstan, once part of the Soviet Union, is a valued partner in our efforts to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. Together we are determined to prevent the North Korean regime from threatening the world with nuclear devastation, he said, as both presidents addressed journalists between meetings. Nazarbayev noted that his country once had one of the worlds largest nuclear arsenals but voluntarily gave it up after the Soviet Union collapsed. He said his country is in talks with Iran, which was the focus of a global deal that lifted some economic sanctions in exchange for Irans curbing its nuclear program. Trump has sharply criticized the Iran nuclear deal and threatened last week to pull out soon unless other countries fix what he says are terrible flaws. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump falsely claims his approval rating among black Americans has doubled By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump lashed out at the news media Tuesday morning in a tweet denouncing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion among members of his campaign team. Do you notice the Fake News Mainstream Media never likes covering the great and record setting economic news, but rather talks about anything negative or that can be turned into the negative. The Russian Collusion Hoax is dead, except as it pertains to the Dems. Public gets it!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the presidents tweet, but it appeared as though he was watching Fox & Friends. A short time later, Trump tweeted a headline from a report that aired during that mornings episode: 90% of Trump 2017 news coverage was negative -and much of it contrived!@foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The segment focused on the latest survey results from conservative watchdog Media Research Center, which purportedly analyzed the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC from Jan. 20 to Dec. 31 and found that 90% of the statements made about Trump were negative. Study: 90% of Trump media coverage in 2017 was negative pic.twitter.com/vbrwup4Drg  FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 16, 2018 But believe it or not, through all this negative coverage, they did a survey of 600,000 people about how black America views this president, co-host Brian Kilmeade said. His numbers have actually doubled in approval. Trump highlighted the statement in another tweet: Unemployment for Black Americans is the lowest ever recorded. Trump approval ratings with Black Americans has doubled. Thank you, and it will get even (much) better! @FoxNews  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 But its not true. The claim appears to have originated from a misreading of data from the online polling firm SurveyMonkey, according to factcheck.org. The firm polled 600,000 Americans in 2017 and found that Trumps approval rating among blacks actually dropped from 23% early in his presidency to about 17%, as of the week ending Jan. 3. Some conservative outlets, including Breitbart, produced an average from those and other SurveyMonkey figures and compared them to the scores Trump received from black voters in the 2016 exit polls. That methodology is not sound. And since the statistics measure different things, the comparison is misleading. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump goes after senator who surfaced his immigration remark By Associated Press President Trump turned his Twitter torment Monday on the Democrat in the room where immigration talks with lawmakers took a famously coarse turn, saying Sen. Richard J. Durbin misrepresented what he had said about African nations and Haiti and, in the process, undermined the trust needed to make a deal. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting, Trump tweeted, using a nickname to needle the Illinois senator. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 Trump was referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young people who came to the United States illegally as children. Members of Congress from both parties are trying to strike a deal that Trump would support to extend that protection. Trump also cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching an agreement in tweets sent earlier Monday: Statement by me last night in Florida: Honestly, I dont think the Democrats want to make a deal. They talk about DACA, but they dont want to help..We are ready, willing and able to make a deal but they dont want to. They dont want security at the border, they dont want.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 ...to stop drugs, they want to take money away from our military which we cannot do. My standard is very simple, AMERICA FIRST & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 On a day of remembrance for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump spent time at his golf course with no public events, bypassing the acts of service that his predecessors staged in honor of the civil rights leader. Instead, Trump dedicated his weekly address to Kings memory, saying Kings dream and Americas are the same: A world where people are judged by who they are, not how they look or where they come from. That message was a distinct counterpoint to words attributed to Trump by Durbin and others at a meeting last week, when the question of where immigrants come from seemed at the forefront of Trumps concerns. Some participants and others familiar with the conversation said Trump challenged immigration from shithole countries of Africa and disparaged Haiti as well. Without explicitly denying using that word, Trump lashed out at the Democratic senator, who said Trump uttered it on several occasions. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump thanks pundit for laudatory Fox & Friends spot By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump thanked Fox News personality Stuart Varney after Varney praised Trump during an appearance on Fox & Friends. In a pair of tweets early Sunday, Trump quoted from Varneys commentary, in which he argued that Trump deserves more credit for the booming economy. The pundit, who also hosts a show on Fox Business Network, cited moves by some corporations to raise workers minimum wage or pay out one-time bonuses in response to the GOP tax cuts. President Trump is not getting the credit he deserves for the economy. Tax Cut bonuses to more than 2,000,000 workers. Most explosive Stock Market rally that weve seen in modern times. 18,000 to 26,000 from Election, and grounded in profitability and growth. All Trump, not 0...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 ...big unnecessary regulation cuts made it all possible (among many other things). President Trump reversed the policies of President Obama, and reversed our economic decline. Thank you Stuart Varney. @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 Varney was reacting to a quote from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who on Thursday called the bonuses handed down to workers pathetic in comparison to the gains corporations are expected to see from the tax cuts. In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic, Pelosi told reporters. Its pathetic. Varney shot back Sunday that the bonuses, along with explosive stock market growth, are enriching all Americans. This is a huge shot in the arm, its the result of this tax cut deal and I think President Trump should get the credit for it, he said. .@Varneyco Sets the economic record straight after Nancy Pelosi calls U.S. mass bonuses crumbs pic.twitter.com/BvjIHGm3HE  FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 14, 2018 The sweeping tax plan passed last month lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and cuts personal income taxes. Analysts say the benefits will largely flow to corporations and the wealthy, as theyre more likely to be in positions to share in corporate profits. For instance, Wells Fargo & Co., which responded to news of the tax overhaul by announcing it will raise workers pay to at least $15 an hour, also reported that it expects to pay an effective tax rate of 19% this year, down from about 31% in previous years. That should amount to tax savings of more than $3 billion annually. On average, middle-class Americans are expected to see a very small tax cut in the near term and a tax increase after 2025, when all of the tax cuts for individuals expire. The tax cuts for corporations, however, are permanent.  This post contains reporting from Times staff writer James Rufus Koren. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump touts MLK proclamation in tweet, but ceremony is overshadowed by reports of racist remarks By Associated Press President Trump signed a proclamation Friday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, noting the contributions of a great American hero. Today, it was my great honor to proclaim January 15, 2018, as Martin Luther King Jr., Federal Holiday. I encourage all Americans to observe this day with appropriate civic, community, and service activities in honor of Dr. King's life and legacy. pic.twitter.com/samlJsz1Nt  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 Overshadowing the event was mounting backlash from Trumps comments during a private meeting with lawmakers the day before. A short time after the meeting, which was called to discuss a possible immigration deal, reports emerged that Trump had asked participants why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, the Senates second-ranking Democrat, appeared to confirm those reports on Friday. Trump did not respond Friday to several questions about the incident, including whether he actually used vulgar language to describe African nations, or if he is racist. The president said at the White House that love was central to the slain civil rights leader. Trump said the nation celebrates King for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or place of our birth, we are all created equal by God.  This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump criticizes Democrats in tweet calling for stricter immigration rules President Trump hit out at Democrats on Thursday night in a tweet calling for stricter immigration rules. Trump wrote that members of the party seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the border with Mexico: The Democrats seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the Southern Border, risking thousands of lives in the process. It is my duty to protect the lives and safety of all Americans. We must build a Great Wall, think Merit and end Lottery & Chain. USA!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the tweet. Earlier Thursday, Trump rejected a bipartisan compromise to resolve the standoff over so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children but have temporary permits to work, attend school or serve in the military. The president drew widespread condemnation after reports emerged that he had asked participants in an Oval Office meeting about the proposal why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump touts bill aimed at improving border screening for fentanyl By Associated Press President Trump signed legislation Wednesday aimed at giving Customs and Border Protection agents additional screening devices and other tools to stop the flow of illicit drugs. Speaking at a surprise bill-signing ceremony while flanked by members of Congress from both parties in the Oval Office, Trump described the bill as a significant step forward in the fight against powerful opioids such as fentanyl, which he called our new big scourge. He echoed that language Thursday in a tweet: Yesterday, I signed the #INTERDICTAct (H.R. 2142) with bipartisan members of Congress to help end the flow of drugs into our country. Together, we are committed to doing everything we can to combat the deadly scourge of drug addiction and overdose in the United States! pic.twitter.com/ELZvFol5Lo  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 The legislation will pay for new portable and fixed chemical screening devices to detect and intercept fentanyl at ports of entry and in the mail, along with other laboratory equipment and personnel, including scientists. Trump has made fighting the opioid epidemic a centerpiece of his administration, though critics say he hasnt dedicated nearly enough money or resources to make a difference. Trump suggested during his remarks on Wednesday that hed like to take a more aggressive approach to the drug crisis  but the countrys not ready for what he has in mind. So were going to sign this. And its a step. And it feels like a very giant step, but unfortunately, its not going to be a giant step, because no matter what you do, this is something that keeps pouring in, he said. And were going to find the answer. There is an answer. I think I actually know the answer, but Im not sure the countrys ready for it yet, he added. Does anybody know what I mean? I think so. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump applauds news that Toyota-Mazda plant is slated for Alabama By Associated Press Japanese automakers Toyota and Mazda on Wednesday announced plans to build a mammoth, $1.6-billion joint-venture plant in Alabama that will eventually employ about 4,000 people. President Trump lauded the news in a tweet: Cutting taxes and simplifying regulations makes America the place to invest! Great news as Toyota and Mazda announce they are bringing 4,000 JOBS and investing $1.6 BILLION in Alabama, helping to further grow our economy! pic.twitter.com/Kcg8IVH6iA  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Good news: Toyota and Mazda announce giant new Huntsville, Alabama, plant which will produce over 300,000 cars and SUVs a year and employ 4000 people. Companies are coming back to the U.S. in a very big way. Congratulations Alabama!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 Several states had competed for the project, which will be able to turn out 300,000 vehicles per year and produce the Toyota Corolla compact car for North America and a new small SUV from Mazda. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and company executives held a news conference to announce that the facility is coming to the Huntsville area not far from the Tennessee line. Production is expected to begin by 2021. The decision to pick Alabama is another example of foreign-based automakers building U.S. factories in the South. To entice manufacturers, Southern states have used a combination of lucrative incentive packages, low-cost labor and a pro-business labor environment, because the United Auto Workers union is stronger in Northern states. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump highlights call for border wall in tweets on visit with Norways prime minister By Associated Press President Trump praised Norways prime minister in a tweet on Wednesday after Erna Solberg became the first foreign leader to visit with the president in 2018. Today, it was my great honor to welcome Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway to the @WhiteHouse - a great friend and ally of the United States! Joint press conference: https://t.co/qWR1BhfQZI pic.twitter.com/PJvwznjRCO  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Trump also shared via Twitter a video clip of a joint news conference he held with Solberg on Wednesday afternoon. In the clip, Trump responds to a question from a reporter by saying there can be no bipartisan immigration deal absent funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been seeking a solution for hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers, young people who were brought to the United States as children and are living here illegally. The United States needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. The safety and security of our country is #1! pic.twitter.com/4CFzQXb5aS  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety, we need the wall for stopping the drugs from pouring in, Trump said Wednesday.  Any solution has to include the wall because without the wall, it all doesnt work. On Tuesday, Trump drew widespread attention when he said during a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers that he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. That contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill in subsequent tweets and public comments. Read More This post contains reporting from Los Angeles Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump praises Cabinet in tweet touting meeting By Associated Press President Trump promoted a meeting of his Cabinet on Wednesday, sharing via Twitter a link to a video of the session posted on the White House YouTube account. In his tweet, Trump thanked his Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country and wrote that the last year has been one of monumental achievement. I want to thank my @Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country. 2017 was a year of monumental achievement and we look forward to the year ahead. Together, we are delivering results and MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! https://t.co/ptXa1hAPwW pic.twitter.com/yv6RALkQf3  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The former reality television star continued to dispense accolades at the meeting Wednesday, greeting reporters in the Cabinet Room by saying: Welcome back to the studio. Then he proceeded to relive a Cabinet Room session from the prior day, when he had allowed reporters and TV cameras to stick around for much of his meeting with a bipartisan group of legislators on the thorny issue of immigration. It was a tremendous meeting. Actually, it was reported as incredibly good. And my performance  you know, some of them called it a performance  I consider it work, Trump said. Trump went on to say he had received letters from news anchors calling it one of the greatest meetings theyve ever witnessed. He added that the media will ultimately support Trump in the end, because theyre going to say, if Trump doesnt win in three years, theyre all out of business. Asked for examples of letters received from news anchors, the White House said it had received private communications. It also offered a series of positive on-air comments and tweets from journalists about the unusual access to the meeting. During his remarks, Trump swung from praising his own meeting coverage to telling journalists that they were dependent on his presidency for ratings to threatening a strong look at libel laws. Still, Trump thanked the journalists in front of him, joking: Youve gotten very familiar with this room. I appreciate your nice comments yesterday. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump blasts DACA ruling in tweet calling courts broken and unfair By Lisa Mascaro President Trump denounced the federal courts Wednesday as broken and unfair after a district judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction keeping protections in place for so-called Dreamers. Trump tweeted: It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 On Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administrations decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which has protected from deportation some 700,000 people who came to the country illegally as children. Alsup granted a request by the state of California, the University of California and other plaintiffs to stop Trump from ending DACA on March 5. The administrations decision to end DACA, which was announced in September, was based on a flawed legal analysis, Alsup wrote in his decision. Dreamers would be irreparably harmed if their DACA protections, which allow them to live and work legally in the U.S., were stripped away before the courts had a chance to fully consider their claims, he ruled. The action is the mirror image of a ruling in 2015 by a federal judge in Texas who ruled in favor of that state when it sought to block President Obama from expanding DACA to include the parents of Dreamers. Trump administration officials praised that judicial ruling. By contrast, they sharply criticized Alsups decision. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump thanks lawmakers for productive immigration meeting, says deal must include border wall President Trump thanked a bipartisan group of lawmakers for participating in a meeting on immigration legislation on Tuesday. Much of the discussion involved so-called Dreamers, an estimated 700,000 young people who were brought to the country illegally as children and are now facing deportation. In a tweet, Trump wrote that there was strong agreement to negotiate a bill to protect Dreamers, as well as put into place some of the reforms favored by Republicans. Thanks to all of the Republican and Democratic lawmakers for todays very productive meeting on immigration reform. There was strong agreement to negotiate a bill that deals with border security, chain migration, lottery and DACA. https://t.co/SdqAQ3aL3z pic.twitter.com/8DYHZHspAy  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 The most notable exchange of the meeting came when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the San Francisco Democrat, asked Trump whether he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. Yeah, I would like to do it, Trump responded. The statement drew widespread attention because it contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump later backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill, tweeting that a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico must be part of any deal: As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Pressure has been mounting for Congress to broker an immigration deal by Jan. 19 as part of a must-pass budget package to fund the government. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump thanks officers and veterans in tweets President Trump doled out a slew of accolades Tuesday via Twitter. He thanked the nations law enforcement officers, including in his message a hashtag denoting a day of appreciation organized by a national support group for law enforcement families. On behalf of the American people, THANK YOU to our incredible law enforcement officers. As President of the United States - I will fight for you, and I will never, ever let you down. Now, more than ever, we must support the men and women in blue! #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay pic.twitter.com/Qb4uxB4JRm  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trump later expressed gratitude for federal immigration agents, in particular: .@ICEgov HSI agents and ERO officers, on behalf of an entire Nation, THANK YOU for what you are doing 24/7/365 to keep fellow Americans SAFE. Everyone is so grateful!#LawEnforcementAppreciationDay

President @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/HXCpTlruVo  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The president thanked veterans as he cited his administrations efforts to curb the number of veteran suicides by improving mental health treatment for the high-risk group: Today, it was my great honor to sign a new Executive Order to ensure Veterans have the resources they need as they transition back to civilian life. We must ensure that our HEROES are given the care and support they so richly deserve! https://t.co/0MdP9DDIAS pic.twitter.com/LP2a8KCBAp  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trumps tweet included photos of the president signing an executive order Tuesday directing the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to develop a plan to provide seamless access to mental health and suicide prevention resources for 12 months for members leaving the armed forces. Also on Tuesday, Trump touted a law he signed the day before designating the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a national historic park: It was my great honor to sign H.R. 267, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act, which redesignates the Martin Luther King, Junior, National Historic Site in the State of Georgia as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. https://t.co/Qe0b6HBFTY pic.twitter.com/QTgaqTawPT  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 And he thanked House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) for sharing a video compilation comprised of clips of politicians and commentators praising the GOPs tax cut bill: Thank you @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy! Couldnt agree w/you more. TOGETHER, we are #MAGA https://t.co/QaxtqpyXTR  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018  This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump hails tax bill in tweets recapping speech to farmers By Associated Press Connecting with rural Americans, President Trump on Monday hailed his tax overhaul as a victory for family farmers. Farm country is Gods country, Trump told the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Trump became the first president in a quarter-century to address the federations convention. His Southern swing also included a stop in Atlanta for the national college football championship game. Cant wait to be back in the amazing state of Tennessee to address the 99th American @FarmBureau Federations Annual Convention in Nashville! #AFBF18



On my way now - join me LIVE at 4:00pmE: https://t.co/QaljAqekdD. pic.twitter.com/Wm7Io0hYT8  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Joined by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and a group of Tennessee lawmakers, Trump said most of the benefits of the tax legislation are going to working families, small businesses, and who  the family farmer. The package Trump signed into law last month provides generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families. In every decision we make, we are honoring Americas PROUD FARMING LEGACY. Years of crushing taxes, crippling regs, & corrupt politics left our communities hurting, our economy stagnant, & millions of hardworking Americans COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. But they are not forgotten ANYMORE! pic.twitter.com/MdYS7xnukQ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The president vastly inflated the value of the package in his speech, citing a total of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts, with most of those benefits going to working families, small businesses and who? The family farmer. The estimated value of the tax cuts is actually $1.5 trillion for families and businesses because of cuts in deductions and the use of other steps to generate offsetting tax revenue. We have been working every day to DELIVER for Americas Farmers just as they work every day to deliver FOR US. #AFBF18 pic.twitter.com/QDH7fvFkZ7  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 From Nashville, Trump traveled to Atlanta to watch Alabamas Crimson Tide and Georgias Bulldogs face off Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship. We are fighting for our farmers, for our country, and for our GREAT AMERICAN FLAG. We want our flag respected - and we want our NATIONAL ANTHEM respected also! pic.twitter.com/16eOLXg6Fi  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Before departing for the game, Trump referenced his ongoing defense of the American flag and the national anthem, saying there was enough space for people to express their views. We love our flag and we love our anthem, and we want to keep it that way, he said. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump tweet hails drop in unemployment rate for African Americans By Associated Press President Trump touted a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans on Monday in a tweet. African American unemployment is the lowest ever recorded in our country. The Hispanic unemployment rate dropped a full point in the last year and is close to the lowest in recorded history. Dems did nothing for you but get your vote! #NeverForget @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The rate fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Trump also hailed the development via Twitter on Saturday. His latest tweet on the topic came about an hour after it was discussed during an episode of Fox & Friends, according to Mediaite. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump talks up the economy and dresses down the media in Sunday tweets With President Trump cheering from the sidelines, the White House on Sunday pressed its defense of the presidents fitness to govern, as fired former aide Stephen K. Bannon reversed course and apologized for his role in a new books explosive portrait of Trump. The presidents critics, meanwhile, said Trumps stream of taunts and insults in response to the book  Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, released last week  served only to underscore the authors unsettling portrayal of Trumps year-old presidency, depicting a leader whose own aides consider him childish, ignorant and dangerously erratic. Trump provided more ammunition Sunday morning, as he continued to attack the book via Twitter while preparing to depart Camp David for the White House: Leaving Camp David for the White House. Great meetings with the Cabinet and Military on many very important subjects including Border Security & the desperately needed Wall, the ever increasing Drug and Opioid Problem, Infrastructure, Military, Budget, Trade and DACA.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Ive had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 The most vehement defense of Trump on Sunday came from senior advisor Stephen Miller, a onetime Bannon acolyte who distanced himself from his former mentor. In a combative appearance Sunday on CNNs State of the Union, Miller called the book grotesque and writer Michael Wolff the garbage author of a garbage book. Trump is known to closely monitor aides televised performances in putting forth his case, and he gleefully weighed in within moments of Millers televised clash with host Jake Tapper. CNN has long been a particular target of Trumps ire. Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trumps reaction, however, seemed to bolster Tappers on-air depiction of Miller as using his appearance on the show to play to the president rather than addressing questions put to him. I get it  theres one viewer that you care about, the host said exasperatedly after Miller turned the discussion repeatedly to negative news coverage of the president while deflecting specific queries. Later on Twitter, Trump took up two themes that have been prevalent on his social media feeds recently. The president again went after the news media, tweeting that the recipients of his self-proclaimed most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year, which he promised earlier in the week to announce on Monday, would actually be revealed the following Wednesday: The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trump later lauded a New York Post opinion piece that compared him favorably with his predecessor, President Obama, as well as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In quoting the op-ed, Trump initally misspelled consequential as consensual, but he deleted those tweets and re-sent the messages. His is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency. So much so that, despite my own frustration over his missteps, there has never been a day when I wished Hillary Clinton were president. Not one. Indeed, as Trumps accomplishments accumulate, the mere thought of...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 ...Clinton in the WH, doubling down on Barack Obamas failed policies, washes away any doubts that America made the right choice. This was truly a change election  and the changes Trump is bringing are far-reaching & necessary. Thank you Michael Goodwin! https://t.co/4fHNcx2Ydg  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Trump also continued talking up the economy, which has been enjoying a period of strong gains. The Stock Market has been creating tremendous benefits for our country in the form of not only Record Setting Stock Prices, but present and future Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Seven TRILLION dollars of value created since our big election win!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 In addition to Miller, other senior administration officials made the rounds of Sunday news talk shows to decry the claims made in Wolffs book. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Wolffs characterization of Trump as averse to digesting classified briefing material was ludicrous, and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, insisted that that those around Trump love their country and respect their president. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Responding to book that mocks his intelligence, Trump tweets hes like, really smart By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump declared himself a very stable genius on Twitter on Saturday and later in a televised news conference called the author of a book that questioned his mental fitness a fraud. His comments came on a bone-cold day at Camp David during a weekend retreat with top administration officials and Republican congressional leaders strategizing on the years legislative agenda, including matters such as infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and national security. Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Still, Trumps explosive rebuttal to author Michael Wolffs claims not only opened the day, but it also ensured the presidents capability to fill the highest office in the land was a topic that would not go away. In his early-morning tweets, Trump said two of his greatest assets have been mental stability, and being, like, really smart. He noted that his former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, played these cards [about competence] very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

In morning tweets, Trump touts job numbers and takes digs at news media By Associated Press President Trump used Twitter on Saturday morning to tout a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans. He also used the tweets as an opportunity to take digs at media outlets whose past coverage he has found to be critical. The African American unemployment rate fell to 6.8%, the lowest rate in 45 years. I am so happy about this News! And, in the Washington Post (of all places), headline states, Trumps first year jobs numbers were very, very good.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The unemployment rate for African Americans fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Still, the rate for black workers remains well above those for whites and some other groups, something experts attribute in large part to decades of discrimination and disadvantages. Robust job creation has lowered unemployment for all Americans. U.S. employers added nearly 2.1 million jobs in 2017  the seventh straight year that hiring has topped 2 million. In his tweet, Trump praised a report that noted the numbers, touting the fact that it appeared in the Washington Post (of all places). Minutes later, Trump renewed his attack on an ABC News reporter who was suspended last month after filing an erroneous report on Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor. Brian Ross, the reporter who made a fraudulent live newscast about me that drove the Stock Market down 350 points (billions of dollars), was suspended for a month but is now back at ABC NEWS in a lower capacity. He is no longer allowed to report on Trump. Should have been fired!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The reporter, Brian Ross, was reportedly reassigned within ABC News upon returning from his unpaid suspension. But on Saturday, Trump wrote that he should have been fired. Trumps tweets came hours before he was set to host congressional Republicans and administration officials at Camp David. The meeting scheduled to begin at midmorning Saturday was expected to touch on the budget, infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and the shape of the midterm election this fall. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump commends Sen. Rand Paul after he proposes eliminating all U.S. aid to Pakistan President Trump commended Sen. Rand Paul after the Kentucky Republican announced plans to introduce legislation that would eliminate all U.S. aid to Pakistan. Trump tweeted Friday night: Good idea Rand! https://t.co/55sqUDiC0s  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it was suspending security assistance to Islamabad until the country moves aggressively against local militants who have attacked U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration at the apparent inability of Pakistani authorities to rein in militants who cross out of the countrys rugged tribal areas to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump continues to lash out at Sloppy Steve Bannon in tweets on tell-all book By Associated Press President Trump is praising a major Republican donor family for distancing themselves from his former advisor Steve Bannon. Trump tweeted Friday: The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trump has continued to lash out at Bannon over an explosive new book that quoted his former aide as questioning Trumps competence and describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower among Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as treasonous and unpatriotic. On Thursday, billionaire GOP donor Rebekah Mercer issued a statement distancing her family from Bannon. Mercer is a co-owner of Breitbart, the populist website Bannon helps run. I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected, Mercer said. My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements. The book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, quickly shot atop Amazons best-seller list, and the publisher moved up its release date by four days, to Friday. Trump took up the topic again on Twitter on Friday night, denouncing both Bannon and the books author, Michael Wolff, in starkly personal terms: Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Trumps message linked to a meme depicting a parody book cover titled, Liar and Phony, that featured a photo of Wolff and disparaging quotes about the author. In a tweet sent earlier Friday morning, Trump suggested the book was intended to serve as a distraction from the FBIs investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Trump wrote is proving to be a total hoax. Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 That came amid reports that Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Departments Russia investigation. Trumps effort to keep Sessions, a vocal and loyal supporter of his election bid, in charge of an investigation into his campaign offers special counsel Robert Mueller yet another avenue to explore as his prosecutors work to untangle potential evidence of obstruction. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump praises the economy ahead of meetings at Camp David By Associated Press President Trump is praising the strength of the U.S. economy ahead of meetings at Camp David with congressional Republicans. Trump tweeted early Friday: Dow goes from 18,589 on November 9, 2016, to 25,075 today, for a new all-time Record. Jumped 1000 points in last 5 weeks, Record fastest 1000 point move in history. This is all about the Make America Great Again agenda! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Six trillion dollars in value created!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The president also told reporters on the South Lawn that the tax cuts are really kicking in after Congress passed a package of tax cuts at the end of 2017. And the president praised the December jobs report, which found U.S. employers added 148,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate stayed at 4.1%, the lowest level since 2000. The modest but steady pace of hiring is a reassuring sign for investors who have been buoyed by the just-passed Republican tax plan and have been sending stock market indexes roaring to uncharted heights. The president is meeting with Republican congressional leaders and members of his Cabinet on Friday and Saturday to discuss the 2018 agenda. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump tweets as Dow crashes through 25,000 By Associated Press President Trump dispatched a congratulatory tweet as the Dow Jones industrial average rose above the 25,000-point mark Thursday, just five weeks after its first close above 24,000. Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 After the Dow closed above 25,000, Trump shared a graphic depicting the stock indexs record-setting rise. MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/iONbr1DkVk  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Later in the day, the president was back on Twitter, complaining that news outlets had barely covered the stock market milestone. He suggested that the strength of the economy would be the biggest story on earth, had it unfolded during the presidency of his predecessor. The Fake News Media barely mentions the fact that the Stock Market just hit another New Record and that business in the U.S. is booming...but the people know! Can you imagine if O was president and had these numbers - would be biggest story on earth! Dow now over 25,000.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The Dow broke past 1,000-point barriers in 2017 on its way to a 25% gain for the year, as an eight-year rally since the Great Recession continued to confound skeptics. Strong global economic growth and good prospects for higher company earnings have analysts predicting more gains, although the market may not stay as calm as it has been recently. The Dow has made a rapid trip since it reached 24,000 points Nov. 30, partly on enthusiasm over passage of the Republican-backed tax package, which could boost company profits this year with across-the-board cuts to corporate taxes. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump reacts to Fire and Fury book in tweet lashing out at author and Sloppy Steve President Trump lashed out at the author of a soon-to-be-released book about the chaotic first year of his presidency Thursday night. In a tweet, Trump called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a phony book and claimed that hed never spoken to its author, Michael Wolff. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Trump wrote. He appeared to be referring to former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whose stunning criticisms of Trump and his circle figure prominently in the title. I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that dont exist. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trumps tweet came hours after he had his lawyer demand that Henry Holt & Co. and Wolff stop publication the book. Instead, the publisher expedited the books release to Friday, four days before it was slated to hit bookstore shelves, in response to unprecedented demand. Published excerpts on Wednesday and Thursday whetted that appetite and roiled Washington. Bannons comments, including that it was treasonous and unpatriotic for Trumps son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort to have met in 2016 with Russians said to have dirt on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, prompted Trump on Wednesday to rebuke his former advisor, saying Bannon had lost his mind. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Brian Bennett and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump thanks senators who attended meeting on immigration President Trump tweeted thanks to Republican senators who attended a meeting about possible immigration legislation on Thursday. In his message, Trump also listed his top priorities when it comes to any type of overhaul of the nations immigration system. Thank you to the great Republican Senators who showed up to our mtg on immigration reform. We must BUILD THE WALL, stop illegal immigration, end chain migration & cancel the visa lottery. The current system is unsafe & unfair to the great people of our country - time for change!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Trumps tweet echoed his remarks at the beginning of Thursdays meeting, when he insisted again that constructing a border wall and overhauling two legal immigration programs must be part of any deal with Democrats to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation. Two-year deportation protections and work permits given under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begin to expire March 6 under an executive order. Trump announced in September that he was ending the Obama-era program, but told Congress to draft a law to continue protections for people brought to the country illegally as children  a group that has widespread public support. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Brian Bennett. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump resumes Twitter war against kneeling NFL players President Trump has resumed his Twitter war against NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest social injustice and racial inequality. In a tweet early Thursday, Trump replied to a supporter who shared a meme that appears to depict family members lying on the grave of a fallen soldier with the caption: This is why we stand. Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! Trump wrote. So beautiful....Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! https://t.co/tJLM1tvbvb  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The president has denounced players who kneel during the anthem in previous tweets. Hes also called for the firing of players who do so. His latest message came amid news that the NFL finished the regular season with TV ratings that fell nearly 10% below the previous season. Analysts attribute the drop to controversies facing the league, as well as changing viewing habits and a possible saturation point in the number of games available. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Stephen Battaglio and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump credits himself with facilitating talks between North and South Korea By Associated Press President Trump says his tough stance on nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula is helping push North Korea and South Korea to talk. Trump tweeted early Thursday: With all of the failed experts weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasnt firm, strong and willing to commit our total might against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 That assertion is in conflict with some of the presidents own statements. Last year, he ridiculed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for talking about negotiations with the North. This week, Trump seemed open to the possibility of an inter-Korean dialogue after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a rare overture toward South Korea in a New Years Day address. But Trumps ambassador to the United Nations insisted that talks wont be meaningful unless the North is getting rid of its nuclear weapons. The overture about talks came after Trump and Kim traded more bellicose claims about their nuclear weapons. In his New Years Day address, Kim repeated fiery nuclear threats against the United States. Kim said he has a nuclear button on his office desk and warned that the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike. Trump mocked that assertion Tuesday evening in a tweet. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

After disbanding his vote fraud panel, Trump still says voting system is rigged By Brian Bennett One day after disbanding his troubled voter fraud commission without any findings of fraud, President Trump continued to call the U.S. voting system rigged and said states should require that Americans have voter-identification cards. In two tweets on Thursday morning, Trump blamed the commissions failure on the lack of cooperation from mostly Democrat States that refused to hand over voter rolls because they know that many people are voting illegally. However, voting supervisors in Republican-led states refused as well, objecting on privacy and other grounds. Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 Election to the Commission On Voter Fraud. They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 As Americans, you need identification, sometimes in a very strong and accurate form, for almost everything you do.....except when it comes to the most important thing, VOTING for the people that run your country. Push hard for Voter Identification!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Despite Trumps assertions, analysts have not found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after alleging, without proof, that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Trump was elected after winning a majority in the electoral college, but the nationwide count showed Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes. The commission sought personal data on voters across the country and faced mounting lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump touts another good day for stocks, credits tax cut By Associated Press President Trump touted another good day for the stock market Wednesday in a tweet. Stock Market had another good day but, now that the Tax Cut Bill has passed, we have tremendous upward potential. Dow just short of 25,000, a number that few thought would be possible this soon into my administration. Also, unemployment went down to 4.1%. Only getting better!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Big gains for technology and healthcare stocks helped U.S. indexes set records again Wednesday. Some analysts attributed the surge to investor enthusiasm for Trumps $1.5-trillion tax cut. All told, Wall Street analysts estimate the tax package should boost earnings for companies in the Standard & Poors 500 index by roughly 8% this year. Thats much more generous than the average tax cut of 1.6% that middle-class families will receive, according to the Tax Policy Center. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The public has been less enthusiastic about the tax law. A Monmouth University poll last month found that nearly half of Americans disapproved of it, with only 26% in support. Still, as Trump also noted on Twitter, some workers have seen a benefit: So far, dozens of companies have announced bonuses and higher minimum wages as a result of the tax cut. AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America, and American Airlines have all pledged to pay $1,000 bonuses to their employees. Some 40 U.S. companies have responded to President Trumps tax cut and reform victory in Congress last year by handing out bonuses up to $2,000, increases in 401k matches and spending on charity, a much higher number than previously known. https://t.co/bmWrwWzxMR  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Investors also appear less concerned than many politicians about how the additional profits will be used. The Trump administration says it expects companies will plow much of the extra profit back into their businesses, purchasing more software, machinery, and other equipment. Those investments will make workers more productive and provide a key boost to the economys long-run growth. They should also boost wages and salaries for employees. Opponents of the tax law respond that companies are more likely to pass the windfall on to shareholders in the form of higher dividend payments and share buybacks, which raise the price of those shares still in investors hands. Previous cuts in corporate tax rates, in the United States and overseas, havent always led to higher wages. For Wall Street, its all good, at least in the short run. Most analysts take the view that either way, companies and the economy will benefit. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump reacts to death of Mormon Church president By Associated Press President Trump mourned the death of Mormon Church leader Thomas S. Monson on Wednesday evening. Trump tweeted a link to a statement in which he said that Monson demonstrated wisdom, inspired leadership, and great compassion and delivered a message of optimism, forgiveness, and faith. Melania and I are deeply saddened by the death of Thomas S. Monson, a beloved President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...https://t.co/ETD3fWtfU3  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 A church bishop at the age of 22, Monson became the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008. After a life of church service, Monson died Tuesday at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins. He was 90. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump tweets that Iranian protesters will see great U.S. support at the appropriate time By Associated Press President Trump continued to express support for Irans anti-government protesters on Wednesday. In a tweet, Trump commended the protesters and pledged that the United States will support them at the appropriate time. Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Trumps tweet Wednesday morning came as Iranian Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo sent a letter to United Nations officials complaining that Washington was intervening in a grotesque way in Irans internal affairs. The President and Vice-President of the United States, in their numerous absurd tweets, incited Iranians to engage in disruptive acts, the ambassador wrote to the U.N. Security Council president and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.S. didnt immediately respond to the letter, which maintains that Washington has crossed every limit in flouting rules and principles of international law governing the civilized conduct of international relations. At least 21 people have been killed and hundreds arrested in Iran during a week of anti-government protests and unrest over economic woes and official corruption. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people took part in counter-demonstrations Wednesday backing the clerically overseen government, which has said enemies of Iran are fomenting the protests. Trump has unleashed a series of tweets in recent days backing the protesters, saying Iran is failing at every level and declaring that it is time for change in the Islamic Republic. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump congratulates Sen. Orrin Hatch upon news of his retirement By Associated Press President Trump congratulated Sen. Orrin Hatch for an absolutely incredible career upon news of Hatchs impending retirement. In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Trump called Hatch a tremendous supporter and wrote that he will be greatly missed in the Senate. Congratulations to Senator Orrin Hatch on an absolutely incredible career. He has been a tremendous supporter, and I will never forget the (beyond kind) statements he has made about me as President. He is my friend and he will be greatly missed in the U.S. Senate! pic.twitter.com/0VjzLEeHTl  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Hatchs decision to retire from the Senate after four decades lets the Utah Republican walk away at the height of his power after helping to push through an overhaul of the tax code and persuading Trump to downsize two national monuments. Retirement also preserves the 83-year-olds legacy by allowing him to avoid a bruising reelection battle that would have broken his promise not to seek an eighth term. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump tweet exaggerates progress in improving veterans care By Associated Press President Trump played up tremendous progress in improving care for veterans in his first year on Tuesday in a tweet. His message linked to an Instagram video describing eight accomplishments that show Trump is fighting for our veterans. But it overstates the impact of these steps. We will not rest until all of Americas GREAT VETERANS can receive the care they so richly deserve. Tremendous progress has been made in a short period of time. Keep up the great work @SecShulkin @DeptVetAffairs! https://t.co/ir25vW15hx pic.twitter.com/OtuzIgxMn6  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Of the eight achievements cited, two are ceremonial proclamations recognizing National Veterans and Military Families Month and National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Two are pieces of legislation that extended the troubled Veterans Choice program on a temporary basis. This became necessary because the Trump administration repeatedly miscalculated the amount of taxpayer dollars available to pay for care from private doctors outside the Veterans Affairs system when veterans had to endure long waits for treatment at VA medical centers. The departments poor budget planning caught lawmakers off guard. A fifth claim involves telehealth, a step letting doctors practice medicine across state lines using digital technology. Announced in August, it has yet to take full effect because a proposed VA regulation hasnt been completed. The VA wants authority to practice across state lines to come from legislation, not a regulation. On Wednesday, the Senate approved a telehealth measure that now goes to the House. A sixth claim refers to legislation that streamlines the appeals process for disability compensation claims within the VA. This step has had limited effect so far because it applies to new disability claims, not the 470,000 pending claims. The last two initiatives make it easier for the VA to discipline employees. The department has pointed to more than 1,300 employees who have been fired under Trumps watch. Because their infractions are not detailed in public documents, the effect on veterans care is not fully known. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump unleashes his first tweetstorm of 2018 By Noah Bierman President Trump clearly didnt resolve to change his Twitter habits this year. With nine disparate tweets over three hours on Tuesday morning, the first working day of 2018, Trump continued to exploit social media to be the most aggressive commentator in chief in American history. For any other president, his posts would have made for a monumental day of (mis-)statements. Yet for Trump, the series  attacks on political foes and media, provocations of foreign leaders and self-praise for events he had nothing to do with  was all but unremarkable. His Twitter barrage  sent between 7:09 a.m. and 10:16 a.m.  reflected a familiar gamut after nearly a year in office: Attacks on political foes: Nearly 14 months after his election, Trump called for the jailing of Huma Abedin, Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid (his misspelling, another occasional feature of Trump tweets). Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 In the same tweet, he disparaged the Deep State Justice Dept, headed of course by his appointees, calling on it to act against James B. Comey, the FBI director he fired for investigating the Russia thing. Diplomatic provocations: Trump again called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Rocket man, ridiculed the volatile nuclear-armed foe for recent military defections and openly speculated about potential talks between North and South Korea. Sanctions and other pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not  we will see! Trump wrote. Later Tuesday, Trump tweeted: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times. Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Also later Tuesday, Trump tweeted an attack on Pakistan, his second in as many days, and added a new one against Palestinians: It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They dont even want to negotiate a long overdue...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Undermining media: Trump offered Congratulations! to A.G. Sulzberger, who took over as publisher of the New York Times this week. The Failing New York Times has a new publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. Congratulations! Here is a last chance for the Times to fulfill the vision of its Founder, Adolph Ochs, to give the news impartially, without fear or FAVOR, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved. Get...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ....impartial journalists of a much higher standard, lose all of your phony and non-existent sources, and treat the President of the United States FAIRLY, so that the next time I (and the people) win, you wont have to write an apology to your readers for a job poorly done! GL  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the two-part post was really yet another slam against a perceived media foe: Trump said the paper had a last chance to fulfill its journalistic mission, and accused it of relying on phony sources and substandard reporters  just days after he granted another exclusive interview to the paper. As a bonus, the tweet contained a recycled falsehood, that the paper apologized after the election for reporting on him unfairly. It didnt. Trump later said on Twitter that he would soon announce the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year. Stay tuned! I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 oclock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 The president also tweeted a quote from Fox Business Networks Lou Dobbs Tonight, which aired a segment praising Trumps first-year accomplishments. Dobbs reportedly joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday for a gala to celebrate New Years Eve. President Trump has something now he didnt have a year ago, that is a set of accomplishments that nobody can deny. The accomplishments are there, look at his record, he has had a very significant first year. @LouDobbs Show,David Asman & Ed Rollins  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Taking credit: Trump congratulated himself for policing the border with Mexico, an area where his policies and anti-immigration rhetoric are believed to have had some effect on reducing illegal crossings. Thank you to Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council for your kind words on how well we are doing at the Border. We will be bringing in more & more of your great folks and will build the desperately needed WALL! @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 He took credit for employee bonuses by companies after he signed Republican tax cuts into law last month. Companies are giving big bonuses to their workers because of the Tax Cut Bill. Really great!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the jaw-dropper was Trump congratulating himself for planes not crashing. Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 It was the safest year on record worldwide, but the American streak without commercial jet passenger deaths goes back to 2009. Trump, who has promoted deregulation as one of his top accomplishments, has not signed off on any new airline safety regulations. The White House pointed to new security screening of passengers, to electronic devices to prevent terrorist attacks and to Trumps support for privatizing air traffic control  a proposal that has gotten nowhere in Congress. Falsehoods: Trump said President Obama, in brokering the 2015 nuclear arms limitation deal with Iran, foolishly gave money to the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. He didnt. The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their pockets. The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 The nuclear deal, which included major U.S. allies as signators, released Irans own funds that had long been frozen. Trumps art of the deal: When Trump sees a big deal looming, he often blasts the other side  to gain leverage, as hes written. This week he resumes a showdown with Democratic lawmakers over funding the government and immigration protections for so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA - just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start falling in love with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Trump, who in September ordered a gradual end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sought to shift blame for the resulting controversy, saying Democrats are doing nothing for DACA and are just interested in politics. Trump has insisted that any help for Dreamers be paired with funding for a border wall and a crackdown on legal immigration. Democrats, and some Republicans, are opposed. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

In tweet, Trump suggests U.S. will withdraw financial assistance to Pakistan By Shashank Bengali Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies & deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. It was the presidents latest broadside against Pakistan after a speech in August in which he demanded its leaders crack down on the safe havens enjoyed by Taliban militants fighting U.S.-backed forces in neighboring Afghanistan. The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018 U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to discuss the presidents statement, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said. Pakistan lodged a strongly worded protest and asked for clarification about Trumps comments, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump continues to tweet in support of Iranian protesters By Laura King President Trump expressed renewed support Sunday for protesters in Iran, declaring that people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. In a tweet from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the president said the nationwide economic protests that began on Thursday  and have taken on wider political overtones as they have grown in size  were a signal that Iranians will not take it any longer. Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Trump has tweeted about the protests for three days straight as Iranians took to the streets despite a heavy police presence, tear gas and scores of arrests. The defiance gained urgency after two people were reported shot to death in the city of Dorud, about 200 miles southwest of Tehran. As the conflict escalated, Iranian authorities on Sunday slapped a temporary ban on Instagram and the messaging app Telegram, which were widely used to fan protest fervor. Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Irans leaders already are casting Trumps increasingly effusive expressions of support for the demonstrators as opportunistic meddling and are painting the demonstrators as foreign pawns, adopting a strategy that some analysts say could jeopardize the legitimacy of the nascent antigovernment protests. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump tweets condolences after Colorado deputies are shot in ambush, one fatally By Associated Press A man fired more than 100 rounds at sheriffs deputies in Colorado early Sunday, killing one and injuring four others, before being fatally shot himself in what authorities called an ambush. Two civilians were also injured. President Trump expressed sorrow, writing on Twitter: My deepest condolences to the victims of the terrible shooting in Douglas County @DCSheriff, and their families. We love our police and law enforcement - God Bless them all! #LESM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said deputies came under fire almost
JOHN MUIR TRAIL

Slide show

Pamela Zoolalian will share stories and experiences from her solo thru-hike of the John Muir Trail from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney.

When, where: 7 p.m. Wednesday at the REI store in Tustin, 2962 El Camino Real.

Admission, info: Free. (714) 505-0205

NEPAL

Presentation

Guide Steve Tickle will share photos and stories from his experiences while trekking, climbing and traveling in Nepal for 15 years.

Advertisement

When, where: 7 p.m. Friday at the Adventure 16 store, 11161 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles

Admission, info: Free. (310) 473-4574.

TRAVEL TIPS

Presentation

Angel Castellanos will share tips and tricks on packing, how to avoid airline baggage fees, and airport dos and donts.

When, where: 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday at H. Savinar Luggage Co., 6931 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park, and 2 p.m. July 30 at the Los Angeles store, 4625 W. Washington Blvd.

Admission, info: Free. (818) 703-1313, Canoga Park; (323) 938-2501, Los Angeles.

Please email announcements at least three weeks before the event to travel@latimes.com.
Seeing the Grand Canyon might be on your bucket list, but sleeping in an underground cavern 200 feet below the Earths surface confers some major bragging rights.

And that is what many travelers crave.

Unusual accommodations  treehouses, castles, lighthouses and more  are growing in number and popularity, in part because the Internet makes them easier to find.

Travelers want to invest in experiences, and swapping your standard room for a treehouse or houseboat is an experience you definitely wont forget, said Laurel Greatrix, spokeswoman for TripAdvisor Rentals.

Still, sleeping on ice, as people do at the famed Icehotel in Sweden, isnt for everyone.

There are many people who are perfectly happy with tried and tested accommodation  and have little desire for quirky accommodation, said Makarand Mody, assistant professor of hospitality marketing at Boston University. It takes someone with a certain kind of personality.

If youre one of those people, here are six offbeat accommodations that should appeal to you.

Kokopellis Cave

The man-made Kokopellis Cave features multiple arches and room to relax. The exterior offers wide open views of the surrounding area. (Bruce Black / Kokopellis Cave) (Bruce Black/Kokopellias Cave / Bruce Black/Kokopellias Cave)

This 1,700-square-foot house, named for the Hopi fertility deity, was built into sandstone cliffs near Farmington, N.M., where it provides guests with solitude 70 feet below the surface of the Earth.

How it came to be: Owner Bruce Black, a geologist born and raised in New Mexico, loved the cliff dwellings of the ancient Pueblos. He had $20,000 to spend so he hired a crew to blast out his home. I told them to make me as big a hole as they could.

The result, which took years to finish, is perched 300 feet above La Plata River Valley.

What youll find: The house offers everything you need for a comfortable stay, including a bathroom with a waterfall shower and jetted tub.

Sliding glass doors in the master bedroom and front entrance open to porches with stunning views of the landscape, including the Four Corners area, where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado meet. Guests might spot coyotes, bobcats, deer, foxes, eagles and other animals.

Many [guests] describe staying there as an almost spiritual experience, Black said.

Possible downside: The house does not have an elevator. Although guests can drive to the house rather than hike in, they will need to walk on a sloping path and stairs to enter and exit. Packing light is advised.

Info: Kokopellis Cave, Farmington, N.M.; (505) 860-3812. $620 for a two-night stay for two, plus $50 for each additional guest.

Grand Canyon Caverns Inn

The Cavern Suite at Grand Canyon Caverns is 200 feet below the Earths surface. Despite the huge opening in the rock, the cavern can prompt claustrophobia. (Grand Canyon Caverns) (Grand Canyon Caverns / Grand Canyon Caverns)

The Underground Cave Suite at the Grand Canyon Caverns Inn is described as the deepest, darkest, oldest, quietest motel room in the world.

How it came to be: Rock from an ancient seabed was lifted by geologic forces and eroded by fresh water to form the caverns along what is now Route 66 in northern Arizona.

What you will find: The rough-hewn suite  more than 65 million years old and buried under 220 feet of earth  has what owner John McEnulty called Mother Natures wallcovering with sea geodes, selenite crystals and other evidence of the ancient past.

There are no bats, insects or vegetation, and the air is pure, filtered by rock, McEnulty said.

The suite has a library filled with books and old National Geographics  some dating to 1917  a record player and beds to accommodate six.

There is no kitchen, but guests can order food from the Caverns Grill.

Possible downside: Although the cavern housing the suite is huge  200 by 400 feet with 70-foot ceilings  claustrophobia does stop some people from entering. It happens about twice a year, McEnulty said.

Info: Grand Canyon Caverns Inn, Peach Springs, Ariz.; (928) 422-3223. $850 per night for two people, with $100 for each additional guest. A motel, camping and an RV park are other lodging options.

Point No Point Lighthouse keepers home

The Point No Point Lighthouse at Puget Sound in Washington continues to help guide vessels. (Jeff Gales / U.S. Lighthouse Society) (Jeff Gales/U.S. Lighthouse Socie / Jeff Gales/U.S. Lighthouse Socie)

The Point No Point Lighthouse, built in 1879, continues to guide sailors to safety. The keepers house, open to guests since 2008, guides travelers to serenity.

How it came to be: The Point No Point Lighthouse and keepers house sit on a spit of land in Puget Sound about an hour from Seattle.

What youll find: The two-story house has a wide front porch where you can sit and watch the boats, birds and whales.

Although the homes exterior has been restored to its proper period, the interior is updated, said Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society, which rents the house.

The furnishings have more of a beachy feel so visitors dont feel as if they are living in a museum. The house is bright and tidy with a living room, formal dining area, full kitchen and two bedrooms.

It gives a sense of history [without] feeling uncomfortable, Gales said.

When the park closes and theres no more people, no more activity, there is something special about that feeling, Gales said. You sit and are quiet for two minutes and something comes over you. You are connected to nature.

Possible downside: Although the bedrooms have no windows that would capture light from the working beacon, guests might hear the horns of passing ships.

Info: Point No Point, Hansville, Wash.; (415) 362-7255. $275 a night; a two-night minimum stay is required Fridays-Sundays.

Free Spirit Spheres

The interior of the Free Spirit Sphere Eryn maximizes space, incorporating a small sink, a dining area and a bed in its 10.5-foot diameter space. (Adam Clarke) (Adam Clarke / Adam Clarke)

These spherical treehouses of fiberglass and wood resemble nothing so much as giant birdhouses.

How they came to be: The three spheres, set in a rainforest on Vancouver Island, Canada, are the work of Tom Chudleigh, who began building them in 1993.

My original idea was to create something that would allow people to move into a forest canopy without leaving any footprints  just to give people an opportunity to experience the magic of an old-growth forest without damaging it, he said.

What you will find: Chudleighs spheres are functional works of art, highly polished structures that each took about 5,700 hours to build. The spheres, suspended by ropes in the trees and reached by circular walkways, have sitting and sleeping areas as well as lookouts onto nature.

Above all else there is a feeling of tranquillity, he said. At night as the birds are roosting and the bird chatter dies down, it gives way to the croaking of frogs and owl sounds. The presence of nature sprites and fairies is almost tangible.

Possible downside: The spheres have no bathrooms (they are at ground level) or kitchens.

Info: Free Spirit Spheres, 420 Horne Lake Road, Qualicum Beach, Canada; (250) 757-9445. About $435 for a two-night stay for two.

Calpine Lookout

Interior of the Calpine Fire Lookout. (U.S. Forest Service) (U.S. Forest Service / U.S. Forest Service)

This 1934 fire lookout in Tahoe National Forest, about 40 miles west of Truckee, Calif., doesnt have running water or electricity, but it does have unrivaled views at 5,980 feet.

How it came to be: This three-story lookout was built in an unusual windmill style, with its first two floors enclosed. Only three such lookouts remain in California.

What guests will find: The third floor of the tower, at 196 square feet, is outfitted with two twin beds, a dry sink, a propane stove and a propane heater.

Guests will need to bring bedding, water, firewood and even toilet paper (theres a vault toilet at the towers base).

But unlike other fire lookouts available for rent, guests can drive to this tower in summer with their essentials. (In winter, they can snowshoe in.)

Staying there is peaceful, said Barbara Cooper, visitor services information assistant with the Sierraville Ranger District. You can kind of unplug.

With a deck and no light pollution, the tower is a great place to study the heavens. You can watch stars for hours and hours, she said, suggesting guests time their visits to coincide with meteor showers or other astronomical events.

Possible downside: The tower has two twin beds. Families might want to camp at its base.

Info: Calpine Lookout, (530) 994-3401. $45 a night; books months in advance. For more lookouts available for stays, go to www.recreation.gov.

Earthship Biotecture

Phoenix Earthship at the Greater World Community outside Taos, New Mexico. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

If you want to live off the grid but dont enjoy roughing it, five rental homes outside Taos, N.M., show how its done.

How they came to be: Architect Michael Reynolds has been experimenting since the 1970s with sustainable building practices now showcased in a 650-acre community. Five of the houses, known as Earthships, are for rent.

What you will find: Earthships are made with recycled materials and use passive solar heating; there also are copper counters, slate backsplashes and other luxury touches.

The homes range in size from the studio-size Hobbit House, Reynolds first Earthship, to the Phoenix, with three bedrooms, two baths, a jungle greenhouse and a fishpond.

The Phoenixs master bedroom shows that luxury and comfort are compatible with energy efficiency. (Kirsten Jacobsen / Earthship Biotecture) (Kirsten Jacobsen/Earthship Biote / Kirsten Jacobsen/Earthship Biote)

Kirsten Jacobsen, education director of Earthship Biotecture, said people are often surprised by what they find. The earth-berm houses have Wi-Fi and Apple TV with Netflix; they arent as dark or cramped as expected.

Guests are surprised they can live off the grid without having to change their lifestyle, she said. People can see that living off the grid wasnt just for hippies or survivalists.

Possible downside: Guests might spend so much time admiring the sustainable design features that they wont have time to explore the nearby San Francisco de Asis Mission Church or the Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway.

Info: Earthship Biotecture, 2 Earthship Way, Taos, N.M.; (575) 751-0462. From $140 a night.

travel@latimes.com

UPDATES:

This article was updated with contact information of Point No Point.
The late South African leader Nelson Mandela said in his will that he wanted his home in rural Qunu to be used to forever unite his family. But his kinsmen, who fought bitterly over his burial place and went to court over the bones of his children, arent easily united.

His former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, whom he divorced in 1996, is challenging Mandelas will, demanding that the Qunu homestead and land should be hers, according to reports in South African newspapers Tuesday.

Mandela, who died in December, left Madikizela-Mandela out of his will, leaving his $4.3 million in property and belongings to his wife, Graca Machel, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, with small bequests to his staff and doctors. He left money to several educational institutions.

Advertisement

The Qunu property should be used by my family in perpetuity to preserve the unity of the Mandela family, his will said.

However, Madikizela-Mandelas lawyers have written to the wills executor, Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, issuing a challenge. One of the lawyers, Mvuyo Notyesi, said in the letter that her claim wasnt an attack on the will, but an assertion of customary and traditional rights.

The letter said that under African traditional law the property was rightfully Madikizela-Mandelas, even if she was divorced from Nelson Mandela. Tha lawyer added that the customs of Mandelas aba-Thembu clan dictated that Madikizela-Mandela and her family should get the family home.

News about the letter was first published Tuesday in an Eastern Cape newspaper the Daily Dispatch and subsequently reported by other South African media. The letter was reportedly written two weeks ago.

This position becomes applicable irrespective of whether the wife was divorced or not, the letter said, according to South Africas City Press newspaper. It is only in this home that the children and grandchildren of Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela can conduct their own customs and tradition.

Machel waived her right to half of Mandelas estate left to her in his will, instead taking ownership of four properties the couple owned in Mozambique, plus vehicles, jewelry given her during the marriage and money in various financial institutions.

At the time that Madikizela-Mandela was left out of the will, her daughter with Nelson Mandela, Zindzi, said her mother never expected any bequest from her former husband.

Why would she expect to be maintained after his passing when she was never maintained during his lifetime? Zindzi Mandela tweeted at the time.

After the will was read to the family in February, South Africas Mail and Guardian reported that Madikizela-Mandela wanted half of Mandelas assets, worth about $2.1 million. Madikizela-Mandelas claim to the Qunu property was supported by the controversial Aba-Thembu king, Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo.

In an unrelated development, South African President Jacob Zuma recently gave the king 30 days to prove why he should not be dethroned after complaints from the Aba-Thembu people.

Mandelas property in Qunu had already been the subject of a bitterly fought court case.

Fifteen members of his family went to court last year in a successful effort to force the exhumation of family bones from Mandelas birthplace, Mvezo, to Qunu, where he grew up. At the time, critics charged that family members were trying to gain control over future tourist revenue from his memorial site.

Follow @RobynDixon_LAT for news from Africa
American-backed Syrian opposition fighters were standing watch against Islamic State militants from atop a water tower earlier this month when they were shocked to face a barrage of mortar shells  not from militants, but from the Syrian army.

We are fighting ISIS. They are fighting ISIS. Why are they fighting us? Raad Abdullah Hamoud, 17, said as he stood at the foot of the remote desert tower. This is what theyre doing now. Think what theyre going to do after ISIS is gone.

Syrian opposition fighters and their U.S. allies tried to maintain a strained detente with President Bashar Assads Russian-backed forces as the battle against Islamic State has shifted this month across the border from northern Iraq to eastern Syria.

Advertisement

But theres an essential conflict: Many of the U.S.-backed fighters also want to overthrow Assad, who has stubbornly clung to power through six years of a civil war that has spawned a multitude of competing armed groups and drawn in forces from Russia, the United States, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon.

As Assads troops gain a foothold in Dair Alzour, the crossroads of a strategic land corridor from Tehran to Beirut, U.S.-trained opposition fighters and allies nearby said they hope to take a stand with American backing, potentially drawing the U.S. into a long and costly conflict.

In recent weeks, an 80-mile stretch of the Euphrates River has served as a buffer zone  a so-called deconfliction line  between U.S.-backed opposition fighters and the Syrian government.

To the west of the river, some of Assads estimated 40,000 soldiers are fighting with support from allied militias, Russia and Iran. To the east, some of the 55,000 opposition forces are fighting with help from U.S. forces. The U.S.-backed coalition said it has about 500 troops in Syria, but experts estimate that has grown to include up to 1,500 Marines, Army Rangers and special forces, plus 1,000 contractors. U.S.-backed forces have largely focused on recapturing Islamic States self-declared capital, Raqqah, while Assads forces and allies advanced on the militant stronghold of Dair Alzour to the southeast.

The coalition mission is to defeat ISIS, the coalition said. We have no fight with Syrian or pro-regime forces as long as all forces adhere to the agreed-upon deconfliction line.

But the Syrian government and its supporters have already made several forays across the buffer zone. Last month, a Syrian fighter jet clashed with U.S.-backed forces south of Raqqah. Farther south, near the border with Jordan and Iraq, what appeared to be an Iranian-made drone attacked American advisers training Syrian opposition forces at a U.S. base in Tanf. That clash came soon after U.S. warplanes struck Iranian-backed Shiite militias approaching the base for the third time in as many weeks.

A U.S. coalition spokesman declined to say last week whether it would back Syrian opposition fighters should they confront Assads forces.

Future operations depend on many different factors and we will not speculate on what the coalition or partner forces may do in the future, the statement said.

Complicating matters is the instability of the Syrian oppositions alliance of multiethnic militias that includes Assyrian, Arab and Kurdish forces, among others. Most are fighting as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella group created with help from the Pentagon, but each has its own agenda for what it will do once the militants caliphate falls.

The largest opposition militia is the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, with about 25,000 troops, including Hamouds unit at the water tower. The militias political wing has been governing northeastern Syria since Assads government withdrew about four years ago, adopting the Marxist-inspired philosophy of Abdullah Apo Ocalan, whose image adorns not just YPG command posts but billboards and local squares.

Ocalans leadership could prove problematic for the U.S., particularly in its relations with Turkey. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison, and his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the U.S.

Commander Dilsoz Derek, 32, visits U.S.-backed Peoples Protection Unit (YPG) troops stationed at bases north of Dair Alzour in eastern Syria. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

Earlier this month, YPG military leaders on the front lines said eastern Syria should govern itself according to Ocalans principles, not be beholden to Turkey or Assad.

The regime allies are trying to extend, to control as much as they can, said YPG commander Daman Frat from his post north of Dair Alzour. We need to coordinate with the coalition to do an advance before the regime comes.

He compared the situation outside Dair Alzour to Syrias embattled northwestern border region of Afrin, where Turkey deployed added troops this month and shelled Kurdish fighters as tensions increased. The head of the Syrian YPG said the buildup amounted to a declaration of war and warned of coming clashes.

If the coalition doesnt help us now, the same thing will happen here, Frat said  this time with the Syrian army, not Turkish, forces.

Outside his compound, a convoy of what appeared to be U.S. forces passed, headed south toward the front line. Marine convoys were visible farther north, as were encampments behind dirt berms that YPG officials identified as U.S. bases. The U.S. has at least 10 bases across northern Syria, the Turkish state news agency Anadalou reported last week.

U.S. officials declined requests to accompany or interview those forces.

Warriors, dreamers and just plain crazy: U.S. civilian volunteers fighting Islamic State in Syria 

One Kurdish commander, Orkesh Serdam, has been encouraged to see the U.S. expanding its makeshift bases in eastern Syria, but said that doesnt mean America is willing to take on Assads troops.

Now when we are fighting, we dont put all our hope in the Americans. We always say, Just imagine you dont have airstrikes, said Serdam, 27.

Arab militia commanders in the Syrian Democratic Forces said they also want to recapture Dair Alzour, but are unsure if they can count on the U.S. to support them.

Members of an affiliated group, the 10,000-strong Army of the Revolutionaries militia, traveled east from Idlib province this month as a U.S.-Russian negotiated ceasefire was declared there. They had come to fight in Raqqah and, they hoped, Dair Alzour. They complained the U.S. coalition had failed to provide them with needed equipment, including armored cars and night vision goggles.

Why, the fighters asked, was the U.S. helping Iranian-affiliated Popular Mobilization Forces (also known as Hashd al Shabi) across the border in Mosul, Iraq, and would those militias ultimately help Assad  also aligned with Iran  recapture Dair Alzour?

We all know that Hashd al Shabi are Iranian militias, they are under the control of Iran. And the U.S. is training them, complained one of the fighters, Abu Ghayas, 45.

Abu Imad, left, a spokesman in the Free Syrian Army allied with U.S.-backed forces, consults fighters at their base in an abandoned house in east Raqqah before heading to the front line earlier this month. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

The Free Syrian Army, another opposition militia, already has about 2,500 forces north of Dair Alzour, according to a spokesman leading about 1,000 of the fighters in Raqqah who identified himself as Abu Imad, the nickname hes known by on the battlefield. They are waiting to see if the battle becomes a proxy war.

The future of Syria is in the hands of America and Russia, like a card game, he said as he sat surrounded by dozens of fighters armed with rifles and automatic weapons at their post in an abandoned house east of the embattled city earlier this month.

Abu Imad, 30, mentioned what he saw as encouraging signs: President Trump called Assad an animal in an April interview with Fox News. When Syrian forces unleashed chemical weapons on civilians in the central city of Khan Sheikhoun in April, Trump ordered swift retribution in the form of missile strikes. U.S. forces had trained some of Abu Imads militia fighters, and promised to train an additional 500.

He hopes they follow through soon. There has been infighting among the militias. Earlier this month, a Free Syrian Army commander squabbled with a Kurdish counterpart after withdrawing some troops from Raqqah under fire. The Kurdish commander accused them of deserting. Abu Imad insisted they had only partially withdrawn.

The Sunni Muslim militia leader saw a showdown coming in Dair Alzour, at least between Syrian militias and Assads forces (he insisted the opposition is largely united).

If the regime takes Dair Alzour, they will not stop there. They will go to Raqqah and Hasakah to the north, he said. I want America to help us fight in Dair Alzour.

To the west in Resafa, a remote desert village built around an ancient fortress, Zinar Kobani, the local YPG commander, also said he hopes he can count on U.S. support if his forces continue on their collision course with Assads army.

Its not part of our plan to attack the regime. But if someone comes to fight us, we will fight back, said Kobani, 27.

U.S.-backed Syrian opposition fighters standing watch against Islamic State atop a water tower in northeastern Syria. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

For now, their red line is the water tower north of Resafa. If Assads forces try to pass it, closing the roughly five-mile dusty no mans land in between, YPG troops will return fire.

They recently overheard military radio chatter suggesting an attack by Syrian forces in coming days. Soon after, Syrian troops closed the gap. So far, they havent tried to pass the tower.

ALSO

The caliphate is all but lost, yet Islamic States threat remains potent

Rebuilding Mosul: The daunting mission to bring the demolished city back from the dead

Irans latest culture battle: Should women in cars keep their heads covered?

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf
Since Syria's civil war began six years ago, dozens of forces have been fighting to hold sway. Now many have united in eastern Syria against Islamic State with U.S. backing as the Syrian Democratic Forces, but they still wear the signature badges and insignia of their militias. The largest is the Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, and their female counterparts, the YPJ, about 25,000 strong, notable for their bright red and yellow patches, some of which feature the likeness of their Kurdish nationalist founder, Abdullah Apo Ocalan, imprisoned by Turkey for terrorism. Other forces fighting militants in eastern Syria include the Free Syrian Army , the Revolutionary Army, and the Syriac Military Council, or MFS.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF):

An alliance of about 55,000 fighters, about half from Kurdish militias, fighting Islamic State with U.S. support. They are fighting to recapture the self-declared capital of Islamic States caliphate, Raqqah. But some have already said their focus is shifting southeast to the strategic city of Dair Alzour. Syrian President Bashar Assad s forces have been fighting there with Russian and Iranian support. Its unclear what position the U.S. will take should the SDF clash with the Syrian army and its allies.

(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

Peoples Protection Units (YPG)

The largest militia in the Syrian Democratic Forces, the YPG was founded as the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, which Turkish authorities have accused of being linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the U.S. The PKKs founder, imprisoned by Turkey for life, is lionized by YPG fighters, who have posted Ocalans image on street corners, squares, checkpoints, schools and offices. Many say they are fighting for his socialist vision of a world governed by a confederation of local councils.

(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

Womens Protection Units (YPJ)

The female wing of the Peoples Protection Units, a Kurdish force inspired by Ocalan. His philosophy, detailed in a book Jineology, is based on gender equity and the notion that a societys success rests on how well women are treated. In accordance with that philosophy, Kurdish paramilitary units and the local political councils they support are jointly run by male and female leaders. Women serve in combat and have died on the front line fighting Islamic State. They often wear floral scarves, as do male YPG fighters, and patterned socks.

The Free Syrian Army

A U.S.-backed opposition militia fighting Islamic State as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, it has about a thousand fighters in Raqqah and 2,500 staging north of Dair Alzour, said Abu Imad, a commander in Raqqah.

(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

Syrian Self-Defense Forces:

Drafted by Kurdish authorities to defend northern Syria, they are local, multiethnic troops. Those conscripted train for about a month with the YPG. Some young men attempt to avoid the draft by fleeing to Iraq and Syria. But if caught by the Asayish, or Kurdish police, they can be forced to serve.

(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

Syriac Military Council (MFS)

A small militia with only a couple thousand fighters, many of them members of the Assyrian Christian minority in eastern Syria, the MFS has established a presence in west Raqqah and attracted volunteer fighters from America and other western countries, who said they have come to Syria to support Christians as a religious minority.

(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

Asayish, or Kurdish police:

Charged with holding areas cleared of Islamic State, the Asayish often find themselves working with the military to root out sleeper cells and confront militants. Officer Haval Mirwan works in an area west of Raqqah wearing a patch that honors his 36-year-old brother, Bilind, left, and friend Navi Sheraman, 20. Both were Kurdish soldiers killed two years ago fighting Islamic State. Mirwan had left Syria for Germany at the time, but returned to fight.

I will not leave until Daesh is gone, he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

This month, his officers caught a militant disguised as a woman milling with the afternoon crowd on a busy street in Mansoura, an area 10 miles west of Raqqah supposedly free of Islamic State for a month. He suspected the fighter was a spy, or had planned to attack. Now that we caught him, maybe they will send somebody else to do an explosion, Mirwan said.
By India Today Web Desk: Intentionally or unintentionally, Akshay Kumar's films since Baby (2015) have led to him being touted as the flag-bearer of patriotism in Bollywood. From fighting against terrorism (Baby) to open defecation (Toilet: Ek Prem Katha), Akshay has done it all, and is being hailed by some as 'Bharat Kumar'. However, the actor told Hindustan Times that he does not consciously choose films with a social message.

advertisement

"I am doing different kinds of characters and they are not chosen on the basis of a particular message to give in a film. Whichever script I find exciting, I take it up. Last year I did comedy with Housefull 3. I keep experimenting with genres. I don't want any particular image for myself, I don't want anybody to say that I am an action or a comedy hero. I want people to think ki ye koi bhi role kar leta hai (He can do any kind of a role)," he said.

The National Award-winning actor was popularly known as Bollywood's Khiladi, and was the go-to actor for action films. However, Akshay was not very happy with his action hero image. "I have gone through a lot because of image issues. In the first 14 years of my career, I had the image of only being an action hero. It came to a stage where I started hating action films. When you get typecast in a certain image, it's very difficult to come out of it," he told the publication.

OPINION: How Akshay Kumar is cementing his position as India's new Bharat Kumar

ALSO READ: Toilet Ek Prem Katha and the charm of being Akshay Kumar in 2017

ALSO READ: Step aside, Khans. 2017 is Akshay Kumar 2.0's year

OPINION: Will Toilet Ek Prem Katha play Midas for PM Modi's Swachh Bharat Abhiyan?

ALSO WATCH: Akshay Kumar wins National Award - How the actor became Sabse Bada Khiladi

--- ENDS ---
While other high school students spend their summer at the beach or by the pool, rising senior Jaspreet Kaur spends four to five days a week inside St. Luke's Hospital in Warren County.

The 17-year-old received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award in May from the Easton Area School District. She accumulated 720 volunteer hours at the hospital over two years.

Ever since she was in fifth grade, Kaur knew she wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. Her passion began when she saw her grandfather struggling with heart problems and her fascination grew stronger with every medical book she read.

"Since I want to be a doctor, I really wanted to volunteer in a hospital because I believed it would help shape my future career," Kaur said.

She works at the information desk, interacts with patients and helps with labs.

Once she started volunteering, she loved it too much to stop. With each patient she met, her passion grew stronger.

One particular case stands out. A cancer patient she became extremely close with encouraged her to push toward her goal, she said.

"She inspired me to make a change," Kaur said. "I saw that I could do so much to help others."

Her father, who also does a great deal of community service, played a major role in her decision to volunteer, Kaur said. He encouraged her and her siblings to help out the community as much as they could. This encouragement shaped her understanding of the importance of helping others.

Her volunteering will enhance her college application, but that's not what brings Kaur back to the hospital day in and day out. It's the impact she makes.

"I've had patients come and tell me that I made them smile or made their day... it feels good to hear that," Kaur said. "When you do things for others, it gives you that happiness that you really can't get from anywhere else."

Kaur works every Saturday from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. during the school year, and four to five days a week during the summer. She has volunteered 805 hours but hopes to break 1,000 before graduation.

She's a member of her school's computer science club, German club, Future Business Leaders of America, Model UN, debate club and scholastic scrimmage.

After high school, she hopes to attend Drexel University in Philadelphia. For medical school, she is considering Drexel or the University of Pennsylvania.

Kaur couldn't believe it when she received the presidential award.

"I'm really thankful for the Easton (Area) School District, my principal and my manager, Mary-Beth, for giving me the opportunities to succeed."

Her love for volunteering keeps growing.

"I believe that everyone should volunteer at least once in their lives," Kaur said. "It definitely will help out the community."

Alyssa Mursch may be reached at amursch@lehighvalleylive.com. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
We're less than a month away from a solar eclipse that will be visible to the entire continent. When the moon passes in front of the sun on Aug. 21, it will be the first time in 38 years that a total solar eclipse is visible in the continental U.S.

Here is an idea of what to expect as eclipse day approaches.

Where can it be seen?

All of North America will be able to see at least a partial eclipse on Aug. 21. A 70-mile-wide path from Oregon to South Carolina will see totality. (NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio)

The moon will pass in front of the sun, casting a shadow that will at least be partially visible from all of North America, weather permitting. But the path of totality -- where the moon completely covers the disk of the sun -- will be a line about 70 miles wide through 14 states, from Lincoln Beach, Ore., to Charleston, S.C.

Other major cities in or near that line include Nashville, Kansas City and St. Louis. The farther you are from that line, the less the sun will appear to be covered.

Those who choose to observe from home in the Lehigh Valley can expect to see between 70 and 80 percent coverage.

When will it happen?

The exact time of the eclipse on Aug. 21 depends on where you're viewing it. But for the Lehigh Valley, the partial eclipse will begin about 1:20 p.m., reach maximum eclipse at 2:43 and end at 3:59.

Totality, if you're in a place where it's visible, will last about 2 minutes, 40 seconds.

An interactive NASA map allows you to check the eclipse times at any location.

How can I view it?

Very carefully. You should never look directly into the sun. For an eclipse, special glasses are required to protect your eyes.

There are plenty of places online to order eclipse glasses, including Walmart and Amazon. Warby Parker will be giving them away for free at its stores starting Aug. 1 (its closest locations to the Lehigh Valley are in Philadelphia and New York City). NASA has more information on its eclipse website about how to make sure the glasses you get are effective.

If, when the day comes, clouds ruin your eclipse-viewing experience, NASA will livestream the event at www.nasa.gov/eclipselive.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The gardai discovered a number of stolen bicycles at a house in Portlaoise which had been dismantled and repainted.

At last weeks district court, a police property act application was made by Detective Garda Brian Kennedy, who gave evidence that a quantity of stolen bicycles was seized by the gardai at an address at Harpurs Lane in Portlaoise, in October, 2013.

The resident of the house, a Mr Dwane, provided the gardai with a telephone number, but Det Kennedy said this number was not answered.

The detective said that there is no resident residing at the address now. Mr Dwane was supposed to be residing at Oakleaf Place, Portlaoise, but he is not there.

In April of this year, Mr Dwane provided a new address in Rosenallis, but Det Kennedy said that a notice sent by the gardai to this address was returned and the current location of Mr Dwane was unknown.

Det Kennedy asked that the property seized go to the State.

Judge Catherine Staines asked could the bicycles be given to people who needed them, but Det Kennedy said that the bicycles were not fit for use as they had been dismantled with parts missing and some parts repainted.

Judge Staines granted the application for the property to go to the State.
Abbeyleix deserves its place in the sun and let's hope the Entente Florale judges think so too.

The heritage town pulled out all the stops for the judging which took place last week.

However, as the judges themselves pointed out this was not just a once off, or done merely for this occasion.

Rather, they noted the years of work that have gone into Abbeyleix and its environs, which have created the town which exists today, which can rightfully take its place as amongst the best that is on offer in the country, and indeed, Europe.

They were impressed with the passion of the people in Abbeyleix for the town and their role in it.

Its worth noting too that Ireland is the only country that has entries from voluntary tidy towns groups.

The competition highlighted the complexity of what goes on in Abbeyleix, which can often be overlooked or passed over if you are not from the place.

And this ranges from the planting of flowers and vegetables to a non-electrical water pump system and environmental education in the schools.

The rich diversity of what the town has to offer makes it a standard bearer for the rest of the county.

The Abbeyleix Bog Project is a case in point.

Rather than lose the bog to peat harvesting the local community galvanised themselves and saved it as a public amenity and a truly valuable eco system.

Now, it is one of the county's most prized and valuable tourist and leisure amenities, and the local community should rightly take no small measure of pride in it.

Of course, success in anything is rarely achieved overnight and not without the participation of a number of stakeholders.

Primarily, though, the motivaton and enthusism comes from the ground up, in this instance the local community themselves.

When you consider some of the categories under which this compeititon is judged - water quality, waste management, pollution reduction - to name but a few - the template is there for every town.

Abbeyleix is hardly the only community in Laois this active.

In fact there are many examples of it.

Their achievements do deserve rightful recognition, however, and let's hope that come September, this happens.
DM Kanwal Tanuj had gone to meet the villagers in Aurangabad district to spread awareness about building toilets and to tell them why open defecation was bad for everyone.

By India Today Web Desk: Apparently on a drive to promote Swachh Bharat campaign (Clean India drive), district magistrate of Bihar's Aurangabad Kanwal Tanuj ended up telling a poor villager that if he did not have money to build a toilet at home, he should sell his wife.

DM Kanwal Tanuj had gone to meet the villagers in Aurangabad district to spread awareness about building toilets and to tell them why open defecation was bad for everyone. But, he stirred a huge controversy with his uncharitable remarks.

advertisement

The DM was seen addressing a gathering at a village in the district where he tried to link toilet with the dignity of women. He said, "Save the dignity of your women if you can. How poor are you? Raise your hands and tell me if the value of your wife is lower than Rs 12,000. Listen to me first. Don't raise your hands."

Then Kanwal Tanuj said, "Which man would say that take the dignity of my wife and give me Rs 12,000? Is there anyone like that?"

#WATCH Aurangabad's DM Kanwal Tanuj says, " go sell your wife" to a person while addressing a public gathering on cleanliness (22.07) #Bihar pic.twitter.com/kqkQpVdC1q- ANI (@ANI_news) July 23, 2017

Responding to his open queries thrown at the villagers, one from the audience said that he did not have enough money to build a toilet at home. "Sir, I don't have the money to build a toilet," the man said.

DM Kanwal Tanuj responded by saying, "I will talk to you. If that is the case then go and sell your wife. If this is the mentality you have then go and sell your wife. So many people talk about advance payment, they get advance and then spend it on useless things. "

In Septmber, 2016 Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had launched two schemes as part of his Saat Nishchay or Seven Resolves of state government. The schemes were Har Ghar Nal Ka Jal and Shauchalay Nirman, Ghar Ka Sammaan.

The schemes were part of larger Clean India drive. The schemes were cover all towns and villages of the state by the end of 2019.

Under the Shauchalay Nirman, Ghar Ka Sammaan, a beneficiary is given an aid of Rs 12,000 by the state government for building toilets to end open defecation. DM Kanwal Tanuj was addressing the gathering about the same scheme.

ALSO READ:

Rajasthan activist Zafar Khan objects to photography of women defecating in open, gets beaten to death

Delhi: Man beaten to death for stopping 2 youths from urinating in public

ALSO WATCH:

Rajasthan activist lynched for objecting to women being photographed

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
He didnt talk compassion, he lived compassion were the words spoken by Michael OConnor, older brother of the late Ballymore Eustace man Gerry OConnor, whose recent funeral attracted one of the largest crowds witnessed in recent years.

There was a massive turn out at his funeral on the weekend of July 1/2 from the community and from his friends and colleagues at Cheeverstown House where he worked for ten years.

Aged only 53, the suddenness and brevity of his illness shocked not only his family but the extended community and the many other organisations he aided during his life.

Michael spoke of a young Gerry growing up in Alton, in the UK, the second youngest of five boys. Their parents hailed from Bantry, Co Cork and Gerry, above all of them, loved the family holidays home, striking up a close rapport with his uncle.

He loved farm life, particularly driving a horse-drawn delivery cart. He made regular trips home to Bantry so it was no surprise when he and his wife Tracy decided to come to Ireland to live.

Sixteen years ago, they chose a home on the back road, Plunkett Road where they lived for a short time before settling at the Sycamores, Broadleas.

Gerry was a deeply religious man but he lived his faith, lived a good life, helping others at every opportunity. From the onset, he chose social work as his favoured career and was particularly interested in special needs. Michael stated that social inclusion and treating everyone equally was paramount to Gerry, hence he had worked with St Michaels House, St John of God and at Cheeverstown.

The huge attendance and support of colleagues and residents of Cheeverstown during his illness and then in support of the family after his passing was a tribute to the mans high standing within the Cheeverstown community.

He and Tracy were committed to the Samaritans organisation and Michael noted that Gerry also had the gift, not just to listen when people needed it, but also to spot potential volunteers; Gerry was noted for his ability to recruit and secure more helpers for the organisation.

Tracy and Gerry also gave weekend counselling twice a year at Barretstown to families of children with serious illness.

They were actively involved in parish activities with Gerry compiling content for The Bell, a weekly publication for the Church of the Immaculate Conception. They were widely regarded as good neighbours, decent people and a couple who were dedicated to the community of Ballymore Eustace.

Michael stated that only shortly before his illness was diagnosed, the family received a video on Whatsapp with Tracy, Gerry and the family dog, Jules out hill walking, looking happy out and content with the world.

Gerrys faith was a crutch for him during his illness but his death shocked the community who are indebted to him on so many levels.

He is survived by his wife Tracy, children Jack, Tom and Fionnuala; mother Kathleen, brothers Michael, Joe, David, Peter and Christopher and the extended family.

A good soul, always the Good Samaritan, the late Gerry OConnor, RIP.
A writer who spent time in Clane in the early 1970s has written a book which features some of his experiences in the area.

Mario Martinez, who spent some time at Clongowes Wood College, has written a new book, called Ghost of a Guttersnipe, a fact based fictional work which features the ghost of Adolf Hitler.

A couple of chapters feature Clongowes Wood College. Two chapters in the book are about the college. I knew many of the Jesuits very well, he said.

An American from New York of Spanish descent he currently lives in Heswall on the Wirral, near Liverpool, UK.

His parents were from Lugo and Galicia and left Spain for the USA in the 1890s.

His mother was born in New York and his father in Cuba.

Mr Martinez arrived in Clongowes in 1972 as a fundraising consultant to help the college with a project which resulted in school improvements.

He told the Leader: In doing so  as was said in Ireland at the time  I fell among friends. It was a very happy time for me.

The book, published by Olympia of London, is about the ghost of Adolf Hitler, and is a fact-based work of historical fiction. The supernatural runs through the book and the Jesuits Clongowes Wood College comes sharply into focus as my yarn unfolds, he said.

I once lived and worked at Clongowes and what Ive written about the college and its Jesuits has been done so with respect and affection for the school.

Mr Martinez said he has been in contact with headmaster, Chris Lumb. I worked for the college twice as well as for others in Ireland  the Redemptorist Order of Ligore House in Rathgar and the country parishes of Holy Cross and Graignamanagh. My fundraising work enabled these to restore their ancient abbeys in county Tipperary and county Kilkenny, he said.

The authors previous books include Ladys Men, about the disappearance of an American Liberator bomber in April 1943 and Hell, Fire and Damnation which is about the raising of 500,000 for the building of a Redemptorist seminary in Dublin.

The cover of 'Ghost of a Guttersnipe'
STEP up or step away is the message to Transport Minister Shane Ross from Limerick TD Niall Collins.

Deputy Collins has accused the minister of failing to do his job and appoint directors to vacancies on the Shannon Foynes Port Company board.

If he is not prepared to carry out his duties and responsibilities, why doesnt he resign and let some other minister do the job? Deputy Collins declared.

Instead, he said, Minister Ross is completely fixated about his campaign on judicial appointments.

Deputy Collins warned that vacancies on the Shannon Foynes Port Company board were putting the company at risk of not having a quorum and being unable to conduct meetings in a legal sense.

While this is not the case at present, he said, it was his information that it might shortly be the case.

Given that Foynes is one of the largest ports in the country, a Tier One port and such an important economic driver for Limerick and the Mid-West, I find it unacceptable that the Minister is treating us in Limerick like this.

It is another example of the Dublin versus rural divide, he continued.

He thinks political appointment of people is wrong, Deputy Collins added but pointed out that the Minister is obliged in law to make these appointments, as recommended by the Public Appointments Service.

He is failing abjectly to carry out his legal duties, he said.

The Fianna Fail TD pointed out that he had discovered through a parliamentary question that there is a raft of vacancies on all stage agencies under the remit of Minister Ross. Commercial, semi-state agencies are suffering under Minister Rosss watch, he claimed. He cant take any decision at all in relation to addressing the gaps and vacancies at board level.

What is going on? These are agencies of state with obligations under company law and many other headings but they find themselves with corporate structures being fundamentally undermined by the inaction of the Minister, Deputy Shane Ross.

He has stated applications are with the Public Appointments Service, Deputy Collins said.

A spokesman for the Shannon Foynes Port Company confirmed that there is at present a quorum in place for the board.
HARD work, prayer and eating lightly are among the secrets to longevity, said Sr Eileen Doyle, who celebrated her 104th birthday this Saturday.

A second cousin of the executed patriot Kevin Barry, Sr Eileen, who is the oldest nun living at Mount St Vincent on OConnell Avenue, planned to quietly celebrate the day, and did not want any party in honour of her longevity.

The second youngest in a family of nine, she has out-lived all her siblings, and her parents.

The first principal of Ballynanty school in Limerick, she said she was always a healthy little devil and has few vices, bar her sweet tooth. A pioneer for years, she still rarely has an alcoholic drink.

I worked hard, I think that kept me going. I eat lightly, but still I eat enough. Ive never had a serious illness, and love reading and music.

Born on July 22, 1913 in Wicklow, she shares her birth date, she noted, with Prince George of Cambridge, in addition to the late fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.

She was only seven years old when her famous cousin Kevin Barry was the first republican to be executed by the British since the leaders of the Easter Rising, in November 1920, at the age of 18.

Eleven years his junior, she said her cousins family lived over the border in Carlow, and while she was too young to remember those dramatic days, she recalled that one of Kevin Barrys favourite songs was Bantry Bay.

While Sr Eileen has lived in Limerick for most of her life, she also lived in America for 11 years, teaching in Florida and in Mobile, Alabama in the 1970s.

When the convent closed at Mount St Vincent some years ago, Sr Eileen was one of some 23 nuns who moved to a new, more modern home on the same grounds.

However, she said that number has now dwindled as some nuns have moved to live in nursing homes, but generally she noted that they have all lived to a great age.

Looking back, she says that joining the nuns was the right decision for her.

Im happier that I chose this way of life. I dont know would I have been able to face all those problems that married people have.

On her 100th birthday, Sr Eileen received the centenarian bounty of 2,540 from President Michael D. Higgins, which is paid to Irish citizens when they turn 100.

The oldest living Limerick woman is believed to be Bridie MacNeil, from Glin, who turned 105 on St Valentines day, February 14 last.

She is one of just fifteen 105 year-olds in the State, according to the office of the President.

The third eldest in a family of nine, she has also outlived her fellow eight siblings, and enjoys a drop of Baileys liqueur in her coffee before bedtime each time, which she said helps her sleep.
UK LABORATORY analysis of water samples taken during an investigation into buried chemicals in Limerick have come back clear.

In May, whistleblowers contacted Deputy Niall Collins and the Limerick Leader saying up to 20 barrels of toxic waste were secretly buried in a field in Friarstown, Ballysheedy approximately 25 years ago.

After the story appeared Deputy Collins got a number of calls corroborating their claims and a further allegation that asbestos was buried in a separate hole on the site.

The whistleblowers believe the chemicals are connected to a "circle of cancer". The say up to 30 people have died from cancer in the Friarstown area in the last 15 years.

It is understood the current landowner doesn't know that anything is buried there. Limerick City and County Council launched an investigation. Water sourced from three private wells surrounding the area of concern was sent to the UK for analysis.

They were tested for 12 heavy metals and up to 29 other contaminants. All results were negative and based on these results, no evidence has come to light to suggest any contamination of the water table in the area, said a spokesperson.

Details of the alleged incident, as provided to the council, have not been sufficient enough to identify the exact location or nature of the alleged dumping, they say.

However, an area around the national monument site has been identified as being of interest. Because of the legislative restrictions protecting national monuments, any investigation in this area would be subject to licence. The council is currently investigating its options in this regard, said a spokesperson.

Deputy Niall Collins welcomed the council's "thorough and conscientious" investigation.

It is good news that the water samples have come back clear but that doesn't disguise the fact that a number of people have come forward to corroborate the whistleblowers that there is buried toxic waste in Friarstown. There have also been allegations made to me of asbestos been dumped there separately.

Locals are very worried and I have received a number of phone calls from concerned citizens. There is a very high occurrence of cancer which the whistleblowers called a circle of cancer.

"Despite the fact that tests on the water have come back clear I am calling on the council to now begin progressing the investigation on the ground and remove whatever waste is buried there.

"It is complicated by the need for licences due to the national monument but this remains a public health issue of serious concern and must be tackled," said Deputy Collins.
THE mother of an 11-year-old boy who missed 65 days of school over the last year told the education and welfare officer from Tusla she was afraid that her son, if educated, would lose part of his culture.

She didnt want her child to have country ways, Liam Rogers, education and welfare officer with Tusla said in evidence at Newcastle West court where the boys mother and father appeared before Judge Mary Larkin, charged with breaching the Education and Welfare Act.

Mr Rogers said the boy was very bright and intelligent and would be one of the top pupils in his class but he missed 65 days in the school year 2016/207 and 85 the year before.

Various reasons were given for absence, the court heard, Nine days were covered by a medical cert, another because it was a fine day and on another occasion the school was told the boy had to go to a solicitor on business.

But the main reason, Tusla solicitor Derry ODonovan said, was that, because her son, a member of the Travelling community, was being educated, she was fearful he would lose part of his culture.

She also indicated if it came to the point, she would have to send the child to England, Mr ODonovan said, explaining that the childs father was away a lot. However, he continued, the mother had at all times being polite and co-operative and he was prepared to adjourn the case if the mother would give a sworn undertaking to the court to send her son to school.

No person has ever been damaged by education, Judge Mary Larkin said. If that is her defence, it is not an adequate defence, she said.

I would like Pavee Point to come and set out to me why they believe education is not appropriate for a member of the Travelling Community.

The Travelling community lives in this country and are obliged to obey the laws of this country, the judge added.

I assure you, the children in Syria, Iraq and Mosul would be very happy to think they had a school to go to, Judge Larkin said. I do not accept you cannot send your child to school.

The mother gave an undertaking to send her son to school and the case was adjourned to October to monitor his attendance.
A Limerick Lady from the heart of the city, I went to Scoil Ide for primary school, Laurel Hill for secondary school, and later studied Arts at the University of Limerick.

In 2012, though, I grew some wings and found myself travelling and working in Vancouver, Canada. Two years later, I returned to Ireland and I am now based in Dublin. Having assisted in Directing many successful events both here and in Canada I jumped at the opportunity of being involved with The Limericks Summer Festival. Dominic Taylor from the Limerick Writers Centre (LWC) helped with the development of the competition. Initially we set our sights on International audiences for The Gathering Festival (2012) which was ambitious but, in fact, we received entries from over 16 countries (including South Africa and Australia).

As a Director, you yearn to lead (but I dont mean control!)

To invest time in a project I really need to feel that I am offering something new. The Limericks Festival, for example, combines my twin loves for poetry and marketing. Festivals and events are all about bringing people with similar interests together. Being then able to move things forward in a strategic manner, promoting Limerick City, and acting as an outreach to all communities, is a dream come true. However, organising a festival is no easy task. So, to give-up on Limerick, which is the home of The Limerick, would be a lost opportunity. In fact, it is to be greatly hoped that an annual programme of events built around the festival will be a legacy for our City both now and in the future.

Last year, I assisted in organising an annual walking festival in Kerry, with walkers and nature enthusiasts from all over the world.

Poetry, like walking, is something that is accessible to everyone. People often use it as a means of escape. No subject, theme or attitude, is off limits. Language gives everyone the freedom to explore and to say how they truly feel through the medium of words. Today, I participate in an online poetry forum where members share thoughts, words and experiences. I keep my personal poetry private but the beauty of poetry is that anyone can harness their inner creativity if they put pen to paper. Sharing how you feel, even if it is just about a subject in five lines, can be very liberating. I fell in love with Derek Walcotts poetry when I was younger. When you read poetry you should be able to feel, taste and hear the words on the page. Walcott uses his poetry to carve out notions of identity while tapping into the emotions of the poet.

My father was a budding entrepreneur, bursting with new innovations and my mother is one of the hardest workers I know.

They always encouraged me to be creative and greatly shaped my love for turning ideas into reality. Without passion there are no dreams, no hopes, no willingness to work hard at something; passion is the longing required for anything to grow. If I hear of a project that is expanding, where people have come together due to a similar interest, I get hooked. I have participated in innovation seminars where you have the chance to hear individuals speak of their hunger for success, this is where my inspiration comes from. I spoke at a Tech Summit in the RDS last year where you had the chance to meet people from all walks of life who are not only driven for themselves but transfer energy to each other. For me, success, therefore, has nothing to do with achieving fame or financial gains. Instead, it means waking-up happy to be doing what you do, at least five days a week. Time passes quickly so we need to be sure that it is well spent.

Complex notions of identity have never really left the Irish and in the process became our muse.

Rural Ireland, may indeed feel, that they continually suffer from their position on the side-lines but it is this alienated stance that makes us so unique. For example, Limericks troubled past may seem like a sore point for some, but for me, it is essential. It is the reason why we are bursting with stories to be told. Without these stories communities are lost. Currently, I am reading a book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. It describes the evolution of humankind as an imagined order, pre-dating our foraging ancestors. With the cognitive revolution, around 70,000 years ago, came imagination, learning, and innovative ways of thinking. Our language enabled us to share inner ideas and emotions which was crucial to our development. Without those myths, we wouldnt have been able to survive and prosper.

The Arts in Ireland are thriving at the moment; however, funding is a massive issue nationwide.

For example, my brother is a tenor, who has been to Stuttgart, Amsterdam and Vienna, to research their facilities. These countries invest heavily in artistic infrastructure. Sadly, this forward thinking isnt at all evident here in Ireland. Personally, I think we need to focus on supporting local talent, whether that be through smaller grants, part-time funding, or employment for key individuals. This would mean that people better understand that the funding pot is more accessible. Currently, it feels like it is reserved only for the big players. Wouldnt it be better to have every small initiative supported rather than focusing on one or two potential revenue generators? Tourism Ireland, for example, has done an excellent job in harnessing local talent, the government and Arts Council should follow suit!

Bring Your Limericks To Limerick Literary Festival will take place from August 25  27. For more information visit: https://limericksfest.wixsite.com/ limerickliteraryfest and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/irishpoetryfest/
The suspected militants were killed between April 26 and 27, in the Shibganj area of Chapai Nawabganj.

The suspected militants were killed between April 26 and 27, in the Shibganj area of Chapai Nawabganj.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: Two planners and suspected militants of the Holey Artisan Bakery attack at Gulshan, were killed in a police operation in Chapai Nawabganj district in April, Bangladesh Police has said. Both the militants, Basharuzzaman alias Chocolate and Mizanur Rahman alias Chota Mizan, were on the most wanted list.

In a meeting of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, Monirul Islam, Chief of the Counter Terrorism Unit, said that this information was found from interrogation of recently arrested militant Sohel Mahfuz.

advertisement

The suspected militants were killed on April 26 and 27, in the Shibganj area of Chapai Nawabganj, in the village of Trimohoni Shibnagar under Mobarakpur Union, during operation 'Eagle Hunt' conducted by the Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit.

Police had recovered the bodies of four militants after the two-day operation. Monirul Islam said, "The identity of one of the four people killed was confirmed immediately. The identity of the remaining three was not known."

During the interrogation of Mahfuz he revealed that militant Basharuzzaman, alias Chocolate Bashar and younger Mizan were killed there. "We've came to understand with militant Mahfuz's statement, where militants Basharuzzaman Chocolate and Chota Mizan were killed. We've collected the DNA of the dead to be more sure. It will be cross checked with their family members to confirm their identity," Monirul Islam added.

NIA DIDN'T COME TO DHAKA

Media reports have said that Indian Intelligence Agency NIA had come to Bangladesh to interrogate militant Sohel Mahfuz, suspected of being involved in a terrorist attack in Burdwan, India.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mohammad Asaduzzaman Mia denied the news saying that no team of the NIA had come to Dhaka. Calling the news baseless, he said that no such interrogation could take place without the permission of the court.

Bangladeshi security analysts believe that the Pakistani intelligence agency has been involved in Holly Artisan attacks. Police also said that the weapons used in the attack were entered into Bangladesh through India . DMP commissioner Mohammad Asaduzzaman Mia said, "We had left the post-mortem report and forensic report so far but have got it now. Information given by Sohel Mahfuz is under scrutiny at the final stage of the case. We hope we will be able to place charge sheet of the case in a very short time."

On July 1st, 2016, the house no. 5 on road no. 79 at Gulshan-2 previously housed the cafe where a group of militants shot dead 23 people including 17 foreigners and a chef in an overnight siege. Indian national Tarishi Jain was among those who were killed.

advertisement

ALSO READ:

Bangladesh: Mastermind of Holey Artisan attack among 4 neo-JMB militants arrested

Dhaka terror attack: Police hand over Holey Artisan Bakery to owner

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: colleges

Puducherry, Jul 22 (PTI) Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi has come out with a suggestion for the Puducherry government to adopt an ordinance to ensure 50 per cent quota for local students in MBBS courses at private medical colleges here.

She said in a WhatsApp message, which was circulated to media persons tonight, that the Assembly "ought to pass an ordinance in this regard".

advertisement

Bedi promised that she would give her "full support" if the Assembly brings an ordinance to ensure the introduction of 50 per cent quota in MBBS courses at private medical colleges for the benefit of students from the Union Territory.

The former IPS officer wanted to know "why they (the government) are not doing this. I shall fully support them if an ordinance is brought in for 50 per cent quota in MBBS courses for local students".

"When they have all the time for various other issues, why should they not do this as it would... benefit students from Puducherry," she said. PTI CORR NSD ANB

--- ENDS ---
The proposed bridge is said to be 326 metres long and will connect commuters from Race Course Road towards Hare Krishna Road and the railway under-bridge in Sheshadripuram.

By Nolan Pinto: Early on Sunday morning, citizens in large numbers held a silent protest at the Shivananda circle. They were protesting against the construction of a bridge proposed to be built over the Shivananda Cirlce at a cost of Rs 19.85 crore. The cabinet had approved this project on June 8 and overall costs after land acquisition could come up to Rs 50 crore.

advertisement

The proposed bridge is said to be 326 metres long and will connect commuters from Race Course Road towards Hare Krishna Road and the railway under-bridge in Sheshadripuram. But residents tell India Today this projects will only create more bottlenecks. Dinesh, a resident who came out to protest said the actual issue is the underpass adding, "We are not against development. What we are against are the unwanted and unnecessary flyovers that are coming up."

Another protestor explained what the real issue is, and what the government needs to do. According to Mohan, the width of Hare Krishna Road between Jeevan building, adjoining Kumara Park and the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce is hardly enough to provide service roads on either side of the ramp. Furthermore, downward movement of vehicles towards the narrow road leading to the railway under-bridge will lead to a bottleneck.

"We do not want the government to take the public lightly. They need to take us into consideration before going ahead with such projects," he said, adding, "Instead of spending almost Rs 50 crore on the bridge, they can spend it on widening the railway under-bridge."

The project will also lead to the felling of almost 30 trees which can damage the ecological balance in the area.

Local authorities began the work of soil testing a few days ago and this led citizens to organize the silent protest before it is too late. The protests were supported by Citizens of Bengaluru (CfB), the group that successfully led the movement against the Rs 1,800-crore flyover that was to come up from Basaveshwara Circle to Hebbal.

--- ENDS ---
Thousands of firefighters continued to make progress Saturday on a wildfire burning west of Yosemite National Park in the states Gold Country, officials said.

The Detwiler Fire, which started last Sunday and spread across Mariposa County, grew overnight by about 200 acres. By Saturday evening, the fire had charred 75,500 acres, but a crew of around 4,600 firefighters had increased containment to 40 percent, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
By PTI: Bengaluru, Jul 23 (PTI) An international conference on B R Ambedkar today said "regressive" social and political forces were "systematically dismantling institutions" which are the nations foundations and urged people to dedicate themselves to protecting and enhancing the Constitutional path.

The Bengaluru Declaration, unveiled at the conclusion of the three-day conference, also made about 40 recommendations including reservations in private sector employment, promotions, private higher educational institutions for SCs, STs and OBCs.

advertisement

The declaration, unveiled by Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, noted that the countrys founding fathers sought to ensure that every person enjoyed equal rights and that no one gets left out or held behind.

Regressive social and political forces have consistently resisted and tried to undermine both the constitutional idea of India and the efforts of the state in the last 70 years, said the declaration passed at the conference, inaugurated by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on July 21.

It said these forces also seek to homogenise India and restore the principles of "hierarchy", "patriarchy" and "fundamentalism" rejected by founders at the birth of the nation.

"Now that they enjoy state power, they are systematically dismantling the institutions that are the foundations of our society, by undermining Indias holistic welfare and affirmative action architecture and by destroying pluralistic fabric of our nation. This poses a grave threat to the idea of India espoused by the freedom movement and spelt out in the Constitution," it added.

Stating that these concerns needed to be addressed "urgently", and these attacks resisted "boldly", the deceleration said"it is time for the Indian people to recognise the constitutional path we chose 70 years ago and dedicate ourselves to protect and enhance this legacy."

The conference, organised by the state government to commemorate Ambedkars 126th birth anniversary and inaugurated in the presence of social reformers Martin Luther King-III, and Noble laureate Kailash Satyarthi, among others, saw participation from national and international academics, activists and policy-makers as speakers.

According to the organisers, the declaration is a compilation of recommendations received from consultations held with academics, activists and policymakers, from discussions held at the conference and from ordinary citizens across India.

Some of the recommendations made in the declaration include - freeing police service from political control, and reform it by fully implementing police reforms, so that they become a service provider to citizens rather than a force to impose control, a special Act for the prevention of caste, religious and gender discrimination in educational institutions.

It also suggested that the Election Commission should be conferred with extensive regulatory powers to ensure that political parties mandatorily uphold fundamental rights and adhere to constitutional values and comply with internal democratic procedures.

advertisement

It should also ensure that religious beliefs and practices cannot be mobilised in any form in electoral or governance practices.

Protecting media freedom and judicial reforms are also among the recommendations.

Pointing out at the under-representation of SC, ST, OBC, women and minorities in employment, the declaration suggests that state should establish an Equal Opportunities Commission which should adopt creative strategies and policies to achieve equity in the public and private sectors.

The state shall put in place an appropriate institutional mechanism to ensure all the sub-castes among SCs and STs enjoy equal access to benefits of reservations, it further said adding that landless Dalits should be provided with agricultural land as a legal entitlement. PTI KSU VS KUN

--- ENDS ---
"They always live with you, people you lose like that," muses Prince William, the 35-year-old Duke of Cambridge and future king of England, whose mother, Diana, was killed in a Paris car crash 20 years ago next month. "My mother lives with me every day."

HBO's hour-long documentary, "Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy" (airing Monday night) offers this rare conversation with Diana's sons, William and his brother Harry, 32, who get out old their mother's old photo albums and use the opportunity, as they must, to promote some of her favorite charities and causes. The film, which was directed by Ashley Gething and kept under wraps by HBO, is a brisk and polite review of Diana's life, the way some of her closest friends, employees and relatives remember it, including her 1981 marriage to Prince Charles, their separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996.

A month ahead of an onslaught of anniversary coverage that includes at least half a dozen TV specials, "Diana, Our Mother" is likely all we'll hear from William and Harry this time around, and, to be entirely honest, it feels like just enough. Just enough of the anguish. Just enough review of her good works (visiting AIDS patients when no one else would, campaigning against land mines). Just enough rumination on her phenomenal wattage.

It's too easy to turn the story of Diana - and her death especially - into a gruesome set of conspiracy theories or a sappy, never-ending wallow. At some point, we really do have to let go and let it become history. "Diana, Our Mother" is a coordinated attempt to once more try to head the wolves off at the pass. Then and now it's an impossible task.

Time has worked some of its kindnesses, however. Held to the even harsher light of the 21st-century mediasphere, the pictures and footage of Diana in her prime seem like valued artifacts from 100 years ago, safely keeping her in another era's definition of superstardom. There are still trouble spots to be considered: her give-and-take relationship with the media and the paparazzi that hounded her to the moment she died, and the fickle public who could never get enough of her. There is something yet to learn about her influence on the royal family, which is still deeply felt.

And what of her sons, who, at 15 and 12, so stoically walked behind her casket and then put away nearly all public expressions of their grief? How do they think of her now? What do they remember? They remember her as their mum.

William is more circumspect in the film, recalling Diana's principles and approach to her duty more than the private moments they shared (aside from the embarrassing time his mother invited a trio of famous supermodels to visit him on his birthday).

"She understood there was a real life outside the palace walls," William says. "She wanted us to see it from a very young age." She took the boys with her to homeless shelters, one of which William still regularly visits.

Harry, who says he has only cried once since his mother died and thinks he still has grief issues to work through ("There's a lot of [it] that still needs to be let out"), has memories that are more emotional and tied to specific moments: Her laughter. Her driving her car with the top down and Enya songs blaring.

"Our mother was a total kid, through and through," Harry says. "One of her mottos to me (was) 'You can be as naughty as you want - just don't get caught.'"

Both men remember the last phone call from her, some hours before she died. They were spending the summer with their father and grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, in Scotland; when Diana called, they were eager to get back outside and gave her short shrift. Harry says he's regretted that fleeting moment "for the rest of my life, how short that phone call was."

"Diana, Our Mother" also seems to be a chance for William and Harry to subtly transmit to Diana that everything turned out OK. She'd be 56 now, probably doting on her two grandchildren. The brothers don't shy away from imagining it, but they don't elaborate on it either.

Her legacy to her sons - and perhaps to all of us who are so busy sharing intimate details on social networks - is to be careful about how much you give away. A little, not a lot. While managing to elide most of Diana's more unseemly entanglements with the media, the film includes one of the most memorable clips that exists of her; the time she took William and Harry on a ski holiday in Austria. She is seen walking up to a camera scrum and blocking the a video lens with her hand, begging the photographers to leave her and her sons alone. It's still heartbreaking to watch, and it has left William, especially, with a lot to say on the subject.

"I think it was an industry that lost its way quite heavily," William says. "Lost its sense of dignity, lost its perspective on what was appropriate."

The only times he remembers his mother crying, he adds, had something to do with the media. "Harry and I lived through that, and one lesson I've learned is you never let (the media) in too far, because it's very difficult to get them back out again. You've got to maintain a barrier and a boundary, because if both sides cross it, a lot of pain can come from it."

---

"Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy" (65 minutes) airs Monday at 10 p.m. ET on HBO.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A local doctor has been arrested for allegedly harassing his soon-to-be ex-wife's friend, accusing both of being "lesbian girlfriends," according to court documents obtained Friday.

On Wednesday, Rene Rolando Compean, 57, was charged with harassment.

Compean's attorney, Marc Gonzalez, declined to comment on the allegations against his client, citing an ongoing investigation.

RELATED: Laredo gynecologist confessed to downloading child porn after employees found it on USB, according to records

The case unfolded June 19, when a San Antonio woman called Laredo police saying she had received a voicemail on her cellphone. In the voicemail, a man said a sexual slur and added, 'Hope you enjoy it b***h,'" states the criminal complaint.

The woman told police she immediately identified the man as Compean.

She said to police she is friends with his wife, who is going through a divorce. Compean has falsely accused her and his wife of being lesbian girlfriends, according to court documents.

Investigators retrieved the voicemail as evidence.

The woman told police she had recently blocked Compean's number to prevent him from calling her.

RELATED: Suspect charged in harassment case

"However, (she) now suspected that Dr. Compean was using the on-call answering service operator from (a hospital) to get through," the complaint states.

Police said they tried meeting with Compean on July 4. He declined to meet with police and stated he had an attorney handling the case.

Compean's wife stated he was upset because she and her adult children went to a concert in San Antonio during Father's Day weekend, the complaint states.

Compean allegedly sent his wife text messages accusing her of meeting with her friend in San Antonio, according to the complaint. LPD said they recovered screenshots of those text messages.
New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci hasn't always shared the political views of the administration he now serves.

In previous tweets, the Wall Street financier called Hillary Clinton "incredibly competent" and appeared to be at odds with his new boss on issues such as gun control, climate change, Islam and illegal immigration.

But on Saturday, the day after he became Trump's communications director, he announced on Twitter that he's deleting his old tweets, which he said are only a distraction.

"Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction. I serve @POTUS agenda & that's all that matters"

- Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 22, 2017

"The politics of 'gotcha' are over. I have thick skin and we're moving on to @POTUS agenda serving the American people," he wrote in a follow-up tweet nearly two hours later.

Scaramucci's old tweets began resurfacing Friday. Some have been deleted, but they've since been immortalized by other Twitter users.

In a pair of 2012 tweets, one of which has not yet been deleted, he said that the United States has too many guns and that he's "always been for strong gun control laws."

"We (the USA) has 5% of the world's population but 50% of the world's guns," he wrote in the deleted tweet. "Enough is enough. It is just common sense it apply more controls."

Laura Goldman, who said she is friends with Scaramucci, came to his defense on the policy matter Saturday, saying his 2012 tweet advocating gun control was a response to her.

"He answered because that's the kind of guy he is. . . . He shouldn't be crucified for his politeness in answering tweets to a friend before he starts his job," Goldman said in an email to The Post.

Scaramucci also praised former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in 2011 for staying out of the "Trump spectacle" and called former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, an "odd guy" who's "so smart with no judgment."

A few other tweets still appear to be on Scaramucci's profile.

In another 2012 post, he appeared to be advocating liberal causes, describing himself as "for Gay Marriage, against the death penalty, and Pro Choice."

"@cda0519 I am not a partisan. For Gay Marriage, against the death penalty, and Pro Choice. I am for social inclusion, fiscal responsibility"

- Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) June 8, 2012

That same year, he said: "I like Hillary. Have to go with the best athlete. We need to turn this around."

In a 2016 tweet that appears to contradict Trump's previous statements against Islam, he said:

"'It is a fight within Islam, overwhelming majority see Islam as a religion of peace, want to live in multiracial/ethnic/faith democracies'"

- Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) January 23, 2016

He railed against climate-change deniers:

"You can take steps to combat climate change without crippling the economy. The fact many people still believe CC is a hoax is disheartening," he tweeted in 2016.

And against Trump's plan for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border:

"Walls don't work. Never have never will. The Berlin Wall 1961-1989 don't fall for it," he tweeted in 2015.

He also appeared to favor another former Republican presidential candidate over Trump:

"Big number for @JebBush people just need to get to know him. Will make a great President."

- Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) October 15, 2015

In a 2015 Fox Business Network interview, Scaramucci called Trump a "hack" and a bully and said he didn't like how the presidential candidate talked about women.

"He's a hack politician. . . . I'll tell you who he's going to be president of - you can tell Donald I said this - the Queens County bullies association," he said.

Now Scaramucci has shifted from criticizing Trump to telling reporters several times he loves the president. He also apologized for calling Trump a hack and said the president still reminds him of his previous comments.

"I should have never said that about him," he told reporters at his first press briefing Friday, adding later: "Mr. President, if you're listening, I personally apologize for the 50th time for saying that."

Trump weighed in Saturday morning, saying Scaramucci wanted to endorse him but didn't know he was going to run. But as The Washington Post's Aaron Blake pointed out, Trump had been a candidate for a month when Scaramucci called him a hack.

"In all fairness to Anthony Scaramucci, he wanted to endorse me 1st, before the Republican Primaries started, but didn't think I was running!"

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017
MODIIN, Israel - They are ultra-Orthodox feminists and liken their group to the suffragist movement.

Esty Shushan and Estee Rieder-Indursky have been fighting for the past five years for women's rights within their strictly conservative ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community. Now they are trying to draw worldwide attention.

"As Haredi women, we face many battles. It took me awhile to realize that fighting those battles starts up there," said Shushan, sporting a stylish sheitel, Yiddish for the wig that married ultra-Orthodox women wear to cover their hair as a sign of modesty.

By "up there" she does not mean God, Rieder-Indursky explained, but rather the ultra-Orthodox decision-makers and leaders who do not allow women in the political sphere.

The two women lead a nonprofit organization called Nivcharot, or "the elected women." Their goal is to pressure the Haredi leadership to give women a voice.

The fight sometimes gets ugly, they say.

During the last election, they lobbied against ultra-Orthodox parties, decrying their refusal to allow women to have a role. They handed out provocative fliers, asking women to refrain from voting until they were represented, and they clandestinely pasted posters on billboards in the most religious neighborhoods.

In one of the posters, they criticized women for asking for political representation, realizing that by attacking their own message they would raise curiosity and the posters probably would not be torn down.

More recently, they petitioned Israel's Supreme Court, arguing that a party that discriminates against women should not be afforded legitimacy in the political system.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up about 10 percent of Israeli society. Two political parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, represent the population, with 13 Haredi members in Israel's 120-seat parliament and three government ministers. None are women.

The parties are run along strict lines set by their spiritual leaders, and their positions on many issues are dictated by the Torah. The Haredi electorate votes for one of the two parties according to instructions from religious leaders, who have made clear that women should not be involved in politics.

Before the creation of Israel, ultra-Orthodox women stayed home and raised children while the men worked. In recent years, however, as the community has struggled with poverty and many men spend their days studying Torah, women have been allowed, even encouraged, by spiritual leaders to work outside the home.

Nurit Stadler, a professor of sociology and anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the participation of women in the labor market laid the foundation for the debate about women's rights in the community.

"There is a problem when women take on a role like that. They change the way they dress, they go out of the house and face an atmosphere of pollution. It's a provocation," Stadler said. Women are exposed to new ideas and suddenly start seeing the world in a different light.

That is what happened to Shushan and Rieder-Indursky.

Before becoming political activists, they worked for Haredi newspapers. Shushan was a columnist, and Rieder-Indursky was a political reporter.

Both used male pseudonyms.

"My editor was happy I wanted to write. He said my writing was good but asked me not to use my name because 'You know, the men will not accept the opinions of a women,' " Shushan said.

Working from home, she had no problem keeping her identity secret and was grateful to be earning an income while still being able to air her views.

For Rieder-Indursky, it was trickier. As a political reporter she had to interview people, among them former Israeli prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.

"Whenever I would get to an interview, people were always shocked to discover that I was actually a woman," she said. "One surprised foreign diplomat even told me: 'I expected many things but never did I expect to meet the Haredi Claudia Schiffer.' "

For Shushan, the novelty of working without credit or recognition for her ideas wore off quickly. In 2012, she quit the newspaper and turned to the only platform where she felt free to express herself: Facebook.

She set up numerous groups that reached thousands in her community, and turned a taboo subject of women in politics into a focal point of the 2015 general election.

Rieder-Indursky reached a similar conclusion soon after: "It took me longer to see, but now all I see is Haredi women's voices silenced in our community."

The two Haredi parties did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment.

Although Shushan and Rieder-Indursky have succeeded in bringing the issue to the fore, they face immense social pressure to stop. Often labeled troublemakers or crazies, their families also pay a price, they said.

Shushan, a mother of four, was forced to obtain a court order to keep her daughter in an ultra-Orthodox school that saw her mother's activities as undesirable. Rieder-Indurskysaid her son often returns from his yeshiva begging her to stop.

Israel Cohen, a journalist and commentator for the Haredi website Kikar Shabat, said the women are seen as extreme by the Haredi mainstream.

"There are already Haredi women who are close to the decision-makers. They operate quietly and within the Haredi mainstream without being elected," he said. "These women are coming and demanding change and in that way, there will be pushback and nothing will change."

But the women are determined.

"In my opinion, this change will happen, the question is just when?" Rieder-Indursky said. "How do I know it will happen? Because it has happened all over the world. It's just a matter of time."
By Utpal Kumar/Mail Today: It's a story that needs to be told - and retold - for the insight it gives into the country's psyche. Jawaharlal Nehru was having a lunch with JRD Tata. The then Prime Minister, being an unswerving socialist that he was, took the occasion to hit out at India's leading industrialist for being obsessed with making profit. Tata reminded him that the business was expected to make profit. To this Nehru's response was astounding. "Jeh, profit is a dirty word. Let's not spoil our lunch talking about it!"

advertisement

Remind this story to Donald R Davis, Jr, an associate professor of Sanskrit and Indian religions at the University of Texas in Austin and author of The Dharma of Business, and he calls this mindset, along with the consequent Licence Raj between 1947 and 1991, "an aberration in India's long economic history".

Davis reminds that over-regulation in business is counterproductive for everyone. "State needs to have a supervisory, corrective role, rather than an active, interfering job in the field of economy," he says, adding that in the dharma texts, "businessmen would fix the prices of products and negotiate tax rates. State should be there just to stop deceitful activities coming out of lobh (greed)". In this worldview, greed wasn't good, unlike what Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) would like us to believe in the film Wall Street, but profit (labh) definitely was. The author informs that the word labh is mentioned repeatedly - and approvingly - in Dharmashastras. Interestingly, another term that finds mention frequently - and condemned universally - is lobh (greed). "Dharma texts make a distinction between labh and lobh. The purpose of business is not only to make profit but also to do it righteously," he says.

Donald R Davis, Jr, Penguin Random House; Rs 299

This book makes one recall Arshia Sattar's The Mouse Merchant, which came out in this very series, 'The Story of Indian Business', edited by Gurcharan Das. Sattar tells us the stories from India's ancient past that unabashedly celebrate money, the foremost being the tale of a young man who builds a fortune with a dead mouse! "The young man sells the mouse as cat food, the proceeds of which he invests to buy food that he sells to loggers, receiving logs from them as payment; in the manner, he goes on to build a fortune in timber."

There's however, nothing truly unique in what Davis brings out through dharma texts. One finds a similar theme in as diverse tomes as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to the Kathasaritsagara and the Mricchakatika - that a man is "better dead than poor"; and that the ruler's duty is to create good infrastructure in order to attract commerce, as the Ramayana exhorts.

Morality has been another constant phenomenon. Here, Davis reminds that Adam Smith, whose 'hidden hand' theory is often put forward to justify the greed-isgood argument, believed in moral economy and his initial juxtaposition on economy and morality has been distorted. "There emerged a series of economists in the US in the 20th century who mystified the economy and believed that it was an autonomous entity. They said there was no need to worry about morality because the market magically converted greed into good," he says. "I think Smith would have been shocked to see his idea being distorted so much."

advertisement

Also, unlike the Western model, all businesses in India are personal. "We are often told in the professional arena that it's not personal. But the Dharmashastras tell us that the business will flourish more if there's a personal touch and a sense of belonging involved."

Davis blames the West for creating this sense of distrust among Indians for their indigenous way of doing business, and instead blindly aping the US. "My colonial predecessors inculcated a sense of stigma among Indians about their local laws, languages and customs. This also explains why Sanskrit finds so little support and patronage in the country of its birth."

One may not be too optimist about Sanskrit's fate. But the presence of scholars like Davis may help plug gaping holes in our thinking. The foremost being who we actually are - the ascetic type or the entrepreneurial one. Also, it holds the key to moral economy, something the world has been eagerly looking for, battered as it is due to economic crises one after another.

advertisement

--- ENDS ---
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Editor's note: This story was originally published Jan. 19, 2007

HOUSTON -- In abandoning 19 people to their deaths in his sweltering, stifling tractor-trailer, Tyrone Williams ultimately gave up just the sort of American life those illegal immigrants had made the risky journey to attain.

A native of Jamaica, Williams came to the United States legally in 1989. Eventually, he owned his own trucking business, was married and had two kids, with a third on the way.

But he wanted more. The lure of $7,500 for taking part in the 2003 smuggling operation, which left immigrants trapped in his airtight refrigerator truck dead of dehydration, overheating and suffocation, led to his sentence Thursday to life in prison without parole.

After convicting Williams last month of 58 counts of conspiracy and harboring and transporting immigrants, the jury took more than five days to decide Williams should not be executed. Jurors said they spared him because they believed he didn't mean for the immigrants to die on the aborted trip from South Texas to Houston.

Williams looked down as the verdict was read and gave no visible reaction. His attorney, former U.S. Rep. Craig Washington, wept and wiped his eyes with a tissue.

Later, Washington said he was crying tears of joy.

"We're grateful to God and to the jury for saving Tyrone's life," Washington said.

Prosecutor Daniel Rodriguez looked grim after the sentence was announced as his boss, U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle, spoke to reporters.

"We did everything we could to impose a sentence of death. Nineteen life sentences is not something to be disappointed about," DeGabrielle said. "One human being had the chance to let those people out. That was Tyrone Williams."

In May 2003, his tractor-trailer was packed with more than 70 immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic. As temperatures rose inside the airtight refrigerator truck, the immigrants kicked walls, clawed at insulation, broke out taillights and screamed for help.

Williams, apparently frightened at the sight of the dead bodies strewn inside his truck when he opened the door, abandoned the trailer at a truck stop near Victoria, about 100 miles southwest of Houston.

"Justice is served from today's sentencing," Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Julie Myers said in a written statement. "We hope this significant sentence will help dissuade potential alien smugglers away from this dangerous, dehumanizing and illegal business."

Jurors, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said they began each day of deliberations with 19 seconds of silence in memory of Williams' victims.

"It will probably be a very long time before any of us passes an 18-wheeler on the freeway without looking at it twice," said one juror.

Williams' attorneys argued he never intended for the immigrants to die and didn't know they were dying until it was too late. They blamed the deaths on other members of the smuggling ring who overstuffed the trailer.

Williams' family, including his mother and father, begged the jury to spare his life during emotional testimony presented at the retrial's punishment phase.

Prosecutors said Williams earned a death sentence because he intentionally caused the immigrants' deaths by not freeing them when he knew their lives were in danger. They also noted he failed to take life-saving measures, like turning on the trailer's air conditioning, although some survivors testified they thought it had been turned on.

Relatives of the victims also testified, demanding justice and telling jurors their loved ones did not deserve to die the way they did.

Williams, an immigrant from Jamaica who lived in Schenectady, N.Y., was the only one of 14 people charged in the case who faced the death penalty.

In 2005, a jury convicted him of 38 transporting counts, but he avoided a death sentence because the jury couldn't agree on his role in the smuggling attempt. A court later voided the verdict, saying the jury failed to specify his role in the crime.

Williams still faces sentencing on Aug. 23 for the remaining 38 counts of harboring and transporting immigrants and for the conspiracy count. The maximum sentence for the conspiracy count is life in prison.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy will melt the heart of the most hardened cynic. The film, premiering Monday, July 24, on HBO is likely to be the most important hour of the anticipated saturation TV coverage of the 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The film, produced and directed by Ashley Gething, begins with Princes William and Harry looking at photos of their mother, and of themselves, frolicking with a woman Harry calls a total kid, with a wicked sense of humor.

The above-mentioned cynic might conclude that this is meant to counter the whole shy Di thing, and the focus on her obvious unhappiness performing her royal duties while her marriage to Prince Charles was falling apart  one of the publics most indelible memories of the peoples princess.

But there is ample evidence that the royal princes knew their mum far better than the news media, who chased her around the world, and eventually through that tunnel in Paris on the last night of her life, Aug. 31, 1997.

To its credit, the film does not try to rewrite history, for the most part. One slight edit: The moment when Diana rearranged two of Charles many names at the Westminster Abbey altar during their 1981 wedding has been snipped out of the tape.

We get a sense of her sense of fun not only from her sons, but from her younger brother, Charles, Earl Spencer, and from family photos at Althorp.

She was always caring of little people, Spencer says, and I was the first little person she cared for.

Both as princess and after she and Charles separated in 1992, Dianas care for little people was amply documented, even when it got her into political hot water.

She gave a speech about the deplorable level of homelessness in London in 1995 that was seen by some as the Royal Family meddling in British politics. When William was 12, his mother brought him to homeless shelters so he could understand the severity of the problem.

She became a soldier, as one observer puts it, against AIDS and a photo of her taking the hand of an AIDS patient at Middlesex Hospital was seen around the world at a time when many were afraid to have any physical contact with someone who had the disease.

In the final years of her life, she became a soldier against land mines, visiting Bosnia only three weeks before her death, a country that was still riddled with land mines. Today, it is entirely free of land mines, thanks in large part to her activism.

All of this could be dismissed as Buckingham Palace PR, were it not for the relative openness with which Harry and William talk about their mother.

Harry admits its still raw, and says that he shut down emotionally for years because he was unable to process his grief.

Even talking about her now, I can feel the hugs she used to give us, he says.

My mother lives with me every day, his elder brother adds.

The day she died, Diana called Balmoral Castle to talk with her sons. Will is asked if he remembers what she said. He does, but doesnt reveal her words. Given the ferocity with which she was hounded by paparazzi, who can blame him?

While it is clear that both men inherited their mothers sense of duty and activism, Will, at least, also inherited a wariness about the press. He doesnt mince words slamming an industry thats lost perspective, trying to make a woman cry in public to get the photographs.

One lesson I learned is that you never let them in too far because its difficult to get them out, he says.

William and Harry have lived their lives in public, which, to an extent, goes with their jobs in the family business.

Yet the film reminds us that they were 15 and 12, respectively, when their mother died  just boys. Prior to the car crash, the boys had been shuttled back and forth between Diana and Charles, never feeling as though they had sufficient time with either parent.

As difficult as it has been processing grief, William and Harry have always had one thing that perhaps the rest of the world did not: They knew their mother for who she was, not the creation of paparazzi.

No doubt other programming will explore other aspects of Dianas life, her relationship with Dodi Fayed and Dr. Hasnat Khan, her confessional collaboration with Andrew Morton on Diana in Her Own Words. No other current members of the Royal Family participate in this film, although Charles is seen in news footage, as is his mother. The Duchess of Cornwall is not mentioned or pictured.

Expect all of this and, heaven knows, a lot more as television overdoses on Diana coverage in August.

Through it all, Diana, Our Mother, will make a claim for legitimacy that no other TV documentary can touch. Of all that she accomplished in her life, her sons are her real legacy.

David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV

Our Mother, Diana: Her Life and Legacy: Documentary. 10 p.m. Monday, July 24, on HBO.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.
If you do not have a current print subscription to the Lodi News-Sentinel, but want to view unlimited articles for the month, please choose this option.
By PTI: New Delhi, Jul 23 (PTI) A special court has directed the CBI to respond by September 6 to the objections of Union Ministers Prakash Javadekar and Hansraj Ahir against its move to close a coal scam case.

Special Judge Bharat Parashar allowed the probe agencys plea seeking time to respond to the ministers petition in a case allegedly involving Prakash Industries Ltd (PIL) and others as accused.

advertisement

HRD Minister Javadekar and Minister of State for Home Ahir, who are complainants in case, had approached the court seeking rejection of the CBIs closure report and a direction to the agency to further investigate it and file a supplementary charge sheet.

In 2014, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) had started its proceedings on the complaints made by the two ministers.

The case was registered on the basis of CVCs reference, but after completing the probe, the CBI had filed a closure report in 2014 saying no incriminating evidence had come on record warranting prosecution of any accused.

The BJP leaders had alleged in their petition that the PIL had deliberately misrepresented facts to the 35th Screening Committee with the connivance of others to get the coal block in Chhattisgarhs Fatehpur allotted to it and the CBI had wrongly accepted the claims made by the accused.

Their petition came in response to the courts earlier notice asking them whether they wanted to submit anything on the final report in the case.

The court had issued notices to both the ministers after CVC Director Sanjay Agarwal had informed it that the anti- graft watchdog was not a complainant in the matter and had no role to play in the case. It was these two leaders on whose complaint the CVC had started its proceedings, he had said.

The court had said that before accepting CBIs closure report, it was duty-bound to issue notice to the complainant. It had also directed the CVC to clarify its stand on the report.

According to the CBIs FIR, the Fatehpur coal block was allocated jointly to PIL and another firm by the 35th Screening Committee.

The FIR was lodged against PIL, its three officials, some officials of the Coal Ministry and others on the charge that the firm had misrepresented its net worth while applying for the block.

The FIR was registered under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with 420 (cheating) of the IPC and under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The CBI had also alleged in its FIR that while the company had misrepresented facts relating to its net worth, the screening committee had deliberately not followed the guidelines and showed undue favour to it. PTI UK ARC DV

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Since July 2011, the US Treasury and State Departments have repeatedly stated that the Iranian regime allows al Qaeda to maintain a key facilitation network on its soil. This formerly clandestine network is the result of a specific agreement between the Iranian government and al Qaedas leadership.

On July 19, the State Department once again pointed to the relationship. Since at least 2009, States Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 reads, Iran has allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through the country, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria.

Iran also remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qaida (AQ) members it continued to detain and has refused to publicly identify the members in its custody, Foggy Bottom said, echoing language found in previous reports.

In its terrorism reports for 2015 and 2014, the State Department implied that al Qaedas Iran-based network was a thing of the past, saying the Iranian government previously allowed AQ facilitators to operate. But Country Reports on Terrorism 2016, released last week, subtly revised that language.

It is often assumed that the two sides cant cooperate because of theological differences. However, the relationship has been repeatedly documented by official sources, such as the 9/11 Commission, US courts, intelligence agencies and various others. At times, al Qaeda itself has conceded that there is a level of collusion, despite the groups blistering anti-Iranian rhetoric. A key al Qaeda defector offered his own explanation of the arrangement in a newsletter published by the Islamic State. After the Islamic State and al Qaeda became bitter rivals, the so-called caliphate even accused al Qaeda of prohibiting terrorist attacks inside Iran.

A document presumably authored by Osama bin Laden in 2007 refers to Iran as al Qaedas main artery for funds, personnel, and communication. That same letter referred to the hostages held by Iran, meaning those al Qaeda figures who were held in some form of detention and not allowed to freely operate. Bin Laden was not against attacking Iran in principle; he simply did not think the costs of such action were worth it.

Irans relationship with al Qaeda has survived for years, despite numerous disagreements and conflicts between the two. For instance, one file recovered in bin Ladens Abbottabad lair shows that he was troubled by Irans attempt to expand across the Middle East and he conceived of a plan to combat the Shiite jihadists growing footprint. Al Qaeda has also kidnapped Iranian diplomats in order force hostage exchanges. Several high-level al Qaeda leaders were reportedly released as part of one such exchange in 2015, although their status beforehand inside Iran was murky.

Most importantly, the two sides are clearly at odds in Syria and Yemen, where they have fought each other and affiliated proxies for several years.

Yet, throughout all of this, Iran has allowed al Qaeda to maintain a key facilitation hub.

In July 2016, for instance, the US Treasury Department sanctioned three senior al Qaeda leaders located in Iran. One of them, Faisal Jassim Mohammed Al Amri Al Khalidi (a.k.a. Abu Hamza al Khalidi), has served as al Qaedas Military Commission Chief  meaning he was one of the most important figures in the groups international network. Al Khalidi was identified in Osama bin Ladens files as part of a new generation of leadership al Qaeda groomed to replace their fallen comrades. As Treasurys July 2016 designations made clear, some of al Qaedas most important men continued to operate inside Iran. [See FDDs Long War Journal report, Treasury designates 3 senior al Qaeda members in Iran.]

Previous designations and other statements by Treasury and State Departments

The State Departments Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 is the latest instance in which a branch of the US government has officially recognized al Qaedas core facilitation pipeline inside Iran, or other dealings between the two. In 2009, Treasury acknowledged that several al Qaeda operatives were living inside Iran. Then, beginning in July 2011, both the Treasury and State Departments repeatedly targeted the Iran-based network, saying it operated as part of a formerly secret deal between Iran and al Qaedas leadership.

Below is a brief timeline of designations and other official statements by the US government.

Jan. 2009: Treasury designated four al Qaeda members in Iran, including Osama bin Ladens son Saad, who was later killed after relocating to Pakistan. It is important that Iran give a public accounting of how it is meeting its international obligations to constrain al Qaeda, Stuart Levey, who was then Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said at the time.

July 2011: Treasury targeted Irans formerly secret deal with al Qaeda, designating six jihadists who were involved in al Qaedas operations inside the country. One of them is known as Yasin al Suri, a prominent Iran-based al Qaeda facilitator who operates under an agreement between al Qaeda and the Iranian government. The agreement was negotiated with Atiyah Abd al Rahmans permission. Rahman was a top al Qaeda lieutenant who was killed in a US drone strike in mid-2011. Rahman was previously appointed by Osama bin Laden to serve as al Qaedas emissary in Iran, a position which allowed him to travel in and out of Iran with the permission of Iranian officials, Treasury noted.

Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world today, David S. Cohen, who was then Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a press release. By exposing Irans secret deal with al Qaeda allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory, we are illuminating yet another aspect of Irans unmatched support for terrorism, Cohen emphasized.

Dec. 2011: The State Department announced a $10 million reward for Yasin al Suri, making him one of the most wanted terrorists on the planet. Under an agreement between al Qaeda and the Government of Iran, Yasin al Suri has helped move money and recruits through Iran to al Qaeda leaders in neighboring countries in the region, Robert Hartung, the State Department Assistant Director for Threat Investigations and Analysis, explained during a briefing.

Feb. 2012: The Treasury Department designated the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) for a number of reasons, including the assistance it provided to al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq. According to Treasury, the MOIS has facilitated the movement of al Qaeda operatives in Iran and provided them with documents, identification cards, and passports. In addition, the MOIS has provided money and weapons to al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)and negotiated prisoner releases of AQI operatives.

July 2012: In its Country Reports on Terrorism 2011, the State Department reported that Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior AQ members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody. Iran also allowed AQ members to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iranian territory, enabling AQ to carry funds and move facilitators and operatives to South Asia and elsewhere.

October 2012: Treasury explained that Yasin al Suri had been temporarily sidelined as the chief of al Qaedas network in Iran. His replacement was Muhsin al Fadhli, a veteran Kuwaiti operative, who later relocated to Syria as part of al Qaedas Khorasan Group and was killed in an American airstrike. Treasury named Adel Radi Saqr al Wahabi al Harbi as one of Fadhlis men inside Iran. Harbi also eventually relocated to Syria, where he served as the military commander of Jund al Aqsa, an al Qaeda front group, until meeting his own demise.

Treasury explained how the deal between the Iranian regime and al Qaeda works. Under the terms of the agreement between al Qaeda and Iran, Treasury reported, al Qaeda must refrain from conducting any operations within Iranian territory and recruiting operatives inside Iran while keeping Iranian authorities informed of their activities. As long as al Qaeda didnt violate these terms, the Government of Iran gave the Iran-based al Qaeda network freedom of operation and uninhibited ability to travel for extremists and their families.

Treasurys Cohen explained in a press release that the designation of Harbi builds on our action from July 2011 and further exposes al Qaedas critically important Iran-based funding and facilitation network. Cohen added: We will continue targeting this crucial source of al Qaedas funding and support, as well as highlight Irans ongoing complicity in this networks operation.

May 2013: In its Country Reports on Terrorism 2012, the State Department said that Iran allowed AQ facilitators Muhsin al-Fadhli and Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and to Syria. Fadhli began working with the Iran-based AQ facilitation network in 2009, was later arrested by Iranian authorities, but then released in 2011 so he could assume leadership of the Iran-based AQ facilitation network.

Jan. 2014: Treasury and State Department officials told Al Jazeera that Yasin al Suri was once again in charge of al Qaedas Iran-based network.

Feb. 2014: Treasury identified another Iran-based al Qaeda facilitator, Olimzhon Adkhamovich Sadikov, who is an Uzbek and part of the Islamic Jihad Union. Sadikov provides logistical support and funding to al Qaedas Iran-based network, according to Treasury.

Apr. 2014: In its Country Reports on Terrorism 2013, the State Department once again noted that the Iranian regime hosted al Qaedas core facilitation pipeline and remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al Qaeda (AQ) members it continued to detain, while also refusing to publicly identify those senior members in its custody.

Aug. 2014: Treasury designated a senior al Qaeda leader known as Sanafi al Nasr, who served in early 2013 as chief of al Qaedas Iran-based extremist and financial facilitation network. Nasr relocated to Syria in 2013 as part of al Qaedas Khorasan Group and was killed in an American airstrike in 2015.

June 2016: The State Departments Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 is released. Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qaida (AQ) members it continued to detain and refused to publicly identify the members in its custody, the report read. State added: Iran previously allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria. The implication of the language (previously allowed), which was included in the 2014 report as well, was that al Qaeda no longer operated its facilitation network inside Iran. However, al Qaeda did in fact continue to operate its pipeline inside Iran. Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 removed the phrase previously allowed from its summary.

July 2016: The US Treasury Department designated three senior al Qaeda figures located in Iran: Faisal Jassim Mohammed Al Amri Al Khalidi (a.k.a. Abu Hamza al Khalid), Yisra Muhammad Ibrahim Bayumi, and Abu Bakr Muhammad Muhammad Ghumayn. Treasury explained that it took the action to disrupt the operations, fundraising, and support networks that help al Qaeda move money and operatives from South Asia and across the Middle East.

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.
After the detention of popular actor Dileep in actress assault case a lot of news has been roving around day by day relating to this. According to the latest reports, a person from Palakkad helped police to arrest Sunil kumar (Pulsar Suni) and Dileep in the case.

The person who was working in a private firm in Ernakulam has created a twist in the case during a train journey to Trivandrum. While in train he came across a lady advocate who was talking to someone through phone regarding the actress attack case. After being skeptical he immediately informed Aluva Police about the lady. Later the lady advocate was interrogated by the police at Trivandrum Railway station as per the instruction of Aluva police that helped the probing team to reach the culprit.

The police has not revealed the identity of the person yet. Above all, ADGP B Sandhya also once referred about a person, a native from Palakkad, who helped police during investigation.
The employees had demanded a revision of the pay band, and the rolling back of action against staff council members.

By Kapil Sharma: The Delhi Metro staff today called off their strike after they met the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) Managing Director Mangu Singh over revision of the pay band at the Metro Bhawan.

"The ongoing protest by DMRC's non-executive employees was called off today after all the issues raised by the agitating employees were amicably settled following many rounds of meetings and deliberations with DMRC's Managing Director Dr Mangu Singh and other senior officials," said Anuj Dayal, spokesperson, Delhi Metro.

advertisement

The Delhi Metro services will hence continue as per schedule tomorrow.

"The issue was also deliberated in detail on Saturday in a high-level meeting chaired by secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, DS Mishra and Chief Secretary, NCT of Delhi, Dr MM Kutty with Dr Mangu Singh." added Dayal.

As many as 9,000 non-executive employees of the Delhi Metro were sticking to their call to stop services from Monday, after talks with the corporation's management had failed on Saturday night.

The employees were demanding a revision of the pay band, and the rolling back of action against staff council members.

A member of the staff council said on Thursday (July 20) the non-executive staff will gradually stop performing their duties from July 21 and completely cease operating from July 24, if their demands are not met.

The DMRC management, in an internal communication, had said the issues raised by the agitating staff was an attempt to "push their personal agenda to cause disruption".

"The management is alive to its responsibility towards staff welfare. All concerned employees are requested to stay away from the path of agitation and not to fall for rumours and issues of alleged injustices," it said.

As many as 30 lakh passengers travel in the metro every day.

ALSO READ

Coming soon on Delhi Metro: Automated driverless trains

Now you can buy token, recharge Delhi Metro card with QR scan

ALSO WATCH

Delhi Metro non-executive staff stick to call for strike from Monday

--- ENDS ---
Beijing: Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval's visit to Beijing for a meeting of NSAs from BRICS countries may be a key to ease tensions between India and China over the military standoff in Dokalam, a Chinese analyst said. Doval is scheduled to visit China for the meeting on July 27-28.

The meeting is hosted by his Chinese counterpart and State Councillor Yang Jiechi. It is part of a series of meetings of officials from BRICS countries-Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa ahead of this year's summit of the five-member bloc of emerging countries in Xiamen city in September. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to attend the summit.

Ma Jiali, a research fellow at the China Reform Forum thinktank, said Doval's visit may be a key and would serve as an opportunity to ease India-China tensions.
By Karishma Kuenzang, Adila Matra: Remember a time when desserts meant only Wenger's? Their no-nonsense, flavour-filled red velvet and cheese cakes complemented our evening tea and sometimes, even the mutton puffs and quiches added to the spread. Then came the age of L'opera, Whipped and the like - windows displaying expensive macarons and croissants that we went back to for the lack of other options. Though a lot of patisseries and bakeries opened up in Delhi after that (Hauz Khas mainly), nothing ever made it to our coffee table regularly, owing to the high prices.

advertisement

With a lot of new bakeries and home bakers opening shop, this trend might soon change or so we hope. For instance, the iconic patisserie off Mumbai, THEOBROMA set foot in the Capital a few months ago and we found its offerings extremely satisfying. Brainchild of Kainaz Messman, Theobroma first opened in 2004 in Mumbai, after Messman ended her pastry chef career at Oberoi Udailvilas following a back injury. She grew up around dough, cake mix and frosting, as Messman's mom had been baking at home for customers and guests since she was a kid. So opening Theobroma was like answering her calling. In Delhi, Threobroma has opened in the SDA market and the modest but chic interiors - with teal walls and white Victorian chairs - is a pull in itself.

The Rainbow Cake at Theobroma is a treat for the eyes as well as the palate. Picture courtesy: Mail Today/Ramesh Sharma

Pick up a Red Velvet Cup Cake for sure. The cream cheese topping is heavenly. If you want to go for something healthier, try the Baked Yoghurt with different fruit pulp toppings. The Opium Cake is chocolate heaven. The sponge layers are alternated with chocolate cream; it is a best seller at Theobroma. On the savoury side of things, there is the Chicken and Cheese Patty and Vegetable Quiche. For 50 bucks, the patty is the perfect deal. Don't order both though as it can be really heavy on the tummy. Theobroma is setting an example of bringing cost effective pastries to Delhi. The cost for one is s 350 plus taxes.

Theobroma opened in Mumbai in 2004 and has recently set foot in the Capital. Picture courtesy: Mail Today/Ramesh Sharma

Moving away from SDA, there is another bakery in Defence Colony that promises the same. The diverse menu at 20-day-old HONEY & DOUGH Bakery in Defence Colony market reflects the passion the bakery's 26-year-old owner Aavika has, to provide an "affordable, mid-range, bakery and coffee shop experience.

The Belgian Chocolate cake was picked up first. It is rich in chocolate and not too sweet, just the way we like it. But the Nutella Cheesecake does not impress, Maybe we're just too used to Big Chill Cakery and the likes and expect the nutella to be a part of the cheesecake, and not a layer on top of a slice of New York Cheesecake. The cheesecake is creamy and perfect once you scrape off the nutella. The special Devil's Delight, is dark, rich and chocolate-y, like little bites of sin. It takes a lot to open a bakery in a market which already has a pioneer like the Defence Bakery. And maybe this quaint outlet still has a few kinks to iron out. We would love to come back after a few months and give it a try, though the breads, croissants and tea cakes are inviting.

advertisement

HOME BAKERS' JUNCTION

Sakshi Chughs cakes are colourful and theme-based. Picture courtesy: Mail Today/K Asif Sakshi Chughs cakes are colourful and theme-based. Picture courtesy: Mail Today/K Asif

Bani Nanda, a 20 something baker, started the Miam Patisserie which has one take away outlet in Hauz Khas. Other pick ups and orders are taken at her kitchen in SDA. Nanda bakes cookies, eclairs, macarons, cakes, madeleines and what not. Recently, she has collaborated with the Hauz Khas outlet of Big Fat Sandwich and sells her delicious desserts there. We tried her s'mores (Rs 120) and Vanilla Custard Coux Pastry (Rs 150) and cannot stop raving about since then. Go and place an order now.

advertisement

Sakshi Chugh is another 27-year-old baker who goes by the name House of Pie on Instagram. It has been just three months since she started retailing, so she is a bit rough around the edges. She makes custom made Willy Wonka-ish cakes - bright and popping. She operates out of her kitchen in Vasant Kunj. Price of her cakes start from Rs 2,500 and she will customise it according to your favourite themes

--- ENDS ---
Few situations in life are black and white. More often, they are cast in shades of gray.

Is it fair to keep getting paid, even when you admit youre not doing your job? The immediate answer would be no, but in some cases, there is another side, especially when your orders keep changing. As we reported in Tuesdays paper, during the New College Institute board meeting this week, college officials and the director of the New College Foundation discussed the current problems between the two. The foundation was launched in 2006 at roughly the same time as NCI, to support the college and all of its activities and endeavors. Specifically, that means serving as NCIs fundraising arm. And thats where the current problems arise.

Currently, the foundation has nothing budgeted to give the college for the current fiscal year. That is, they havent raised any money to fund NCIs operations and only budgeted $1,000 toward its own fundraising efforts. According to the foundations proposed fiscal 2018 budget, $246,000 of the foundations net revenue from renting the college building to NCI will go toward salaries for four foundation employees.

Theyre using taxpayer money to fund their own salaries and then they dont fund us, Sen. Bill Stanley, chairman of the NCI board, said at Mondays meeting.

Stanley raises a fair point. If the main purpose of the foundation is indeed to raise funds for NCI and the foundation has declined to do so, then what exactly are those salaries going toward?

Yet here is where the shades of gray begin to enter the scene.

In the same meeting, Deborah Kaufman, executive director of the foundation, said that the reason the New College Foundation is not pursuing fundraising at this time is because it is waiting until NCI chooses its future direction.

Frankly, that makes sense.

Imagine that a college student tells her mother and father that she needs several thousand dollars for a study abroad program in Rome. She tells them that shes pursuing an architectural degree and plans to write her thesis on ancient Roman architecture. She tells them that she cant wait to visit the Pantheon, the Coliseum and the Basilica of Maxentius, and she hopes they will help her out with a little folding money to cover the cost of the program. Assuming the parents can afford it, chances are, they might just help her out.

Now imagine that the same college student tells her mother and father that she needs several thousand dollars for a study abroad program. When they ask where she plans to go, she tells them she isnt sure yet, and she doesnt exactly know what her major is going to be, but wherever she goes, its going to be educational.

It is unlikely that anyones billfold is going to spring open after that conversation.

Until recent months, thats where the foundation was left. By NCIs own admission, they were retooling. They talked to local residents, held town hall meetings and spoke with local business owners, all good efforts that needed to take place. But just like the college student talking to her parents, how was the foundation supposed to ask people to contribute to something they couldnt describe? On the other hand, its hard to justify still collecting a salary as foundation staff have when youre not actually doing the work your organization was created for.

Kaufman said she would talk to the foundations board at their August meeting and NCI officials hope to be able to move forward. We would argue the best way to do that is through a face to face discussion. One meeting of both boards, where everyone sits down and hammers out an agreement. This seems like something that can be easily addressed, if everyone would just take the time to talk with each other.

One thing is for certain: However they get there, NCI and the New College Foundation need to move past this impasse quickly and amicably, as it benefits neither party. We are confident they will find a way to do so.

The Bulletin Editorial Board consists of Brian Carlton, Ben Williams and Trisha Long
Sevenars Music Festival will present Jerry Noble and Friends on Sunday, Aug. 6 at 4 p.m.

The concert features Clifton "Jerry" Noble, Jr. with the talents of legendary jazz clarinetist Bob Sparkman and dynamic young classical cellist Christopher James. Bridging styles and generations, this concert has something for everyone.

Noble, nationally sought-after as both composer and pianist, is the classical music critic for The Republican. His more than 20 years of jazz collaborations with clarinetist Bob Sparkman has resulted in five CD recordings.

Sparkman developed his golden phrasing playing with The Jazzmen, The Bourbon Street Six, the Gotham Jazz Band, and Fats Waller's trumpeter Herman Autry among others.

James, an alumnus of Tanglewood, Soundfest, and Bard festivals, returns from a season playing in multiple orchestras in New York, with performances at Symphony Space, Lincoln Center, and Weill Hall. He will perform Edward Elgar's Concerto, Op. 85, in Elgar's own piano-cello version.

After a largely classical first half, the second half of the program will break out into duos and trios, including bossa novas and improvisations on some well-known tunes, played by Noble and Sparkman, and joined in some selections by Noble's wife, Kara Noble, on bass guitar.

Noble will also be joined in special selections by his good friend Anup Kumar Biswas on cello. Biswas is known in the United Kingdom as both as a cellist and as founder and director of the Mathiesen Music School in Kolkata, India. Together they will perform "Anondo Loke" by the famous poet Rabindranath Tagore, and also Biswas's own composition, "Celebration." In the Tagore piece, the group will be joined by Biswas's son, Satyajit on mridangam (an ancient Indian percussion instrument), and also daughter Geetanjali (vocal).

This 2017 project is supported in part by The Cultural Councils of Amherst, Hadley, Huntington, Plainfield, and Worthington, local agencies which are funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Event: Concert by Jerry Noble and Friends

Date: Sunday, Aug. 6, at 4 p.m.

Location: Sevenars Academy, just off Rte. 112 at Ireland Street in South Worthington

For more info: Call 413-238-5854 or online at www.sevenars.org

Admission: Suggested donation of $20 at the door including refreshments
"Age is a limit we impose upon ourselves."

So said the High Lama in the 1937 screen version of "Lost Horizon." I was watching director Frank Capra's take on the James Hilton novel about the utopian Shangri-La last week as I was preparing remarks I would make at the 90th birthday celebration for a good friend and mentor.

Hearing those words provided my "Aha!" moment. I was to be among the last on the list of speakers and knew I would not need to gild the lily.

This is a woman who rarely acts her age. She swims at the YMCA each weekday morning before most of us are awake and then attends Mass at her parish church.

She plays bridge at least twice a week, hosting a high-stakes (I'm talking wagers in terms of dimes here) card party at her home each Monday afternoon.

And, then, there is the weekly tapestry of visits to friends who are in nursing homes or hospitals, luncheons with various groups, movies and theater performances, all carefully wrapped around the daily errands of life and Senior Center events, including yoga classes she says keeps her limber as her aging joints regularly protest.

There are times her schedule tires me out, and I have a full-time job.

Oh, did I mention she writes a weekly column for The Republican? And, that she takes the time to respond to every reader who sends along a comment or question?

Barbara C. Bernard is a good example of how age truly is a state of mind. She revels in being 90. Seat yourself in a banquet room filled with 300 or so friends and admirers, and you'll learn that for her, Shangri-La, really does exist. She lives it every day in the city of Holyoke where her beloved late husband, George, brought her to live in 1950. She still makes her home in the house they built together in the early years of their marriage, a spotless, neat-as-a-pin refuge that is probably as immaculate as it was when they and their two daughters first moved in.

When her children and grandchildren asked months ago how she wanted to celebrate her 90th, Barbara told them she wanted a party. A big party. And, the party had to be preceded by a Mass because she thanks God for her long and wonderful life.

She got her wish, and then some.

The group at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House a week ago today was as diverse as you might imagine, young and old, men and women, children and grandchildren of some of her contemporaries who she still watches over as if they were her own, professional colleagues, swimming and bridge buddies, companions from bus trips to the casinos and so many more, all of them united by the woman of the hour. We were, I told them, "Barbara's people."

My connection to Barbara dates back only a mere 20 years when I inherited duties as her editor. Back then, she had no computer, relying on a stable of four (yes, you read that correctly) electric typewriters in her home office and a steady supply of carbon paper to prepare her columns (one copy for me, one for her files). They would always be delivered in person in batches of three or four so they could then be transcribed by someone else for publication in the newspaper. Over time, especially with the demise of shops where those typewriters could be tended and the emergence of this thing called the Internet, Barbara's come of age in the online world. There's still a measure of distrust though, as I must assure her that each and every column has arrived via email and not everything she reads on the Internet is true.

She's amassed a following of loyal readers across the generations. Her columns, a print-only feature of The Republican on Fridays and monthly in the Plus Papers, run the gamut, from slice-of-life commentaries (her most recent cautioned against making quick decisions) to perspectives on history, faith, family and some politics (if you want to really get her going, talk about the estate tax issue). She is unafraid to share her views, either in writing or in person, but is always respectful of others' opinions.



I'd be remiss if I didn't note that in the course of her lifetime, Barbara's had a career in journalism that's spanned more than seven decades, starting in print and going to radio and TV before back to print. Colleagues past and present from today's WesternMass News, including Durham Caldwell, Kathy Tobin, Ray Hershel and Dave Madsen, feted her at Sunday's big bash, reminding us all that Barbara helped break the glass ceiling for women in our regional TV (and even the national) market back in the day.

Barbara knows she won't live forever. It's one of the reasons she wanted this party. As she explained at the end of the festivities, she wanted the chance to see what her funeral will be like, to hear the plaudits and praise and to soak up the love and affection of her friends and family. "How can I experience this if I'm not here," she said.

So, Barbara, this column's for you before I'm placed in that uncomfortable position of having to share your final words with which you've entrusted me. There's no need to introduce me anymore as your editor. You're more than a co-worker to me. Please know I'm thankful to have you as a friend, a confidante, a mentor and so much more. I'm even more thankful that Western Massachusetts is your Shangri-La, the place you've found peace, happiness, a sense of purpose and a long and wonderful life.

Happy birthday.

Cynthia G. Simison is managing editor of The Republican. She may be reached by email to csimison@repub.com.
A 43-year-old woman from Fall River died Sunday morning after she crossed over into the other travel lane on Route 138 in Raynham and struck another vehicle head on, according to authorities.

Police Chief James Donovan said officers and firefighters responded to a fatal head-on motor vehicle crash around 3:15 a.m. on Rte. 138. The crash was near Raynham Park.

The woman from Fall River was heading south in a 1992 Honda Civic when she crossed into the northbound lane and struck a 2011 BMW head on, police said.

The woman, who has not been identified publicly, died at the scene. The driver of the BMW, a 22-year-old man from Boston, was rushed to a nearby hospital.

Authorities said he is expected to survive. The crash remains under investigation.
SPRINGFIELD -- A long-stalled hotel project at the Epiphany Tower on lower State Street has evolved into a newly filed lawsuit in Superior Court and accusations of breach of contract and fraud against the owner.



The lawsuit filed by plaintiffs including Epiphany Development Corp., based in Springfield, and the Rev. Timothy Paul Baymon accuses the property owner, Jhanvi Hospitality LLC, of refusing to sell the site to them in alleged violation of a contractual agreement signed years ago.



Jhanvi, in a filed response to the civil suit, denies all claims of breach of contract, fraud and wrongdoing.



A hotel project at the eight-story tower at 143-147 State St., in the downtown, was initially proposed in 2006. It was followed by multiple plan revisions and construction delays over the years.



In recent years, the plans have called for a 98-room Holiday Inn Express, but work is not yet complete, officials said.

A third plaintiff in the suit is Praise & Glory Church of God in Christ Inc., of Springfield, listed as the prior owner that sold the property to Jhanvi in 2007 for the purpose of converting the site to a hotel. The church had a written option agreement giving it the right to repurchase the property, with the agreement extended several times, the suit states.

The last option agreement was in 2013 and expired in March 2016, the suit states. It alleges the option expired after Praise and Glory Church had given proper notice that it was "ready, willing and able to exercise the option to purchase," the suit states.

The suit accuses Jhanvi of refusing to honor the contract, constituting "bad faith and unfair dealing." As a result, the church "incurred substantial financial damages," the suit said.



Jhanvi, in response, said the defendants "denied that defendants engaged in any such conduct."



The three plaintiffs have ties to the Holy Christian Orthodox Church. The plaintiffs said they have invested considerable funds into the Epiphany Tower project over the years and want the conveyance of the property and compensation for their expenses.



"During the rehabilitation of the property the defendants failed to pay numerous obligations including contract work, taxes, Business Improvement District fees and other large expenses," the suit claims. "Plaintiffs had to intervene and pay for these obligations on behalf of the defendants, and negotiate collection of unpaid invoices and utilities."



The plaintiffs said that Praise and Glory Church attempted to exercise its option to buy the property last year, with multiple notices, but alleged that Jhanvi "refused to honor or even answer the notice of exercise of the option agreement by Plaintiff Praise and Glory."

The plaintiffs are asking the court to order Jhanvi, a hotel management company, to convey the property to the church at an alleged agreed-upon price of $9.5 million and to pay the plaintiffs for incurred costs and legal expenses. A jury trial is requested.

Other defendants are listed as Jamsan Hotel Management Inc., of Lexington, Ashok Patel and Dilip Patel.



Attorney Bart Heemskerk, representing Jhanvi Hospitality, filed a response that denies the company "has any duty to convey the property," and said there was no breach of contract or fraud, among other claims.



He described the claims made by the plaintiffs as "totally frivolous and subject to sanction" under state law.

On Friday, Heemskerk said the lawsuit will not slow down the hotel project, but he said he was not aware of the current timetable for the work to be completed.

The troubles for the Epiphany Tower property over the years included being placed on an advertised list of tax delinquents in 2015 for property taxes owed in fiscal 2014.



According to an article in The Republican in 2015, representatives of Jhanvi Hospitality paid the taxes and fees totaling $167,555 for the State Street property and a second property owned by Jhanvi at 1127 Main St., in the South End.

Jhanvi, through Heemskerk, has stated that it plans to rehabilitate the former Black Pearl property at 1127 Main St., as a new restaurant on the ground floor and for apartments in the upper floors.



Jhanvi reached agreement Friday to clean the property, and monitor it daily, pending rehabilitation.

Baymon has acted as a spokesman for both the Epiphany Tower project and the Main Street project for a number of years.



Baymon is listed as the former president of Epiphany Development Corp., and said he is still involved in the project. He has provided updates on the project multiple times, including his estimate in 2014 that the hotel would be ready to open by the spring of 2015.

In addition, Baymon has been listed as archbishop of the Archdiocese of New England of the International Communion of the Holy Christian Orthodox Church.



The Epiphany Tower is formerly the Civic Tower, and is across the street from the MassMutual Center.

Praise & Glory Church of God vs. Jhanvi Hospitality by The Republican/MassLive.com on Scribd
HOLYOKE - A 25-year-old man is in critical condition after being shot late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

The victim suffered five gunshot wounds. He was brought to Holyoke Medical Center by a friend or family member shortly after midnight Sunday, Holyoke Police Lt. James Albert told Western Mass News.

The victim is from Holyoke but police did not release his name.

Police are still investigating the crime and do not know the location where the man was shot and have no motive.
CHICOPEE - A man accused of driving about 100 miles an hour on Granby Road and running a red light has been arrested after allegedly causing a three-car crash Saturday.

Jonathan Cotto, 24, of 355 High St., New Britain, Connecticut, was arrested immediately after the 5;15 p.m. crash and charged with operating with a suspended license, driving an unregistered, uninsured motor vehicle, negligent operation and failure to use a seatbelt, Michael Wilk, Chicopee Police public information officer, said.

Chicopee Police Officer John Slachetka was parked at the Knights of Columbus on Granby Road when he spotted a vehicle passing at a speed of about 100 miles an hour, at least 60 miles an hour over the speed limit, just before the accident, Wilk said.

"He activated his blue lights and siren in an attempt to have the party slow down, and warn other motorists. As he pulled out, he lost sight of the suspect vehicle," Wilk said.

Slachetka dispatched other officers to warn them of the speeding car. Almost immediately after police received a report of a three-vehicle crash less than a mile away at the intersection of Grattan Street and Granby Road, Wilk said.

Cotto is being accused of speeding through a red light and striking a mail truck causing it to flip onto its side. The impact also caused a car behind the mail truck to be struck, he said.

The Postal Service employee was injured and trapped in the mail truck. Chicopee Fire Department responded to extricate the worker, Wilk said.

Four other people, including Cotto, were also injured and brought to area hospitals. The mail truck operator and a passenger in the third vehicle are listed in stable condition in area hospitals. The remaining victims have been released, Wilk said.

Cotto was treated for minor injuries and then released to Chicopee Police and booked on the charges. He is being held without bail until his arraignment in Chicopee District Court on Monday.

Police later learned Massachusetts State Police troopers also attempted to stop the same car earlier, but ceased their pursuit on the highway for safety reasons. They also learned Cotto had recently been paroled in Connecticut, Wilk said.
By PTI: case lodged

By Saloni Bhatia

New Delhi, Jul 23 (PTI) The Delhi Police has registered a case of forgery on a complaint by former Lok Sabha MP Ram Sevak Singh who has alleged that his signature was forged on papers listing questions pertaining to different ministries in 2005.

Singh, who was a Congress member in the House, was expelled in December 2005 from Parliament for allegedly accepting bribes for asking questions.

advertisement

His son Dharamveer Singh claimed that 31 questions pertaining to different ministries were submitted in his fathers name in August 2005.

The Lok Sabha Secretariat informed his father about the signatures not matching after verification, he said.

He claimed that his father signed in English, but the questions submitted to the Lok Sabha had his fathers signature in Hindi.

He claimed even though the former MP pursued the issue, the matter was not probed further, he said.

However, after his father was expelled from Parliament for allegedly accepting bribes for asking questions, Dharamveer decided to pursue the matter.

"My father was ill for more than two years after 2005. It was in 2008 that I started filing RTIs to get details about the matter," he said.

The Lok Sabha Secretariat, in a reply to the Central Information Commission, last year accepted that the signature on the questions allegedly submitted by the former MP were forged and asked the MP to approach the police, he said.

A complaint was filed in December 2016 at the Parliament Street Police Station by ex-MP. However, an FIR was registered in the matter on July 14 on the directions of Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik, police said.

According to the FIR, "The question wing of Lok Sabha Secretariat addressed a letter dated August 12, 2005 to the undersigned that the request letter seeking questions proposed to be raised in Parliament under his name do not contain the authentic signatures, thus varying from the records as available with Parliament."

In his complaint, the former MP has claimed that even though he pursued the issue, no action was taken.

"The CCTV footage and records of relevant time would clearly reveal the fake, forged action and purpose of the person who presented these questions before the secretariat," the FIR said.

A senior police officer said that a case under sections relating to forgery for purpose of cheating and using as genuine a forged document or electronic record of the Indian Penal Code has been registered and an investigation is underway. PTI SLB PLB AAR SC AAR

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Your eyes arent deceiving you.

Business is booming in Gallatin County according to a new study released by personal finance technology company Smart Asset.

Gallatin County ranked first in the state of Montana for receiving the greatest amount of incoming investments.

The study ranks counties based on their business establishment growth, GDP growth, new building permits and federal contracts.

Gallatin County showed an 8.9 percent business growth over the course of three years, and President and CEO of the Bozeman Chamber of Commerce, Daryl Schliem said it bodes well for Bozeman and the county.

By Kaitlin Corbett  MTN News

Full Story: http://www.kbzk.com/story/35946439/gallatin-county-leads-state-for-business-investment-growth
Since our founding in 2011, Adventure Scientists has sent thousands of volunteers on missions to collect data from remote, difficult-to-access locations for our conservation partners. These partnerships have led to the discovery of more than three dozen new species, provided key information to guide climate change decision-making, and helped protect threatened wildlife habitat around the world.

Our work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets, and our volunteer adventurers are making a difference around the world. 

Opportunities: http://www.adventurescientists.org/join-our-team.html
Dozens of Park City residents on brand-new electric bikes rode up to the McPolin Barn for the launch of the nations first fully electric bike-share program recently.

Park City officials say the first phase of its program, operated by Canadian company Bewegen, will support 88 new pedal-assisted e-bikes. The bikes will initially be available at nine charging stations throughout Park City and the Snyderville Basin.

By Ryan Morgan @RyanMor53791934

Full Story: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865685359/Park-City-launches-first-all-electric-bike-share-program-in-the-nation.html
Developer Tom Cody lost all the ground-floor retail tenants of his building on the Northwest Park Blocks and he thinks he knows why.

Customers avoided the tents, tarps and backpacks that filled the leafy corridor north of Burnside. In turn, his tenants looked for shops without dozens of people sleeping or hanging out in front at all hours of the day.

Its not the first time Cody saw his business jeopardized by the citys 4,000-and-growing homeless population.

By Molly Harbarger, [email protected], The Oregonian/OregonLive

Full Story: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/07/business_community_takes_bigge.html#incart_river_index
The elderly couple was rescued by National Disaster Relief Force in Surendranagar district, while the leopard was saved from a farm in Amreli district of Gujarat.

Surendranagar district of Gujarat has been worst hit by the flood. Photo: ANI.

By India Today Web Desk: The flood-like situation in Gujarat has claimed three lives so far while evacuation operations are underway in several parts of the state.

An elderly couple was rescued by the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) in Surendranagar district today. The two were stuck in Khambhlav village since last night and were rescued today morning.

In Amreli district, the incessant rains have affected the wildlife in the forest area. A leopard, while trying to get away from the flooded areas, got stuck between the meshed wires near a farm.

advertisement

The leopard spent a night in that condition before it was rescued by the forest department and taken to an animal rescue centre.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE FLOOD-LIKE SITUATION IN GUJARAT: The Saurashtra region in Gujarat has been worst hid by the heavy rains, and rescue operations are underway in Surendranagar, Rajkot and Morbi districts. Three people died in separate instances of being swept away by water in Rajkot, Amreli and Junagadh districts. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupai said on Saturday that "NDRF, IAF and state rescue teams have so far rescued 214 people, stranded at different places". He said that 6,235 people have been shifted out of low-lying areas. Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) Commissioner B N Pani said that a two-storey building in Hathikhana area of the city collapsed but no casualty was reported. The Indian Air Force, in a release on Saturday, said that four MI-17V5 helicopters were deployed for rescue and relief operation in different areas of Surendranagar and Morbi districts. The heavy rains have hit bus and rail services with state transport authorities temporarily discontinuing bus services on 17 routes due to waterlogging. According to CM Vijay Rupani, 65 roads and 10 state highways have been damaged in the rains. A port warning has been issued along the coast and fishermen have been asked not to venture into the sea in the next few days.

ALSO READ:

Indian Air Force continues to provide support in flood-hit Gujarat

Devastating Assam floods put wildlife in peril, 58 animals killed in Kaziranga National Park

Jammu and Kashmir: 6 killed in flash floods triggered by cloudburst in Doda district

ALSO WATCH: Assam flood toll climbs to 60, over 10 lakh affected

--- ENDS ---
The woman alleged that a man tried to forcefully pull off her hijab, and hit her when she tried to resist the attempt.

By Press Trust of India: A Muslim woman's hijab was pulled off allegedly by a man in a vicious assault in London, amid a spike in hate crime incidents following a series of terror attacks by Islamists in the UK.

Aniso Abdulkadir was waiting for a tube at Baker Street station on July 16 when she says the man grabbed her headscarf before lashing out with his fists and pinning one of her friends up against a wall, the BBC reported.

advertisement

"This man at Baker Street station forcefully attempted to pull my hijab off and when I instinctively grabbed hold of my scarf he hit me," Abdulkadir tweeted and posted a picture of the man who allegedly attacked her.

"He proceeded to verbally abuse my friends and I, pinning one of them against the wall and spitting in her face," the tweet read.

Abdulkadir added that a woman who was present was also threatening and verbally abusive, the report said.

A British Transport Police spokesman said it was being investigated as a hate crime. "Behaviour like this is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated... This incident has been reported to us and we are investigating," the official said.

MAN DENIES ALLEGATIONS

However a man, who claimed to be the man in the image posted by the woman, tweeted on July 17 to protest his innocence, claiming he had been defending his partner from what he called a "racist attack", the Guardian reported.

He said the allegation against him was "completely false". "I would like to confirm I never hit or attacked anyone; I simply defused the situation by separating them," Pawel Uczciwek wrote.

"The police is fully cooperating with me and will be able to obtain CCTV footage showing the three women attempting to attack my partner because we are in an interracial relationship," he claimed.

The assault comes amid a spike in hate crime incidents in the UK following a suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester that claimed 22 lives and an attack in London by three terrorists, who drove a van into pedestrians and then went on a stabbing spree, killing eight persons before being shot dead.

Anti-Muslim crimes in the British capital increased five-fold since the London attack, London Mayor Sadiq Khan had said, warning that police would take a "zero-tolerance approach".

ALSO READ:

Muslim girl's hijab ripped off, called "terrorist" in US

Woman kicked out of bank in US for wearing hijab

US teacher rips off 8-year-old girls hijab, fired

ALSO WATCH:

Rise in hate crime in US: Third incident in 2 weeks

--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: The Kapil Sharma Show fans were disappointed, as no new episode was aired on Saturday. However, an old TKSS episode that had Yuvraj Singh and Hazel Keech as guests was aired.

The episode was aired with a disclaimer that said, "You are watching a repeat episode of The Kapil Sharma Show today. Next week you will be able to see a new episode."

advertisement

Comedian Kapil Sharma has not been keeping well. Recently, Kapil had to shoot with the cast of Mubarkan that included Anil Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Ileana D'Cruz and Athiya Shetty but the comedian fainted on the sets and had to be rushed to Kokilaben Hospital.

A similar thing had happened more than a week ago on the sets of the show when TKSS' shoot had to be cancelled because Kapil had collapsed after complaining about being unwell. Last time Shah Rukh Khan and Imtiaz Ali were to come on the show for the promotion of Jab Harry Met Sejal.

This is the third time that Kapil had to cancel the shoot due to his ill health in the last two months. Kapil has been shooting for his upcoming movie, Firangi, simultaneously and looks like work has taken a toll over the comedian's health.

We wish Kapil a speedy recovery.

Also read: TKSS: Kapil Sharma hospitalised after fainting on the sets of the show

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: By Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Jul 23 (PTI) India has extended Nepalese Rupees 66.44 million as financial assistance for the construction of school buildings in Nepal.

Ambassador of India to Nepal Manjeev Singh Puri yesterday inaugurated one of the school buildings in Jogidaha, Udayapur and laid the foundation stone for the construction of campus building for Narad Aadarsha Education in Basaha.

advertisement

India has extended a total of Nepalese Rupees 66.44 million as financial assistance for construction of these buildings under its Small Development Programme Scheme, according to a press release issued by the Indian embassy here.

The newly constructed building of Shree Janata Higher Secondary School consists of 12 classrooms along with toilets, a compound wall and furniture.

The Ambassador also announced Mahatma Gandhi scholarship for two meritorious students of the school.

Narad Aadarsha Education Campus, affiliated to Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, currently provides education for more than 175 students and 7 per cent of them are girls.

The new infrastructure would provide much needed classroom space and would create an improved environment for learning and contribute to the development of the education facilities in Udyapur district. PTI SBP AJR NSA AJR

--- ENDS ---
Error 404 Not Found

You may have mis-typed the URL. Or the page has been removed. Actually, there is nothing to see here...

Click on the links below to do something, Thanks!

Take Me our of here
Memory relies on different timescales that must all be available at once in order to be useful, new research argues. Both short- and long-term memory are thus equally important to the way in which our brains function. Share on Pinterest A key factor in the formation of short- and long-term memory is time, research shows. Short- and long-term memory have been the subject of many studies seeking to explore how, what, and why we remember. Medical News Today have previously reported on research identifying memory formation mechanisms, and revealing the impact of sleep deprivation on how much we can learn and recall. Drs. Thomas Carew and Nikolay Kukushkin, from the Center of Neural Science at New York University in New York City, have recently undertaken a study aiming to furnish us with a better understanding of how memory works in humans. Their findings are published in the current issue of Neuron.

Short- and long-term memories collaborate The researchers point out that short-term and long-term memories coexist with the experience lived in the present moment. They offer the example of music, saying that we experience a song both as it is played to us in the present, and through the lens of our past recollections about it. When we listen to our favorite song on the radio, we process the short-term memory of the notes and lyrics that we have just heard and link it to memories of listening to that same song at various points in the past. Drs. Carew and Kukushkin compare the formation of long-term memories with the way in which human beings process sound. Much like sound is broken down by the auditory system into many discrete bins of frequencies that are perceived simultaneously, an experience as a whole is parsed by the brain into many time windows that collectively represent the past. The researchers view this process as reliant on a temporal hierarchy, wherein various related time windows, or recalled information, work together simultaneously. Both short-term and long-term memories, therefore, do two things at once: they preserve past information and determine our current perception of events.
Functional neurological symptom disorder (FND), also called conversion disorder, is a complex condition that causes neurological symptoms without an apparent structural problem in the nervous system. The exact cause is not completely understood, but stress can be a major contributor. According to the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience , FND occurs in 412 per 100,000 people. While it can affect children, FND is more common among adolescents and adults. People in rural settings and military personnel may be at higher risk of FND than other groups.

Symptoms Individuals who have FND experience physical symptoms. These symptoms have no underlying structural cause and are often associated with an emotional or psychological crisis. However, many individuals have FND that did not result from an emotional or psychological cause. A person with FND has no control over the symptoms they experience and does not consciously or deliberately produce them. Typical signs and symptoms of FND include: fainting

jerky movements

numbness, tingling, or pain, often on one side of the body

problems walking, or gait disorder

seizures

speech problems

tremors or spasms

vision problems, such as loss of vision or double vision

weakness or paralysis in the limbs Symptom duration and severity Symptoms may come and go, or they may persist. They can vary in severity and location. In some cases, symptoms resolve within a short period. However, in some people, they may continue for months or years and can hinder a persons ability to work and carry out everyday activities. According to FND Hope, a non-profit patient advocacy organization for people with FND, the symptoms of FND can be as debilitating as those of multiple sclerosis or Parkinsons disease.

Causes The exact cause of FND is not known. One theory is that FND results from an internal conflict, and the symptoms are the bodys attempt to provide a solution to this stress. For example, someone who believes violence is wrong yet experiences an urge to react violently to a traumatic situation may experience numbness in their arms or legs as a way of suppressing the urge to hit or kick. However, some people may develop FND in the absence of stress, depression, or other psychological factors. Some studies have shown that people with FND have decreased functional connectivity in certain parts of their brains, including those parts that control the muscles and senses. This indicates the bodys lack of control over physical movement or actions.

Risk factors Factors that may increase the risk of developing FND include: dissociative disorders

personality disorders

distressing life events

childhood traumas

having a family member with FND

Diagnosis Diagnosing FND may take a long time, as the symptoms do not result from an underlying physical condition and can mimic the symptoms of many other conditions. Doctors should not diagnose FND on the basis that tests for other conditions have proved negative. In many cases, both a neurologist and a psychiatrist will be involved in a diagnosis. A neurologist will help rule out underlying neurological conditions, while a psychiatrist can rule out other psychological causes and confirm a diagnosis of FND. Although there is no standard test to check for FND, tests commonly used for diagnosis include: A health assessment and physical exam A doctor will note any symptoms a person is experiencing and ask about life changes, traumas, and major stressors. They may also take a full medical history and family history. A doctor may carry out functional tests to check a persons reflexes, balance, and physical movements. Imaging tests X-rays and MRI scans can identify whether symptoms are related to brain injuries or neurological abnormalities. Electroencephalogram scans can track brain waves, allowing doctors to detect problems associated with the brains electrical activity, such as epilepsy. DSM criteria A psychiatrist will use the diagnostic criteria laid out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) to make a diagnosis. To receive a diagnosis of FND, people will: have one or more symptoms that affect their movement or senses and are outside of their conscious control

not be able to attribute their symptoms to drug use or a physical or neurological condition

find that their symptoms cause significant distress or problems socializing, at work, or in other areas of life, or are significant enough that medical evaluation is required

Treatment Symptoms can resolve without treatment in some people with FND, particularly after they receive assurance that their symptoms are not related to a more serious health condition. However, treatments may be beneficial for those with: co-occurring psychological conditions

severe FND symptoms

symptoms that are slow to resolve

recurrent symptoms In general, doctors recommend a combination of treatments. These treatments include: Psychotherapy: People with FND related to a stressful or traumatic event or an underlying mental health condition may benefit from working with a psychotherapist or psychologist. Some individuals with FND undergo cognitive behavioral therapy .

People with FND related to a stressful or traumatic event or an underlying mental health condition may benefit from working with a psychotherapist or psychologist. Some individuals with FND undergo . Physical therapy: People may treat the physical symptoms of FND, such as impaired movement or muscle weakness, or pain, with physical therapy.

People may treat the physical symptoms of FND, such as impaired movement or muscle weakness, or pain, with physical therapy. Medication: Antianxiety drugs or antidepressants may help treat the stress or anxiety that contributed to the onset of FND.

Antianxiety drugs or antidepressants may help treat the stress or anxiety that contributed to the onset of FND. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): This treatment uses magnetic fields to stimulate certain parts of the brain. Some reports suggest TMS is beneficial for people with FND, but there is limited evidence at this stage.

This treatment uses magnetic fields to stimulate certain parts of the brain. suggest TMS is beneficial for people with FND, but there is limited evidence at this stage. Lifestyle changes: Engaging in activities that alleviate stress and anxiety, such as yoga, meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation, may be helpful for some people with FND. Eating a balanced diet, getting enough sleep, fostering positive relationships, and maintaining a good quality of life also contribute to stress reduction.

Outlook The duration and severity of symptoms vary from person to person. Typically, the symptoms are not life threatening, but complications that arise may be debilitating or decrease a persons quality of life. Once reassured that their symptoms are not related to a physical condition or serious illness, many people with FND recover. However, some people may experience ongoing symptoms, recurring symptoms, or the development of new symptoms at a later stage, particularly if: they delay treatment

symptoms develop slowly

symptoms do not improve quickly

symptoms are not stress-related

symptoms include tremors or seizures

there are co-occurring psychological conditions
On one hand where some people are fighting against each other in the name of religion and fueling the Hindu-Muslim conflict, Alam Ara is setting an example that the whole nation needs to learn from and at the same time feel ashamed of as well. For the past 17 years, this woman from Varanasi has been carving Shiv Lingams for a living and believes that there are no Hindus or Muslims in the country, everyone is a Hindustani. She believes that this divide is a waste of time and we don't think anyone could have said it as easily as her.

Making Shiv Lingams is a god-gifted art and we make it with love, Ara told ANI.

UP: Varanasi's Alam Ara making Shiva Lingam for the last 17 years to earn a living, says "this is god-gifted art, we make it with love" pic.twitter.com/bIJZvvWGoe  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) 22 July 2017

Ara further said that this is her source of income; when it comes to art there are no Hindus or Muslims. We only hope that more people realize that art knows no religious boundaries and religion should never come in the way of work or love for something.

Ye humari rozi hai...Hindu-Muslim se kuch nahi hota hai. Hum Hindustani hain: Varanasi's Alam Ara on making Shiva Lingam for 17 years pic.twitter.com/aASkM4nkW3  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) 22 July 2017

Hindu-Muslim se kuch nahi hota hai. Hum Hindustani hain, she told ANI and we couldn't agree any less with her. While the feeling of solidarity is losing its sheen with each passing day, it's people like Alam Ara who help us restore our faith in unity.
An analysis of remuneration disclosures made by top listed companies shows that the pay packages of senior-most personnel such as CEOs and executive chairmen continue to remain high and rose further at most private sector firms during 2016-17.

The public sector companies show a totally different picture with their chiefs getting salaries of just about 3-4 times of their median employee remunerations

By Press Trust of India: A huge pay gap between CEOs and other employees at Indian companies has come to the fore, with the biggest listed blue-chip firms doling out to their top executives salary packages of up to 1,200-times of their median employee remunerations.

An analysis of remuneration disclosures made by top listed companies forming part of the blue-chip index Sensex -- under directions of the capital markets regulator Sebi -- shows that the pay packages of senior-most personnel such as CEOs and executive chairmen continue to remain high and rose further at most private sector firms during 2016-17.

advertisement

TOP EXECUTIVES' PAY REMAINS HIGH

On the contrary, the median employee remuneration fell or remained almost same during the last fiscal, while the ratio of the top executives' pay to the median employee remuneration remained at astronomically high levels of hundreds-times in many cases.

The public sector companies show a totally different picture with their chiefs getting salaries of just about 3-4 times of their median employee remunerations.

SEBI REGULATIONS REQUIRE COMPANIES TO DISCLOSE REMUNERATIONS

While the rules do not put any restrictions on the companies regarding how much more they want to pay their top executives vis-a-vis an average employee, the Sebi regulations require most listed companies to annually disclose various remuneration ratios to help the investors know about salary practices at the firms in which they have invested.

However, salaries of top executives, especially in case of those related to promoter groups, typically require the approval of the companies boards, various committees and shareholders. Besides, the companies with inadequate profits need the governments approval for any excessive salaries paid to their top executives.

As per the rules, the remuneration payable to any one managing director or whole-time director or manager, cannot exceed 5 per cent of the net profit of the company. If there is more than one such director, the remuneration cannot exceed 10 per cent of the net profit to all such directors and managers taken together.

INCREASE IN RATIO OF TOP EXECUTIVE PAY

Among the 30 Sensex firms, at least 15 have already disclosed an increase in the ratio of top executive pay with that of the median employee remuneration for 2016-17. Nine of the Sensex firms are yet to disclose these numbers and therefore the tally may go up.

Six Sensex companies have reported some decline in this ratio and these include Wipro (down from 260 times to 259 times), Infosys (283 times), Dr Reddys Lab (from 312 times to 233 times) and Hero MotoCorp (from 755 times to 731 times).

advertisement

The countrys most-valued firm Reliance Industries did not disclose this ratio in its latest annual report published on the website. While its chief Mukesh Ambani has capped his pay at Rs 15 crore for many years now, the ratio was high at 205 times in 2014-15.

Among other major Sensex firms, TCS saw the ratio between top-paid executive pay and the median employee remuneration rise to 515 times (from 460 times in previous year), while the same for Lupin stood at 1,263-times (though down from 1,317 times) for Chairman. The ratio for the CEO at Lupin was much lower at 217-times.

At Adani Ports, the ratio was down to 42 times in case of Gautam Adani (from 48 times), while the ratio was much higher at 169-times for another Whole Time Director. The same for Bajaj Auto was also high at 522 times.

Among banks, the ratio was highest for HDFC Banks CEO Aditya Puri (whose pay package rose by 20 per cent to over Rs 10 crore) where it rose from 179 to 187 times. Kotak Mahindra Bank saw the ratio rise from 42 to 48, ICICI from 100 to 112- times and Axis Bank from 72-times to 78-times. At HDFC Ltd, the ratio for the CEO Keki Mistry rose from 88 times to 92 times, while the same for Chairman Deepak Parekh was much less at 17 times.

advertisement

Among the companies which are yet to report their latest numbers, Larsen and Toubro had disclosed a very high ratio of 1004-times for the fiscal 2005-16.

At ITC, the ratio rose from 427 to 508 times in case of Y C Deveshwar, who has now given up his top executive role, but the ratio for the current executive chief was much lesser at 59 times.

Deveshwars total package rose by 58 per cent to Rs 21.16 crore, including all the benefits.

Other companies that saw an increase in the ratio included Bharti Airtel (to 366-times in 2016-17), Cipla (416 times), M&M (108 times), Tata Steel (94 times) and HUL (138 times).

In terms of the median employee remuneration, a few companies such as Wipro and Cipla recorded a decline and there was only a marginal rise of less than 5 per cent for several others such as Bharti Airtel, M&M, Bajaj Auto, TCS and HUL.

The companies with an increase of over 10 per cent for median employee remuneration were a few and included Kotak Mahindra Bank, Adani Ports, HDFC Bank, HDFC Ltd and Lupin.

advertisement

Dr Reddys Lab was among the very few to see a decline in the CEO pay, while it was unchanged for RIL and Adani Ports. The companies having seen a rise in the top executive pay included Wipro, TCS, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, Bajaj Auto, Tata Steel, M&M, Hero Motocorp, Lupin and Bharti Airtel.

The overall key management pay rose significantly for Bharti Airtel, HDFC Bank, HDFC Ltd, TCS and Asian Paints.

ALSO READ:

Salary cut lesser evil than layoffs in aviation space

Salary in the times of demonetisation: Big test for Modi government in first week of December

--- ENDS ---
This year's CAG report, tabled in Parliament on Friday, said that there was not enough ammunition to last more than 10 days if war breaks out.

The CAG blamed the functioning of the Ordnance Factory Board for the shortage of supplies to the Indian armed forces. (Photo for representation | Reuters)

By Prabhash K Dutta: In 2015, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said that the Indian Army did not have ammunition to fight a war extending more than 20 days.

This year's CAG report, tabled in Parliament on Friday, said that there was not enough ammunition to last more than 10 days if war breaks out. This makes the Indian Army vulnerable when they are facing threats on multiple fronts from China and Pakistan.

advertisement

Indian Army is already engaged in an eyeball encounter with the People's Liberation Army of China over Doklam plateau in Bhutan for over a month. The CAG blamed the functioning of the Ordnance Factory Board for the shortage of supplies to the Indian armed forces. But, there are a number of factors contributing towards shortfall of ammunition to the Indian Army.

WHAT CAG SAID IN 2015?

The CAG report red-flagged acute shortage of ammunition required for protecting the borders of the country in the event of a war with China or Pakistan if it extended for more than 20 days. Not only this, some types of ammunition would not last even 10 days, according to the CAG report.

In its 2015 report, the CAG had said that the Indian Army needed more budgetary support to reach 50 per cent of the target capacity of the War Wastage Reserve (WWR).

The WWR is referred to as a collection of military material held in reserve in case of war. This includes bullets and other form of ammunition, as well as equipment, weapons and fuel.

Ideally, the WWR should last for 40 days of intense war giving enough time to the ordnance factories for ramping up production of required ammunition and supply the same to the military.

The CAG report meant that if adequate budgetary support was given, the shortfall in ammunition could be overcome by 2019 and in any case not before that.

WHY ARMY IS RUNNING OUT OF AMMUNITION

The latest report of the CAG mentions that despite the concern being red-flagged by the central auditor and also a high-level report on defence preparedness in 2015, no improvement was seen in the working of the ordnance factories.

The production and supply of ammunition remain inferior in quality and quantity, the CAG report said.

Indian Army is the third largest in the world with more than 13 lakh personnel. Such a huge size of army makes storage of arms and ammunition difficult. There have also been storage quality problems with defence establishment.

Usually, bullets and shells last for decades if properly stored. But, large stocks of ammunition have been found to degrade and create problems when put to use.

advertisement

BUREAUCRATIC HURDLES

Besides the functioning of the ordnance factories, there have been problems of funds for both production of ammunition in the country and import from outside.

Defence observers say that due to red tapism and archaic bureaucratic practices have hampered defence over the years. According to one report, only 20 per cent of the targeted ammunition was imported between 2008 and 2013 as bureaucracy kept creating hurdles.

The Make In India push is also blamed for poor defence procurement. Under the ambitious programme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in 2014 that India would cut down import of arms and ammunitions to give a push to domestic production of the same.

Modi said that India should emerge as an exporter of arms and ammunition to the world especially the smaller countries. Though, the programme is well intended but it further delayed bureaucratic clearances.

The CAG has expressed surprise that majority of the procurement cases from other than Ordnance Factory Board and which were initiated by Army headquarters during 2009-13 were pending as of January 2017.

LARGEST ARMS IMPORTER YET SPENDING LESS

Though, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India is the largest arms importer in the world. Between 2012 and 2016, India accounted for 13 per cent of global arms imports.

advertisement

But, noted strategic thinker, Ian Bremmer recently said that India is among the few countries, which were spending more on infrastructure than on defence preparedness. Bremmer wrote on Twitter: "Under @narendramodi, India now spends more on infrastructure than defense. One of the only countries to do so."

ALSO READ | Doklam row: India-China bilateral talks ruled out till border standoff is resolved

Indian Army's ammunition stock will exhaust after 10 days of war: CAG report China nervous? Sikkim standoff should not threaten RCEP deal, appeals Chinese media

As India-China standoff over Doklam continues, CAG report exposes vulnerability of Army, Navy

ALSO WATCH | As Doklam standoff continues, Pakistan turns up border heat

--- ENDS ---
The 39 Indian nationals have been missing since 2014.

By Satender Chauhan: Vijay Sampla, the Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment, said the Narendra Modi government is doing everything it can to bring back the 39 Indian nationals missing in Iraq.

"(The) Indian government is doing everything it can for them to bring them back. We need to have patience," he said.

Just days ago, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the Indian citizens, who've been missing since 2014, might be alive in a prison in Badush, located west of Mosul.

advertisement

An India Today team travelled to Badush but found no sign of them. The jail had been flattened to the ground.

"On Badush jail, I can't say anything about it. MEA is to answer that," Sampla said.

Sampla, who called on the media to help the government, said most of the missing Indians are from Punjab, and that some are from Tamil Nadu.

ALSO READ

India Today first to reach Mosul after ISIS fall. No sign of missing 39 Indians

Indians missing in Iraq: Families likely to come to Delhi in next two days to question Centre

ALSO WATCH

Missing Indians in Iraq: 3 years on, endless wait for anxious families

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: reopen Amarinder threat case

Chandigarh, Jul 23 (PTI) The Punjab Congress has urged the Centre to take up with the Canadian prime minister a case pertaining to threat issued by pro-Khalistani elements to Chief Minister Amarinder Singh in April.

About two months back, videos had surfaced purportedly showing men, suspected to be based in Canada, giving threats to the chief minister at an event in British Columbias Surrey on April 22.

advertisement

Leaders of the Congress party in Punjab alleged that a "cover-up" in the Canadian governments decision to close its probe into the "brazen threats" issued by the pro-Khalistanis against Amarinder.

"The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) should seek the Canadian Prime Ministers intervention to ensure that those guilty of using the countrys soil to issue open and violent threats to the Punjab chief minister are not allowed a free run," state party leaders Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria and Ramanjit Singh Sikki said in a joint statement.

They demanded to know the status of the case filed by the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) against the chief minister to prevent him from visiting Canada.

"The Punjab Congress has called for activation of all international diplomatic channels to put pressure on the Canadian government to take necessary steps to check the proliferation of anti-India forces on their soil," the leaders said.

Canada should be asked to reopen the case and get it independently investigated in the interest of justice and fair play, and to ensure that its land is not used for divisive propaganda and spreading hatred, they said.

"It is evident that a proper inquiry had not been carried out with respect to the formal complaint, reportedly, lodged by the Indian High Commission in Ottawa to Global Affairs- Canada," the leaders of the state Congress committee said.

They recalled that Amarinder was forced to cancel his Canada visit last year following the complaint and case lodged against him by the SFJ on "frivolous" grounds.

Canada should take strong steps to prevent such "frivolous" cases against Indian leaders, especially when these were obviously aimed at playing into hands of anti-India forces like the ISI to embarrass India and project a wrong image of the country, the leaders said. PTI CHS ANB AKK ANB

--- ENDS ---
We're sorry, but we're unable to locate the page you requested. The page may have been removed, renamed, or deleted. You can try searching for the topic using the search button in the right hand corner above.
By India Today Web Desk: Zee TV's popular show Jamai Raja went off-air in March but five artists from the show - Shiny Doshi, Mouli Gangully, Sanjay Swaraj, Neelu Kohli and Rajshree Dutta have not yet been paid their dues. The actors reached out to Cine and TV Artistes' Association (CINTAA) for help in the matter, where Meenakshi assured to clear everyone's dues.

advertisement

Actress Mouli Ganguly, who was part of the show, said to Bombay Times, "I've received only a part of my payment. They stopped us from depositing the post-dated cheques. I wasn't even given a copy of my contract in spite of repeated requests. Around seven actors had approached CINTAA before the shoot wrapped up. We were assured that we would be paid. On that condition, we resumed the shoot, but the dues still haven't been cleared."

Recently, CINTAA issued a non-cooperation directive against producer Meenakshi Sagar, which prevents all CINTAA members from providing their services to any projects handled by the producer.

The directive didn't go down well with producer Meenakshi, who in return sent a legal notice to CINTAA for extortion, defamation and criminally intimidating her. She spoke to SpotBoye.com and said, "We had a little delay in payment for one of the shows, Jamai Raja. Everybody was getting cleared bit by bit. There was a little cash crunch and out of 10 people who went to CINTAA we have cleared 5 artistes' payments. CINTAA has taken one-sided decision. They can't stop actors from working with me. They can't do this type of dadagiri or gundagardi. They haven't given me any reaction after my notice. There was a delay I am accepting but I have not run way. It was a matter of a few months. I expect them to back off from this non-cooperation directive and definitely give me an apology."

Also read: Shilpa Shinde ousted from CINTAA; 5 times the actress got embroiled in a controversy

--- ENDS ---
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...
ANN ARBOR, MI - Ann Arbor officials are taking steps to try to improve the design of downtown buildings.

Partly, they want to make sure developers aren't using cheap materials on new building facades.

And they want to avoid having "dead zones" in shopping districts where the ground levels of some buildings lack windows, as is the case with certain bank buildings downtown.

The goal is to encourage more ground-floor uses that allow passersby to see activity inside, whether it's a retail shop, restaurant, cafe, office space, art gallery or something else.

The City Council voted unanimously this past week to give initial approval to new building design requirements.

"I share everyone's delight in this moving forward and think that this is going to be one of those things that benefits us for years to come," said Mayor Christopher Taylor.

"If we hear anything consistently from residents, it's that they don't like ugly buildings," said Council Member Julie Grand, D-3rd Ward. "This is helping us get closer to having better-looking buildings."

The new requirements stipulate at least 60 percent of any street-level facade must be transparent windows or glazing, and the ground-floor level must be at least 15 feet tall.

Additionally, the bottom of all windows on the street level can't be more than 2.5 feet above the sidewalk.

The ordinance, which awaits final approval at second reading on Aug. 21, will apply to all newly constructed buildings and additions on lots zoned D1 or D2 in downtown character overlay zoning districts that have primary or secondary street frontages.

The new design rules also dictate the types of materials that will be permitted on facades visible from primary or secondary streets, allowing glass, brick, cut stone, cast stone or high-quality finished metal such as architectural-grade cast or machined steel.

Facade materials that will be prohibited include aluminum or vinyl siding, or an exterior insulation finishing system, except for minor design accents eight feet above the sidewalk level.

Other materials could be permitted if recommended by the city's Design Review Board and approved by Planning Commission.

Projects in historic districts, such as the Main Street Historic District, still will go through the city's Historic District Commission for approval and will be held to historic standards.

"Anything in the historic district is its own beast," said Council Member Zachary Ackerman, D-3rd Ward.

The city's downtown zoning still caps building height at varying levels, with some D2 buffer areas capped at 60 feet and some D1 core downtown areas allowing buildings as tall as 180 feet.

Ackerman, the council's liaison to the Planning Commission, introduced the design requirements ordinance at the council's July 17 meeting, encouraging his colleagues to think about how the new rules might improve the character of downtown. Other council members said they're glad to see the proposal moving forward.

The council is moving forward with the new design requirements while putting other downtown zoning changes on hold.

The city's Planning Commission voted last fall to recommend an overhaul of the city's downtown zoning premiums to focus on incentivizing workforce housing and energy efficiency.

In order to unlock floor-area premiums allowing bigger buildings, developers would have to adhere to design guidelines, mostly focusing on the first floor of the buildings, Ackerman said of the proposed premium changes recommended by the Planning Commission.

But he said the full package of premium changes isn't ready for City Council approval just yet. That has to do with some legal ambiguity regarding incentivizing workforce housing, which is affordable housing for people with decent-paying jobs.

"In the legislative landscape of Lansing and its disfunction, there is a lack of clarity around whether or not affordability can actually be used as an incentive in any zoning policy," Ackerman said, noting the Michigan Municipal League is now lobbying the state Legislature to try to clarify the law and allow cities to incentivize the development of new affordable housing through zoning premiums.

While the state legislative process plays out, Ackerman said the city's proposed premium package as a whole, in city staff's opinion, is not ready to be considered by the City Council. But there's nothing stopping the council from approving new design rules.

In response to a resolution from Council Member Kirk Westphal that was approved by council in January, the city's planning staff and Planning Commission took a close look at possible regulations to encourage more active street-level uses downtown.

Ackerman said the commission decided against dictating the use of first-floor spaces and instead decided to support form-based regulations that say what a building can look like, hoping that will encourage the types of uses the city wants while still giving property owners flexibility in leasing spaces.

Westphal said he still wants to improve upon what's currently being proposed and add language to regulate what's allowed behind windows for three or four feet into a first-floor space to prevent "the worst of the worst" in terms of what users of first-floor spaces can do to limit transparency. He suggested prohibiting blinds, curtains or other objects that block more than 20 percent of the view inside.

He also raised concerns about some businesses putting up advertising signs in windows and blocking views inside.

Brett Lenart, the city's planning manager, said some of that could be regulated through the city's sign ordinance, which the city is in the process of updating. He said this is a common regulatory issue with which many communities struggle.

Lenart noted some retail stores rely on storefront window displays, so that should be considered.

In terms of the impact of the new design requirements on existing buildings, Lenart said they could come into play if there's a significant renovation that requires site plan approval, such as if floor area is being added. But if a business or building owner wanted to renovate a second-floor space, he said, the city wouldn't require replacing the first floor to conform to the new street-level requirements.

"We would probably -- on the flip side, when we're looking at those ground-level spaces -- look for every opportunity to ensure compliance to the extent possible," he said.

Council Member Jane Lumm, an independent from the 2nd Ward, raised concerns that the city's zoning premiums still incentivize downtown residential development. She pointed out there's been a significant amount of residential development in recent years.

"The free market seems to more than adequately address the need for the supply of market-rate housing," she said.

"Why would we incentivize something that's happening naturally, other than to just have a mechanism for larger buildings?"

Lenart reiterated that the larger zoning premium changes that were recommended by the Planning Commission last fall aren't part of the design requirements the council is now considering. The recommended premium changes, he said, did contemplate a shift away from incentivizing market-rate residential to focus more on sustainable design and affordable/workforce housing.

As for why the current premiums incentivizing downtown residential development were put in place several years ago, Lenart said, it was encouraging greater population density in the downtown, allowing people to live closer to jobs and be more transit-dependent.

"So that had a lot of sustainability goals, but I think the community conversation started evolving -- as we started having a lot of success with residential downtown -- to start thinking about probably how we wanted to leverage those types of premiums for perhaps other types of sustainability aspects," Lenart said. "Maybe it's renewable energy. Maybe it's a really high level of energy-efficiency design beyond what's mandated by code."

Using zoning premiums to try to incentivize the types of housing that aren't being provided by the market seems like "a very sweet spot for the city to consider," Lenart said. "But for the reasons that Council Member Ackerman has indicated, I think it's appropriate to sort of take a pause on that while that state legislation plays out.

"Because that will really open up some tools not only for premiums or other zoning incentives that we might want to consider in the future -- whether it's downtown or elsewhere, perhaps on transit corridors -- but it also enforces our ability to ensure that when we make those decisions, that they're going to be enforceable for the longterm."

Council Member Chuck Warpehoski, D-5th Ward, said he expects the city to have further conversations about zoning premiums, but for now he's glad to be moving forward with new design rules.

"I think these are great places to start," he said. "It's not a substitute for doing that deep dive into these other issues once we get clarity from the state."

Once again speaking about the proposed premium changes that are on hold, Lumm said she's glad to see the ordinance would eliminate the option of allowing developers to provide off-street parking through contracts for permits in the public parking system.

She said she still thinks the city made a mistake in agreeing to lease 361 public parking spaces to Chicago-based Core Spaces as part of its proposed 17-story high-rise development on the Library Lot.

"It's appropriate that that can't happen again," Lumm said. "I also agree with the recommended approach in terms of promoting active use. I think it does make more sense to set design guidelines -- more windows, windows closer to the ground, taller street-level first floors, upgraded materials -- rather than restrictions on who uses the property and for what purpose."

Lumm said she's looking forward to hearing feedback from the community during the public hearing that will be held when the design requirements come back for second reading on Aug. 21.
Jr NTR with son Abhay Ram on the sets of Bigg Boss Telugu. Picture courtesy: Twitter/@tarak9999

By Indo-Asian News Service: Actor Jr. NTR's son Abhay Ram turned two on Saturday. He paid his father a surprise visit along with his mother and some family friends on the sets of Telugu Bigg Boss, a source said.

"Abhay, NTR's wife and some of his friends paid him a surprise visit on the sets of Bigg Boss. They celebrated Abhay's birthday on the sets of the reality show in Lonavala," told a source close to Jr. NTR.

advertisement

Jr. NTR tweeted on Saturday, "Happy birthday to my happiness. Your blessings are always a boon."

Happy birthday to my happiness.your blessings are always a boon.thank you all. pic.twitter.com/F7ardNVZHn- Jr NTR (@tarak9999) July 22, 2017

He also shared a picture with Abhay from the sets.

NTR is hosting the Telugu version of Bigg Boss, which marks his television debut.

On the career front, he is currently shooting for upcoming Telugu actioner "Jai Lava Kusa", in which he plays a triple role.

Also read: Bigg Boss Telugu: Jr NTR says he has watched 'few minutes' of an episode where Salman Khan was hosting

--- ENDS ---
By Srijani Ganguly/Mail Today: For a while now, Red Bull Music Academy has been taking viewers into the minds of musical geniuses through its 'Studio Science' series. Disclosure, Four Tet and Suzanne Ciani have all been featured on the series, with the newest entrant to this group being New York-based multi-instrumentalist Karsh Kale.

The episode, which can be viewed on YouTube, is focused on giving an electronic touch to the sounds of the tabla.

advertisement

Kale explains the technicality of it all, before putting it to use in a jam session with the Karsh Kale Collective. The group performs two songs - 'Up' from the 2016 album by the same name and 'Unkahi', a song by Delhi duo Shadow & Light. The musicians that make up the Collective, in the episode, are guitarist Warren Mendonsa of Blackstratblues, flute player Ajay Prasanna, Jai Row Kavi on drums, Karan Deshmukh on percussions, Apeksha Dandekar on vocals, Nathan Thomas on bass and Delhi-based live act Shadow & Light (Anindo and Pavithra).

"The episode," says Kale, "is my take on representing the tabla in an electronic context and through a song. We got to speak and discuss the various aspects of the tabla, its usage and my approach and inspiration to incorporating it in my music. Most importantly, it was an opportunity to discuss the importance of a live band in the context of creation of music."

He adds, "I created the electric tabla out of necessity. As an acoustic instrument, sharing the stage with drums, guitars and generally loud instrumentation would relegate it to a simple percussion instrument and not the incredibly expressive instrument it is in classical music. Once I was able to put my instrument in the mix of sound where it belongs, the possibilities became endless."

Currently, Kale is putting his immense musical knowledge to use to produce an album for Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, score a digital series and begin work on his next release. Touring too isn't far from his mind. He says, "We are putting together a plan for an extensive tour in India. We will be able to share details once they are locked in."

--- ENDS ---
By Shweta Keshri: Khatron Ke Khiladi - Pain in Spain premiered on Colors on Saturday, July 22. The show marked the returned of director Rohit Shetty as a host.

Rohit, who has earlier hosted two seasons of the show is back for its eight installment. The show has a good line-up of contestants. It has Bigg Boss Season 10 winner Manveer Gurjar, Lopmudra Raut, wrestler Geeta Phogat, TV hotties like Ravi Dubey, Karan Wahi , Rithvik Dhanjani and Shantanu Maheshwari and telly beauties Hina Khan and Nia Sharma among others.

advertisement

The show started with a skit, performed by Hina Khan and Ravi Dubey, who played husband and wife. Hina had to persuade Ravi to participate in Khatron Ke Khiladi (KKK). It was one hilarious act.

Rithvik Dhanjani performing the first task on top of a moving bus. Picture courtesy: voot.com

Manveer Gurjar performed the first stunt of the show, where he was mounted on a moving bus and had to collect as many KKK flags within the stipulated time. The stunt was conducted on the middle of a street in Ronda, Spain. Manveer was followed by Shibani Dandekar and Rithvik Dhanjani. Rithvik outperformed the other two contestants by pulling out 12 flags in comparison to Manveer's 7 and Shibani's 4. Shibani became the first contestant to get the Fear ka Fanda (contestants in danger zone gets Fear Ka Fanda).

Shantanu Maheshwari performing the crane stunt. Picture courtesy: voot.com

The second task was not a new one but required agility, focus and balance, where the contestant had to walk on ramp that was hanging from crane. Nia Sharma got badly injured while performing this task. She was the fastest among the three contestants but as she couldn't complete the task, she was given the Fear ka Fanda. Hina was quite resilient while performing this task and completed it with full confidence.

Ravi Dubey inside the cage with the tiger. Picture courtesy: voot.com

One of the most interesting tasks was performed by wrestler Geeta Phogat and actor Ravi Dubey. They had to get inside the cage of a Royal Bengal tiger, open a box with a spanner, collect KKK flag and run. The fastest to reach the finish spot won the task. It was a sweet moment, when Ravi talked to his wife Sargun Mehta before going in for the task. Geeta completed the task in less time than Ravi.

Overall, the show doesn't have a lot of new stunts but it manages to keep you on the edge of the seat with its nail-biting suspense. All the contestants are spirited and ready to take on any challenge.

Rohit Shetty had earlier said that he would like a girl to win this year's Khatron Ke Khiladi and after watching Geeta, Hina and Nia perform their stunts, it can easily be said that this season, girls will give a good competition to the boys.

Ravi Dubey, Rithvik Dhanjani and Karan Wahi in a still from the show. Picture courtesy: voot.com Ravi Dubey, Rithvik Dhanjani and Karan Wahi in a still from the show. Picture courtesy: voot.com

advertisement

There is a little drama added to the show to make it more entertaining, that serve as good fillers before the start of each stunt. We would like to give a special mention to the camaraderie shared by Ravi, Karan and Rithvik on the show. It's quite entertaining when the three pull each other's leg. The show has its share of thrills and spine-chilling moments but it's equally entertaining.

All in all it's a total paisa vasool show.

Also read: Exclusive: My hubby is irritated that I talk about Khatron Ke Khiladi all the time: Geeta Phogat

Also read: Ravi Dubey on reports of tiff with Lopamudra Raut: We discussed it and laughed it off

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi has been chosen for hosting Nexus, a US government-funded platform for enabling and encouraging startups in India as it has "all the right components" needed for such initiatives, says its director.

Nexus Director, Erik Azulay, who moved here from Austin to set up and run the centre, said "Delhi is the pilot" and the vision now is to expand the footprint to other parts of India and South Asia.

"Delhi has all the right components, you have the entrepreneurs, the funders, the government, the capital and other complementary factors. We saw an ecosystem here which was needed for starting this initiative," he told PTI.

Asked if other cities were considered before selecting Delhi, Azulay said, "We did look at other cities, including Bengaluru, but we chose Delhi. Delhi is the pilot... From here on, we see our future in more Indian cities, and other parts of South Asia."

Under the 'Nexus' platform, 10 cohorts (start-ups) were chosen from 115 applications from all over India. An intense 10-week training programme followed that featured workshops conducted by expert and industry leaders from the two countries.

Nearly half of these innovations were further picked up last week for incubation under the programme, which the US government runs in partnership with the University of Texas in Austin through its IC2 Institute, a "think and do" tank.

IC2 (Innovation, Creativity & Capital) Institute is an interdisciplinary research unit of the university which works to advance the theory and practice of entrepreneurial wealth creation.

Nexus, hosted in the American Center building here, resembles a mini-classroom at the University of Texas, with organised desks, laptops, whiteboards and Longhorn pinnates on walls, evoking the atmosphere.

"This place on the first floor of the Center was initially housing the library, which has been shifted downstairs. The next cohorts would be starting this fall (autumn season). We are also hopeful of the formal launch of Nexus facility sometime in September," said Azulay, himself an entrepreneur, who has been part of the IC2.

Counselor for Cultural Affairs at the US Embassy here, Craig L Dicker says, "Nexus is our way of bringing the various stakeholders of the entrepreneurial ecosystem together to work in a concerted way."

"This is big move... Give us another couple of months, and I am convinced, this model would be adopted in other countries -- not just in South Asia, I can see it in Central Europe, Africa and lot of other places," he said.

Start-ups selected under Nexus include Agpulse (Ayurvedic organic agricultural inputs), Escrowffer (platform for buying or selling of property with a safety net), Dhakka Brakes (which invented a new regenerative brake system for rickshaw pullers).

Dicker says real entrepreneurs are not in it for the money but a passionate belief that their idea can make the world a little better.

"And, we received some incredible proposals and ideas. It was difficult to choose the best. We hope through this platform these ideas will work and find the right direction they need," he added.

Asked about the genesis of the programme, Craig said, two years ago someone from the IC2 met me and discussed an idea, and "we felt it was the right idea at the right time and at the right place, and so we began to formulate it further".

"Our job is to create a framework platform for entrepreneurs ans experts to work together. So, we give them a framework and a black canvas, so that they can paint a Mona Lisa," he said, adding, "This platform is also going to feed into the bilateral relationship."

Manya Jha, founder of Morphedo, a one-stop shop platform for 3D printing, and one of the Nexus cohorts, said, "I already have a headstart, and getting to the right people for funding is now easier."

US Charge d'Affaires in India MaryKay Carlson, during a graduation ceremony of the inaugural batch of 'Nexus', had said the "tremendous drive, enthusiasm and intellect for innovation and entrepreneurship (in India) is particularly exciting".
Representative image

Heavy rains since last night created a flood-like situation in several parts of the state today, leaving three persons dead, the state government said.

Surendranagar, Rajkot and Morbi districts in Saurashtra region were the worst affected by the heavy rains and the IAF, and the NDRF along with district authorities conducted massive relief and rescue operations at different places.

The National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) and the Indian Air Force (IAF) rescued several people from these areas and relocated them to safer locations.

Rail and road traffic in Saurashtra region were disrupted as over a dozen state highways were affected and several trains cancelled due to waterlogging in Maliya Miyana town of Morbi district which threw normal life out of gear.

As many as 214 people, who were stranded at different places in these affected districts, were rescued.

Morbi district disaster relief team officials said Maliya Miyana village was flooded after water was released from Machhu 2 and 3 dams and around 50 persons were rescued.

Ten gates of Machhu-2 and 14 gates of Machhu-3 dams were opened, leading to release of 55,000 cusec and 59,000 cusec of water respectively, they said.

"Two hundred people were rescued from different parts of the district by NDRF, IAF and fire brigade teams," Morbi District Collector I K Patel said.

Three persons died after being swept away by water at Jasdan taluka in Rajkot, Lathi in Amreli, and Junagadh, a state emergency operations centre official said.

Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, who headed a disaster review meeting today, told reporters that Surendranagar, Rajkot, Morbi, Amreli, Junagadh, Gir Somnath districts in Saurashtra received heavy rainfall.

As many as 65 roads and 10 state highways were damaged due to the rains, he said.

"NDRF, IAF and state rescue teams have so far rescued 214 people, stranded at different places," Rupani said, adding that 6,235 people have been shifted at safer places from low lying areas near rivers and dams.

According to Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) Commissioner B N Pani, a two-storey building in Hathikhana area of the city collapsed but there was no casualty.

"The city has received over 72 mm rain and water in the Lalpari reservoir has overflown. Nearly 60 people living in the nearby areas have been shifted to safer places," Pani said.

Surendranagar is the worst affected district in the Saurashtra region as over 350 mm rainfall was recorded in the temple town of Chotila.

The Indian Air Force, in a release, said four MI-17V5 helicopters were deployed for rescue and relief operation in different areas of Surendranagar and Morbi districts.

"In all, four IAF helicopters were today engaged in rescue and relief work. More requests have been received from the civil administration as reports last came in with three aircrafts currently engaged in ongoing missions at various locations," it said.

The NDRF said its teams carried out rescue operations in Limdi and Chotila talukas of Surendranagar district, where five persons were evacuated to safer places, six persons were shifted to safety in Rajkot, and 15 in Amreli.

State transport authorities said buses services have been temporarily discontinued on 17 routes due to waterlogging.

Train services in Samkhiyali, Maliya Miyan, Wankaner, Surendranagar and Viramgam were also suspended due to waterlogging on the route.

During the day, Deodar in Banaskantha received 204 mm of rains, followed by Kalol in Gandhinagar 181 mm and Bhabhar in Banaskantha 105 mm.

Ahmedabad city received over 100 mm of rain which led to waterlogging in several underpasses and roads.

According to IMD official Manorama Mohanty, Gujarat is likely to get light to moderate rains in the next four days while heavy to very heavy rainfall has been predicted in isolated areas.

Intensity of rains in Saurashtra region will decrease, she said, adding, "Port warning has been issued in Gujarat coast. Fishermen have been advised not to venture in the waters.
Martin Luther King III (center), an American human rights advocate, speaks to the press after meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., January 16, 2017. REUTERS/Alex Wroblewski

American civil rights activist Martin Luther King III today said the "state or central" administration of the day "should be held" responsible for incidents against Dalits and poor in India.

King, the son of Martin Luther King Jr was responding to a query as to how the present central government could be held responsible for lynching incidents like in Dadri, when incidents against Dalits and poor had been taking place under different state and central governments for decades and that law and order was a state subject.

"When incidents against Dalits, oppressed and the poor take place, whoever is in power, he or she at the state or central level, should be held accountable for such incidents," he told PTI in an interview here.

However, the facts show that such incidents against the oppressed and poor people have risen and the Indian Prime Minister should address the issue, he said.

On the popularity of Modi still going up as reflected in repeated election victories, he said it is for the people of India to choose their rulers.

"I think the real and biggest question is what do the people want. People in the last election chose the Modi administration. Whether people of India will rechoose Modi in the next election, I don't know. If they are against, they need to rise up in numbers to oppose his rule," he said.

"India still has a long way to go to solve the problems of poverty and incidents against the oppressed and poor people," he added.

Referring to the Trump administration, King said the US president has to acknowledge the environment of hatred in the country and address it, something which he has not done so far.

He said that in 2015, there was not much environment of hatred in the United States.

"When Donald Trump started running his rhetoric in 2016, things started going up. By the time he got elected, it kept going further up. He has to acknowledge this, but he hasn't so far. He should acknowledge," he said.

Yesterday, in his inaugural address at BR Ambedkar International Conference - Quest For Equity - 2017, King drew a parallel between India and the US, saying both the countries are ruled by people who have "little regard" for the poor, and where there is no respect for the rule of law.

King had said both India and the US are seeing a rise in hate crimes.

"If my father were here, he would have stood by the Dalit demonstrations that the country is seeing in different places," he added, drawing a parallel between the values espoused by Ambedkar and civil rights movement icon Martin Luther King Jr.
Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba today began an eight-day-long two-nation tour of Mozambique and Tanzania with an aim of exploring new avenues of bilateral defence cooperation.

Admiral Lanba, who also heads the powerful Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC), will be in Mozambique till July 25.

There, he will hold extensive talks with national defence minister Atanasio Salvador M'tumuke, Chief of General Staff General Graca Tomas Chongo besides chiefs of the army, navy and air force of the African nation.

"The visit aims to consolidate bilateral defence relations with Mozambique and Tanzania, as also to explore new avenues for defence cooperation," the defence ministry said in a statement.

Admiral Lanba will begin his five-day-long visit to Tanzania on July 26.

He is scheduled to meet President of Tanzania John Magufuli, Defence Minister Hussein Mwinyi, Foreign Minister Augustine Mahiga and Chief of Defence Forces General Venance S Mabeyo among others, the defence ministry said.

Indian Armed Forces cooperate with the armed forces of Mozambique and Tanzanian on many fronts, which include training and hydrography, besides participating in each other's defence events.

India and Mozambique have a Joint Defence Working Group (JDWG) for defence and security cooperation.
Villagers use a boat to cross a flooded road at Asigarh village in Morigaon district in the northeastern state of Assam, India, July 4, 2017. REUTERS/Anuwar Hazarika - RTX39YVC

Bangladesh and India have already signed a memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to connect the North-East and West Bengal with Bangladesh through new waterways, Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said.

"The new waterways would enable transportation of people and goods by ships. The new waterways would be set up by using major rivers of Bangladesh, West Bengal and Brahmaputra in Assam.

"Dredging in the rivers would be required and the concerned countries would conduct the dredging works in the rivers in their countries," the Union Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping told reporters here last night.

The new project would be operational in the current year and boost the trade and passenger movement between the countries, he said.

The two countries share a 4095 km border of which 1116 km is through river.

Bangladesh as lower riparian state receives water from 54 rivers from India.

Mandaviya, who is also Union minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers yesterday met Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and Governor Tathagata Roy and discussed about implementation of Pradhanmantry Bharatiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojana with a target of providing quality medicine to the poor people.

He said the Narendra Modi government is giving a lot of importance to strengthen "Look East act East" policy by building more infrastructure and institutions in the region to catch up with the rest of the country.

Construction of highways was one of them, he said.

Mandaviya said at present there are six national highways having length of 854 km in Tripura and in addition to this four new roads covering 229 km have been approved by the ministry.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during an election campaign event in Bradford, Britain, June 5, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble - RTX39625

Around 15 Conservative party MPs have agreed to sign a no-confidence motion against British Prime Minister Theresa May as part of a plot to oust her, according to a media report.

Although the letter of no confidence falls short of the 48 names required to trigger a leadership contest, the UK Parliament's summer break could prove critical for May's future as British prime minister, 'The Sunday Times' reported.

"The numbers change from day to day depending on what's happened but there are about 15 who are fairly consistent in their desire for change. If she has a quiet summer and there are no crises and things are not mismanaged then she might be able to cling on beyond conference, but that is still a big if," a former minister was quoted as saying.

The reports come days after a summer party in the House of Commons last week where May pleaded with her MPs to "go away and have a proper break and come back ready for serious business".

"No backbiting, no carping. The choice is me or (Opposition Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn - and no one wants him," Conservative MPs who were present reported her as saying.

Meanwhile, a Conservative party survey indicates that some Tory grassroots MPs want May to quit by Christmas time this year.

The survey, carried out by the Party Members' Project, comes as Parliament stands down for the summer but with bitter party infighting and behind-the-scenes plotting expected to continue over the recess.

It found 21 per cent of members backed Brexit minister David Davis, 17 per cent preferred foreign minister Boris Johnson, while the third choice was backbencher Jacob Rees- Mogg, who has something of a cult following, but was backed by just six per cent of those surveyed.

A quarter of respondents said they did not know or could not say who the next leader would be. However, most Conservatives are keen to avoid a leadership contest until the Brexit negotiations have concluded in 2019, and would prefer to let May finish the job  and carry the can  in the event of a poor deal with the European Union (EU).
An Afghan policeman inspects a vehicle at a check point in Kabul, Afghanistan June 15, 2016. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani - RTX2GQUG

Seventy Afghans were abducted from their village along the main highway in the south of the country, and at least seven were killed, police said, accusing the Taliban of the kidnappings.

Around 30 villagers have been released but at least 30 others are missing, Abdul Raziq, the head of Kandahar provincial police told AFP, which was confirmed by officials at the Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar and Kabul.
By India Today Web Desk: A youth in Madhya Pradesh's Shivpuri district was allegedly forced to eat shit and also beaten up by a girl's family. The girl's family accused the youth of harassing her.

According to the youth Kallu Dhakad, the girl allegedly called him to the fields on July 16.

Her family then allegedly thrashed him and forced him to eat excreta. "Police said forcing to eat excreta is nothing, it is done just to insult someone," Kallu Dhakad told ANI.

advertisement

Police said that both the girl's family and the youth are from the same village and the sides first tried to resolve the issue between themselves. "Later, both sides registered cases," said Kamal Maurya, additional superintendent of police, Shivpuri.

ALSO READ:

No shaving heads, blackening faces: UP's Anti-Romeo squad to return in gentler, 2.0 avatar

Lingerie model harassed online, approaches Delhi Commission for Women

Anti-Romeo squad 'catches' tutor, student exchanging notes in the most dramatic way possible

ALSO WATCH: Akhilesh's advice to a girl in anti-Romeo raj: Don't go to Gomti park with your brother

--- ENDS ---
Rabbis installation at Keneseth Israel will get a boost of student creativity
July 23, 2017

Syria Summary - Consolidating The West - Marching East

There were no major changes in the situation in Syria since our last post. Several smaller steps have further consolidated the position of the government of Syria and its allies while the positions of its enemies continue to deteriorate.



Source: Fabrice Balanche/WINEP - bigger (with legend)

In the north-west Idleb governate and the city of Idleb saw new infighting between Ahrar al-Sham and al-Qaeda in Syria under its current moniker Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Ahrar, historically also an al-Qaeda offspring, was supported by Qatar and Turkey while al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al Nusra aka HTS) was said to have support from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Rudiments of local CIA paid Free Syrian Army gangs are intermixed with these. Their primary task was to collect supplies from the CIA in Turkey and to distribute those to their friends in al-Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham. Each of these groups received support in the range of at least $1 billion per year.

The spat between Qatar and Saudi Arabia mostly ended their interest in their proxies in Syria. The Trump administration decided to end the CIA support program for its FSA proxies in the north-west (but not for others elsewhere). This was a significant change of the situation for each group.

After losing their paymasters the local FSA gangs melted away. Ahrar held on to the border crossings with Turkey and collected "taxes" for everything that went through them. Al-Qaeda in Syria needed money. It attacked Ahrar al-Sham to eliminate the competition and to gain control over the only income source left. Last week al-Qaeda overran nearly all Ahrar al-Sham positions. It managed to capture and hold the Bab al-Hawa border station with Turkey. It also controls all other border stations. Taxing all trucks going through is a very significant sources of money. Al-Qaeda will now feed off all im- and exports between the Idleb area and Turkey. Ahrar al-Sham is practically done. It lost most of its weapon and ammunition storages and several subgroups left to join with al-Qaeda in Syria.

In an effort to support Ahrar al-Sham Turkey transferred some of its Syrian proxies from the Euphrates Shield area it holds north-east of Aleppo towards the Turkish side of Idleb border station. But those forces are too few and too little motivated to take up al-Qaeda in Syria. Ahrar is now too depleted and weak to win and control Idleb. The Turkish move was too little too late. Idleb is now for most parts consolidated al-Qaeda territory.

The usual "expert" propagandists have long claimed that Ahrar and Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had no longer anything at all to do with the original al-Qaeda. But today al-Qaeda central published a letter that asks both of these groups to stop there infighting. What will those propaganda goons make out of that?

South from Idleb a pocket of various insurgent groups (Ahrar, al-Qaeda, ISIS) controls the mountains around the Lebanese city of Arsal right next to the border with Syria. In June several Lebanese army personal were killed in the area. The Takfiri insurgent groups are a continuing danger to Lebanon as well as to Syria. Several offers for their transfer to Idleb were rejected.

Last week a united front of Lebanese and Syrian forces started to clean up the pocket and to eliminate all insurgents in area. The Lebanese army took control of Arsal city and will protect it against infiltration. About 5,000 Hizbullah fighters were allocated to attack the insurgents within Lebanon while 3,500 Syrian army personal will mop them up from the Syrian side. The Syrian air-force provides support within Lebanon and Syria. The Hariri government of Lebanon (a Saudi puppet) as well as the U.S. have agreed to the operation. So far it ran without a hitch. After several losses on the first day Hizbullah gained significant ground (see map below) during the last two or three days. Nearly half of the insurgent area is already under control and it will not take long for the rest to be liberated. Those insurgents who do not want to get killed and give up their fight may be send to Idleb where they can join the infighting between their brothers.



bigger

The U.S. and Russia had agreed on a deescalation zone further south next to the border with Israel and Jordan. While Israel was consulted on the issue it later voiced disagreement. The Israeli government wants a permanent U.S. forces in the area to cover the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan height. Neither the Trump administration nor the U.S. military have any interested in such a costly entanglement. Israel has long paid, supplied and supported Takifiri groups in the area. It gave them fire support whenever they were in fighting the Syrian government forces. The deescalation agreement foresees the supervision of the deescalation area by Russian military policy. That regime will be installed during the next few weeks and further Israeli shenanigans in the area will become difficult. Russia will react harshly against any interference with its troops' task.

In the north-east the Kurdish YPG is the U.S. proxy forces for the fight against ISIS in Raqqa. When the YPG submitted to U.S. command was told (video) to rename itself and became the "Syrian Democratic Forces". It is still the same anarcho-marxist cult that it was before but is ordered to hide it (video). It is still the same group that is killing Turkish soldiers within Turkey. The U.S. military believes that it can sustain the support for the group and continue to occupy the north-east of Syria after ISIS is defeated:

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last month left open the possibility of longer-term assistance to Kurdish YPG militia in Syria, saying the United States may need to supply them weapons and equipment even after the capture of Islamic State's Syria stronghold of Raqqa.

The U.S. plan to split up Syria and Iraq after ISIS is defeated is still in force. But neither the Turkish nor the Iraqi nor the Syrian government will allow the consolidation of a U.S. protected Kurdish minority in east-Syria that they all see as a threat to their sovereignty:

The question remains: how can new Kurdistan states survive with four countries surrounding it (Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran), all determined to do everything to neutralise a future Kurdish state in Mesopotamia and/or Bilad al-Sham? The Kurds really believe they can rely on two US and one British military bases in Kurdistan Iraq and on Saudi Arabia monies, and on six US military bases in the north of Syria to impose their state?

The YPG/SDF has already huge difficulties to defeat ISIS in Raqqa. There is little progress but the losses are considerable. Last week it had to discontinue its attack and wait for fresh forces to arrive. Raqqa is only a medium size city but with many high-rise buildings and a still significant population. Bombing support by the U.S. and heavy artillery shelling will be requited to eliminate ISIS from the city. This may well take several additional months. The city will be destroyed and the attacking Kurds will have high losses. There will be many civilian casualties. All this for a city that even after ISIS is defeated will never submit to Kurdish control and will eventually fall back to the Syrian government. One wonders how the political leadership of the YPG will justify this costly effort when questioned by its constituency.

On the southern bank of the Euphrates the Syrian government forces have now encapsulated the SDF forces around Raqqa. They make continues progress towards Deir Ezzor where a Syrian government forces is still under siege of ISIS.



Source: Weekend Warrior/@evil_SDOC - bigger

The Syrian government attack against ISIS around Deir Ezzor will come on multiple axes. But there are still some 80 kilometers to go and even though the area is mostly an empty semi-desert ISIS commandos are still active there. Only last week some 25 Syrian soldiers were killed in one ISIS commando attack at the T-3 pumping station near Palmyra.

The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was interviewed (video) by some (know-nothing) journalist of NBC. He rejected the claims of a stop of CIA support to the insurgents (25:20):

I understand that the US supports much more groups than just the ones, which were announced as being left without the American weapons.

Lavrov also warned against any thoughts of establishing permanent U.S. bases in Syria.

Posted by b on July 23, 2017 at 16:28 UTC | Permalink

Comments

next page 
GRANITE FALLS  About seven oclock we were (cooking) supper for our kids, and my brother-in-law came over because he saw the smoke, said Meredith Bentley, neighboring resident to the old Shuford Mill, which caught fire Friday evening.

I looked out the window, and it was just blazing. I just took the supper off the stove and ran with the kids," she said. "It was very scary. We had a hard time sleeping last night.

All 16 fire departments in Caldwell County and several from Burke and Catawba counties battled the warehouse fire in downtown Granite Falls late into Friday night.

Most of the building was used for storage, residential and commercial storage, Granite Falls Mayor Barry Hayes said. I know there was cars and furniture and valuables from families there.

There are several small businesses that may be located in that part of the building.

The warehouse is 75,729 square feet and housed several businesses including Smith Thread Sales, an art studio and gallery, and Foothills Community Workshop.

The owner of the warehouse has been notified of the fire and damage but was not available for comments.

No homes in that structure at all, and no injuries that we know of, have been reported, Hayes said. Of course the firemen are all suffering from heat exhaustion, but everybody is fine as far as that goes.

Just as firefighters set up a perimeter around the warehouse, multiple emergency service personnel, including the American Red Cross.

People from everywhere are bringing water and ice, Hayes said. Its typical Granite Falls behavior. People help out in Granite Falls, and Im real proud of everyone thats involved here, from the residents that theyre just here cause they love Granite Falls and they appreciate whats being done.

Twelve to 15 homes in the surrounding area were evacuated due to the heat from the fire, and residents were invited to gather at the Granite Falls Recreation Center, Drug Center and Town Offices to cool down from the heat.

Everybody Ive talked to said the fire was extremely intense, Hayes said. Ive had people come up to me saying that they were in Valley Hills Mall in Hickory and saw the smoke from there.

This was true for area real estate developer Tom Cooke, who also rented a number of the storage units in the building.

I was out on Highway 70 last night, and I looked to the west and saw the smoke, Cooke said. Ive seen enough fires to know that typical fires will go out fairly quick, but the smoke was deep dark and I knew the only thing that would burn like that was this building.

Cooke had stored numerous personal items such as family heirlooms and other sentimental items and believed it was a great place to store things because it was a controlled environment.

With hosiery mills, the reality is that over 100 years a lot of heavy machinery and a lot of lubricants sat in there, Cooke said. You could always smell oil and the structure was built out of thick timber, so it really was an underlying thought in my mind that if there was ever a fire, it would be hard to contain.

Now, the Granite Falls Fire Department is continuing to contain the fire within the walls  but it is still smoldering. Firefighters are allowing the insides of the building to burn itself out because it is too dangerous at this point to enter the warehouse.

We would like to warn residents in the area that conditions will remain smoky until the interior burns itself out, Hayes said. It will be up to a week before the interior will cool down enough to begin investigation into what started the fire.

The president of Foothills Community Workshop, Colin Robinson, has prepared himself for the worst.

In the basement of the building, we had a machine shop, an electronics lab, we put on classes for schools and dozens of computers, Robinson said. It appears it is a total loss, but we cant get in there to see yet.

The workshop had planned to hold classes at the site Saturday afternoon. Robinson plans to canvas the community to find a new facility.

I am thankful for the Lord who was here, and I just ask people to remember the firefighters and everyone involved in their prayers, Hayes said.
Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.

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.
By Mayuresh Ganapatye: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) today skipped the meeting of the United Opposition and instead, conducted a separate press conference raising eyebrows on the unity of the parties.

The conference was held to discuss the Opposition's strategy to corner the Devendra Fadnavis government in the Assembly. The monsoon session of the Maharashtra Assembly begins on July 24.

advertisement

All the Opposition parties except NCP were present at Leader of Opposition (LOP) Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil's residence to discuss issues on which they can corner the government.

All the parties took a unanimous decision that the confusion over loan waiver would be the first priority while cornering the government.

This year malnutrition will be another issue on which the Opposition will be attacking the state government as the number of deaths due to the same has reached 18,000.

The Opposition will also target the government over Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scam. The concerned SRA head passed over 100 projects a week before his retirement. The Opposition claims they have all documents related to the SRA scam and are planning to raise the issue in Assembly.

OPPOSITION CRITICISES SHIV SENA

The Opposition also criticised the Shiv Sena for being in the government and speaking against it. "Shiv Sena has become FM radio. They don't have any direction on any issue. They are the party of 'U Turn'," said Vikhe Patil.

On being asked about NCP's absence, Vikhe Patil said, "All is well within the United Opposition. We are united. The NCP wanted to address some other issues which is why they are addressing a separate press conference".

"There was no communication from the Congress party on how to conduct the session. They directly communicated to the Assembly speaker but didn't inform us thus, we decided to hold a separate conference," said NCP state chief Sunil Tatkare.

According to sources, NCP is not happy with the functioning of the Congress leaders on the floor of the House. NCP feels the Fadnavis government has failed to solve issues including that of the loan waiver. There are problems of law and order in the state hence, the NCP has also decided to skip the CM's tea party.

FADNAVIS ON NCP'S TEA PARTY BOYCOTT

"We had invited the Opposition for tea but they took two different meetings and boycotted our event. This is the first time we have seen the Opposition split and organise two different press conferences," said Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

advertisement

"I have got two different letters - one from the NCP and the other from the Congress and remaining parties. There are no new points in the letters and the most important thing is both the letters have common text format," Fadnavis said.

Speaking about the online loan waiver forms, the chief minister said, "We will open 25,000 centres which will distribute the forms. To fill the loan waiver, the Aadhaar number will be mandatory. The reason behind the distribution of these forms is ghost accounts, which we have experienced in the past. We will be link the loan waiver form with Aadhaar".

Fadnavis said that the government will consider all positive and viable considerations from the Opposition but won't entertain vague demands on loan waiver.

ALSO READ | Maharashtra Assembly, Council unanimously pass the Prevention of Violence against Media Persons Act

NCP Kerala President Uzhavoor Vijayan passes away

Maharashtra farmers strike: Shiv Sena slams Devendra Fadnavis government

ALSO WATCH | Maharashtra: NCP skips joint Opposition press conference ahead of Assembly session

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Mount Pleasant, SC (29464)

Today

Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy this afternoon. High 76F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 55F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Troops noticed suspicious movement along the LoC and immediately challenged the intruders, and in the exchange of fire one militant was killed. The infiltration bid was thwarted and an operation is in progress.

By India Today Web Desk: A militant was killed along the Line of Control (LoC) in Machil sector in north Kashmir's Kupwara district today when the Army foiled an infiltration bid.

Troops noticed suspicious movement along the LoC and immediately challenged the intruders, and in the exchange of fire one militant was killed. The infiltration bid was thwarted and an operation is in progress.

advertisement

"One terrorist has been killed in Machil sector of Kupwara district of the LoC today where the army has foiled an infiltration bid. The operation against the intruding terrorists is still going on in the area," Defence Ministry spokesman, Colonel Rajesh Kalia said.

Meanwhile, in another incident, police arrested three overground workers (OWGs) of militants in Srinagar and recovered an AK-47 rifle from their possession.

Police sources said the three OWGs of militants were arrested in Tengpora (Batmaloo) area of Srinagar city.

"They were arrested while moving in a car. One AK-47 rifle has been recovered from the possession of these OWGs," sources said.

OWGs are described by the security forces as facilitators of militants who arrange hideouts, ferry weapons and keep an eye on movement of the security forces to alert militants during crackdowns and search operations.

--- ENDS ---
'The big truck is still on ...
By PTI: Mumbai, Jul 23 (PTI) Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being on a "centralisation spree" as he criticised demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Thackeray, whose party is a constituent of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre and in Maharashtra, said reforms are a must, "but one should pause" to review their impact.

advertisement

In an interview to Sena mouthpiece Saamna, he said that going by government advertisements, one would get a feeling that everything was hunky-dory, but one should check the ground reality.

Talking about the GST which was rolled out on July one and the Senas reservations on it, he said, "Should we centralise or decentralise? Rajiv Gandhi had introduced autonomy through the Panchayati Raj when he was the prime minister. Narendra Modi has taken away the autonomy and is on a centralisation spree."

Thackeray said if governance depends "only on the will of whoever is the prime minister", then does India really have a democracy?

"Do peoples views have any value?....Reforms are a must, but one should also pause from time-to-time and review their impact," he said.

"I read somewhere that 15 lakh people lost their jobs in the four months after demonetisation. It means 60 lakh families were affected. It happened only due to the notes ban (demonetisation). What happened to those who lost their jobs is the governments responsibility," he added.

Referring to the Centres initiatives aimed at job creation such as Start-up India and Make-in-India, Thackeray wondered how did one reconcile them with demonetisation and its effects.

He also said the Sena would not shy away from "exposing" the BJP-led Maharashtra government, if it failed to implement the loan waiver scheme in the state properly.

Claiming that the Sena was the first to raise the issue of farm loan waiver when Sharad Pawar was the Union agriculture minister, Thackeray said, "Maharashtra was at the top in farmer suicides and unfortunately, it is still there. This was not an area where we should have been at the top."

He said he had asked Sena workers to beat drums outside banks (as part of an agitation) and make them display the list of beneficiaries of farm loan waiver.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had, on June 24, announced a loan waiver to the tune of Rs 34,022 crore following a statewide agitation by farmers.

On July 9, Fadnavis had said the entire debt of around 36 lakh farmers in the state would be waived.

Thackeray said, "The state had said the entire loan of 36 lakh farmers would be waived, while 89 lakh farmers would benefit from the scheme. I want to see their names."

advertisement

Reminding the state government of its proposal to give Rs 10,000 to every farmer till the loan waiver scheme was worked for buying seeds and fertilisers, he claimed that only around 2,500 people had received the payments, even though more than a month had passed since the announcement was made.

Thackeray asked, "If this is not chaos, then what is?"

He claimed that no bank had so far received clear instructions about how to grant waiver. PTI ND GK KRK RC AKK

--- ENDS ---
GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here.
By PTI: London, Jul 23 (PTI) A Muslim womans hijab was pulled off allegedly by a man in a vicious assault in London, amid a spike in hate crime incidents following a series of terror attacks by Islamists in the UK.

Aniso Abdulkadir was waiting for a tube at Baker Street station on July 16 when she says the man grabbed her headscarf before lashing out with his fists and pinning one of her friends up against a wall, the BBC reported.

advertisement

"This man at Baker Street station forcefully attempted to pull my hijab off and when I instinctively grabbed ahold of my scarf he hit me," Abdulkadir tweeted and posted a picture of the man who allegedly attacked her.

"He proceeded to verbally abuse my friends and I, pinning one of them against the wall and spitting in her face," the tweet read.

Abdulkadir added that a woman who was present was also threatening and verbally abusive, the report said.

A British Transport Police spokesman said it was being investigated as a hate crime.

"Behaviour like this is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated...This incident has been reported to us and were investigating," the official said.

However, a man claiming to be the man in the image tweeted on July 17 to protest his innocence, claiming he had been defending his partner from what he called a "racist attack", the Guardian reported.

He said the allegation against him was "completely false".

"I would like to confirm I never hit or attacked anyone I simply defused the situation by separating them," Pawel Uczciwek wrote.

"The police is fully cooperating with me and will be able to obtain CCTV footage showing the three women attempting to attack my partner because we are in an interracial relationship," he claimed.

The assault comes amid a spike in hate crime incidents in the UK following a suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester that claimed 22 lives and an attack in London by three terrorists, who drove a van into pedestrians and then went on a stabbing spree, killing eight persons before being shot dead.

Anti-Muslim crimes in the British capital increased fivefold since the London attack, London Mayor Sadiq Khan had said, warning that police would take a "zero-tolerance approach". PTI AMS ZH AMS

--- ENDS ---
Midlands labor market continued to experience the traditional summer doldrums, according to data released Friday by the Texas Workforce Commission.

June unemployment in the commissions Midland metropolitan statistical area inched up to 3.5 percent from 3.4 percent in May but is well below the 5 percent reported last June. Despite the marginal increase, Midland rose to third among the MSAs with the lowest unemployment, just behind Amarillo and Austin-Round Rock, which were tied at 3.4 percent each.

Odessa also saw its unemployment rate inch up, to 4.7 percent from 4.6 percent but still far below the June 2016 rate of 7.3 percent.

All of the commissions MSAs saw increases in June, some marginal, some significant, like Waco, Brownsville-Harlingen and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, which each saw their unemployment rates rise by an eighth of a percent.

Commission spokeswoman Lisa Givens said Midlands rate saw its slight increase because of a higher number of unemployed residents. She attributed that higher unemployment to the end of the school year and changes in staffing levels.

The Government and the Education and Health Services sectors did see decreases from May to June of 300 and 100 jobs respectively.

Midlands civilian labor force was virtually unchanged from May to June, down by only five, while the number of employed fell by 94 and the number of unemployed rose by 89. The civilian labor force is very close to year-ago levels while the number of employed Midlanders is higher by about 1,200 and the number of unemployed is down by a similar 1,200.

On the positive side, (the) Mining, Logging and Construction jobs saw an increase in June of 500 jobs, she said by email.

Loren Singletary, chief investor and industry relations officer with National Oilwell Varco Inc., told the Reporter-Telegram by telephone from his Houston office that, while he could not speak to specific needs in the Permian Basin  because his company is international in scope  oil field activity levels in the region are phenomenal and the area is experiencing a shortage of quality personnel.

Other sectors adding jobs from May to June were the Trade, Transportation and Utilities and the Other Services, which added 100 jobs each. In addition to the loss of jobs in the Government and Education and Health Services sectors, the loss of 200 jobs in the Leisure and Hospitality sector helped offset those gains, resulting in the addition of just 100 jobs in Midland from May to June.

For the 12 months from June 2016 to June 2017, Midland added 2,000 jobs for a growth rate of 2.3 percent. The areas dominant Mining, Logging and Construction sector added 2,300 new jobs, followed by Government with 300 new jobs and the Manufacturing, the Education and Health Services and the Other Services sectors with 100 jobs each.

Those gains were offset by the loss of 300 jobs each in the Trade, Transportation and Utilities sector and the Leisure and Hospitality sector, 200 jobs in the Professional and Business Services sector and 100 jobs in the Financial Activities sector.

Statewide, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent from 4.8 percent in May, marking the second consecutive monthly decline.

The commission reports employers have added 319,300 jobs over the last year in 10 of 11 industrial sectors, outperforming job growth over the last two years.

While Amarillo and Austin Round-Rock reported the lowest unemployment, the highest was reported in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission at 8.3 percent.

Midland unemployment

January 2017 4.1 percent

January 2016 4 percent

February 2017 4.2 percent

February 2016 4.2 percent

March 2017 4 percent

March 2016 4.4 percent

April 2017 3.5 percent

April 2016 4.5 percent

May 2017 3.4 percent

May 2016 4.5 percent

June 2017 3.5 percent

June 2016 5 percent

Preliminary numbers for June with May numbers in parentheses:

Amarillo 3.4 (3.1)

Austin-Round Rock 3.4 (3.2)

Midland 3.5 (3.4)

College Station-Bryan 3.8 (3.2)

Lubbock 3.9 (3.2)

San Antonio-New Braunfels 3.9 (3.6)

Sherman-Denison 3.9 (3.7)

Dallas-Plano-Irving 4.0 (3.8)

Fort Worth-Arlington 4.1 (3.8)

Wichita Falls 4.1 (3.9)

San Angelo 4.2 (4.0)

Abilene 4.3 (4.0)

Tyler 4.3 (4.1)

Killeen-Temple 4.4 (4.2)

Laredo 4.7 (4.4)

Odessa 4.7 (4.6)

Waco 4.8 (4.0)

Texarkana 4.9 (4.5)

El Paso 5.1 (4.7)

Victoria 5.1 (4.8)

Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land 5.3 (5.1)

Longview 5.6 (5.3)

Corpus Christi 5.9 (5.7)

Beaumont-Port Arthur 7.3 (7.0)

Brownsville-Harlingen 7.8 (7.0)

McAllen-Edinburg-Mission 8.3 (7.5)
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The first curls of smoke rose from the Beale Street Wharf as dusk was falling on the evening of July 24, 1877.

Within minutes, crowds of San Franciscans were gathering on Bryant to watch flames lick the pier, which housed coal, oil and lumber. They soon realized someone had dumped some of the 100 barrels of whale oil to ignite the fire. Quick-thinking citizens pushed the remaining barrels into the bay before they ignited.

What most hadnt yet realized was the fire was a diversion. The real trouble was happening downtown  and soon, four men would be dead.

---

The 1870s were a time of great social and economic unrest in the United States. The country was several years deep into the Long Depression, and San Francisco was hit hard. The Bank of California failed. Unemployment was as high as 20 percent. Thousands were being fed daily by churches and charities.

Anti-Chinese sentiment was long-simmering in the city, and troubled economic times only exacerbated race hate. After completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, Chinese workers flooded the job market and more came by boat from China.

The Chinese are unpopular because they do not vote, and because they work for low wages, the New York Times wrote in 1877.

The 1877 San Francisco race riots started off, at least ostensibly, as a labor strike. But it didnt take long before the labor strike became an overt anti-Chinese action. At one labor meeting, an organizer had to soothe the crowd, which was furious at Chinese immigrants who they felt undercut white laborers by working for less.

Mr. DArcy threw a damper on the meeting by stating that this was no anti-Coolie meeting, and that they were not there for the purpose of discussing the Chinese question, the Daily Alta reported. He put on another blanket by saying that they had met, not for the purpose of encouraging riot and incendiarism, but to give their brother workmen in the [East Coast] their moral support.

On July 23, the anti-Chinese riots started when 8,000 people gathered in the vacant sand lot in front of City Hall for another labor gathering. It didnt take long before it devolved into a racist mob.

"Everything was orderly until an anti-Coolie procession pushed its way into the audience and insisted that the speakers say something about the Chinese, historian Selig Perlman wrote in The Anti-Chinese Agitation in California. This was refused and thereupon the crowd which had gathered on the outskirts of the meeting attacked a passing Chinaman and started the cry, 'On to Chinatown.'"

Along the way, the mob destroyed property, burned Chinese laundries and threatened all challengers. The police were next to useless.

---

The following morning, it became clear the rioting had only just begun. A local newspaper ran an ad placed by one of the mob organizers. RALLY! RALLY! Great anti-coolie Mass Meeting at the New City Hall, Market street, at 8 oclock p.m., the advertisement read.

In preparation for more violence that night, city officials finally began mobilizing.

It becomes my duty as Mayor of the city and county of San Francisco to appeal to all law-abiding people to assist in preserving the peace, Mayor A.J. Bryant wrote in an official proclamation.

Law enforcement in 1800s San Francisco was a shockingly slapdash affair. Lacking sufficient officers, police began handing out 24-hour badges to civilians. The Committee of Public Safety, a vigilante group that formed in times of crisis, signed up even more men with approved weapons to police the streets.

Violence on both sides was expected  and in the case of the police, rather gleefully welcomed.

Yesterday the police force was supplied with a new and improved pattern of club, which is warranted to be more effective than any other instrument in the business of skull-cracking, the San Francisco Bulletin boasted. This beautiful piece of tough wood is double the length and weight of the old club.

When night fell, cool and foggy, Chinatown shuttered. Theatres closed and businesses took down their signs and put up blinds, making them look like ordinary residences.

Across town, crowds of police were dealing with the diversionary Beale Street Wharf fire. There was little to be done. The entire wharf burned down, turning $500,000 of property and goods into ash.

Near City Hall, the mob was again gathering. At 8 p.m., a well-dressed man, but evidently under the influence of liquor started an incendiary harangue against the Chinese from a makeshift stage. The mob was stoked into a fury by the rumor that the steamship City of Tokio was coming into port with even more Chinese workers. Hundreds of rioters, most of them teenage boys, started up Howard Street with destruction in mind.

The band then moved in groups down Howard Street to Second under the lead of a drunken man of gigantic stature, who rend the air with his demoniacal yells, the Chronicle reported. ... Every Chinese house had evidently been carefully listed beforehand, for on the whole line of march and on either side of the streets there was not left a single one which was not utterly and completely sacked.

The hoodlums, as they were called, ripped up the wooden sidewalks to use as battering rams. They broke into Chinese laundries to steal money and valuables. And they shot anyone who opposed them.

At 11:30 p.m., the mob arrived at a wash-house owned by Si Sow on Divisadero and Greenwich. He had recently purchased the business for $1,200 and eight men were employed there. Several rioters entered the business, spraying the interior with bullets as they did. One found 25-year-old Wong Go. After ransacking the building, the mob set it alight. Hours later, Wong Gos body was discovered inside. Hed been shot to death and left to burn.

By the morning of the 25th, three more men were dead and $100,000 of Chinese-owned property was destroyed. But thanks to the increased police presence, and the addition of 1,000 weapon-wielding Committee of Public Safety members, the pogrom was over.

---

In the press, San Francisco took a beating.

With characteristic cowardice the San Francisco mob threatened Chinese residents, and has wrecked several Chinese shops and houses, the New York Times wrote on July 26.  People who sack Chinese houses and stone Chinamen are not workingmen. San Francisco calls them hoodlums, a term which includes everything that is base and mean. The hoodlum is a non-producer, loafer and bully. The hoodlum class think this is a good time to signify their hatred of law and order. The murders of Chinese workers were some of the most wicked and shocking crimes that ever disgraced the city, the Chronicle lamented.

Despite the outpouring of support, the effect was only temporary. The 1877 race riots signaled the amplification of decades-long hatred toward the Bay Areas Chinese population. Later that year, San Franciscan Denis Kearney formed the Workingmens Party of California, a labor organization whose rallying cry was: The Chinese must go!" In the coming decade, they elected several members to the state legislature; their ballot reminded voters they were casting a vote Against Chinese.

The maelstrom of anti-Chinese sentiment culminated in 1882 when President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, halting Chinese immigration for 10 years and barring Chinese from becoming U.S. citizens.

The act wasnt fully dismantled until 83 years later, when the Immigration Act of 1965 abolished quotas based on country of origin.
Nationalist Congress Party Kerala state president Uzhavoor Vijayan passed away this morning at a private hospital in Kochi. He had been undergoing treatment at the Aster Medicity hospital.

By Press Trust of India: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Kerala state president Uzhavoor Vijayan passed away this morning at a private hospital in Kochi, a hospital spokesman said.

He was 60 and is survived by his wife and two daughters.

Vijayan, a prominent figure in the states CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), had been undergoing treatment for liver related diseases at Aster Medicity hospital since July 11.

advertisement

He had been put on ventilator support for the last two days but died this morning, the hospital spokesman said.

Hailing from Uzhavoor in Kottayam district--the birthplace of former President K R Narayanan, Vijayan began his political career during his college days as a leader of the Kerala Students Union (KSU), the student wing of the Indian National Congress.

Vijayan, a graduate, had worked as state secretary of the KSU and the Youth Congress before parting his association with the Congress along with a group of prominent party leaders in protest against proclamation of the emergency in the country in 1975.

He was a loyalist of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, who had floated the Congress (S) after breaking away from the Congress. Vijayan, known for his speech containing political wits, later joined the NCP and rose to the rank of its president.

He also emerged as a key member of the LDF state committee during the Assembly polls held last year. He had fought Assembly elections in 2001 from Pala in Kottayam district but lost to Kerala Congress veteran K M Mani.

His body will be kept at police ground at Kottayam today for paying homage. His cremation will be held at 12 noon tomorrow at his village, NCP leaders said.

Also Read:

Kerala Congress MLA accused of raping 51-year-old woman, arrested

Kerala priest arrested for sexually abusing minor boys

WATCH : Kerala: 6 minor girls raped for over two months in orphanage

--- ENDS ---
Life for residents and merchants in and around the Sierra foothills community of Mariposa began returning to normal Sunday as the immediate threat of wildfire was kept at bay.

Firefighters continued to make incremental progress on the once-fearsome Detwiler Fire west of Yosemite National Park, bringing park-bound visitors back to the popular Gold Country town and allowing more evacuees to come home.

The blaze, which sparked a week earlier and burned 76,250 acres, has forced thousands to flee and destroyed 63 homes and 68 outbuildings, according to fire officials. It was 45 percent contained Sunday, fire officials said.

The owners of Charles Street Dinner House, a popular restaurant on Mariposas main drag, opened Saturday for dinner for the first time since the town evacuated early last week.

Everyone is still trying to find their new normal, restaurant co-owner Jennifer Newman said. The fire is still nearby, and were concerned. A lot of people are hesitant to be unpacking.

On most weekends during the peak summer season, the restaurant  like many of the businesses in the small 1850s-era downtown  is filled with tourists. But as visitors find other ways to Yosemite amid the several road closures in the area and residents return to town, the restaurant has shifted to serving weary locals with depleted food stocks and rattled nerves.

Its been nice to socialize with everyone and see theyre OK, Newman said. Its been tough, but were so happy the town is still here. We were pretty sure we were going to come back to a wasteland.

The once fast-growing blaze became one of the states largest and most menacing this year as it doubled in size on many days and left miles of scorched earth in the small communities along Highway 49. Its still burning in rural areas north and east of Mariposa.

While thousands of firefighters on the ground, along with helicopters and airplanes attacking from the air, successfully defended the 2,000-person city of Mariposa, rural homes to the north and west were lost.

Bobbi Joe Young, who commutes from nearby Catheys Valley to Mariposa, where she holds down four jobs, had feared that at least some part of town would burn as flames came within a quarter mile of the historic area.

I cried every day during the evacuations, she said.

Young was one of the first to return to work after the city reopened to traffic Friday and was cleaning the bar and getting the ice machines going at Betts Gold Coin tavern.

This is tourist season. Its when things are happening, she said. I need the town to stay open so I can actually make a living.

Over the weekend, evacuation orders were also lifted for several populated areas north of Mariposa, including Mount Bullion and Bear Valley. Later Sunday, residents of the Coulterville area were allowed to return.

While immediate danger from the fire has decreased significantly, firefighters were concerned about increasingly unfavorable weather. Forecasters predicted 100-degree temperatures in the region early this week.

The Detwiler Fire became unruly largely because of the troubling fire conditions that plague the state. An especially wet winter contributed to abundant growth of thick, now bone-dry, vegetation. The proliferation of burnable material was coupled with a hot June and July in the lower foothills, where triple-digit days have been common.

The state has already seen about twice the normal acreage burned for this time of year, according to state and federal figures.

The Detwiler Fire is one of eight large wildfires burning in California. Evacuation orders were lifted Sunday morning for all residents affected by another troubling fire  the 18,430-acre Whittier Fire that ignited July 8 in Santa Barbara County.

Chronicle staff writer

Kurtis Alexander

contributed to this report.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
SAN ANTONIO - It began with a desperate request for water and a Walmart employee's suspicions about a tractor-trailer parked outside. That led officials to discover Sunday at least 39 people packed into a sweltering trailer, several of them on the verge of death - their skin hot to the touch, their hearts dangerously racing - and eight men already dead. Another would die later at a hospital.

Authorities think they found an immigrant smuggling operation just 2 1/2 hours from the Mexican border that ended in what San Antonio Police Chief William McManus described as a "horrific tragedy." The victims, as young as 15, appeared to have been loaded like cargo into a trailer without working air conditioning during the height of the Texas summer. It was unknown how long they had been in the trailer or where their journey started, but 30 of the victims were taken to area hospitals and 17 had life-threatening injuries. Federal authorities said the victims were "undocumented aliens."

Reyna Torres, consul of Mexico, confirmed in Spanish that Mexican nationals are among those dead and in the hospitals and said the consulate is interviewing the survivors.

City Fire Chief Charles Hood said some of the victims appeared to suffer severe heatstroke, with heart rates soaring over 130 beats per minute. In the worst cases, Hood said, "a lot of them are going to have some irreversible brain damage."

Even more people were thought to have been inside the trailer before help arrived, police said. Survivors at six area hospitals told investigators that up to 100 individuals were originally in the tractor-trailer.

Walmart surveillance video showed cars stopping and picking up people as they exited the back of the trailer. But suspicions were not raised until an employee noticed a disoriented person, who asked for water. The employee then called police, authorities said. Then, a chaotic scene unfolded outside the Walmart on the city's southwest side, as ambulances and police cars arrived and people were carried away, leaving behind shoes and personal belongings strewn across the asphalt and trailer floor.

The truck's driver, identified as James M. Bradley, 60, of Clearwater, Florida, was arrested and charged with human trafficking, said the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas.

The grisly discovery in San Antonio comes as the Trump administration is calling on Congress to increase funding for border security and to expand the wall on the southern border with Mexico.

It also illuminates the extreme risks immigrants face as they attempt to elude border agents in the searing summer heat. Some try to slip through legal checkpoints undetected, while others sneak illegally across the border. Often, they are fleeing violence and poverty in Latin America, advocates say.

Many have died attempting to enter the United States, drowning in the Rio Grande, lost in the desolate ranch lands of south Texas, or collapsing from exhaustion in Arizona desert.

Two weeks ago, Houston police discovered 12 immigrants, including a girl, who had been locked for hours inside a sweltering box truck in a parking lot, banging for someone to rescue them. Three people were arrested. A Harris County prosecutor said the migrants were at imminent risk of death.

In May, border agents discovered 18 immigrants locked in a refrigerated produce truck, with the temperature set at 51 degrees. Passengers were from Latin America and Kosovo.

One of the deadliest smuggling operations occurred in 2003, when 19 people died after being discovered in an insulated trailer abandoned at a truck stop in Victoria, Texas. The truck driver in that case, Tyrone M. Williams, was sentenced to nearly 34 years in prison.

In San Antonio, the driver was working with Pyle Transportation, a hauling firm in Schaller, Iowa. The company's name was emblazoned on the truck. Owner Brian Pyle said Bradley, the truck driver, operated largely independently from his company.

"This was his very first trip," Pyle said. "It's a common thing in the trucking industry. . . . He had my name on the side, and I pay for his insurance. He makes his own decisions, buys his own fuel."

Pyle declined to name the driver, who he said was from Louisville, and said he did not know what the man was transporting.

A woman at a Louisville address listed for Bradley declined to comment.

The tractor-trailer was found outside the Walmart about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, police said. The store, which was closed at the time, is surrounded by a heavily wooded area. Police feared that some people had fled the trailer when emergency workers arrived. A search using a police dog and a helicopter found one more victim, who was taken to a hospital.

In the morning, Margarita Balderas, 64, stopped by the Walmart on her way home from Sunday Mass. She had seen the news but was shocked to realize that the tragedy had occurred at that store.

"It makes me feel so bad. Why are they treated like that?" she said of the migrants. "They're just trying to make a living."

A vigil was set for Sunday night by groups that support immigrants in San Antonio.

"We'll be praying for the survivors, praying that they are able to recover and be okay," said Amy Fischer, policy director for RAICES, a nonprofit that provides legal services for immigrants in central Texas.

Fischer expressed concern that upon finding the victims in the trailer, San Antonio police called federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities. Police spokesman Sgt. Jesse Salame said that is standard practice for cases of international smuggling.

"We didn't call ICE to get everybody deported. We called them because they are the investigating authority," Salame said.

What will happen to the survivors once they are released from the hospital has not been decided.

But authorities indicated that their journey was not over.

Salame said he expects the victims to be released into ICE custody.

"They have to be turned over to the custody of somebody," he said. "They don't have anywhere else to go."

Moments after mass let out of the historic San Fernando Cathedral, two dozen people held a gathering in Main Plaza to show their support for immigrants. A handful of people made speeches and said prayers in Spanish and English, using a megaphone, to a crowd of about 50 people. Children played in the splash pads nearby while adults wandered in and out of the crowd, many taking photographs and videos.

"Hold your family extra tight tonight," said Barbie Hurtado, statewide organizer for RAICES, which organized the event, "and keep the people that lost their lives in your thoughts, in your prayers."

Congressman Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio native, addressed attendees at the end of the hour-long service.

"This represents a symptom of a broken immigration system that Congress, of which I am a part, has had the chance to fix but has not," said Congressman Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio native. "That's a colossal failure that has a human cost."

Another San Antonio native, Debbie Leal-Herrera, 55, said she was in town visiting from New Mexico this week and wanted to come to the plaza because "it touches me as a Hispanic."

Leal-Herrera, an elementary school teacher, said she knows several people who have immigrated to the U.S. illegally and has taught many students whose parents are undocumented.

"It reminds me of how much we truly take for granted," Leal-Herrera said. "What a beautiful gift it is to be an American."

Advocates for immigrants in Texas are still reeling from the recent passage of the tough new immigration law, due to take effect Sept. 1. The deaths marked yet another blow.

Maria Victoria de la Cruz, a grandmother originally from Mexico, publicly urged federal officials not to deport the immigrants who survived the trip.

"As an immigrant, I feel destroyed," she told the group in Spanish. "It's not fair to return them to the place they have fled."

During the vigil, a somber faced group quietly approached the consul from Mexico to ask about a relative. Juan Jose Castillo, who said he is from the Mexican state of Zacatecas but lives in the United States, said he was relieved that his 44 year old brother was among the survivors.

"He came out of necessity," Castillo said in Spanish. "It's very bad."

---

Frankel and Selk reported from Washington. Jim Higdon in Louisville contributed to this report.

---

Video: A truck was found to contain dozens of suspected illegal immigrants in San Antonio. Eight of the people inside the sweltering truck had died, according to San Antonio Police Chief William McManus and Fire Chief Charles Hood. (San Antonio Police Department)

URL:

http://wapo.st/2uMzQrQ

Embed code:
Last summer, six months before my mother died, I walked into her bedroom, and she greeted me with tinny hello and a big smile. She then resumed a conversation with her mother - who had died in 1973.

"Where are you?" Mom asked, as though Grandma, a onetime Fifth Avenue milliner, was on one of her many European hat-buying junkets. As I stood there dumbstruck, Mom continued chatting - in a young girl's voice, no less - for several more minutes. Was this a reaction to medication, a sign of advancing dementia? Or was she preparing to "transition" to wherever she was going next?

Regardless, Mom was freaking me out - as well as my brother, sister and father.

As it turned out, my mother's chat with a ghost was a signal that the end was inching closer. Those who work with the terminally ill, such as social workers and hospice caregivers, call these episodes or visions a manifestation of what is called Nearing Death Awareness.

"They are very common among dying patients in hospice situations," Rebecca Valla, a psychiatrist in Winston-Salem, N.C., who specializes in treating terminally ill patients, wrote in an email. "Those who are dying and seem to be in and out of this world and the 'next' one often find their deceased loved ones present, and they communicate with them. In many cases, the predeceased loved ones seem (to the dying person) to be aiding them in their 'transition' to the next world."

While family members are often clueless about this phenomenon, at least at the outset, a small 2014 study of hospice patients concluded that "most participants" reported such visions and that as these people "approached death, comforting dreams/visions of the deceased became more prevalent."

Jim May, a licensed clinical social worker in Durham, North Carolina, said that family members - and patients themselves - are frequently surprised by these deathbed visitors, often asking him to help them understand what is happening. "I really try to encourage people, whether it's a near-death experience or a hallucination, to just go with the flow," May explained after I told him about my mom's visitations. "Whatever they are experiencing is real to them."

Valla agreed, telling me what not to do: "Minimize, dismiss or, worse, pathologize these accounts, which is harmful and can be traumatic" to the dying person. In fact, May said, "most patients find the conversations to be comforting."

That certainly appeared to be the case with my mother, who had happy exchanges with several good friends, who, like my grandmother, were no longer living.

In a moving 2015 TED talk, Christopher Kerr, the chief medical officer at the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care in Buffalo, showed a clip of one his terminally ill patients discussing her deathbed visions, which included her saying, "My mom and dad, my uncle, everybody I knew that was dead was there (by my side). I remember seeing every piece of their face." She was lucid and present.

Since Mom had already been diagnosed with advanced dementia, I originally thought her talks were a sign of worsening illness. In fact, current research posits that a combination of physiological, pharmacological and psychological explanations may be at play. That's exactly what May's hands-on experience of more than 14 years revealed to him, too.

May acknowledged that it's understandably "hard to have empirical evidence" for such episodes in patients, but that it's important for family members and health professionals to figure out how to respond

Last fall, another visit to Mom raised the stakes. As before, she greeted me by name and spoke coherently for several minutes before she turned to the bookcase near her bed and began cooing to an imagined baby. I watched in astonishment as Mom gitchi-gitchi-goo-ed to an apparition she referred to as "her" baby.

"My baby is very sick," she repeated, clearly deeply concerned about this apparition. "She's very thirsty. She's hungry. She's crying. Can't you do anything for her?"

I didn't know what to do. Neither did my siblings or Dad. I had long stopped "correcting" Mom. A year earlier, Mom had regaled me with the story that my niece Anna had made a delicious dinner the night before and was at that very moment out doing errands. In fact, Anna was away at college; also, I've never seen her cook, and she doesn't even have a driver's license. But why contradict Mom's vision of a perfect granddaughter?

Social worker May, when asked about these sorts of imaginings, put it this way: "Don't argue, because an argument is not what they need." I decided to go along with the "baby" story and told Mom I was going to take the baby to the kitchen to bottle-feed her, which alleviated the crisis.

As the fall days grew shorter, Mom's "baby" was a continuing presence at my visits, with my mother becoming increasingly distressed. I would settle things down by giving the imagined infant an imaginary bottle, or cradle her in my arms and leave the room for a while, saying I was taking her to the doctor. At one point I asked gently, "Mom, do you think the baby is you?" She didn't miss a beat. "Yes," she replied. "The baby is hurting."

In fact, the largest study to date on deathbed visions reported on numerous cases when the "arrival of ... a visitor appeared to arouse anxiety and intensify death fear."

But what to do? I hated that Mom's level of distress was skyrocketing in what turned out to be her final weeks. I simply held Mom's hands a bit tighter and tried to distract her as best I could with family and political news. Oh, and I cooked, which she loved my doing.

One evening I made a simple dinner: spaghetti with a store-bought marinara sauce and a bright green leafy salad. Mom had pretty much stopped eating by this point, which is common as the end draws near, but she made a show of trying her best with this repast for the two of us, plus my father. It was heartbreaking to watch her try to spear the pasta, but she managed several hearty mouthfuls, saving room for a scoop of Sealtest vanilla ice cream.

After dinner, I helped her back to bed, where she exclaimed: "How did you know?" "How did I know what?" I asked. "That was exactly how I wanted my funeral to be. You invited all my favorite people, and the food was just what I would have ordered."

She was beaming. Six weeks later, she passed - and pasta and salad were on the menu at her service.
Heart pounding, Lillie Shelton opened her web browser in April to check the status of her application to Johns Hopkins University.

"I thought, 'There's no way I got in,'" the 2017 Ozen High School valedictorian said.

When she read "Congratulations," her excitement was quickly dampened by the realization of what her diploma was going to cost her family.

Because of her perfect GPA and involvement in almost every extracurricular activity offered at Ozen, Shelton, 17, has qualified for roughly $50,000 in scholarships and financial aid for the 2017-18 school year.

The cost of tuition, books, and room and board at Johns Hopkins University is $70,000 a year, according the university's website.

A local education foundation is hoping the community will come together to help the Shelton family close the $20,000 gap.

"I see her as a very special case, and her mother as a special lady trying to do good for her daughter," said Creative Corrections Education Foundation President Percy Pitzer. "It would be a shame to not make that happen."

Pitzer said people can make donations to Shelton at the foundation's website, ccefscholarships.org/donate. He said every donation made between now and when he decides to stop will be used specifically for Shelton's tuition.

"I've always stressed the importance of helping others to her growing up," said Shelton's mom, Elizabeth. "If there's an overflow of money, we hope that it can also help another child who didn't get to go to the school they wanted."

While she applied to five Texas universities and three out of state schools, Lillie said she had her heart set on Johns Hopkins, which is in Baltimore, Maryland.

"Ever since I was a little girl, I've had an interest in medicine, and Johns Hopkins is known for that," Lillie Shelton said. "I get excited about education. It's literally my dream school."

After graduation, she plans to either attend medical school or get an engineering job in the medical field.

Getting a head start on her college education, Lillie Shelton is currently taking an all-expense-paid computer science course for five weeks at Johns Hopkins.

Despite the nerves of flying alone for the first time last month, she said she was anxious to meet new people and be in a college classroom.

"I've always been excited to venture off and do new things," Lillie Shelton said. "When the plane took off, I thought, 'Wow, I'm starting my life.'"

Sflores@beaumontenterprise.comTwitter.com/_saraeflores
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Susan Ceasar watched as 8,000 pounds of beets, potatoes, cucumbers and onions were unloaded from a Southeast Texas Food Bank truck on the side of U.S. 90 in China on Friday afternoon.

As two men wheeled out pallets of vegetables, Ceasar joined a group of more than two dozen people to pack some of the produce into plastic bags.

The group worked in front of a freshly-painted building with a new sign that reads: "Hardin-Jefferson Hunger Initiative."

The produce shipment, the fourth the town has received in two months, was arranged by former mayor John Walker, who recently started the town's first food bank.

Walker said he had the idea to start the project a year ago. While serving his brief stint as the town's mayor, he said he realized many residents live below the poverty line.

According to Census data from 2015, nearly 23 percent of China's 891 residents are living below the poverty line, which is defined as an annual income of $12,000 for a one-person household.

Ceasar, who calls China home, said this is the second shipment she's benefited from.

The supply of potatoes, grapes, pineapples, blackberries, corn and cauliflower she received from the previous shipment 10 days earlier cut about $300 off her grocery bill, she said.

"It really helped," said Ceasar,

59, who is retired. "It really helps in this community."

Walker said the food bank was designated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit last month. He hopes to have its small building, a former tire shop, up and running in about three weeks.

The plan is to distribute non-perishable food to any residents living below the poverty line.

Walker said he hasn't set an income limit for who can pick up the fresh produce, and the shipments have been popular in the community, which lacks a large grocery store.

Earlier this month, a shipment that contained 8,000 pounds of food was gone in two and a half hours, he said.

The nearest store is China Mart. Residents must drive 10 miles to Beaumont for the nearest grocery store or food bank, which can be a challenge for the town's large population of senior citizens, he said.

According to Census data, more than 30 percent of the town's residents are over the age of 60.

Volunteer Margaret Higginbotham, a lifelong resident of China, said she helps deliver produce to seniors' homes who can't make it to the produce pick-ups.

"We have a lot of older people in this town, people on fixed incomes," said Higginbotham, 73.

Ronald Bibbs, a pastor at St. Paul Baptist Church, said on Friday he delivered food to about 15 seniors during the last shipment.

"It's been a long time coming," said Bibbs, 52. "We really needed it because of the poverty in this area"

NKrebs@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/natalie_krebs
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Lightning may have sparked a smoldering house fire Saturday night in northwest Houston.

Just before midnight, firefighters responded to an attic fire in a home at Greenhill Forest and Moonlight Forest.

The fire had already been smoldering for hours before it broke out into the full-blown blaze that drew fire crews to the scene.

WEATHER: Severe storm warning and rainy weekend will give way to hot week

The cause of the conflagration appeared to be lightning from the passing storms that battered the area earlier in the evening, authorities said.

Crews made a fast attack and quelled the fire with minimal damage to the home. No one was injured.
By PTI: Pune, Jul 23 (PTI) A Cadet at the National Defence Academy (NDA) here allegedly committed suicide today.

The body of Alesh Jaiswal, a fifth-term Cadet, was found hanging from the ceiling fan in his room, a release from the NDA said.

"The Cadet was immediately rushed to the military hospital but could not be revived," it said.

advertisement

Local Uttamnagar police said that it was suspected that he hanged himself, though no suicide note had been found so far and further probe was on.

Jaiswals parents were informed about the incident and a court of inquiry had been ordered, the NDA authorities said. PTI SPK KRK

--- ENDS ---
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

On Sunday, several local and state officials voiced sympathy after nine migrants died and 30 others were taken to area hospitals as the result of what law enforcement called a horrific case of human smuggling.

Some argued that Sundays incident demonstrated the need to secure the border and pass comprehensive immigration reform, while others simply expressed condolences.

Ron Nirenberg, Mayor of San Antonio: We are still learning about the tragic events that unfolded on our doorstep overnight, which shines a bright light on the plight of immigrants looking for a better life and victims of human trafficking. As we work to coordinate a humanitarian and legal response to this terrible tragedy, I find comfort in the compassionate response of our first-responders, our local medical professionals and the outpouring of support from our community.

Rey Saldana, San Antonio City Councilman: It should sadden us all that eight people took their last breath, and dozens more are being treated with serious symptoms of heat exhaustion and dehydration due to a tragic situation that often goes unnoticed.

Gustavo Garcia-Siller, Archbishop of San Antonio: There are no words to convey the sadness, despair and, yes, even anger we feel today at learning of the completely senseless deaths  This is an incomprehensible tragedy. We pray for these victims and all victims of human smuggling and trafficking; that this monstrous form of modern slavery will come to a quick and final end.

Richard L. Durbin, Jr., U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Texas: The South Texas heat is punishing this time of year. These people were helpless in the hands of their transporters. Imagine their suffering, trapped in a stifling trailer in 100-plus degree heat.

Thomas Homan, ICE Acting Director: By any standard, the horrific crime uncovered last night ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished  These networks have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for those they smuggle, as last nights case demonstrates.

Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas: The loss of these lives is heartbreaking. Human trafficking is an epidemic that Texas is working to eradicate. To that end, Texas will continue to provide protection for the victims who have been robbed of their most basic rights and bring down the full weight of the law for the perpetrators of this despicable crime.

Dan Patrick, Lt. Governor of Texas: Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims of this horrible tragedy. I have been saying for years no one should have to die to come to America. We need a secure border and legal immigration reform so we control who enters our country and they can come here in dignity. No one should have to risk their life, or lose it, to get here and then live in the shadows.

John Cornyn, U.S. Senator (R-Texas): Border security will help prevent this Texas tragedy  Compassion is called for. But lawlessness ensures cartels will continue to profit from these tragedies. Status quo is not compassionate.

Joaquin Castro, U.S. Congressman (D-San Antonio): The smugglers responsible for the incident, who showed no regard for the lives of the people they were transporting, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Lloyd Doggett, U.S. Congressman (D-Austin): Horrific scene overnight in San Antonio where a human smuggling attempt turned deadly. Prosecute smugglers, pray for survivors and the victims' families, stop the hysteria, reform our broken immigration system.

Jose Menendez, Texas State Senator (D-San Antonio): This mornings horrific discovery and reckless disregard of those involved in the criminal act of human trafficking is a brutal reminder that comprehensive immigration reform would reduce horrible tragedies like this one. This global issue is senseless, disappointing, tragic and preventable.

Diego Bernal, Texas State Representative (D-San Antonio): People risking everything for a better life. Heartbreaking.

Tomas Uresti, Texas State Representative (D-San Antonio): The news today that at least 8 people were found dead in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio is absolutely tragic. My prayers are with the victims and their families, and I hope those who are hospitalized make a full recovery.

Roland Gutierrez, Texas State Representative (D-San Antonio): Our prayers are with the victims & their families who lost their lives in search of the #AmericanDream.

RAICES, a nonprofit agency that provides legal services to immigrants, also released this statement: RAICES mourns this tragic loss of life. We hope and pray for the survivors to recover quickly and find peace, safety, and justice. This heartbreaking situation highlights the lengths that migrants will go to seek refuge in the United States. We value, honor, and respect migrant lives.
The nonprofit organization RAICES is holding a vigil Sunday evening to honor those who died in the immigrant smuggling case.

According to a news release sent by RAICES, a candlelight vigil will be held at 6 p.m. Sunday at the San Fernando Cathedral.
Re: Will 2017 be the year that the rule of law was affirmed? Your Turn, June 30:

Dr. Frank Wians, professor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, writes, At this moment in time, history will record whether the rule of law remains the backbone of our democracy or whether it was weakened by individuals.

Dr. Wians wants federal laws enforced against law-breaking immigrants.

The name sanctuary cities is a misnomer. These cities are not protecting immigrants; all they are doing is refusing to burden themselves by enforcing immigration laws that are the exclusive responsibility of the federal government.

These cities are doing the opposite of what the author states: recognizing the enumerated divide in the Constitution and abiding by it.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds have been declared unconstitutional (aka illegal) by federal district courts. Again, the rule of law is implicated. ICE has frequently ignored the statute governing immigration holds by failing to obtain lawful warrants despite Congress and the U.S. Constitution mandating otherwise.

Some cities do not want to enforce unlawful ICE holds because it is unconstitutional and opens the city to civil lawsuits.

Texas has usurped the authority of cities to govern themselves. Furthermore, Texas is mandating cities violate the U.S. Constitution.

If Dr. Wians so dearly treasures the law, he should focus on laws that are constitutional and legal.

Dr. Wians also writes that accusing him of racism is a straw man argument because undocumented immigrants have violated the law.

I would ask Dr. Wians whether he has been so moved to write about the mass fraud committed by multiple banks. Or about the countless U.S. citizens who have failed to complete yearly tax returns or committed fraud on tax returns.

Or since Dr. Wians is a professor at a medical school, perhaps he has considered writing about the number of unlawful injuries and murders attributed to firearms in the U.S., or the number of deaths attributed to drug abuse/addiction.

Setting aside the lack of understanding of our esoteric and outdated immigration laws, or the misconception and oversimplification of what a sanctuary city means, something about immigrants has motivated Dr. Wians to write an article meant to explain that the refusal of cities to enforce a law, and nothing else, will have cataclysmic effects on the rule of law and the strength of our democracy.

In a different century, others no doubt wrote that lifting the prohibition to women voting, recognizing Native Americans as citizens, and ending the enslavement of black people was to change the law and would result in cataclysmic effects on the rule of law and the strength of our democracy.

To the contrary, such changes have resulted in our nations proudest moments and our strengthened democracy.

Eduardo Flores is a San Antonio resident.
The University of Texas at San Antonio La Raza Faculty and Administrator Association recently reached a milestone. The LRFAA was established 30 years ago in April 1987.

From its inception, LRFAA members have been committed to delivering on the promise of making UTSA a high quality institution that is welcoming to underrepresented groups. Toward that end, the organization has been indispensable in UTSAs development.

In its 30-year history, for example, the LRFAA has influenced several presidential transitions, the establishment of key programs focusing on Latino students and the establishment of the UTSA downtown campus.

The LRFAA centered on key issues, including the low number of Latino faculty at UTSA, the need to recruit more Latino students, the need to provide support services for Latino students and much more. In 1987, for example, Latino faculty comprised about 11 percent of all UTSA faculty, while African-Americans comprised about 2 percent.

Members of the LRFAA believed then that UTSAs central administration was not particularly interested in pursuing these issues. Therefore, the LRFAA established links with key Latino legislators, community leaders and local organizations.

During the next few years, the LRFAA scored its most significant victories, such as the establishment of the Hispanic Research Center, the Mexican American Studies program, the Tomas Rivera Center, and the University Affirmative Action and Diversity Committee.

The LRFAA also played an important role in the presidential transition process in 1989.

Members of the LRFAA also worked closely with legislators, community leaders and Latino organizations in the establishment of the UTSA campus downtown. Supporters saw the new campus as essential to ensure access to UTSAs academic programs among people living near the downtown area, especially Latino and African-American students.

During a particularly turbulent period in UTSAs history, the LRFAA played a key role in the resolution of key issues between faculty in general and the administration, and ultimately helped set the stage for the selection of a Latino president, a first for UTSA.

This past December, the LRFAA expressed much concern over the search process for a new president for UTSA. Chief among the issues was that the search committee did not include a single Latino from UTSA despite the university being a prominent Hispanic serving institution, or HSI, and Latinos constituting more than 50 percent of UTSA students and 16 percent of all UTSA faculty.

The LRFAA also called for the addition of the acknowledgment of UTSA as a major HSI in the search advertisement, an oversight that was not corrected and is still a major point of contention among our association members.

Unfortunately, after 30 years, progress on goals like the hiring of diverse faculty has been woefully inadequate. The downtown campus is also at a critical crossroads and demands a renewed commitment. On such issues where the LRFAA has historically provided strong leadership, there has been institutional backsliding.

The LRFAA is disappointed that the UT System Board of Regents maintained a dark search that failed to take into account any of our concerns. Nevertheless, the LRFAA is ready to work and collaborate with whoever is appointed president.

The LRFAA looks forward to meeting with the new president to discuss UTSAs history and future, and the very important role that the LRFAA has played over its three-decade history in the development of our university.

One specific item to discuss is the need to consider diversity in filling the large number of high-level interim administrative positions in the near future.

We are committed to help UTSA deliver on its promise to San Antonio to make prominence in higher education a reality to the historically underserved.

As always, we remain committed to achieving excellence and equity, which are the cornerstone of UTSAs mission.

Jesse T. Zapata is the senior vice provost for academic and faculty support, a professor in the department of counseling, and founding chair of the LRFAA. Roger Enriquez is director of the Center for Policy Studies, an associate professor in the department of criminal justice, and current chair of the LRFAA.
Every day in Texas, industrial polluters spew harmful chemicals into the air, exceeding their state permits.

The consequences of these rogue emissions range from asthma spikes and cancer to contributing to climate change. But the penalties are often nothing. Thats because the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality rarely enforces meaningful fines or challenges the claim from industry that these emission events are unavoidable.

Those are the quick takeaways from the Texas Tribunes exhaustive reporting on the free pass Texas gives industrial polluters.

The piece, A pass to poison, is an important read, renewing the question of whether TCEQ exists to serve Texans or industry.

The answer appears to be industry.

Consider the numbers: There were 3,723 rogue emission events at 774 industrial sites last year, the Tribune reported. These events totaled nearly 58 million pounds of air pollution. But TCEQ has levied fines for fewer than 1 percent of these events, The Tribune found.

The excuse is that enforcement can take a long time. Sometimes it can can take years for an emissions event to be penalized, for example. Or multiple pollution events will be bundled together. But the Tribune looked at the past five years  plenty of time to penalize an industrial site for violating its air permit  and found about 4 percent of emissions events led to fines.

Without a hammer from the state, there is little incentive for industry to do better by Texas residents. The vast majority of these emission events are coming from oil and natural gas extraction. Some in South Texas, but much of it at natural gas plants in West Texas.

These types of emissions events rarely make headlines, or at least big headlines. Many of these events are relatively small, but they add up over time.

Consider the Keystone Gas Plant near Kermit, and the biggest emitter of sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide in the state between 2012 and 2016. During that time, there were 900 emissions events. But the plant was fined once by the TCEQ. The fine was for $76,500  and it wasnt for the emissions.

Or consider an extreme emissions event at a Shell chemical plant and refinery outside Houston. In 2015, a pump failure led to the release of more than 300,000 pounds of 1,3-butadiene. Its a highly explosive chemical. The whole plant could have blown up.

The fine? It was $25,000 and a corrective action plan.

The policy prescriptions are clear.

The Legislature should raise the maximum fine for violating air permits from $25,000, which is not a deterrent for these companies.

The TCEQ should make it policy to always pursue the maximum fine.

The TCEQ should fine polluters by the numbers of chemicals released into the air. Many emissions events involve multiple chemicals, so the fines would stack.

Finally, the TCEQ should be challenging the repeated industry claim that these emission events are unavoidable. Critics say the TCEQ rarely does this.

This isnt a question of reducing emissions. Its a question of following the rules to protect the health and safety of Texans.

But why would industry do that if there are no real consequences for breaking the rules?
By PTI: Kolkata, Jul 23 (PTI) Union minister Prakash Javadekar has said question papers in vernacular languages for the all- India entrance examination for medical colleges, NEET, will be mere translation of the question papers in English.

The Human Resource Development minister was replying to a question about a recent complaint by West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee that students appearing for medical entrance examination in vernacular languages this year had faced tougher questions than the ones set in English and Hindi.

advertisement

"The vernacular question papers for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) ? all-India entrance examination for medical colleges ? will just be translation of the question paper in English," he told reporters here yesterday.

Asked about one nation one test policy for engineering courses, the Union minister said, "We are yet to take a call on this issue. It is in discussion stage." PTI SUS RG SRY

--- ENDS ---
Zanu PF MP for Bikita East, Jonson Madhuku has been dragged to court by a 75-year-old man he hit and injured in a road accident that happened at Zimuto Camp in Masvingo in July, 2018.

Although court documents could not be immediately obtained, The Mirror understands that David Ndangeni is demanding about US$550 for an operation that needs to be carried out on his left leg.

Ndangeni confirmed the case and said that summons have since been served on Madhuku.

Madhuku also confirmed the case to The Mirror and said he helped Ndangeni with medical bills before and added that he only paid this out of compassion because the former was drunk and walking in the middle of the road with his earphones on when he was hit by the car.

Ndangeni who says that he got his hand paralsed after the accident accused Madhuku of having for the last three years refused to pay for the operation to have a metal rod placed in his left leg.

Ndangeni who stays at the Ministry of Transport quarters along Zimuto Road also accused Madhuku of failing to appear in court despite serving him three subpoenas since May 2021.

Ndangeni was drunk when the accident happened. He was running in the middle of the road. I paid for his medication and other expenses when he went to Parirenyatwa Hospital in 2018. I helped him out of the good of my heart and as an elderly person. He has served me with papers to appear in court and I am waiting for the court date, said Madhuku.

Acting Masvingo Police spokesperson Lloyd Masundire said he cannot comment on a case before the courts.

There are allegations that Madhuku who was driving an unregistered Ford Ranger failed to stop at the scene of accident. He allegedly stopped at the High Court in the CBD which is about 2km from where the accident happened.

I was taken to Masvingo Provincial Hospital and later transferred to Parirenyatwa Hospital for medication but I cannot afford bus fare for regular check-ups.

Doctors wanted US$550 for them to put an iron rod in my left foot but Madhuku has been avoiding me since 2018.

I lost my job as a security guard after the accident and can no longer provide for my family. My wife sells vegetables in town. I am struggling to buy pain killers and I cannot walk or do any tasks as I now use one hand, said Ndangeni.

 Mirror

Breaking News via Email
Yellowstone Bears Eat 40,000 Moths a Day In August Yellowstone Park

Court blocks $18 billion British class action against MasterCard Reuters

German Carmakers Face Potential New Scandal Over Antitrust Issues NYT

Big Tobacco and right-wing US billionaires funding anti-regulation hardliners in the EU Corporate Europe Observatory (MT).

Why is neoliberalism back in Latin America? Al Jazeera

Lawmakers divided over a ban on Venezuelan oil amid fears of a Russian takeover McClatchy. Takeover of Citgo, in which Rosneft has a 49.9% stake, Citgo being a subsidiary of Venezuelas state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).

Tennessee jails have been shortening sentences for inmates who get vasectomies or birth control implants Business Insider

After protests, St. Louis to install air conditioning in sweltering jail Reuters

Theres a Marijuana Frenzy That Could End Very Badly in Canada Bloomberg

Syraqistan

Brexit

Emmanuel Macron lays claim to the mantle of de Gaulle FT

Le Pens soul-searching: 5 key issues for her party Politico

Protecting the Cheaters: EU Regulators in Bed With German Auto Industry Regarding Diesel MishTalk (EM).

How Greece lost a great chance to break the chains from the European Financial Dictatorship the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens (ChrisSp).

China?

Japan Captures More Photographs of Likely Melted Fukushima Fuel Bloomberg

Why India Must Go Beyond Loan Waivers to Free Farmers From Debt The Wire

Cheap 3D printed prosthetics could be game changer for Nepal The Star

New Cold War

This *Is* Normal. American Politics Have Always Been Terrible. Daily Beast

Trump Transition

Democrats in Disarray

Bernie Sanders makes first move against a bill with bipartisan support that could increase fracking Mic (UserFriendly).

In Colorado Fracking Fight, Emails Show Constituents Begging Lawmakers For Help International Business Times

Our Famously Free Press

Washington Post Shoots for Pulitzer in Fake News With Reporting on Disability CEPR

Health Care

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

Amazon may give app developers access to Alexa audio recordings The Verge. Yikes.

Imperial Collapse Watch

Class Warfare

The Class Renegade NYRB

Antidote du jour:

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
(Natural News) On July 7, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price announced that Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, M.D., a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, will be taking over as head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Fitzgerald has an extensive resume relative to her position, which includes more than 30 years as a practicing physician. She also happens to be a Major in the U.S. Air Force, having served at both the Wurtsmith Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) Base in Michigan and at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C.

Why is this last point relevant? Because many people dont realize that the CDC in many ways functions as a branch of the United States military. The agency itself isnt officially designated as such, of course. But a good number of its medical officers, which now include among their ranks Dr. Fitzgerald, are members of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). And this agency is officially designated as one of the seven U.S. uniformed services, along with the Army, the Navy, and Dr. Fitzgeralds branch, the Air Force.

Perhaps youre still asking yourself: but why is this relevant? Whats the big deal if the CDC and some of its top officers are directly connected to the military-industrial complex? If youve been following the stories published here at Natural News for any length of time, you may recall that the U.S. military has somewhat of a sordid history when it comes to medical experimentation involving not only its service members, but also ordinary citizens. The CDC is often involved as well, maintaining a shadowy relationship with the upper echelons of the military apparatus.

The whole thing borders on deeply concerning when you start considering the potential implications of having a branch of the military essentially directing public health policy. At the very least, it warrants further scrutiny as to why the CDC seems to prefer hiring individuals with a military background as opposed to just ordinary doctors and medical professionals. It also begs the question as to why these two seemingly unrelated entities are so intertwined in the first place.

CDC officials wear militaristic uniforms with emblems resembling military officers

If youve ever seen CDC officials on television, perhaps you noticed that they wear strange uniforms resembling those worn by service members in the military. This is no coincidence, indicating that these individuals are members of a uniformed service  in this case, PHS. It also shows that they provide support services to the military in addition to their functional roles as public health authorities, which means they essentially have two jobs.

What this means in a practical sense on a day-to-day basis isnt entirely clear. But it does indicate that the CDC doesnt exactly function as a civilian agency as most people think it does. At the very least, it operates in partnership, or as some kind of hybrid, with the military-industrial complex. These CDC officials who are also PHS officers are appointed and paid by the U.S. military, its important to note, and the public isnt necessarily told where they came from or why they now work at the CDC.

This is concerning because not only does military medicine have a much different set of priorities than civilian medicine, but it also has a history of human rights abuses involving medical experimentation. One prominent example of this is the infamous Project 112 program that ran from 1963 to the early 1970s, in which Navy sailors were secretly sprayed with toxic nerve agents like sarin and VX to test the effectiveness of this military branchs decontamination and safety procedures.

The military also has an extensive history of using sinister means to try to force vaccinations on members of the public. In conjunction with the Institutes of Medicine (IoM), the military-industrial complex has funded all sorts of fake science research over the years to push the notion that vaccines are safe. As we exposed back in 2011, for instance, the IoM actively shills for the vaccine industry while accepting tens of millions of dollars from shady government organizations, many of which have direct ties to the U.S. military.

How is Emory involved?

Dr. Fitzgerald is also a graduate of Emory University School of Medicine, another institution tied to the military-industrial complex. Emory seems to churn out graduates that almost always end up working for the vaccine industry, the CDC, or both. The revolving door between these three entities is astounding, and raises a lot of questions about Dr. Fitzgeralds motivations for being CDC director.

Will she turn out to be another Poul Thorsen, the now-shamed former CDC vaccine researcher who was exposed for producing fake vaccine science in defense of the controversial MMR vaccine? Will she rely on the CDCs other distorted positions regarding vaccines and pharmaceuticals to push Americans to accept more of them during the next manufactured pandemic? Do we even know what her views are on any of these important subjects?

We do know her credentials, and that she oversaw the state of Georgias 18 public health districts and its 159 county health departments. We also know that she chaired Georgias Ebola Response Team back in 2015, reportedly overseeing the transfer of Ebola-infected individuals to Emory University Hospital. She also coordinated a statewide push for Georgia residents to receive both Ebola and flu vaccines, suggesting that she would take similar action on a national scale in the event of another reported disease outbreak, fake or otherwise.

Sources for this article include:

News.Emory.edu

USPHS.gov

MilitaryTimes.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

DPH.Georgia.gov
What to Know Ten dead after being trafficked to San Antonio in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer; dozens remain hospitalized.

The driver of the truck is in custody and charged with transporting immigrants in the U.S. illegally. He could face the death penalty.

Some survivors seen leaving in cars with friends or family, at least one person was found after wandering into nearby woods.

Ten people are dead and nearly three dozen more remain hospitalized after being found in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio early Sunday morning in what officials describe as an immigrant-smuggling operation gone wrong.

U.S. officials say 17 people pulled from the trailer suffered life-threatening injuries.



San Antonio Chief of Police William McManus and Fire Chief Charles Hood confirmed overnight police arrived at a Walmart on the city's southwest side shortly after midnight to find eight people dead and dozens of others, including men, women and children, suffering from heat stroke or dehydration and in need of immediate medical care after being trafficked into the United States.

"We're looking at a trafficking crime here this evening. The Department of Homeland Security is involved; homicide will work with them to determine the origin of this horrific tragedy," McManus said.[[436107463,R]]

One of the people hospitalized died Sunday and another was reported deceased Monday morning. Another victim was found in a field nearby, bringing the total number of people found to 39. All of the survivors that have been located are receiving medical care.

None of the names of the deceased have been released, though officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas did confirm all of the deceased are adult men.

McManus said early Sunday morning police were called after a passenger in the truck asked a Walmart employee for water. The employee then saw a number of people in the back of the truck and called for help.

Many of the survivors had heart rates over 130 beats per minute and were hot to the touch, Hood said. They had no water and the air conditioning in the truck was broken. The least-severe cases just needed to be re-hydrated.

It's not clear how long the people had been in the truck or how long they had been without air conditioning and water. Authorities said they were investigating where the immigrants were from.

Hood said EMS transported patients ranging in age from young children to adults in their 30s to seven different area hospitals, sending a large number downtown.

Police said while reviewing the store's surveillance video they noticed a number of cars had arrived at the store and left with some of the survivors. The store's surveillance video is part of the ongoing investigation, McManus said.

Hours later, after daybreak, a helicopter hovered over the area, and investigators were still gathering evidence from the tractor-trailer, which had an Iowa license plate and was registered to Pyle Transportation Inc. of Schaller, Iowa. The company did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.

"This is not an isolated incident. This happens quite frequently. Fortunately, we came across this one," McManus said. "And fortunately there are people that survived."

McManus said truck driver James Mathew Bradley Jr., who remained at the scene and is in police custody, is expected to face state and federal charges. The survivors, McManus said, will be investigated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Federal authorities say charges will be filed against Bradley, 60, from Clearwater, Florida. Bradley is being held in federal custody in connection with this incident, NBC News reported. He is expected to make a court appearance after a criminal complaint is filed Monday.

On Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement saying, Human trafficking is an epidemic that Texas is working to eradicate. To that end, Texas will continue to provide protection for the victims who have been robbed of their most basic rights, and bring down the full weight of the law for the perpetrators of this despicable crime.

Also on Sunday, San Antonio-based U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin Jr. said those responsible for the deaths are "ruthless human smugglers indifferent to the well-being of their fragile cargo."

Durbin also said federal investigators will work with San Antonio police to identify those responsible.

"By any standard, the horrific crime uncovered last night ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished," Thomas Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement.

The temperature Saturday in San Antonio reached 104 degrees and the heat index was likely closer to 110. Temperatures inside a vehicle can increase by 20 degrees more than the outside temperature in as little as 10 minutes, after an hour that temperature can be 43 degrees higher. Heat stroke can be fatal at when the body reaches 107 degrees.

Sunday's Tragedy Just the Latest Case of Human Smuggling to End in Deathz

Sunday's smuggling-by-truck attempt is not uncommon, and only the most recent to end in death.

In one of the deadliest cases on record in the U.S., 19 immigrants locked inside a stifling rig died in Victoria, Texas, in 2003.

In the May 2003 case, the immigrants were being taken from South Texas to Houston. Prosecutors said the driver heard them begging and screaming for their lives but refused to free them. The driver was sentenced to nearly 34 years in prison.

The Border Patrol has reported at least four truck seizures this month in and around Laredo, Texas. On July 7, agents found 72 people crammed into a truck with no means of escape, the agency said. They were from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Authorities in Mexico have also made a number of such discoveries over the years.

Last December, they found 110 migrants trapped and suffocating inside a truck after it crashed while speeding in the state of Veracruz. Most were from Central America, and 48 were minors. Some were injured in the crash.

Last October, also in Veracruz state, four migrants suffocated in a truck carrying 55 people.

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the death toll and number of people found in the truck. This story has been updated to reflect the death toll of nine that was confirmed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Authorities also confirmed that 39 people were found in the truck. Of the nine deceased, are all adult males, according to The United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas.
One person was hospitalized early Saturday morning after a rollover crash involving two vehicles in Providence, Rhode Island.

Police told WJAR-TV that the vehicles somehow collided on Murray Street at about 12:30 a.m. One vehicle struck a house as a result of the crash.

One person had to be extricated from one of the vehicles. The victim, who was not identified, was transported to an area hospital where they are listed in critical condition.

No one in the house was hurt, according to WJAR-TV.

The exact cause of the crash is under investigation.
Another round of severe weather took aim at parts of the Chicago area Sunday as some communities approach two weeks of major flooding.

Your Storm Pictures: July 21

The storm system hit counties throughout northeastern Illinois Sunday afternoon, with 60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail reported near suburban Belvidere around 3:45 p.m.

The storms moved slowly southeast at around 25 to 30 mph, hitting areas from Crystal Lake to Chicago to Manteno [[434281383, C]]

The rainfall has the potential to agitate the Des Plaines and Fox rivers, compounding concerns as several areas continue to battle record flooding.

The Fox River (with a flood stage of 9.5 feet) was at 13 feet near Algonquin on Saturday following heavy rainfall from overnight storms. It had crested Thursday at around 12.82 feet, according to the village of Algonquin, where officials continue to monitor water levels as volunteers sandbag the area. [[434038743, C]]

The Des Plaines River was at 18.26 feet near Des Plaines Saturday morning, six days after cresting at about 19.83 feet  nearly five feet about the 15 foot flood stage.

Both rivers were expected to recede Sunday, though the entire Chicago area remains under a Flood Warning through at least the end of the weekend. [[434290393, C]]

Sundays storms look to be the last for the next few days, as cooler and drier air is expected to move in at night and for the start of the work week.
The remains of a Harrisburg soldier missing in action 66 years are coming home for burial.

Phyllis Walker tells the (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan that the U.S. Army identified the remains of her uncle. Reserve Cpl. Edward Lee Borders was reported missing in action in 1951. The army declared him dead in 1954.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency used DNA analysis to identify the remains of the 20-year-old soldier from comingled remains in 208 boxes turned over to the U.S. from North Korea from 1990 to 1994.

Chinese forces aiding the North Koreans launched an offensive on Feb. 11, 1951. Borders' anti-aircraft artillery battalion came under attack. He was listed as missing on Feb. 13 when he didn't report with his unit in the city of Wonju.
The Washington Post reports that the Russian ambassador to the U.S. has said he discussed election-related issues with Sen. Jeff Sessions when the two men met during the 2016 presidential race.

The Post is citing anonymous U.S. officials who described U.S. intelligence intercepts of Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's descriptions of his meetings with Sessions.

Sessions was then a foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump. The former Alabama senator now serves as the Trump administration's attorney general.

Sessions failed to disclose the meetings with Kislyak during his confirmation hearing. He later said he did not recall discussing the Trump campaign with Kislyak.

Trump called it a "new INTELLIGENCE LEAK [sic] from the Amazon Washington Post" in a tweet early Saturday morning.

He went on to call for an end to "these illegal leaks, like Comey's," referencing former FBI director James Comey, who admitted to sharing information with the press.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores says Sessions stands by his previous assertion that he never had conversations with Russian officials about any type of interference with the election.
By PTI: Agartala, Jul 23 (PTI) Bangladesh and India have already signed a memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to connect the North-East and West Bengal with Bangladesh through new waterways, Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said.

"The new waterways would enable transportation of people and goods by ships. The new waterways would be set up by using major rivers of Bangladesh, West Bengal and Brahmaputra in Assam.

advertisement

"Dredging in the rivers would be required and the concerned countries would conduct the dredging works in the rivers in their countries," the Union Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping told reporters here last night.

The new project would be operational in the current year and boost the trade and passenger movement between the countries, he said.

The two countries share a 4095 km border of which 1116 km is through river.

Bangladesh as lower riparian state receives water from 54 rivers from India.

Mandaviya, who is also Union minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers yesterday met Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and Governor Tathagata Roy and discussed about implementation of Pradhanmantry Bharatiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojana with a target of providing quality medicine to the poor people.

He said the Narendra Modi government is giving a lot of importance to strengthen "Look East act East" policy by building more infrastructure and institutions in the region to catch up with the rest of the country.

Construction of highways was one of them, he said.

Mandaviya said at present there are six national highways having length of 854 km in Tripura and in addition to this four new roads covering 229 km have been approved by the ministry. PTI JOY RG

--- ENDS ---
New White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was schooled in hardscrabble politics  and down-home rhetoric  from a young age by her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Her way with a zinger  and her unshakable loyalty to an often unpredictable boss  are big reasons why she became a rising star in President Donald Trump's orbit. She'll take over for Sean Spicer, who abruptly announced Friday that he's resigning, effective at the end of August.

Sanders steps into what has been deemed the most difficult job in Washington. Her responsibilities are not just to do combat with a feisty White House press corps but to try to please a mercurial president who fancies himself his own best spokesman.

Trump often presents his own thoughts directly on Twitter in the early hours of the morning and is known to closely follow his surrogates on television, assessing their performances. He has been happy with Sanders' advocacy, says Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president.

"She understands America. She understands the president. And she understands how to connect the two," Conway told The Associated Press in March. "The president has a great deal of trust in Sarah."

Sanders, in her debut briefing after the announcement of her promotion, promised to "be as open, honest and transparent with you all as humanly possible." Her low-key approach, which came after a 37-minute charm offensive from new communications director Anthony Scaramucci, was in stark contrast to Spicer's debut in the role. Spicer, in his first briefing, berated reporters about underestimating the size of Trump's inaugural crowds and refused to take questions.

Sanders, who will be the third female press secretary in history, credits her larger-than-life dad with helping her learn how to deliver a message. Huckabee, a frequent political commentator, has long been famed for his pithy rhetoric. The two speak most days before 6 a.m.

"I'll call and say, 'What do you think if I say this?' He'll say, 'That's really good. You might try to say it a little bit more like X,'" she said.

But while she often opts to diffuse problems with some down-home Southern charm, she can also be combative. Last month, she got into a heated exchange with a reporter who accused the White House of trying to antagonize the press corps and snapped, "I think it is outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I was simply trying to respond to his question."

On advocating for the unconventional Trump, Sanders admits that even in the press office, they don't always get a heads-up before Trump tweets. But she says part of Trump's appeal is that he "directly communicates with the American people on a regular basis."

And now she is thrust into the role that made Spicer a household name and the butt of "Saturday Night Live" skits. Sanders, too, has been portrayed on the long-running show, and now she is who most Americans will see when they get news from the White House  if the administration returns the briefing to an on-camera format.

Arkansas-raised, Sanders is married to a Republican consultant and moved her young family to Washington to be part of the administration. She joined the Trump campaign not long after her father's second presidential bid  which she managed  fizzled out in the 2016 Iowa caucuses. She said she was drawn to Trump's message of economic populism and his outsider attitude. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton  a former first lady, senator and secretary of state  was seen by many as the ultimate insider.

"One of the big things my dad was running on was changing Washington, breaking that cycle," Sanders said last spring. "I felt like the outsider component was important and I thought he had the ability to actually win and defeat Hillary."

Sanders entered politics young, helping with her father's campaigns as a child and then working her way up the ranks. In 2007, she moved to Iowa to run her father's operation in the leadoff caucus state, where he was the surprise winner. She also served in the Education Department under President George W. Bush and worked on a number of Senate and presidential campaigns.

The Arkansas ties continue to hold strong. Sanders has consulted with friends from the state about her new role, including Mack McLarty, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, who she said counseled her to appreciate the "historic opportunity" to work in the White House.

And she downplayed on Friday any reports of "chaos" enveloping the West Wing, saying that her house at 6 a.m. with three young kids was far more hectic.

Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed reporting.
Theres a showdown going on in Flower Mound.

Instead of celebrating the near-completion of its first hotel, there is concern it will be forced to sit empty for months.

That could jeopardize some advanced registrations.

The hotel project along Flower Mounds River Walk was supposed to include a parking garage to be used for other attractions.

Not only is the garage not finished, the developer has not broken ground on it yet.

New Era Partners is set to open the hotel in mid-September and says people are already booking holiday parties and weddings.

However, the town of Flower Mound says it is ready to take a tough stance and potentially keep the upscale 5,000 square foot hotel closed until the developer follows through on the agreement.

A handful of workers braved the high temperatures on the construction site on Saturday.

Theyre probably about 85 percent complete, said town manager Jimmy Stathatos. It looks awesome. They really like they say Flower-Mounded it up.

The Courtyard By Marriott will be the first hotel in Flower Mound.

A sign near the future entrance reads parking garage, with an arrow.

But in reality it is just an empty lot next to the hotel.

Personally, Im frustrated and very disappointed, said Stathatos.

Stathatos says a 300-spot parking garage was part of the deal with New Era.

The number of parking spots has fluctuated over the years from around 500 to 300 spots.

Stathatos says the town leadership has repeatedly asked New Era to build the parking garage.

But after years of asking, there is still no garage.

The town is ready to say: No garage? No hotel.

The hotel is not going to open, said Stathatos. Its not going to open and thats unfortunate because its an incredible addition to the town.

The garage will be built. It is underway, said Daryn Eudaly, CEO of New Era Partners.

The well-known North Texas developer says several issues are to blame for the delays including delays with acquiring financing deals, a labor shortage and about a 40 percent increase in construction costs.

We are building the garage, said Eudaly. We are behind. That is our fault, our issue. Is has to do with financing and being a smaller company. If I couldve written a check for it 9 months ago and not been here I would have. But I have solved the problem and ask for compromise to open the garage and the hotel timely.

Eudaly also points to other projects in the Central Business District being built out of order to what was agreed to years ago.

As the rest of the amenities come on in the River Walk, we are hopeful those will be done in the next year, said Eudaly. Obviously the delay in those has caused a delay in our financing.

Im disappointed, said former Flower Mound councilman Paul Stone.

Stone was a council member when the town approved the River Walk Central Business District and he now lives nearby.

You get the feeling that the developer is saying well, well wait til the last minute and theyll give in I dont think the towns going to give in, said Stone.

[New Era has] done great things in the community but I think they underestimated the towns commitment to holding them accountable for this amenity, said Stathatos.

The council and the mayor are wonderful people that weve had a seven year relationship with and we look forward to resolving things and bringing the first hotel to Flower Mound, said Eudaly.

Eudaly says hes got everything lined up and is waiting on the last permits and expects to break ground on the parking garage in the coming days and hopes to finish the garage by the end of the year.

The town of Flower Mound is also contributing $1 million of the roughly $9 million it will cost to build the parking garage.

Stathos says the town might consider allowing the hotel to open at some point if the developer provides some kind of financial assurance when it comes to the parking garage.
Authorities say a boy smoking marijuana was arrested for investigation of starting a small wildfire outside Sacramento.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the fire on Thursday had threatened homes and prompted temporary evacuations in the Auburn area.

Authorities have not yet determined if the boy set the fire or purpose or if it was an accident. The boys name and age were not released.

The Placer County Sheriffs Office says he reported the fire to authorities.

The fire burned 12 acres. No homes were damaged and no injuries were reported.
San Diego law enforcement filed charges against 19 associates of a Mexican gang known as Eme, or La Eme, and arrested 10 of them Thursday.

Most of the associates arrested were active gang members and had prior criminal history, according to the San Diego District County Attorneys Office.

Law enforcement also seized $51,000 in cash, methamphetamine, and heroin.

A three-year investigation called Operation Emero, conducted by San Diego, state and federal law enforcement agencies provided the information needed to file the charges and make the arrests, according to a statement from District Attorney Summer Stephan.

Investigators analyzed thousands of recorded conversations and written communication dealing with La Emes operations and criminal activity. They discovered that incarcerated Mexican mafia members were using prison phones, email, mail and cell phones to order murders, assaults, extortions, drug trafficking and collect money for the incarcerated gang members, according to the DA.

"This gang is extremely gruesome and calculated in their violence to inspire fear and intimidation," Stephan said in a statement.

Two principle gang leaders were revealed to be Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate Jose "Bat" Marquez and California death row inmate Ronaldo Ayala.

The DA stated joint efforts with the FBI, East San Diego Regional Gang Task Force and San Diego Special Services Unit allowed law enforcement to bring 25 felony charges against the 19 mafia associates.

Some of the charges filed against the gang associates include conspiracy to commit torture, conspiracy to commit assault of great bodily injury, conspiracy to commit arson, extortion, possession of drugs for sale and possession of an assault weapon, according to the DA.

"I am proud to continue this tradition of partnership, which allows us to conduct complicated and effective investigations such as Operation Emero, which makes the entire county safer," said Sheriff Bill Gore, head of the East County Regional Gang Task Force.

Within the prison system, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations (CDCR) Security Threat Group searched 39 prison cells and confiscated 23 contraband cell phones, two subscriber identification module (SIM) cards, methamphetamine, narcotics and documents detailing Mexican mafia activities.

"I commend our agents in CDCRs San Diego Special Service Unit and thank our partners on the FBI Safe Streets Task Force," said CDCR Special Agent in Charge John Prelip in a statement. "The Service Unit will continue to work together and liason with law enforcement teams to dismantle the operations of criminal gangs."

The 10 gang associates arrested Thursday are scheduled for arraignment on July 24.
What to Know Mayor de Blasio and MTA Chairman Lhota verbally sparred on Sunday over subway funding

Earlier in the week, Lhota said New York City needed to contribute more to the subway's operations

De Blasio countered that the subway is the state's responsibility to repair and maintain

Mayor Bill de Blasio was full of praise when his one-time opponent Joe Lhota became MTA chairman last month.

Things change.

De Blasio and Lhota got into a war of words Sunday over the condition of the subway system and who was responsible for fixing it, two days after the second derailment in a month and three days after Lhota publicly called on the city to contribute more to the subway's operations.

It started with a morning ride through Brooklyn by De Blasio, during which he insisted it was solely the state's responsibilities to get the trains fixed and running on time.

At the height of the morning rush, a trash fire that spread to the tracks at 145th Street crippled subway service. Lori Bordonaro reports.

"You've heard a lot of fiction the last few days, so I'm going to give you some facts. The State  the State and the MTA are responsible for the operations of New York City's subways. It's been that way for decades," he said, according to a transcript of remarks released by his office.

"No one questions, for example, whether I have responsibility for making sure the city is safe and for how the NYPD is run or how our schools are run. But when it comes to the MTA, in the last weeks, we've heard all sorts of different explanations. There's only one explanation  the State of New York is responsible for the MTA, period  for the expense budget, for the capital budget, for the whole thing."

Top Tri-State News Photos

The mayor told reporters that he still believed Lhota was a good choice to run the MTA, but that Lhota's position on the city's contributions "makes no sense."

Later Sunday, the Lhota responded -- forcefully.

"What we need is leadership, not photo ops. The Mayor's comments today were completely disingenuous knowing that the MTA is set to present its 30-day overhaul plan this week. We know we have a problem and our job now is to fix it. It would best for the people of New York City if everyone stepped up and worked together in those efforts," he said in a statement.

And in a second statement later in the evening, he added "This isn't politics, it's a simple question of math and law."
What to Know A 68-year-old gas station attendant was violently robbed in Summit, New Jersey, police say

Surveillance video shows the assailant beating the attendant with a wrench and dragging him behind the gas station

The attendant's family says he's in too much pain to speak; residents of Summit are shocked

Police in New Jersey are searching for a masked robber who violently beat a gas station attendant with a wrench before dragging him outside and leaving him injured on the pavement.

The robbers face was hidden behind a bandana and hood when he came up behind the 68-year-old attendant at the Shell gas station on River Road in Summit on Sunday night.

Surveillance video shows him hit the man in the head with the wrench multiple times before dragging him outside across pavement and dumping him behind the gas station.

"The gentleman as you saw in the video had his back turned, he didn't even see it coming," said Summit Police Capt. Steven Zagorski. "The suspect was just hitting him with the wrench, unprovoked."

Police say the robber then stole $680 in cash from the register and took off down River Road. Multiple units from the Summit Police Department and the Union County Sheriffs Department searched nearby areas but couldnt locate him, authorities said.

The gas station attendant was taken to Morristown Medical Center by Summit EMS. He suffered from a gash on his forehead and broken ribs.

His family spoke to News 4 New York on Wednesday. They said he was in too much pain to speak, so much pain that he had to be readmitted to the hospital.

In Summit, where violent crime is not a regular sight, residents were shocked.

"Something like that would never happen here," Jamison Setoute said. "Shocking."

"Terrible," said a resident named Jim. "Never seen that happen here before."
What was supposed to be the start of a Hawaiian vacation for many turned out to be an early morning nightmare at the airport.

A United Airlines plane was evacuated at Newark Liberty International Airport Sunday morning, delaying passengers for hours, officials said.



Flight 61 en route to Honolulu, scheduled for leave at 8:40 a.m. was on the runway when an issue with a flight deck window caused the aircraft to stop and abort the full flight, officials said. (Sources initially suggested it was a brake issue before later clarifying.)

United flight 61 from Newark to Honolulu was not able to takeoff this morning due to a minor mechanical issue. Customers deplaned and we are providing meal vouchers, snacks and beverages as we work as quickly as possible to get customers to Honolulu," said Maddie King, a spokesperson for United.



Hundreds of passengers and crew members were bused to Terminal C.

The aircraft will be towed to a maintenance hangar.

The flight has been rescheduled for 1:45 p.m. Sunday afternoon on another aircraft.
Israel's military fortified its troops in the West Bank and placed forces on high alert Saturday, a day after a Palestinian stabbed to death three members of an Israeli family and some of the worst Israeli-Palestinian clashes in years erupted over tensions at the Holy Land's most contested shrine.

Following a relatively quiet day, violence resumed late Saturday near the epicenter of the current crisis in the Old City of Jerusalem. After hundreds of Muslim worshippers defiantly held their evening prayers outside the Jerusalem holy site, resuming their protest against security measures Israel imposed after a deadly attack there, clashes unfolded with police firing tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters.

No injuries were reported, but one Palestinian was killed in uncertain circumstances in other low-level clashes that took place throughout the day, including in the West Bank village of the 20-year-old Palestinian assailant who carried out the grisly stabbing spree. His father said he believes his son was motivated by a desire to protect the "honor" of the Jerusalem holy site.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman visited the site of the attack, the Israeli settlement of Halamish, and consulted with top commanders. Lieberman said the attacker's home would be demolished swiftly and called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to condemn what he called a "slaughter."

Disputes over the shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, have set off major rounds of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations before. They were also at the root of the current violence which began last week when Arab gunmen fired from the shrine, killing two Israeli policemen.

In response, Israel installed metal detectors at the gates of the 37-acre (15-hectare) walled compound, saying the devices were a needed security measure to prevent more attacks and were deployed routinely at holy sites around the world.

Muslims allege Israel was trying to expand its control at the Muslim-administered site under the guise of security  a claim Israel denies  and launched mass prayer protests.

On Friday, tensions boiled over and several thousand Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in Jerusalem after noon prayers  the centerpiece of the Muslim religious week. Three Palestinians were killed and several dozen wounded in some of the worst street clashes in two years.

Late Friday evening, a Palestinian identified as Omar al-Abed jumped over the fence of the Halamish settlement and entered a home, surprising a family that was celebrating the birth of a new grandchild during their Sabbath dinner.

The Israeli military said the assailant killed a man and two of his adult children, while his wife was badly wounded. Their daughter-in-law hid in a separate room, sheltering her young children. A neighbor, an off-duty soldier, heard the screams, rushed to the home and opened fire, wounding al-Abed who was taken to an Israeli hospital, said the head of Israel's rescue service.

Itai Orayon, a medic, said he found "blood everywhere" in the house. He told Israel's Army Radio that three people were on the floor, unconscious "with deep stab wounds all over their bodies," and that the medical team was unable to save them. TV footage showed the floor tiles drenched in blood. The victims have yet to be named.

On Saturday morning, Israeli troops searched the assailant's family home in the West Bank village of Kobar and detained one of his brothers, the army said. Video footage released by the military shows soldiers leading away a handcuffed and blindfolded man.

The army said soldiers searched the house and measured it in preparation for demolition. Anticipating this, local residents said the family emptied its home of valuables. Later, clashes erupted as residents burned tires and hurled rocks at Israeli troops who had searched the home. The military says about 50 people attacked troops who fired back with rubber bullets and tear gas.

The assailant's father said his son had been angered by the escalating violence at the Jerusalem shrine, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

"The honor of Muslims is the only Haram," Mohammed al-Abed said. "If it's gone, the Muslims' honor is gone. This was the motive for my son."

Ibrahim al-Abed, an uncle of the assailant, said his nephew had been arrested three months ago by security forces of Abbas, the Palestinian leader who presides over autonomous enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The uncle said his nephew had spent two weeks in detention and was violently interrogated about alleged plans to attack Israelis before he was released.

The assailant said in a pre-attack Facebook post that he expected to be killed in the attack. He wrote that he wanted his body to be covered by a banner of the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Israel has repeatedly accused Abbas and his Palestinian Authority of permitting anti-Israeli incitement in the public Palestinian discourse.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack as "an act of terror, carried out by an animal who was incited with unfathomable hatred."

Abbas has rejected Israeli incitement allegations, saying Israel's 50-year-old occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state is at the root of widespread Palestinian anger and helps drive violence.

Abbas is a staunch opponent of violence and in 12 years in power has stuck to security coordination between his forces and Israeli troops against a common enemy  Hamas.

On Friday evening, Abbas announced that he would "freeze" ties with Israel "on all levels" until the metal detectors are removed from the shrine, but did not say whether this means halting security coordination. Ending such ties would have far-reaching repercussions and sharply raise tensions with Israel.

Yossi Kuperwasser, a former director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, said these were likely empty words since the cooperation is "most of all important for the Palestinians".

Even if largely meant for domestic Palestinian consumption, the Abbas announcement dealt a setback to fledgling efforts by the Trump administration to revive long-dormant Israeli-Palestinian talks on a peace deal.

Such efforts now seem moot as Israelis and Palestinians refuse to budge in the showdown over the shrine and violence threatens to escalate.

Israeli officials have said they would guarantee continued access to Muslim worshippers but have not said how huge crowds could speedily pass through metal detectors during busy periods.

Late Saturday, Israel's Channel 2 TV reported that police would soon place an "alternative" to the detectors in an effort to lower tensions.

Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Israeli defense body for Palestinian civilian affairs, also said Israel was open to alternatives as long as it "ensures the prevention of the next attack."

Karin Laub in Jericho, West Bank and Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank contributed to this report.
U.S. & World

Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
By PTI: (Eds: Repeating with minor corrections throughout)

Agartala, Jul 23 (PTI) Bangladesh and India have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to connect the north-east and West Bengal with Bangladesh through new waterways, Union minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said.

"The new waterways would enable transportation of people and goods by ships. They would be set up by using the major rivers of Bangladesh, West Bengal and the Brahmaputra in Assam," the Union minister of state for road transport, highways and shipping told reporters here last night.

advertisement

He added that the rivers would have to be dredged and both the countries would do the work in their respective rivers.

The new project would be operational this year itself and would boost the goods and passenger movement between the two countries, said Mandaviya.

India and Bangladesh share a 4,095-km border, of which 1,116 km is through rivers.

Bangladesh receives water from 54 rivers in India.

Mandaviya, who is also the Union minister of state for chemicals and fertilisers, yesterday met Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and Governor Tathagata Roy and discussed about the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana, a central scheme to provide quality medicines to the poor.

He said for the Narendra Modi government, the Look East, act East policy was very important and it planned to build more infrastructure and institutions in the region, so that it could "catch up" with the rest of the country.

Construction of highways in the region was one of the important plans of the government, he said.

Mandaviya said currently, there were six national highways covering a distance of 854 km in Tripura and in addition to this, four new roads covering 229 km had been approved by the ministry. PTI JOY RG RC

--- ENDS ---
A Fallbrook father detained by Border officials on his way to work is recalling, for the first day, his time in custody, unsure if he would ever see his young daughter and wife again.

Mario Figueroa, the young father of a 10-month-old girl, was detained by Border Patrol agents on Tuesday in Temecula on his way to work, and scheduled for deportation the following Tuesday.

The father was first brought to the U.S. from Guatemala when he was just three-years-old. Because the family was not granted asylum, Figueroa's attorney said, his name was put on a removal order.

"They told me [I'm] for sure out of this," Figueroa said in an interview with NBC 7. "You are not going to get away from this. He told me, 'You're on a plane Tuesday.'"

The father of 10-month-old Adalyn spent the last four days in the Otay Mesa Detention Center. His daughter could not begin to comprehend where her father went, his wife Celeste said.

"Since he left all she could say was 'daddy.' That is all she said, Celeste said.

It has been 18 years since Figueroa arrived in the U.S. Figueroa did not obtain legal status in the country and his paperwork for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is currently being processed, his wife said. DACA allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors to receive a two-year period of deferred action from deportation.

For those reasons, undocumented immigrant advocates said, he should never have been detained.

"Many of those getting picked up are contributing to our community. It does us no good. It does not move us forward," Community Alliance member Ricardo Favela said.



Figueroa was released late Friday night without explanation, he said, after a scary four days in detention awaiting certain deportation.



The judge's removal order, however, still stands.

It honestly makes me feel like I am still locked up," Figueroa said. "It feels like just because I am not in the room I'm still not free."

Figueroa's circumstances aren't as unique as they may sound. Advocates say an estimated 44,000 undocumented immigrants in San Diego are eligible for DACA Status.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Figueroa hopes no one has to go through what he went through.

"We shouldn't let people go through what I went through or treat others differently because of where they are from," he said.
D.C. has lost a legendary journalist and friend.

As word of Jim Vance's death spread on Saturday, his family and NBC4 received an outpouring of support, memories and condolences.

Vance probably wouldn't have liked to admit it, but he was big-time. And D.C. loved him.

"He loved this city and we loved him back," D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said. "I know I speak for all 681,000 of us in sharing my condolences with his family, with his work family, with all of his viewers and just thanking him for a job well done."

Over his decades on News4, Jim Vance had an impact on radio, too, inspiring many personalities. Molette Green reports.

The Washington Nationals said they would hold a moment of silence for Vance before Tuesday night's game. And Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton paid homage to Vance on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives Monday evening.

"The District of Columbia has lost a local legend with the passing of Jim Vance," Norton said in a statement. "Jim endeared himself to residents for decades by telling our citys story straight every evening, topped off with pointed commentary, which was particularly valued by his loyal viewers."

Former colleagues lifted up Vance as a journalist.

"Washington loved Jim Vance," said Bob Ryan, who worked at NBC4 alongside Vance for decades. "He was loved not because he was a TV anchorman, a celebrity or a 'personality.' He was loved because of his life, his continuity in our lives and the trust we had in him. Every day for 30 years I would watch him edit bad grammar or a poorly written news story on the fly, as he read it. No one I ever worked with could do that. There is and was only one Vance. What a life. What a journalist. What a friend. Knowing and working with him enriched my life and also I 'had a ball,' as Vance would say. He'll always be with everyone who loves him."

"I saw people fall in love with him, the viewers fall in love with him and I also saw Washington embracing him during the time when he was challenged with some personal issues. He was very open about them and he won the hearts of a lot of people who could see themselves in his issues," said former WJLA anchor Maureen Bunyan.

Washington leaders, including Mayor Muriel Bowser and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder remember Jim Vance. News4's Tom Sherwood and Doreen Gentzler report.

At Ben's Chili Bowl, Rev. Jesse Jackson paid tribute to Vance.

"He really was an international journalist on a local station. People around the whole world knew Jim Vance, because he set the pace," Jackson said.

"Whether he was in Anacostia or Northwest D.C. or at the White House, Jim Vance always had a certain presence about him," Jackson continued.

Virginia Ali, whose family runs Ben's Chili Bowl, said she was honored that last month that Vance attended a ceremony to unveil the new mural outside.

"It was absolutely the most exciting part of the day," Ali said. "He set such an example for young people."

Washington Post columnist Colby King wrote Saturday, "He and I spoke of things not easy to talk about: what its really like on the job  it ain't all sunshine and roses. And what it means to be clinically depressed, a condition that we shared."

"I was saddened to learn of the untimely death of my friend and Washington, D.C. icon, Jim Vance," Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker said in a statement. "Jim has been a role model for me and countless others from the first time we saw him anchoring the news in the late 1970s. He inspired us all because we could see ourselves in him. Jim was someone we could count on to tell us the truth and he delivered the news in a way that drew us in. He was thoughtful, compassionate, extremely smart and genuine."

Vance was an active member of the Greater Washington Urban League. The organization mourned his passing in a statement released Monday.

"There is a great cloud of sadness over the region upon learning of Jims transition," said Greater Washington Urban League President and CEO George H. Lambert, Jr. "We had known about his challenges with cancer, but we also knew that Jim was always a fighter and that if there was anyone who would defeat it, it was Jim Vance."



Vance's passing has been felt not just throughout the D.C. area, but throughout the country.

"When I hear the name Jim Vance I think of a king, man. ... He was the king of news; he was the king of anchors, you know, and people. Think that only applies to D.C.? No. I mean a king around this entire country," said Donnie Simpson, a longtime DJ and one of Vance's friends.

"He was just a person who never forgot where he came from. Always understood that people looked up to him, respected him and he gave that respect back. And I think that came through in real life and on the screen as well," said former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Broadcast legend and NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw said Vance "defined professional cool and accomplishment."

"Rest in peace, my friend," Brokaw said on Twitter.

The National Association of Black Journalists remembered him as a pioneer for African-American journalists.

"As one of the first African-American primetime anchors in a major television market, Vance was an impeccable deliverer of news, keeping the citizens of Washington informed for 45 years. He inspired multiple generations of African-Americans to pursue journalism as their craft. His beautiful spirit touched everyone he met and lives on in the scores of working journalists he mentored," NABJ President Sarah Glover said in a statement.



His calming delivery, quick wit and sharp style -- and, of course, that unforgettable moment when he could not stop laughing on air -- Vance was a true legend.

"It was all about the information he was giving to the audience; it wasnt about him. He did it with grace and humor, he had a terrific personality. And all of it were the ingredients of making a good news broadcaster," D.C. broadcaster Gordon Peterson said.

"Jim Vance was one of our important local figures of the past half century. In some ways he was a more important figure, leader, then all of our politicians. Because he would tell it like it is. He didn't just report the news but conveyed a sense of what's right and wrong, or forgivable in recognition of human frailty," D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said.

NBC News correspondent Blayne Alexander had the opportunity to learn from Jim Vance when she was an intern.

"I knew him, in the same way everyone else did, as a TV newscaster," Mendelson said. "But I also knew Jim as an adoptive parent, and as a citizen of D.C., and as someone who cared deeply about our community. Jim will be missed. And that's an understatement."



"Jim was always Jim," Simpson said. "24/7 -- I dont care who he was talking to, hed be in the presence of the president or the janitor. It was always the same. He knew who he was, he knew who you were, he respected you, he had time for you."
Australia was disappointed that hundreds of its rejected refugees would not begin resettling in the United States this month under a deal that predates President Donald Trump's administration, an official said on Friday.

President Barack Obama's administration agreed to accept up to 1,250 refugees among hundreds of asylum seekers  mostly from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka  who have been languishing for up to four years in immigration camps on the impoverished Pacific island nations of Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton said Australia wanted the refugees to start moving in July, but the United States had already filled its 50,000 refugee quota for the current fiscal year.

"We're disappointed that they haven't been able to move this month, which was my hope, but their new program year starts on Oct. 1, and we're working with both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that we can get people off as quickly as possible," Dutton told reporters.

Trump berated Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during their first telephone conversation as national leaders in January over the deal which Trump described in a tweet as "dumb."

Trump said the refugees would be subjected to "extreme vetting" before they were accepted. There are few details on what that would entail.

Australia will not settle any refugees who try to arrive by boat  a policy that the government says dissuades asylum seekers from attempting the dangerous and occasionally deadly ocean crossing from Indonesia. Australia instead pays Papua New Guinea and Nauru to house asylum seekers in camps that have been plagued by reports of abuse and draconian conditions.

Dutton said he was determined to close the men-only camp on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea by the end of October. Asylum seekers on Manus who were rejected by the United States would be transferred to Nauru, who will remain open indefinitely.

Australia last month reached a settlement of 68 million dollars with more than 1,900 asylum seekers who sued over their treatment on Manus.
A police-involved shooting is under investigation in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

According to the Middlesex District Attorney's office, the shooting happened at a home on Clover Hill Drive at about 7:40 a.m. Sunday.

Officers responded to the home after receiving a 911 call from an older man who heard other family members  a man and woman  engaged in some type of altercation, according to Chelmsford Police Chief James Spinney.

"He was concerned for their well-being," Spinney said.

According to the Chelmsford Police Department, the suspect became combative with the responding officer and struck him in the face with a closed fist.

During the altercation, two additional Chelmsford officers arrived at the scene. The suspect continued to be combative, using a large shard of glass and a hammer as weapons.

After officers tried repeatedly to control the suspect, a Taser was used. When that was not successful, another officer discharged a firearm.

"There was one Taser deployment and it was ineffective. At that point, with growing concern for the well-being of that female and that male victim who was in close proximity to that male subject, the officer discharged his firearm," Spinney said.

Police said they had responded to the home a number of times within the last six months.

Authorities said the officer who discharged the firearm is on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

The names of the suspect and victims have not yet been released.

The suspects wounds are believed to be non-life-threatening, however he remains in serious condition. He is expected to face charges in connection with the incident.

The female victim was also transported to a hospital where she is being treated for injuries allegedly caused by the suspect during the altercation.


A police officer was injured in the pursuit of a subject in Manchester, New Hampshire on Saturday, but a good Samaritan came to his aid.

Officer Fred Gillis of the community policing unit chased 18-year-old Stone Cooper of Manchester on foot after spotting him. Cooper was wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant.

When Gillis tried to detain Cooper after catching up to him, both of them fell to the ground and Gillis struck his head on the pavement, momentarily losing consciousness.

Manchester resident Steve Bannion saw the incident unfold and helped Gillis to cuff Cooper, who was still attempting to break free.

Additional officers responded to the scene to take Cooper into custody.

Gillis was treated at a local hospital as a precaution.
A woman was arrested and charged on Saturday in the death of a man in Brockton, Massachusetts, according to the Plymouth County District Attorney's office.

On Friday, at about 10:30 p.m., Kathryn Podgurski flagged down officers around the nearby Elm Court Hotel.

She led police to her apartment at 42 Green Street where, according to the district attorney, a body was discovered inside of a closet.

Podgurski was charged as an accessory after murder.



The victim was identified as Podgurski's boyfriend Joseph Shaw. His family told NBC Boston that the 44-year-old had been missing for nearly a week.

"We've been looking for him since Sunday," said Shaw's sister, Sandra Shaw. "Nobody's seen him, nobodys heard from him. Nothing."

The victim's niece , Jacinda Shaw, told NBC Boston that, earlier in the week, she begged Podgurski for any information on her uncle's whereabouts.

"I went to the apartment and talked with her," she said. "She looked me dead in the face and started crying and said, 'I don't know what happened.'"

Shaw's niece said of her uncle, "It doesn't matter if you are young or old - if you needed anything, he would give you the shirt off his back."

Shaw, known as Joey to his friends, is a father of three. Family said he had been living with a roommate.

Several stab wounds were visible on Shaw's body, apparently consistent with homicide.

"It appears he had been dead for a period of time and had suffered significant trauma," said Plymouth District Attorney, Timothy Cruz.

Another of Shaw's sisters, Cynthia Rodriguez, said that "you watch this on the news and you expect it to happen to other families. But you never expect it to happen to your own. I'm really just kind of numb inside. I can't believe this is happening right now."

The Plymouth County District Attorney's Office and Massachusetts State Police are handling the investigation. Several interviews and search warrants were executed throughout the day on Saturday.

Podgurski is being held until her Monday arraignment in Brockton District Court.
Not made your Christmas pudding yet? Don't know where to start? Come along to a Christmas pudding workshop at Norwich Central Baptist Church on November 21 with MasterChef contestant Jane Wyndham.

Not made your Christmas pudding yet? Don't know where to start? Come along to a Christmas pudding workshop at Norwich Central Baptist Church on November 21 with MasterChef contestant Jane Wyndham.

Norwich Foodbank provides over 4,700 food parcels Norwich Foodbank gave out 4,793 emergency food parcels to people across Norwich in the last year  with 1,790 of these going to children. Read more

Poppies cascading in Sheringham church A fall of poppies cascades from the pulpit in St Andrews Methodist Church in Sheringham, and anyone is welcome to come and see them. Read more

Bishop Graham's prayers for COP27 climate conference Bishop Graham is publishing daily prayers on social media for the current COP27 climate conference, and is asking all to join. Read more

Discovering the Orange in your life The vibrant colours of autumn have been inspiring regular contributor Jane Walters to focus on the positive. Read more

YMCA annual celebration set to inspire YMCA Norfolk is set to hold its much anticipated 2022 annual celebration and awards ceremony on November 17, after almost 3 years since the last event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more

Hub manager vacancy at community shop Earlham Community Shop Community Interest Company is looking to appoint a manager for this new venture being developed in the heart of NR5 Norwich. Read more

Abbey Days brings Christmas Magic to Wymondham Visitors to Wymondham Abbeys Christmas fair will be able to treat their children to a magic show and fun baking workshop while they browse more than 60 stalls. Read more

Salvation Armys new Christmas Appeal in Norfolk The Salvation Army has launched their new Christmas appeal across Norfolk which, this year, has evolved from the much-loved Toys and Tins appeal. Read more

Are we storing up treasures on earth? Rising prices affect us all, and Anna Heydon urges us to spare a thought for those who will be struggling with the cost of living this winter. Read more

Latest Norfolk Christian community events Events of interest to the Norwich and Norfolk Christian community happening over the next few weeks are listed. Read more

Covid leaf memorial at Norwich church St Peter Mancroft Church Norwich Presents The Leaves of the Trees an installation by sculptor Peter Walker which provides a memorial for those who died of Covid-19 Read more

Community Chaplaincy Norfolk begins a new chapter Community Chaplaincy Norfolk (CCN) celebrated the beginning of a new chapter this week, as the new chair of trustees Chris Tomlinson led his first annual meeting. Read more

Lowestoft Christians launch on-line bible helps app The Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth branch of Good News for Everyone (GNFE), formerly the Gideons, have introduced a new mobile phone app called On-line Bible Helps. Read more

Addicts' rehabilitation centre plan for Drayton Hall Christian addiction charity Teen Challenge London is planning to turn Drayton Hall near Norwich into its headquarters and a rehabilitation centre for men, after it was gifted the freehold of the hall by its owner, the Lind Trust. Read more

The power of positive protest Philip Young encourages us to take a stand for what we believe, and has just written to Therese Coffey regarding climate change and the forthcoming COP 27. He explains why we should be prepared to protest. Read more

Norwich church celebrates with cribs and trees Rosebery Road Methodist Church in Norwich will be holding its annual Cribs and Trees Festival in December. Read more

Transforming Norwich lunch offers ministry tips Ex-Brighton vicar, Rev Phil Moon, will offer tips on how to keep going in ministry to the Transforming Norwich leaders lunch on Wednesday November 16. Read more
Whether its prankster or aliens - it's a crime!

CROP circles  now theyre a crime.

Wiltshire Police has officially outlawed the phenomenon, issuing a public decree this month.

That could make for some interesting arrests  last year an off-duty Wiltshire policeman reportedly saw aliens inspecting a local crop formation, according to national newspaper reports.

Within the last few days the force issued a press release, which stated: With summer well and truly under way, we have seen an increase of crop circles appearing across the county.

They might seem harmless but they actually have a huge negative impact on the hard-working landowners and farmers whose crops are damaged.

Creating a crop circle is criminal damage and an offence.

The force has urged all farmers and landowners to report crop circle formations using the non-emergency 101 number, so they can be recorded.

The force added: Often immediately after a crop circle appears, individuals will arrive with a drone to photograph it.

Take note of any vehicles, their registration plates, and any individuals and pass this information to the police.

If a crop circle is created on your land, Wiltshire Police advise informing the crop circle community if you decide to allow  or not allow  access to the general public, and if you intend to cut the circle out.

The force points landowners to the following three websites to do this:

http://www.cropcircleaccess.com

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/anasazi/post2004.html

http://temporarytemples.co.uk

Finally, the force asks: If you can see a crop circle creation in progress, call police on 999.

One spectacular formation appeared in a field in West Woodhay in 2001, followed by reports of strange lights in the evening sky.

That formation, dubbed the cosmic serpent by enthusiasts, spanned 11 tractor tram lines and was one of the largest seen in the UK.

It immediately attracted hundreds of sightseers and simultaneously earned the ire of landowner Harry Henderson, who said at the time: Some say its to do with aliens but its not  its a team from Holland.

Theyve been caught at it.

However, some formations are not so easily explained, displaying amazingly intricate basket weave patterns; brittle stalks being inexplicably bent rather than broken; nodes rent by steam holes as if from a mysterious heat source and genetic changes in the affected crop reportedly recorded.

Physics World magazine has even speculated that the high-tech creators of such formations are somehow using microwaves generated by a device called a magnetron, directed by GPS satellite.
By PTI: Kohima, Jul 23 (PTI) The Naga Peoples Front (NPF) has decided to move court seeking disqualification of 36 NPF legislators in the wake of new Chief Minister T R Zeliang winning the floor test in the Assembly and forming government.

The petition will be filed tomorrow in the Kohima Bench of the Gauhati High Court here, said NPF legislators supporting former chief minister Shurhozelie Liezietsu.

advertisement

They announced it during an interacting with a section of media-persons at the Chief Ministers official residence here tonight.

MLA Kuzholuzo Azo Nienu said the 10 NPF legislators with Liezietsu had challenged the decision of the Nagaland Legislative Assembly (NLA) Speaker Imtiwapang Aier in recognising Zeliang, an expelled member of NPF, as the whip on July 18 and 20, before the two Assembly sittings were held for the floor test.

He expressed surprise that on both occassions, the speaker did not respond to their letters and also did not cite any reason for not accepting the whip issued by Kiyanilie Peseyie as authorised by NPF president Liezietsu for the sessions.

On the confusion about appointment of chairman of the Democratic Alliance of Nagaland (DAN), Azo said, "His appointment as chairman of DAN will continue as the alliance partners comprising NPF, BJP, NCP and JD(U) has been endorsed."

"The alliance partners have not withdrawn their support signed on July 10 last, and unless they withdraw I will continue to be the chairman," he said.

MLA Chotisuh Sazo, who is also a former NLA Speaker, said during the present crisis the Speaker should have accepted the whip issued by NPF party and not the whip issued by NPF Legislature Party.

"NPF is the registered party and recognised by the Election Commission of India while NPF Legislature Party is not a recognised party," he said.

"As per NPF Constitution Chapter 5 Section 10 clearly mentions that the president of the party is authorised to promulgate ordinance on all its members, including the legislators," he said.

He also said that as per the Tenth Schedule Para 2 (1)(b) clearly mentions that a political party is to give direction to its members, whether vote in favour, against or abstain the floor test.

"The NPF party had appointed MLA Kiyanielie as the chief whip in November 2014, which has not been withdrawn by the party nor revoked by the Assembly," he said.

"So we have decided to challenge the matter in the court and file the petition by tomorrow," he said.

advertisement

Sazo said once the judgement is out, the 36 NPF legislators who vote against the NPF whip will be liable of disqualification from the Assembly.

"Unless condoned by the party within 15 days, they will be disqualified from the Assembly," he said.

MLA Yitachu said that many of the legislators supporting Zeliang have been misguided on the entire episode.

He also informed that NPF has taken the matter to the Supreme Court while hearing has been listed for tomorrow.

Meanwhile, NPF continued suspending its dissident legislators.

Kezong Chang, who had been inducted as a minister in the Zeliang Cabinet yesterday, was today suspended by the NPF party.

With his suspension, altogether 11 legislators with Zeliang have been suspended till date while 20 are expelled.

"Kezong Chang, MLA and member of NPF Party ceases to be primary and active member of the Party but shall continue to be bound by the whip of the NPF on the floor of NLA as per judicial decision of the apex court," stated a suspension order issued by NPF Working President Huska Yepthomi. PTI NBS SBN ANB

--- ENDS ---
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The government moved an inch closer to privatisation of Air India by holding the first high-level meeting over the issue on Friday. A Group of Ministers (GoM) appointed by the Union Cabinet to look into disinvestment of the debt-ridden carrier held the meeting in which Air Indias Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani was also present.

Sources privy to the developments told Express that the modalities of disinvestment of the airline were discussed at length in the meeting, which lasted for three hours. The GoM discussed the fate of Air Indias nearly 24,000 employees and examined the possibility of hiving off non-core assets of the airline, including real estate, land parcels and art treasures, into a separate company before the government calls a formal bid for the airline.

Industry experts said such a process was likely to expedite the process of disinvestment, as locating and registering Air Indias vast land pool and real estate would have taken much longer. In the meeting, the GoM also examined the option of giving voluntary buyouts to a segment of its employees, sources said.

Pertinently, ever since the government has given the in-principle approval for considering strategic disinvestment of Air India and its five subsidiaries, the employees have been protesting against the governments decision.

The privatisation of Air India is set to bring about a major change in the work life of its employees and there is a lot of uncertainty about the future of airlines employees.

NEW DELHI: The government moved an inch closer to privatisation of Air India by holding the first high-level meeting over the issue on Friday. A Group of Ministers (GoM) appointed by the Union Cabinet to look into disinvestment of the debt-ridden carrier held the meeting in which Air Indias Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani was also present. Sources privy to the developments told Express that the modalities of disinvestment of the airline were discussed at length in the meeting, which lasted for three hours. The GoM discussed the fate of Air Indias nearly 24,000 employees and examined the possibility of hiving off non-core assets of the airline, including real estate, land parcels and art treasures, into a separate company before the government calls a formal bid for the airline. Industry experts said such a process was likely to expedite the process of disinvestment, as locating and registering Air Indias vast land pool and real estate would have taken much longer. In the meeting, the GoM also examined the option of giving voluntary buyouts to a segment of its employees, sources said. Pertinently, ever since the government has given the in-principle approval for considering strategic disinvestment of Air India and its five subsidiaries, the employees have been protesting against the governments decision. The privatisation of Air India is set to bring about a major change in the work life of its employees and there is a lot of uncertainty about the future of airlines employees.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Almost a month after Delhi Police arrested a man alleged masturbating in flight, a 32-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly masturbating in front of a German woman in Delhi. According to the police, victim is pursuing PhD from JNU and living in south Delhi.

Incident happened on Thursday afternoon when the 33-year-old victim had taken her dog out for a stroll in Greater Kailash-II. She stopped for a while when she saw the man looking at her in a weird manner, she ignored her and walked ahead. Soon, she realized that man has started masturbating while looking at her, a police official said.

She shouted at him but before she could try and catch him, he drove off in his car. The woman managed to capture a picture of the car and its number plate which helped the cops to nab the accused. According to the police, accused has been identified as Tarun and he has been arrested.

A month ago, Delhi Police arrested a 56-year-old man at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi for making 'lewd gestures' at a woman while they were on a flight from Hyderabad. Victim alleged that co-passenger masturbating as the flight was about to take off.

NEW DELHI: Almost a month after Delhi Police arrested a man alleged masturbating in flight, a 32-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly masturbating in front of a German woman in Delhi. According to the police, victim is pursuing PhD from JNU and living in south Delhi. Incident happened on Thursday afternoon when the 33-year-old victim had taken her dog out for a stroll in Greater Kailash-II. She stopped for a while when she saw the man looking at her in a weird manner, she ignored her and walked ahead. Soon, she realized that man has started masturbating while looking at her, a police official said. She shouted at him but before she could try and catch him, he drove off in his car. The woman managed to capture a picture of the car and its number plate which helped the cops to nab the accused. According to the police, accused has been identified as Tarun and he has been arrested. A month ago, Delhi Police arrested a 56-year-old man at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi for making 'lewd gestures' at a woman while they were on a flight from Hyderabad. Victim alleged that co-passenger masturbating as the flight was about to take off.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: The Ernakulam Central police on Saturday seized the van used by Pulsar Suni and gang for abducting an actor in 2011. Earlier, there were reports the van was in Coimbatore and destroyed to wipe out evidence.However, the Central police probing the case recovered the vehicle from Madavana, near Kochi. They hired the van for a day and after the failed abduction attempt, it was handed over to the owner. We have seized the vehicle and it will be produced before the court said Central CI A Ananthalal.

The accused hired the van from a Kakkanad native in 2011, The vehicle was later sold to another person.

Pulsar Suni, the key accused in the actor assault case, is the first accused in this case as well. According to the police, he conspired with four others to abduct the actress in January 2011.

Suni and others picked up the actress, who had reached the city for shooting purposes, from the Ernakulam South Railway Station in the tempo traveller. On the way, Suni changed the route. Suspicious over the deviation, the actor telephoned her husband and the producer of the movie. Following this, Suni dropped the plan. The police have arrested all the accused in the case.Meanwhile, the cops produced the accused persons, except Suni, before the court on Saturday.

KOCHI: The Ernakulam Central police on Saturday seized the van used by Pulsar Suni and gang for abducting an actor in 2011. Earlier, there were reports the van was in Coimbatore and destroyed to wipe out evidence.However, the Central police probing the case recovered the vehicle from Madavana, near Kochi. They hired the van for a day and after the failed abduction attempt, it was handed over to the owner. We have seized the vehicle and it will be produced before the court said Central CI A Ananthalal. The accused hired the van from a Kakkanad native in 2011, The vehicle was later sold to another person. Pulsar Suni, the key accused in the actor assault case, is the first accused in this case as well. According to the police, he conspired with four others to abduct the actress in January 2011. Suni and others picked up the actress, who had reached the city for shooting purposes, from the Ernakulam South Railway Station in the tempo traveller. On the way, Suni changed the route. Suspicious over the deviation, the actor telephoned her husband and the producer of the movie. Following this, Suni dropped the plan. The police have arrested all the accused in the case.Meanwhile, the cops produced the accused persons, except Suni, before the court on Saturday.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: A youth was killed and another injured in army firing in Beerwah area of central Kashmirs Budgam district on Friday. Official sources said army men fired on a group of youth who pelted stones on their patrol while it was returning to their camp at Beerwah area in central Kashmirs Budgam district in the afternoon.

In the army firing, two youth Tanveer Ahmad Pala and Mohammad Ibrahim, were injured. Both were evacuated to a nearby hospital, where Tanveer, who was hit by a bullet in the head, succumbed to injuries.

Another injured person Ibrahim is undergoing treatment in hospital and his condition is said to be stable.

The killing of youth triggered protests in the Beerwah area.

A large number of people took to the streets to protest the killing of youth. They demanded action against the army men involved in the incident. Police sources said police has registered a first information report against the armys 53 Rashtria Rifles for firing on the youth and causing the death of one of them.

SRINAGAR: A youth was killed and another injured in army firing in Beerwah area of central Kashmirs Budgam district on Friday. Official sources said army men fired on a group of youth who pelted stones on their patrol while it was returning to their camp at Beerwah area in central Kashmirs Budgam district in the afternoon. In the army firing, two youth Tanveer Ahmad Pala and Mohammad Ibrahim, were injured. Both were evacuated to a nearby hospital, where Tanveer, who was hit by a bullet in the head, succumbed to injuries. Another injured person Ibrahim is undergoing treatment in hospital and his condition is said to be stable. The killing of youth triggered protests in the Beerwah area. A large number of people took to the streets to protest the killing of youth. They demanded action against the army men involved in the incident. Police sources said police has registered a first information report against the armys 53 Rashtria Rifles for firing on the youth and causing the death of one of them.
Pradip Sagar By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: While the Indian army is engaged in a month-long standoff with the Chinese army on the Sikkim border amidst heightened tension with Pakistan, the countrys premier auditor has highlighted the plight of ammunition in the army, as 80 per cent of its stock is way below the authorised level to help keep the force prepared for war.

Just last week, the government had allowed the army to make emergency procurements without going through red-tape to be prepared for a short intense war.

In the report tabled in Parliament on Friday, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has come out with startling revelations that no significant improvement has been made in the availability of ammunition in the last four years, despite recommendations.

Out of a total of 152 types of ammunition, the stock of 121 types of ammunition (80%) was below the authorization level of days. And availability of 55 per cent types of ammunition was below the minimum inescapable requirement to be maintained for operational preparedness and 40 per cent types of ammunitions were critical level having stock of less than 10 days, CAG observed.

The CAG also pointed the more alarming state of the availability of high-calibre ammunition relating to tanks and artillery. Moreover, in the absence of fuze, 83 per cent of these high-calibre ammunitions presently held with the army were not in a state to be used in operation, the CAG stated.

The CAG report is a performance report of its own report of 2015, on Ammunition Management in Army and the auditor analysed the availability of WWR ammunition in the army from 2013-14 to 2016-17 (September 2016).

The War Wastage Reserve (WWR) is the reserve to meet the requirements for the expected duration of operations. The Defence Ministry approved authorisation of WWR as 40 days of intense period or 40(I). In 1999, Army introduced Minimum Acceptable Risk Level (MARL), a bottom line requirement of 20(I) days considered as minimum requirement of ammunition to be maintained at all times to meet operational preparedness.

Summarising the findings, the CAG said in the report: Thus, despite lapse of more than three years (from March 2013) no significant improvement in availability of WWR ammunition was noticed in audit. Further, the stock levels of a majority of high-calibre ammunition relating to AFV and artillery, meant for sustaining superior fire power, remained under critical level.

On the efforts to procure ammunition, the CAG noted that there was no significant improvement in critical deficiency in the availability and quality of ammunition supplied by the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) since March 2013.

NEW DELHI: While the Indian army is engaged in a month-long standoff with the Chinese army on the Sikkim border amidst heightened tension with Pakistan, the countrys premier auditor has highlighted the plight of ammunition in the army, as 80 per cent of its stock is way below the authorised level to help keep the force prepared for war. Just last week, the government had allowed the army to make emergency procurements without going through red-tape to be prepared for a short intense war. In the report tabled in Parliament on Friday, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has come out with startling revelations that no significant improvement has been made in the availability of ammunition in the last four years, despite recommendations. Out of a total of 152 types of ammunition, the stock of 121 types of ammunition (80%) was below the authorization level of days. And availability of 55 per cent types of ammunition was below the minimum inescapable requirement to be maintained for operational preparedness and 40 per cent types of ammunitions were critical level having stock of less than 10 days, CAG observed. The CAG also pointed the more alarming state of the availability of high-calibre ammunition relating to tanks and artillery. Moreover, in the absence of fuze, 83 per cent of these high-calibre ammunitions presently held with the army were not in a state to be used in operation, the CAG stated. The CAG report is a performance report of its own report of 2015, on Ammunition Management in Army and the auditor analysed the availability of WWR ammunition in the army from 2013-14 to 2016-17 (September 2016). The War Wastage Reserve (WWR) is the reserve to meet the requirements for the expected duration of operations. The Defence Ministry approved authorisation of WWR as 40 days of intense period or 40(I). In 1999, Army introduced Minimum Acceptable Risk Level (MARL), a bottom line requirement of 20(I) days considered as minimum requirement of ammunition to be maintained at all times to meet operational preparedness. Summarising the findings, the CAG said in the report: Thus, despite lapse of more than three years (from March 2013) no significant improvement in availability of WWR ammunition was noticed in audit. Further, the stock levels of a majority of high-calibre ammunition relating to AFV and artillery, meant for sustaining superior fire power, remained under critical level. On the efforts to procure ammunition, the CAG noted that there was no significant improvement in critical deficiency in the availability and quality of ammunition supplied by the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) since March 2013.
By Express News Service

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray lashed out at the BJP-led Central government on a range of issues from demonetization to crop loan waiver in a special interview, published in the party mouthpiece, Saamana.

Acche Din is only limited to government advertisements, Why do we need centralization? I feel decentralization is good. Do we have true democracy in the country? It appears all affairs are going to be run as per the wishes of the Prime Minister? He is centralizing power at the Centre, instead of decentralizing it, Thackeray said in the interview conducted by Saamana executive editor and Shiv Sena MP from Rajya Sabha Sanjay Raut.

It has been a usual practice to run a full-length interview of Thackeray in the party mouthpiece on the occasion of his birthday on July 27. This year he is turning 57.

It's a complete mess. We won't keep quiet. Now, they must decide whether to bear it or bear it. See, in Gujarat small traders took to the streets opposing GST and they were mercilessly beaten up. I read today that 1.50 million people lost jobs directly due to demonetization, meaning six million (dependents) will suffer a hit. Who will provide for these six million their daily 'dal-roti'?  Thackeray asked.

The Shiv Sena leader also took a jibe at the Maharashtra government despite the fact that his party is a constituent of the state's ruling coalition. While announcing crop loan waiver, Fadnavis said that his government will clear land records of 36 lakh farmers and benefit 89 lakh farmers. I'd like the government to prepare a list of all these farmers and present them in the state assembly," he said.

Uddhav's comments came against the backdrop of cross-voting in the recently held presidential polls. Ram Nath Kovind, NDA's presidential candidate, won 23 votes from Opposition MLAs after which the BJP appears to have gained the confidence to run the state government without Shiv Sena's support.

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray lashed out at the BJP-led Central government on a range of issues from demonetization to crop loan waiver in a special interview, published in the party mouthpiece, Saamana. Acche Din is only limited to government advertisements, Why do we need centralization? I feel decentralization is good. Do we have true democracy in the country? It appears all affairs are going to be run as per the wishes of the Prime Minister? He is centralizing power at the Centre, instead of decentralizing it, Thackeray said in the interview conducted by Saamana executive editor and Shiv Sena MP from Rajya Sabha Sanjay Raut. It has been a usual practice to run a full-length interview of Thackeray in the party mouthpiece on the occasion of his birthday on July 27. This year he is turning 57. It's a complete mess. We won't keep quiet. Now, they must decide whether to bear it or bear it. See, in Gujarat small traders took to the streets opposing GST and they were mercilessly beaten up. I read today that 1.50 million people lost jobs directly due to demonetization, meaning six million (dependents) will suffer a hit. Who will provide for these six million their daily 'dal-roti'?  Thackeray asked. The Shiv Sena leader also took a jibe at the Maharashtra government despite the fact that his party is a constituent of the state's ruling coalition. While announcing crop loan waiver, Fadnavis said that his government will clear land records of 36 lakh farmers and benefit 89 lakh farmers. I'd like the government to prepare a list of all these farmers and present them in the state assembly," he said. Uddhav's comments came against the backdrop of cross-voting in the recently held presidential polls. Ram Nath Kovind, NDA's presidential candidate, won 23 votes from Opposition MLAs after which the BJP appears to have gained the confidence to run the state government without Shiv Sena's support.
Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: After being brought to Uttar Pradesh on a transit remand, alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative Salim Khan was Friday handed over to the Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) of the UP police on a seven-day remand with the probe agency all set to interrogate him to trace his possible connections with the terror group in the state. The ATS is verifying if Salim funded unrest in Kashmir.

According to IG ATS Asim Arun, the interrogators were trying to extract information from Salim about hawala operations of terror groups in India.

Salim was arrested from Mumbai airport on July 17. According to sources in the ATS, Salim was responsible for wiring money to sleeper cells active in India and one such agent, Aftab Ali, was arrested for spying on military installations from Faizabad district in May. Aftab was working for his Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) handlers in Pakistan. On Friday, a team of police officers led by DySP Dinesh Puri produced Salim in a local court.

According to sources privy to the investigations, Salim had revealed to the ATS sleuths the names of three persons and also the places of their operation in UP. However, the ATS was yet to verify the details. He is a difficult person to crack. We are yet to establish the authenticity of the information he has shared with us.

The names revealed by him may be fictitious to misguide us, said the sources.

It is believed that Salim has deep knowledge about penetration of ISI-backed terror groups in the country. A native of Fatehpur, Salim was staying in the United Arab Emirates before his passport expired. He underwent arms training in a Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir over a decade ago.

At the training camp, he was joined by Kausar and Sharif, the two LeT ultras who were arrested for attacking the Central Reserve Police Force camp in Rampur leaving eight personnel dead and many injured in 2008. The two terrorists arrested for the attack had named a third person called Salim. The ATS personnel, however, suspect that it was this Salim who had a role in the Rampur incident.

LUCKNOW: After being brought to Uttar Pradesh on a transit remand, alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative Salim Khan was Friday handed over to the Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) of the UP police on a seven-day remand with the probe agency all set to interrogate him to trace his possible connections with the terror group in the state. The ATS is verifying if Salim funded unrest in Kashmir. According to IG ATS Asim Arun, the interrogators were trying to extract information from Salim about hawala operations of terror groups in India. Salim was arrested from Mumbai airport on July 17. According to sources in the ATS, Salim was responsible for wiring money to sleeper cells active in India and one such agent, Aftab Ali, was arrested for spying on military installations from Faizabad district in May. Aftab was working for his Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) handlers in Pakistan. On Friday, a team of police officers led by DySP Dinesh Puri produced Salim in a local court. According to sources privy to the investigations, Salim had revealed to the ATS sleuths the names of three persons and also the places of their operation in UP. However, the ATS was yet to verify the details. He is a difficult person to crack. We are yet to establish the authenticity of the information he has shared with us. The names revealed by him may be fictitious to misguide us, said the sources. It is believed that Salim has deep knowledge about penetration of ISI-backed terror groups in the country. A native of Fatehpur, Salim was staying in the United Arab Emirates before his passport expired. He underwent arms training in a Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir over a decade ago. At the training camp, he was joined by Kausar and Sharif, the two LeT ultras who were arrested for attacking the Central Reserve Police Force camp in Rampur leaving eight personnel dead and many injured in 2008. The two terrorists arrested for the attack had named a third person called Salim. The ATS personnel, however, suspect that it was this Salim who had a role in the Rampur incident.
By PTI

BHOPAL: The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have jumped in support of the 18,000 families from Madhya Pradesh which have been displaced by the recent closure of the gates of Sardar Sarovar Dam on river Narmada in Gujarat.

Both the parties have decided to raise the issue in the assembly and the Parliament.

Congress leader of opposition in assembly Ajay Singh said his party is going to take to the task the Madhya Pradesh government in the House for failing to rehabilitate 18,000 families.

"The state government has asked these oustees to vacate the submergence area of the dam by July 31. We are planning to bring an adjournment motion on the issue in the House," he added.

"Our leader and the party chief whip in the Lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia is going to raise the issue in parliament," state Congress spokesman Pankaj Chaturvedi said.

"The affected people are on tenterhooks given that the water level in the dam was swelling due to the rains. The state government should take immediate steps to save precious lives," he added.

Madhya Pradesh AAP convenor Alok Agarwal said their MP Bhagwant Mann is going to raise the oustees' issue in the parliament.

He said that 18,000 families in Madhya Pradesh's Alirajpur, Barwani, Dhar and Khargone districts are on the verge of drowning following the closure of the gates of Sardar Sarovar dam last month.

"These people in villages close to Narmada river have come under the submergence area of the dam water," Agrawal, who is also AAP national spokesman added.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has turned a blind eye to the oustees' rehabilitation and was not even talking to Narmada Bachao Andolan leaders over it.

Narmada has its source in Amarkantak in eastern Madhya Pradesh and Sardar Sarovar Dam is the possibly the last dam built on its downstream in Gujarat.

BHOPAL: The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have jumped in support of the 18,000 families from Madhya Pradesh which have been displaced by the recent closure of the gates of Sardar Sarovar Dam on river Narmada in Gujarat. Both the parties have decided to raise the issue in the assembly and the Parliament. Congress leader of opposition in assembly Ajay Singh said his party is going to take to the task the Madhya Pradesh government in the House for failing to rehabilitate 18,000 families. "The state government has asked these oustees to vacate the submergence area of the dam by July 31. We are planning to bring an adjournment motion on the issue in the House," he added. "Our leader and the party chief whip in the Lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia is going to raise the issue in parliament," state Congress spokesman Pankaj Chaturvedi said. "The affected people are on tenterhooks given that the water level in the dam was swelling due to the rains. The state government should take immediate steps to save precious lives," he added. Madhya Pradesh AAP convenor Alok Agarwal said their MP Bhagwant Mann is going to raise the oustees' issue in the parliament. He said that 18,000 families in Madhya Pradesh's Alirajpur, Barwani, Dhar and Khargone districts are on the verge of drowning following the closure of the gates of Sardar Sarovar dam last month. "These people in villages close to Narmada river have come under the submergence area of the dam water," Agrawal, who is also AAP national spokesman added. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has turned a blind eye to the oustees' rehabilitation and was not even talking to Narmada Bachao Andolan leaders over it. Narmada has its source in Amarkantak in eastern Madhya Pradesh and Sardar Sarovar Dam is the possibly the last dam built on its downstream in Gujarat.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The central government has appointed its favourites at the President Secretariat. While the two bureaucrats Sanjay Kothari and Bharat Lal are known to be favourites of PM Narendra Modi, senior journalist Ashok Malik, who has been appointed as press secretary to the President, is known to be a BJP loyalist.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, headed by the PM Narendra Modi, has cleared appointments of the three officials. Sanjay Kothari, chairman of Public Enterprises Selection Board, has been appointed as secretary to President-elect Ram Nath Kovind.

Kothari is known for taking the unique initiative of encouraging self-certification in place of attestations and affidavits when he used to be secretary at the Department of Administrative Reforms and Grievances (DARPG).

His idea was subsequently implemented by the NDA government in August 2014. Impressed with his work, government in July 2014 named the 1978-batch IAS officer of Haryana cadre as secretary of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) from where he retired in June last year. He was in November 2016 appointed as the chief of PESB.

Similarly, Bharat Lal, Gujarats resident commissioner in New Delhi, is known to be a close aide of the PM. During the initial days of Modi taking over as PM, Lal used to shuttle between PMO and Gujarat Bhavan in New Delhi.

NEW DELHI: The central government has appointed its favourites at the President Secretariat. While the two bureaucrats Sanjay Kothari and Bharat Lal are known to be favourites of PM Narendra Modi, senior journalist Ashok Malik, who has been appointed as press secretary to the President, is known to be a BJP loyalist. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, headed by the PM Narendra Modi, has cleared appointments of the three officials. Sanjay Kothari, chairman of Public Enterprises Selection Board, has been appointed as secretary to President-elect Ram Nath Kovind. Kothari is known for taking the unique initiative of encouraging self-certification in place of attestations and affidavits when he used to be secretary at the Department of Administrative Reforms and Grievances (DARPG). His idea was subsequently implemented by the NDA government in August 2014. Impressed with his work, government in July 2014 named the 1978-batch IAS officer of Haryana cadre as secretary of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) from where he retired in June last year. He was in November 2016 appointed as the chief of PESB. Similarly, Bharat Lal, Gujarats resident commissioner in New Delhi, is known to be a close aide of the PM. During the initial days of Modi taking over as PM, Lal used to shuttle between PMO and Gujarat Bhavan in New Delhi.
Sushmita Ramakrishnan By

Express News Service

There is overwhelming support among urban Indians for the proposal to give one days leave to women workers during their period of menstruation each month. A survey by Express found that 86.5 per cent were in favour of the idea, which is not yet on the table of Indias policymakers.

Further, contrary to expectations, support for the proposal cut across all barriers of gender, age and marital status. The real surprise was that men favoured it nearly as much as women. The 84.7 per cent assent by men almost matched the 87.7 per cent enthusiasm by women.

The survey was conducted in 12 cities across six states  Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra and Odisha. A total of 1,266 respondents were asked if they would welcome it if women were given a days leave each month to spare them the physical discomfort of working through their monthly period.

Support for the idea exceeded 80 per cent across the divides of gender, age and marital status. While 88.8 per cent of those in the age group of 20-30 supported it, 83.8 per cent of those aged 30 or higher did so too. Similarly, married respondents (87.4 per cent) were in favour quite as much as the unmarried (84.2 per cent).

Female respondents were also asked if they would be embarrassed to apply for period leave. The findings show that embarrassment was not a big concern, again, cutting across the divides of age and marital status. Overall, 67.3 per cent of women said they would not be embarrassed to apply for period leave. Among younger women, 72.7 per cent said they wouldnt be inhibited at all. Among women aged 30 or higher, 41.2 per cent said inhibition was indeed a concern. Similarly, 41.5 per cent of married women cited embarrassment as a factor. Seventy-one per cent of unmarried women said it was no concern.

Regionally, support for period leave was consistently high with Kerala reporting 91 per cent for the proposal and Odisha reporting the least, 79.1 per cent. Women were the most vocally for it in Telangana (95.7) and Kerala (95.2). The most vocal support from men came from Tamil Nadu with 91.8 per cent of male respondents ticking assent.

There is overwhelming support among urban Indians for the proposal to give one days leave to women workers during their period of menstruation each month. A survey by Express found that 86.5 per cent were in favour of the idea, which is not yet on the table of Indias policymakers. Further, contrary to expectations, support for the proposal cut across all barriers of gender, age and marital status. The real surprise was that men favoured it nearly as much as women. The 84.7 per cent assent by men almost matched the 87.7 per cent enthusiasm by women. The survey was conducted in 12 cities across six states  Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra and Odisha. A total of 1,266 respondents were asked if they would welcome it if women were given a days leave each month to spare them the physical discomfort of working through their monthly period. Support for the idea exceeded 80 per cent across the divides of gender, age and marital status. While 88.8 per cent of those in the age group of 20-30 supported it, 83.8 per cent of those aged 30 or higher did so too. Similarly, married respondents (87.4 per cent) were in favour quite as much as the unmarried (84.2 per cent). Female respondents were also asked if they would be embarrassed to apply for period leave. The findings show that embarrassment was not a big concern, again, cutting across the divides of age and marital status. Overall, 67.3 per cent of women said they would not be embarrassed to apply for period leave. Among younger women, 72.7 per cent said they wouldnt be inhibited at all. Among women aged 30 or higher, 41.2 per cent said inhibition was indeed a concern. Similarly, 41.5 per cent of married women cited embarrassment as a factor. Seventy-one per cent of unmarried women said it was no concern. Regionally, support for period leave was consistently high with Kerala reporting 91 per cent for the proposal and Odisha reporting the least, 79.1 per cent. Women were the most vocally for it in Telangana (95.7) and Kerala (95.2). The most vocal support from men came from Tamil Nadu with 91.8 per cent of male respondents ticking assent.
MPs will give farewell to Pranab Mukherjee at Central Hall of Parliament.

By India Today Web Desk: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted a farewell dinner for outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee, Members of Parliament (MPs) will give him a farewell today.

The ceremony will take place at the Central Hall of Parliament and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan will deliver the farewell address to outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee.

The function is scheduled to start at 5.30 pm and besides current MPs, some former parliamentarians too have been invited to Pranab Mukherjee's farewell.

advertisement

The outgoing President will be gifted a memento and a book signed by all MPs. Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan will also present a specially designed shawl to Pranab Mukherjee.

The Speaker's speech will be embossed on a silk cloth that will be later presented to Pranab Mukherjee. The cloth will have art form from the President's native state, West Bengal, printed on it.

The gifts for outgoing President will be packed in boxes crafted by artisans of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

On Saturday, the Prime Minister hosted a farewell dinner for Pranab Mukherjee at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. President-elect Ram Nath Kovind and vice-president Hamid Ansari attended the farewell dinner.

Outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee, who is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, was also given a farewell by the Chiefs of Staff Committee on Friday. The President interacted with senior officers at the farewell hosted at the Manekshaw Centre.

On Tuesday, Ram Nath Kovind will take oath as the 14th President of India and move to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Pranab Mukherjee will leave for his new residence at 10, Rajaji Marg. Former president APJ Abdul Kalam stayed at the house till his death.

ALSO READ:

GST a tribute to the maturity and wisdom of India's democracy: Pranab Mukherjee

No Mercy: Pranab Mukherjee rejected 30 mercy petitions as President

A look back at Pranab Mukherjee's differences of opinion with the Narendra Modi government

Perks of a former president: A sprawling house for Mr Mukherjee in Lutyens Delhi with a library

ALSO WATCH: PM Modi gets emotional, says Pranab Da has guided him like a father figure

--- ENDS ---
By PTI

SRINAGAR: A militant was today killed as the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the Line of Control (LoC) in Machil sector in north Kashmirs Kupwara district.

Troops guarding the LoC noticed suspicious movement along the LoC and immediately challenged the intruders.

In the ensuing firefight, one militant was killed.

"An infiltration bid was foiled in Machil sector today. One terrorist has been killed, a Defence spokesman said here.

He said the operation is in progress.

SRINAGAR: A militant was today killed as the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the Line of Control (LoC) in Machil sector in north Kashmirs Kupwara district. Troops guarding the LoC noticed suspicious movement along the LoC and immediately challenged the intruders. In the ensuing firefight, one militant was killed. "An infiltration bid was foiled in Machil sector today. One terrorist has been killed, a Defence spokesman said here. He said the operation is in progress.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: The Naga Peoples Front (NPF) in Nagaland on Friday lodged their protest against the partisan governor PB Acharya by holding a beef fest and extended a sarcastc invite to the the governor too.

The festival was held at the NPF central office at Kohima hours after chief minister TR Zeliang had proved his majority in the House by winning the floor test 47-11. To celebrate your latest political coup, and to mark the severance of ties with your political party, the BJP, we are organising a beef feast (Your Excellency knows Nagas are voracious meat eaters) this evening and would like to take this opportunity to invite you to cancel some of your not-so-official engagements in political scheming and to come and join us for dinner at the NPF central office, the NPF youth wing said in a statement.

Mocking the governor further, the statement said, Your Excellency has been terribly busy in the last few days breaking all democratic norms, playing politics and installing BJP-friendly government in the state. You have forgotten that the office of the governor should be apolitical, (but you) have been acting as the leader of the dissident NPF group.

Your attempts to cloak your political decisions with some semblance of legality are transparent and the nakedness of it all is most repulsive and loathsome. The NPF youth wing was livid with Acharya for allegedly turning a blind eye to a monumental travesty of democracy where a member (Zeliang) of the Assembly, who was expelled from the NPF for six years, has been accepted as the chief whip of the very party from which he was expelled.

The governor had first riled a section of NPF leaders by directing former CM Shurhozelie Liezietsu to prove his majority in the House.

GUWAHATI: The Naga Peoples Front (NPF) in Nagaland on Friday lodged their protest against the partisan governor PB Acharya by holding a beef fest and extended a sarcastc invite to the the governor too. The festival was held at the NPF central office at Kohima hours after chief minister TR Zeliang had proved his majority in the House by winning the floor test 47-11. To celebrate your latest political coup, and to mark the severance of ties with your political party, the BJP, we are organising a beef feast (Your Excellency knows Nagas are voracious meat eaters) this evening and would like to take this opportunity to invite you to cancel some of your not-so-official engagements in political scheming and to come and join us for dinner at the NPF central office, the NPF youth wing said in a statement. Mocking the governor further, the statement said, Your Excellency has been terribly busy in the last few days breaking all democratic norms, playing politics and installing BJP-friendly government in the state. You have forgotten that the office of the governor should be apolitical, (but you) have been acting as the leader of the dissident NPF group. Your attempts to cloak your political decisions with some semblance of legality are transparent and the nakedness of it all is most repulsive and loathsome. The NPF youth wing was livid with Acharya for allegedly turning a blind eye to a monumental travesty of democracy where a member (Zeliang) of the Assembly, who was expelled from the NPF for six years, has been accepted as the chief whip of the very party from which he was expelled. The governor had first riled a section of NPF leaders by directing former CM Shurhozelie Liezietsu to prove his majority in the House.
By PTI

JAMMU: Nine soldiers among 11 people were killed while 16 others injured in border skirmishes this month between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in in Jammu and Kashmir.

Amid one of the worst fatalities in recent times, the month also saw over 110 livestock falling prey to shellings and firings by the Pakistani army in which nearly 35 structures, including over two dozen houses, were damaged along the LoC in Rajouri district alone.

The repeated skirmishes saw over 4,000 villagers from near borders to government camps at safer places in the district.

"The month has seen greater ceasefire violations along LoC in the state. The aim was to engineer infiltrations and push in more and more militants in J&K," said a senior Army officer adding that Indian forces too aptly retaliated to the shellings by the Pakistani army.

The security agencies attribute the increased shelling and firing by the Pakistani army to their support to the Pak-based terror group Jamaat-ud-Dawa's "Year of Kashmir" campaign to make the LoC "more active to highlight the Kashmir issue."

Known as Lashkar-e-Taiba earlier, JuD has now named itself Tehreek Azadi Jammu and Kashmir (TAJK).

On July 21, 28-year-old rifleman Jayadrath Singh was killed when Pakistan army resorted to firing at Indian Army posts in Sunderbandi sector of Rajouri district.

Singh belonged to village Bhagwanpur of Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Mamta Devi.

A junior commissioned officer, Subedar Shashi Kumar, who was grievously injured in an unprovoked ceasefire breach by Pakistan in Naushera on July 18, died at Udhampur Command Hospital on July 19.

Subedar Kumar was a native of Galon village of Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Santosh Sharma and children.

The July 18 ceasefire violations by Pakistan also saw two Army jawans, Sepoy Jaspreet Singh, 24 and Rifleman Bimal Sinjali, 21 killed in Naushera and Nowgam sectors of Rajouri and Kupwara districts respectively.

Eight people including 5 jawans had suffered injuries that day.

"More than 110 livestock were reported dead and two dozen houses damaged. A total of 35 structures including private houses, government buildings including schools, were damaged in recent mortar shelling in Nowshera," said Rajouri Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Choudhary.

On July 18, Pakistani troops also targeted school children, shelling their schools and trapping 217 of them in in 3 schools in Kadali and Seha areas of Rajouri near the LoC for 6 hours. The Army and state police, however, rescued and evacuated them to safer places in bullet-proof vehicles along with other people totalling 261.

Earlier on July 17, one Army jawan and a girl were killed when the Pakistan army violated ceasefire twice in two sectors and resorted to firing at Indian Army posts and civilian areas in Rajouri and Poonch districts.

The victims were identified as 37-year-old Naik Muddasar Ahmed of militancy-infested Tral belt of South Kashmir and 9year-old girl Sajada.

On July 15, another jawan, Lance Naik Mohmmad Naseer, 35 was killed and yet another injured in Pak shelling along the LoC in Rajouri district.

Two other jawans, Lance Naik Ranjit Singh and Rifleman Satesh Bhagat, both of Jammu, were killed along LoC on July 12, in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of North Kashmir sector.

Four days earlier on July 8, jawan Mohammad Showkat, who was on leave, was killed along with his wife, when his house was hit by a Pakistani army's mortar shell in Poonch sector. Four people were injured.

The officials said there have been 23 incidents of ceasefire violations, one attack by Pakistan's notorious Border Action Team and two infiltration bids by Pakistan-backed militants in June in which 4 people, including 3 jawans were killed and 12 injured.

On June 29, two Indian Army jawans were injured when Pakistani troops fired from small arms and shelled mortars on forward posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Poonch district.

Even on the occasion of Eid-ul Fitr on June 26, the Pakistani army had fired small arms and automatic weapons and shelled mortars along the LoC in Bhimbher Gali sector of Rajouri.

On June 22, in the third such attack this year, a team of Pakistani special forces sneaked 600 metres across the LoC into the Poonch sector and killed two Indian jawans, but lost one Border Action Team (BAT) member in retaliatory action.

It had carried out the attack at around 2 PM on an Army patrol party in the Gulpur belt of Poonch on 22 June under heavy cover fire by Pakistani troops.

In the firefight, two Indian soldiers, Naik Jadhav Sandip, 34, of Aurangabad and Sepoy Mane Savan Balku, 24, of Kolhapur were martyred.

JAMMU: Nine soldiers among 11 people were killed while 16 others injured in border skirmishes this month between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in in Jammu and Kashmir. Amid one of the worst fatalities in recent times, the month also saw over 110 livestock falling prey to shellings and firings by the Pakistani army in which nearly 35 structures, including over two dozen houses, were damaged along the LoC in Rajouri district alone. The repeated skirmishes saw over 4,000 villagers from near borders to government camps at safer places in the district. "The month has seen greater ceasefire violations along LoC in the state. The aim was to engineer infiltrations and push in more and more militants in J&K," said a senior Army officer adding that Indian forces too aptly retaliated to the shellings by the Pakistani army. The security agencies attribute the increased shelling and firing by the Pakistani army to their support to the Pak-based terror group Jamaat-ud-Dawa's "Year of Kashmir" campaign to make the LoC "more active to highlight the Kashmir issue." Known as Lashkar-e-Taiba earlier, JuD has now named itself Tehreek Azadi Jammu and Kashmir (TAJK). On July 21, 28-year-old rifleman Jayadrath Singh was killed when Pakistan army resorted to firing at Indian Army posts in Sunderbandi sector of Rajouri district. Singh belonged to village Bhagwanpur of Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Mamta Devi. A junior commissioned officer, Subedar Shashi Kumar, who was grievously injured in an unprovoked ceasefire breach by Pakistan in Naushera on July 18, died at Udhampur Command Hospital on July 19. Subedar Kumar was a native of Galon village of Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Santosh Sharma and children. The July 18 ceasefire violations by Pakistan also saw two Army jawans, Sepoy Jaspreet Singh, 24 and Rifleman Bimal Sinjali, 21 killed in Naushera and Nowgam sectors of Rajouri and Kupwara districts respectively. Eight people including 5 jawans had suffered injuries that day. "More than 110 livestock were reported dead and two dozen houses damaged. A total of 35 structures including private houses, government buildings including schools, were damaged in recent mortar shelling in Nowshera," said Rajouri Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Choudhary. On July 18, Pakistani troops also targeted school children, shelling their schools and trapping 217 of them in in 3 schools in Kadali and Seha areas of Rajouri near the LoC for 6 hours. The Army and state police, however, rescued and evacuated them to safer places in bullet-proof vehicles along with other people totalling 261. Earlier on July 17, one Army jawan and a girl were killed when the Pakistan army violated ceasefire twice in two sectors and resorted to firing at Indian Army posts and civilian areas in Rajouri and Poonch districts. The victims were identified as 37-year-old Naik Muddasar Ahmed of militancy-infested Tral belt of South Kashmir and 9year-old girl Sajada. On July 15, another jawan, Lance Naik Mohmmad Naseer, 35 was killed and yet another injured in Pak shelling along the LoC in Rajouri district. Two other jawans, Lance Naik Ranjit Singh and Rifleman Satesh Bhagat, both of Jammu, were killed along LoC on July 12, in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of North Kashmir sector. Four days earlier on July 8, jawan Mohammad Showkat, who was on leave, was killed along with his wife, when his house was hit by a Pakistani army's mortar shell in Poonch sector. Four people were injured. The officials said there have been 23 incidents of ceasefire violations, one attack by Pakistan's notorious Border Action Team and two infiltration bids by Pakistan-backed militants in June in which 4 people, including 3 jawans were killed and 12 injured. On June 29, two Indian Army jawans were injured when Pakistani troops fired from small arms and shelled mortars on forward posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Poonch district. Even on the occasion of Eid-ul Fitr on June 26, the Pakistani army had fired small arms and automatic weapons and shelled mortars along the LoC in Bhimbher Gali sector of Rajouri. On June 22, in the third such attack this year, a team of Pakistani special forces sneaked 600 metres across the LoC into the Poonch sector and killed two Indian jawans, but lost one Border Action Team (BAT) member in retaliatory action. It had carried out the attack at around 2 PM on an Army patrol party in the Gulpur belt of Poonch on 22 June under heavy cover fire by Pakistani troops. In the firefight, two Indian soldiers, Naik Jadhav Sandip, 34, of Aurangabad and Sepoy Mane Savan Balku, 24, of Kolhapur were martyred.
Anand ST Das By

Express News Service

PATNA: Bihar chief minister and JD(U) national president Nitish Kumar on Saturday met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi and reportedly urged him to prevail upon RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav to ensure his younger son Tejashwi Yadav resigns as the states deputy chief minister.

JD(U) sources said Kumar, during the 20-minute discussion he held with Gandhi, explained Bihars current political situation and the peoples expectations from the state government after Tejashwi was named in an FIR registered by CBI in a corruption case on July 6. Despite JD(U)s clear hints that Tejashwi should step down, Lalu is unwilling to ensure the exit of his heir apparent from the state cabinet and thus weakening and endangering the grand alliance government, Kumar is understood to have told Gandhi.

He (Nitish) also reminded the Congress leader how, in September 2013, the latter had angrily torn off a copy of the UPA governments proposed ordinance aimed at protecting convicted politicians from disqualification from elected office, said a JD(U) leader close to Kumar. The UPA government had planned the ordinance just days after Lalu was convicted in a fodder scam case. Kumar is understood to have told Gandhi that as chief minister he would not allow Tejashwis continuation in his cabinet and that sacking him might be the only option left before him now.

Gandhi listened to Kumar with patience and, in the words of JD(U) national general secretary KC Tyagi, the meeting took place in a cordial atmosphere. The CM assured Gandhi that he is keen on ensuring that the three-party alliance government completes its full term ending in 2020 and that Tejashwi himself resigning would be in the best interests of the government and the future of the alliance, said the JD(U) leader.

During the discussion, Lalus claim of the CBI action against Tejashwi being part of the Narendra Modi governments vendetta politics also came up briefly, and both Kumar and Gandhi are believed to have rejected it. Congress sources said Gandhi was aware of the hotel-for-land allegations against Lalu as JD(U) leaders had brought them before then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. With Rahul Gandhi having reportedly promised Kumar that he would try to end the current stalemate in Bihars ruling alliance,

Congress sources said party national general secretary and in-charge of Bihar, CP Joshi, would be asked to speak with Lalu.

Meanwhile, relations between RJD and JD(U) sank to a new low on Saturday with the discovery of a few banners hung at public sites in Patna. The banners, which carried photographs of four JD(U) spokespersons, attacked the JD(U) leaders, saying: JD(U) spokespersons are speaking rubbish. They are speaking despite Nitish having asked them not to. They are acting at the behest of Sushil Kumar Modi.

The banners, allegedly put up by some RJD leaders, drew sharp reactions from the JD(U) spokespersons, who said their party still awaits Tejashwis point-by-point clarification on the charges he faces.

PATNA: Bihar chief minister and JD(U) national president Nitish Kumar on Saturday met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi and reportedly urged him to prevail upon RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav to ensure his younger son Tejashwi Yadav resigns as the states deputy chief minister. JD(U) sources said Kumar, during the 20-minute discussion he held with Gandhi, explained Bihars current political situation and the peoples expectations from the state government after Tejashwi was named in an FIR registered by CBI in a corruption case on July 6. Despite JD(U)s clear hints that Tejashwi should step down, Lalu is unwilling to ensure the exit of his heir apparent from the state cabinet and thus weakening and endangering the grand alliance government, Kumar is understood to have told Gandhi. He (Nitish) also reminded the Congress leader how, in September 2013, the latter had angrily torn off a copy of the UPA governments proposed ordinance aimed at protecting convicted politicians from disqualification from elected office, said a JD(U) leader close to Kumar. The UPA government had planned the ordinance just days after Lalu was convicted in a fodder scam case. Kumar is understood to have told Gandhi that as chief minister he would not allow Tejashwis continuation in his cabinet and that sacking him might be the only option left before him now. Gandhi listened to Kumar with patience and, in the words of JD(U) national general secretary KC Tyagi, the meeting took place in a cordial atmosphere. The CM assured Gandhi that he is keen on ensuring that the three-party alliance government completes its full term ending in 2020 and that Tejashwi himself resigning would be in the best interests of the government and the future of the alliance, said the JD(U) leader. During the discussion, Lalus claim of the CBI action against Tejashwi being part of the Narendra Modi governments vendetta politics also came up briefly, and both Kumar and Gandhi are believed to have rejected it. Congress sources said Gandhi was aware of the hotel-for-land allegations against Lalu as JD(U) leaders had brought them before then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. With Rahul Gandhi having reportedly promised Kumar that he would try to end the current stalemate in Bihars ruling alliance, Congress sources said party national general secretary and in-charge of Bihar, CP Joshi, would be asked to speak with Lalu. Meanwhile, relations between RJD and JD(U) sank to a new low on Saturday with the discovery of a few banners hung at public sites in Patna. The banners, which carried photographs of four JD(U) spokespersons, attacked the JD(U) leaders, saying: JD(U) spokespersons are speaking rubbish. They are speaking despite Nitish having asked them not to. They are acting at the behest of Sushil Kumar Modi. The banners, allegedly put up by some RJD leaders, drew sharp reactions from the JD(U) spokespersons, who said their party still awaits Tejashwis point-by-point clarification on the charges he faces.
Sushmita Ramakrishnan By

Express News Service

Would you give period leave to your domestic help?

Isnt the debate over paid period leave typical of middle class talk fests? An idea that, should it come to pass, would restrict the benefit to the corporate world?

Before the concept of menstrual leave became a law in Japan in 1947, it had taken a two-decade push by the countrys labour unions. The law is now in the books in a few Asian countries but such movements did not gain the support of the masses.

Is that how it might end up in India? The hard truth of our country is that only about 7 per cent of the workforce is in the organised sector. Even if women were half of this workforce  which they are not  only about 3.5 per cent of the total workforce in the country may get to enjoy the benefits of paid menstrual leave.

That would exclude agricultural labourers, short-term contract workers, self-employed women, domestic workers and many others who populate our faceless unorganised sector.

Within the organised sector, where human capital is seemingly the backbone of corporate companies, productivity is the mantra by which benefits like promotions and salary hikes are handed out. So how would womens productivity be judged if they were to have menstrual leave? Would their performance appraisals at the end of the year be affected? Human resource executives that New Indian Express spoke to said that while paid menstrual leave would be welcomed by women staff, it may not  er, um, well  increase their productivity.

Soundarya Rajesh, founder-president of AVTAR Career Creators, agreed that period leave would bring relief to women, but it would also be a predicament. When labour reforms such as maternity leave, work from home, child care break and flexible working hours penetrated work spaces, women came back and said that it was life changing, she said.

Rituparna Chakraborty, president of the Indian Staffing Federation, however said the concept may not drastically improve womens participation in the work force but may in fact diminish their status in their respective organisations instead. She says building inclusive workspaces for women would do more for gender justice than creating a new paid leave.

Aditya Misra, chief executive of CIEL HR, a leading staffing agency, pointed out another unanticipated outcome: Paid menstrual leave would increase gender polarity at work. Competitive male counterparts may create a hostile social atmosphere for women who avail of period leave. Instead of bringing in a separate period leave, I would simply increase the number of days on a womans leave stack, he said.

However, the menstrual leave debate may help improve mens understanding of feminine physiology  which tends to be at best limited. As Soundarya Rajesh says, While menstrual leave may not increase participation of women in the work force, it is a way of telling women that we accept them as a whole.

DOCTORS VIEW

Just a normal physiological function

Surprisingly, doctors who spoke to Express on the principle of period leave said menstruation is just that time of the month and should be treated as a normal physiological function rather than as a sickness.

Dr Suman Singh, gynaecologist, Bengaluru

Women risk ghettoising themselves if leave is mandated during menstruation. It is something that people work through, be they construction workers or work-at-home professionals. Only a small proportion of women experience debilitating pain and leave might be justified then. If they have severe cramps, medical help is available.



Dr Chitra Ramamurthy, gynaecologist, Apollo Hospital

If women have been working during their cycles all these years, they can continue to do so.

I think it is a normal biological function. In cases of severe endometriosis, there is pain and in such cases they may want to take leave.

TEACHERS VIEW

At school, the whispered period

If working through menstruation is a problem for adult women, what must it be like for schoolchildren, especially in schools that rank low on sanitation arrangements.

A teacher, Sarada Academy Kanakpur High School, Jagatsinghpur, Odisha

Our school was established in 1882 but does not have a lavatory for girls and women teachers. One can well imagine the plight of girls who get their first period in school. Only when a girl complains of abdominal pain during her period do we take her to the common room to rest or allow her to go home if she stays close by.



Kamalini Das, headmistress, Sinduri UGMP School, Sunahat, Odisha

We do not have a common room where a girl can take rest on her first day of period. Women teachers have made it mandatory for girls of Classes VI, VII and VIII to attend a special class on Saturdays where they can talk about menstruation.

LEGAL VIEW



A new law required

In India, the question of menstrual leave has never engaged policymakers attention. Recently, the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016, increased maternity leave for all women employees from 12 weeks to 26 weeks for the first two children

 The law requires every establishment with over 50 employees to provide creche facilities for mothers. Such mothers are permitted to make four visits during working hours to look after and feed the child in the creche.

 Giving menstrual leave to women would require making a separate law that applies to both public and private sectors. Legal experts Express spoke to said the law would have to be comprehensive enough to plug any loopholes that might open up.

Kaleeswaram Raj, SC advocate

The legislative feasibility of menstrual leave has been demonstrated in at least a few countries which have separate enactments for it lest it become a matter of selective indulgence by a few employers.

EMPLOYERS VIEW

Lets take it case by case

If menstrual leave was made mandatory, would it make companies think twice before hiring women? Typically, HR managers said workers are hired for talent rather than other attributes.

A senior IT industry representative

Before we introduce a broad policy, there has to be a survey on how many women actually feel the need for it. While the menstrual cycle might be extremely painful for some, it might not be for others



Moksha Srivastava, co-founder and CMO of Wheelstreet

Our focus is on skill sets and talents, immaterial of gender. Ive come across intense debates on exclusive policies, but we have experienced at par productivity between men and women regardless of health, time and travel constraints

Prerna Chauhan, HR manager, Media Mantra

Our company does not have a menstrual leave policy but would be flexible about it

How this leave works around the world

While the initiative is still a nascent policy in India, the concept is not uncommon globally. Here are some countries that already have a similar policy

Japan

According to Japans 1947 Labor Standards Law, women suffering from painful periods or those whose jobs might aggravate period pain are allowed seirikyuuka (meaning physiological leave). The law was implemented in view of the limited sanitary facilities available for women at workplaces including factories, mines.

Taiwan

Taiwans menstrual leave legislation is more recent. A 2013 amendment to the countrys Act of Gender Equality in Employment guarantees female workers three days of menstrual leave a year, in addition to the 30 days of half-paid sick leave allotted to all workers.

China

Only three of the countrys 24 provinces  Anhui, Shanxi and Hubei  have menstrual leave in China. In the central Anhui Province, women workers are allowed to take one or two days off on production of a certificate from a legal medical institute or hospital.

Indonesia

Indonesian women are entitled to take two days a month of menstrual leave, though many companies simply ignore the law.

South Korea

Menstrual leave came into force in South Korea in 2001. The policy has lately come under fire from Koreas mens rights activists, who, despite Koreas heavily male-dominated work culture, see it as a form of discrimination. An experiment to give menstruation leave to university students ended in failure.

Zambia

A programme titled Mothers Day gives women a day off from work every month in the African country.

Nepal

One online shopping portal Sasto Deal introduced menstrual leave policy for women workers in 2016.

The west

Contrary to popular notions, menstrual leave has not been a major issue in the west. The idea was floated in Russia in 2013, and more recently Italy, but to no avail. In the UK, a company Coexist announced a policy to allow women to take time off during their periods. Nike has had menstrual leave in their code of conduct since 2007.

How effective is it?

 Wherever it has been implemented, menstrual leave has not proven to be very successful. For instance, women in Japan do not take advantage of the menstrual leave policy for a number of reasons. One professional woman worker told The Guardian newspaper, If you take menstrual leave, youre basically broadcasting to the entire office which days of the month you have your period. Many women tend to use regular sick leave rather than availing of menstrual leave, the report said.

 In an article in Global Times, Shanghai-based writer Yang Lan mentions that employees in China are evaluated and paid on the basis of their workload. Workers have fixed responsibilities that they are required to fulfill. So if a woman takes menstrual leave, she will have to make up for lost hours, which will result in increased work pressure. Sure, women suffering from debilitating dysmenorrhea, a medically recognised pain in the pelvis that occurs during menstruation, should not be required to work. But the bloody fact is that accepting paid leave whenever a woman has cramps will ultimately do more harm than good for our cause, as it weakens us at the workplace, she writes.

Would you give period leave to your domestic help? Isnt the debate over paid period leave typical of middle class talk fests? An idea that, should it come to pass, would restrict the benefit to the corporate world? Before the concept of menstrual leave became a law in Japan in 1947, it had taken a two-decade push by the countrys labour unions. The law is now in the books in a few Asian countries but such movements did not gain the support of the masses. Is that how it might end up in India? The hard truth of our country is that only about 7 per cent of the workforce is in the organised sector. Even if women were half of this workforce  which they are not  only about 3.5 per cent of the total workforce in the country may get to enjoy the benefits of paid menstrual leave. That would exclude agricultural labourers, short-term contract workers, self-employed women, domestic workers and many others who populate our faceless unorganised sector. Within the organised sector, where human capital is seemingly the backbone of corporate companies, productivity is the mantra by which benefits like promotions and salary hikes are handed out. So how would womens productivity be judged if they were to have menstrual leave? Would their performance appraisals at the end of the year be affected? Human resource executives that New Indian Express spoke to said that while paid menstrual leave would be welcomed by women staff, it may not  er, um, well  increase their productivity. Soundarya Rajesh, founder-president of AVTAR Career Creators, agreed that period leave would bring relief to women, but it would also be a predicament. When labour reforms such as maternity leave, work from home, child care break and flexible working hours penetrated work spaces, women came back and said that it was life changing, she said. Rituparna Chakraborty, president of the Indian Staffing Federation, however said the concept may not drastically improve womens participation in the work force but may in fact diminish their status in their respective organisations instead. She says building inclusive workspaces for women would do more for gender justice than creating a new paid leave. Aditya Misra, chief executive of CIEL HR, a leading staffing agency, pointed out another unanticipated outcome: Paid menstrual leave would increase gender polarity at work. Competitive male counterparts may create a hostile social atmosphere for women who avail of period leave. Instead of bringing in a separate period leave, I would simply increase the number of days on a womans leave stack, he said. However, the menstrual leave debate may help improve mens understanding of feminine physiology  which tends to be at best limited. As Soundarya Rajesh says, While menstrual leave may not increase participation of women in the work force, it is a way of telling women that we accept them as a whole. DOCTORS VIEW Just a normal physiological function Surprisingly, doctors who spoke to Express on the principle of period leave said menstruation is just that time of the month and should be treated as a normal physiological function rather than as a sickness. Dr Suman Singh, gynaecologist, Bengaluru Women risk ghettoising themselves if leave is mandated during menstruation. It is something that people work through, be they construction workers or work-at-home professionals. Only a small proportion of women experience debilitating pain and leave might be justified then. If they have severe cramps, medical help is available. Dr Chitra Ramamurthy, gynaecologist, Apollo Hospital If women have been working during their cycles all these years, they can continue to do so. I think it is a normal biological function. In cases of severe endometriosis, there is pain and in such cases they may want to take leave. TEACHERS VIEW At school, the whispered period If working through menstruation is a problem for adult women, what must it be like for schoolchildren, especially in schools that rank low on sanitation arrangements. A teacher, Sarada Academy Kanakpur High School, Jagatsinghpur, Odisha Our school was established in 1882 but does not have a lavatory for girls and women teachers. One can well imagine the plight of girls who get their first period in school. Only when a girl complains of abdominal pain during her period do we take her to the common room to rest or allow her to go home if she stays close by. Kamalini Das, headmistress, Sinduri UGMP School, Sunahat, Odisha We do not have a common room where a girl can take rest on her first day of period. Women teachers have made it mandatory for girls of Classes VI, VII and VIII to attend a special class on Saturdays where they can talk about menstruation. LEGAL VIEW A new law required In India, the question of menstrual leave has never engaged policymakers attention. Recently, the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016, increased maternity leave for all women employees from 12 weeks to 26 weeks for the first two children  The law requires every establishment with over 50 employees to provide creche facilities for mothers. Such mothers are permitted to make four visits during working hours to look after and feed the child in the creche.  Giving menstrual leave to women would require making a separate law that applies to both public and private sectors. Legal experts Express spoke to said the law would have to be comprehensive enough to plug any loopholes that might open up. Kaleeswaram Raj, SC advocate The legislative feasibility of menstrual leave has been demonstrated in at least a few countries which have separate enactments for it lest it become a matter of selective indulgence by a few employers. EMPLOYERS VIEW Lets take it case by case If menstrual leave was made mandatory, would it make companies think twice before hiring women? Typically, HR managers said workers are hired for talent rather than other attributes. A senior IT industry representative Before we introduce a broad policy, there has to be a survey on how many women actually feel the need for it. While the menstrual cycle might be extremely painful for some, it might not be for others Moksha Srivastava, co-founder and CMO of Wheelstreet Our focus is on skill sets and talents, immaterial of gender. Ive come across intense debates on exclusive policies, but we have experienced at par productivity between men and women regardless of health, time and travel constraints Prerna Chauhan, HR manager, Media Mantra Our company does not have a menstrual leave policy but would be flexible about it How this leave works around the world While the initiative is still a nascent policy in India, the concept is not uncommon globally. Here are some countries that already have a similar policy Japan According to Japans 1947 Labor Standards Law, women suffering from painful periods or those whose jobs might aggravate period pain are allowed seirikyuuka (meaning physiological leave). The law was implemented in view of the limited sanitary facilities available for women at workplaces including factories, mines. Taiwan Taiwans menstrual leave legislation is more recent. A 2013 amendment to the countrys Act of Gender Equality in Employment guarantees female workers three days of menstrual leave a year, in addition to the 30 days of half-paid sick leave allotted to all workers. China Only three of the countrys 24 provinces  Anhui, Shanxi and Hubei  have menstrual leave in China. In the central Anhui Province, women workers are allowed to take one or two days off on production of a certificate from a legal medical institute or hospital. Indonesia Indonesian women are entitled to take two days a month of menstrual leave, though many companies simply ignore the law. South Korea Menstrual leave came into force in South Korea in 2001. The policy has lately come under fire from Koreas mens rights activists, who, despite Koreas heavily male-dominated work culture, see it as a form of discrimination. An experiment to give menstruation leave to university students ended in failure. Zambia A programme titled Mothers Day gives women a day off from work every month in the African country. Nepal One online shopping portal Sasto Deal introduced menstrual leave policy for women workers in 2016. The west Contrary to popular notions, menstrual leave has not been a major issue in the west. The idea was floated in Russia in 2013, and more recently Italy, but to no avail. In the UK, a company Coexist announced a policy to allow women to take time off during their periods. Nike has had menstrual leave in their code of conduct since 2007. How effective is it?  Wherever it has been implemented, menstrual leave has not proven to be very successful. For instance, women in Japan do not take advantage of the menstrual leave policy for a number of reasons. One professional woman worker told The Guardian newspaper, If you take menstrual leave, youre basically broadcasting to the entire office which days of the month you have your period. Many women tend to use regular sick leave rather than availing of menstrual leave, the report said.  In an article in Global Times, Shanghai-based writer Yang Lan mentions that employees in China are evaluated and paid on the basis of their workload. Workers have fixed responsibilities that they are required to fulfill. So if a woman takes menstrual leave, she will have to make up for lost hours, which will result in increased work pressure. Sure, women suffering from debilitating dysmenorrhea, a medically recognised pain in the pelvis that occurs during menstruation, should not be required to work. But the bloody fact is that accepting paid leave whenever a woman has cramps will ultimately do more harm than good for our cause, as it weakens us at the workplace, she writes.
Aishik Chanda By

Express News Service

KOLKATA: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee threatened to sue the central government in a defamation case worth over thousands of crores if allegations brought against Trinamool Congress leaders in Narada sting could not be proved.

TMC party supremo and West Bengal

chief minister Mamata Banerjee

addresses a rally in Kolkata on

Friday | PTI

Speaking at the July 21 Martyrs Day programme here on Friday, the Trinamool supremo said the party had lost trust in sting operations. Why is Narada probe taking so long to get completed? We believe that none of our leaders was involved. Hence, if the CBI fails to prove its allegations, we will bring a defamation suit worth thousands of crores against the central government, she said to over 30 lakh Trinamool Congress supporters, who came from all over the state to mourn the deaths of 13 Youth Congress men who were killed in police firing during a march to Writers Building on July 21, 1993.

Mamata demanded an investigation into demonetisation alleging that BJP made crores out of the move. Over 6 lakh people have lost their jobs due to demonetisation and SBI recovered only Rs 11.6 crore as black money. It is a big scam, she said.

The West Bengal chief minister also said that the central government failed in economic indicators. If we compare financial years 2015-16 and 2016-11, we see that GDP growth has gone down from 8% to 7.1%, industrial growth from 10.3% to 3.1%, job generation has reduced from 12.8 lakh from 2011-13 to 6 lakh in 2014-16 due to demonetisation. Bank credit growth has come down from 10.3% in 2015-16 to 5.1% in 2016-17. Gross Fixed Capital Formation, which is an indicator of investments, has come down from 6.11% in 2015-16 to 0.57% in 2016-17 while Non-Perfoming Assets (NPA) of banks have risen from 5.7% in 2015-16 to 11.9% in 2016-17, she said.

Sounding the poll bugle for elections in seven municipalities on August 13, panchayat elections in May next year and Lok Sabha polls in 2019, Mamata declared launch of BJP Quit India movement from August 9. I want TMC to win all muncipalities and gram panchayats next year. We have to ensure that BJP does not win a single seat from Bengal in 2019 for which TMC MPs, MLAs, ministers, councillors and panchayat members will have to conduct massive booth and block-level programmes which we will call the BJP Quit India movement, she said.

Referring to Gau Rakshaks as Gau Rakshas (demons), she said that Dalits, Muslims and Hindus are not able to lead a life of dignity due to fake Hinduism. Speaking on the India-China face-off in Dokalam, the West Bengal chief minister said: "West Bengal shares borders with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and is also the gateway to North-east. If Bengals is geographically at risk, India is at risk. We need to save our country, not trot around the globe.

She also asked workers to report to police of any rumours spread on social media.

KOLKATA: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee threatened to sue the central government in a defamation case worth over thousands of crores if allegations brought against Trinamool Congress leaders in Narada sting could not be proved. TMC party supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee addresses a rally in Kolkata on Friday | PTISpeaking at the July 21 Martyrs Day programme here on Friday, the Trinamool supremo said the party had lost trust in sting operations. Why is Narada probe taking so long to get completed? We believe that none of our leaders was involved. Hence, if the CBI fails to prove its allegations, we will bring a defamation suit worth thousands of crores against the central government, she said to over 30 lakh Trinamool Congress supporters, who came from all over the state to mourn the deaths of 13 Youth Congress men who were killed in police firing during a march to Writers Building on July 21, 1993. Mamata demanded an investigation into demonetisation alleging that BJP made crores out of the move. Over 6 lakh people have lost their jobs due to demonetisation and SBI recovered only Rs 11.6 crore as black money. It is a big scam, she said. The West Bengal chief minister also said that the central government failed in economic indicators. If we compare financial years 2015-16 and 2016-11, we see that GDP growth has gone down from 8% to 7.1%, industrial growth from 10.3% to 3.1%, job generation has reduced from 12.8 lakh from 2011-13 to 6 lakh in 2014-16 due to demonetisation. Bank credit growth has come down from 10.3% in 2015-16 to 5.1% in 2016-17. Gross Fixed Capital Formation, which is an indicator of investments, has come down from 6.11% in 2015-16 to 0.57% in 2016-17 while Non-Perfoming Assets (NPA) of banks have risen from 5.7% in 2015-16 to 11.9% in 2016-17, she said. Sounding the poll bugle for elections in seven municipalities on August 13, panchayat elections in May next year and Lok Sabha polls in 2019, Mamata declared launch of BJP Quit India movement from August 9. I want TMC to win all muncipalities and gram panchayats next year. We have to ensure that BJP does not win a single seat from Bengal in 2019 for which TMC MPs, MLAs, ministers, councillors and panchayat members will have to conduct massive booth and block-level programmes which we will call the BJP Quit India movement, she said. Referring to Gau Rakshaks as Gau Rakshas (demons), she said that Dalits, Muslims and Hindus are not able to lead a life of dignity due to fake Hinduism. Speaking on the India-China face-off in Dokalam, the West Bengal chief minister said: "West Bengal shares borders with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and is also the gateway to North-east. If Bengals is geographically at risk, India is at risk. We need to save our country, not trot around the globe. She also asked workers to report to police of any rumours spread on social media.
Anand ST Das By

Express News Service

PATNA: The district magistrate of Aurangabad district found himself in the middle of a controversy when a video clip widely circulated on Sunday showed him asking an audience of villagers to sell their wives if they have no money to build toilets at home.

Kanwal Tanuj, a 2010-batch IAS officer, was apparently incensed when during a motivational speech he was delivering before hundreds of villagers, someone in the audience shouted that he did not have the money to build a toilet.

If that is the case, then go and sell your wife. If this is the mentality you have, then go and sell your wife, Tanuj was heard retorting angrily. Sources said the incident took place at an event by the district administration on Friday to promote Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in a village populated mostly by Mahadalit villagers.

Before making the statement, Tanuj was heard explaining at length the need for toilets at home and the campaigns run by both the Centre and the state to make villages open defecation free (ODF). Likening the presence of a toilet to a desire to protect the dignity of women, he said many women in villages were getting raped due to the absence of toilets at home.

Save the dignity of your women if you can. How poor are you? Raise your hands and tell me if the value of your wife is lower than Rs 12,000, he said, referring to the amount the government pays for each toilet. Which man would say, Take the dignity of my wife and give me Rs 12,000? he asked.

While his remarks drew sharp criticism from various sections, Tanuj told The New Indian Express that a small portion of his long speech was being cited by vested interests with an ulterior motive.

We are organising camps in every panchayat to promote toilet construction. Most people claim they do not have the money and want advances. I explained to them why toilets are necessary, and I did not say anything objectionable as being claimed, said Tanuj.

Bihar is among the most laggard states in toilet construction despite sanitation being one of CM Nitish Kumars seven resolves. Bihars ODF coverage currently remains a lowly 31 per cent, showing marginal rise from 22 per cent in October 2014, when the scheme was launched. Only six per cent of Bihars villages have become ODF, and no district has been declared ODF yet. The state government is likely to declare two districts  Sitamarhi and Rohtas  as the first two ODF districts later this month.

PATNA: The district magistrate of Aurangabad district found himself in the middle of a controversy when a video clip widely circulated on Sunday showed him asking an audience of villagers to sell their wives if they have no money to build toilets at home. Kanwal Tanuj, a 2010-batch IAS officer, was apparently incensed when during a motivational speech he was delivering before hundreds of villagers, someone in the audience shouted that he did not have the money to build a toilet. If that is the case, then go and sell your wife. If this is the mentality you have, then go and sell your wife, Tanuj was heard retorting angrily. Sources said the incident took place at an event by the district administration on Friday to promote Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in a village populated mostly by Mahadalit villagers. Before making the statement, Tanuj was heard explaining at length the need for toilets at home and the campaigns run by both the Centre and the state to make villages open defecation free (ODF). Likening the presence of a toilet to a desire to protect the dignity of women, he said many women in villages were getting raped due to the absence of toilets at home. Save the dignity of your women if you can. How poor are you? Raise your hands and tell me if the value of your wife is lower than Rs 12,000, he said, referring to the amount the government pays for each toilet. Which man would say, Take the dignity of my wife and give me Rs 12,000? he asked. While his remarks drew sharp criticism from various sections, Tanuj told The New Indian Express that a small portion of his long speech was being cited by vested interests with an ulterior motive. We are organising camps in every panchayat to promote toilet construction. Most people claim they do not have the money and want advances. I explained to them why toilets are necessary, and I did not say anything objectionable as being claimed, said Tanuj. Bihar is among the most laggard states in toilet construction despite sanitation being one of CM Nitish Kumars seven resolves. Bihars ODF coverage currently remains a lowly 31 per cent, showing marginal rise from 22 per cent in October 2014, when the scheme was launched. Only six per cent of Bihars villages have become ODF, and no district has been declared ODF yet. The state government is likely to declare two districts  Sitamarhi and Rohtas  as the first two ODF districts later this month.
Mahendra Pandey By

Mahendra Pandey National Office Secretary, BJP

By paraphrasing history, it also repeats as rhapsody and farce. The latest affirmation of the intellectual divide between resurgent nationalists and the farcical Neo-Left is the latters fury against Prime Minister Narendra Modis Israel policy. Critics of Modi and the Bharat narrative condemned his Israel visit as sabotage of the Indo-Arab relationship.

However, sectarian interests do not dictate pragmatic foreign policy to score domestic points. Followers of lapsed Nehruvian doctrinethat peace in the Levant region cannot be achieved without primacy of Palestineignore the change in geopolitical reality of meeting terrorism as the biggest global challenge. Israel, with its long history of fighting terror, is Indias natural ally. The long-festering Palestine issue is too complex to be resolved merely by a global leaders visit. However, Indias Leftist intellectual class, haunted by the ghost of Non-Alignment policy, prefers status quo in diplomacy.



The governments stance towards Israel and Palestine is largely guided by the UN General Assembly, which resolved on May 15, 1947, that a Special Committee be created to prepare for consideration at the next regular session of the Assembly a report on the question of Palestine. In its final report of September 3, 1947, seven members in Chapter VI expressed themselves, by recorded vote, in support of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union. The plan proposed an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem.

On November 29, 1947, the Assembly recommended its adoption and implementation. The vote itself, which required a two-third majority, was a dramatic affair. It led to celebrations on the streets of Israel, but was rejected by the Arab Palestinians and the Arab League. Indias Socialist intellectual class treats Israel as an illegitimate nation, though they claim to be torchbearers of world peace. If only the Modi initiative had been adopted in the Nehruvian era, it would have given more time to resolve the Palestinian questionimpossible without an active role for the Jewish state.



The historical hypocrisy of the secular Left distorts Indian perspective towards West Asia by politicising the Holocaust without acknowledging its victims. It is obvious Wahhabis had guided Indias policy in the region until the BJP came to power. Before, P V Narasimha Rao, despite fierce opposition in the Congress, established a complete diplomatic relationship with Israel. The Indo-Israeli coordination in defence and strategic dialogue in the Vajpayee era strengthened the framework. Indias position in West Asia could adopt the American policy of equidistance even with rogue nations for tactical balancea policy India could have adopted in West Asia until now.



However, Modi has ended Israels pariah status in the subcontinent. Surely, he was aware of the thoughts of former RSS chief, the late Bhaurao Deoras, who had consistently persuaded the BJP to open dialogue with Israel. Hence, the Prime Ministers acknowledgment of the relevance of Indian Jewry in Israels progress heralds the emergence of a new combined force in the West Asian theatre of the War on Terror.

pandey.bjp@gmail.com

Mahendra Pandey National Office Secretary, BJP By paraphrasing history, it also repeats as rhapsody and farce. The latest affirmation of the intellectual divide between resurgent nationalists and the farcical Neo-Left is the latters fury against Prime Minister Narendra Modis Israel policy. Critics of Modi and the Bharat narrative condemned his Israel visit as sabotage of the Indo-Arab relationship. However, sectarian interests do not dictate pragmatic foreign policy to score domestic points. Followers of lapsed Nehruvian doctrinethat peace in the Levant region cannot be achieved without primacy of Palestineignore the change in geopolitical reality of meeting terrorism as the biggest global challenge. Israel, with its long history of fighting terror, is Indias natural ally. The long-festering Palestine issue is too complex to be resolved merely by a global leaders visit. However, Indias Leftist intellectual class, haunted by the ghost of Non-Alignment policy, prefers status quo in diplomacy. The governments stance towards Israel and Palestine is largely guided by the UN General Assembly, which resolved on May 15, 1947, that a Special Committee be created to prepare for consideration at the next regular session of the Assembly a report on the question of Palestine. In its final report of September 3, 1947, seven members in Chapter VI expressed themselves, by recorded vote, in support of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union. The plan proposed an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem. On November 29, 1947, the Assembly recommended its adoption and implementation. The vote itself, which required a two-third majority, was a dramatic affair. It led to celebrations on the streets of Israel, but was rejected by the Arab Palestinians and the Arab League. Indias Socialist intellectual class treats Israel as an illegitimate nation, though they claim to be torchbearers of world peace. If only the Modi initiative had been adopted in the Nehruvian era, it would have given more time to resolve the Palestinian questionimpossible without an active role for the Jewish state. The historical hypocrisy of the secular Left distorts Indian perspective towards West Asia by politicising the Holocaust without acknowledging its victims. It is obvious Wahhabis had guided Indias policy in the region until the BJP came to power. Before, P V Narasimha Rao, despite fierce opposition in the Congress, established a complete diplomatic relationship with Israel. The Indo-Israeli coordination in defence and strategic dialogue in the Vajpayee era strengthened the framework. Indias position in West Asia could adopt the American policy of equidistance even with rogue nations for tactical balancea policy India could have adopted in West Asia until now. However, Modi has ended Israels pariah status in the subcontinent. Surely, he was aware of the thoughts of former RSS chief, the late Bhaurao Deoras, who had consistently persuaded the BJP to open dialogue with Israel. Hence, the Prime Ministers acknowledgment of the relevance of Indian Jewry in Israels progress heralds the emergence of a new combined force in the West Asian theatre of the War on Terror. pandey.bjp@gmail.com
T J S George By

Mention corruption, and the names of some politicians jump out like registered trademarks. Lalu Prasad Yadav is right when he says that the BJP government is hunting him for political reasons. The government has indeed been using the CBI to hunt its opponents on a selective basis. But it is able to play politics of revenge because facts are there to exploit. Lalu has been a synonym for corruption in unique waysthe only leader who breaks laws with defiance and daring.

When his second daughter Rohini got married in 2002, arrangements had to be made on a grand scale, which meant dozens of cars for guests, comfortable sofas and chairs for use in the pandal, dry fruits, provisions, garlands and so on. Organising them was no problem for Lalu. Musclemen walked into car showrooms in Patna and just took away all the models there.

Others went to furniture storerooms, cake shops, grocery shops, fruit and dry fruit stalls and flower shops, and just took things away. What an original idea! The press published reports, but didnt quote shop owners who were so scared that they pleaded for anonymity. But Rohini got happily married. Those were also days when kidnapping for ransom flourished. Well-known doctors were among those who lived in fear.

No Indian politician has so openly misused power. Nor has any other leader pushed the family into power with the same I-am-the-proprietor attitude. When the courts disqualified Lalu following the Fodder scam (fraudulent payments for non-existent cattle feed), he unashamedly put his illiterate wife Rabri in the chief ministers chair. In the United Front with Nitish Kumar, he got two of his sons into the cabinet, one as deputy chief minister. His daughter Misa, inheritor of many of her fathers special talents, is in Parliament.

Left to himself, Lalu Prasad would think it perfectly natural for Rabri Devi to become President of the country, Misa to become Prime Minister, Tejashwi the Home Minister with additional charge of Industries, Finance and Information, Tej Pratap the Chief Minister of Bihar, and daughters Rohini, Ragini, Chanda, Hema, Raj Lakshmi and Dhannu to be named ambassadors to the worlds big powers. He would want nothing for himself except his formal portrait to hang in all government offices as the most-loving husband and father in Indian history.

How nasty of the CBI to get going suddenly and shatter all the dreams. It filed charges with unusual promptness, claiming that the family had acquired nearly a Rs 1,000 crore worth of benami properties in a decade. Contracts for the maintenance of railway hotels and licence for a liquor factory were the kind of favours given in return for prime properties. There was a gift of land even by Rabri Devis cattle-shed owner. Some unkindly opponents referred to Lalu as the Robert Vadra of Bihar.

Lalus operations were wide and his attitude reckless. Therefore, he made himself easy prey to his opponents. But deeper is the corruption that goes on at the grassroots. There has been a drop, since Narendra Modis rise, in big-ticket scandals in Delhi such as the Commonwealth Games or the Spectrum sale. But that does not lighten the burden of everyday corruption that continues as before. The last Transparency International report put the total bribe Indians paid to access routine government services at Rs 21,000 crore. (How? Go and register a trust or a will at any sub-registrar office and you will know).

All parties contribute to this shame despite the BJPs holier-than-thou posture. A former Gujarat chief ministers daughter faced charges of getting 422 acres of land from the state government at Rs 15 per square metre when the governments own prevailing rate was Rs 180 per square metre. The long-running Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh rocked Parliament again recently, but is yet to be fully investigated. Lalit Modi, with friends in the BJP, is not trawled the way Vijay Mallya is, though both are absconders of the same kind. Most importantly, some BJP leaders in Kerala have been found to have taken money to help start new medical colleges in the state.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made yet another call for a corruption-free India when he said, at the all-party meet on the eve of Parliaments current session, that it was the responsibility of all political parties to take action against corrupt leaders. All parties? That sounds like an instruction to the Karnataka BJP to find a clean chief minister candidate, instead of one who was jailed for corruption the first time around.

Mention corruption, and the names of some politicians jump out like registered trademarks. Lalu Prasad Yadav is right when he says that the BJP government is hunting him for political reasons. The government has indeed been using the CBI to hunt its opponents on a selective basis. But it is able to play politics of revenge because facts are there to exploit. Lalu has been a synonym for corruption in unique waysthe only leader who breaks laws with defiance and daring. When his second daughter Rohini got married in 2002, arrangements had to be made on a grand scale, which meant dozens of cars for guests, comfortable sofas and chairs for use in the pandal, dry fruits, provisions, garlands and so on. Organising them was no problem for Lalu. Musclemen walked into car showrooms in Patna and just took away all the models there. Others went to furniture storerooms, cake shops, grocery shops, fruit and dry fruit stalls and flower shops, and just took things away. What an original idea! The press published reports, but didnt quote shop owners who were so scared that they pleaded for anonymity. But Rohini got happily married. Those were also days when kidnapping for ransom flourished. Well-known doctors were among those who lived in fear. No Indian politician has so openly misused power. Nor has any other leader pushed the family into power with the same I-am-the-proprietor attitude. When the courts disqualified Lalu following the Fodder scam (fraudulent payments for non-existent cattle feed), he unashamedly put his illiterate wife Rabri in the chief ministers chair. In the United Front with Nitish Kumar, he got two of his sons into the cabinet, one as deputy chief minister. His daughter Misa, inheritor of many of her fathers special talents, is in Parliament. Left to himself, Lalu Prasad would think it perfectly natural for Rabri Devi to become President of the country, Misa to become Prime Minister, Tejashwi the Home Minister with additional charge of Industries, Finance and Information, Tej Pratap the Chief Minister of Bihar, and daughters Rohini, Ragini, Chanda, Hema, Raj Lakshmi and Dhannu to be named ambassadors to the worlds big powers. He would want nothing for himself except his formal portrait to hang in all government offices as the most-loving husband and father in Indian history. How nasty of the CBI to get going suddenly and shatter all the dreams. It filed charges with unusual promptness, claiming that the family had acquired nearly a Rs 1,000 crore worth of benami properties in a decade. Contracts for the maintenance of railway hotels and licence for a liquor factory were the kind of favours given in return for prime properties. There was a gift of land even by Rabri Devis cattle-shed owner. Some unkindly opponents referred to Lalu as the Robert Vadra of Bihar. Lalus operations were wide and his attitude reckless. Therefore, he made himself easy prey to his opponents. But deeper is the corruption that goes on at the grassroots. There has been a drop, since Narendra Modis rise, in big-ticket scandals in Delhi such as the Commonwealth Games or the Spectrum sale. But that does not lighten the burden of everyday corruption that continues as before. The last Transparency International report put the total bribe Indians paid to access routine government services at Rs 21,000 crore. (How? Go and register a trust or a will at any sub-registrar office and you will know). All parties contribute to this shame despite the BJPs holier-than-thou posture. A former Gujarat chief ministers daughter faced charges of getting 422 acres of land from the state government at Rs 15 per square metre when the governments own prevailing rate was Rs 180 per square metre. The long-running Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh rocked Parliament again recently, but is yet to be fully investigated. Lalit Modi, with friends in the BJP, is not trawled the way Vijay Mallya is, though both are absconders of the same kind. Most importantly, some BJP leaders in Kerala have been found to have taken money to help start new medical colleges in the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made yet another call for a corruption-free India when he said, at the all-party meet on the eve of Parliaments current session, that it was the responsibility of all political parties to take action against corrupt leaders. All parties? That sounds like an instruction to the Karnataka BJP to find a clean chief minister candidate, instead of one who was jailed for corruption the first time around.
An Indian start-ups announcement that it would offer a day of paid menstrual leave for its female employees has triggered a debate. The company has gone on to run a campaign asking the government to make this a policy. Of course, this debate has come up in different countries at different times, most recently in Italy where that countrys Parliament was considering a proposal to give three days of paid menstrual leave a month to women who had painful periods. Most women, if not all, experience varying levels of pain and discomfort during menstruation.

In Italy, as in India, the argument against the proposal is that this would make companies think twice about hiring women. An allied argument is that this would validate the patriarchal misconception that women workers are inherently unreliable. Japan, for instance, has offered menstrual leave since 1947 but it is not paid and reports indicate that few women take advantage of it as they fear coworkers would think them weak.

The problem with these arguments is that they view the workplace as a static entity, forgetting that many of the benefits and rights that workers take for granted were once bitterly contested. The modern workplace is designed to benefit the able-bodied, heterosexual male worker. This is the norm that all workersdisabled, LGBTQ, female, etcare expected to meet. Such an expectation is inherently unfair.

If paid menstrual or maternity leave or child care support is a reason for companies not to hire women, let us not forget that lack of such supports is also a barrier to womens success in the workplace. These rights have yet to reach those in the unorganised sector, of which women make up a significant number. If we want a more equal society we need to acknowledge that while we are all equal, we have different needs that must be accommodated across class, caste and sector. Paid menstrual leave would be a step towards a more inclusive workplace and a more equal world.

An Indian start-ups announcement that it would offer a day of paid menstrual leave for its female employees has triggered a debate. The company has gone on to run a campaign asking the government to make this a policy. Of course, this debate has come up in different countries at different times, most recently in Italy where that countrys Parliament was considering a proposal to give three days of paid menstrual leave a month to women who had painful periods. Most women, if not all, experience varying levels of pain and discomfort during menstruation. In Italy, as in India, the argument against the proposal is that this would make companies think twice about hiring women. An allied argument is that this would validate the patriarchal misconception that women workers are inherently unreliable. Japan, for instance, has offered menstrual leave since 1947 but it is not paid and reports indicate that few women take advantage of it as they fear coworkers would think them weak. The problem with these arguments is that they view the workplace as a static entity, forgetting that many of the benefits and rights that workers take for granted were once bitterly contested. The modern workplace is designed to benefit the able-bodied, heterosexual male worker. This is the norm that all workersdisabled, LGBTQ, female, etcare expected to meet. Such an expectation is inherently unfair. If paid menstrual or maternity leave or child care support is a reason for companies not to hire women, let us not forget that lack of such supports is also a barrier to womens success in the workplace. These rights have yet to reach those in the unorganised sector, of which women make up a significant number. If we want a more equal society we need to acknowledge that while we are all equal, we have different needs that must be accommodated across class, caste and sector. Paid menstrual leave would be a step towards a more inclusive workplace and a more equal world.
By PTI: Ramanathapuram (TN), Jul 23 (PTI) A 65-year-old Pakistan national has been arrested on charges including of drug- peddling, police said today.

The arrest comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Rameswaram in the district to inaugurate a memorial for former president late APJ Abdul Kalam on July 27.

Mohammed Yunus, from Karachi, was arrested from a lodge in Ervadi, they said. Ervadi is famous for its centuries-old dargah in Ramanathapuram district.

advertisement

When he was arrested yesterday, he neither had a passport nor a visa. He was carrying Pakistani Rupees 2,500 and Rs 3,000 in Indian currency, the police said.

During interrogation, it came to light that he had come to Tamil Nadu illegally by a boat from Sri Lanka.

After travelling to several places, including Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu allegedly in search of a contraband substance, he had come to Ervadi, Q branch district police, which deals with national security, said.

Two others from Ervadi, who had allegedly promised to get him the drug, have also been arrested, they said.

The Pakistani national was produced before a magistrate at his residence in Paramakudi and was remanded to judicial custody.

He is being taken to the Puzhal Central Prison in Chennai, which has a separate cell to house foreigners. PTI COR VGN ROH TIR

--- ENDS ---
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: A civil court here has asked a Norwegian medical equipment company to pay Rs 100 as damages to a rival US-based company for filing a petition in the Chief Ministers cell against the US company.

An official of the Neorad AS, a Norway-based company, filed in June 2013 a petition in the CMs cell that certain specifications were included in the procurement tender issued by the Health department to favour Perfint Healthcare, a US-based company.

The company had also alleged that Perfint had offered foreign trips to officials. Perfint had filed a civil suit against Neorad AS for making the allegations and sought a nominal compensation of Rs 100 and an order restraining Neorad AS from making any further allegations.

CHENNAI: A civil court here has asked a Norwegian medical equipment company to pay Rs 100 as damages to a rival US-based company for filing a petition in the Chief Ministers cell against the US company. An official of the Neorad AS, a Norway-based company, filed in June 2013 a petition in the CMs cell that certain specifications were included in the procurement tender issued by the Health department to favour Perfint Healthcare, a US-based company. The company had also alleged that Perfint had offered foreign trips to officials. Perfint had filed a civil suit against Neorad AS for making the allegations and sought a nominal compensation of Rs 100 and an order restraining Neorad AS from making any further allegations.
Ankur Sharma By

NEW DELHI: During her regular pregnancy check-ups at a top private hospital in Delhi, Nisha Saxena (name changed) had categorically told her gynaecologists about her preference: normal delivery. Even hours before the childbirth, the doctors had assured the 29-year-old professional, considering her normal clinical parameters.

But due to some last-minute complications, the doctors converted her normal delivery into caesarean section and she was suddenly wheeled into the operation theatre. They took Nishas thumb impression on the consent letter inside the OT. After she got discharged, Nisha consulted another doctor who told her that the C-section was unwarranted.

Nisha is not alone. Almost 1,80,000 women, who have faced similar experience and want the government to curb commercialisation of C-section delivery, have signed a petition on change.org. And an RTI reply has exposed the labour room intrigues, highlighting that caesarean deliveries are new normal in Delhis private hospitals.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) prescribes the ideal rate of C-section as 10-15 per cent, the national capitals private hospitals conduct 65 per cent C-section deliveries. From April 2016 to January 2017, as many as 9,208 deliveries at these hospitals were C-section, of the total 14,612 cases.

The number of C-section has been increasing since 2011 in the citys private hospitals, according to the reply to a RTI query. However, public hospitals, which conduct almost 10 times more deliveries than their private counterparts, have resorted to C-section only in 20 per cent of the cases, according to the RTI query filed by east Delhi resident Zeshaan Haider. They conducted 1,01,103 deliveries from April 2016 to January 2017, of which 79,479 were normal. Only in 21,624 cases doctors conducted C-section deliveries.

In February, Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi had raised the concern of increasing caesarean deliveries in private hospitals and its commercialisation with Health Minister J P Nadda. We would need some methods to solve this issue. We need to mandate the nursing homes and hospitals to publicly display the number of C-section deliveries vis-a-vis the normal deliveries, Maneka wrote in her letter to Nadda. She also said that we should name and shame such gynaecologists and hospitals who perform caesarean deliveries for money.

Like Nisha, thirty-year-old Anjali Mishra (name changed) also went through the same ordeal. Doctors allegedly under the last-minute complication ploy performed C-section on her. Everything was normal. Doctors, after performing all the required tests, told me that I will have a normal delivery and the baby is also healthy. Later they told us that they have to perform C-section. When asked about the reason, they said a bone which is very close to the baby can harm it, Anjali said.

According to the RTI reply, the rate of C-section deliveries has increased by almost 50 per cent, but rate of normal deliveries are almost same in private hospitals since 2011.

Caesarean rates are higher not only in Delhi but also in other metropolitan cities. If places like Delhi and Mumbai will have increasing C-section rate, how will things improve in small cities? The government has to treat this problem as soon as possible, said Subarna Ghosh, an activist who has filed a petition signed by 1,80,000 people on change.org, demanding making it mandatory for hospitals to declare caesarean rate.

But, according to Indian Medical Association president KK Aggarwal, one should not focus on the number of caesarean deliveries done but the survival rates and need of such deliveries. Some doctors treat only critical cases, so their caesarean rates will be higher. One should not generalise the intention of the doctors. If someone is doing caesarean deliveries to earn profits, he/she should be suspended and punished but caesarean doesnt mean that doctors have done it deliberately. Private hospitals cater to more critical cases than government hospitals. If we are focusing on caesarean rates, we should also focus on death rate of mother and babies in government and private hospitals, Aggarwal told The Sunday Standard.

Subarna, however, contradicted. She said doctors should at least acknowledge that there is some problem. If you will ask the women who have delivered babies in your neighbourhood, you will find there is some problem. If doctors are not ready to acknowledge that there is some problem how can they treat it? No one is asking doctors not to perform caesarean in emergency cases but one should understand that every caesarean has a life threat. There are problems that is why almost 1,80,000 people have signed the petition, Subarna said.

NEW DELHI: During her regular pregnancy check-ups at a top private hospital in Delhi, Nisha Saxena (name changed) had categorically told her gynaecologists about her preference: normal delivery. Even hours before the childbirth, the doctors had assured the 29-year-old professional, considering her normal clinical parameters. But due to some last-minute complications, the doctors converted her normal delivery into caesarean section and she was suddenly wheeled into the operation theatre. They took Nishas thumb impression on the consent letter inside the OT. After she got discharged, Nisha consulted another doctor who told her that the C-section was unwarranted. Nisha is not alone. Almost 1,80,000 women, who have faced similar experience and want the government to curb commercialisation of C-section delivery, have signed a petition on change.org. And an RTI reply has exposed the labour room intrigues, highlighting that caesarean deliveries are new normal in Delhis private hospitals. While the World Health Organization (WHO) prescribes the ideal rate of C-section as 10-15 per cent, the national capitals private hospitals conduct 65 per cent C-section deliveries. From April 2016 to January 2017, as many as 9,208 deliveries at these hospitals were C-section, of the total 14,612 cases. The number of C-section has been increasing since 2011 in the citys private hospitals, according to the reply to a RTI query. However, public hospitals, which conduct almost 10 times more deliveries than their private counterparts, have resorted to C-section only in 20 per cent of the cases, according to the RTI query filed by east Delhi resident Zeshaan Haider. They conducted 1,01,103 deliveries from April 2016 to January 2017, of which 79,479 were normal. Only in 21,624 cases doctors conducted C-section deliveries. In February, Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi had raised the concern of increasing caesarean deliveries in private hospitals and its commercialisation with Health Minister J P Nadda. We would need some methods to solve this issue. We need to mandate the nursing homes and hospitals to publicly display the number of C-section deliveries vis-a-vis the normal deliveries, Maneka wrote in her letter to Nadda. She also said that we should name and shame such gynaecologists and hospitals who perform caesarean deliveries for money. Like Nisha, thirty-year-old Anjali Mishra (name changed) also went through the same ordeal. Doctors allegedly under the last-minute complication ploy performed C-section on her. Everything was normal. Doctors, after performing all the required tests, told me that I will have a normal delivery and the baby is also healthy. Later they told us that they have to perform C-section. When asked about the reason, they said a bone which is very close to the baby can harm it, Anjali said. According to the RTI reply, the rate of C-section deliveries has increased by almost 50 per cent, but rate of normal deliveries are almost same in private hospitals since 2011. Caesarean rates are higher not only in Delhi but also in other metropolitan cities. If places like Delhi and Mumbai will have increasing C-section rate, how will things improve in small cities? The government has to treat this problem as soon as possible, said Subarna Ghosh, an activist who has filed a petition signed by 1,80,000 people on change.org, demanding making it mandatory for hospitals to declare caesarean rate. But, according to Indian Medical Association president KK Aggarwal, one should not focus on the number of caesarean deliveries done but the survival rates and need of such deliveries. Some doctors treat only critical cases, so their caesarean rates will be higher. One should not generalise the intention of the doctors. If someone is doing caesarean deliveries to earn profits, he/she should be suspended and punished but caesarean doesnt mean that doctors have done it deliberately. Private hospitals cater to more critical cases than government hospitals. If we are focusing on caesarean rates, we should also focus on death rate of mother and babies in government and private hospitals, Aggarwal told The Sunday Standard. Subarna, however, contradicted. She said doctors should at least acknowledge that there is some problem. If you will ask the women who have delivered babies in your neighbourhood, you will find there is some problem. If doctors are not ready to acknowledge that there is some problem how can they treat it? No one is asking doctors not to perform caesarean in emergency cases but one should understand that every caesarean has a life threat. There are problems that is why almost 1,80,000 people have signed the petition, Subarna said.
By Pradip R Sagar By

NEW DELHI: Aggressive air support is crucial for advancing ground troops in a short and intense war. Last week, the government also allowed the Army to make emergency procurements without going into red-tapism, to be prepared for a short intense war.

According to officials privy to the development, Boeing, which manufactures these helicopters, will start delivering from early next year, and all 22 machines will be handed over to IAF in a time span of nine months. IAF has been asked to develop infrastructure, including hangers and helipads, to create base for these helicopters.



According to IAF, Apache will be the first pure attack helicopter in the Indian forces. The IAF already operates two squadrons of the Russian-origin Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, which are deployed close to the frontlines on the Pakistan border. But these helicopters are on the verge of retirement and were designed only to carry troops into heavily defended territories.



Equipped with laser and infrared systems for all-weather, day-night operability, the Apache fires the Hellfire air-to-air missiles, besides its arsenal of 70 mm rockets and an automatic cannon. Apache helicopters are capable of detecting 256 moving targets and engaging them, the twin-engine Apache is operated by two pilots.

The attack choppers can track up to 128 targets in a minute and prioritise threats

Armed with fire-and-forget Hellfire missiles, besides its arsenal of 70 mm rockets and an automatic cannon.

These missiles equip the helicopter gunships with heavy anti-armour capabilities

The stealthy chopper is equipped with laser and infrared systems for all-weather, day-night operability

Both crew members are capable of flying the aircraft and performing methods of weapon engagements independently.

NEW DELHI: Aggressive air support is crucial for advancing ground troops in a short and intense war. Last week, the government also allowed the Army to make emergency procurements without going into red-tapism, to be prepared for a short intense war. According to officials privy to the development, Boeing, which manufactures these helicopters, will start delivering from early next year, and all 22 machines will be handed over to IAF in a time span of nine months. IAF has been asked to develop infrastructure, including hangers and helipads, to create base for these helicopters. According to IAF, Apache will be the first pure attack helicopter in the Indian forces. The IAF already operates two squadrons of the Russian-origin Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, which are deployed close to the frontlines on the Pakistan border. But these helicopters are on the verge of retirement and were designed only to carry troops into heavily defended territories. Equipped with laser and infrared systems for all-weather, day-night operability, the Apache fires the Hellfire air-to-air missiles, besides its arsenal of 70 mm rockets and an automatic cannon. Apache helicopters are capable of detecting 256 moving targets and engaging them, the twin-engine Apache is operated by two pilots. The attack choppers can track up to 128 targets in a minute and prioritise threats Armed with fire-and-forget Hellfire missiles, besides its arsenal of 70 mm rockets and an automatic cannon. These missiles equip the helicopter gunships with heavy anti-armour capabilities The stealthy chopper is equipped with laser and infrared systems for all-weather, day-night operability Both crew members are capable of flying the aircraft and performing methods of weapon engagements independently.
Sana Shakil By

In a fortnight from now, the much anticipated vice-presidential elections will be fought. Though oppositions Vice-Presidential nominee Gopalkrishna Gandhi may not seem to have the upper hand, he is hopeful of being Indias 13th Vice-President. In this interview to the Sunday Standard, Gandhi talks about the election and its significance. He also responds to the charge of supporting Yakub Memons mercy petition and talks about the life beyond polls. Gandhi further asserted that he is not banking on his grandfathers name alone. Here is the full interview.

Q- NDAs vice presidential candidate Venkaiah Naidu is said to have the support of 485 of the 788 members of the Electoral College. There are chances of you not winning this election. So, are you looking at politics beyond this poll?

I am not thinking of myself in the future of Indian politics. That would be presumptuous. India is teeming with talent, dedication and vision. Men and women, unknown to us now, perhaps, could stun us by their leadership. Our future needs of leadership will be served well by the people of India.

Q- 18 political parties have pledged to support you in the Vice-presidential elections but possibility of cross voting cannot be denied. Seems you will have to canvass support from NDA. How do you plan to go about it considering you wrote a scathing open letter to Prime Minister Modi soon after he assumed office?

A- I am not canvassing votes from the NDAs MPs. I am not saying to them leave your candidate, vote for me. That would not be right, that would be in fact, crass. Their votes have to go their candidate, the Hon'ble Venkayya Naidy Garu. But I am telling them that the culture of mutual respect and political courtesies that the veteran national leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee nurtured should make them see me not as an opponent but a fellow citizen with views different from theirs and as such entitled to their attention as democrats. They too should know what I stand for in this election, not as pre-conditioned voters but as receptive thinkers. Also, it is important to bear in mind the fact that MPs are not just entitled to but expected to vote in sovereign autonomy, as MPs. No whip applies on them. Not only that, MPs have a first preference vote and a second preference vote. The rules and regulations provide for not just completely independent voting but nuanced voting. This flexibility that I am talking about works both ways and every candidate can gain from it or lose on account of it. That is the beauty and the challenge of the procedure.

Q- Some quarters have criticized you severely for filing Yakub Memon's mercy petition. Do you think that has impacted your chances of winning this election?

A- I did not file Yakub Memons mercy petition. Citing the example of President A P J Abdul Kalam, who was against the death penalty, I wrote to President Mukherjee requesting him to consider all grounds before him, while deciding on the mercy petition. I also wrote, in like vein, to the President of Pakistan to desist from executing our fellow citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav. I believe the death penalty should, in Babasaheb Ambedkar's words 'be done away with altogether'. As to my chances in the election being affected by this, I believe Hon'ble MPs know well how elections generate sensation and know how to separate false from true.

Q- Looking back, do you think it (supporting the mercy petition for Yakub) was a right step? A news channel even started a campaign for your defeat on grounds of this petition. Are you proud of what you did? Or do you regret taking that step?

A-I have answered that in the previous question.

Q- You are against death penalty. So, would you file similar mercy petitions in the future too for death sentence convicts and those convicts may include terrorists?

A-Terror has to be met by the state with all its might by the use of the most state-of-art intelligence machinery to stall terror in its tracks and by the merciless annihilation of terrorists on the spot where they are carrying out their foul deed. The culpability of any accused in the state's custody has, of course, to be examined in accordance with the Constitution and the law. This is how any abolitionist who also despises terror would see it.

Q-You are the grandson of the father of our nation. But even your grandfather's name may not help win you this election. What does this say about today's times?

A- If I intend to stand and hope to win in an election on account of my grandfather's name alone, I deserve to lose the election. And as for India in the context of Gandhi, I can say that the two can never be sundered. India has and always will hearken to the message of the Mahatma because as he said himself, his life was his message. And his life and his death are there for all to see. As the world has seen it, from Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Barak Obama...The list is endless and growing.

Q-What do you feel about the Modi government since it has completed three years in power?

A-The candidature is for the office of the Vice President of India, not for a legislature. So I should not answer your question in the stark political tones in which it has been put. But this I would say: The last three years have ranged the liberal against the illiberal, the inclusive against the divisionist, the egalitarian against the monopolist as no other three continuous years in free India.

Q- In case you lose, what are your plans? Losing won't mean end of your public life, right?

A- Politics is larger than elections, life is larger than politics.

Q- Do you think you had a better chance if you stood for the post of President? You were being considered as the Presidential nominee of the opposition?

A-That is not so.

Q- As governor of West Bengal, you earned the ire of the then Left front government in the state when you spoke about the farmers agitation. But now, Left parties and Trinamool Congress are supporting you. Why do you think Left has come out to support you?

A-Both the Left and the Trinamool have taken far-sighted views of things and prioritized the issues before the nation today. I salute their egoless-ness in this regard.

Q- The oppositions presidential candidate Meira Kumar called the presidential election a battle of ideologies between the BJP and its allies on one side and Congress and other secular allies on the other side. Would you call vice-presidential election an extension of that contest?

A- I see my election campaign as being that between the core values of our Republican Constitution best proclaimed in its Preamble on the one hand, and the impulse for stark, severe and strict majoritarianism on the other.

Q- As a former IAS officer, you served as Secretary to the President of India...That experience would help if you become the Vice-President?

A-I was also secretary to the then Vice President, the veteran leader, Sri R Venkataraman. That experience should help. But I should add that those two experiences of mine are not unique. There are many who held those secretarial positions with distinction. Nor are those two positions that I held, determining. I cannot claim a consideration for any vote merely because I held those positions. I can claim consideration only on the strength of what I stand for now, in this election.

In a fortnight from now, the much anticipated vice-presidential elections will be fought. Though oppositions Vice-Presidential nominee Gopalkrishna Gandhi may not seem to have the upper hand, he is hopeful of being Indias 13th Vice-President. In this interview to the Sunday Standard, Gandhi talks about the election and its significance. He also responds to the charge of supporting Yakub Memons mercy petition and talks about the life beyond polls. Gandhi further asserted that he is not banking on his grandfathers name alone. Here is the full interview. Q- NDAs vice presidential candidate Venkaiah Naidu is said to have the support of 485 of the 788 members of the Electoral College. There are chances of you not winning this election. So, are you looking at politics beyond this poll? I am not thinking of myself in the future of Indian politics. That would be presumptuous. India is teeming with talent, dedication and vision. Men and women, unknown to us now, perhaps, could stun us by their leadership. Our future needs of leadership will be served well by the people of India. Q- 18 political parties have pledged to support you in the Vice-presidential elections but possibility of cross voting cannot be denied. Seems you will have to canvass support from NDA. How do you plan to go about it considering you wrote a scathing open letter to Prime Minister Modi soon after he assumed office? A- I am not canvassing votes from the NDAs MPs. I am not saying to them leave your candidate, vote for me. That would not be right, that would be in fact, crass. Their votes have to go their candidate, the Hon'ble Venkayya Naidy Garu. But I am telling them that the culture of mutual respect and political courtesies that the veteran national leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee nurtured should make them see me not as an opponent but a fellow citizen with views different from theirs and as such entitled to their attention as democrats. They too should know what I stand for in this election, not as pre-conditioned voters but as receptive thinkers. Also, it is important to bear in mind the fact that MPs are not just entitled to but expected to vote in sovereign autonomy, as MPs. No whip applies on them. Not only that, MPs have a first preference vote and a second preference vote. The rules and regulations provide for not just completely independent voting but nuanced voting. This flexibility that I am talking about works both ways and every candidate can gain from it or lose on account of it. That is the beauty and the challenge of the procedure. Q- Some quarters have criticized you severely for filing Yakub Memon's mercy petition. Do you think that has impacted your chances of winning this election? A- I did not file Yakub Memons mercy petition. Citing the example of President A P J Abdul Kalam, who was against the death penalty, I wrote to President Mukherjee requesting him to consider all grounds before him, while deciding on the mercy petition. I also wrote, in like vein, to the President of Pakistan to desist from executing our fellow citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav. I believe the death penalty should, in Babasaheb Ambedkar's words 'be done away with altogether'. As to my chances in the election being affected by this, I believe Hon'ble MPs know well how elections generate sensation and know how to separate false from true. Q- Looking back, do you think it (supporting the mercy petition for Yakub) was a right step? A news channel even started a campaign for your defeat on grounds of this petition. Are you proud of what you did? Or do you regret taking that step? A-I have answered that in the previous question. Q- You are against death penalty. So, would you file similar mercy petitions in the future too for death sentence convicts and those convicts may include terrorists? A-Terror has to be met by the state with all its might by the use of the most state-of-art intelligence machinery to stall terror in its tracks and by the merciless annihilation of terrorists on the spot where they are carrying out their foul deed. The culpability of any accused in the state's custody has, of course, to be examined in accordance with the Constitution and the law. This is how any abolitionist who also despises terror would see it. Q-You are the grandson of the father of our nation. But even your grandfather's name may not help win you this election. What does this say about today's times? A- If I intend to stand and hope to win in an election on account of my grandfather's name alone, I deserve to lose the election. And as for India in the context of Gandhi, I can say that the two can never be sundered. India has and always will hearken to the message of the Mahatma because as he said himself, his life was his message. And his life and his death are there for all to see. As the world has seen it, from Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Barak Obama...The list is endless and growing. Q-What do you feel about the Modi government since it has completed three years in power? A-The candidature is for the office of the Vice President of India, not for a legislature. So I should not answer your question in the stark political tones in which it has been put. But this I would say: The last three years have ranged the liberal against the illiberal, the inclusive against the divisionist, the egalitarian against the monopolist as no other three continuous years in free India. Q- In case you lose, what are your plans? Losing won't mean end of your public life, right? A- Politics is larger than elections, life is larger than politics. Q- Do you think you had a better chance if you stood for the post of President? You were being considered as the Presidential nominee of the opposition? A-That is not so. Q- As governor of West Bengal, you earned the ire of the then Left front government in the state when you spoke about the farmers agitation. But now, Left parties and Trinamool Congress are supporting you. Why do you think Left has come out to support you? A-Both the Left and the Trinamool have taken far-sighted views of things and prioritized the issues before the nation today. I salute their egoless-ness in this regard. Q- The oppositions presidential candidate Meira Kumar called the presidential election a battle of ideologies between the BJP and its allies on one side and Congress and other secular allies on the other side. Would you call vice-presidential election an extension of that contest? A- I see my election campaign as being that between the core values of our Republican Constitution best proclaimed in its Preamble on the one hand, and the impulse for stark, severe and strict majoritarianism on the other. Q- As a former IAS officer, you served as Secretary to the President of India...That experience would help if you become the Vice-President? A-I was also secretary to the then Vice President, the veteran leader, Sri R Venkataraman. That experience should help. But I should add that those two experiences of mine are not unique. There are many who held those secretarial positions with distinction. Nor are those two positions that I held, determining. I cannot claim a consideration for any vote merely because I held those positions. I can claim consideration only on the strength of what I stand for now, in this election.
By PTI

GREECE: Hundreds of people on the eastern Greek island of Kos have spent the night sleeping outdoors after a powerful earthquake killed two tourists and injured nearly 500 others across the Aegean Sea region in Greece and Turkey.

Residents and tourists were too afraid to return to their homes and hotels, camping out instead in parks and olive groves, or slumbering in their cars or on lounge chairs. The most seriously injured in Greece were airlifted to hospitals on the mainland and the southern island of Crete, and at least two were listed in critical condition today.

The US Geological Survey measured the quake, which struck early yesterday, as being of magnitude 6.7, with Greek and Turkish estimates a fraction lower. Two men, one from Turkey and one from Sweden, were killed when a collapsing wall smashed into a popular a bar in the Old Town of Kos. The Turkish man's parents were on the island Saturday making arrangements to repatriate his body. Panagiotis Bekali, a 30-year-old who has lived on Kos for several years, spent the night sleeping in an olive grove with his entire family. His 5-year-old son and 16-year-old nephew slept in the family car. "There were cracks in the house (from the earthquake) so we went straight out," he said.

"We were afraid to stay indoors so the whole family slept outside." Dozens of aftershocks have shaken the island, further rattling residents and tourists. John Grant, a 60-year-old tourist from Britain, said he felt safer sleeping outside. "I think coming from somewhere that doesn't have earthquakes, you don't understand," he said from his makeshift bed set up on a lounge chair. "So to me it was very frightening being in the building, but being outside I know I'm safe." About 350 of the injuries occurred in Turkey, in Bodrum and other beach resorts, as people fled buildings and as the sea swell flung cars off the road and pushed boats ashore.

Seismologists said the shallow depth of the undersea quake was to blame for the damage. In Kos, the quake damaged the island's main port, leading to ferry services being temporarily suspended. Churches, an old mosque, the port's 14th-century castle and old buildings in the town also suffered, and archaeologists and experts from Greece's Culture Ministry were on the island Saturday to examine the damage. Ferry services to Kos were being restored Saturday, with ships diverted to the smaller port of Kefalos on the island's southwestern coast. Kos Mayor Giorgos Kyritsis said the biggest infrastructure problem on the island was the damage to the main port.

Coast guard divers were on the scene inspecting the condition of the jetty. "Life on the island is returning to normal," Kyritsis said. "The infrastructure problems are being repaired." The mayor said Kos hadn't seen many tourist booking cancellations as a result of the quake. Visitors, he said, "are touring the island with their tour guides. We don't have a big problem. The ferry connection has been restored with the port of Kefalos and we are waiting as soon as possible to repair the damage at the (main) port."

GREECE: Hundreds of people on the eastern Greek island of Kos have spent the night sleeping outdoors after a powerful earthquake killed two tourists and injured nearly 500 others across the Aegean Sea region in Greece and Turkey. Residents and tourists were too afraid to return to their homes and hotels, camping out instead in parks and olive groves, or slumbering in their cars or on lounge chairs. The most seriously injured in Greece were airlifted to hospitals on the mainland and the southern island of Crete, and at least two were listed in critical condition today. The US Geological Survey measured the quake, which struck early yesterday, as being of magnitude 6.7, with Greek and Turkish estimates a fraction lower. Two men, one from Turkey and one from Sweden, were killed when a collapsing wall smashed into a popular a bar in the Old Town of Kos. The Turkish man's parents were on the island Saturday making arrangements to repatriate his body. Panagiotis Bekali, a 30-year-old who has lived on Kos for several years, spent the night sleeping in an olive grove with his entire family. His 5-year-old son and 16-year-old nephew slept in the family car. "There were cracks in the house (from the earthquake) so we went straight out," he said. "We were afraid to stay indoors so the whole family slept outside." Dozens of aftershocks have shaken the island, further rattling residents and tourists. John Grant, a 60-year-old tourist from Britain, said he felt safer sleeping outside. "I think coming from somewhere that doesn't have earthquakes, you don't understand," he said from his makeshift bed set up on a lounge chair. "So to me it was very frightening being in the building, but being outside I know I'm safe." About 350 of the injuries occurred in Turkey, in Bodrum and other beach resorts, as people fled buildings and as the sea swell flung cars off the road and pushed boats ashore. Seismologists said the shallow depth of the undersea quake was to blame for the damage. In Kos, the quake damaged the island's main port, leading to ferry services being temporarily suspended. Churches, an old mosque, the port's 14th-century castle and old buildings in the town also suffered, and archaeologists and experts from Greece's Culture Ministry were on the island Saturday to examine the damage. Ferry services to Kos were being restored Saturday, with ships diverted to the smaller port of Kefalos on the island's southwestern coast. Kos Mayor Giorgos Kyritsis said the biggest infrastructure problem on the island was the damage to the main port. Coast guard divers were on the scene inspecting the condition of the jetty. "Life on the island is returning to normal," Kyritsis said. "The infrastructure problems are being repaired." The mayor said Kos hadn't seen many tourist booking cancellations as a result of the quake. Visitors, he said, "are touring the island with their tour guides. We don't have a big problem. The ferry connection has been restored with the port of Kefalos and we are waiting as soon as possible to repair the damage at the (main) port."
By PTI

LONDON: Some of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) most prominent female journalists and TV presenters are banding together to demand immediate fix of the wide gender pay gap rather than in many years as the management has proposed.



TV personalities including Clare Balding, Victoria Derbyshire and others wrote an open letter to the BBC's top manager on Sunday saying that plans to resolve the company's gender pay gap by 2020 must be accelerated. They pointed out that the Equal Pay Act became the law in 1970.



BBC responded in a statement that it has made "significant changes" in recent years but needs to do more to close the pay gap.



Documents made public last week showed that male BBC TV and radio personalities make substantially more than their female counterparts. The salary disparity came to light after the publicly funded BBC was forced to publish the salary ranges of its best-paid actors and presenters.



The list showed that two-thirds of the highest earners were men, with the highest-paid woman earning less than a quarter of the highest-earning male star. Many BBC men were also found to be receiving far higher salaries than women in comparable jobs.



Education Secretary Justine Greening, who handles matters involving women and equality, told Sky News on Sunday it is "impossible not to be shocked" by the BBC's pay disparity. She said the salary gap is "very hard to justify." Prime Minister Theresa May has also criticised the pay differential.



The letter to BBC Director-General Tony Hall says the documents confirmed a long-held suspicion that "women at the BBC are being paid less than men for the same work."



Balding, one of BBC's most accomplished TV journalists, said in a pointed tweet that a 2020 target for equal pay isn't good enough, since the Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1970 and the Equality Act was passed in 2010.



"We're standing together to politely suggest they can do better," she said. The women said they are taking action now so "future generations" of BBC women won't face gender discrimination.



Hall said, when the salary list was published, that the BBC needed to move more quickly on issues of gender and diversity.

The BBC said today that when annual figures are published next year substantial progress on salary equity will have been made. The broadcaster's statement said its substantial workforce has been "hired over generations" and that the problem is complex and cannot be fixed overnight.



LONDON: Some of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) most prominent female journalists and TV presenters are banding together to demand immediate fix of the wide gender pay gap rather than in many years as the management has proposed. TV personalities including Clare Balding, Victoria Derbyshire and others wrote an open letter to the BBC's top manager on Sunday saying that plans to resolve the company's gender pay gap by 2020 must be accelerated. They pointed out that the Equal Pay Act became the law in 1970. BBC responded in a statement that it has made "significant changes" in recent years but needs to do more to close the pay gap. Documents made public last week showed that male BBC TV and radio personalities make substantially more than their female counterparts. The salary disparity came to light after the publicly funded BBC was forced to publish the salary ranges of its best-paid actors and presenters. The list showed that two-thirds of the highest earners were men, with the highest-paid woman earning less than a quarter of the highest-earning male star. Many BBC men were also found to be receiving far higher salaries than women in comparable jobs. Education Secretary Justine Greening, who handles matters involving women and equality, told Sky News on Sunday it is "impossible not to be shocked" by the BBC's pay disparity. She said the salary gap is "very hard to justify." Prime Minister Theresa May has also criticised the pay differential. The letter to BBC Director-General Tony Hall says the documents confirmed a long-held suspicion that "women at the BBC are being paid less than men for the same work." Balding, one of BBC's most accomplished TV journalists, said in a pointed tweet that a 2020 target for equal pay isn't good enough, since the Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1970 and the Equality Act was passed in 2010. "We're standing together to politely suggest they can do better," she said. The women said they are taking action now so "future generations" of BBC women won't face gender discrimination. Hall said, when the salary list was published, that the BBC needed to move more quickly on issues of gender and diversity. The BBC said today that when annual figures are published next year substantial progress on salary equity will have been made. The broadcaster's statement said its substantial workforce has been "hired over generations" and that the problem is complex and cannot be fixed overnight.
By AFP

SARAJEVO: She may once have been known as "the mistress of life and death", but in the court trying her for war crimes Azra Basic hardly stands out.

Basic is among around a dozen women charged or convicted of crimes committed during Bosnia's inter-ethnic war in the 1990s which claimed nearly 100,000 lives.

Compared to the several hundred men convicted by local and international courts for crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war, the number of women is not many.

But several ex-prisoners have already testified in court to Basic's brutal torture of detainees since the trial opened in February.

One witness at Basic's trial recalled in testimony Friday the glimmer of hope he felt on April 26, 1992.

Dusan Nedic said he saw a woman called Azra enter a detention facility in the northern town of Derventa, where he was being held by ethnic Croats.

She spoke with other detainees, he recalled.

"For me it was a glimmer of hope," said Nedic. "I told myself that a 'woman should not be aggressive as men.'"

But he was wrong.

"She started to beat the detainees, she was jumping on them while they were on the floor," the 55-year-old shoe factory worker said.

Looking at her in court, it is difficult to link Basic with the brutal violence, including one murder, of which she is accused.

A short, silent, bespectacled woman, she avoids eye contact when in court.

When in 2011 the authorities finally caught up with her after the war, she was working in a food factory in the United States.

Basic has pleaded not guilty to war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war at the start of her trial, including a charge that she killed a prisoner.

"This person was not me," she told the court on Friday, her voice trembling.

"I swear before God and thats all," she added, as Slavisa Djuras, the son of Blagoje Djuras, the man she allegedly killed, looked on.

- 'Better' than men -

Biljana Plavsic, now aged 86, remains the most famous woman war criminal from the former Yugoslavia. The former Bosnian Serb vice-president Biljana Plavsic is also the only one tried before the UN war crimes court in The Hague.

She was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 2003 after pleading guilty to crimes against humanity for her leading role in a campaign of persecution against Croats and Muslims during Bosnia's war.

"Women are just as capable of committing crimes," prominent Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic, told AFP.

That much is clear from her essay on war criminals in the former Yugoslavia titled "They Would Never hurt a Fly".

"A woman in such a position has to be 'better' than men," Drakulic wrote in an essay on Plavsic.

"In the given circumstances it meant taking more radical views."

Drakulic recalled the scientific-racist rhetoric used by Plavsic during Bosnia's war, the kind of ideas the Nazis would not have rejected.

Plavsic, a former biology professor, labelled Bosnian Muslims a "genetic mistake on the Serbian body".

Bosnia's war crimes prosecutors say more cases against women suspects are in the pipeline. According to local media, some 40 women are being investigated for war crimes.

Visnja Acimovic, a 45-year-old Bosnian Serb who now lives in neighbouring Serbia, is one of them.

She is accused of having taken part in the 1992 executions of 37 Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Vlasenica, most of them between 15 and 20 years old.

She denied the charges before a Belgrade court in January, and Serbia will not extradite its citizens for trial in Bosnia. They do not trust Bosnian justice, her lawyer Krsto Bobot said.

But not everyone enjoys such protection.

- 'Notably cruel' -

In March, Switzerland extradited Elfeta Veseli, a former member of Bosnian Muslim forces, back to Bosnia.

She is accused of the 1992 murder of a 12-year-old Serb in eastern Bosnia. As his family had fled, the boy returned for a forgotten dog and paid for it with his life.

Veseli's trial has yet to start.

But as well as Basic, the United States has also extradited Rasema Handanovic, 44. She had lied about her past as a former member of a special Bosnian Muslim unit.

In 2012 she pleaded guilty to the execution of three civilians and three ethnic Croat prisoners of war in the central Bosnian town of Trusina.

"The order was to do the work at Trusina, so that no one remained alive," she told the court. She was jailed for five and a half years.

"Each of these women had her own personal reason that could explain her sadistic outburst that targeted men in particular," said Bosnian psychologist Ismet Dizdarevic.

While there were fewer women war criminals they were notably cruel "to prove their power among men," he told AFP.

Most of war crimes committed by women took place in a detention context.

SARAJEVO: She may once have been known as "the mistress of life and death", but in the court trying her for war crimes Azra Basic hardly stands out. Basic is among around a dozen women charged or convicted of crimes committed during Bosnia's inter-ethnic war in the 1990s which claimed nearly 100,000 lives. Compared to the several hundred men convicted by local and international courts for crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war, the number of women is not many. But several ex-prisoners have already testified in court to Basic's brutal torture of detainees since the trial opened in February. One witness at Basic's trial recalled in testimony Friday the glimmer of hope he felt on April 26, 1992. Dusan Nedic said he saw a woman called Azra enter a detention facility in the northern town of Derventa, where he was being held by ethnic Croats. She spoke with other detainees, he recalled. "For me it was a glimmer of hope," said Nedic. "I told myself that a 'woman should not be aggressive as men.'" But he was wrong. "She started to beat the detainees, she was jumping on them while they were on the floor," the 55-year-old shoe factory worker said. Looking at her in court, it is difficult to link Basic with the brutal violence, including one murder, of which she is accused. A short, silent, bespectacled woman, she avoids eye contact when in court. When in 2011 the authorities finally caught up with her after the war, she was working in a food factory in the United States. Basic has pleaded not guilty to war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war at the start of her trial, including a charge that she killed a prisoner. "This person was not me," she told the court on Friday, her voice trembling. "I swear before God and thats all," she added, as Slavisa Djuras, the son of Blagoje Djuras, the man she allegedly killed, looked on. - 'Better' than men - Biljana Plavsic, now aged 86, remains the most famous woman war criminal from the former Yugoslavia. The former Bosnian Serb vice-president Biljana Plavsic is also the only one tried before the UN war crimes court in The Hague. She was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 2003 after pleading guilty to crimes against humanity for her leading role in a campaign of persecution against Croats and Muslims during Bosnia's war. "Women are just as capable of committing crimes," prominent Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic, told AFP. That much is clear from her essay on war criminals in the former Yugoslavia titled "They Would Never hurt a Fly". "A woman in such a position has to be 'better' than men," Drakulic wrote in an essay on Plavsic. "In the given circumstances it meant taking more radical views." Drakulic recalled the scientific-racist rhetoric used by Plavsic during Bosnia's war, the kind of ideas the Nazis would not have rejected. Plavsic, a former biology professor, labelled Bosnian Muslims a "genetic mistake on the Serbian body". Bosnia's war crimes prosecutors say more cases against women suspects are in the pipeline. According to local media, some 40 women are being investigated for war crimes. Visnja Acimovic, a 45-year-old Bosnian Serb who now lives in neighbouring Serbia, is one of them. She is accused of having taken part in the 1992 executions of 37 Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Vlasenica, most of them between 15 and 20 years old. She denied the charges before a Belgrade court in January, and Serbia will not extradite its citizens for trial in Bosnia. They do not trust Bosnian justice, her lawyer Krsto Bobot said. But not everyone enjoys such protection. - 'Notably cruel' - In March, Switzerland extradited Elfeta Veseli, a former member of Bosnian Muslim forces, back to Bosnia. She is accused of the 1992 murder of a 12-year-old Serb in eastern Bosnia. As his family had fled, the boy returned for a forgotten dog and paid for it with his life. Veseli's trial has yet to start. But as well as Basic, the United States has also extradited Rasema Handanovic, 44. She had lied about her past as a former member of a special Bosnian Muslim unit. In 2012 she pleaded guilty to the execution of three civilians and three ethnic Croat prisoners of war in the central Bosnian town of Trusina. "The order was to do the work at Trusina, so that no one remained alive," she told the court. She was jailed for five and a half years. "Each of these women had her own personal reason that could explain her sadistic outburst that targeted men in particular," said Bosnian psychologist Ismet Dizdarevic. While there were fewer women war criminals they were notably cruel "to prove their power among men," he told AFP. Most of war crimes committed by women took place in a detention context.
By PTI

MOSCOW: The Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, a prominent figure in the controversy over Russia's possible involvement in the 2016 US presidential election, has ended his assignment in Washington.



The Russian Embassy in Washington announced on Twitter that Kislyak's tenure ended yesterday.

Kislyak's successor has not been announced, although it is widely expected to be Anatoly Antonov, a deputy foreign minister and former deputy defense minister seen as a hardliner regarding the United States.

President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned after lying about contacts with Kislyak. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election after reports that he had not disclosed meetings with Kislyak.



MOSCOW: The Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, a prominent figure in the controversy over Russia's possible involvement in the 2016 US presidential election, has ended his assignment in Washington. The Russian Embassy in Washington announced on Twitter that Kislyak's tenure ended yesterday. Kislyak's successor has not been announced, although it is widely expected to be Anatoly Antonov, a deputy foreign minister and former deputy defense minister seen as a hardliner regarding the United States. President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned after lying about contacts with Kislyak. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election after reports that he had not disclosed meetings with Kislyak.
By PTI

LONDON: A Muslim woman's hijab was pulled off allegedly by a man in a vicious assault in London, amid a spike in hate crime incidents following a series of terror attacks by Islamists in the UK.

Aniso Abdulkadir was waiting for a tube at Baker Street station on July 16 when she says the man grabbed her headscarf before lashing out with his fists and pinning one of her friends up against a wall, the BBC reported.

"This man at Baker Street station forcefully attempted to pull my hijab off and when I instinctively grabbed ahold of my scarf he hit me," Abdulkadir tweeted and posted a picture of the man who allegedly attacked her.

"He proceeded to verbally abuse my friends and I, pinning one of them against the wall and spitting in her face," the tweet read.

Abdulkadir added that a woman who was present was also threatening and verbally abusive, the report said.

A British Transport Police spokesman said it was being investigated as a hate crime.

"Behaviour like this is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated...This incident has been reported to us and we're investigating," the official said.

However, a man claiming to be the man in the image tweeted on July 17 to protest his innocence, claiming he had been defending his partner from what he called a "racist attack", the Guardian reported.

He said the allegation against him was "completely false".

"I would like to confirm I never hit or attacked anyone I simply defused the situation by separating them," Pawel Uczciwek wrote.

"The police is fully cooperating with me and will be able to obtain CCTV footage showing the three women attempting to attack my partner because we are in an interracial relationship," he claimed.

The assault comes amid a spike in hate crime incidents in the UK following a suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester that claimed 22 lives and an attack in London by three terrorists, who drove a van into pedestrians and then went on a stabbing spree, killing eight persons before being shot dead.

Anti-Muslim crimes in the British capital increased fivefold since the London attack, London Mayor Sadiq Khan had said, warning that police would take a "zero-tolerance approach"

LONDON: A Muslim woman's hijab was pulled off allegedly by a man in a vicious assault in London, amid a spike in hate crime incidents following a series of terror attacks by Islamists in the UK. Aniso Abdulkadir was waiting for a tube at Baker Street station on July 16 when she says the man grabbed her headscarf before lashing out with his fists and pinning one of her friends up against a wall, the BBC reported. "This man at Baker Street station forcefully attempted to pull my hijab off and when I instinctively grabbed ahold of my scarf he hit me," Abdulkadir tweeted and posted a picture of the man who allegedly attacked her. "He proceeded to verbally abuse my friends and I, pinning one of them against the wall and spitting in her face," the tweet read. Abdulkadir added that a woman who was present was also threatening and verbally abusive, the report said. A British Transport Police spokesman said it was being investigated as a hate crime. "Behaviour like this is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated...This incident has been reported to us and we're investigating," the official said. However, a man claiming to be the man in the image tweeted on July 17 to protest his innocence, claiming he had been defending his partner from what he called a "racist attack", the Guardian reported. He said the allegation against him was "completely false". "I would like to confirm I never hit or attacked anyone I simply defused the situation by separating them," Pawel Uczciwek wrote. "The police is fully cooperating with me and will be able to obtain CCTV footage showing the three women attempting to attack my partner because we are in an interracial relationship," he claimed. The assault comes amid a spike in hate crime incidents in the UK following a suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester that claimed 22 lives and an attack in London by three terrorists, who drove a van into pedestrians and then went on a stabbing spree, killing eight persons before being shot dead. Anti-Muslim crimes in the British capital increased fivefold since the London attack, London Mayor Sadiq Khan had said, warning that police would take a "zero-tolerance approach"
By PTI

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration's new Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said today he wants to reset ties with the media by creating "an era of a new good feeling" but he would not ask the US president to change his style.



Scaramucci, during his introductory appearance at the White House on Friday, had expressed a desire to improve the administration's relationship with the media, which has hit a new low over several issues, including Donald Trump's repeated accusations that some US news outlets reported what he calls "fake news".



The 53-year-old soft-speaking New York financier told two American news networks that the administration needed to deliver its message a "little bit differently". But, he added, he would not want to change Trump's style of communication.



"He is 71 years old. We're not going to change him. The last time I checked, he won the presidency quite handily. He's going to win it again in 2020. He's our guy. And so how to learn to work with and operate with him," he told CNN.



"The president likes speaking from the heart. He likes telling what he likes and he dislikes... I just think we need to deliver the messaging a little bit differently than we have been doing it in the past," Scaramucci told the network.



Appearing on Fox News, he said there was a need to reset the ties with the media and "create a more positive mojo".

Responding to a question from the interviewer, Scaramucci said he wants "the president to be the president".

"I want him to express the full nature of his personality. Corey Lewandowski used to say early on, on the campaign, let Trump be Trump."



"My point is if he wants to talk about things like that, I'm not going to want to stop him or be able to stop him. I want to be there to help aid and abet his agenda," he said.



Though he will officially begin on August 15, Scaramucci said he would have his first meeting with his communications team tomorrow and would tell them: "Hey, I don't like these leaks. And so we're going to stop the leaks. And, if we don't stop the leaks, I'm going to stop you."

"In some ways, we want to deescalate things and have there be a level of diplomacy. In other ways, we want it to be very hard-hitting and war-like. So it's sort of a blend of those two things," he told the network.



Scaramucci's appointment as Trump administration's communications director coincided with the resignation of the press secretary, Sean Spicer, whose six-month controversial tenure saw several run-ins with the media. Spicer was mocked on popular television shows for his aggressive responses to journalists.



Spicer reportedly resigned because he was opposed to Scaramucci, whom he had to report to as press secretary.



WASHINGTON: The Trump administration's new Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said today he wants to reset ties with the media by creating "an era of a new good feeling" but he would not ask the US president to change his style. Scaramucci, during his introductory appearance at the White House on Friday, had expressed a desire to improve the administration's relationship with the media, which has hit a new low over several issues, including Donald Trump's repeated accusations that some US news outlets reported what he calls "fake news". The 53-year-old soft-speaking New York financier told two American news networks that the administration needed to deliver its message a "little bit differently". But, he added, he would not want to change Trump's style of communication. "He is 71 years old. We're not going to change him. The last time I checked, he won the presidency quite handily. He's going to win it again in 2020. He's our guy. And so how to learn to work with and operate with him," he told CNN. "The president likes speaking from the heart. He likes telling what he likes and he dislikes... I just think we need to deliver the messaging a little bit differently than we have been doing it in the past," Scaramucci told the network. Appearing on Fox News, he said there was a need to reset the ties with the media and "create a more positive mojo". Responding to a question from the interviewer, Scaramucci said he wants "the president to be the president". "I want him to express the full nature of his personality. Corey Lewandowski used to say early on, on the campaign, let Trump be Trump." "My point is if he wants to talk about things like that, I'm not going to want to stop him or be able to stop him. I want to be there to help aid and abet his agenda," he said. Though he will officially begin on August 15, Scaramucci said he would have his first meeting with his communications team tomorrow and would tell them: "Hey, I don't like these leaks. And so we're going to stop the leaks. And, if we don't stop the leaks, I'm going to stop you." "In some ways, we want to deescalate things and have there be a level of diplomacy. In other ways, we want it to be very hard-hitting and war-like. So it's sort of a blend of those two things," he told the network. Scaramucci's appointment as Trump administration's communications director coincided with the resignation of the press secretary, Sean Spicer, whose six-month controversial tenure saw several run-ins with the media. Spicer was mocked on popular television shows for his aggressive responses to journalists. Spicer reportedly resigned because he was opposed to Scaramucci, whom he had to report to as press secretary.
By PTI: (Eds: Updating with more details)

By Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Jul 21 (PTI) Pakistans Supreme Court today concluded hearing the sensitive Panama Papers case against beleaguered Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family for alleged corruption and money laundering, but reserved its verdict that could jeopardise his political future.

The judgment was reserved after counsels of both sides concluded their arguments before a three-judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan. The bench did not immediately give any date to give its judgement.

advertisement

Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed observed that the court will not deviate from any law while delivering its judgement. "We are conscious of the fundamental rights of petitioners and respondents," he said.

The apex court also opened the final part of the 10- Volume report submitted by the Joint Investigation Team it had set up to probe the allegations of money laundering by Sharif.

The six-member JIT was set up in May by the Supreme Court with the mandate to probe the Sharif family for allegedly failing to provide the trail of money used to buy properties in London in 1990s.

The JIT has recommended that the reports Volume-X should be treated as confidential as it contains the details of correspondence with other countries.

Sharifs legal team has objected to it.

Sharif, 67, has rejected all the allegations of corruption against him and his family.

But the JIT report is turning into a major challenge to Sharif, the three-time prime minister. Opposition parties accuse his family of using their political influence to amass wealth by unlawful means and are demanding his resignation.

So far Sharif has refused to quit, calling the investigators report a compilation of "allegations and assumptions". His decision to stay in power was endorsed by the federal Cabinet last week.

Exercising their right to respond to the arguments by defence lawyers, the petitioners in their brief remarks urged the apex court to disqualify Sharif and order a trial against him for allegedly hiding assets and failing to disclose the sources of income used to set up businesses by his children.

"The prime minister has failed to give satisfactory answer to the allegation of money laundering and should be disqualified," argued the lawyer of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan, one of the petitioners against Sharif.

The opposition parties in Pakistan have taken on Sharif seeking his disqualification after the Panama Papers last year revealed that he and his sons - Hassan and Hussain - and his daughter Maryam - owned offshore companies which managed their familys properties. The assets in question include four expensive flats in Park Lane, London.

advertisement

But the judges hearing the case have made observations that Sharif and his children have been unable to satisfy the court about the sources of money used to buy these properties.

The Supreme Court decision in the case is keenly awaited as it would determine the course of Pakistans polity and with it Sharifs. An adverse decision may result in Sharifs disqualification and even snap elections.

The scandal surfaced when the Panama Papers leaks last year revealed that Sharifs sons -- Hassan Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz -- and his daughter Maryam -- owned offshore companies which managed their familys properties. PTI SH ABH AKJ AKJ

--- ENDS ---
By ANI

LAHORE: Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif on Saturday said that the talk of appointing a new Prime Minister is just a speculation.

His statement comes amidst fears that Pakistans Supreme Court is set to ask Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to step down over the Panama Papers case.

Specifically stating that Prime Minister Sharif's name was not mentioned in the Panama Papers, Asif said, "The option of a new prime minister is not under consideration."

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, who has escaped indictment in the JIT report, is the front-runner for the Prime Minister's job, that is, if Prime Minister Sharif is disqualified by the Supreme Court for alleged graft and money laundering in the sensitive Panama Papers case.

The Pakistan Premier chaired a high-profile meeting of party leaders on Saturday and clearly stated that he would not tender his resignation.

Asif said that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was being held accountable when the names of his children were mentioned in the scandal.

The Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz (PML-N) leader said that the premier presented himself for accountability when he could have taken diplomatic immunity, the Samaa TV reported.

Asif stated, Politicians have gone to extreme lengths to defame the characters of one another.

LAHORE: Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif on Saturday said that the talk of appointing a new Prime Minister is just a speculation. His statement comes amidst fears that Pakistans Supreme Court is set to ask Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to step down over the Panama Papers case. Specifically stating that Prime Minister Sharif's name was not mentioned in the Panama Papers, Asif said, "The option of a new prime minister is not under consideration." Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, who has escaped indictment in the JIT report, is the front-runner for the Prime Minister's job, that is, if Prime Minister Sharif is disqualified by the Supreme Court for alleged graft and money laundering in the sensitive Panama Papers case. The Pakistan Premier chaired a high-profile meeting of party leaders on Saturday and clearly stated that he would not tender his resignation. Asif said that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was being held accountable when the names of his children were mentioned in the scandal. The Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz (PML-N) leader said that the premier presented himself for accountability when he could have taken diplomatic immunity, the Samaa TV reported. Asif stated, Politicians have gone to extreme lengths to defame the characters of one another.
By PTI

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's embattled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has admitted before the Supreme Court, hearing a money laundering case against him, that he had obtained a permit to work in a company in the UAE while rejecting the allegation that he had concealed his employment.

In a written reply submitted in the apex court yesterday through his counsels -- Khawaja Haris, Amjad Pervaiz and Saad Hashmi -- Sharif said his employment with the Capital FZE and obtaining of work permit for it had been mentioned in his nomination papers submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) during the 2013 general election.

A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted by the apex court to probe the offshore business dealings of the Sharif family in 1990s in its report said that the prime minister was the chairman of Capital FZE and he had also obtained a work permit from the UAE government for the purpose.

The prime ministers lawyers had initially denied that Sharif was the chairman of any offshore company.

In his fresh reply, Sharif told the Supreme Court that his son, Hassan Nawaz, was the "owner, director & secretary and the authorised signatory of the Capital FZE".

"Nawaz Sharif is not a shareholder, or director or secretary of Capital FZE," according to the reply. The premier was only a "ceremonial office holder" in 2007 when he was in exile and had nothing to do with the running of the company or supervising its affairs, it said.

"The Iqama (work permit) and the prime ministers employment with the Capital FZE is reflected in the copies of his passport annexed with the nomination forms submitted to the ECP before 2013 election. Being no separate column in the nomination forms for any such information to be provided by the candidate contesting the election Nawaz Sharif's passport copies were annexed," the reply said.

A six-member JIT was set up in May by the apex court with the mandate to probe the Sharif family for allegedly failing to provide the trail of money used to buy properties in London in 1990s.

The JIT has recommended that the report's Volume-X should be treated as confidential as it contains the details of correspondence with other countries.



So far Sharif has refused to quit, calling the investigators' report a compilation of "allegations and assumptions".



The apex court is likely to announce its verdict in the sensitive Panama Papers case against Sharif in the coming week. Sharif and his cabinet members have been alleging for weeks that conspiracies are being hatched to oust Nawaz Sharif. They openly blamed the military establishment and judiciary behind the plot for Sharif's ouster.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's embattled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has admitted before the Supreme Court, hearing a money laundering case against him, that he had obtained a permit to work in a company in the UAE while rejecting the allegation that he had concealed his employment. In a written reply submitted in the apex court yesterday through his counsels -- Khawaja Haris, Amjad Pervaiz and Saad Hashmi -- Sharif said his employment with the Capital FZE and obtaining of work permit for it had been mentioned in his nomination papers submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) during the 2013 general election. A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted by the apex court to probe the offshore business dealings of the Sharif family in 1990s in its report said that the prime minister was the chairman of Capital FZE and he had also obtained a work permit from the UAE government for the purpose. The prime ministers lawyers had initially denied that Sharif was the chairman of any offshore company. In his fresh reply, Sharif told the Supreme Court that his son, Hassan Nawaz, was the "owner, director & secretary and the authorised signatory of the Capital FZE". "Nawaz Sharif is not a shareholder, or director or secretary of Capital FZE," according to the reply. The premier was only a "ceremonial office holder" in 2007 when he was in exile and had nothing to do with the running of the company or supervising its affairs, it said. "The Iqama (work permit) and the prime ministers employment with the Capital FZE is reflected in the copies of his passport annexed with the nomination forms submitted to the ECP before 2013 election. Being no separate column in the nomination forms for any such information to be provided by the candidate contesting the election Nawaz Sharif's passport copies were annexed," the reply said. A six-member JIT was set up in May by the apex court with the mandate to probe the Sharif family for allegedly failing to provide the trail of money used to buy properties in London in 1990s. The JIT has recommended that the report's Volume-X should be treated as confidential as it contains the details of correspondence with other countries. So far Sharif has refused to quit, calling the investigators' report a compilation of "allegations and assumptions". The apex court is likely to announce its verdict in the sensitive Panama Papers case against Sharif in the coming week. Sharif and his cabinet members have been alleging for weeks that conspiracies are being hatched to oust Nawaz Sharif. They openly blamed the military establishment and judiciary behind the plot for Sharif's ouster.
By PTI

JEDDAH: Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday began a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no one had an interest in prolonging the crisis.



Erdogan, whose country has come to Qatar's aid in the crisis, had talks in Jeddah Sunday with King Salman who hailed the Turkish leader's "efforts in the fight against terrorism and its financing," Saudi state news agency SPA reported.



Erdogan is scheduled to fly to Kuwait later today before heading to Qatar tomorrow for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began. "No one has any interest in prolonging this crisis anymore," Erdogan said in Istanbul before leaving on the two-day trip.



He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.



Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying Doha had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said.



On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran. Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.



The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position, and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.



In recent years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.



Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region.

It has expedited the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base. "From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.



But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.



As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan was also to hold talks with Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of Crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house.



"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom.



Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.



JEDDAH: Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday began a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no one had an interest in prolonging the crisis. Erdogan, whose country has come to Qatar's aid in the crisis, had talks in Jeddah Sunday with King Salman who hailed the Turkish leader's "efforts in the fight against terrorism and its financing," Saudi state news agency SPA reported. Erdogan is scheduled to fly to Kuwait later today before heading to Qatar tomorrow for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began. "No one has any interest in prolonging this crisis anymore," Erdogan said in Istanbul before leaving on the two-day trip. He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region. Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying Doha had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said. On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran. Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff. The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position, and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible. In recent years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad. Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has expedited the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base. "From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan. But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia. As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan was also to hold talks with Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of Crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house. "As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom. Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.
By IANS

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council will hold an urgent meeting on Monday morning to discuss the violence unfolding in Jerusalem, diplomats said.

According to the UN mission of China, president of the UN Security Council for July, the meeting will be held behind closed doors.

"Sweden, France and Egypt request UN Security Council to urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported," said Security Council coordinator of the mission of Sweden Carl Skau on his Twitter account on Saturday.

Three Israelis were killed on Friday in a stabbing attack by a Palestinian in a West Bank settlement.

The attack followed clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in Jerusalem's Old City, in which three Palestinians died.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Middle East Quartet -- Russia, the US, the European Union and the UN -- expressed concerns over the escalating tensions.

"The Quartet envoys reiterate that violence deepens mistrust and is fundamentally incompatible with achieving a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said the statement.

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council will hold an urgent meeting on Monday morning to discuss the violence unfolding in Jerusalem, diplomats said. According to the UN mission of China, president of the UN Security Council for July, the meeting will be held behind closed doors. "Sweden, France and Egypt request UN Security Council to urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported," said Security Council coordinator of the mission of Sweden Carl Skau on his Twitter account on Saturday. Three Israelis were killed on Friday in a stabbing attack by a Palestinian in a West Bank settlement. The attack followed clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in Jerusalem's Old City, in which three Palestinians died. In a statement released on Saturday, the Middle East Quartet -- Russia, the US, the European Union and the UN -- expressed concerns over the escalating tensions. "The Quartet envoys reiterate that violence deepens mistrust and is fundamentally incompatible with achieving a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said the statement.
By Associated Press

AMMAN (JORDAN): A Jordanian man was shot to death and an Israeli man was wounded in a violent incident at the Israeli embassy in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Sunday evening, a security official and a news site linked to Jordan's military reported.

The Hala Akhbar site said the violent incident also included a stabbing.

It said the Israeli man was in an "unstable" condition and that the Jordanian died after suffering critical gunshot injuries.

A security official confirmed a Jordanian had been killed and an Israeli wounded, but would not provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident with the media.

The site says one of the wounded was in critical and the other in an "unstable" condition.

Israel's Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

The incident comes at a time of mounting tensions between Israel and the Muslim world over metal detectors Israel installed at a Jerusalem shrine revered by Muslims and Jews.Jordan is the Muslim custodian of the site. On Friday, thousands of Jordanians staged an anti-Israeli protest in Amman.

AMMAN (JORDAN): A Jordanian man was shot to death and an Israeli man was wounded in a violent incident at the Israeli embassy in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Sunday evening, a security official and a news site linked to Jordan's military reported. The Hala Akhbar site said the violent incident also included a stabbing. It said the Israeli man was in an "unstable" condition and that the Jordanian died after suffering critical gunshot injuries. A security official confirmed a Jordanian had been killed and an Israeli wounded, but would not provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident with the media. The site says one of the wounded was in critical and the other in an "unstable" condition. Israel's Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment. The incident comes at a time of mounting tensions between Israel and the Muslim world over metal detectors Israel installed at a Jerusalem shrine revered by Muslims and Jews.Jordan is the Muslim custodian of the site. On Friday, thousands of Jordanians staged an anti-Israeli protest in Amman.
I would like to acknowledge my deep gratitude and appreciation to Honourable Speaker and the Honourable Chairman, Rajya Sabha and Honourable Members of Parliament for organizing this farewell ceremony on the eve of my demitting office as the 13th President of the Republic of India.

If I say I am a creation of this Parliament. It shaped by political outlook and persona. Bear with me if I feel nostalgic and indulge myself by going back to the past. On 26th January 1950, the Constitution of India came into effect. In a remarkable display of idealism and courage, we the people of India gave to ourselves a sovereign democratic republic to secure to all its citizens justice, liberty and equality.

We undertook to promote amongst all citizens fraternity, the dignity of the individual and the unity of the nation. These ideals became the lodestars of the modern Indian state. The Indian Constitution consisting of 395 Articles and 12 Schedules is not merely a legal document for administration but the Magna Carta of socio-economic transformation of the country. It represents the hopes and aspirations of the billion plus Indians.

Sixty eight years ago, after the first general election, the Indian Parliament began its journey representing the sovereign will of its people. Both the Houses were constituted, the first President of the Republic was elected who addressed the first Joint Session of the Parliament and the Indian Parliamentary system rolled out.

When I first entered the portals of this hallowed institution 48 years ago, I was only 34 years old. In July 1969, I came to this Parliament as a member of Rajya Sabha representing one of the six seats from the State of West Bengal. My election to Rajya Sabha took place on 4th July and the first session I attended began on July 22nd, 1969.

Since then, for 37 years I served as a Member of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Of these, I served five terms as a Member of the Rajya Sabha, elected for four terms from West Bengal and one term from Gujarat, and two terms in the Lok Sabha. My long career has been instructive and educative. I entered Parliament at a time when the Rajya Sabha was full of experienced Parliamentarians and leaders of the freedom movement, many of whom were brilliant speakers: M.C. Chagla, Ajit Prasad Jain, Jairamdas Daulatram, Bhupesh Gupta, Joachim Alva, Mahavir Tyagi, Raj Narain, Bhai Mahavir, Loknath Misra, Chitta Basu and many more.

In fact, Bhupesh Gupta was truly a legend in the Rajya Sabha. Dahyabhai Patel and Maniben Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's son and daughter, represented Swatantra Party in the Parliament. My years in Parliament were further enriched by the wisdom of P.V. Narasimha Rao, oration of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, cryptic one-liners of Madhu Limaye and Dr. Nath Pai, wit and humour of Piloo Modi, poetic discourses of Hiren Mukherjee, razor sharp repartee of Indrajit Gupta, calming presence of Dr. Manmohan Singh, mature advice of L.K. Advani and passionate support of Sonia Gandhi on social legislations.

In those days, both the Houses of the Parliament used to reverberate with animated discussions and illuminative and exhaustive debates on social and financial legislations. Listening to the stalwarts for hours and days in Parliament sitting in the Treasury or Opposition Benches, I felt one with the soul of this living institution. I understood the real value of debate, discussion and dissent. I realized how disruption hurts the opposition more than the government as it denies them the opportunity to raise the concerns of the people.

I internalized the essence of what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had said (and I quote): "There has always to be balancing of change and continuity. The system of parliamentary democracy embodies these principles of change and continuity. And it is up to those who function in this system, members of the House and the numerous others who are part of this system, to increase the pace of change, to make it as fast as they like, subject to the principle of continuity. If continuity is broken, we become rootless and the system of parliamentary democracy breaks down" (unquote).

I experienced the joy of the enactment of pro-poor and pro-farmer legislations. The recent passage of Goods and Services Tax and its launch on 1st July is a shining example of co-operative federalism and speaks volumes for the maturity of Indian Parliament. To be a part of this system is a unique experience and I am grateful to the people of this great country for giving me that opportunity.

I had the privilege of being a witness and a participant in the unfolding scenario of emergence of a great India. An India where 130 crore people belonging to three major ethnic groups - Aryans, Dravidians and Mongoloids - practicing 7 major religions and speaking 122 languages in daily lives live under one Constitution, one flag and one administrative system.

Not a single part of this vast territory of 3.3 million square kilometers of landmass and islands is unrepresented in the Parliament. 543 persons from the 543 territorial constituencies of this country representing the people in Lok Sabha and 245 persons elected by 29 States and 7 Union Territories make laws, scrutinize orders of the executive and enforce accountability to protect the interests of the people. Each of these 788 voices is important.

It is unfortunate that the parliamentary time devoted to legislation has been declining. With the heightened complexity of administration, legislation must be preceded by scrutiny and adequate discussion. Scrutiny in committees is no substitute to open discussion on the floor of the House. When the Parliament fails to discharge its law-making role or enacts laws without discussion, I feel it breaches the trust reposed in it by the people of this great country.

Through the instrument of Ordinances, the Executive has been vested with extraordinary powers to make laws to meet exigencies during a time when Parliament is not in session. However, such Ordinances have to be approved by Parliament within six weeks of the next session of the Parliament.

I am firm in the opinion that the Ordinance route should be used only in compelling circumstances and there should be no recourse to Ordinances on monetary matters. Ordinance route should not be taken on matters which are being considered or have been introduced in the House or a committee of the House. If a matter is deemed urgent, the concerned committee should be made aware of the situation and should be mandated to present its report within the stipulated time.

It was in July 2012 that my membership in Lok Sabha came to an end when I was declared elected as the 13th President of the Republic on 22nd of that month. Even though thirty-seven years of my life in Parliament came to an end on that day but I still continued to have a tenacious link with this institution, in fact I became an integral part of it, as the President of Republic, as per the Constitution. Article 79 of the Indian Constitution says: "There shall be a Parliament for the Union which shall consist of the President and two Houses to be known respectively as the Council of States and the House of the People."

In these five years, my principal responsibility was to function as the guardian of the Constitution. As I had said on oath, I strived to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution, not just in word but also in spirit. In this task, I greatly benefitted from the advice and co-operation extended by Prime Minister Modi at every step. With passion and energy, he is driving transformational changes in the country. I will carry with me fond memories of our association and his warm and courteous behaviour.

As I retire from the Office of the President of the Republic, my association with the Parliament also comes to an end. I will no longer be a part of the Parliament of India. It will be with a tinge of sadness and a rainbow of memories that I will be leaving this magnificent building today.
What's next for Chase Marina? RIDEM has received plenty of proposals

Bob Ballou, assistant to the director of RIDEM, spoke about the goal of establishing a state port in Tiverton similar to Newports State Pier #9.
Copy Editor/Entertainment Editor

Frank Pieper is a copy editor and entertainment editor at The News-Gazette, and the author of Frank's Faves and Frank's Weekend Faves. His email is fpieper@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@frp308).
One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021
A proud owner of over 500 smoking pipes gifted to him by different heads of states and other foreign dignitaries, Pranab Mukherjee has donated the collection to the Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum.

By PTI: The late Indira Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee shared an unspoken bond--not just metaphorically but literally.

The story goes that it was difficult, rather impossible, for any outsider to extract any information he did not want to reveal.

"Even Mrs Gandhi would say, no matter how hard one tries, they can never get a word out of Pranab. All they will see is the smoke coming out of his pipe," laughed journalist and long-time friend Jayanta Ghoshal, who has known Mukherjee since 1985, as he remembered the immense faith between the prime minister and her finance minister.

advertisement

As the 13th president of India leaves the Rashtrapati Bhavan tomorrow, making way for his successor Ram Nath Kovind, old friends recalled with fondness the many anecdotes that marked his long career in politics.

LOVE FOR SMOKING PIPE

Mukherjee is said to have had loved his pipes, even after he quit smoking years ago.

"He never smoked cigarettes, only the pipe. After he was asked to quit smoking for health issues, he wouldn't smoke but would keep the pipe in his mouth, without any nicotine, and chew the stem of pipe, just to get the feel of it," Ghoshal said.

Pranab Mukherjee with a Dunhill pipe. Photo: Pramod Pushkarna/India Today

A proud owner of over 500 smoking pipes gifted to him by different heads of states and other foreign dignitaries, Mukherjee has donated the collection to the Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum.

His first pipe, Ghoshal said, was given to him by senior Congress leader Debkanta Barua from Assam.

ANECDOTES ABOUT INDIRA

The journalist first met Mukherjee in 1985, at the latter's south Calcutta residence in Southern Avenue, as a junior reporter in the Bengali daily Bartaman.

Young and enthusiastic, Ghoshal would accompany the politician on each of his trips to different districts in West Bengal, gaining political knowledge on the way.

"He was a very scholarly person. Even though I was only a junior reporter, he would explain things (political science) to me and I would listen to him like a student."

"He would also sometimes share anecdotes about Indira Gandhi. He used to miss her a lot," Ghoshal recalled, remembering the days after Gandhi's assassination when there was a leadership struggle in the party.

BECOMING THE NUMBER ONE

Senior Congress leader and former union minister Shivraj Patil describes his long-time colleague as a man who "knew the politics and economics of the country in the best possible manner".

"He was one of the senior most members in Parliament and he knew very well in what manner a minister should conduct himself. He knew how the Constitution is to be protected without creating problems for the government. He was one of the best presidents of India," Patil said.

advertisement

For fellow Bengali and Trinamool Congress (TMC) member Saugato Roy, Mukherjee was a lover of "old political history" and an extremely affectionate and hard working man.

"Although it has been long since I split from the Congress, I continue to enjoy his affection. He loved to talk about old political history. I have known him for 30-35 years and he is an extremely hard working person. When he was the finance minister, I remember how he wouldn't ever leave without meeting the last visitor," Roy said.

Having held several ministerial portfolios in the Indian government, including defence, finance and external affairs, Mukherjee was, as Ghoshal noted, "perpetual Number 2".

"Becoming the President of India gave him the opportunity to become Number 1," he said.

ALSO READ:

Let there be debate, dissent but never intolerance, says President Pranab Mukherjee at IIM Calcutta

Perks of a former president: A sprawling house for Mr Mukherjee in Lutyens Delhi with a library

No Mercy: Pranab Mukherjee rejected 30 mercy petitions as President

advertisement

IN PICTURES: Man Friday of Congress party: President Pranab Mukherjee's story

ALSO WATCH: PM Modi gets emotional, says Pranab Da has guided him like a father figure

--- ENDS ---
Despite Darjeeling experiencing violent protests for more than a month, the constituencys MP, SS Ahluwalia has not visited the hilly region. Taking note of the absence, the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) has lodged a missing persons complaint against the minister. The GNLF is an ally of GJM in the Gorkhaland protests.While questioning the role and responsibility of Ahluwalia, GNLF leader Neeraj Zimba Tamang said, It is quite unfortunate that despite several killings by police and the state governments atrocities against the pro-Gorkhaland leaders, the Darjeeling MP hasnt even bothered to visit the Hills. Therefore, we have lodged a missing complaint at the Sadar police station for him on Friday.He was elected by the people of the Hills and it is his duty to stand beside them at a time when they need him the most. There are so many human right violations taking place and he is not bothered. He should not forget his responsibilities to his people, said Tamang.The miffed GNLF has also put up several missing posters of Ahluwalia across Darjeeling and other parts of the Hills.The posters  contains Ahluwalias name and other details in Nepali - requests the people to find the missing MP.People, especially children, here are without proper food, drinking water, medicines etc. No one is bothered and therefore we urge the people to find the MP, said MG Subba, chief convener of the GNLF Darjeeling branch committee and the person who lodged the complaint.However, GJM leaders came out in support of Ahluwalia and claimed that he was working, supporting the movement from Delhi.This is a publicity stunt by the GNLF. I would like to ask them to participate in the Gorkhaland movement seriously, Prakash Gurung, president of the GJMs Yuva Morcha said.In August 2013, the Gorkhaland Task Force, an alliance of pro-Gorkhaland political parties, had filed a missing person report at the Kalimpong police station against former Darjeeling MP Jaswant Singh.
At #KargilParakramRally meant to recall the valor & sacrifices of our brave soldiers that resulted in spectacular victory in #KargilWar 1999 pic.twitter.com/bwnMk4Q4GY  M Venkaiah Naidu (@MVenkaiahNaidu) July 23, 2017

BJPs vice-presidential nominee Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday warned Pakistan against aiding and abetting terrorism, asking the neighbour to recall what happened in 1971.Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them. They should recall what happened in 1971, the former Union minister said at a Kargil Parakram Rally. He was referring to the 1971 war between India and Pakistan which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh.India will mark Kargil Vijay Diwas on July 26 amid tensions with Pakistan over repeated ceasefire violations and the death sentence handed to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav on spying charges.Ours is a peace loving country. But when this highly coveted peace is denied to us, our brave soldiers respond in a befitting manner, Naidu tweeted later in the day.Naidu had stepped down as Information and Broadcasting minister last week after the BJP announced him as its vice-presidential nominee against opposition candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi.Naidu so far enjoys the support of 485 of the 788 members of the Electoral College that will choose the next vice-president on August 5, his election managers have said.
Mumbai: The husband of a former Doordarshan anchor, who was crushed to death on Friday morning when a coconut tree fell on her, is now planning to sue the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).



Kanchan Nath (58) was out on a morning walk when the coconut tree fell on her in Mumbais Chembur. Footage from a nearby CCTV camera showed passersby rushing to her aid and trying to remove the mammoth tree off Nath. She was taken to the hospital and succumbed to her injuries the next day.



Once I am done with my responsibilities, I will sue the BMC I will not get my wife back, but this should not happen to anyone else, said Rajat Nath to CNN-News18.



CNN-News18 has learnt that nearby residents had complained to the BMC in February that the trees branches were falling onto the road, posing a hazard to pedestrians and motorists. CNN-News18 has a copy of the complaint.



Rajat Nath, Kanchans husband, told CNN-News18 that the civic body had assured them and then certified the tree as healthy. We (the society people) had complained to the BMC about the tree. They assured us on Friday that they were coming in an hour and then stopped picking our calls. The BMC had certified that the tree was healthy, said Nath.



How can the tree be healthy when it was over 50 years old? The tree had stopped bearing any fruit and had gone weak. The BMC is more interested in people making fun of them rather than taking note of the complaints filed by the people. Look at what has happened with RJ Malishka. She made a video about them and they are trying to sue her. Look at the conditions of the roads, said Nath.



The incident is likely to result in more flak for the Shiv Sena-led BMC. The civic body is already under fire shooting off a notice to radio jockey Malishka Mendonsa after her parody video mocked the corporation for the citys potholed roads.



The notice has asked Malishka to pay Rs 10,000 as fine after an Aedes mosquito breeding site was allegedly detected at her house.






Ahmedabad: Veteran leader Shankersinh Vaghela, who quit the Congress two days ago, resigned as Leader of Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly on Sunday.



In his resignation letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he alleged that party leaders never accepted him wholeheartedly, and had actively worked to ensure his defeat in several elections over the past couple of decades.



He said some Congress leaders were conspiring against him ahead of the Assembly polls, expected to be held in Gujarat in December. "As I can see right now that once again history is repeating itself, as a well-planned conspiracy within the party is at work for ousting me during the forthcoming elections. Hence, I strongly feel that I should not remain in the party at the cost of my dignity and self-respect, he said in the letter.



Vaghela also thanked Gandhi for making him Union minister in the UPA-1 government. Venting his anger on the Congress, Vaghela claimed he was left with no other option but to resign as his suggestions for the upcoming Assembly polls were not accepted.



In the three page letter, Vaghela recounted how Congress leaders had made deliberate attempts to ensure his defeat in the 1999, 2004 and the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, which he had lost by a narrow margin.



In 1999, the Congress high command decided to pitch Shankersinh Vaghela against Lal Krishna Advani from the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat. Vaghela declined and instead sought to contest from the Kapadwanj seat. Many in the Congress had then alleged that Vaghela declined to contest against Advani because of his BJP and RSS background.



In his 'farewell' speech on Friday, Vaghela announced he would resign as MLA on August 15, after the Rajya Sabha polls, to be held on August 8. The former RSS leader, who left the BJP 20 years ago and later joined the Congress, also announced that he will not join any political party, not even the BJP.



This is not the first time that Shankerinh Vaghela has openly stated that several leaders within the Congress have always conspired to ensure his defeat. On June 24 this year, Vaghela recounted the general elections of 2004 and 2009, saying that on both occasions, several Congress leaders had conspired to ensure not only his defeat but also defeat of his loyalists.



Vaghela had won the 1999 election and the 2004 Lok Sabha elections from the Kapadwanj seat. However post delimitation, the Lok Sabha seat ceased to exist and Vaghela contested from the Godhra Lok Sabha seat. Interestingly there were about 4 or 5 candidates with the name Shankersinh Vaghela, with just the little change in the spelling of the name. Vaghela had lost that election by a narrow margin.
Outside the world of Internet, posters of identified gangsters have been put up at dhabas and bus stands, seeking help of general public in nabbing the gangsters (Photo: Jyoti Kamal, Network18)
New Delhi: An emotional President Pranab Mukherjee said he would leave the Parliament with a tinge of sadness and a rainbow of memories as he thanked all parliamentarians for giving him a warm farewell.



In his final speech in the Central Hall of Parliament, Mukherjee reminisced about his political journey, and said that he was a creation of this Parliament as the House had created his political outlook and persona. He was 34 when he was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1969. He spoke about his relationships during his long career lasting 48 years, and said he would carry fond memories of his association with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his tenure as President.



He reserved the most praise for his mentor, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and described her as a towering personality. My career was mentored by Mrs Indira Gandhi who was a towering personality. She had the courage to call a spade a spade," Mukherjee said, as he related an interesting incident that happened in London after the Congress defeat post Emergency.



After the Congress and her own defeat post Emergency, she went to London in 1978. A battery of media persons, in a fairly aggressive mood were waiting to ask questions, he said. "The first question was: What had been your gains from Emergency?' Looking directly into their eyes, in a level voice she replied: In those 21 months, we comprehensively managed to alienate all sections of people, Mukherjee recalled.



After a few seconds of silence, there was laughter, he said. Nobody after that asked a question about Emergency and the media persons melted away, he said.



Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who addressed the parliamentarians first, said Mukherjee had adorned the office of the President with great dignity and it was a sombre moment for all those gathered in the Central Hall of Parliament.



You have been a guru for a generation of parliamentarians. Your contributions will be cherished for times to come, she added.



Vice-president Hamid Ansari also showered praises on Mukherjee, saying his rich political legacy would inspire a generation of parliamentarians. President Pranab has an unshakable belief in the idea of India. He has spoken about the plurality of our country and has preserved it, said Ansari, whose term as V-P will come to an end next month.



The outgoing President left with a parting advice for MPs, the Opposition as well as the government. He said the governments should avoid taking the Ordinance route to promulgate a law it wants, and stressed that this option should be used only in "compelling circumstances".



Mukherjee said: I am firm in my opinion that the Ordinance route should be used only in compelling circumstances and there should be no recourse to Ordinance in monetary matters. When legislation is passed without discussion it betrays the trust that people have in the Parliament.



He also voiced concern over the disruption of proceedings in the Parliament and said, I know that disruption hurts the Opposition more than the government as it denies them the opportunity to raise the concerns of the people. He cited the implementation of Goods and Services Tax, and said it was an example of a mature democracy.



It is unfortunate that the parliamentary time devoted to legislation has been declining. With the heightened complexity of administration, legislation must be preceded by scrutiny and adequate discussion, he said.
Happy birthday to my happiness.your blessings are always a boon.thank you all. pic.twitter.com/F7ardNVZHn  Jr NTR (@tarak9999) July 22, 2017

Actor Jr. NTRs son Abhay Ram turned two on Saturday. He paid his father a surprise visit along with his mother and some family friends on the sets of Telugu Bigg Boss, a source said."Abhay, NTR's wife and some of his friends paid him a surprise visit on the sets of Bigg Boss. They celebrated Abhay's birthday on the sets of the reality show in Lonavala," a source close to Jr. NTR said.Jr. NTR tweeted on Saturday: "Happy birthday to my happiness. Your blessings are always a boon."He also shared a picture with Abhay from the sets.NTR is hosting the Telugu version of Bigg Boss, which marks his television debut.On the career front, he is currently shooting for upcoming Telugu actioner Jai Lava Kusa, in which he plays a triple role.
Thiruvananthapuram: The Congress in Kerala on Sunday suspended its MLA M Vincent from the party post after he was arrested for allegedly raping and stalking a woman, though it defended him saying "the case and his arrest is politically motivated."



"Though the rape charges and the arrest was part of a political conspiracy, considering the complaint of the woman, the Congress has decided to suspend Vincent from the party secretary post, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president M M Hassan told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.



He would stand divested of the party post till his innocence in the case is proved, Hassan said, adding, Vincent has told the party that he was confident that he would be able to prove his innocence in the court.



The Congress rejected the demand of the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF for the resignation of Vincent and said there was no need for it now.



"Party will take a call on that after he is declared guilty by the court," he said.



Terming the arrest as an unusual step, Hassan wanted the police to probe the conspiracy angle to the whole episode. "The charges against the MLA were converted into rape following political pressure exerted by local CPI(M) MLA K Ansalan and some of its local leaders," Hassan alleged.



Hassan also mentioned about media reports on statement of the victim's sister that "it is a case of political conspiracy and the victim is suffering from mental problem."



Stating that the case and further steps against Vincent was taken in a haste, Hassan said CPI(M)-led LDF government had not taken any action against its worker in Vadakancherry and NCP MLA A K Saseendhran who were facing sexual harassment complaint by women.



Meanwhile, the CPI(M) rubbished the Congress charges that political conspiracy was behind the arrest of Vincent and said the government initiated steps as per the law.



CPI(M) State Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the MLA was charged and arrested on the basis of the deposition of the victim, which was very important in such cases.



"I failed to understand the logic behind the Congress party's charge that the case is part of political conspiracy," he said.



The LDF government is committed to protect women from any atrocity and would take stern action against persons who indulge in crime against women, he said.



Vincent, representing Kovalam segment in the assembly, was arrested yesterday on charges of rape and abatement of suicide under respectively under sections 376 and 306 of the Indian Penal Code.



A Neyyatinkara magisterial court sent him to judicial custody on Saturday for 14 days.



The incident came to light on July 19 after the 51-year-old woman attempted to commit suicide by consuming an overdose of sleeping pills and her husband filed a police complaint against the MLA, alleging that he used to repeatedly call her over the phone and harasser her.



The police had said on Saturday that the MLA had made more than 900 calls to the woman in the past few months.



The police had questioned Vincent for over three hours at the MLA's hostel here yesterday after which he was arrested.
The Russian embassy in Washington said on its Twitter feed that Minister-Counseler and Deputy Chief of Mission Denis V. Gonchar would serve as Charge d'Affaires until Kislyak's successor arrived.

By Reuters: Russia's ambassador to Washington Sergei Kislyak, a key figure in ongoing US investigations into Moscow's meddling in the 2016 presidential election, ended his tenure on Saturday.

The Russian embassy in Washington said on its Twitter feed that Minister-Counseler and Deputy Chief of Mission Denis V. Gonchar would serve as Charge d'Affaires until Kislyak's successor arrived.

Kislyak, who held the post since 2008, is expected to be replaced by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Antonov.

advertisement

Antonov's nomination for the post, which has yet to be approved by the Kremlin, comes at a time of intense scrutiny over Moscow-Washington relations following US allegations that Russia meddled in the U S election last year.

Kislyak's name has emerged in relation to several of Trump's associates as a special counsel and congressional panels investigate Russian meddling and possible ties with the Trump campaign.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported Kislyak was overheard by US spy agencies telling his bosses he had discussed campaign-related matters, including issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race.

As Attorney General, Sessions recused himself in March from matters connected to an investigation by the FBI following his admission he had talked to the Russian envoy.

Sessions has denied discussing campaign issues with Russian officials and has said he only met Kislyak in his role of US senator.

Former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign in February after it became known that he had failed to disclose the content of conversations he had with Kislyak and misled the vice president about their meetings.

Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner also failed to disclose contacts with Russia when seeking his security clearance, the New York Times reported in April.

The White House disclosed in March that Kushner met with Kislyak at Trump Tower in December 2016, in addition to seeing Kislyak when he attended an April 2016 campaign speech in Washington. The White House said the December meeting was to establish "a line of communication."

Kushner also had phone calls with Kislyak between April and November 2016, Reuters reported. Kushner's attorney has said that Kushner had "no recollection" of the calls as he had participated in "thousands of calls in this time period."

Moscow has denied any interference, and Trump has said his campaign did not collude with Russia. The White House said this week Trump would nominate Jon Huntsman as his new ambassador to Russia.

ALSO READ | White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer wishes India a happy Independence Day... in June

ALSO READ | Trump spokesman sparks outcry by comparing Assad to Hitler, apologises

advertisement

ALSO WATCH | Trump administration blocks funding to Pakistan for not acting against Haqqani network

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi: The Election Commission has found that some politicians sidestep provisions of the model code while raking up religious issues and has written to political parties in this regard.



The poll panel has pointed out that during by-elections, political functionaries tend to issue appeals on religious or communal grounds in areas not covered under the provisions of the model code.



And by doing so, they seek to avoid violating its provisions.



This has far reaching implications as it would certainly influence the minds of electors of the assembly or parliamentary constituency where the by-election is going on and, thus vitiate the free and fair elections in that constituency, the poll watchdog has written to leaders of all recognised national and state parties.



It has now requested political parties to advise their leaders and cadre to refrain from making such appeals as intend to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the society.



In its June 29 letter, the commission said such statements should not be made at any time throughout the country.



It said special care must be taken on use of words even in the areas where model code is not in force so that the purity of election process is maintained and no ill feeling is generated among the general public which is essential for conducive atmosphere for conducting free, fair and peaceful elections.



The Model Code of Conduct is a set of norms which has been evolved with the consensus of political parties who have consented to abide by the principles embodied in it.



During bypolls, the code is applicable in the entire district in which the constituency falls.
New Delhi: In a setback to DMK veteran K N Nehru, the Supreme Court has paved the way for further investigation into the alleged disproportionate assets of his son and set aside his exoneration in the case.



The apex court has set aside the order of the Madras High Court exonerating Nehru, a former transport minister, and his wife terming their discharge pending investigation as "visibly prematured" and "unsustainable in law as well as on facts".



Nehru, his wife Shanta and son Arun are accused of acquiring assets disproportionate to their known sources of income during his tenure as the transport minister of Tamil Nadu between 2006 and 2011.



Currently an MLA from the Tiruchirappalli West constituency, he has been a four-time legislator of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party.



"The impugned order directing the discharge of the respondents is hereby set aside and the order of the Trial Court vis-a-vis them is restored," a bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy said.



It directed the vigilance department to complete further investigation at the earliest so as to enable the trial court to proceed in accordance with law.



The bench upheld the direction of High Court and the trial court for further probe and said the probe agency should keep in mind "the seriousness of the charge and the avowed objectives of the anti-corruption law involved and conduct the investigation as expected of it and submit its report as expeditiously as possible".



The apex court allowed the appeal of the state government challenging the High Court order exonerating Nehru and his wife but affirming the direction for further probe against his son Arun.



"Having regard to the FIR, the explanation provided by the respondent No.1 (Nehru), the charge-sheet submitted as well as the indispensability of the scrutiny of the sources of income of Arun and his assets, we are of the view that the courts below had rightly directed further investigation to verify the genuineness or otherwise of the source(s) of income of Arun and his assets and the bearing thereof, if any, on the charge levelled against the respondents," it said.



The court observed that the High Court, having endorsed the direction for further investigation vis-a-vis Arun, ought not to have recorded its findings of exoneration of Nehru and his wife at this stage.



"In fact, the discharge of the respondents flies in the face of the direction for further investigation into the affairs of Arun in order to verify the lawfulness or otherwise of his source of income and his assets.



"In our estimate, in view of the correlation of the explanation provided by the respondent No.1 to the imputation of disproportionate assets and the probe ordered into the affairs of Arun, to say the least, the discharge of the respondents before the completion of the investigation is visibly prematured," the bench said.



Nehru in his explanation about his income said he had received the amount only from his son Arun and the latter had received remuneration for which he had paid TDS under the Income Tax Act and therefore the question of disproportionateness of his assets did not arise.



The court said that the exoneration of Nehru and his wife pending investigation amounted to "prejudging the charge" against them.



"We have thus no hesitation to hold that the order of the High Court, discharging the respondents herein, pending the investigation against Arun, at this stage, is unsustainable in law as well as on facts," the bench said.



Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the state government, contended that on taking into account the materials on record, the High Court ought not to have discharged them at this stage while affirming further probe into the sources of income of Arun.



He said the outcome of the further probe would have a vital bearing on the charge leveled against the accused and their discharge at this stage is wholly unwarranted.



Counsel appearing for Nehru and others said that the available materials do not substantiate the allegation and the discharge of the respondents is perfectly justified and does not merit any interference.



An FIR was lodged in 2011 against Nehru, his wife and son by the Deputy Superintendent of Police (vigilance & anti- corruption), Trichy, alleging that Nehru while serving as the transport minister had acquired assets in his name and in the names of his wife and son far beyond their known sources of income.



Before the check-period (May 13, 2006-March 24, 2011) both husband, wife and son had assets worth over Rs 2.83 crore which swelled to over Rs 18.52 crore at the end of the period.



After the charge sheet was filed against them, the accused moved trial court seeking discharge but the court ordered further probe into the assets and income of Arun.



The High Court on December 19, 2013, exonerated Nehru and his wife but affirmed further probe into the assets and income of Arun.
Mumbai: The Shiv Sena has launched yet another scathing attack on ally BJP through mouthpiece Saamana, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of taking away the independence of states.



The achhe din are only in advertisements. Do we have true democracy in the country if all affairs are going to be run as per the wishes of the Prime Minister? He is centralising power at the Centre, instead of decentralising it. He is taking away the independence of the states, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said in an interview in Saamana.



Senas latest tirade against the BJP comes days after Ram Nath Kovinds presidential win signaled a shift in the states power play.



The NDA nominee won almost two dozen extra votes in Maharashtra  over and above 63 MLAs of the Shiv Sena. The BJP has 122 MLAs in the 288-member Assembly. A simple number crunch reveals that MLAs from the NCP or the Congress, or perhaps even both, cross-voted for Kovind.



While the BJP seems to have reduced its dependence on Sena in the Assembly, the latter now finds itself in an unenviable position of relying on its ally in the cash-rich Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.



The two parties have shared an uncomfortable relationship and even parted ways during civic polls earlier this year.



With its latest Saamana article, the Sena has renewed its attack on the Devendra Fadvanis government. The Maharashtra government has deceived farmers in the name of farm loan waivers. No clear instructions have been issued to banks yet, Thackeray said.



Criticising the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the Sena batted for the return of the Octroi. China is trying to instigate Muslims in India. The lack of check on octroi nakas (checkposts) is a grave security threat.



The party also renewed its attack on demonetisation, claiming it had affected the livelihoods of 15 lakh people. Around 15 lakh people lost their jobs due to demonetisation. This means, around 60 lakh people have been directly affected. You should give jobs to them. How are you going to balance Start-up India and Make in India, with such colossal job losses? Will you call me a traitor for saying this?



Thackeray added that traders in Gujarat, the home state of PM Modi, were hit by GST, while his intervention averted loss of income in Maharashtra. Mumbai and 27 other municipal corporations got funds equivalent to the octroi income, he said.
London: Britain's Prince William and Harry talk about the last phone call they ever had with their mother, Princess Diana, before she died, in a new documentary.



"Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy" is being released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Diana's death in a Paris car crash on Aug 31, 1997.



"I think you get the private Diana," Nick Kent, the film's executive producer, told Reuters. "Nobody has ever told this story from the point of view of the two people who knew her better than anyone else, and loved her the most: her sons."



The princes recall their mother's sense of humour, with Prince Harry describing her as "one of the naughtiest parents". They also recall the pain of their parents' divorce, and how they dealt with the news of her death and its aftermath.



While the film addresses such aspect of Diana's life as her charity work involving HIV and landmines, it shies away from more controversial issues, such as extra-marital affairs.



According to the makers, however, the British royals were very open, and did not put any subject off limits. Rather, they wanted to cover new ground and make a different type of film.



"What we had in mind is that in years to come, Princes William and Prince Harry would be happy to show this film to their own children and say this is who your grandmother was", Kent said.



"Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy" will be broadcast on British and US television on July 24th.
Beijing: China has opened a modern cinema theatre on Yongxing Island in the disputed South China Sea as part of its plan to establish authority over the area, the state media reported on Sunday.



Over 200 residents and soldiers watched the Chinese movie The Eternity of Jiao Yulu on Saturday at the Sansha Yinlong Cinema, located in Sansha municipality, Chinas newest city in the South China Sea (SCS).



The cinema will show at least one film every day, so residents and soldiers on Yongxing Island can enjoy films simultaneously with moviegoers across the country, said Gu Xiaojing, general manager of Hainan Media Croup.



China has been expanding facilities in the islands under its control encouraging population settlements in the disputed area, where Beijing also built artificial islands some with facilities for garrison as well as airstrip reinforcing its control over the area.



Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the South China Sea.



The theatre is equipped with advanced projection equipment, including the latest 4K digital projectors as well as a 3D perforated screen for viewers to indulge in the pleasure of big screen, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.



Chen Zijian, general manager of Hainan Film Company, which operates the cinema, said they have also purchased two mobile projection units and plan to screen films for free on more islands within the municipality to meet the demands of residents, it added.



The opening of the cinema is part of a plan by local cultural authorities to establish community services on islands under Sanshas jurisdiction.



In April last year, Sansha opened its first public library. It also has a stadium and has organised various cultural activities to enrich the lives of residents.



Sansha municipality was set up in 2012.



Also, a total of 12 Chinese-developed underwater gliders are carrying out scientific observations in the SCS from the research vessel Kexue and sending back real-time data.



It is the largest group of gliders to perform simultaneous observations in the region.



Kexue left Qingdao in east Chinas Shandong Province last Monday for a maritime scientific expedition and stopped in Xiamen, southeast China to resupply Friday after completing the first part of the mission.



The gliders have collected detailed maritime information, including temperature, salinity, turbidity, oxygen levels as well as the intensity and direction of currents, said Yu Jiancheng, a scientist with the programme.



The 12 submersible devices will collect comprehensive ocean data over the next month, said Sun Song, another scientist with the programme.



Underwater gliders are a new type of underwater robot featuring less energy consumption, higher efficiency and better endurance.



During the first stage of the mission, scientists also successfully placed three submersible buoys and conducted several diving missions. Kexue will leave Xiamen today for the missions second stage.



Kexue is Chinas most advanced, independently-made marine science expedition vessel. It was put into operation in April 2014. The 4,711-tonne vessel is capable of conducting deep and open sea exploration and research, the Xinhua said.
Pyongyang: The Westerners lined up on Sunday before giant statues of North Koreas founder Kim Il-Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-Il and, on command from their guide, bowed deeply.



It is a ritual that the Trump administration intends to stop US tourists performing, with Washington due to impose a ban this week on its citizens holidaying in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as the North is officially known.



The move comes amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile ambitions - it launched a rocket earlier this month which specialists say could reach Alaska or Hawaii - and after the death of US student Otto Warmbier, who had been imprisoned for more than a year by Pyongyang.



Warmbier was convicted of crimes against the state and sentenced to 15 years' hard labour for trying to steal a propaganda poster from a Pyongyang hotel. He was sent home in June in a mysterious coma that proved fatal soon afterwards.



Most tourists to North Korea are motivated by curiosity and the desire to experience a different destination.



The iconic 20-metre-high (66-feet) statues at Mansu hill look out over Pyongyang and groups of North Koreans in suits and ties arrive regularly to pay their respects. Passing traffic is obliged to slow down.



As the tourists reached the platform, speakers played We miss our general, about Kim Jong-Il, the father of current leader Kim Jong-Un. President Kim Il-Sung liberated our country and built a people's paradise on this land, they were told.



Call centre manager Kyle Myers, 28, from Ireland, said he wanted to go somewhere very different from what I'm used to for his first trip to Asia, to see something that not a lot of people from back home have seen.



The mounting tensions in the year since he booked the tour had made him nervous, he said, but he added: I don't see the threat here for tourists as long as they behave themselves and they follow the rules of the country.



'A little disquieting'



Some of the visitors - who paid from 1,850 euros for the tour - expressed enthusiasm. Australian IT manager Pallavi Phadke, 43, was among those who placed a bouquet before the statues.



It was a sign of respect, she told AFP. It's the same as covering your head when you go to a mosque or removing your shoes when you go to a temple.



The people seem happy, they certainly don't appear to be oppressed or anything, she said. They're very proud of their country, they're proud of their history and it's nice to watch them be patriotic.



Many disagree, with the United Nations, multiple Western governments and independent groups accusing Pyongyang of widespread human rights violations.



Other tourists were more sceptical. Mark Hill, a writer and editor from Calgary in Canada, compared the statues to a very grim Mount Rushmore. It's all very impressive and also a little disquieting, he said.



For years the US State Department has warned its citizens against travelling to North Korea, telling them that they are at serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Koreas system of law enforcement, which imposes unduly harsh sentences for actions that would not be considered crimes in the United States, including showing disrespect to the country's leaders and proselytising.



It is entirely possible that money spent by tourists in the DPRK goes to fund its weapons programmes, it adds.



The ban will go into force 30 days after it is formally declared, said department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, and US passports will be invalid for travel to, through and in North Korea.



'Monolithic evil force'



The vast majority of tourists to North Korea are from China, its sole major ally and key provider of trade and aid. Americans make up around 20 percent of the 4,000 to 5,000 Western tourists who go to the country each year, according to Simon Cockerell of Koryo Tours, the leader in the niche market, which brought Sunday's visitors to Pyongyang.



Warmbier's death had already hammered the market, he said, with bookings down 50 percent since then. It's would-be customers' perceptions that anybody can make a mistake, he told AFP. And almost everyone in their lives has made some mistake and of course they don't want the consequences of that mistake to be so devastating.



But Washington's move, he said, was self-defeating. As well as the potential ramifications for North Koreans who earn their living from tourism, he said, it would completely eliminate any human interaction between United States citizens and North Korean citizens.



Pyongyang's state propaganda about the US was 100 percent negative, he said, but contacts between tourists and locals work against the idea that foreigners are some kind of monolithic evil force out to undermine the North Koreans.



The idea that tourism is somehow sustaining the government is absurd, he added. The numbers are very low, the revenues are very low.



Young Pioneer Tours, the firm which brought Warmbier to the North, had already said it would no longer take US citizens to the country. Among Sunday's tour group was comedy writer Evan Symon, from Los Angeles, who as a result of Washington's ban is likely to be one of the last American tourists to the country for several years.



It's just what happened, he said. Kind of cool in a way, I guess.
APPOMATTOX  Instead of buying a knife, Chris Purches spent all day in a blacksmith shop Saturday  in 100-plus-degree temperatures - making his own.

Standing over an anvil, he pounded a red-hot piece of iron several times to flatten the knife blade before plunging it back into the hot coals. By the end of the day, the old railroad spike he started with would be twisted, flattened and sharpened into a simple knife.

Before last Saturday, neither Purches nor his classmate Mike Hirtz had worked in a forge. But under the direction of Brian Moore, 56, in Central Virginia Community Colleges beginning blacksmithing course coordinated by the satellite campus in Appomattox, they were well on their way to learning the basics.

Taught in the blacksmith shop at Appomattox County Historical Societys Clover Hill Village, the course was spread out over two full-day Saturday classes. To begin, students learned the history of early 19th century blacksmithing, how to start a fire and keep it at the proper temperature, and safety.

Although the hammer and anvil are essential, Moore said also key is starting with a properly made fire at the correct temperature.

Its not like its a charcoal [fire] and youre going to have hamburgers, he said. Theres a process to it, especially since we dont have a power fan. Controlling the fire is as important as the hammer and the anvil. If the fires not right, the tool wont be right.

Taking turns, Moore, Purches and Hirtz turned a hand crank to keep oxygen flowing to the fire located at the center of the aging wooden shed. Slowly, the two students worked their metal into shape.

For Purches, the process of forming metal into different useful tools and decorative shapes attracted him to learn blacksmithing.

When I was young my grandfather and I did welding and metal reworking together, but we never really had a forge so I thought this would be a good thing to try and learn, he said. The fact that you can make the metal hot enough to make it into whatever you want is pretty awesome, compared to using a grinder and damaging the metal while you work on it.

While blacksmithing is tiring work, Moore said the trade is more about patience than the ability to swing a hammer with a lot of force.

Its more about finesse than strength, he said. Over time you work it a little bit at a time and see whats not working and what does. Its easy to get frustrated with this because you will have the picture in your head of what you want to make and then it comes out looking like a clump, but eventually you find out how to get the metal to do what you want.

After Purches and Hirtz had learned basic safety and fire building, they spent the first class learning how to flatten metal, make hooks, curls and other decorative shapes to practice the basic skills before working on their knives with Moores help.

Originally from New England, Moore moved to Appomattox six years ago to get away from the cold climate up north due to a wound he sustained serving in the Army in Iraq in 2008. Shortly after moving to Appomattox, he met someone at a craft fair doing blacksmithing and got involved with the Old Dominion Blacksmith Association and began to learn the trade.

Its a pretty large group and about once a month we get together and they bring in different smiths and we teach each other, and over time Ive been working with them and improving my own stuff, he said. I found it to be fun and relaxing and it keeps me on my feet moving forward.

As a member of the Appomattox County Historical Society, he does demonstrations in the blacksmith shop for school groups and other events. After some community members requested a blacksmithing class, Sue Cochran, the director of CVCCs satellite campus in Appomattox, reached out to Moore to teach the class.

As a community college were here to serve the needs of the community, and if people ask us for a specific topic we try to accommodate that, Cochran said.

We had a couple of gentlemen come in and say they wanted to take a blacksmithing class so we set it up for them. If its something that we can schedule so our community can take advantage of it, and thats what happened with the blacksmithing class.

The $250 class included all materials. Although this round of classes is concluded, she said the college is interested in working with Moore to hold more classes if there are interested students.

For more information, contact CVCC Appomattox, (434) 832-7200.
Divers recovered the body of a 58-year-old Nelson County man who was reported missing at Pelican Point Yacht Club in Union Hall on Saturday. While an investigation is still ongoing, authorities believe the man drowned after falling from a dock.

Family members reported the man missing to authorities around noon. According to Sgt. Karl Martin with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the family had spent the night at the marina on a boat.

Martin said that clothing was seen near the dock and it was believed that the man fell into the water. Divers with the Scruggs Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad Dive Team assisted the Smith Mountain Lake Marine Volunteer Fire/Rescue Department in searching the water at approximately 12:30 p.m. The body was discovered within 30 minutes.

The man's body was found near the marina docks in around 17 feet of water after approximately 30 minutes of searching, Martin said. Authorities are still working to determine the cause of the drowning, but Martin said that no foul play was involved.

Martin said the name of the man will be released Sunday after his next of kin is notified.
Chief Executive Officer of the MiG Aircraft Corporation Ilya Tarasenko said that after having presented MiG-35 in January, the MiG corporation began to actively promote the aircraft in India and in other parts of the world.

By Press Trust of India: Russia is keen on selling its new fighter jet MiG-35 to India with the MiG corporation's chief saying the country has evinced interest in the aircraft and talks were on to understand its requirements.

Chief Executive Officer of the MiG Aircraft Corporation Ilya Tarasenko said that after having presented MiG-35 in January, the MiG corporation began to actively promote the aircraft in India and in other parts of the world.

advertisement

"We are proposing supply of the aircraft for tenders in India and we actively work with its Air Force in order to win the tender," he said while talking to reporters on the sidelines of the MAKS 2017 air show here.

The MiG-35 is Russia's most advanced 4++ generation multipurpose fighter jet developed on the basis of the serial-produced MiG-29K/KUB and MiG-29M/M2 combat aircraft.

Asked if India has expressed any interest in the MiG-35, Tarasenko said, "Of course they have."

MIG AIRCRAFT USED BY INDIA FOR 50 YEARS

MiG aircraft have been used by India for almost 50 years and MiG corporation proposes its new products to India among the first countries and intends to continue supplying India with its most modern aircraft, the MiG chief said.

Asked about the current status of the proposal of the aircraft to India, he said, "We are in the negotiation stage where talks on technical and technological specifications that MiG can present to India and the requirements that India has for this aircraft were taking place."

"Since this is a very new plane, it will still take some time to negotiate on exactly what India needs and adjust the product to it," he added.

Talking about the cost of the plane, Tarasenko said it was economical due to the after-sales services being offered along with the aircraft.

"We propose not just the aircraft, but also training for its use, as well as after-sales servicing where we take upon the responsibility to service it for 40 years," he added.

He stressed that in comparison to its competitors, the prices offered by MiG were 20-25 per cent cheaper, making it an attractive option for those who wish to purchase this aircraft.

FEATURES OF MIG-35

Highlighting the main features of the MiG-35, Tarasenko said its technical specifications were close to a fifth generation aircraft, namely its flight capabilities, its new weapon range and defence systems, including stealth.

"I would like to note the demand for this aircraft for our own air force, as well as our foreign partners. The plane is light, multi-functional and has high manoeuvrability," Tarasenko said, adding that the MiG was also offering special commercial terms to its partners.

He also stressed that the plane was fully Russian-made with Rostec companies like United Engine Corporation (UEC), KRET and Technodinamika participating in the project.

advertisement

At MAKS 2017, the MiG-35 grabbed all the limelight as it took to the skies and enthralled the audience with breathtaking manoeuvres like the tail slide, barrel roll and the nesterov loop.

Belyaev Mikhail, the Lead Test Pilot of MiG-35, told reporters that the main feature of this aircraft was the new on board equipment and the new quality of weapons -- air-to- air, air-to-ground and air-to-sea.

"Compared with the basic version of the MiG-29, it is a new aircraft, new airframe, fly-by-wire, glass cockpit, adapted for night vision goggles...new engines, more power, more fuel, new on board equipment and new weapons," said Mikhail, who was earlier this year presented the star of the 'Hero of Russia' by President Vladimir Putin for bravery in piloting and testing of aviation equipment.

Asked if it was easier to fly MiG-35, Mikhail said new tasks were required for such an aircraft so one needs to learn these.

"On the basic level it is not that difficult to switch from MIG 29 to 35 as the plane remains the same. It is still a light simple plane. The combat tasks that can be achieved from this plane are much more serious and much more complex," he said.

advertisement

"More combat tasks can be achieved from this plane than with the MiG-29. So it will take time to learn new tasks and to adapt," he added.

An overhauled MiG-35 multi-role fighter completed a successful demonstration flight at the MAKS 2017 air show, with Russian officials saying the first combat-ready plane will be delivered to the Air Force next year.

While speaking to reporters at MAKS, Tarasenko also noted that around 30 countries are using various modifications of MiG-35's predecessor, the MiG-29, and that "talks are already ongoing with potential buyers".

The fighter jet features improved flight and technical characteristics, the most advanced on board radio-electronic equipment and a wide arsenal of air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles.

The flight tests of MiG-35 fighter aircraft began on January 26 and the plane's international presentation was held in the Moscow Region on the following day.

--- ENDS ---
House of Hemp

However, beedies have nothing to do with hemp but are tobacco wrapped in tendu or temburni leaf. Hemp, on the other hand, is a variation of the cannabis plant but with an insignificant amount, 0.3 percent or less, of THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) which gives marijuana its intoxicating effects. In fact, one web article on hemp stated, Youd need to smoke a hemp joint the size of a telephone pole to get high. When entrepreneur Lorenzo Mendez Stewart, 31, thinks of hemp, however, he thinks of hempcrete, and other useful products made from the plant.

Stewart was considering building his own house so he did some research and realised hempcrete, a material made of hemp which is use for construction and insulation, was the best way for him.

He said his research led him to realise that the cost of building materials was very high, making it very difficult for young people wanting to build their own homes to do so.

Hempcrete, he said, was cheaper, environmentally sustainable, and if made correctly, stronger than concrete.

In addition to hempcrete, a long list of products can be derived from the plant. Its seeds and flowers are used in health foods, organic body care, foodstuff such as bread, cereal, protein powder, as well as lubricants, paints, ink, and cosmetics.

The fibres and stalks are used in clothing, construction materials, paper products, biofuel, and plastic composites, including ethanol, animal bedding, mulch, rope, carpet, fibreboard, concrete, cardboard and filters.

He said Canada, Chile and countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Europe grow hemp commercially. Unfortunately, it is illegal to import the whole plant or grow it in Trinidad and Tobago, as it is a member of the cannabis family. However, by-products and components of the plant could be imported. Because of its close resemblance to marijuana, its a bit of a situation to grow it, but we are trying to present the plant and make the people of Trinidad and Tobago aware of its nature and ability. HEMP USES According to Stewart, one acre of land could produce one tonne of hemp, which could produce two three-bedroom houses. He said because the material is cheap to produce and hempcrete could last for centuries, it is perfect for the construction of Housing Development Corporation (HDC) houses.

The hemp plant is composed of the bark, bast fibre, hurd, and a hollow core.

Hempcrete is made by mixing the hurd, which Stewart imported, with a lime-based binder, and water. The hempcrete, which resembles damp straw, is then poured or cast into a frame, tamped, and left to dry.

The material is mostly used to make walls, but is also used to form floor slabs, ceilings, and roof insulation, although it is not suitable for foundations.

Research on hempcrete revealed that the material is breathable so it absorbs and emits moisture, making it able to regulate internal humidity, as well as avoid trapped moisture and mould growth. It also provides good acoustic insulation, is fireproof and earthquake resistant, and provides thermal insulation so that it regulates internal temperatures.

Stewart said hemp is a billion-dollar industry and many jobs can come out of it, from growing to processing to final products.

A nations power is based on the resources a land and its ability to produce, not its consumption power...

We want to break the stigmatisation of this plant. It is not marijuana.

This is what could carry Trinidad and Tobago to a next level of production and change its financial dynamic. He said he believed youths would be interested in the plant as it was part of the Caribbean culture.

He said people have known about or have heard of marijuana and hemp for decades. Yet, he said there was very little opportunity to research hemp in the country.

There is so much negative news, very little hopeful items in the media. I am presenting this an alternative way to do simple yet positive things. I want to inspire people to see that positive things can be done. We want to get the young people back in a position to work and be productive in a field that interests them.

They can grow it and create things out of this. It is an industrious plant. It would be beneficial to society as well as to the environment. One of the main reasons I was drawn to hemp was because it is environmentally friendly and sustainable.

The plant absorbs carbon dioxide, it is a sustainable resource, its actually good for the soil, and its six times stronger that concrete. In fact, as it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere it turns into stone over a period of time. He said growing hemp would benefit the country, helping it meet the terms of The Montreal Protocol, which, among other things, requires the country to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Hemp usually takes 12 to 14 weeks to grow.

It is pest and weed resistant, requires very little fertiliser and less water than the average crop. It also enriches and detoxifies soil, and prevents soil erosion.

Stewart recently registered his company, Hempcrete Ltd, with the intention of importing and selling hemp products including oils, hempcrete, clothing. He plans to take more short courses to educate himself on the plant and its uses, especially in the construction industry.

He also wants to hold a workshop and bring in hemp experts and builders to educate people, and intends to start an NGO to bring awareness to hemp, experiment with the plant, and connect various education, government, and civil engineering agencies to move the study and use of hemp forward in this country. He also hopes to one day help create an eco-community, with 100 to 200 homes made of hempcrete and accessorised with other environmentally friendly products.
WINC calls for entrepreneur applicants

The initiative is part of the Entrepreneurship Programme for Innovation in the Caribbean (EPI C), funded by the government of Canada and implemented by the World Banks infoDev programme for innovation and entrepreneurship. It will be delivered by infoDev-trained and certified facilitators in nine countries: Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St.

Kitts & Nevis, and TT . The call for applications closes on July 31 and the programme will begin in November. Last year, 108 women entrepreneurs from 12 countries in the Caribbean graduated from the programme. Of these, 94 per cent stated that their businesses had become more focused; 77 per cent indicated that they had significantly improved their marketing methods since joining the programme; and 73 per cent indicated having significantly improved their internal processes and organisational structure and management practices.

The eight-month peer learning programme is designed to help growth-oriented women entrepreneurs innovate within their businesses, and have the self-confidence to make the necessary changes to improve their competitiveness and boost their growth. As with the women entrepreneurs from the first cohort, participants will benefit from a suite of services including business and personal development, one-to-one mentoring, technical workshops and motivational sessions.

Women entrepreneurs will be considered for selection if they have been running their business for at least two years, the business has demonstrated growth, they have realistic plans for substantial future growth and they can devote up to eight hours per month to the programme.

Up to 15 participants will be supported.

According to past participant, Rebecca Cockburn MD, RMC Consulting Ltd., It has been a rich experience where a lot of information is provided and we have the opportunity to share our experiences with each other.

We have been provided with so many tools and resources and have been exposed to professionals in all relevant areas of business.

I continue to learn from each of the other women entrepreneurs who belong to the group - a fantastic network of inspiring women. Women entrepreneurs who are committed to growing and scaling their business may apply for the WINC 2017 Acceleration Programme at https:// www.surveymonkey.com/r/WINC-AP2.

For questions and updates, please visit: https:// www.facebook.com/WomenInnovatorsNetworkCaribbean
NO PYOL INVASION

I assure you that as we have our Constituent National Assembly, there is no need for this fear of Venezuelans coming across here in droves. We will be able to have increased democratic participation, empowerment of people and increased economic development, she said. The Ambassador articulated her concern that in the media, including the local press, whenever they speak of the CNA, they say that President (Nicolas) Maduro is looking to rewrite the Constitution. However she stressed this was not the case. Calderon explained, The CNA process really seeks to entrench the achievements made in the 1999 Constitution. So it is not really just to change the Constitution. She said because of the economic and social conditions in Venezuela, the Venezuelan people are, aware of a need to entrench their constitutional guarantees and this has been the action of the people since the time of the revolution.

MADURO SHIELDING THE RULE OF LAW

She said it was against this background Maduro activated Article 347 of the Venezuelan Constitution.

He is actively looking to shield and shore up the rule of law in Venezuela and ensure the guarantee of the people because they are under siege, Calderon said.

Article 347 states, The original constituent power rests with the people of Venezuela. This power may be exercised by calling a National Constituent Assembly for the purpose of transforming the State, creating a new judicial order and drawing up a new Constitution. The ambassador added under Article 348 of the Venezuelan Constitution, a CNA can be called either by the president or by the Venezuelan National Assembly.

In the case of the Assembly, twothirds of its members must vote for a CNA. Calderon found it curious why Venezuelas opposition did not exercise this option, since it has the majority in the Assembly. She claimed the opposition did not do this because, they are desirous of making this country ungovernable so that President Maduro would be ousted from office. However Calderon said despite the oppositions efforts, Venezuelans turned out in their numbers for a simulation of the CNA which was conducted by Venezuelas National Electoral Council. She explained by law, the Council, is responsible for the election calendar and is also the guarantor of the elections. Calderon said in last Sundays simulation, 55,000 Venezuelans presented themselves as candidates for 537 posts in CNA.

DEMOCRACY BEING STRENGTHENED

She said after July 30, TT can be assured that, we will be strengthening our democracy. Calderon said what is being portrayed as a humanitarian crisis is actually a crisis in humanity, fuelled by internal and external forces opposed to Maduro. To underscore this point, she showed Sunday Newsday a copy of a bill which was laid in the US Senate on May 3 and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

That bill called for the provision of, humanitarian assistance for the Venezuelan people, to defend the democratic governance and combat widespread public corruption in Venezuela, and for other purposes. One of the people who introduced this bill was Republican Senator John McCain who was recently diagnosed with brain cancer.

Notwithstanding those efforts, Calderon is confident peace will be restored in Venezuela once the CNA is held. We see what is going on as a ten-day wonder. Saying the new constitution which will emerge will shore up our economic and social development, Calderon said TT citizens do not have to fear a flood of Venezuelans coming to this country to seek refuge. Venezuela will be a net country receiving immigrants as opposed to a country that people are leaving. Even in the situation right now, which is not the best, we keep receiving Colombians for instance. Calderon said in recent times some six million Colombian immigrants have gone to Venezuela which has always had a policy of receiving immigrants with open arms. Saying Spanish and Italian nationals have migrated to Venezuela, Calderon added, We have some Trinidadians living in Venezuela, for many years, who are very happy, who have become part of our people. However she did not indicate how many TT nationals reside in Venezuela.

Calderon said she is heartened by the position taken by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his administration on attempts to undermine Maduros administration.

Upon his return from a State visit to Chile in June, Rowley called for the removal of Luis Almagro as secretary general of the Organisation of American States over his engagement of Maduro in a derogatory manner. Noting the longstanding diplomatic ties between TT and Venezuela, Calderon recalled the 500,000 barrels of crude oil sent to Venezuela in 2002 by then prime minister Patrick Manning (now deceased) to the then Hugo Chavez administration in the midst of coup in the South American nation.

VENEZUELA OWES TT

Calderon said Chavez (also deceased) said that gesture by Manning meant that Venezuela owed the people of TT, 500 years of loyalty and love. She said, Trinidadians and Tobagonians are brothers and sisters and not partners and praised Caricom for its support for Venezuela and the stance of non-intervention which the regional body has adopted. Calderon is also grateful for the support Venezuela has received from the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM). In a statement on Friday, JTUM expressed its support for the CNA and denounced any further attempt to disband it.

Calderon condemned statements made by United States President Donald Trump in support of a plebiscite held by the opposition which rejected Maduros call to hold a CNA. She said this plebiscite is illegitimate as it was not authorised by Venezuelas National Electoral Council. In a statement dated July 17, Trump vowed the US will take strong and swift economic sanctions if the CNA takes place on July 30.

According to Calderon, Trump is a victim of the Venezuelan opposition which is trying to create a situation which would cause foreign intervention in Venezuela.

Last week, Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Moncada observed, The trench that the government of the United States is digging in its relations with Venezuela makes it difficult to rationally predict its actions for the entire national community. Describing the US as an empire which is in decline, Calderon said Trumps statement was reflective of the double standards which the US takes in telling other countries how to solve their problems but is blind to problems within its own borders.

The Ambassador said dialogue was the only way to resolve the problems facing Venezuela today and this is something that Maduro has been calling tirelessly for.

Apart from Caricom, Calderon noted that support for Maduros call has come from Pope Francis, China and Russia. A BBC report Friday said millions of Venezuelans joined a general strike called by the opposition as pressure mounts on Maduro to cancel elections for the CNA.

The BBC reported clashes between police and protesters killed at least three people. More than 300 others were reportedly arrested.

Colombia, France, Spain, the US and the European Union have urged the Venezuelan government to cancel the vote for a new CNA.
Consumer pressure

Simply put, according to the Consumer Protection and Safety Act (No 30 of 1985, amended), a consumer is somebody who legitimately pays for some kind of goods or services.

It is more than that. The pressure comes even before paying. The lack of courtesy and counter assistance is horrible. Take our paediatrician and columnist, Dr David Bratt who, having had several bad experiences with discourtesy, had this headline to his column: Teach people how to treat the public. (Guardian, July 11). He wrote:  People do not realise that serving people is not slave work. Make life easier. This is our country. Our country? Sometimes you think when you enter some stores, you entering enemy country. The sour face you meet over the counter, the flippant answers you get, all this not only turns you off, but is bad for the owner and business.

Of course, you never know how the sales clerks are being treated, their work conditions etc. But, really, on the face of it, courtesy to customers is the A.B.C. of good business. For one thing, it encourages people to return  good for business.

Faced with an ugly-mannered salesclerk, columnist Lennox Grant, vowed never to return there again, adding: Its my lonely and ultimately ineffectual way of responding to indifferent, insensitive, even hostile and ignorant service. (Express, Dec. 8, 2016).

You see, during the last five years I have been compiling the various types of customers complaints. A lot has to do with cell-phone scams and consumer run-around. I think people should use the government Consumer Protection Division more. Where is it located? Do they have an office in San Fernando, Arima, Sangre Grande, Tobago  with easy access for distressed consumers? Well, to tell you the truth, I myself dont know. In fact, Point Fortin resident, I. Edwards, in a letter to the editor, wrote: I would like to know what the Consumer Affairs Division is doing about the steady increases in food prices. Have they noticed the prices in the supermarkets lately? All hard-working persons would have noticed. When the decrease in VAT was enforced, all prices again went up although there was supposed to be a decrease. (Express, June 9).

Now, grocers will have answers ranging from forex to labour costs, etc. But as early as March 16 last year, Martin Daly, SC, challenged consumers to hit business hard, in their pockets, where they would feel it when confronted with unscrupulous business practices. Admitting the Consumer Division has no teeth, Trade and Industry Minister, Paula Gopee-Scoon said a new National Consumer Policy was being developed. (March 15, 2016).

Mobile phone, cable and TSTT rates and service are big issues for consumers now. Banks too. The Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT) took exemplary action for consumers. In media advertisements, TATT stated: Call 800-8288 if you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of a complaint you have lodged with your provider of any one of the following services: mobile, fixed line, internet, data, cable and satellite television. (Newsday, June 29), Of course, one swallow does not a summer make, but here is another encouraging sign.

Last month, (June29) Ministry of finance Permanent Secretary, Vishnu Dhanpaul, publicly stated that it is totally unacceptable that so many government pensioners had to wait several years to get their pension. This kind of suffering at government counters is worse than just discourtesy. It is inhumane.

Earlier, 65-year old Viola Smith, noted that People came as early as 3 a.m., lining up for a service number to get a birth certificate, waiting for hours, only to be turned back since only a limited number could be served. (Express, January 28) She asked: What about people coming with babies, the elderly, the disabled, why dont they have shelter for people coming early? Bad consumer service and citizen hardships are all around now.

But such things could be prevented, especially with the current economic situation.

G o o d m a n n e r s , c o n s u me r courtesy and more humane treatment among o u r s e l v e s could help ease the pain.
By PTI: Islamabad, Jul 23 (PTI) Pakistans embattled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has admitted before the Supreme Court, hearing a money laundering case against him, that he had obtained a permit to work in a company in the UAE while rejecting the allegation that he had concealed his employment.

In a written reply submitted in the apex court yesterday through his counsels -- Khawaja Haris, Amjad Pervaiz and Saad Hashmi -- Sharif said his employment with the Capital FZE and obtaining of work permit for it had been mentioned in his nomination papers submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) during the 2013 general election.

advertisement

A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted by the apex court to probe the offshore business dealings of the Sharif family in 1990s in its report said that the prime minister was the chairman of Capital FZE and he had also obtained a work permit from the UAE government for the purpose.

The prime minister?s lawyers had initially denied that Sharif was the chairman of any offshore company. In his fresh reply, Sharif told the Supreme Court that his son, Hassan Nawaz, was the "owner, director & secretary and the authorised signatory of the Capital FZE".

"Nawaz Sharif is not a shareholder, or director or secretary of Capital FZE," according to the reply.

The premier was only a "ceremonial office holder" in 2007 when he was in exile and had nothing to do with the running of the company or supervising its affairs, it said.

"The Iqama (work permit) and the prime minister?s employment with the Capital FZE is reflected in the copies of his passport annexed with the nomination forms submitted to the ECP before 2013 election. Being no separate column in the nomination forms for any such information to be provided by the candidate contesting the election Nawaz Sharifs passport copies were annexed," the reply said.

A six-member JIT was set up in May by the apex court with the mandate to probe the Sharif family for allegedly failing to provide the trail of money used to buy properties in London in 1990s.

The JIT has recommended that the reports Volume-X should be treated as confidential as it contains the details of correspondence with other countries.

So far Sharif has refused to quit, calling the investigators report a compilation of "allegations and assumptions".

The apex court is likely to announce its verdict in the sensitive Panama Papers case against Sharif in the coming week. Sharif and his cabinet members have been alleging for weeks that conspiracies are being hatched to oust Nawaz Sharif. They openly blamed the military establishment and judiciary behind the plot for Sharifs ouster. PTI MZ NSA

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
No One Will

Ever Smash

Stuff Quite

Like He Did
Efforts to turn two looming cell towers in Toledo, Ohio, into faux pine trees to help them blend in with their surroundings are getting mixed reviews from residents, reports the AP. Some residents in Springfield Township have derisively dubbed the towers "frankenpines," the Toledo Blade reports. Adding branches to the towers in the Toledo suburb wasn't purely an aesthetic decision. It's a zoning requirement for cell towers erected in Springfield Township residential districts.

Springfield Township zoning officer Jacob Barnes says "the township is happy with how it turned out," and told the Blade that he expects "the residents are as well." A resident of a nearby subdivision who opposed construction of the 120-foot structure from the start says he remains concerned about potential health risks from living near a cell tower. Another resident says he's just happy to have better cellphone service, and "I like how they disguised it. ... My wife drives by it all the time and she didnt even notice it." (Read more strange stuff stories.)
Nearly five years after the disappearance of 13-year-old Dylan Redwine in Colorado stirred national concern, the police have arrested his father for his murder. Mark Redwine was charged on Saturday with second-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death, CBS News reports. Dylan disappeared in 2012 while visiting his father in Vallecito, Colorado, for Thanksgiving, a trip that followed a contentious divorce between Mark Redwine and Dylan's mother, Elaine Hall. Authorities say Hall reported her son missing the day after his arrival. Some of the boy's remains were discovered 10 miles away from Redwine's home in 2013 and his skull was found by hikers two years later. The skull showed injuries consistent with blunt force trauma.

During the course of the nearly five-year, multi-agency investigation, officials found Dylan's blood in his father's living room, and cadaver dogs were able to determine that a dead body had been in the older man's home and the bed of his truck, CNN reports. According to the indictment, Redwine and Hall were in the midst of a bitter custody battle at the time of Dylan's disappearance and the boy was not happy about visiting his father. Redwine is currently being held by police in Bellingham, Washington, on a cash-only $1 million bond. His prosecution will begin once he is extradited back to Colorado. (Read more cold cases stories.)
The Washington Post has a scoop on a terrifying near-miss in Mosul, Iraq. When the Islamic State seized Iraq's second-largest city in June 2014 it came into possession of two caches of cobalt-60, one of the key ingredients for making "dirty bombs," the paper reports. At the time, Western intelligence agencies were aware of the cobalt-60, a substance with deadly levels of radiation that, in peaceful hands, can be used to destroy cancer cells. What they weren't sure of is whether ISIS knew about them. Those agencies, along with independent nuclear experts, appraised the potential damage the two caches could cause and reported to the US government and the Iraqi military about them, but otherwise kept their reports private in case ISIS didn't know what they had in their possession.

Earlier this year, when Iraqi military soldiers entered the college campus storage room where the cobalt was last seen, they found it untouched. Experts says they don't know why ISIS didn't use the substance to make dirty bombs but speculate that they didn't have the knowledge to dismantle the machines holding it without exposing themselves to radiation. And while the two caches are now safe in Iraqi government hands, officials warn that similar caches exist in hundreds of cities around the world, some of them in conflict areas. The Post reports that it learned of the cobalt-60 in Mosul last year but agreed to a US government request not to report on it until Mosul was retaken. Earlier this month, the Iraqi government officially declared victory in Mosul. (Read more Mosul stories.)
New White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci captured most of the headlines from the Sunday talk shows. Among other things, he rejected the idea that President Trump is considering pardons and defended his own move to delete old tweets in which he was critical of Trump. Details:

Pardons: "The president is thinking about pardoning nobody," he said on CNN, adding that Trump "is not going to have to pardon anybody because the Russian thing is a nonsensical thing." (Trump tweeted about the power of presidential pardons on Saturday.)

"The president is thinking about pardoning nobody," he said on CNN, adding that Trump "is not going to have to pardon anybody because the Russian thing is a nonsensical thing." (Trump tweeted about the power of presidential pardons on Saturday.) Pardons, take II: Trump attorney Jay Sekulow also dismissed the idea of pardon discussions, per the Hill. We have not and I continue to not have conversations with the president of the United States about pardons, he said on ABC's This Week.

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow also dismissed the idea of pardon discussions, per the Hill. We have not and I continue to not have conversations with the president of the United States about pardons, he said on ABC's This Week. Not convinced: Scaramucci said Trump is still not convinced Russia interfered in the election. "He basically said to me, 'Hey you know, this is, maybe they did it, maybe they didn't do it.'" He also said he was speaking with somebody recently who asserted that if the Russians did indeed meddle, they would leave behind no evidence of it. Upon questioning, he told Jake Tapper the person who said that was, in fact, Trump, per Politico.

Scaramucci said Trump is still not convinced Russia interfered in the election. "He basically said to me, 'Hey you know, this is, maybe they did it, maybe they didn't do it.'" He also said he was speaking with somebody recently who asserted that if the Russians did indeed meddle, they would leave behind no evidence of it. Upon questioning, he told Jake Tapper the person who said that was, in fact, Trump, per Politico. Deleting tweets: Earlier over the weekend, Scaramucci deleted old tweets critical of Trump, explaining that "past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction." The Hill notes that Scaramucci also publicly apologized to Trump on Friday.

Earlier over the weekend, Scaramucci deleted old tweets critical of Trump, explaining that "past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction." The Hill notes that Scaramucci also publicly apologized to Trump on Friday. Moving on: "If I said some things about [Trump] when I was working for another candidate, Mr. Trump, Mr. President, I apologize for that. Can we move on off of that?" he said Sunday.

Old column: One piece of criticism gaining attention is a 2016 column Scaramucci wrote for Fox Business in which he warned about "unbridled demagoguery" taking over the GOP. He did not, however, mention Trump by name in the column.

One piece of criticism gaining attention is a 2016 column Scaramucci wrote for Fox Business in which he warned about "unbridled demagoguery" taking over the GOP. He did not, however, mention Trump by name in the column. Maureen Dowd: In her New York Times column, Dowd describes Scaramucci as a "wealthy mini-me Manhattan bro" who has much in common with Trump, including a big ego. But she says the hire won't solve the president's big problem, that being the "existential threat" posed by special investigator Robert Mueller. Trump, she writes, doesn't get that Mueller is not some "contractor" he can bully and intimidate.

(Read more Anthony Scaramucci stories.)
Sorry!

This content is not available in your region
The CBI officials, on the directions of Himachal High Court, reached the hill city on Sunday afternoon and met senior Shimla police officer.

By Manjeet Sehgal: After registering two separate cases on Saturday, three CBI teams reached Shimla on Sunday to probe a minor's gangrape and murder case besides a custodial death of a co-accused.

CBI has formed three teams to investigate the gangrape and murder case which was registered on July 6 at Kotkhai police station. While one team will leave for Kotkhai ,located 60 kms from the state capital Shimla, two teams will be stationed at Shimla.The teams also include forensic science experts.

advertisement

The teams comprising 15 members including a Superintendent of Police, Additional Superintendent of Police and Deputy Superintendent of Police , Sub-Inspectors has started investigating the case .The probe will be supervised by DIG, Special Crime Branch.

The CBI officials, on the directions of Himachal High Court, reached the hill city on Sunday afternoon and met senior Shimla police officers who handed over important record pertaining to the case to them.

CBI officials after scanning the records, also organised a meeting in the evening to chalk out the strategy to solve the gangrape ,murder and custodial death mystery.

Sources said CBI officials will work in close co-ordination with the Shimla police officials and will gather forensic and other evidences .

A 10th standard minor girl was found missing on July 4 from her village called Hilaila under Kotkhai police station in Shimla district . Her body was recovered from a forest located close to her home . She was allegedly gangraped and murdered. The incident rocked the hill state .The case was handed over to CBI as the state police officials faced allegations of corruption and mishandling the case.

ALSO READ:

Shimla rape case: CBI files 2 cases, forms SIT to probe incident

Shimla rape outrage: How Himachal, other states fare in crime against women

ALSO WATCH: Our press reports every incident of rape so it becomes 'top of the mind': Maneka Gandhi

--- ENDS ---
The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574.
By PTI: Colombo, Jul 23 (PTI) A personal protection officer of a prominent Sri Lankan Tamil high court judge died today after being shot by unidentified man during a failed assassination bid on the judge, police said.

The officer was injured and hospitalised in Jaffnas Nallur area yesterday after the unidentified man snatched his revolver while attacking Justice Manickavasagar Illancheliyan.

advertisement

Justice Illancheliyan was unhurt while the policeman had suffered injuries.

The wounded police officer who was admitted to a Jaffna hospital has died, police said.

"I saw a civilian approach my escort and trying to remove his pistol. He fought for several minutes to grab the weapon," Ilencheliyan told reporters.

A fearless judge, Illancheliyan had struck terror in the hearts of criminals in the Tamil-dominated Jaffna town.

"I am handling the most dangerous cases in Jaffna. I call on the authorities to ensure protection of judiciary," he said.

Ilanechelians car was caught in a traffic block in Nallur junction when the shooting took place.

Justice Ilanechelian had presided in high profile rape and murder case of Sivaloganathan Vithya, a young student in May 2015. The incident had caused much public outrage.

A deputy inspector general of police was arrested and remanded last week by the judge. PTI CORR MRJ ZH MRJ

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi:

Union Minister Smriti Irani while addressing traders and businessmen at 'GST - a Tool for Inclusive Growth' event in Ahmedabad on Saturday encouraged them to accept the new tax policy. No one will be harassed under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), she said.



There will be no punishment for being honest If government agencies or officers ask about past transactions or harasses anyone, direct action will be taken against them, Irani said.

ALSO READ: Smriti Irani hits back at Rahul Gandhi for Hitler dig on PM Modi



Taking a step further, Irani termed the GST as Great Step towards Transparency. The beauty of GST is that it is a destination tax and it gives money back through tax credit, she further added.



Talking about the previous transactions and if there will be punishment for the faulty ones, Irani said, "Past transactions won't be checked under this system. There will be no punishment for being honest. If government agencies or officers ask anyone about past transactions or harasses anyone, direct action will be taken against them."

ALSO READ: Smriti Irani gets I&B, Narendra Tomar Urban Ministry after Venkaiah Naidu resigns

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam defends their country's Visa regime, by saying that one third of its workforce is "already foriegn" and it would be mindless to have open border without any policy framework.

His statement is siginficant,as many Indian IT companies including TCS, HCL, Wipro, Infosys have presence in Singapore. These companies use that country as a gateway to serve clients in the region. As Singapore taking a conservative view of visa issuance to Indian tech workers, its going to be difficult for companies to maintain the level of manpower there.

Singapore Minister said that their country has been the strongest propents of liberalisation of goods and services but movement of people has to operate within some framework of constraint.

Singapore is concernd because out of 5.5 million population,only 3.5 million are Singaporean citizens, and almost one third of their workforce is already from outside. IT body Nasscom had stated in April that the clamp down on tech visas by Singapore has shrunk the base of Indian techies to under 10,000 in the South East Asian nation.

India and Singapore have implemented a comprehensive free trade agreement (FTA). It has beenoperational since 2005. Singapore is also part of the Asean bloc, with which India has signed a similar pact. Currently both are also part of the ongoing negotiations for a proposed mega deal - Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Kunal Kapoor, who was recently shooting for Akshay Kumar's upcoming movie 'Gold', came across an ugly experience after he allegedly got robbed on the sets.



Reportedly, the incident took place during movie's shoot in Bradford, England. According to the media reports, Kunal was robbed of his wallet along with credit cards and cash from the sets of 'Gold'.



While at the shoot, the actor realised his wallet that contained all his cards and cash was missing. When he informed his friends, they immediately helped him out. A few days later, wife Naina Bachchan, joined him at the location. The actor has since returned to India," a source reportedly told Mumbai Mirror.

Also Read | 'Raag Desh': Tigmanshu Dhulia, Kunal Kapoor, Mohit Marwah get candid about their war film



Although, the news has come as a shock for everyone, Kunal Kapoor hasn't given any official statement regarding the incident.



Reportedly, Kunal is back in India and is currently busy promoting his upcoming movie 'Raag Desh'. Helmed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, the movie is based on the 1945 Red Fort trails and also stars Amit Sadh and Mohit Marwah in key roles.



'Raag Desh' is slated to release on July 28.

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

After spending some gala time amid wonder-filed natural beauty of Maldives, B-town diva Priyanka Chopra flew back to the USA to join her tough schedule yet another time. The former Miss World went for a much awaited family vacation with mother Madhu Chopra and brother Siddharth Chopra on the occasion of her birthday. Priyanka has even skipped the 18th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards as unfortunately her birthday and the show coincided.

However, while flying back to US, the 'Barfi' star was spotted at the airport late night and clicked by the paparazzi in a long summer blue dress. A flower printed cardigan and black heels completed her latest airport look.

According to reports the diva headed out to the island to please her mom who was quoted saying, "You should enjoy your success and its good to be working, but you need time to savour it."

During her entire Maldives vacation the diva kept posting a series of heart-melting photographs and attractive videos drooling people over her exotic vacation look. From beach costumes to her orange maxi dress everytime she has stolen the show.

Later, the 'Baywatch' star has also spent some quality times with friends and family as she went for several lunch and dinner dates after returning back to Mumbai.

Also Read: Priyanka chooses family over IIFA 2017, to enjoy vacation on birthday

On the workfront, the 'Anjaana Anjaani' actress is currently busy shooting her upcoming Hollywood projects 'A Kid Like Jake' and 'Isnt It Romantic' along with her famous American television series 'Quantico'.

Priyanka who will also be seen in Shah Rukh Khan-starrer 'Gustakhiyan', is also gearing up to attend the upcoming Toronto Film Festival after giving a miss to IIFA 2017.

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

In a major catch, Rajasthan police have managed to get hold of a large smuggling network at the Cairn India oilfield, that went undetected for nearly six years until police in Rajasthan arrested 25 people this week.

According to a official, police in Rajasthan have cracked a criminal syndicate accused of smuggling more than 50 million litres of crude oil inside water tankers from India's largest onshore oilfield.

The oilfield run by a subsidiary of British mining giant Vedanta Resources would have lost oil worth Rs. 49 crore in total, as per the reports by local media.

Read more: Indian Railway network will transform in next five years: Prabhu

More than 75 people, many drivers and contractors working at the oilfield, are still wanted in connection with the heists, said district police chief Gangandeep Singla.

The oil was sold to two small factory owners nearby, who stockpiled the crude in underground tanks before selling it on to clients across India.

The stolen oil was used in road construction and diesel production, police said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

An RTI activist claimed that he has found alleged irregularities and hawala scam in his investigation into Biju Janata Dal (BJD) donation case.

While talking to news agency ANI, Subhash Mahapatra, an RTI activist, said, "I found irregularities and a hawala scam in my investigation."

On the other hand, BJP leader Sajjan Sharma alleged that there is a scam in every project in Odisha and state chief minister Naveen Patnaik is at the helm of the affairs.

As per media reports, Naveen Patnaik-led BJD is facing charges of taking cash donations from unknown sources.

Found irregularities and a hawala scam in my investigation: Subhash Mahapatra,RTI activist on BJD donation issue pic.twitter.com/ugfuViN0sX  ANI (@ANI_news) July 23, 2017

However, the party has rubbished all charges, terming it as baseless.

There is a scam in every project in Odisha, state has been looted. Sardar of these scams is Naveen babu: Sajjan Sharma,BJP pic.twitter.com/bF8XNXu78K  ANI (@ANI_news) July 23, 2017

On Friday,BJP state vice-president Samir Mohanty said,"We will draw the attention of Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax department and apprise them of the irregularities (of BJD's election expenditure)."

An English language television channel had aired a news item in this regard on July 20. Meanwhile, Congress chief whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati had demanded CBI investigation into the entire financial transaction of the ruling party.

Also Read: Naveen Patnaik defer decision on Nitishs suggestion of grand alliance

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

A Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawan has allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself with gun in Chhattisgarh, worst insurgency-hit Sukma District, ANI reported.

A case has been registered in this connection and further investigation is on. The exact reason which prompted him to take the extreme step is yet to come.

Chhattisgarh: CRPF jawan allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself in Sukma, investigation on. a ANI (@ANI_news) July 23, 2017

Atleast 25 CRPF personnel were killed and six other wounded in an ambush by Maoists in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district on 24th April, 2017.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The destiny of 39 Indian workers, who were abducted in Mosul city of Iraq, is still remain uncertain despite the Indian government hoped that they might be live and lodged into jail of Badush.

As per media reports, the Badush jail is now a deserted structure and it was not occupied by anyone in the last few weeks.

Last week, the family members of missing Indians met Union Minister Sushma Swaraj in Delhi who had informed them that those abducted might be lodged in a jail in Badush in northwest Mosul.

"We have kept our hopes alive about our family members who went missing in Iraq three years ago," Davinder, whose elder brother Gobinder (45) is missing in Iraq, told.

"We still have hope...we have not got any bad news yet from the government side," he said.

On the other hand, Iraqi foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari will be visiting New Delhi from July-24-28.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The security forces on Sunday foiled an infiltration bid in Machil sector of Jammu and Kashmir, and killed one terrorist in the incident.

The operations were underway at the time of filing the report.

Last week, two terrorists were killed in an encounter with security forces in Tral area of South Kashmir's Pulwama district.

A senior police officer had informed the bodies of the terrorists were yet to be recovered and that the exchange of fire continued.

The encounter had begun after militants opened fire on security forces who were carrying out a search operation in Satoora forest area of Tral.

Jammu & Kashmir: One terrorist killed as infiltration bid foiled in Machil Sector. Operations in progress. pic.twitter.com/7tkc2zau73  ANI (@ANI_news) July 23, 2017

The police officer had said the search operation was launched on information about the presence of some militants there.

Also Read | J&K: 2 civilians, 1 LeT terrorist killed in Anantnag

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The Uttar Pradesh police arrested four accused in connection with Jewar rape and murder case following an encounter on Sunday. Meanwhile, two criminals managed to escape from the spot.

The UP Police along with the respective state police was conducting search operations in different locations of all possible suspects in the neighbouring states.

On May 25, Armed robbers had struck a group of eight persons travelling to Bulandshahr in a vehicle on the Yamuna Expressway, shooting dead a man and looting cash and jewellery.

Jewar rape and murder case: Police have arrested four culprits after an encounter, two managed to flee  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) July 23, 2017

Four women, who were travelling in the car along with as many men, alleged that they were raped at gunpoint after they tried to resist the robbery bid. (with PTI inputs)

#Visuals of Jewar rape and murder case: Police have arrested four culprits after an encounter, two managed to flee pic.twitter.com/NEiiXSQC88  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) July 23, 2017

Also Read: Greater Noida gang rape: Police can't be deployed everywhere, says UP minister

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Over 200 residents and soldiers watched the Chinese movie 'The Eternity of Jiao Yulu' yesterday at the Sansha Yinlong Cinema, located in Sansha municipality, China's newest city in the South China Sea (SCS).

An aerial view of China-occupied Subi Reef at Spratly Islands in the disputed South China Sea. Photo: Reuters

By Press Trust of India: China has opened a modern cinema theatre on Yongxing Island in the disputed South China Sea as part of its plan to establish authority over the area, the state media reported today.

Over 200 residents and soldiers watched the Chinese movie 'The Eternity of Jiao Yulu' yesterday at the Sansha Yinlong Cinema, located in Sansha municipality, China's newest city in the South China Sea (SCS).

advertisement

"The cinema will show at least one film every day, so residents and soldiers on Yongxing Island can enjoy films simultaneously with moviegoers across the country," said Gu Xiaojing, general manager of Hainan Media Croup.

China has been expanding facilities in the islands under its control encouraging population settlements in the disputed area, where Beijing also built artificial islands some with facilities for garrison as well as airstrip reinforcing its control over the area.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the South China Sea.

HI-FI TECHNOLOGY

The theatre is equipped with advanced projection equipment, including the latest 4K digital projectors as well as a 3D perforated screen for viewers to indulge in the pleasure of big screen, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Chen Zijian, general manager of Hainan Film Company, which operates the cinema, said they have also purchased two mobile projection units and plan to screen films for free on more islands within the municipality to meet the demands of residents, it added.

The opening of the cinema is part of a plan by local cultural authorities to establish community services on islands under Sansha's jurisdiction.

In April last year, Sansha opened its first public library. It also has a stadium and has organised various cultural activities to enrich the lives of residents. Sansha municipality was set up in 2012.

Also, a total of 12 Chinese-developed underwater gliders are carrying out scientific observations in the SCS from the research vessel "Kexue" and sending back real-time data.

It is the largest group of gliders to perform simultaneous observations in the region.

MARITIME SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION

Kexue left Qingdao in east China's Shandong Province last Monday for a maritime scientific expedition and stopped in Xiamen, southeast China to resupply Friday after completing the first part of the mission.

"The gliders have collected detailed maritime information, including temperature, salinity, turbidity, oxygen levels as well as the intensity and direction of currents," said Yu Jiancheng, a scientist with the programme.

The 12 submersible devices will collect comprehensive ocean data over the next month, said Sun Song, another scientist with the programme.

Underwater gliders are a new type of underwater robot featuring less energy consumption, higher efficiency and better endurance.

advertisement

During the first stage of the mission, scientists also successfully placed three submersible buoys and conducted several diving missions. Kexue will leave Xiamen today for the mission's second stage.

Kexue is China's most advanced, independently-made marine science expedition vessel. It was put into operation in April 2014. The 4,711-tonne vessel is capable of conducting deep and open sea exploration and research, the Xinhua said.

--- ENDS ---
New:

India has witnessed more terror attacks than countries inlcuding Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan and Yemen  infamous for brutal terror attacks carried out by various internationally banned terror groups, Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 report released by US State Department says.

Terrorist attacks in India has increased by 16% in 2016 and total number of deaths went up by 17% in the same year, while, globally the trend has decreased by nine percent, according to the report.

India is only below Iraq and Afghanistan in the list of countries that have faced the most number of terrorist attacks in 2016.

The report stated that Jammu and Kashmir witnessed a 93 percent increase in attacks in 2016.

US States Department reported that half of the terrorist attacks in India in 2016 majorly took place in four states: Jammu and Kashmir (19%), Chhattisgarh (18%), Manipur (12%), and Jharkhand (10%).

Over 47% of the terrorist incidents that occurred in India involved either bombings or explosions. Only 18% were armed assaults. Kidnappings incidents were also prevalent in the country as it comprised of 15% of all attacks, compared to 10% globally. Facility and infrastructure attacks accounted to 12%, compared to 6% worldwide.

The report states, Compared to the other countries that face the most terrorist attacks, the diversity of perpetrator groups was much greater in India, with 52 active groups.

According to the state out of the total terrorist activated early two-thirds of the terrorist attacks carried out in India in 2016 (65%) were attributed to the Communist Party of India-Maoist.

The report further states that the deaths caused in the attacks, remained relatively low compared to the other countries. According to the report, in India 0.4 total deaths were caused per attack last year compared to 2.4 deaths per attack worldwide.

Nearly 73% attacks in India in 2016 were non-lethal, the report reads.

The report also states that kidnapping or taken hostage in terrorist attacks has decreased by 63%  from 866 in 2015 to 317 in 2016.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

In a typical analysis, scientists have discovered that a protein found in saliva holds evidence that ancient Africans may have engaged in sexual rendezvous with a ghost species of archaic humans.

According to the experts, interbreeding was not unusual among early hominin species  but, with no fossils of the mysterious species in question, its considered a ghost.

Omer Gokcumen, PhD, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, says, "It seems that interbreeding between different early hominin species is not the exception -- it's the norm".

"Our research traced the evolution of an important mucin protein called MUC7 that is found in saliva", he says. "When we looked at the history of the gene that codes for the protein, we see the signature of archaic admixture in modern day Sub-Saharan African populations."

The team examined the MUC7 gene in more than 2,500 modern human genomes. The result that came out astonished the researchers as a group of genomes from Sub-Saharan Africa had a version of the gene that was wildly different from versions found in other modern humans.

The study concluded that MUC7 appears to influence the makeup of the oral microbiome, the collection of bacteria within the mouth. The evidence for this came from an analysis of biological samples from 130 people, which found that different versions of the MUC7 gene were strongly associated with different oral microbiome compositions.

Read more: 'Giant dinosaur fossil wall' discovered in China's Chongqing city

The research is published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Read more: Standford University scientists discover angel particle'

For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:



US President Donald Trump approved a plan giving the US's navy more freedom to carry out patrols in South China sea and put pressure on China's efforts to enlarge its military presence by artificially builiding reefs and atolls in the area.

According to Diplomats, the move is seen as a challenge to Beijing's maritime claims over most of the South China Sea and its attempts to overrule overlapping claims by five other countries, Vietnam, Malayasia, Indonesia, Brunie and the Philippines.

The US move will keep Chinese navy busy in the region and make it difficult for Beijing to deal with territorial disputes with other countries such as India and Japan.

This decision came soon after Chinese warships began moving towards the Baltic Sea for a joint naval exercise with Russian navy.

Jim Mattis, US defence secretary, has made a new plan which involves a full-year schedule of when US navy will sail through disputed waters.

This move will make difficult for communist party to resolve territorial disputes with other countries such as India and Japan.

The navy will enjoy more freedom than it did during the Obama administration, which insisted on the National Security Council approving major operational decisions. Under former President Barack Obama, the US suspended freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea from 2012 to 2015.

In 2016, an international court at The Hague deemed China's maritime claims unlawful and excessive, but China rejected the ruling outright and has continued to build military installations and unilaterally declare no-fly and no-sail zones.

China has responded to US incursions into the region, telling the US moves were provocative and that they must ask permission, which doesn't align with interantional law or UN conventions.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

As the deadly terrorist group Islamic State had seized Iraq's second largest city, Mosul in 2014, it laid claim to various garrisons and military bases filled with huge stock of weapons such as rockets, bombs, guns and tanks. However, if that was not enough, they also found two caches of cobalt-60, a metallic substance with high levels of radiation, in a storage room of Mosul college campus. Cobalt-60 is used to kill cancer cells when it is contained within the heavy shielding of a radiotherapy machine.

However, in terrorists hands, it is the core ingredient of a dirty bomb, a weapon which could be used to spread radiation. Although Western Intelligence agencies knew about the cobalt and watched anxiously for three years for signs that the militants might try to use it. Problems intensified in late 2014 when Islamic State officials said that they had obtained radioactive material and again in early 2016 when the terrorists took over laboratories at the same Mosul college campus with the aim of building new kinds of weapons.

The Iraqi military was also apprised of the potential threat as they battled Islamic State fighters in the sprawling complex where the cobalt was last seen.

Finally, in early 2017, the Iraqi army entered the bullet-pocked campus building and peered into the storage room where the cobalt machines were kept.

The cobalt had not been left untouched by the terrorist group.However, it remains unclear why the Islamic State failed to take advantage of the cobalt at its disposal. U.S. officials and nuclear experts think that the terrorists may have been stopped by a practical concern: how to dismantle the machines thick cladding without exposing themselves to a burst of deadly radiation.

Read more: Trump accuses New York Times of foiling US attempt to kill ISIS chief

The danger has still not passed as despite Iraq's victory in Mosul, many IS operatives are still loose in the city.A lethal doseInternational experts around the globe were highly concerned since IS's entry into Mosul in 2014.

U.S. officials knew that the Islamic State had gained control of small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium  the remnants of Iraqs nuclear projects from the time of Saddam Husseins presidency  as well as some relatively harmless radioactive iridium used in industrial equipment.

However, global intelligence agencies were concerned du to the existence in Mosul of at least one powerful radiotherapy machine used for cancer treatment, one that could potentially provide the Islamic State with a potent terrorist weapon.

However, US officials and private researchers were unable to answer where was the cobalt located exactly.In the end it was Iraqi officials who offered an explanation, claiming that both machines had been in Mosul throughout the Islamic States occupation, but not in the places where the terrorists might have thought to look for them.

Read more: US lists Pakistan among nations offering 'safe havens' to terrorists

They had been placed out of commission for several years because of lack of parts and had been put in storage in a building owned by the University of Mosul, somewhere in the citys eastern side.

Morris reported from Beirut. Mustafa Salim in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Zhukovsky (Russia):

Russia is keen on selling its new fighter jet MiG-35 to India with the MiG corporation's chief saying the country has evinced interest in the aircraft and talks were on to understand its requirements.

Director General of Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG Ilya Tarasenko said the MiG-35 was "the best" and definitely better than Lockheed Martin's fifth-generation combat aircraftF-35. He claimed that the MiG-35 would beat the American jet in air-to-air combat.

Tarasenko, while talking to reporters on the sidelines of the MAKS 2017 air show, said after having presented MiG-35 in January, the MiG corporation began to actively promote the aircraft in India and in other parts of the world.

"We are proposing supply of the aircraft for tenders in India and we actively work with its Air Force in order to win the tender", he said.

The MiG-35 is Russia's most advanced 4++ generation multipurpose fighter jet developed on the basis of the serial-produced MiG-29K/KUB and MiG-29M/M2 combat aircraft.

Read more: Russian satellite Mayak brighthest object after Sun and Moon

Asked if India has expressed any interest in the MiG-35, Tarasenko said, "Of course they have."

MiG aircraft have been used by India for almost 50 years and MiG corporation proposes its new products to India among the first countries and intends to continue supplying India with its most modern aircraft, the MiG chief said.

Asked about the current status of the proposal of the aircraft to India, he said, "We are in the negotiation stage where talks on technical and technological specifications that MiG can present to India and the requirements that India has for this aircraft were taking place."

"Since this is a very new plane, it will still take sometime to negotiate on exactly what India needs and adjust the product to it", he added.

Talking about the cost of the plane, Tarasenko said it was economical due to the after-sales services being offered along with the aircraft.

"We propose not just the aircraft, but also training for its use, as well as after-sales servicing where we take upon the responsibility to service it for 40 years", he added.

He stressed that in comparison to its competitors, the prices offered by MiG were 20-25 per cent cheaper, making it an attractive option for those who wish to purchase this aircraft.

Highlighting the main features of the MiG-35, Tarasenko said its technical specifications were close to a fifth generation aircraft, namely its flight capabilities, its new weapon range and defence systems, including stealth.

"I would like to note the demand for this aircraft for our own air force, as well as our foreign partners. The plane is light, multi-functional and has high manoeuvrability", Tarasenko said, adding that the MiG was also offering special commercial terms to its partners.

He also stressed that the plane was fully Russian-made with Rostec companies like United Engine Corporation (UEC), KRET and Technodinamika participating in the project.

At MAKS 2017, the MiG-35 grabbed all the limelight as it took to the skies and enthralled the audience with breathtaking manoeuvres like the tail slide, barrel roll and the nesterov loop.

Read more: Donald Trumps son to testify before Congress next week

Meanwhile, Director of Russia's Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation Dmitry Shugayev also said that Russia is ready to take part in India's tender for the supply of light fighter jets with its MiG-35 plane.

"Principally, Russia is ready to participate in future aviation tenders in India. However, as of now, we do not have information on the opening of a tender and, correspondingly, on the plane's technical requirements set by the Indian side", he was quoted as saying by Russia's TASS news agency.

Mikhail Belyaev, the Lead Test Pilot of MiG-35, told reporters that the main feature of this aircraft was the new on board equipment and the new quality of weapons -- air-to-air, air-to-ground and air-to-sea.

"Compared with the basic version of the MiG-29, it is a new aircraft, new airframe, fly-by-wire, glass cockpit, adapted for night vision goggles...new engines, more power, more fuel, new on board equipment and new weapons", said Belyaev, who was earlier this year presented the star of the 'Hero of Russia' by President Vladimir Putin for bravery in piloting and testing of aviation equipment.

Asked if it was easier to fly MiG-35, Belyaev said new tasks were required for such an aircraft so one needs to learn these.

"On the basic level it is not that difficult to switch from MIG 29 to 35 as the plane remains the same. It is still a light simple plane. The combat tasks that can be achieved from this plane are much more serious and much more complex", he said.

"More combat tasks can be achieved from this plane than with the MiG-29. So it will take time to learn new tasks and to adapt", he added.

An overhauled MiG-35 multi-role fighter completed a successful demonstration flight at the MAKS 2017 air show, with Russian officials saying the first combat-ready plane will be delivered to the Air Force next year.

While speaking to reporters at MAKS, Tarasenko also noted that around 30 countries are using various modifications of MiG-35's predecessor, the MiG-29, and that "talks are already ongoing with potential buyers."

The fighter jet features improved flight and technical characteristics, the most advanced on board radio-electronic equipment and a wide arsenal of air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles.

The flight tests of MiG-35 fighter aircraft began on January 26 and the plane's international presentation was held in the Moscow Region on the following day.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Tehran, Jul 23 (AP):

Iran on Saturday demanded that the United States release all detained Iranian citizens, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.



The report on Saturday quoted Irans deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi as saying he raised the issue on Friday during a meeting with an American delegation in Vienna, on the sidelines of a meeting on 2015 nuclear deal.



We raised the issue of the release of Iranians who are detained under the meaningless accusation of bypassing sanctions, on Iran, Araghchi was quoted as saying. He did not elaborate.



Earlier on Friday the White House threatened new and serious consequences for Iran unless it releases all US citizens who are detained there. The White House says President Donald Trump is prepared to act in an attempt to end Irans practice of using detentions and hostage taking as state policy, but it provides no specifics about potential consequences.

ALSO READ: US announces sanctions on Iran over ballistic missiles, terrorism



Washington is urging the return of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang, who was arrested last year. Xiyues confinement became public this week after Irans judiciary announced his 10-year sentence.



Late on Saturday the spokesman for Irans foreign ministry, Bahram Ghasemi, rejected the US demand calling it intervention in Iranian internal affairs, the official IRNA news agency reported.



Ghasemi said Irans judiciary and judges are independent and such statements would not deter the judiciary from punishing violators of Iranian law and national security. However he added that Levinson left Iran after visiting Iran and Tehran has no information about him.



Ghasemi also reiterated the demand for the quick release of Iranian detainees in the US, and said one of the wanted Iranian by the US has already died abroad. He did not elaborate.



Also detained by Iran are Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his 81-year-old father, Baquer Namazi. They were taken during the Obama administration and are also serving 10-year sentences.

ALSO READ: Iran detains President Rouhanis brother of financial misconduct, sentences Chinese-American to 10 years of imprisonment

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
By PTI: By Kishor Dwivedi

Pilani (Rajasthan), Jul 23 (PTI) Eminent scientist Tessy Thomas today called upon the youth to take up initiatives like start-ups to help the government fight challenges in sectors like health, environment and education.

Thomas - known as the Missile Woman of India - was speaking at the Convocation 2017 of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science here.

advertisement

"The quality of Indian graduates coming out from such institutes would also have significant impact on the global economy as many of the students join the MNCs and global corporates. It is worth reminding ourselves of this goal as India today is faced with challenges in the domains of health, sanitation, housing, environment and education and cannot be resolved by the government alone.

"To overcome these, it is important that graduating students such as you take the initiative - through start-ups or towards building a public-private partnership ? a bridge between citizens and the government, between sections of society and the nation as a whole," she said.

The project director for Agni-IV Missile in Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) stressed that the role of education was not only to cultivate the intellect but also to ignite their imagination and create academic excellence and also emerge as scholars who can transfer values and information to the society.

"You should strive towards fostering a culture of excellence. Excellence is not an accident but a habit - where you set your own performance standards like working with a focus for completing tasks ahead of time," Thomas said.

"The world you are entering as a graduate today has changed, and would continue to change, at an incredibly rapid pace. The 21st century landscape is very much a global world, driven by a knowledge economy," she said.

However, she said, the core objectives of education in the coming years should encompass four essential components ? building values, awareness, knowledge and skills. Ideally, these should foster development of personal qualities and behavioural attributes, which will help children develop into good citizens.

She further focused on how technology has changed the educational landscape -- from the use of tablets in the classroom to the proliferation of open universities -- and the pressure to prepare students for an increasingly competitive workplace in a hyper-connected world.

Earlier, BITS-Pilani Vice Chancellor Souvik Bhattacharya said a total of 3,542 students, including UG and PG, graduated in the year 2016-17 while 112 students graduated with a PhD.

Santanu Chaudhary, director of CSIR-CEERI, Pilani was the guest of honour at the annual event. PTI KIS KUN

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Police in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, said Saturday they have arrested a 16-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl on suspicion of abandoning the body of a newborn baby in a vacant lot in February.

The decayed remains of the infant, whose sex has not yet been determined, were discovered on Friday.

Police said the two high school students, who are classmates, have admitted that the baby was theirs and quoted them as saying they left it partially buried in the vacant lot, Fuji TV reported.

The girl told police that she and her boyfriend took the baby to the vacant lot immediately after she gave birth in February. The girl said she hid her pregnancy from her family and did not go a hospital when the baby was born.
In 2016, H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu, claimed 265 lives in the country, and here it is striking again.

In 2016, H1N1 flu virus claimed 265 lives in the country. This year, the virus is more aggressive, according to experts.

By Priyanka Sharma: Grappling with a deluge of vector-borne diseases like dengue, chikungunya and malaria, the national Capital is now staring at a fresh crisis from dreaded H1N1 virus, say doctors at leading city hospitals.

In 2016, H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu, claimed 265 lives in the country, according to health ministry statistics. This year, the situation is worse due to the cyclical nature of the virus, say experts.

advertisement

"This could be the toughest year for medical professionals in recent history as the combination of respiratory H1N1 infection with vectorborne diseases is not an easy condition to deal with," Dr Randeep Guleria, AIIMS director, who is also a respiratory expert, told Mail Today. "This year, swine flu has struck early and the virus is more aggressive."

Guleria said at least four patients have tested positive of H1N1 at AIIMS and were under close watch in the ICU. Other top hospitals like Safdarjung, RML, Sir Ganga Ram, Max and Fortis too confirmed varying number of cases being treated for swine flu.

"Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital has received 25 cases of suspected H1N1 virus flu. Of these, at least 10 have tested positive," Dr Smriti, public relations officer of the hospital, told Mail Today.

WORRISOME

Health experts said that at a time when over 100 cases of dengue, chikungunya and malaria are being reported by municipal corporations, sudden spurt in swine flu cases in Delhi is a worrying development.

"The virus is circulating due to erratic rains this time. With the vector-borne diseases already spread to an alarming level in the city, one has to be cautious," Guleria said. The AIIMS director stressed that hospitals and state health department must ensure adequate stock and supply of diagnostic kits, Tamiflu and related equipment to handle the situation.

Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, another leading medical facility in the city, has seen at least six to seven cases in the past two weeks. "We have admitted two serious patients to the ICU. Viral cases are normally up in this season but we are not taking any chance at OPD," Dr Atul Kakar, vice chairman of internal medicine department at SGRH told Mail Today. Kakar said on an average 15 per cent of the total cases were related to various virus infections.

Dr Vikas Maurya, head of the respiratory department at Fortis (Shalimar Bagh), said: "We have four H1N1 patients at the hospital. Two patients are inside the ICU on ventilator support while the other two have been kept in isolation. There are many cases of bilateral viral pneumonia and suspected HINI virus. But these reports are yet to come."

advertisement

Experts say due to cyclical nature of H1N1 flu virus, which means it is yet to be stabilised under the common set of virus infections, swine flu will be more lethal than the previous year. Already, over 600 deaths have been reported in the country this year, more than double the fatalities in 2016.

TOO EARLY FOR SWINE FLU

"This is unusual that we are witnessing early cases of swine flu. I have seen about five to ten swine flu cases in the past one month," said Dr Rommel Tickoo, senior consultant in the internal medicine department of Max (Saket). The hospital has two cases of swine flu being treated at its ICU.

"Children and the elderly are more vulnerable to the disease," said Dr Sanjeev Bagai, director of Manipal Hospital, who confirmed several cases of H1N1 virus being treated in the hospital, without specifying the number. "We are also witnessing cases of gastroenteritis, dengue, chikungunya and malaria."

Symptoms of swine flu are similar to those produced by standard, seasonal flu such as fever, cough, sore throat, body ache and shivers. Vulnerable groups include pregnant women, children under five and those with serious medical conditions. According to health ministry guidelines, to prevent and contain the outbreak of Influenza-A H1N1 virus, screening, testing and isolation of the patient is done at both government and private hospitals.

advertisement

Also Read

2 more swine flu deaths, toll touches 5 in Uttarakhand

Pregnant woman dies of swine flu in Telangana

--- ENDS ---
Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul seem to have played the role of peace-broker between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav. It is almost certain now that Tejashwi Yadav will resign before Monsoon Session of Bihar Assembly commences on July 28.

By India Today Web Desk: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is learnt to have conveyed his decision to the alliance partners of Mahagathbadhan over Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.

Nitish Kumar has made it clear to both the RJD and the Congress leadership that under the present circumstance Tejashwi Yadav cannot continue in his government. Tejashwi Yadav has to go before Bihar Assembly meets for Monsoon Session on July 28.

advertisement

Nitish Kumar does not want to face the Opposition in the Assembly with corruption taint on his deputy in the government. Tejashwi Yadav has been made an accused in a case of corruption by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Raids were conducted by both the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) at residences and properties belonging to the Yadav family. Tejashwi in his response accused the BJP of framing him by using the central agency.

Reports suggest that Nitish Kumar has conveyed the message to RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and also made this clear to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi during his meeting with him yesterday in New Delhi.

LALU LIKELY TO RELENT

On the other hand, there are reports that Lalu Prasad Yadav is willing to reconsider his decision about his son Tejashwi Yadav continuing in the government. Lalu Prasad Yadav is not in favour snapping ties with the JD(U) over the issue of resignation of Tejashwi Yadav.

At one point of time Lalu Prasad Yadav was considering withdrawing all the 12 RJD members in the Nitish Kumar government including his sons Tejashwi and Tej Pratap. But, over the last week, Lalu Prasad Yadav has seemingly recalibrated his stand.

Lalu Prasad has already played the victim card after the CBI and ED raids. With Nitish Kumar staying firm on his decision to have Tejashwi out of his cabinet unless he gives a point-wise reply in public to all the allegations leveled by the agencies, Lalu Prasad may project his younger son as another victim of vendetta politics of the BJP.

SONIA, RAHUL AS PEACE BROKER

Some observers say that things started moving towards a compromise between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad after Congress president Sonia Gandhi spoke to both the leaders earlier this month. Sonia is believed to have asked both the leaders to resolve the issue without breaking the alliance.

Congress is the third partner in the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar. Nitish has recently been seen inclined towards the BJP over several issues. The latest was the Presidential Election when Nitish broke ranks with the Opposition to support BJP candidate Ram Nath Kovind. The Bihar unit of the BJP has made it clear that it would welcome back Nitish Kumar in the NDA fold if he parted ways with the RJD.

advertisement

The Congress, however, has been trying to keep the grand alliance together and keep the BJP out of power in Bihar. This also helps the Congress keep the Opposition camp strong against the BJP at the Centre.

ALSO READ |

Nitish meets Rahul amid reports of rift in grand alliance

--- ENDS ---
Youve probably heard of link building, but you might not know what it really is or how to do it effectively. Sure, you can go ahead and hire a digital marketing agency, but unless you know the ins and outs, you won't be successful.

What if they use PBNs?

What if they have a bad linking strategy?

What if they waste all your budget and don't deliver any results?

It's important to understand link building practices and how Google can change your website -- especially with Google's recent updates.

While working with clients through my agency, Taco, I come across a few common mistakes website owners make as they build links. And even though there are fantastic guides talking about link building, I see these mistakes over and over again.

Here are six link building strategies that hurt your SEO efforts and how to fix them.

1. Building links to home page links

It seems logical to send all of your SEO power to your homepage because that's where you want everyone to start. But, it's wrong. In fact, it's probably one of the biggest SEO myths. The homepage shouldn't be used for your top phrases.

I know you're asking right now, "But then how do I target the key phrases I want to rank for?"

You should build out content-rich subpages in your site to target those phrases, then build backlinks to those pages. By following this method, you will have links going to many pages on your site, not just your home page. This is a much more natural way to build links to your website.

Related: Why You Want 'Backlinks' to Your Website

2. Too much keyword anchor text

As I mentioned in the previous section, your homepage is not the place to target all of your important key phrases. Use it instead for building the brand and creating trust with the search engines.

So, when you are building links to your home page, the majority of the anchors should come from your brand or some form of your URL.

Most SEO strategies want to build links that have their important phrases as the anchor, but according to the research done by SEOJet, only 3 percent of your links should have an exact match as an anchor text.

This principle of building branded links also applies to subpages, if you want your link profile to look really natural, you need to have some anchor texts that have no key phrase at all, some links with the URL as the anchor, and some with your brand as the anchor.

This is how other website owners would link to you naturally. It is unreasonable to think that anyone who ever linked to you because they loved your site would use your main key phrase as the anchor. So, you can't do it either.

3. Not enough nofollow links

There is a misconception about nofollow links and whether or not you should get any as you build links for your site. If you look at it from a real-world perspective, the nofollow attribute was created so we as website owners could let Google know that certain links were advertisements and they shouldn't be counted in the SEO algorithm.

In other words, Google expects that real businesses will have nofollow links because real businesses advertise. So, how do you expect Google to recognize you as a real business if you aren't getting any nofollow links through advertising?

This is further supported by the fact that on average over 30 percent of links pointing to top-ranked websites are nofollow links. It is good to get nofollow links.

Related: How to Promote a Website Through Link Building in 10 Easy Ways

4. Not enough high-content pages

If you want people to link to your website naturally, then you should create amazing content ever written so people will link to it.

In fact, in order to build a lot of links to a page, you need good, in-depth content. If you're not doing that then getting a lot of links pointing to a page of yours will not look natural.

Google would never believe that a post with 500 words would naturally get 100 links pointing to it. But, the ultimate guide on a certain topic with 5000+ words could bring in hundreds of links naturally. That is where you need to focus your content marketing efforts.

5. Bad blogger outreach practices

One of the best ways to get links from high-authority websites is to write a guest blog post for them. There are a ton of blogs that will accept your guest post, but the reality is most guest posts never get approved.

This happens for two reasons.

Your pitch email is a template that could apply to any blog in the world or your writing isn't good enough. When you pitch a potential blog, don't think of it as a one-time thing but as if you are building a relationship with a colleague. Reach out to your new business colleague and talk to them about their site and their needs.

Then pitch your guest article that helps solve those needs. After that, make sure you write an amazing article. If writing isn't your greatest talent, then find someone who is a stellar writer and get them to help you.

If you are looking for a good outreach email to copy, check out this one in SEMRush.

Related: 5 Strategies for Better 'Link Building' and Improving Your SEO

6. No link building plan

This is the most common mistake almost all marketers make. They think that if they create amazing content, either people will naturally link to you (good luck with that to anyone who doesn't already have a following) or you just need to go build links to that page and it will rank.

That is a vague SEO strategy. You might as well say, "Just go do stuff and you will rank."

For some reason, people don't treat links as they should -- like money. Links are money. Links help you get on page one of Google search results. Page one equals money.

With your own personal money, you create a budget (read: plan) and then tell your money what to do. So, if you treat links like money, then you will have a plan in place and can tell your links what to do. You will plan out which anchor texts you need to get and how many so that you can keep a natural link profile. Using this SEO tactic, you will be able to get better SEO results with fewer links.

You would be surprised how much of an impact these things can have on your rankings, so give yourself a leg up on your competition by fixing these link building miscues.

Related:

6 SEO Strategies That Are Hurting Your Online Business

4 Easily Overlooked Reasons Your Online Business Is Not Thriving

4 Online Marketing Trends With Big Potential to Drive Sales



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


By PTI: Hyderabad, Jul 22 (PTI) The Telangana State Wildlife Board today approved the Strategic Road Development Project (SRDP) proposed to be taken up here.

A meeting of the Board, presided over by state Forest Minister Jogu Ramanna approved the project unanimously, a state government release said.

Under the SRDP, the state government proposes to construct six multi level flyovers at the KBR park here to ease traffic congestion, it said.

advertisement

The state governments proposal was challenged in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) citing environmental concerns, it said.

However, the proposal to construct the flyovers got a green signal with a recent verdict of the NGT, the release claimed.

The issue would come before a meeting of the National Wildlife Board this month end, the release said, adding that no damage would be caused to KBR Park due to the construction of the flyovers. PTI SJR RMT BAS

--- ENDS ---
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A western New York jury that's trying to decide whether four people are guilty of murder has also been eager to figure out another question: What does "importune" mean?

Jurors in Rochester made that query this week during deliberations in the trial of Laura Rideout, her two adult sons and her boyfriend. They're charged with killing her estranged husband, Craig Rideout, and attempting to hide his identity by disfiguring his face.

Laura Rideout and Paul Tucci arrived for court. Judge will be clarifying the charge to the jury this morning pic.twitter.com/qcs6wBqx3U  Tina MacIntyre-Yee (@tyee23) July 19, 2017

The word question came up because state law says a person can be held liable for a crime that he "solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or intentionally aids."

After some research, the judge drew on a 1999 appeals court ruling to tell jurors Friday that importune means "to beg, urge, or solicit persistently or troublesomely."

Deliberations resume Monday.
The leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has praised the Federal Government for reversing the controversial merger of the Christian Religious Studies and the Islamic Religious Studies by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC).CAN President, Rev Samson Olasupo Ayokunle said the reverse of the policy shows that: we have a listening and sensitive government who is ready to reverse itself or any unacceptable policy when the need arises.According to a statement issued in Abuja by his Special Assistant (Media & Communications), Pastor Adebayo Oladeji: CAN is using this medium to register our sincere and deep appreciation to the Federal Government for reversing the controversial, unlawful, and ungodly merger of the Christian Religious Studies and the Islamic Religious Studies as a subject by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC).The merger of the two subjects had been rejected long before the emergence of this government because it was done without the consent of all stakeholders including CAN and all efforts made to reverse the ungodly policy were fruitless until now.CAN also appreciate the timely intervention of the National Assembly in the saga that quickly doused the tension that was generated by the policy.However, we ask the Federal Government to do the following: Direct the NERDC to organize a seminar on the New Curriculum with a view to addressing all the grey areas in it especially topics that can promote rebellion in our children. Mandate all state governments to recruit adequate teachers for the CRK especially in the North where most of the states have no teachers for the subject. Ask the Federal Ministry of Education to review all the textbooks that are currently being used as some of them are encouraging ungodly practices like masturbation.We appreciate all well meaning Nigerians, the media and the civil society for their roles while the controversy lasted. We pray for divine guidance and wisdom for our political leaders as they lead the country.
*

Coalition of Niger Delta Agitators has condemned the recent alliance meeting between the Yorubas, Middle Belt, South East and Niger Delta Elders.

The coalition in a statement on Monday also hinted that it would declare Niger Delta Republic on September 1 if its demands are not met by the Nigerian government.

The group said while the Niger Delta leaders could meet Igbo and Middle Belt, it was against Yoruba which allegedly acts against the interest of the South South region.

The statement reads: The eight years of President Olusegun Obasanjo was a total disappointment. He failed to develop the Niger Delta or resolve the Niger Delta issues. Even the NDDC he created was not funded in order to drive the development of Niger Delta according to master plan.

After so much agitation and pressure by the Militants, Obasanjo decided to nominate Goodluck Jonathan as running mate to late Yaradua, the Yorubas were not comfortable having Vice President from Niger Delta, this was demonstrated in 2014 APC Primaries election. The Presidential candidate was zoned to the North to complete the tenure of late Yaradua while the Vice President supposed to be zoned to the South South to complete the tenure of the Niger Delta.

But the Yorubas ignored and brought their son. Today the Yorubas have the Acting President and the Minister of Works, Power and Housing who ignores the East-West road and concentrates only on Benin-Ore road, which is their own.

The Acting President tour of the Niger Delta states was a camouflage to deceive the Niger Delta people. After many months since the Acting President visited, there is nothing good that has come out from the visit. The call by the Acting President for the relocation of the head office of the Oil/Gas companies to their operational base was a great joke which we know even if he is the President he would not enforce it.

The greatest enemy of the Niger Delta people are the Yorubas. They constantly do everything possible to frustrate the progress and development of the Niger Delta region. They are in control of the Oil/Gas companies, they pay taxes and royalties to Lagos state government instead of Niger Delta states.

If we are to continue as one Nigeria from October 1st, 2017 we demand as follows: Restructuring and True Federalism that will give all the zones equal right; Total Resource Control; Removal of the Group Managing Director  NNPC; Removal of the National Security Adviser; All the Oil/Gas companies and their servicing companies must relocate their headquarters to their operational base.

Also, there must be concrete arrangement that come 2019, the President or Vice President must come from any of the Niger Delta States; Sixty percent (60%) of oil blocs in the Niger Delta should be awarded by Niger Delta people.

We resolved to unfold the programmes for October 1st, 2017 declaration of Niger Delta Republic on September 1st 2017, if the Federal Government failed to meet up our demands as stated above.





The statement was signed by General John Duku (Niger Delta Watchdogs) and Convener: Coalition of Niger Delta Agitators; General Ekpo Ekpo  Niger Delta Volunteers; General Osarolor Nedam  Niger Delta Warriors; Major-Gen. Henry Okon Etete  Niger Delta Peoples Fighters; Major-Gen. Asukwo Henshaw  Bakassi Freedom Fighters.

Others are Major-Gen. Ibinabo Horsfall  Niger Delta Movement for Justice; Major-Gen. Duke Emmanson  Niger Delta Fighters Network; Major-Gen. Inibeghe Adams  Niger Delta Freedom Mandate; Major-Gen. Ibinabo Tariah  Niger Delta Development Network.
A former US State Department Nigeria specialist, Mathew Page, has suggested that a US civil forfeiture case to seize $144 million of as...

A former US State Department Nigeria specialist, Mathew Page, has suggested that a US civil forfeiture case to seize $144 million of assets from two cronies of Diezani Alison-Madueke, may just be the start of her legal troubles with America.US Justice Department last week filed an asset recovery case in Houston against Jide Omokore and Kola Aluko, seeking the seizure of luxury property, including a New York apartment and super-yacht, bought by one of the businessmen. The two businessmen, at the detriment of Nigerian treasury, were heavily favoured by Diezani, during her tenure as Nigerias oil minister.Although this is the first attempt by US law enforcement to go after assets allegedly stolen by Diezani and her henchmen, it almost certainly will not be the last, the AFP reported Mathew Page as saying.At present, Diezani faces charges only at home but her name crops up in a growing number of international cases that lift the lid on the scale of alleged corruption in the countrys oil sector.Since leaving office in 2015, she has been implicated in bribery, fraud, misuse of public funds, and money laundering cases in Nigeria, Britain, Italy and the United States.The first female president of the global oil cartel OPEC  who was one of Africas most prominent politicians  has always denied the allegations, which involve billions of dollars syphoned from oil deals and state coffers.Nigerias President Muhammadu Buhari, elected in 2015 on a promise to eliminate graft, has said that mind-boggling sums of public money were stolen by previous administrations.Officials in Abuja say they are talking with US prosecutors about repatriating the money if the civil forfeiture claim is successful.Alison-Madueke served under president Goodluck Jonathan from 2010 to 2015 and was Nigerias first female minister of petroleum resources. But her tenure was dogged by scandal.On her watch, the former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi was sacked for claiming the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had failed to remit $20 billion.In one case heard in Nigeria in February, Alison-Madueke was accused of diverting some $153 million from the NNPC coffers.In another ongoing trial, some 23 billion naira ($73 million) of NNPC money is alleged to have been used to influence the 2015 presidential election to keep Jonathan in power.Lat week, prosecutors in Lagos began proceedings to recover $1.76 billion of assets owned by Kola Aluko and Jide Omokore, whose companies were awarded oil contracts by Alison-Madueke.On Wednesday, another judge ordered the forfeiture of Alison-Maduekes $37.5 million luxury Lagos property, saying it was purchased with ill-gotten funds.Meanwhile, Italian prosecutors allege that she and Jonathan received kickbacks from oil majors ENI and Shell as part of a $1.3-billion deal for an offshore oil block in Nigeria.Charges relating to the same oil block deal have also been filed against the oil majors and some senior Nigerian politicians.Jonathan and Alison-Madueke are not named in the suit but the former president is under pressure from parliament to answer questions about the so-called Malabu deal.Finally, Diezani-Madueke was arrested in London in October 2015 in connection with a British probe into international corruption and money laundering, but she was freed on bail.As the international cases pile up, anti-graft campaigners hope the growing body of evidence will boost current President Muhammadu Buharis faltering war on corruption.Several high-profile figures in Jonathans government have been charged with corruption since Buhari came to power, however so far there have been no major convictions.Still, some activists believe the overseas cases will serve as a powerful example of justice.Debo Adeniran, of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders lobby group, said the latest cases involving Alison-Madueke, Aluko and Omokore could be a morale booster.Once a conviction is got abroad, the right signal will be sent to all looters that the judgment day has come, he said.The fight against corruption will receive a boost. At last, the chickens are coming home to roost.Dolapo Oni, an oil analyst with Ecobank, said that in contrast to Nigerias sluggish courts, the overseas corruption cases may be concluded faster.But whatever positive impact that may have, fears remain that with Buhari on indefinite medical leave, his anti-corruption war is losing momentum.Leading Nigerian lawyer Festus Keyamo said the cases demonstrated the need fundamentally to overhaul the NNPC  and to investigate just how far up corruption went in the ruling elite.The big unanswered questions: is it possible one Minister allegedly stole so much without the knowledge, connivance & approval of the C-in-C (commander-in-chief)?, he tweeted.Source: AFP
Benue and Cross River states are using a chunk of the Paris refund to pay the salaries and pensions of their workers as advised by the ...

Benue and Cross River states are using a chunk of the Paris refund to pay the salaries and pensions of their workers as advised by the Federal Government.Benue said it is devoting 90 per cent of the N6.4 billion received as its share of the second tranche of the Paris refund to pay arrears of salaries.Mr Terver Akase, Chief Press Secretary to the Benue governor, who announced this in Makurdi, said that the measure was part of efforts to clear the backlog of salaries owed workers to boost their morale.He, however, stated that what came to the state was far below what it was expecting.Actually, we expected N12 billion. But we shall try to use the N6.4 billion prudently, he said.Akase said that the inability to pay salaries promptly was not deliberate.We have not been able to pay salaries because of the paucity of funds.The federal allocation and the internally generated revenue, put together, cannot meet the monthly wage bill of N7.8 billion. It is indeed a bad situation, but we are trying to navigate it, he said.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that state government workers in Benue are owed five months, while local government workers and teachers are owed nine months.Pensioners are owed more than 12 months.In Cross River, Governor Ben Ayade has ordered the payment of gratuities to retirees in the state civil service who retired from service in 2014 from the Paris Club Refund.The 2013 retirees are currently being paid their gratuities and pension in the state.Mr Ekpenyong Henshaw, the Head of Service of Cross River, briefing newsmen on Saturday in Calabar, disclosed that the governor had directed the Commissioner for Finance and the Accountant-General of the state to start processes of the payment.According to Henshaw, the second tranche of N6 billion received by the state from the Paris Club Refund was basically for the payment of gratuities and salaries of public and civil servants in the state.Gov. Ayade is desirous of paying all outstanding arrears owed civil servants by the previous administration because he has their interest at heart.He is ready to do anything within his power to ensure that their salaries and other lawful entitlements are paid when due.He has directed the commissioner for finance and the accountant-general of the state to immediately commence processes for the payment of gratuities to 2014 retirees as we round up payment to 2013 retirees, he said.He assured local government staff who were yet to receive their entitlement to be patient, adding that everyone would be paid his or her entitlement in full.He urged workers in the state not to relent in contributing their quota to the development of the state, adding that the present administration placed high premium on the welfare of workers.
By PTI: New Delhi, Jul 23 (PTI) A 19-year-old Tibetan student, who had attempted self-immolation on a university campus in Varanasi demanding a "free Tibet", has succumbed to his injuries in a hospital here, a doctor said today.

Tenzin Choeying, a student of the Central University of Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, succumbed to his burn injuries at the Safdarjung Hospital yesterday.

advertisement

"He died yesterday, days after he was shifted here from a Varanasi hospital for specialised treatment," said a senior doctor of the Safdarjung Hospital.

He added that the body would be handed over to the authorities after post-mortem.

According to the police, Choeying had set himself ablaze on July 14 on the university campus, while protesting against the Chinese rule in Tibet, and was being treated at a Varanasi hospital, before being shifted to Delhi.

The police in Varanasi had said that as per the accounts of eyewitnesses, Choeying shouted "freedom" before pouring kerosene on his body and setting himself ablaze.

The police were looking at every possibility which led the Tibetan student to take the extreme step, including failure in examinations.

According to the International Campaign for Tibet, 150 Tibetans have self-immolated since 2009. PTI SKV PLB RC

--- ENDS ---
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has hailed the Federal Government for reversing the controversial, unlawful, and ungodly merger...

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has hailed the Federal Government for reversing the controversial, unlawful, and ungodly merger of the Christian Religious Studies and the Islamic Religious Studies as a subject by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC).

The minister, represented by Minister of State for Education, Anthony Anwukah, noted that the meeting was aimed at strengthening the partnership within the three tiers of government in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals 4, SDG4.

Pastor Adebayo Oladeji, Special Assistant on Media to CAN President, Rev Samson Olasupo in a statement sent on Saturday, recalled that the merger of the two subjects had been rejected long before the emergence of this government because it was done without the consent of all stakeholders including CAN and all efforts made to reverse the ungodly policy were fruitless until now.

The reverse of the policy shows that we have a listening and sensitive government who is ready to reverse itself or any unacceptable policy when the need arises.

CAN also appreciates the timely intervention of the National Assembly in the saga that quickly doused the tension that was generated by the policy.

However, we ask the Federal Government to do the following: 1. Direct the NERDC to organise a seminar on the New Curriculum with a view to addressing all the grey areas in it especially topics that can promote rebellion in our children.

2. Mandate all state governments to recruit adequate teachers for the CRK especially in the North where most of the states have no teachers for the subject.

3. Ask the Federal Ministry of Education to review all the textbooks that are currently being used as some of them are encouraging ungodly practices like masturbation.

We appreciate all well meaning Nigerians, the media and the civil society for their roles while the controversy lasted. We pray for divine guidance and wisdom for our political leaders as they lead the country, he said.
The saga started when Kemi Olunloyo, the controversial daughter of an ex-governor of Oyo state in a post, alleged that comedian Seyi Law...

The comedian fired back immediately and described Olunloyo as a bully who was hating on his daughter. Some persons mediated in the online battle and both parties seemed to sheathe their swords. But days later, Olunloyo made another post in which she insisted that Tiwaloluwa wasnt healthy and that a relative of Seyis wife in London had told her that Tiwa indeed had Type 1 diabetes.However, Seyi refuted Olunloyos claims.He said, This is just a case of a person who has refused to seek help. It is obvious that Kemi has decided to bully my daughter. Bullies usually fight people who are within their age bracket and people who have the same body size as them. For her to attack my daughter only means that she is unwell.Who bullies a young child? Never have I seen someone her age bully a child as young as my daughter who is barely a year old. I have decided to ignore her rants. She also made some obnoxious claims about my daughters health. But when youre a man that wakes up every day, knowing the only reason your daughter visits the hospital is to take her vaccines, you have every reason to be grateful to God.Speaking further, he said, According to her, there was an article in which I said I rejoiced she was sent to prison. But its apparent she only read the headline of the article, and not the body. She did not even know that I was pleading on her behalf. I will keep celebrating my daughter and having wonderful times with my wife.On the veracity of Olunloyos claims that his wife, Staceys relative informed her (Olunloyo) that Tiwa has Type 1 Diabetes, Seyi laughed it off. That doesnt even make any sense. For the records though, my wife does not have any relative in the United Kingdom, he said.Explaining the only physical interaction they had before the online battle of words, Seyi said, Prior to her rants online, I only met her once. That was during a Glo Lafftafest show in Ibadan when she came backstage to interview me; that was all.Seyi also maintained that his wife isnt bothered by Kemis rants. My baby is fine; theres nothing wrong with her. I am the one who is a celebrity and Im the one who should talk. My wife is not even bothered, he said.
Keystone Bank Limited has declared it has never hidden any fund belonging to the federal government or its agencies.

Keystone Bank Limited has declared it has never hidden any fund belonging to the federal government or its agencies.The management of the bank was reacting to a ruling by Justice Chuka Obiozor, asking seven banks to remit the various sums allegedly being kept illegally in their custody to the designated federal governments Asset Recovery dollars account domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).The affected banks are United Bank for Africa (UBA), Diamond Bank Plc, Skye Bank Plc, First Bank Limited, Fidelity Bank Plc, Keystone Bank Limited and Sterling Bank Plc.Some of these banks have however disputed the allegation.Keystone Bank, in a statement yesterday, said: Keystone Bank has never illegally hidden any amount of money belonging to the federal government or any of its agencies.
JERSEY CITY -- Seven adults and one child were displaced after a fire broke out in their home on Saturday afternoon, officials said.

The one-alarm fire was report just before 4 p.m. at 745 Communipaw Ave., city spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said.

All floors, including the basement, in the two story building suffered damage from the fire that took firefighter about a half hour to bring under control, Morrill said.

The American Red Cross is assisting the eight people with relocation, she said.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- A 27-year-old man was stabbed during a street fight on Communipaw Avenue late Saturday night, police said.

Police were notified just after midnight by the Jersey City Medical Center that a man had been brought to the hospital with a stab wound. Officers were sent to a home on Prescott Street to locate a crime scene, a police report indicates.

When the officers arrived, they met 32-year-old Jermaine Young who told police he drove to a store on Communipaw Avenue and was assaulted by three men while he searched for money in his pockets, the report states.

Young allegedly admitted to stabbing the victim out of self defense and gave the knife used in the assault to authorities, police said.

He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault causing seriously bodily injury and possession of a weapon.

Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
ORLANDO -- Walt Disney World is known for its magical moments, but for the Gilmour family it was life changing visit.

Janelle Gilmour, 12, and Elijah Gilmour, 10, thought a private meeting with Mickey Mouse was going to be the highlight of their trip to the Magic Kingdom. But it was the news the Mickey broke to pair during their meeting that was the real surprise.

Mickey told the siblings they were being officially adopted by Tom, 41, and Courtney Gilmour, 36.

And the tears started to flow.

Tom and Courtney Gilmour found out the adoption was going to be finalized on May 24, about a month before the family took a trip from their Portland, Pa. residence to Disney World.

Mickey Mouse told the unsuspecting siblings that their foster family would be adopting them. (Courtesy Courtney Gilmour)

The Gilmour couple began fostering Janelle and Elijah in August 2014, Courtney Gilmour said. While the adoption had been in the works for a while, no one knew when the official date would be.

The couple kept the news under wraps until vacation, since they love surprising their children, Courtney Gilmour, who was raised in Old Bridge, said.

Given the kids had never been to Disney, Mickey Mouse was an iconic way to give them some of the best news of their life, Courtney Gilmour said.

Disney arranged the private meeting with a talking Mickey, who took photos with the kids and showed them a few magic tricks before handing them a sign breaking the big news, reading "Your Adoption Day!"

"Adoption..." Elijah Gilmour said while his sister broke down in tears. The family shared a group hug, and a lot of tears, before snapping another family photo with Mickey.

"Hot dog!" said the rare, talking Mickey, hugging the tearful family.

"It was emotional, it was awesome but mostly emotional," Courtney Gilmour said. "I try to do everything big for them and I want everything to be extra special."

She uploaded the video to a Disney fan Facebook group and went viral overnight, she said. It now has more than 2 million views.

She said she's watched it a "bazillion" times but still can't hold back the tears.

As someone who was fostered as a child herself, the moment resonated with Courtney Gilmour.

At age 1, she went through the New Jersey foster system, until she was adopted in Old Bridge at 6 years old. From the things she saw growing up, she knew she wanted to give back to the foster care system.

The Gilmours have fostered a total of 13 children, and "absolutely" plan on continuing to do so. Their only children are Elijah and Janelle.

"I know there's a strong need for good foster homes and that's what my husband and I wanted to provide for the kids that need it," she said.

The family is celebrating the adoption on Saturday, explaining they make the little things into big events, and big events into bigger events.

"We're calling this the first summer of freedom. They can go on sleepovers or to hang out," she said, pointing out this was something they previously couldn't do since approval from the county and private foster care agency were needed in many instances.

She said although the family dynamic has always been there, the kids are officially Gilmours.

Now that everything has been settled with the adoption, Courtney Gilmour also started seeing Janelle and Elijah's personalities shine through a bit more.

"It's awesome, we feel content. We don't have all these hands and eyes in our family. The kids can just be kids," she said.

Courtney Gilmour hopes the video sparks an interest in the foster system.

Although she realizes not every family has the ability to foster children, granting the wish of foster children can help just as much.

"I just hope people take an interest in the fostering system, and this is shining a more positive light out there for it," she said.

Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snieto-munoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @snietomunoz. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips
The person in charge of enforcing regulations for sexual assault at our colleges and universities believes that the overwhelming majority of campus attacks are just regrettable drunken hookups, so get over it already, ladies.

If it is hard to fathom a remark so breathtakingly stupid, note that Candice Jackson also wrote last year on Facebook that the women who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault were "fake victims" lying for "political gain."

After Betsy DeVos put her in charge of the Civil Rights office at the Department of Education, Jackson told the New York Times last week that the Title IX rules pertaining to sexual violence need to be rolled back because "the accusations -- 90 percent of them -- fall into the category of 'We were both drunk,' (or) 'We broke up, and six months later she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.'"

A model Trump appointee, this one.

Jackson later apologized for being "flippant," but that remark is not only impossible to walk back, it is disqualifying: Anyone who doesn't believe campus sexual assault is an epidemic doesn't belong in the job, and she needs to be put on a bus.

It's also disqualifying because she is too dense to do even rudimentary research: Rape is one of the most underreported crimes, and schools are appallingly negligent in documenting incidents of sexual violence and need to improve victim services.

That doesn't mean false accusations don't occur - Justice Department data suggests they are found in 2 to 10 percent of the cases - so it is compulsory to revisit the Title IX rules established by the Obama Administration in 2011.

The rules lowered the standard of proof for sexual assault and often denied the cross-examination of witnesses and alleged victims, so there is always the possibility that due process rights would be trampled by schools who fear the threat of losing federal funding.

But even cases in New Jersey - such as the false gang-rape charge at William Paterson in 2014, when five young men were expelled without even a hearing -- demonstrates that the most urgent reform needed is a reduction in the role of the schools themselves. Indeed, they should retain the right to expel students who perpetrate crimes, but they should also be required to report every sexual assault allegation to the local prosecutor's sex crimes unit.

Felonies mandate the criminal justice system, not college tribunals. Campus cops and school nurses are not equipped to do forensic work or administer rape kits.

And if deep thinkers like Candice Jackson disagree, New Jersey needs devise its own rules.

No doubt, the issue is complex. The trauma of too many women is not taken seriously, and at the same time, the rules might sweep up innocent people wrongly accused, and Jackson is right that more than half the cases involve alcohol.

But the person now making the rules is a filth-peddler who has spent decades cloaked as a political operative: Years before coordinating that infamous press conference for the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault before the presidential debate last Oct. 9, Jackson wrote a book entitled "The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine." It's a living.

In the book, she pointed out that current laws about harassment do not address "the reality that unwanted sexual advances are difficult to define," and feared these laws cause men to "self-censor themselves to avoid being accused of sexual harassment."

Such plums of insight undoubtedly caught Trump's attention. New Jersey needs to forge its own path.

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Trumpcare failed spectacularly, and now the president and his party are attempting to sabotage Obamacare. They want it to get so bad that Democrats have crawl to them for relief.



Insurers say this is one big reason their rates are going up; because they fear Republicans will find another way to kill the requirement that everyone carry health insurance or pay a penalty - and that Trump will stop paying the subsidies that enable people to afford coverage.



This is not an idle threat. New Jersey's own Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.) is already on it - a chief architect of the continuing effort to cripple this law.

Under his leadership, the House Appropriations committee passed legislation forbidding the IRS from enforcing the mandate that people buy insurance or pay a penalty. That's a lot like repealing the law without a replacement.

Health insurance rates in N.J. are going up under Obamacare. You can blame Trump.



Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-3rd Dist.) is also doubling down, insisting Republican repeal attempts are not really to blame for the upheaval: "Let's not kid ourselves," he said. "Insurers were pulling out many, many months ago."



Let's not kid ourselves: While there were some shakeups, overall, the marketplace was doing just fine. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health care, recently found that it was stable in most places, with insurers finally setting appropriate rates.



Yet no longer enforcing the mandate to carry insurance or failing to pay the subsidies - as Trump is threatening - would blow up the entire system. Without the mandate, healthy people will wait until they are sick to buy insurance. And without the subsidies, it will be unaffordable.



This would leave us with an insurance pool full of people with expensive pre-existing conditions that insurers are still required to cover. Is it any wonder they're hiking premiums?

N.J. lawmaker on his role in trying to repeal Obamacare: 'No regrets'



New Jersey's largest insurer, Horizon, is now seeking rate increases two to three times higher than it would have without the GOP repeal effort. We asked Frelinghuysen for his take, but got no response. Sir Rodney, who still refuses to hold a town hall, answers to no one.



And Trump isn't just threatening to withhold subsidies. He is actively discouraging enrollment, diverting money from outreach programs to a campaign designed to smear the Affordable Care Act. He ended contracts in 18 cities that help people sign up for coverage; a big deal, because states that don't facilitate this law haven't seen the same reductions in their uninsured.



Trump's admitted plan is to let the law fail, and blame Democrats. "We're not going to own it," he says. But he already does. A Kaiser poll found most Americans would hold Trump and the Republicans responsible if it falls apart. And rightly so. About 20 million fewer people are uninsured now than before the Affordable Care Act.



Trump is hoping the law's collapse will force Democrats to make concessions. He is willing to hurt regular Americans to gain leverage in this political fight, a poisonous tactic, and one that is doomed to fail. The only question is how much damage he and his supporters will cause before they give up.

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
TRENTON -- Publishers who gather troves of criminal records and charge fees to remove them from the internet can now be sued in state court under a bill signed by Gov. Chris Christie.

Anyone who has ever poked around on a search engine like Google has likely come across sites that act as clearinghouses of booking photos and arrest records.

The measure signed by Christie on Friday specifically targets sites that exist solely to solicit fees for taking town embarrassing material from the Web, according to a key sponsor.

"These website operators put these mugshots online just to extort people and charge them to remove their photos," Assemblyman Raj Mukherji (D-Hudson) told NJ Advance Media on Friday. "That serves no public information purpose. It's a shakedown."

Of course, most mainstream news organizations, including NJ Advance Media, regularly publish mugshots as a matter of public record but very rarely remove them and do not charge money for doing so.

Mugshots and driver's license photos frequently accompany police reports or press releases put out by law enforcement, though some agencies refuse to release them as a matter of policy, claiming they are exempt from disclosure under the New Jersey's Open Public Records Act.

Websites devoted exclusively to publishing mugshots and criminal records have drawn scrutiny across the country in recent years, prompting lawsuits in California, Illinois and elsewhere. Publishers of such sites have maintained they are protected under the First Amendment.

A previous version of the bill signed by Christie included criminal penalties for publishers, but that provision was later removed in committee. Mukherji maintained the new law would not have any impact on access to public records.

"Nothing here prohibits the publication of any information that's public record at all," he said. "What we're saying is the extortion is what's going to be civilly publishable now."

New Jersey joins more than a dozen states with similar laws on the books, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The organization also noted in a February report that major credit card companies were cutting ties with the paid mugshot services as Google changed its search algorithm to feature them less prominently.

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
TRENTON -- Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill expanding paid leave for New Jersey workers caring for a new child or sick relative.

Christie's conditional, or partial, veto, on Friday wipes out the expansion of benefits under the program and job protections during leave for certain workers. Christie criticized the Legislature for ignoring the increased cost to taxpayers and risks the expansion could pose to small businesses.

The bill (A4927) would increase the eligibility period for family leave insurance from six to 12 weeks and raise the cap on the reimbursement an applicant can receive.

Siblings, grandparents, grandchildren and parents-in-law would be newly covered as caregivers, while under the current law, only children, parents, spouses, domestic partners and civil union partners qualify.

It also would confer the job protections presently available to employees of firms with 50 or more employees to those with 20 or more employees.

New Jersey's paid family leave program, one of just a few in the U.S., is funded by workers through a small payroll deduction of up to $33.50 a year.

In his veto message, Christie warmed this "costly expansion ... will result in increased taxes to be paid by working citizens in New Jersey."

The state paid out $88.7 million in benefits in 2016, according to a fiscal estimate from the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services.

The changes proposed in this bill would increase payouts by about $147.3 million year, without accounting for "any likely, but indeterminate growth" in the number of users, OLS said.

"It is all but guaranteed that the cost of this program will increase and that cost will be borne by the taxpaying citizens of this state directly out of their paychecks," Christie said.

Bill sponsors argued the insurance program will be able to absorb the costs because it it is underutilized.

Just 12 percent of New Jersey's eligible new parents are receiving family leave benefits, according to a study from the progressive think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective.

Between 2009 and 2015, family leave insurance paid out more than 200,000 claims, totaling nearly half a billion dollars. About eight in 10 claims were for bonding with a child, while two in 10 were for caring for a family member.

Democratic sponsors and NJPP argued low-income families can't afford to get by on the weekly cap on benefits -- two-thirds of wages up to $633 a week.

A worker making $15 an hour, or $600 a week, received $400 a week in wage replacement under Family Leave Insurance.

Christie said if lawmakers want to boost participation, they should take aim more narrowly at increasing awareness.

"With significant uncertainty about the cost associated with the expansion of these programs, I am recommending that the bill be amended to focus directly on raising awareness of the benefits currently available," he said.

The Democrat-controlled Legislature can override his veto, something it lacks the votes to do without Republican support, or it can accept Christie's recommendations.

Dena Mottola Jaborska, director of New Jersey Citizen Action, called the veto a setback, but only a temporary one.

"Christie's conditional veto ... is only one in a long line of actions and inactions he has taken that have meant caregivers faced with taking leave from work have little or no safety net to prevent them from financial hardship, even devastation," she said.
By PTI: Mirzapur (UP), Jul 23 (PTI) Twenty people today fell ill in Ahraura area here after consuming tea at a shop in which a similar incident had taken place earlier this month, police said.

They were rushed to a nearby hospital after complaining of stomach ache and vomiting. Five of them were then referred to a hospital in Varanasi, police said.

advertisement

An FIR has been registered against the tea shop owner, Ahraura police station SHO Praveen Singh said.

About 22 people had taken ill earlier this month after consuming tea at the same shop, he said. PTI CORR ABN BSA

--- ENDS ---
WASHINGTON  A weeks-long impasse over imposing new financial sanctions on Iran and Russia broke late Friday, with the House preparing to vote next week on a bill that would prevent President Donald Trump from lifting measures against Moscow.

House leaders agreed to vote on an expanded version of the bill after incorporating a roster of sanctions aimed at freezing North Koreas nuclear program and draining the government of revenue it uses to fund it. The measures against Pyongyang, which passed the House 419 to 1 as a stand-alone bill earlier this year, were inserted at the request of House Republican leaders.

While some details have yet to be finalized, congressional aides said, the bill is set for a vote Tuesday, according to a schedule circulated Saturday by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. It will proceed under special expedited procedures for noncontroversial bills expected to pass with a two-thirds majority.

The legislation, however, has hardly had a smooth ride to this point.

An initial Senate bill  which slapped sanctions on Iran in response to its ballistic missile testing and on Russia for its meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election  passed in June on a 98-to-2 vote. Critically, the sanctions could only be lifted with congressional approval  a departure from the flexibility presidents are traditionally given to conduct foreign policy.

But the bill hit an immediate procedural snag due to claims it ran afoul of the constitutional requirement that revenue bills originate in the House.

The roadblock arose as Trump administration officials stepped up a lobbying campaign against the bill, prompting Democrats to accuse House GOP leaders of stalling on Trumps behalf.

New obstacles emerged earlier this month: House Democrats objected to Senate changes to the bill that could freeze out the House minoritys ability to block sanctions relief, and the oil-and-gas industry raised fears that U.S. companies could be frozen out of projects with Russian partners.

Last week, McCarthy added another twist by proposing the North Korea sanctions to the Senate bill. That again raised hackles around the Capitol at the prospect that the legislation could be complicated further. But according to multiple congressional aides, negotiations continued behind the scenes this week, with McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., working to strike a compromise, along with Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committees.

The version of the bill posted on a House website just before midnight Friday includes changes aimed at addressing the energy industry concerns as well as some White House objections.

But despite pressure from lobbyists and the Trump administration, negotiators maintained unprecedented oversight authority for Congress.

The legislation ensures that both the Majority and Minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the Administrations implementation of sanctions, Hoyer said in a statement. Other changes made to the bill will ensure effective and unified implementation among partners and make provisions more workable.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also issued a statement Saturday praising the breakthrough and calling for the bills swift passage.

Given the many transgressions of Russia, and President Trumps seeming inability to deal with them, a strong sanctions bill such as the one Democrats and Republicans have just agreed to is essential, he said.
By PTI: Mathura, Jul 23 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Power Minister Srikant Sharma today launched free power connection scheme for the BPL card holders in the state.

"The scheme of providing free power connection to the BPL card holders has been launched at 624 places across the state," he said.

Sharma said the scheme would also benefit the poor people who do not have BPL cards at present.

advertisement

"Such people would have to pay between Rs 80 to Rs 120 for getting the power connection," he said.

"The scheme would also provide relief to the middle class people as the instalment payment facility would be admissible for them," the minister said.

Sharma said while the Centre had launched the free gas connection scheme for the poor, the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh is giving free power connection to the same class of people.

"The Yogi government is working for the common man and the poor," he claimed.

Sharma accused the previous government of not being "worried" about the poor. "The body was in India, the soul was in Italy," he alleged.

He said, "The Saifai system is now over and the whole of the state is getting uniform power supply," he claimed, adding that the same principle is being applied for development.

"The work on making the state free of crime and corruption is going on a war footing," he added. PTI CORR AQS AQS

--- ENDS ---
It wasnt planned. It wasnt in the event program.

But Saturday morning, Phil Little Thunder, his family and descendants of Gen. William S. Harney went on a 10-mile walk.

They walked to the site of the Blue Water Creek Massacre, where members of a Lakota village were killed by Harneys troops in 1855. The massacre is remembered as part of the First Sioux War.

The walk took place during the Convergence event at Ash Hollow State Historical Park, a three-day event where the public can interact with Native Americans, as well as actors portraying pioneers, homesteaders, fur traders, military members and others who lived near Ash Hollow during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Native Americans planned their own events to tell their stories. Artifacts from the massacre came from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., and have never been publicly viewed before. Little Thunder came from Rosebud, South Dakota.

After returning to the teepees set up at camp on Ash Hollows grounds, they gathered in a circle with a large group of spectators for a ceremony bringing peace and forgiveness.

Little Thunders relatives spoke about never forgetting what happened to their ancestors at Blue Water Creek Massacre, but also spoke of forgiveness.

At the time of the massacre in 1855, Native Americans forgave even as they flew a white flag.

Members of Rose Bud Reservation sang traditional songs and banged a drum before Native Americans and attendees participated in a group prayer, facing each cardinal direction.

A village elder asked attendees to embrace each member of Little Thunders family before forming a circle, uniting as one group. Little Thunders family members cried as attendees reached out to hug, touch and embrace. Many attendees wiped tears as they embraced the Native Americans. Some sobbed.

Little Thunder said the idea for the walk was casually brought up Friday night.

Weve been on this journey for quite a while, he said of Gen. Harneys descendant, also on the walk, doing the healing.
The highlights, key points, reports and injury and suspension news from all the weekend's Round 20 NRL Telstra Premiership matches.

Broncos v Bulldogs

A devastating seven-minute period midway through the second half helped Brisbane move into second position on the Telstra Premiership ladder and cast further doubt on Canterbury's finals aspirations with a 42-12 win at Suncorp Stadium

Injuries: No major injuries.

Judiciary: Danny Fualalo (Dangerous throw).

Match report: Broncos hammer hapless Bulldogs

Broncos v Bulldogs: Five key points

Watch: Match highlights



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 20: Broncos vs Bulldogs



Roosters v Knights

The Roosters found their groove late to claim a scrappy 28-4 win over a brave Knights side that belied their lowly ranking to match it with the competition heavyweights for the full 80 minutes.

Injuries: Chanel Mata'utia (concussion).

Judiciary: No charges.

Match report: Roosters ease past Newcastle

Roosters v Knights: Five key points

Watch: Match highlights



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 20: Roosters vs Knights



Sharks v Rabbitohs

Cronulla celebrated the 300-game milestone of veteran Luke Lewis with a much-needed 26-12 win in front of their home fans at Southern Cross Group Stadium on Friday night.

The win was classic Sharks  gritty, rarely pretty, but marked by a refusal to back down and an uncanny ability to find points when they needed them.

Injuries: Sam Burgess (ribs).

Judiciary: No charges.

Match report: Sharks win in Lewis's 300th

Sharks v Rabbitohs: Five key points

Watch: Match highlights



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 20: Sharks vs Rabbitohs

Panthers v Titans

The Panthers were slow out of the blocks but clicked into gear in the second half, keeping the pressure on the top eight with a win over the Titans.

Injuries: Konrad Hurrell (leg), Matt Moylan (hamstring).

Judiciary: Solomone Kata (dangerous contact - other).

Match report: Panthers beat in-form Titans

Panthers v Titans: Five key points

Watch: Match highlights



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 20: Panthers vs Titans

Raiders v Storm

Melbourne left the nation's capital with two competition points but the result could come at a cost, with Cameron Smith and Billy Slater both injured in the narrow victory over Canberra.

Injuries: Cameron Smith (pec), Billy Slater (concussion).

Judiciary: Iosia Soliola (dangerous contract - head/neck), Jordan Rapana (shoulder charge).

Match report: Storm lose Smith and Slater in Raiders win

Raiders v Storm: Five key points

Watch: Match highlights



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 20: Raiders vs Storm

Cowboys v Warriors

The Warriors battled hard but the Cowboys effectively ended the Auckland side's finals hopes with a 24-12 win on Saturday night.

Injuries: No major injuries.

Judiciary: Solomone Kata (dangerous contact - other).

Match report: Cowboys scrape past Warriors

Cowboys v Warriors: Five key points

Watch: Match highlights



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 20: Cowboys vs Warriors

Dragons v Sea Eagles

The Dragons have survived a ferocious second-half fightback to defeat the Sea Eagles 52-22 in a huge boost to their top-eight hopes.

Injuries: Joel Thompson (ankle, pre-game), Euan Aitken (shoulder/arm).

Judiciary: No charges.

Match report: Points galore as Dragons thump Manly

Dragons v Sea Eagles: Five key points

Watch: Match highlights



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 20: Dragons vs Sea Eagles

Wests Tigers v Eels

Parramatta have edged tantalisingly close to their first finals appearance since 2009 with a highly entertaining 17-16 win over Wests Tigers at ANZ Stadium.

Injuries: Clint Gutherson (knee).

Judiciary: Luke Brooks (tripping).

Match report: Eels clinch thrilling win over Tigers

Wests Tigers v Eels: Five key points

Watch: Match highlights



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 20: Wests Tigers vs Eels


"Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them, they should recall what happened in 1971," Naidu added.

By India Today Web Desk: Senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu, the National Democratic Alliance's candidate for the Vice-Presidential polls , today said terrorism had become Pakistan's state policy.

"Terrorism is the enemy of humanity. It has no religion. It has unfortunately become Pakistan's state policy," the news agency ANI quoted Naidu as saying.

"Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them, they should recall what happened in 1971," Naidu added, referring to the war that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

advertisement

His comments come on a day when a militant was killed in North Kashmir's Kupwara district as the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the Line of Control. Home Ministry data reveals that there have been more than 40 infiltration attempts by terrorists in 2017.

Venkaiah Naidu stepped down as Union Minister after his nomination, handing over the Information and Broadcasting portfolio to Textile minister Smriti Irani .

Also in the race to succeed Vice-President Hamid Ansari is Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's great-grandson.

ALSO READ

Vice-Presidential election: NDA picks Venkaiah Naidu against Opposition's Gopalkrishna Gandhi

42 infiltration attempts by terrorists this year, reveals MHA data

ALSO WATCH

Gopalkrishna Gandhi to India Today: Not seeking votes as a Gandhi descendant

--- ENDS ---
Inquiries about moving businesses from Illinois to Northwest Indiana have spiked, Region officials say, since the Land of Lincoln passed a budget that raised personal state income taxes by 32 percent and the effective corporate income tax rate by 22.5 percent.

Lake County Economic Alliance President and CEO Karen Lauerman said her office typically handles 20 to 30 inquiries from businesses a week  ranging from the idly curious kicking the tires to companies already scouting sites. She's been getting 10 to 15 more inquiries a week from across the state line since the Illinois Legislature voted to raise taxes earlier this summer.

Illinois business owners have been concerned that state income taxes rose to 4.95 percent from 3.75 percent, and corporate income taxes increased to 9.5 percent from 7.75 percent while cutting spending by $2 billion a year.

Northwest Indiana economic development officials hope to capitalize on the discontent with a new campaign that would brand NWI as a low-cost enclave in Chicagoland.

Starting with the air waves

On Friday, the Northwest Indiana Forum sent Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority President and CEO Bill Hanna to appear on WGN radio's Wintrust Business Lunch with Steve Bertrand. He touted Indiana's business climate and projects intended to position the Region more as a bedroom community for Chicago, including lakefront improvements, the South Shore Line double tracking project that's expected to shorten trips to Chicago, and the plan to extend South Shore Line service to Munster and Dyer.

The opportunity to share the positive story of living and connecting business within the Chicago metro market is essential to our continued growth and success," NWI Forum Economic Development Director Joe Rurode said. The Forums partnership with the RDA furthers our mission of marketing Northwest Indiana as the place to invest in now."

NWI Forum President and CEO Heather Ennis said the private economic development agency based in Portage was putting together marketing materials to appeal to Illinois businesses, especially manufacturers. She said it might not result in an immediate stampede across the state line, but would get factory owners to consider Northwest Indiana if they outgrow their existing space and need to expand or relocate.

"Obviously, moving a manufacturing company is a large undertaking so you have to be at a push point," she said. "No company just says, 'I'll pack up and move everything. That'll be a good business decision.' It's a process that takes time. Our message is that we will continue to be a great place to do business as they continue to go through these reorganizations and struggles in Illinois. It's advantageous to be here."

Northwest Indiana already has had success drawing manufacturers from the south suburbs across the state line, including AM Manufacturing, Carl Buddig, Land O'Frost, MAC Medical Supply Co. and Tec Air Inc. They are the most likely to move because they can retain most of their workforce, who just have to move a little farther, Ennis said.

Focus on the 'next level'

The NWI Forum did a similar campaign when Illinois last raised taxes in 2011, putting up billboards, placing ads on buses and reaching business owners through the Chicago Tribune and Crain's Chicago Business. Indiana also has done several campaigns at a statewide level, including with billboards along the border that asked motorists if they were "Illinoyed" by higher taxes.

The new marketing campaign, however, will target businesses from across the state, as well as residents, Ennis said. It will build on existing slogans the state has promoted such as "A State That Works" and "Taking Indiana to the Next Level."

The NWI Forum is coordinating the campaign with other agencies such as the RDA, the Lake County Economic Alliance and the Greater Northwest Indiana Association of Realtors.

"We want to be organized. We want our message to be crisp and consistent," Ennis said. "Everybody's doing such a great job of telling Northwest Indiana's story. And we keep having more and more positive things to say."

Indiana and the entire Midwest depend on a strong Chicago, but the latest round of tax hikes just reinforce NWI's position as a lower-cost haven just outside the nation's third-largest city with an economy bigger than Thailand's, Lauerman, the Lake County Economic Alliance president, said.

"We're considered the eastern suburb of Chicago, but we have more tax certainty with property tax caps," she said.

The Lake County Economic Alliance is now pursuing 79 projects, the top 20 of which could bring $700 million in investment and 8,500 jobs, Lauerman said. The economic development agency will continue to bring its message to companies at conferences and trade shows in Chicago.

"We tout Indiana's advantages, such as logistics, how we're on the right side of Chicago and how we have Lake Michigan and quality of life," she said. "Lake County will be the primary beneficiary of moves across the border since it's closest to the state line."
MUNSTER  Larry Avila has won journalism awards in three states.

He hopes to soon make it four.

Avila is the Times' new business editor, having started June 19. He replaces Keith Benman, who took a job as a TV news reporter in upstate New York.

"I want to continue to emphasize local first, local coverage, since there is a lot going on in this market," said Avila, who was most recently a business editor/reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Wisconsin. "There is a staff in place that knows the market well. I hope to develop the staff's work and make it even stronger and more locally focused."

In his new role, Avila will oversee a staff of three reporters who write for The Times' award-winning business section (which appears in the paper every day but Saturday and Monday), as well as IN Business magazine.

Keith Benmans departure left big shoes to fill, and we conducted a search for a top business editor. Were pleased that Larry Avila, from our sister paper in Madison, Wisconsin, joined our staff, said Bob Heisse, editor of The Times. Larry has a strong business editing and reporting background and has already moved to the Region. We look forward to the business community getting to know him.

Avila, who grew up in Michigan, started working in journalism in 1990 and has also had stops at the Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wisconsin, the Sun in Naperville, Illinois, the Morris Daily Herald in Morris, Illinois, the Business Ledger in suburban Chicago and the Kane County (Illinois) Business Journal.

The job at The Times attracted him because of the size of the market and bevy of coverage opportunities in the Region. So far, he's been impressed by the pace of the newsroom.

"There's something happening every second. Things change at the drop of a dime," he said.

Avila, who works out of The Times' Munster office, can be reached at 219-933-3326 or larry.avila@nwi.com.

"I'm looking forward over the next several months to getting to know the community better," he said. "My wife and I hope to make Northwest Indiana our home for a long time."
Less than a week after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj indicated that 39 Indians missing from Iraq since 2014 might be alive in a prison in the civil war-ravaged country, an India Today team travelled all the way to Mosul but found no sign of them.

By Pooja Shali: The Union Government has appealed to the families of missing 39 Indians to maintain hope and assured that the government is doing its best.

Minister of state for External Affairs, Gen. VK Singh, said, "I had gone to Iraq and brought some information, which had been shared with the families and media. Till the time we do not get any proof, no country abandons its citizens."

advertisement

The MoS added that official statement regarding such matters concerning the ministry are usually issued by the spokesperson or the minister, referring to Sushma Swaraj.

"We have already told the families what we wanted to say. Our minister has also said the same in the parliament. "

In fact, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural gas, Dharmendra Pradhan assured that the government is taking all steps to track whereabouts of the men.

"Indian government is doing its best. Families also must keep patience. The government is leaving no stone unturned in this issue."

Less than a week after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj indicated that 39 Indians missing from Iraq since 2014 might be alive in a prison in the civil war-ravaged country, an India Today team travelled all the way to Mosul but found no sign of them in the restive region.

Sources say, the families may likely visit once the visit concludes between External Affairs Minister and Iraqi foreign minister, scheduled to arrive on 24 July. In 2014, the leader of the terror group declared a global caliphate from Mosul after his jehadi guerrillas overran the ancient city.

There was, however, no clarity about al-Baghdadi's whereabouts. An estimated 40,000 people have been killed in Mosul, with many more still unaccounted for. In the city of Erbil, near Mosul, Red Crescent manager Hawre Ihsan Sadiq admitted he had received no information about the missing Indians.

India today's ground report showed that the Badush prison, which government hinted the men were kept as prisoners, had been bombarded long back.

ALSO READ:

Missing Indians in Iraq: 3 years and counting, two tales of 46 nurses and 39 labourers

India Today first to reach Mosul after ISIS fall. No sign of missing 39 Indians

No confirmed information on 39 missing Indians, Iraqi ambassador tells India Today

ALSO WATCH | Mystery over 39 missing Indians deepen: A ground report from Mosul, Iraq

--- ENDS ---
CROWN POINT  The number of homeless men and women in Indiana declined in 2017, with significant progress made in housing veterans and the chronically homeless, according to recently released survey results.

The Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority reported in the "Balance of State Point-in-Time Homeless Count," a statewide survey of the homeless population conducted each year on Jan. 25, that there were 3,203 homeless persons counted this year in Indiana, excluding Marion and St. Joseph counties.

The surveyors counted 3,711 Hoosiers in 2016, a 13.6 percent annual decline. The state has seen a five-year decline of 17.4 percent.

The homeless population in Lake County has fallen 12.6 percent during that same period, and the population in Porter, LaPorte and Jasper counties, which is grouped together into Region 1 in the point-in-time count, has fallen 27.2 percent.

State and local officials attributed the continued reduction in homelessness to rapid rehousing and housing-first programs, which aim to quickly transition the homeless into permanent, affordable housing without preconditions. The programs provide social services after the person has been housed.

But local officials fear that federal cuts to affordable housing programs included in President Donald Trump's proposed budget for fiscal year 2018 would undermine that progress.

Caroline Shook, chief executive officer of Housing Opportunities in Valparaiso, said the president's proposed budget would eliminate several federal grants relied on by local shelters and homeless assistance programs.

Sharron Liggins, executive director of the Continuum of Care Network of NWI, said there was concern among homeless advocates about what will happen at the federal level.

"We are hoping that (cuts) will not come to fruition at the federal level, but we all will see an impact on our work," Liggins said. "It will erode the progress we've made."

The longtime homeless and veterans

The most dramatic decline both in the Region and statewide has occurred among homeless veterans and the chronically homeless.

A person is chronically homeless if he or she has been homeless for at least a year, or repeatedly homeless for several years, while struggling with a disabling condition, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

The statewide population of homeless veterans has fallen 33.4 percent in a five-year period, and the chronically homeless has declined by about 19 percent.

The number of chronically homeless persons and homeless veterans in Lake County has declined by more than 50 percent since both populations peaked in 2014.

In Porter, LaPorte and Jasper counties, surveyors identified 14 chronically homeless persons in 2013, but only one such person was identified earlier this year.

Thirteen homeless veterans were identified in 2013 in the tri-county area, compared to 1 homeless veteran in 2017.

Shook, CEO of Housing Opportunities, said her agency began four years ago to prioritize the chronically homeless on its waiting list for housing services, which is now a standard for all homelessness agencies in LaPorte and Porter counties.

Liggins, of the Continuum of Care Network, said the reduction in both the chronically homeless and homeless veterans population in Lake County can be attributed to two supportive housing complexes: the South Shore Commons, a 60-unit apartment complex opened in 2014, and the Northwest Indiana Veterans Village, a 44-unit apartment complex opened last March.

More homelessness among domestic violence victims

A more troubling trend has been a steady increase statewide in the past several years in the number of homeless domestic violence victims.

That population has increased almost 13 percent statewide since 2015, to 735 people from 651 people.

There also has been a 50-percent increase in LaPorte, Porter and Jasper counties  34 people identified in 2015, compared to 51 in 2017.

Mary Beth Schultz, executive director of The Caring Place, said the nonprofit organization is raising funds to build a new 45-bed facility, which would replace its current shelter of 24 beds. The organization, which is an emergency shelter for domestic violence victims in Valparaiso, has raised $1.2 million for the project, but an additional $2.2 million is needed.

The house is 100 years old, Schultz said. It was never intended to house this many people for such long periods of time.

Brad Meadows, a spokesman for the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority, said the loss of federal funds for transitional housing has hurt domestic violence providers across the state.

Homeless providers will get some new state assistance due to the passage of Senate Bill 242, which created a homelessness prevention program based on the housing-first model.

The bill was signed into law last month by Gov. Eric Holcomb, and $2 million is appropriated for the program in the current biennial budget, which began July 1.
A Staten Island mom says the mayor's Pre-K for all program, really isn't "for all." She says that because of a disability she has, the school that the city assigned to her daughter isn't practical. NY1's Lisa Voyticki has the exclusive story.

Nuala Bonner can't wait to start Pre-K in a few weeks. "Yeah, going to go to school, I am so excited," said the four-year-old.

But her mom, Holly, said Nuala might not be able to go because it would be too hard for her to take her to school.

Holly, who is legally blind, said the city placed her daughter in a school that requires a 16-block walk and a ride on an MTA bus.

"So all total with two children, it'll be over an hour each way. That's four hours of commuting each day to get my daughter to pre-school," said Holly Bonner, who will also need to take her two-year-old daughter along for the walk.

Holly said she also needs to rely on her guide dog Francis to get to the school.

"The dog does not know red from green as far as a light," said Holly. "The dog relies on me, and what I have to do is tell my children to be quiet, and I have to use my hearing and I have to listen."

Holly said she has been hit by a car five times before, so she's worried about the 16-block walk.

We joined Holly for part of the walk and timed it. It took about 13 minutes just to go a few blocks.

"It takes a lot of mental and even physical effort because you're manning the dog and you have two children holding onto you," Holly said.

Holly said she asked education department officials to supply a bus for Nuala, but was told Nuala has to be at least five years old to qualify.

She's also asked the department to reassign Nuala to another school six blocks away, but she has been waitlisted.

Holly said Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis and State Senator Diane Savino even got involved, but so far no luck.

Nuala already knows what backpack she wants, Holly said, but she's avoiding taking her to the store.

"Are you going to come to my house and explain to my little girl that she can't go to Pre-K, because her mommy is disabled?" Holly said about the education department. "Because that's going to be a really hard conversation."

"We've been in constant contact with the family over the past several months and will continue working with them to find an appropriate placement that meets their needs. There is a free, full-day, high quality Pre-K seat available for every 4-year-old in the City," education department spokesman Michael Aciman told NY1 in a statement.

Holly said it's been three weeks since she heard from the department.

The clock is ticking for a solution: school starts in about a month.
TGI de Lyon, Ch. 3 cab 3 C, 16 May 2017,

)

Light design of 'Berre L'Etang' by L'Atelier Lumi e re,

Pierre N e gre and Lucas Goy.

e

e

e

Cat loving the back-light of this design

by Pottercraft Pictures

e

e

e

e

'Ambiguous' you say?

e
Cannonball, Europe's largest organised road trip is coming to Offaly again this September.

On day three of Cannonball on September 10, the route will take the cars Sligo to Kilkenny. The lunch stop will take place in Mullingar at 1pm and will then proceed to Offaly. The route takes it through Tullamore and on to Kinnitty before an Official Fuel Stop at Barack Obama Plaza in Moneygall at 4pm.

From there the route takes the participants through Laois and on to Kilkenny.

The Cannonball begins on Friday, September 8 when it goes from Dublin to Limerick via Kinsalr. Day 2 will take the cars from Limerick to Sligo via Galway.

Over 150,000 people are expected to line the streets as McLarens, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Aston Martins, Porsches, Masserattis and Bentleys blaze a trail through towns and counties in spectacular style. With festivals and gatherings all along the route, this three-day road trip is an experience of a lifetime. For further details and to register click here

Cannonball Ireland has raised over 900,000 for Irish Charities. This year, Make a Wish will be Cannonball Ireland's charity.
The weather-beaten FBI agent from the Louisiana bayou and the fresh-faced interpreter from the Kabul streets sit together on a couch inside a Millard apartment building. They glance sideways at each other. They shake their heads at the unlikeliness of this moment, the wonder of it.

They begin to laugh.

I cant believe Im drinking chai with you in your own house in America, Dave tells Fraidoon. Never, ever. I thought it could happen, but I just ... wow.

I lost my hope, Fraidoon says. I sent an email and I said I give up.

But Dave wrote me back and he said Dont give up. We will fight. We will never give up. 

We could focus today on the insanity of the fact that it took seven years for Fraidoon Fred Akhtari  a beloved Afghan interpreter who routinely risked his life by going on combat missions with American troops  to get a special U.S. visa meant for people exactly like him. We could skewer the bungled bureaucracy that slowed his familys journey, or lament the hate-fueled rhetoric against people who look like the Akhtari family does.

But instead, for at least a few moments, let us focus on the wildly diverse group  nonprofit employees, lawyers, active-duty servicemen and volunteers  who battled through that red tape and that hate to get Fraidoon and his family into a fully furnished apartment here in Omaha.

And lets concentrate on the two men sitting together on the couch inside a Millard apartment building. Dave and Fred. Two men who can teach us a little something about respect, about honor, about love.

When I was coming here, people asked me Why are you going to the United States? You have no family there?  Fraidoon says. And I said I have many family in the United States. 

He looks at Dave Lemoine again.

And that is true.

The unlikely best friends first met nearly a decade ago at a combat outpost in eastern Afghanistan, a dangerous and remote spot along the Afghan-Pakistan border where the soldiers lived in tents and showered by emptying bottled water into a bucket and dumping it over their heads.

Fraidoon already had been working for the coalition forces as an interpreter for nearly five years. He had become adept at taking questions in English from American troops, relaying them in Dari to Afghan civilians, and then translating the answers back into English.

The U.S. soldiers called him Fred. Fred, they all said, was the best terp east of Kabul.

Dave was brand-new in Afghanistan, lured there by a defense contractor and tasked with gathering intelligence on insurgents and handing over that intel to Afghan police and U.S. special operations forces.

Dave had ample experience with this work, having chased drug kingpins and smugglers across Texas and California for decades before retiring to Nebraska City from the FBI. But this was a strange new land: unfamiliar terrain, language and culture. Dave needed help. He needed a good terp.

He quickly noticed that the interpreter they called Fred seemed fearless, going on combat missions each week  sometimes each day  while other interpreters tried to stick to the relative safety on the base.

Fred noticed that this new defense contractor Dave was doing high-level police work, building a network of informants and patiently gathering puzzle pieces of intelligence until they fit together.

They began working together more and more. When Dave got a middle-of-the-night call from an informant, a common occurrence, he would wake up Fred and then watch as the sleepy-eyed interpreter took the phone.

He was taking the notes, Dave says. He was doing the interview, not me. And he never complained. He never said Can you get somebody else? 

When Fred got pieces of intelligence, Dave helped build them into a story that made sense.

Together they wormed their way into the Talibans supply lines, using insurgents truck drivers and support staff as informants. In time they followed the intelligence to a hole in the ground, dug 20 feet deep. Inside the hole: a gargantuan weapons cache, including rockets, anti-tank mines and anti-aircraft guns.

It was everything, Fred says, shaking his head.

That saved a lot of lives, Dave says.

After nine months, Dave left Afghanistan in a hurry, transported to a hospital and then stateside after suffering a heart attack.

But that abrupt departure turned out to be merely the beginning of his bond with Fred.

In 2009, after years of lobbying from U.S. service members, Congress created the Special Immigrant Visa program. The intent: Give visas to Iraqi and Afghan interpreters and others who had supported the U.S. military effort and were increasingly endangered in their home countries.

Fred perfectly fit that definition. He had gone on an eye-popping number of combat missions  nearly 500, say Fred and Dave. His family had received night letters from the Taliban threatening his life and the lives of his relatives.

He applied for a special immigrant visa for the first time in 2010, hopeful he could soon move his family out of harms way. The U.S. Embassy promptly lost his paperwork, Fred and Dave say.

He reapplied a year later, still hopeful. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul allegedly lost his paperwork again, Fred and Dave say.

He applied for a visa a third time, and this time was denied for reasons no one could explain. Dave got deeply involved at this point, calling U.S. military and intelligence contacts in Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. Finally he got an answer: Someone, somewhere, had checked a box on Freds paperwork that said he had refused to go on a combat mission.

Thats insane, Dave says. This guy used to go on two missions a darn day!

At that point, Fred was ready to give up. He had switched jobs, taking an even more dangerous one as a supervisor for an Afghan security company. Twice, his vehicle was attacked. More times than he can count, he barely escaped alive.

My wife said You are going to die and leave me and the children alone,  Fred says as he sits on the couch in Omaha.

In the United States, Dave couldnt escape the nagging feeling that both he and the United States owed Fred deeply  that he, and we, were letting Fred down.

I didnt like seeing him not get what he had earned, Dave says.

So Dave launched himself full-body into the effort, working every bit as hard as he did on his biggest FBI cases, he says. He lobbied Congress, which after months of delays extended the special immigrant visa program through this year. After I wrote a column about a group of Afghans adrift in Omaha after receiving special immigrant visas, Dave connected with them and, with zero fanfare, helped them find furniture and jobs.

Dave also found several organizations that help Afghan and Iraqi interpreters after they move to the United States, and told them about Fred. And crucially, one of those nonprofits hooked him up with a D.C. immigration attorney, Sari Long, who agreed to take Freds case pro bono.

Thats when the pit bull took over, Dave says of Sari Long. She started ripping people apart.

With the help of the Pit Bull, Fred applied for a fourth time. Sari worked through legal channels. Dave worked his contacts at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Finally, a breakthrough: A supervisor there agreed to uncheck the box saying that Fred had refused a combat mission.

Fred was approved for a visa. The Pit Bull called Fred, crying tears of joy. But a problem remained: He was now at the bottom of a massive pile of approved applications, and with the confusion sown by the Trump administrations travel ban, it wasnt clear when  if ever  Fred and his family would actually get to the United States.

So the Pit Bull went back to work. So did Dave, phoning Kabul late at night here in order to catch U.S. officials in the morning there. He explained Freds situation, pointed out that he had been waiting since 2010, pleaded his case. And one of those phone calls resulted in Freds paperwork being moved up to the top of the accepted visa file. It meant something simple and profound: Fred and his family were moving from Kabul to Omaha. Right now.

When members of the Pennsylvania National Guard learned this, they immediately raised money to help pay for the familys plane tickets. Some of them had served with Fred and believe he saved lives.

Lutheran Family Services, the nonprofit that does so much inspiring work with Afghan and Iraqi interpreters here on special immigrant visas, and LFS program development officer Lacey Studnicka sprang into action. Studnicka lined up a church group, St. Johns Lutheran in Bennington, that collected furniture and donations and set up a small Millard apartment for the family. First Christian Church in Omaha donated items, too.

Fred, his wife, Homa, and their two children, 7-year-old Fardin and 3-year-old Leema, landed at Eppley Airfield the evening of July 16, exhausted after a four-stop flight. But when they walked into their apartment, this is what they saw: A couch. A love seat. A table. A coffee table. Beds for the kids. Toys. A flat-screen television. And dinner, prepared by the church volunteers, ready to eat.

Their first meal in their new home, Omaha.

It was too much, Fred says two days later, tears forming in his eyes at the memory.

Think about this, Dave says.

They were helped by a Jewish lawyer, and a Christian organization run by a Muslim lady, and a bunch of other churches in Omaha.

All these people, all these religions, came together and said Lets do whats right. 

The Omaha story of Fraidoon Fred Akhtari and his family has only just begun. This week he is getting his Social Security card and a medical checkup. The family is meeting with mentors from St. Johns Lutheran, people meant to help ease the familys transition from Kabul to Omaha. After years in the middle of a war zone, hes getting used to the quiet.

We are so excited! he says. Since we have been here, we havent seen a helicopter, or soldiers with guns in the streets. Since we have been here, we havent heard any boom. These are good things!

Next week he will start applying for jobs. Dave and Fred have already discussed work as a state prison guard, a job several other Afghan interpreters now living here have landed  and a job that allows them to go to college tuition-free in their spare time.

And next year, and the year after that  well, Fred isnt sure. But he is sure that his children will work hard in school. He is sure that he will do everything he can to make sure they go to college.

Maybe Leema will be a doctor, he thinks. Maybe Fardin will be an engineer.

One thing is sure: Fred and Homa wont be doing this alone.

Fred explained it this way to his kids right before they left Kabul. He told them that they wouldnt see their aunts and uncles and cousins again for a long time. But dont worry, he said. Dont be scared. Because we are going to a new place, a safer place, called Omaha, and you will have aunts and uncles and cousins there, too.

Thats why, when they reached Omaha, 7-year-old Fardin met Dave for the first time, hugged him and called him a name Dave had never heard before. Freds son looked up at Dave and called him Baba.

The word confused Dave, and so the man from the Louisiana bayou looked to his interpreter from Kabul, same as he had for nearly a year inside a war zone. Fred smiled and looked at the man who helped him reach the United States and translated baba to English, a single word that turned the FBI agents heart to mush.

It means grandfather, the interpreter said. Grandpa.
Trump demanded the return of Robert Levinson, an American former law enforcement officer who disappeared in Iran more than a decade ago, as well as businessman Siamak Namazi and his father, Baquer.

Washington slapped new economic sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile program last Tuesday, and said Tehrans malign activities in the Middle East undercut any positive contributions coming from the 2015 nuclear accord.

The Trump administration is putting pressure on Iran, while keeping in place the nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers that curbs its nuclear program in return for lifting economic sanctions.

Trump and his administration are redoubling efforts to bring back all Americans unjustly detained abroad, like 46-year-old Siamak Namazi and his 80-year-old father Baquer Namazi, who each were sentenced by an Iranian court to 10 years in prison on charges of spying and cooperating with the United States.

In October of 2015, Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps detained Siamak in while he was visiting family in Tehran, and his father, a former Iranian provincial governor and former UNICEF official, was arrested in February of last year, family members said.

The U.S. government has a $5 million reward for information leading to Robert Levinsons safe return. He is a former agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who disappeared in Iran in 2007.

Irans judiciary spokesman said on Sunday that Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen graduate student from Princeton University, was sentenced by an Iranian court to 10 years in jail on spying charges.

Iran is responsible for the care and wellbeing of every United States citizen in its custody, the White House said in the statement.

In a related effort on Friday, Rex Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State, met with Yusuf bin Alawi, foreign affairs minister of Oman, an Arab country on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. In the past, Washington has sought Omans mediation to help in securing the release of detained Americans abroad. Oman paid the bail that ultimately resulted in the release of three American hikers in 2010 and 2011, and last year, American prisoners held captive by Yemen Houthi rebels were released after Omans intercession.
An Omaha man who had turned to reach for a beer before his car rolled on the Winnebago Indian Reservation, killing a passenger, has been sentenced to a year in prison.

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf sentenced Kylan Dale, 26, at a Thursday hearing in Lincoln. Horace Gailes was killed in the accident, which occurred early on March 28, 2016.

Dale, who was convicted of misdemeanor motor vehicle homicide, also was ordered to pay $5,964 to Gailes mother as restitution for funeral expenses.

East of Winnebago, on Bureau of Indian Affairs Road 30, Dale took his eyes off his driving and the car crossed to the other side of the road, rolled and came to rest upside down, the U.S. Attorneys Office in Nebraska said.

Dale was knocked unconscious. When he regained consciousness, he found Gailes unresponsive in the car. Shortly afterward, the car began to burn. Law enforcement officers who arrived about 2:45 a.m. found Gailes dead in the burning car.

An autopsy found that Gailes died as a result of the car accident from severe closed-head injuries and severe burns.

A case of unopened beer and three opened beer cans were found in and near the car.

Dale admitted to drinking before the crash, but his blood-alcohol content tested below legal limits when it was first measured several hours later, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.
Even before the helmet was on his head and the harness around his hips, Larry Wolfe was grinning. He knew what was coming: the few moments when he could rise into the sky, leaving his motorized wheelchair far below.

As Wolfe, 45, was lifted into the air by a pulley system dubbed the flying squirrel, he stretched his arms out and started to laugh.

From the shade of a picnic shelter nearby, fellow Easterseals camper Dave Walter, 54, shouted encouragement:

Go, Larry!

After decades of coming to this camp, and after seeing it change and grow and staff come and go, Wolfe and Walter say theres one thing that wont change:

As long as Easterseals offers a camp for adults with disabilities, theyll be there.

This year marks the 50th that the organization has offered a summer camp for people with disabilities. Walter has showed up for more than 45 of those years, Wolfe for 35.

Its pretty awesome to see how much these guys love it here, said Jami Biodrowski, director of camp, respite and recreation. They get to come to camp for their whole lives.

For eight weeks, the organization rents Camp Eagle near Cedar Bluffs, offering 11 camp sessions for a range of disabilities and age groups. Wolfe and Walter attended the session for adults ages 30 and older. In an all-ages day camp earlier this summer, one camper was 85 years old.

For a week, the adult campers swim and fish and canoe. They ride horses and roast marshmallows and play games and make crafts.

My favorite part is everything, Walter said. For him, its less about the activities and more about the people at camp. I just like to hang out here and relax with friends.

Walter was born with spina bifida and has arthrogryposis, a condition that makes it difficult for him to bend his joints. He enjoys his independence and stays busy answering phones at Community Alternatives Nebraska and volunteering at Bryan Medical Centers west campus, both in Lincoln.

But the highlight of his year, Walter said, is when he gets a little vacation at camp.

He starts asking about it in January, said his mom, Marcia Walter. When he was a kid we couldnt even tell him about camp ahead of time because hed be way too excited.

Walters mom and Wolfes mom remember that first summer decades ago  the first time each dropped off her son at camp.

I was so worried, said Peggy Wolfe. It was hard to leave him, but he had so much fun that first year, and its gotten better every year. Its hard to get him to leave. He would definitely stay there forever if he could.

Larry Wolfe has cerebral palsy and lives at home with his mom and her boyfriend in Lincoln. When at camp, he leaves his communication device at home and uses gestures and eye movements to talk to his counselor, Lucy Kohmetscher, 20.

Kohmetscher has been one of the best parts of camp for Larry, Peggy Wolfe said. This summer is Kohmetschers fourth at camp and her second as Larrys counselor. In the off-season she often hangs out with Larry, taking him to the mall or a movie and offering Peggy a little respite time.

People dont realize how important it is that these people get a week of independence but also a week away from their caregivers, Peggy said.

That time gives the caregivers a break, too; while Larry was at camp this year, Peggy took a vacation to see an old friend in Minneapolis.

That camp and the group of people there is really a blessing to everyone involved, Peggy said.

Kohmetscher and the other counselors spend the whole summer at camp, serving as both counselors and caregivers.

I always tell them its the hardest job theyll ever love, Biodrowski said.

Kohmetscher uses the word love often when she talks about her work with Camp Easterseals. She loves to give campers a chance to have new experiences. She loves seeing how everyone at camp can forget about their differences. And she loves hearing Wolfes laugh  especially as hes flying high above his wheelchair on the flying squirrel.

Larry and I both think the weeks here just go by too quickly, Kohmetscher said.

At the end of the week the campers and counselors gather in the lodge and dance. They share their favorite camp memories and pass out awards.

This year, Walter and Wolfe shared the title of camp celebrities.

Before the campers head back to their cabins on that last night, the dance ends with the song Stand by Me and usually a lot of tears.

But Walter doesnt cry.

After all, he said, I always know Ill be back next year.
Parkinsons Nebraska fundraiser: Planet Sub, 8990 West Center Road, will host a fundraiser for Parkinsons Nebraska from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. today. Ten percent of total sales for the day will benefit the nonprofit that offers information and resources to people in Nebraska and the surrounding areas affected by Parkinsons disease, including families and caregivers. For more information, go to parkinsonsnebraska.org.

Duffel bag drive: Nebraska Families Collaborative is raising money for its Duffels 4 Dignity Drive program that provides foster children with a new duffel bag filled with essential items such as shampoo, bar soap, a toothbrush and more. These bags are used to carry personal belongings during their transition into foster care. The drive runs through the month of July. Donations can be made to Nebraska Families Collaborative, 2110 Papillion Parkway. To learn more or to donate, visit nebraskafc.org/duffels-for-dignity.

Alzheimers selfie fundraiser: During July and August, the in-home care company Synergy HomeCare is raising money for Alzheimers research. The Omaha business will donate $5 to the Alzheimers Association for every senior selfie posted on its Facebook page. Photos must include a person age 65 or older and be posted to the Synergy HomeCare page with the hashtag #SeniorSelfie.

Boys Nation senators: Michael McClellan of Creighton Prep High School and Nick Koehler of Omaha Central High School have been selected as the two Nebraska senators for American Legion Boys Nation in Washington, D.C. Boys Nation is an annual American Legion program that includes civic training, leadership development and a focus on Americanism. The two were selected out of 400 state participants. The national session is underway now and continues through Friday.

Powwow grant: A $14,400 grant from the Douglas County Board of Commissioners Visitor Improvement Fund will support the annual Fort Omaha Intertribal Powwow. The powwow celebrates regional Native American cultures and features traditional dances, music, artistry, oral history and foods of various tribes across Nebraska and the region. This years event is Sept. 30.

Food pantry donation: St. Bernard Catholic School Girl Scouts recently completed a service project dubbed Birthday Party in a Bag for the St. Vincent DePaul food pantry, 2101 Leavenworth St. Each bag contained items needed to throw a birthday party: pan, cake mix, frosting, candles, plates, napkins, balloons, streamers, hats and party favors. The troop delivered 10 boy bags and 15 girl bags to the food pantry.

Cancer survivor donation: Onestaff Medical, a traveling nurse and medical professional recruitment company of Omaha, raised $30,000 for Project Pinkd through the Pinkd Ribbon Open on June 25. Project Pinkd is a volunteer organization that provides emotional, physical and financial support to Nebraska and western Iowa residents diagnosed with cancer. For more information, go to projectpinkd.org.

Business and technology aid: The Peter Kiewit Foundation awarded the Midlands Latino Community Development Corporation $70,000 in grants to assist its business programs and technology. The nonprofit said $60,000 will go to micro-lending and assistance programs and $10,000 will go to technology improvements, including new computers and software.

Foster family donation: The Pottawattamie County Community Foundation gave a $500 grant to the local nonprofit organization Share My Smile in Council Bluffs. The group helps support foster and adoptive families and children in 15 Iowa counties, including Pottawattamie. This donation is to support holiday-related events.

Community Services Fund: Community Services Fund of Nebraska recently completed its annual campaign, raising $610,000 for member agencies. The organization connects donors to 64 state nonprofits. It also added six new member agencies for the 2017 campaign: Angels Among Us, Boy ScoutsCornhusker Council, Crane River Theater, Lincolns Symphony Orchestra, Merryman Performing Arts Center and Omaha Community Playhouse. For more information, go to communityservicesfund.org.
COUNCIL BLUFFS  Lonnie McMullens love of trucks was second only to his love of family.

The owner of McMullen Trucking Co. died Thursday after suffering a heart attack on July 9. He was 79.

While friends and family dreamed of owning their own farms, McMullen was focused on trucks, his family said.

Born in Council Bluffs, McMullen grew up in Silver City, Iowa. He attended high school in Crescent and then learned his trade, working as a mechanic for 18 years.

In 1981, McMullen moved back to Council Bluffs to go into business with his sons. McMullen Trucking was founded the next year. Over time, he owned Lonnie McMullen Diesel, McMullen Trucking and McMullen Truck Lines of Iowa.

Now based in La Vista, McMullen Trucking employs more than 200 people.

He was a very hard worker. Up at 5 a.m. Home at midnight. Thats how we knew him, said his daughter, Theresa Clark of Omaha. Trucks were his life and hobby.

His family recalled McMullen as a self-taught businessman who passed on his enthusiasm for the industry to his wife and children.

He was very well-respected, both in the industry and the community, Clark said.

The family plans to continue running the business, adding that its what McMullen would have wanted.

In addition to his daughter, McMullens survivors include his wife of 57 years, Patricia; sons Lonnie Marty Martell McMullen and Michael McMullen, both of Omaha; 10 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Private services have been held.
LINCOLN  A long-awaited new business in Whiteclay, Nebraska, is finally under construction in the border village.

Construction began last week on a Family Dollar discount variety store, the first new retail structure built in the unincorporated town of nine residents in at least a decade.

Whiteclay is best known as the home of four beer-only liquor stores.

Before the stores closed in April, they sold the equivalent of 3.5 million cans of beer a year, mostly to residents of the adjacent  and officially dry  Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, across the state line in South Dakota.

The town is known as the Skid Row of the Plains for the 15 to 30 people who used to openly drink on the streets.

But since the closing of the liquor stores  an action that is under appeal before the Nebraska Supreme Court  most, if not all, of the street people have moved on, and there have been some improvements to the look of the community.

A new storefront is being put on a once-vacant building by the owners of Abes, a clothing/feed/ranch supply store.

Part of the building, which used to house a post office years ago, may be rented out for a new business once renovations are completed in about six months, according to Abe Abold, the namesake of Abes.

Twelve-by-20-foot small homes, for use on the Pine Ridge Reservation, are also being built in Whiteclay by a Minnesota-based Christian ministry that owns a building on the towns main street, Nebraska Highway 87.

People are seeing the improvements and its catching on, said Bruce BonFleur, head of Lakota Hope Ministry, a Whiteclay group that is raising money for redevelopment projects in town.

BonFleur said that he knows of street people who have either quit or reduced their drinking and that the remaining people now hang out in Pine Ridge. The result is that littering in Whiteclay has been reduced dramatically, he said.

Family Dollar store officials did not respond to requests for comment Friday. The company already has a discount variety store in Rushville, 21 miles south of Whiteclay.

Abold said that any new business in the community helps, and he expects that Family Dollar might bring more traffic to the town, which also has two restaurants, a grocery store and an auto parts store.

Jack Andersen, the chairman of the Sheridan County Board, said the new store will bring new property tax revenue to the county.

He added that hes starting to wobble in his opinion that closing down the beer stores was a bad idea, because he had expected the street people to remain a problem in Whiteclay.

Several Whiteclay-area residents have expressed concerns that drunken driving accidents would increase as people are forced to drive farther to purchase liquor. There has been one alcohol-related accident since the closing.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments on Aug. 29 to determine whether the beer stores should remain closed. A ruling isnt expected for several weeks after that.
LINCOLN  Two decades ago, Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner was trained to end high-speed chases by bumping a fleeing car into a disabling spin.

Not today.

His agency, like nearly all others in Nebraska, has turned to other methods, such as using spike strips to puncture the tires of a fleeing vehicle, to end a chase. Some agencies use helicopters or airplanes for pursuits, and many have sought to reduce or eliminate such chases altogether.

There are less risky ways, several law enforcement officials said, than the bumping tactic, known as tactical vehicle intervention (TVI), especially in urban and high-traffic areas.

There are other techniques and tools now, Wagner said. Things have changed in the pursuit world  the public is less tolerant of third parties being injured.

A TVI was at the center of a recent World-Herald investigation into a high-speed chase by a Nebraska State Patrol trooper.

That chase ended with the death of a fleeing drunken driver on a rural highway in Sheridan County in northwest Nebraska. The handling of the ensuing investigation was cited by Gov. Pete Ricketts as one factor in ordering a review of patrol policies, which led to the firing of the superintendent of the Nebraska State Patrol, Col. Brad Rice. Six others at the patrol were put on paid administrative leave.

The case raised questions not only about the credibility of internal investigations by the patrol but also whether TVI can be safely used.

A check of area law enforcement agencies in Nebraska showed that perhaps only the patrol allows the tactic  which also is known as a pursuit intervention technique, or PIT. However, both the Iowa and South Dakota Highway Patrols employ the practice, as do the police forces in Council Bluffs and Rapid City, South Dakota.

The tactic is not new. It was developed three decades ago, adapted from a stock-car racing trick in which a driver would bump a car ahead into a spin, called a bump and run, to knock a rival off course.

In the law enforcement maneuver, a pursuing officer uses the front corner or bumper of the patrol car to push into the back quarter panel of a fleeing vehicle, causing it to spin out and stall. That allows for the quick apprehension of a disoriented driver, bringing a potentially dangerous highway chase to a safe conclusion.

Although the maneuver is not used widely in Nebraska, several law enforcement officials maintain that TVI is an effective tool in safely ending high-risk chases, when used appropriately. In cases of pursuits involving dangerous felons, the tactic is an essential tool, they said.

If youre chasing a homicide suspect, how do you justify to the victims family halting a pursuit? asked Council Bluffs Police Chief Tim Carmody.

In the Sheridan County case, State Trooper Tim Flick initiated a pursuit after driver Antoine LaDeaux failed to heed a rural stop sign, then sped off when Flick attempted a traffic stop.

In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Flick said repeatedly that he had used a TVI, according to a review of his dashboard camera video.

But the story changed during the subsequent internal investigation, with Flick and others in his western Nebraska troop saying that LaDeaux had caused the crash by veering into the troopers car. Some within the patrol suspected the change was made to avoid scrutiny, embarrassment and possible liability.

That led to two different versions of events being presented by State Patrol personnel to the grand jury that probed the fatality. The different accounts also prompted concerns that internal State Patrol investigators probing the matter were pressured by higher-ups. A Sheridan County grand jury cleared the trooper of responsibility in the death of LaDeaux, though officials interviewed for this story differed on whether they would have launched a high-speed chase for a blown stop sign. The chase, patrol officials said, met their criteria for engaging in a high-speed pursuit.

Still, questions about the handling of the incident prompted Ricketts on June 23 to order a review of the patrols policies, procedures and leadership. On June 30, Ricketts fired the patrols superintendent, citing preliminary findings that interferences in internal investigations and violations of internal policy extended to the patrols highest levels.

The Nebraska State Patrol has been training troopers on the use of TVI since 2010. On average, between five and 11 TVIs are performed out of about 80 high-speed chases a year. By comparison, the Iowa State Patrol has used PIT maneuvers between five and seven times a year in recent years.

It provides us another option to attempt to safely terminate a pursuit, said Capt. Buck Duis, who directs the Nebraska State Patrols training academy.

Duis and other law enforcement officials said that ending a chase because of dangerous road or traffic conditions is another option.

We self-terminate far more pursuits than we end with a TVI, he said, estimating that ending a pursuit happens two to three times more often.

Duis added that TVI is not an overly difficult maneuver once you understand it and the physics. If done correctly, the maneuver causes minor denting or creasing damage to the vehicles involved, he said.

An official with the Fairfax (Virginia) County Police Department, which pioneered the use of TVI or PIT maneuvers, said that requests from agencies in his area to learn the technique are on the rise.

Fairfax 2nd Lt. Michael Shamblin said that while such tactics are effective, policies vary widely on when its appropriate to initiate a pursuit. Some agencies prohibit chases except when one involves a dangerous felon, and some rural agencies ban all chases, for liability reasons. Other departments, such as the Nebraska State Patrol, leave the decision to an individual officer or a supervisor.

The Nebraska patrols policy requires supervisory approval and proper training to use a TVI. Several factors are considered, such as the conduct of the fleeing driver (swerving or driving on the wrong side of the road), the danger of allowing a chase to continue, roadway and traffic conditions, and whether there are passengers in the fleeing car.

In Nebraska, more than one law enforcement official said that the states strict liability law in high-speed pursuits, which holds governments liable for injuries suffered by innocent third parties in police chases, discourages such chases because of the risk of an accident.

Nebraska is the only state that has such a liability law, which was introduced by State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha following pursuits in Omaha that caused death and injuries to innocent parties. Nebraska law enforcement offices have tried unsuccessfully several times to get the law overturned, including this year.

An Omaha Police Department spokesman said the agency has been advised by city lawyers to not use the TVI.

We believe this maneuver could potentially be a significant liability for the city, said Officer Michael Pecha.

The Omaha Police Department has significantly reduced its number of pursuits and related accidents in recent years. In 2007 the department had 156 pursuits that resulted in 41 accidents (which can range from hitting a curb to totaling a car). In 2016, the last year for which statistics were available, there were 56 pursuits and 12 accidents.

Several other agencies, including the Douglas County Sheriffs Office, the Scotts Bluff County Sheriffs Office, the Kearney Police Department and the Chadron Police Department, said that TVI was not part of their arsenal to stop high-speed chases.

Were in a city, said Kearney Police Chief Dan Lynch. It would not be safe. Theres just too many things that wed end up crashing into.

But the use of TVI is more common in states without strict liability laws, such as Iowa and South Dakota.

The Rapid City Police Department averages about 50 high-speed pursuits a year, and of those, uses TVI four to six times, according to Lt. Elias Diaz, who oversees the agencys driving training.

The maneuver is not allowed in Rapid City at high speeds, generally in excess of 50 mph. That is unlike the Nebraska State Patrol policy, which has no speed limit. Instead, the Nebraska patrols written policy urges caution at higher speeds because the outcome becomes less predictable and the chances of serious damage and injury increases.

In the fatal Sheridan County chase, grand jury testimony indicated that the state trooper was driving about 67 mph when he attempted the TVI. The patrol trains for TVI at speeds no higher than 45 or 50 mph, according to that testimony.

But a patrol TVI trainer, Sgt. Cody Paro, told the grand jury that the TVI is a controlled maneuver that can be safely done at higher speeds. He testified that he did not think Flicks speed was excessive. Paro also said he was shocked that LaDeauxs car had flipped rather than spun out.

Recent chases that involved TVI have had varying results.

On July 10, a California Highway Patrol officer used a TVI to end a 70 mph freeway chase without injury, and Florida state troopers stopped an impaired driver with a PIT maneuver on July 11 without incident. However, in June, three occupants of a car were injured when their car flipped after a South Dakota state trooper used a TVI near Rapid City.

Duis, the Nebraska patrols training chief, said he could not recall a TVI other than the Sheridan County crash that caused injuries. Diaz, the Rapid City police official, said he could recall only one bad TVI outcome in his jurisdiction, and thats when the fleeing driver slammed on the brakes as the maneuver was being attempted, causing a wreck but no injuries.

Sen. Chambers said he would like to outlaw all high-speed chases by police officers, and he considers the bumping tactic unpredictable and risky.

It comprises a deliberate and intentional act, he said. Any bad result can be foreseen.

The senator also said it was wrong to initiate a chase for a minor offense like a blown stop sign.

The attorney for the state troopers union, Gary Young, disagreed, saying that Trooper Flick initiated the chase because LaDeaux failed to stop and then endangered the public by driving erratically at speeds that reached 80 mph.

Officials with the Nebraska State Patrol said that all but one of the highway patrols in neighboring states use the TVI maneuver.

Nebraska patrol recruits get eight hours of training at the academy on tactical maneuvers, including time on a test track practicing TVI with actual vehicles. Refresher courses are required every two years.

Duis said a TVI might be used to prevent a high-speed chase from entering a more populated area or a city.

Jack Ryan, a Rhode Island attorney who is an authority on use of force by police, said the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that law enforcement can perform tactics like a PIT or TVI if the purpose is to protect the public from a fleeing driver.

Such tactics are very technical, and scientific and must be used where traffic and the width of the roadway permit it, Ryan said. At high speeds, such tactics should be used with extreme caution, he said.

The problem with any maneuver like that is the suspect vehicle can maneuver in a way that defeats your ability to carry it out properly, Ryan said.

Law enforcement agencies have other means to stop a high-speed chase, such as spike strips or new sticky homing devices that, when launched successfully, will adhere to a fleeing car. But they have limitations, officials said. The Omaha police and similar departments can use helicopters to follow a fleeing car at a safe distance.

Wagner, the Lancaster County sheriff, said that his deputies will still chase dangerous criminals but that, overall, agencies have tightened up their pursuit policies because of liability concerns.

Theres no reason to risk other peoples lives, he said.
LINCOLN  As the ceremony ended and the other families dispersed, Michelle Howardson sat down on the concrete and quietly cried.

She stayed there, cross-legged in front of her brothers photo, for several minutes, running her fingers over his name, the shape of his smile, the date of Staff Sgt. Sean Howardsons death.

Howardson drove more than four hours from her home in Wayland, Iowa, to the Pinnacle Bank Arena on Saturday morning for the unveiling of the Remembering Our Fallen war memorial.

She said that seeing it  the 25 weatherproof panels featuring more than 4,500 photos of the nearly 7,000 American men and women who have died in the war on terror since 9/11  was overwhelming.

The only way I can describe it is a heart-shattering happiness to know that these veterans wont be forgotten, Howardson said.

Saturdays ceremony marked the first public showing of the memorial that, when completed, will include names and photos of the 7,000. The ceremony honored Gold Star family members from five states and concluded with a black riderless horse led through the towers of photos.

The memorial will have a national unveiling Sept. 7 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It will be on display at the Pentagon for Sept. 11.

The Remembering Our Fallen project began in 2010 after Bill and Evonne Williams read a story in The World-Herald about Lonnie Ford, the father of Army National Guard Sgt. Joshua Ford, who died in 2006 in Iraq. Four years after Joshuas death, Ford told a reporter that he felt that his son already had been forgotten.

Since 2010 the project has completed 19 state-specific memorials, featuring the names and photos of about 60 percent of the Americans who have died in the military since Sept. 11, 2001.

Its been one step at a time, and we are so pleased that its grown into this, Bill Williams said Saturday.

For Ford, the morning ceremony was emotional.

Ive been wiping tears the whole time, he said. This brought us families together, and its just so good for my heart.

Noala Fritz, whose son, 1st Lt. Jacob Fritz, was killed in Iraq in 2007, helped set up the memorial Friday night.

As she put up the banner with her sons name, she said, she felt a calm wash over her.

I smiled because I saw it, I felt it  my son Jacob was at peace, he was with his fellow soldiers who have given the ultimate sacrifice, Fritz said. He was there and people now will never forget him.

Online memorial honors U.S. troops killed since 9/11

The Omaha World-Herald is partnering with Bill and Evonne Williams of Patriotic Productions to create an online honor wall to reflect the national expansion of the Remembering Our Fallen tribute.

Since establishing a tribute to Nebraskas fallen military members, the couple have expanded their memorials to 18 additional states. Now they are creating a national memorial that, when completed, will include almost 7,000 who have died in the war on terror since 9/11.

An online tribute at fallen.dataomaha.com reflects more than 3,600 of our nations fallen troops from 19 states. The numbers will grow as further tributes are added in coming weeks and months. You can search those memorialized by state, hometown or name.

The national memorial, called the Tribute Towers, will have a national unveiling Sept. 7 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It will be on display at the Pentagon for Sept. 11. It then will go on tour across the country.  Jeffrey Robb
Two staff members were assaulted Sunday during a disturbance at the Tecumseh State Prison, authorities said.

One of the staff members was treated for serious injuries that were not life-threatening, said Dawn-Renee Smith, spokeswoman for the Corrections Department. The names of the staff members were not immediately released.

The assault occurred as inmates in a housing unit refused to return to their cells. The facility was secured and all staff members are safe, Smith said.

The prison is in modified operations and will remain so to allow the incident to be investigated, according to prison officials. No weapons were involved and no damage to the facility was reported.

The prisons normal visiting schedule was canceled Sunday morning but resumed later for all housing units except 2A, Smith said. Visitors with questions should call the facility.
Bengaluru: Locals hold silent protest against steel flyover at Shivananda Circle

India

oi-Madhuri

Locals in Bengaluru held a silent protest against the construction of a steel bridge which is proposed to be built near Shivananda Circle at the cost of Rs 19.85-cr.

On June 8, the State Cabinet gave its approval for the construction of a steel flyover at Shivananda Circle at a cost of Rs 19.85 crore. Land acquisition and other expenses will jack up the cost of the project to Rs 40 crore.

Bengaluru: Locals protest against construction of a steel bridge, proposed to be built near Shivananda Circle. pic.twitter.com/njMX1lC9HO  ANI (@ANI_news) July 23, 2017

The Cabinet decision comes close on the heels of dropping a steel flyover project between the Chalukya Circle to Hebbal flyover costing around Rs 1,800 crore following a public outcry. However, the Shivananda Circle steel flyover is much smaller, which is more of an overpass.

Shivananda Circle is the intersection of Hare Krishna Road with Kumara Krupa Road. M Venkata Rao Infra Projects has been assigned the project to complete it in a year from the date of commencement of project.

The Cabinet also decided to develop the Bagalur-Budigere Road as a two- lane road to connect Kempegowda International Airport at a cost of Rs 12.33 crore

However, citizens and activists under the banner of Campaign Against Steel Flyover (CASFo) are forming a human chain along the 6.7 km length of the proposed alignment between Basaveshawara Circle and Hebbal junction, saying the project is not worth it as it is coming at the cost of 812 trees and heritage.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, July 23, 2017, 9:45 [IST]
Does Farooq Abdullah know what US meddling did in Iraq, Afghanistan?

India

oi-Vicky

Does Farooq Abdullah have a clue as to what happened in Afghanistan and Syria. Look at what the meddling by the United States of America has done in those countries, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said.

She was reacting to the comments made by former J&K CM, Abdullah who had last week said that the US and China should be involved to resolve the Kashmir crisis.

The issue needs to be resolved by India and Pakistan. Why should there be a third party intervention she said. China has its share of problems in Tibet and let them deal with that first, the J&K CM also said.

Look at the places where America has interfered. Be it Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq, the situation has gone from bad to worse after the US meddled, Mehbooba said while lashing at Abdullah.

OneIndia News
Govt must speak the truth on missing 39 Indians in Iraq

India

oi-Vicky

The mystery surrounding the 39 missing Indians in Iraq is never-ending. While BJP's national president Amit Shah says that the government is not lying about the issue, the families of the missing Indians have raised serious doubts.

It has been close to three years since the 39 Indians went missing in Iraq's Mosul. The government has repeatedly said that these persons were safe and all efforts were being made to rescue them. Recently Minister for External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj said that 39 Indians were at a prison at the Badush prison. However latest reports clearly suggest that the prison has been destroyed in the fighting between the Iraqi forces and the Islamic State.

Harjit Masih who was part of the group managed to flee from captivity. He has maintained that the rest of them shot dead. Sushma Swaraj during her meetings with the family members has maintained that Harjit is lying. The families however ask why would Harjit lie.

If Harjit is lying why has the government not been able to give proof that the 39 persons are alive. The families have been given false assurances in every meeting that they have held with the ministers. In recent times the government has been giving a lot of assurances. While at first it said that the missing men were in a Church at Mosul. Then the government said that they were in the Badush prison. Now there are reports that the prison has been completely destroyed.

The government must realise that this issue has not given the family members any closure. It either needs to come clean on the issue or make a serious effort to at least put the right facts before the family members. if the government wants the families to believe that Harjit is lying then it should put forth proof to counter his statement.

OneIndia News
Gujarat floods: IAF rescues pregnant woman, newborn twins with mother

India

oi-PTI

A woman and her newborn twins and another pregnant woman from Nana Matra village in Vinchia tehsil of Rajkot district of Gujarat which was flooded due to heavy rains were on Sunday safely evacuated by the Indian Air Force.

The village had been cut off from rest of the district due to the floods.

As soon as a message about need to evacuate two women who were in critical condition and about to deliver' was received at 4.30 PM, a Chetak helicopter was sent from Jamnagar, said Defence spokesperson Abhishek Matiman in a release.

While the helicopter was on its way, district officials informed that one of the women had already delivered twins and needed to be airlifted immediately.

"By 1715 hrs the Chetak was already overhead looking for a safe patch to land. The mother, with her new-born twins and an attendant were instantaneously put into the aircraft and flown out to safety. The aircraft landed at Jasdan helipad where they were handed over to the medical team already waiting," it said.

The helicopter then returned to Nana Matra, this time picking up the other pregnant woman who was bleeding profusely.

PTI

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, July 24, 2017, 0:14 [IST]
Heavy rains in Gujarat:

Heavy rains in Gujarat has led to floods in several parts of the state in which two persons were killed while more than 200 people stranded in floods were rescued by NDRF, Air Force and other agencies.

Stranded people rescued by NDRF Team

The NDRF and other rescue teams deployed on ground extricated the stranded villagers before the helicopter arrived.

(Pic courtesy: NDRF/Twitter)

Army personnel rescue villagers

Armymen rescued 35 people including a 3-day-old infant stranded across Godara river in Kuda village near Dhrangadhara.

(Pic courtesy: PTI)

Met Dept issues warning:

Meanwhile, the meteorological department has issued warning of heavy rains for next 48 hours in the state. Districts like Valsad, Banaskantha, Tapi, Mehsana, and Ahmedabad recieved most of the rainfall. Umargam taluka in Valsad received 114 mm (4 inch) rainfall, the highest in the state.

IAF airlifts villagers from flood-hit areas

Following incessant rain in Gujarat this monsoon, Indian Air Force helicopters on Saturday airlifted people from flood-hit villages in Surendranagar district.

(Pic courtesy: ANI)

OneIndia News

Gujarat CM undertake aerial survey of flood-affected areas

Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani conducted an aerial survey in parts of Surendranagar district to take stock of the situation, an official release said. He also held a meeting with officials and asked the administration to help people as heavy rains are expected till July 29.
No news about 2 Arunachal youths who went missing from near China border in August

Missing Indians in Mosul: Sushma Swaraj to hold talks with Iraqi counterpart

India

oi-PTI

Search for the 39 missing Indian labourers who were kidnapped in Mosul three years ago is expected to gather momentum with the visit of Iraqi foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who arrives in New Delhi on Monday on a five-day visit.

Al-Jaafari's visit from July 24 to July 28 to India comes two weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced liberation of Mosul, the second biggest city in his country, from the IS, which marked a major milestone for the Iraqi security forces.

In their talks, the two sides will to take stock of bilateral relations and explore ways to enhance cooperation in areas of energy and trade.

Iraq has been one of the major suppliers of crude oil to India.

On the visit by al-Jaafari, the external affairs ministry has said the two sides will discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.

"The visit is expected to add further impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement," the MEA had said on Friday.

As liberation of Mosul brightened chances of information about the kidnapped Indians, Swaraj, in a meeting with their relatives last week, had said that they might be languishing in a jail in Badush in northwest of Mosul where fighting was going on.

"Iraq contributes significantly to India's energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to us (over 37 MMT during 2016-17)," the MEA has said.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is also scheduled to meet the Iraqi foreign minister who will be accompanied by a senior-level official delegation.

PTI

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, July 23, 2017, 22:11 [IST]
Pranab Mukherjee new address wont lack in space and comfort

India

ians-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, July 23: 10 Rajaji Road, the new abode of outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee, is all ready to welcome its newest resident. The eight-room, two-storey villa -- quite a change from the 340-room Rashtrapati Bhavan -- is no stranger to former Presidents, having previously hosted A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

The rooms of the villa -- spread over an expansive 11,776 sq feet -- have been spruced up and the walls repainted. The existing furniture has also been replaced and the entrance and exit gates await the nameplates of the new resident.

"It is not overcrowded with furniture. We are keeping it simple. Also, a large space has been created which is being turned into a library," a senior official from the Urban Development Ministry said.

With Ram Nath Kovind elected as the 14th President of India, it is time for Pranab Mukherjee to bid adieu to Rashtrapati Bhavan and move to the new address as he goes into retirement.

Mukherjee will be moving out of the sprawling presidential palace atop Raisina Hill to his new home on July 25 after the incoming President is ceremonially welcomed to Rashtrapati Bhavan, an official told. Kovind will then escort Mukherjee to his new home.

Mukherjee, 81, who was elected President in 2012, is a voracious reader and will be carrying all his personal books to his new address, which will be comparable to a residence allotted to a Union minister. "He is also planning to pen a book based on his five years as the President although nothing is final yet," another official said.

As a former President, Mukherjee's pension will be Rs 75,000 per month (50 per cent of that while in office). There are some other perks, including two telephones, one mobile phone and a car for free. The President Emoluments Act also allows the former President to access secretarial staff, and office expenses of up to Rs 60,000.

This will be apart from free medical attendance and treatment as well as travel anywhere in India, accompanied by one person, in the highest class in any mode of travel.

According to the President Emoluments Act 1951, a retired president is entitled to facilities like rent-free Type VIII accommodation anywhere in India, free water and electricity, apart from the landline, mobile phones and medical amenities.

Mukherjee will have at his disposal five personal staffers, including a private secretary, a personal assistant and two peons. Responsibility for his security will be handed over to the Delhi Police. The 10 Rajaji Marg bungalow was allotted to Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Mahesh Sharma in 2015 after Kalam's death. Sharma has been allotted another bungalow on the adjacent Akbar Road.

IANS
President election lays bare everything that's wrong with the Opposition

India

oi-Prabhpreet

By Prabhpreet

With the dust around the election for President of India settled, facts related to voting pattern for both the candidates have come out. And they don't look pretty for the opposition.

Though it was expected that the ruling alliance National Democratic Alliance's candidate, Ram Nath Kovind, would cruise through to victory, the opposition was at least expected to show a united front and make sure that its nominee, Meira Kumar, gets all the votes of the members of its 17-party grouping.

But the break down of votes polled for each candidate shows that it failed to do so. Gujarat, Assam, Goa, Uttar Pradesh are some of the states where the legislators of party's, part of the 'united front' against the BJP, instead chose to vote for President-elect Kovind.

Such facts though might not have made any difference to the eventual result, lay bare everything wrong with the opposition including its inability to even take a stand, let alone doing it together. Along with these they also throw light on other underlying factors holding back the country from having an effective opposition that it deserves.

Mess that is the Congress

In an era of political alliances, with the Congress-led UPA and BJP-led NDA representing the two main sides of India's political divide, the mess that the Congress is in, can be seen as one of the main causes of the opposition's standing today. And the condition of the party is a self-inflicted wound caused by the decisions made by it and the vacuum that exists at the top of it now.

The party has been in a downward spiral since the second half of the UPA government tenure, during which, it was shrouded in allegations of corruption and witnessed the beginning of Rahul Gandhi's flirtations with taking over. Half a decade has passed and the Gandhi scion has still not officially taken over the party.

And it is consistently outmanoeuvred at every turn by the BJP, in not only elections but also setting the narrative and winning the public debate. These include on strategy related to the media, handling of ground level leaders or dealing with regional parties to build a viable opposition front against the BJP.

The latest example of this being the cross-voting from the party's legislators in different states such as Gujarat, where the mishandling of the situation related to the party's senior state leader, Shankarsinh Vaghela, led to the legislators loyal to him voting for Kovind. Vaghela is no longer part of the party.

This latest misstep of the high command of the party when it comes to local leaders of the party is by no means the first time. A number important leaders have been treated the same way, especially when they do not come from a family with old ties with the Gandhi's, and worse when they take on those who do.

Assam's Himanta Biswa Sarma being a case in point who ended up having to leave the Congress after he became a challenger to then Chief Minister of the state Tarun Gogoi and his son Gaurav Gogoi. Sarma ended up joining the BJP and helped it replace the Congress in Assam. A number of other leaders have gone down the same path and the BJP has been the biggest beneficiary of this.

This makes the UPA's opponents stronger and gives sycophancy an impetus which in turn makes the party weaker as leaders chosen on the basis of it and not merit, end up losing elections as they lack any ground level political support. Ruling out the possibility of someone rising from the state level, with a strong ground level support, to lead the party and the alliance, as seen in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's case.

Regional allies saving their own skin

While such uncertainty and mess would have been considered an internal matter of Congress, the fact that it has stopped the country from having a viable and strong opposition required in a healthy democracy makes it a concern for the entire country.

The impact of the problems of the national party has impacted the alliance's ability to take on the NDA, while also hampering smaller yet important regional players giving open support to the UPA due to the fear that they too will be bracketed under the umbrella of corruption currently maligning the Congress.

Also their indecision or choice, due to this or some other reasons, to keep coming in and out of a national level alliance have harmed the opposition as well.

This is not to say that the regional players have no faults of their own, with many of them ruling over a divided house. Such a scenario came out in the open as cross-voting from members of the regional parties, who are part of the opposition, was witnessed in many states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh etc.

Some of the major issues hampering parties like Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Left parties etc., are infighting, the lure of joining the BJP for its members, being engulfed in crisis after crisis in their own states and governments, among others, which the BJP is able to take advantage of.

On top of this, the fact that many of those trying to be allies, belong to the same state and in most cases are opponents of each other does not help. As could be seen in the case of Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) and Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal or the TMC and the other Left parties.

Such issues make coming up with joint strategies extremely difficult and even when formed the chances of them becoming ineffective are made high them. As could be seen in the case of the delay and choice of Meira Kumar as the opposition's candidate.

In addition to these the fact that none of the leaders are able to decide on any one leader who all of them can get behind has made matters worse, especially since the traditional party to play this role, the Congress is in turmoil.

The need for which was made clear as noted historian and political commentator, Ramachandra Guha recently said, "There is a genuine leader in India. That is Nitish Kumar. He is a leader without a party, the Congress is a party without a leader. If Congress gives him a chance to lead the UPA, it might have a future."

BJP - A formidable opponent to take on

If these were not enough, the fact that they have to take on the BJP, which is at the height of its powers, has just added to their problems. The saffron party was not only able to come to power with the biggest mandate in around three decades by winning a majority on its own, but they have continued to grow ever since as well.

The party is in power in 17 states in the country, 13 on its own and four in a coalition, and is widely expected to win the next general elections. This though did not let it take the election to choose the next resident of Rashtrapati Bhavan casually.

They were quick to nominate Kovind, a choice, which ticked all the right boxes and put the opposition on the back foot, leaving them only with a choice to react and not be able to take the initiative away from the ruling alliance.

Such a way of functioning is not new. For example earlier this year even when it came to forming governments after recent assembly elections in states such as Goa and Manipur where the BJP was the second largest party, it moved in swiftly to form governments successfully while the Congress that won the maximum seats was in a state of slumber.

The NDA's choice also got votes from the opposition camp in a number of states where their main adversary is not the Congress but one or more regional parties. The election was used for and was able to show that the party is breaking ground among not only people of these states but also among leaders of its opponents.

Another advantage that the BJP seems to have is a clear leadership that both the opposition as a group, and the Congress within itself, desperately lack. With Modi and party president Amit Shah at the helm and the backing of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak with its vast grass root level reach the BJP has been able to move in quickly to take benefit of every opportunity.

Why does Modi keep winning?

Though this does by no stretch of the imagination mean that there is no way back for its opponents, which should be the case in any true democracy. Similar situations have also been seen in the past when a leader had a standing where defeat seemed a distant possibility, yet became a reality anyway. But to make a comeback an acceptance of the present circumstances that the opponents of the BJP find themselves needs to seep in.

This is the basis of any chance that a reinvention of not only themselves but also the dynamics of the relationship between such parties will happen. To reinvent is exactly the need of the hour as while these parties keep crying foul about being under attack by the party in power, it's the skeletons that are in their closets that are enabling such actions.

It would allow them not to repeat the mistakes made so far and make them realise that they need to stand for something more than just being anti-BJP, especially given the popularity that the Prime Minister and his party are enjoying at the moment.

Though such problems have hounded the opposition for years, the parties do not seem to be in the mood or able to learn from their mistakes as there is no hint of, any of the possible steps that could give them a chance to form a viable alternative, being initiated so far. Which can be seen by the nature of the defeat in the election that saw Kovind getting elected as the next President of India.

OneIndia News
No comment on Pranab Mukherjee book before reading it: Former Union Minister

Prez Mukherjee gets nostalgic in farewell speech, remembers Indira Gandhi, praises PM Modi

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

On the last day of his office, President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said that he had tried to protect and defend the Constitution in letter and in spirit.

As the President, I have tried to protect, preserve, defend the Constitution, not just in letter but in spirit as well, he said.

Recalling his days as a member of Parliament, he said, "If I claim I am the creation of this Parliament, perhaps it will not be treated as immodesty," and added, "Parliament stands for debate, discussion, dissent and disruption hurts Opposition more."

Before ending his speech, the President appealed the political stakeholders to enrich the parliamentary procedure, and aim to reach consensus on major decisions. "Ordinance route should be used in only compelling circumstances," he said, adding that the House should not be surpassed.

Mukherjee thanked parliamentarians for giving him a farewell.

Mukherjee hails Modi



Mukherjee also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the "transformational changes" in India. The recent passage of GST and its launch on July 1 is shining example of cooperative federalism and speaks volumes for maturity of India's Parliament.

I will carry with me fond memories of association with PM Modi and Modi's warm and courteous behavior to me.

Remembers 'mentor' Indira

Mukherjee also recalled his "mentor", former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a "towering personality" in his last speech as the President of India.

"My career was mentored by Indira Gandhi who was a towering personality. She had the courage to call a spade a spade," Mukherjee said as he related an interesting incident that happened in London after the Congress' defeat post Emergency.

"After the Congress' and her own defeat post Emergency, she went to London in 1978. A battery of mediapersons, in a fairly aggressive mood were waiting to ask questions.

"The first question was: 'What had been your gains from Emergency?'. Looking directly into the eyes of mediapersons, in a level voice she replied: 'In those 21 months we comprehensively managed to alienate all sections of people'," Mukherjee recalled.

After a few seconds of silence, there was laughter, he said.

"Nobody after that asked a question about Emergency and the mediapersons melted away," he said.

Meanwhile, LS Speaker presented a book signed by MPs and her speech to President Mukherjee during farewell ceremony hosted in Parliament's Central Hall.

Before Pranab's address, Vice President Hamid Ansari said that President Pranab Mukherjee brought great distinction, dignity to the high office. His views on national, international issues have enhanced the stature of the top office.

On July 25, President Mukherjee will formally quit from his post and will be succeeded by Ram Nath Govind.

OneIndia News (with agency inputs)

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, July 23, 2017, 19:18 [IST]
Rajasthan: Gang held for stealing 50 million litres of crude oil

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Rajasthan Police have cracked a sophisticated smuggling network accused of smuggling more than 50 million litres of crude oil inside water tankers from India's largest onshore oilfield. More than 30 trucks have been seized, so far.

The theft went undetected for nearly six years until the Rajasthan sleuths arrested 25 people this week for involvement in the smuggling.

Reportedly, Rs. 49 crore worth of oil could have been stolen in total from the oilfield run by a subsidiary of British mining giant Vedanta Resources.

More than 75 people, many drivers and contractors working at the oilfield, are still wanted in connection with the heists, said district police chief Gangandeep Singla, reports AFP.

"The company suspected something fishy was happening and complained to us, and during investigations we found this was an organised ring," he told AFP.

He said the drivers were authorised to carry water -- a byproduct in oil exploration for dumping but some of the tankers were filled with crude instead.

Interestingly, the drivers were disabling their GPS devices to avoid tracking and detection.

The stolen oil was used in road construction and diesel production, police said.

In February, police in Uttar Pradesh arrested nearly a dozen people accused of stealing nearly Rs. 100 crore worth of petroleum from a high pressure refinery pipeline in the northern state.

OneIndia News (with agency inputs)

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, July 23, 2017, 20:51 [IST]
Iraq gets a new government after a year of deadlock

Search operations on for 39 missing Indians: Iraq Embassy

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, July 23: High level coordination between India and Iraq authorities is underway to trace the 39 Indians who went missing in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014.

The Government of India has already sent two high-level senior delegations to Iraq to follow up on this matter.

The search operation is currently underway to locate the missing Indian nationals, the Iraqi Embassy confirmed on Sunday.

However, Iraqi Ambassador to India Fakhri H Al-Issa, said that no concrete information has been recovered so far about the missing Indians.

Government is trying its best to rescue Indian citizens. We have always said that till the time we don't get proof, no government can abandon its citizens said, MoS MEA VK Singh.

Opposition has demanded Centre to come clean about the matter and what concrete steps they have taken to free the 39 Indians.

"I don't want to say anything. I have no information. Sometimes no news is good news. They might be in Badush prison, he told ANI.

Sushma Swaraj, along with Minister of State (MoS) for Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) M.J. Akbar and MoS MEA Gen. (Retd.) V.K. Singh, met families of 39 Indians who are missing in Iraq since 2014 on July 16.

Recently, Sushma said that 39 Indians were at a prison at the Badush prison. However latest reports clearly suggest that the prison has been destroyed in the fighting between the Iraqi forces and the Islamic State.

The issue is expected to gather momentum with the visit of Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who arrives in India on Monday on a five-day visit.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, July 23, 2017, 18:23 [IST]
Social Worker-Politician rahulborole Is Working Day & Night To Help The Needy With Food, Masks & Water

Sell your wife, if you cant build a toilet: Aurangabad DM tells villager

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Aurangabad, July 23:In a controversial remark, Aurangabad District Magistrate Kanwal Tanuj has advised a villager to "go and sell your wife if you cannot protect the dignity of your wife".

Addressing a public awareness rally on cleanliness drive in Jamhore village, Tanuj first asked the attendees to raise their hands if they thought the value of their wife was less than that of Rs 12,000.

When a villager shouted that he does not have money to build one, the DM In a brazen show of insensitivity asked the man to sell his wife.

"If this is your mentality then go and sell your wife. Those who cannot build toilet should sell or auction his wife," he said.

"Is 12,000 more than anyone's wife's dignity? Who can let her wife get raped in return of Rs. 12000?" Tanuj said.

The Bihar government gives Rs 12,000 to a beneficiary to build toilets under the Shauchalay Nirman, Ghar Ka Sammaan - a scheme focussed on bringing an end to open defecation.

OneIndia News
Tamil Nadu: Opp parties will leave Kamal Haasan in due course of time, says AIADMK

India

pti-PTI

Chennai, Jul 23: The ruling AIADMK today hit out at actor Kamal Haasan saying he does not understand that his utterances against the government will "affect" him later and opposition parties which support him now will "leave him in a lurch" in due course of time.

AIADMK's mouthpiece 'Namadhu Dr MGR' said the Opposition parties including the DMK have begun voicing their support for the 'Viswaroopam' star who has spoken against the state government due to "over enthusiasm." It may be recalled that the top actor has been targeting the state government on issues including alleged corruption and incidence of dengue.

"Due to this (support of parties), he is perceiving that the entire Tamil Nadu stands behind him and has been expressing opinions everyday against the government," the Tamil daily said in its front page write-up highlighted as a "box-item." "Though his emotionally charged deeds and utterances will put him in limelight for now, he does not understand the extent to which it will affect him later."

The daily which headlined the article as "Kamal Haasan in Trishanku's heaven," said the Bigg Boss host "should realise that the parties that voice support for him will leave him in the lurch in due course of time."

Parties that were working against the government look at using the actor to their advantage, the daily said. If the actor, without understanding it made a "miscalculation," that the entire Tamil Nadu and political parties were behind him, it is a "plain truth" that he will have to face the "consequences."

Following Haasan's recent outburst against the government, several ministers had spoken against him. Chief Minister K Palaniswami had on July 19 said that the government will give him a reply if he joins politics.

PTI
Imran Khan discharged from hospital, to resume long march from same point where he was shot

This cop from Pakistan became a millionaire overnight: Here is how

Tamil Nadu Police arrests Pakistani national for drug-peddling

India

oi-PTI

Ramanathapuram (TN), July 23: Ramanathapuram District Police have arrested a Pakistani man for allegedly entering India without valid documents on Saturday.

Mohammed Yunus, from Karachi, was arrested from a lodge in Ervadi, they said. Ervadi is famous for its centuries-old dargah in Ramanathapuram district.

When he was arrested on Saturday, he neither had a passport nor a visa. He was carrying Pakistani Rupees 2,500 and Rs 3,000 in Indian currency, the police said.

During interrogation, it came to light that he had come to Tamil Nadu illegally by a boat from Sri Lanka.

After travelling to several places, including Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu allegedly in search of a contraband substance, he had come to Ervadi, Q branch district police, which deals with national security, said.

Two others from Ervadi, who had allegedly promised to get him the drug, have also been arrested, they said.

The Pakistani national was produced before a magistrate at his residence in Paramakudi and was remanded to judicial custody.

He is being taken to the Puzhal Central Prison in Chennai, which has a separate cell to house foreigners.

The arrest comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Rameswaram in the district to inaugurate a memorial for former president late APJ Abdul Kalam on 27 July.

PTI

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, July 24, 2017, 0:28 [IST]
Explained: Why did the ECI freeze the symbol of the Shiv Sena

Not just future of Sena but democracy at stake, says Uddhav

Uddhav Thackeray slams PM Modi for centralising power, demonetisation

India

oi-PTI

Mumbai, Jul 23: In yet another scathing attack Shiv Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and accused him of 'centralising' power.

Thackeray, whose party is a constituent of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre and in Maharashtra, said reforms are a must, "but one should pause" to review their impact.

In an interview to Sena mouthpiece 'Saamna', he said that going by government advertisements, one would get a feeling that everything was hunky-dory, but one should check the ground reality.

Talking about the GST which was rolled out on July 1st and the Sena's reservations on it, he said, "Should we centralise or decentralise? Rajiv Gandhi had introduced autonomy through the Panchayati Raj when he was the prime minister. Narendra Modi has taken away the autonomy and is on a centralisation spree."

Thackeray said if governance depends "only on the will of whoever is the prime minister", then does India really have a democracy?

"Do people's views have any value? Reforms are a must, but one should also pause from time-to-time and review their impact," he said.

"I read somewhere that 15 lakh people lost their jobs in the four months after demonetisation. It means 60 lakh families were affected. It happened only due to the notes ban (demonetisation). What happened to those who lost their jobs is the government's responsibility," he added.

Referring to the Centre's initiatives aimed at job creation such as 'Start-up India' and 'Make-in-India', Thackeray wondered how did one reconcile them with demonetisation and its effects.

He also said the Sena would not shy away from "exposing" the BJP-led Maharashtra government, if it failed to implement the loan waiver scheme in the state properly.

Claiming that the Sena was the first to raise the issue of farm loan waiver when Sharad Pawar was the Union agriculture minister, Thackeray said, "Maharashtra was at the top in farmer suicides and unfortunately, it is still there.

This was not an area where we should have been at the top." He said he had asked Sena workers to beat drums outside banks and make them display the list of beneficiaries of farm loan waiver.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had, on June 24, announced a loan waiver to the tune of Rs 34,022 crore following a statewide agitation by farmers.

On July 9, Fadnavis had said the entire debt of around 36 lakh farmers in the state would be waived.

Thackeray said, "The state had said the entire loan of 36 lakh farmers would be waived, while 89 lakh farmers would benefit from the scheme. I want to see their names."

Reminding the state government of its proposal to give Rs 10,000 to every farmer till the loan waiver scheme was worked for buying seeds and fertilisers, he claimed that only around 2,500 people had received the payments, even though more than a month had passed since the announcement was made.

Thackeray claimed that no bank had so far received clear instructions about how to grant waiver.

PTI

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, July 23, 2017, 23:51 [IST]
People of Himachal have decided to go with Modi; all other factors irrelevant: CM Thakur

Volunteer meet to be held on 18th of every month, says Mayawati

India

oi-Madhuri

Bahujan Samaj Party Supremo Mayawati on Sunday said that she will hold Volunteer meet on 18th of every month starting from September in 18 divisions.

She also called for Volunteer meet which will be held on 18th of every month starting from September in 18 divisions. She further said,''18th is important as I resigned on 18 July.''

This comes after Mayawati resigned from the Rajya Sabha last week, following an argument. Mayawati, whose term as the member of the Rajya Sabha was to end in April 2018, earlier on Tuesday walked out of the Upper House of the Parliament alleging that the she was not allowed to speak on the atrocities against the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh.

Maywati was allotted three-minute time to speak and she started speaking on the atrocities against the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh.

However, after her allotted time elapsed, Rajya Sabha deputy chairman PJ Kurien stopped Mayawati that angered her to the extent that she walked out of the House and resigned.

"I was not allowed to speak on problems being faced by the Dalits, backward classes, weaker sections including farmers and labourers in Uttar Pradesh. Since I was not allowed by the ruling party to raise these issues so, I have decided to resign from Rajya Sabha," she told media after resigning from the party.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, July 23, 2017, 14:20 [IST]
Water level at KRS dam barely 50 per cent despite heavy rains

India

oi-Staff

By Staff

Despite heavy rains in the catchment areas, the Krishna Raja Sagar Dam in Mysuru is barely 50 per cent full. As on July 22, the live storage in KRS dam was a mere 8.62 TMC as against the capacity of 45.05. Same day last year, the water stood at 17.27 TMC.

Despite the dam reporting water level of barely 84.70 ft as against its maximum level of 124 ft, the Karnataka government is already releasing water to Tamil Nadu according to the Supreme court's order. On Saturday, farmers jumped into the Cauvery protesting releasing of water to Tamil Nadu even before the KRS filled up. Police had to intervene and contain protests.

While the Harangi and Kabini dams have received good inflow owing to heavy rains in the catchment area, dams like Linganamakki and Supa are yet to receive good water inflow. On July 22, Harangi had 6.73 TMC storage capacity as against the maximum of 8.07 but Supa dam had a mere 6 .85 TMC water against maximum capacity of 145 .33 TMC. The Kabini dam recorded 9.55 TMC water storage on July 22 as against the maximum of 15.67 TMC.

In the Krishna basin, the Almatti dam recorded water levels of 1691 ft as against the maximum capacity of 1705 ft. Nagarjuna Sagar had 117.69 TMC storage as against the maximum of 312.045 TMC. In the Godavari basin, Nizam Sagar recorded 1380.3 Ft water level on July 22 as against the maximum of 1405.

In Telananga, the Osman Sagar reservoir recorded 1776.940 ft water level as against the maximum of 1790 ft while Himayath Sagar had 0.68 TMC water storage as against full capacity of 2.96 TMC.

OneIndia News
32,000 girls converted to Islam and sold as ISIS slaves: This is The Kerala Story

A bayath, a massive suicide bombing, the Coimbatore blast was in the making for a year

Dozens of IS militants killed in air raid in Iraq

International

ians-IANS

By Ians English

Baghdad, July 23: Iraqi forces on Sunday said that dozens of Islamic State militants were killed in an air raid conducted by the Iraqi Air Force in the Anbar Province.

Iraqi jet fighters carried out the air raid against two IS-controlled towns in western Anbar bordering Syria, said the Iraqi Joint Operations Command in a statement on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.

According to the intelligence body, the Iraqi forces bombarded an IS command base, two weapons and ammunition warehouses, and a car bomb factory, killing dozens of IS militants.

The statement did not mention the exact time of the air raid. On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi formally declared that Mosul, the last stronghold of the IS in Iraq, was liberated from IS control after nine months of fierce fighting.

On the following day, Iraqi local media reported the death of its top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a Russian airstrike in Syria. However, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that he believed al-Baghdadi was still alive. Mosul in northern Iraq had been seized by IS since June 2014.

IAN
Slip of Tongue in Pak Parliament: Speaker pronounces Nawaz Sharif's name instead of Shehbaz Sharif

If Nawaz Sharif disqualified, his brother Shehbaz Sharif to be new Pakistan PM: Report

International

oi-PTI

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's younger brother and Punjab province Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif is expected to replace him if he is disqualified by the Supreme Court for alleged corruption and money laundering in the sensitive Panama Papers case, according to a media report.

Since Shehbaz is not a member of the National Assembly - the lower house of the Parliament - he cannot succeed immediately and would have to contest elections.

Therefore, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif will most likely become the interim prime minister for 45 days till Shehbaz is elected in by-polls, Geo News reported, citing sources, that it was decided in a high-level huddle of ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) yesterday.

It was also decided during the meeting that the party will utilise all legal and constitutional options available if the verdict goes against the premier.

The meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Sharif, was also attended by Shehbaz along with federal ministers, advisers and the legal team representing the Sharif family in the Panama Papers case.

The meeting reviewed the situation following developments in the Supreme Court.

According to sources, the legal team briefed the prime minister on the Panama Papers case.

Speaking in a talk show, Asif rebuffed the media reports. "The entire party is behind the leadership of Nawaz Sharif. There is no any prime ministerial candidate. There has been no discussion in the meeting on this issue".

The Supreme Court yesterday concluded hearing the sensitive Panama Papers case against beleaguered Prime Minister Sharif, 67, and his family for alleged corruption and money laundering, but reserved its verdict that could jeopardise his political future.

The judgement was reserved after counsels of both sides concluded their arguments before a three-judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan. The bench did not immediately give any date to give its judgement.

A six-member JIT was set up in May by the Supreme Court with the mandate to probe the Sharif family for allegedly failing to provide the trail of money used to buy properties in London in 1990s.

The JIT has recommended that the report's Volume-X should be treated as confidential as it contains the details of correspondence with other countries.

So far Sharif has refused to quit, calling the investigators' report a compilation of "allegations and assumptions". His decision to stay in power was endorsed by the federal Cabinet last week.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, July 23, 2017, 8:48 [IST]
Another Sabbath massacre

Watch:The mother of the terrorist who butchered 3 members of an Israeli family last night as they were having dinner says she's proud of him pic.twitter.com/85ZBDFZ8xI July 22, 2017

In an attack reminiscent of the massacre of the Fogel family in Itamar in 2011, a 'Palestinian' terrorist knocked on the door of a Jewish family in the village of Halamish (Neve Tsuf) that was holding a Shalom Zachar (celebration of the birth of a boy) on Friday night, walked in, and started stabbing the residents. The terrorist murdered the grandfather - 70-year old Yosef Salomon, his daughter 46-year old Chaya Salomon, and his son, 36-year old Elad Salomon HY"D (May God Avenge their blood). The grandmother, 68-year old Tova Salomon, was seriously wounded. If not for quick thinking by daughter-in-law Michal Salomon, who rushed her five children into a room, locked the door and called the police, the massacre might have been much worse. An off-duty soldier neighbor shot the terrorist through a nearby window, wounding him. The entire attack, from the time the terrorist jumped the fence of the village until he was neutralized, took less than 15 minutes It has been reported that when medics came to treat the terrorist and his victims, the terrorist attempted to attack the medics In Gaza, the terror attack triggered celebrations . This morning, Israel's Hebrew-English 'Palestinian' daily, Haaretz, publishes a column by Gideon Levy that dances on the victims' blood before they can even be buried. I won't sicken you by posting quotes from it.The other group that's dancing on the victims' blood is the international media. Those include al-AP and al-Guardian.And for those of you who are still foolish enough to believe that Muslims are 'just like us,' here's the terrorist's mother. Let's go to the videotape.Those who believe that this is not a religious war are simply fooling themselves.

Labels: Fogel family massacre, Halamish, Islamic terrorism, Itamar, Neve Tzuf, Palestinian terrorism, Palestinian terrorists, Salomon family massacre
Trump likely to announce bid for presidency next week

Trump blames New York Times for foiling attempt to kill ISIS cheif Baghdadi

International

oi-Vicky

President of the United States of America, Donald Trump has accused The New York Times of foiling an attempt to kill Islamic State chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

"The Failing New York Times foiled US attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist, Al-Baghdadi. Their sick agenda over National Security," Trump tweeted. The president, however, did not give any other details in support of his claim.

The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist,Al-Baghdadi.Their sick agenda over National Security  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

Earlier, Defence Secretary James Mattis said he believes Baghdadi is still alive, shooting down claims the elusive ISIS leader was killed in a Russian air strike in war-torn Syria.

Trump also lashed out another major US daily The Washington Post in other tweet.

"A new INTELLIGENCE LEAK from the Amazon Washington Post, this time against AG Jeff Sessions. These illegal leaks, like Comey's, must stop!" Trump said seeking an end to these leaks.

In an exclusive story, The Post wrote that Sessions had substantive discussion with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on matters related to the Trump campaign.

OneIndia News
UNSC's counter-terror meet in India to focus on use of internet, new payment mechanism by terrorists

UNSC meet in India to begin its deliberations in Mumbai is a message in itself: MEA

From being a victim of terrorism to exploring global solutions: India praised at UN's Counter Terrorism meet

UN Security Council to meet next week on Jerusalem violence

International

ians-IANS

By Ians English

United Nations, July 23: The UN Security Council will hold an urgent meeting on Monday morning to discuss the violence unfolding in Jerusalem. According to the UN mission of China, president of the UN Security Council for July, the meeting will be held behind closed doors.

"Sweden, France and Egypt request UN Security Council to urgently discuss how calls for deescalation in Jerusalem can be supported," said Security Council coordinator of the mission of Sweden Carl Skau on his Twitter account on Saturday.

Three Israelis were killed on Friday in a stabbing attack by a Palestinian in a West Bank settlement. The attack followed clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in Jerusalem's Old City, in which three Palestinians died.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Middle East Quartet -- Russia, the US, the European Union and the UN -- expressed concerns over the escalating tensions.

"The Quartet envoys reiterate that violence deepens mistrust and is fundamentally incompatible with achieving a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said the statement.

IANS
 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd.

All rights reserved.

One News is a registered trademark

of One News Page Ltd.
BANG Showbiz 10 Nov 2022

Steven Spielberg thinks that filmmakers were "thrown under the bus" by the pandemic when HBO Max decided to stream all of their..
According to a report by SaharaReporters, as many as 21 suspected terrorists have been nabbed by the Nigerian police.

The terrorists, from Zamfara State were arrested by the Nigerian police while on their way fleeing to Cameroon.

The Adamawa State Police Command confirmed the arrest to SaharaReporters, adding that majority of the suspected terrorists were young people aged 19 to 40.

According to the police, the suspects were intercepted at Muchalla, a border village in the Mubi North Local Government Area, while attempting to escape into Cameroon, all the way from Zamfara State.

Those arrested include; Bilyaminu Abubakar, 24, Salisu Abubakar, 40, Murtala Alhaji, 26, Zainu Abubakar, 25, Lawali Abubakar, 20, Hassan Abu, 22, Ishaka Umar, 33, Abubakar Liman, 35, Musa Aliwali, 26, and Lawal Mohammed, 20.

Others are; Abubakar Umar, 27, Lawali Modi, 23, Rabiu Salisu, 26, Haruna Adamu, 20, Umar Mohammed, 25, Kabiru Mamman, 20, Bashiru Sani, 20, Naziru Abubakar, 21, Mudasiru Abubakar, 19, Yushawu Lawali, 25 and Ibrahim Lawali, 22.

Spokesperson for the Command, SP Suleiman Nguroje, said on Thursday, The Command in collaboration with Muchalla community members in Mubi North LGA apprehended the suspects.

The arrests followed public outcry by the inhabitants of the community having sighted young men in large numbers travelling all the way from Zamfara to Cameroon Republic.

As I am talking to you now, 21 suspects are in our custody undergoing investigation. The Command is doing everything possible to gather both human and material evidence to substantiate allegations levelled against them.
A South African female Twitter user, Prudence has disclosed how she went the extra-mile to stop her man from being unfaithful.

She disclosed that she once prayed and fasted for three days to stop her man from cheating but he still cheated with three girls at the same time.

She said this after a woman disclosed that she thought her prayers were powerful.

See Post Below;
Save the Poor and Needy charity Initiative (SPANCI), a human rights group, has made some allegations against the police.

The group alleged plans to arrest its members in Ogbomoso, Oyo State following allegations of police brutality

The group, which made the disclosure in a statement on Friday, raised the alarm, a few weeks after it protested against alleged police brutality in Ogbomoso geo-political zone.

SPANCI had a few weeks ago staged a peaceful protest in Ogbomoso.

President of the group, Yemi Ezekiel Bello, has, however, explained that he is raising the alarm to let the public understand what happened after the protest.

Bello claimed that the group protested the alleged habit of converting civil matters into criminal cases by the police in Oyo.

He said, Most times civil matters are converted to criminal matters and money extorted from innocent claimants/victims before being turned to accused/defendants and thereafter maliciously prosecuted by the police. It is our view, therefore, that the public needs to be updated about the events after our protest and also note the following.

That the officers at Owode Area Command are supporting their indicted officer and there cannot be any justice done by them to our client Mr. Babatunde Adetunji who was maliciously prosecuted over his own land;

They are not only after Mr. Olawale Adebowale but also all the members of our organization, including me.

There is a conspiracy against us by some people and or institutions who/ which believe our organization is depriving them of the benefits they get from perpetrating/perpetuating injustice in Ogbomoso Land.

Any purported invitation from or investigation by them or their privy is against our rights to fair hearing because of the earlier indictment and also a way of fighting back. Nemo Judex Incausa Sua.

It is our recommendation, however, the Area Commander should stand for justice and withdraw the malicious charges against innocent people and punish any of his officers who is found to have perpetrated injustice in the interest of fair hearing and justice.
Arsenal hero, Emmanuel Petit has advised Chelsea to offload injury-prone midfielder NGolo Kante.

Kante has enjoyed an outstanding career for both club and country but has struggled with injuries of late.

The France international has played just 175 minutes of football for Chelsea this season as he struggled with a knee injury and then a muscle injury.

Read Also: England Legend Reacts To Dennis First Goal For Nottingham Forest

However, Petit believes Kante cannot play a proper game due to injury and could be allowed to depart Stamford Bridge next year.

Kante has been tremendous for years and years. Hes been running around the world all the time, but I can understand Chelseas position, Petit told Getting Casino.

How can they pay so much money for someone who is always injured? He cannot play a proper game.

He continued, I heard hes back in training and will be fit soon, but I understand Chelseas position. He will be a great bargain if he doesnt sign a contract as he will be available for free and some clubs will be interested to get him for sure.

Personal life

Kante is a practising Muslim. He was born in Paris to Malian parents who migrated to France from Mali in 1980. He grew up in a small apartment in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine. His father died shortly after NGolo turned 11 and his elder sibling Niama died of a heart attack before the 2018 World Cup.

He is named after King Ngolo Diarra of the Bamana Empire. His younger sister was also in the youth system at Suresnes. Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Diego Maradona were his favorite players growing up. At the age of 21, while playing for Boulogne, he earned a diploma in vocational accounting.

At the start of his professional career at Boulogne, he commuted to training on a kick scooter and as of 2018 drove a Mini Hatchhis first purchase in England because he found it easy to learn to drive in. Kante is aware of his public perception as a shy and private individual, but also said that stories about him by current and former teammates, like Jamie Vardy, were often exaggerated.

Copyright  2021 Completesports.com All rights reserved. The information contained in Completesports.com may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without the prior written authority of Completesports.com.
Super Eagles left-back Zaidu Sanusi has renewed his contract at FC Porto which will see him remain at the Portuguese champions until 2027.

Porto announced the contract renewal in a statement released on their website.

Reacting after his contract extension Sanusi said: I am very happy to have renewed my contract with FC Porto until 2027. It is very important for me.

And on scoring his first Champions League goal:It was a very important goal for me, for the club, for the President and it made me very happy. I am even more fulfilled for having renewed.

I hope to score many more goals and celebrate more victories here.

Also Read: Lampard: Where Iwobi Needs To Improve

Born in Jega, Kebbi, Sanusi signed with Gil Vicente F.C. of the Portuguese Primeira Liga in 2016 and in January 2017, he was loaned to third division club SC Mirandela.

Sanusi reached an agreement to join C.D. Santa Clara on 16 March 2019, with the deal being made effective on 1 July.

He made his Portuguese top-flight debut on 15 September that year, coming on as a late substitute in a 20 home win against Moreirense FC.

He scored his first goal in the competition on 23 June 2020, in a 43 away victory over S.L. Benfica which marked the Azoreans first-ever at the Estadio da Luz.

On 30 August 2020, Sanusi signed a five-year contract with FC Porto and won the first trophy of his career on 23 December, when he played the entire 20 defeat of Benfica in the Supertaca Candido de Oliveira.

He finished his first year with 41 competitive matches, scoring in the 43 league win over C.D. Tondela.

On 7 May, 2022, Sanusi scored the only goal in the 93rd minute of O Classico against Benfica to seal the clubs 30th league title.

Copyright  2021 Completesports.com All rights reserved. The information contained in Completesports.com may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without the prior written authority of Completesports.com.
Updated*

A Utah entrepreneur who emerged last summer as the new landlord and seeming financial savior of Oregon's famed Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum has been subpoenaed as part of a federal securities investigation.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late last year subpoenaed Steve Down and several of his companies, including The Falls Event Center. Down is the chief executive officer of the event center, which owns one of the buildings that houses the popular McMinnville museum and several aircraft.

The scope of the SEC inquiry is unclear, and there is no indication the investigation involves the museum itself. But it does raise questions about an organization so intertwined with the popular tourist spot, which draws close to 110,000 visitors a year.

Aviation buffs expressed dismay earlier this month upon learning The Falls Event Center quietly sold two World War II airplanes from the collection housed at the museum. A Corsair was disassembled and shipped out this month, Evergreen officials confirmed. And a P-51 Mustang will be delivered to its new owner later this summer. The prices were not made public, but such planes have commanded million-dollar price tags.

Down said he had not intended to sell any planes but the investigation, in part, forced him to focus on near-term profitability rather than acquisition and growth.

"We've had to make some decisions that were not part of our original plan. We made a business decision to sell those aircraft," he said.

According to an SEC order of investigation, regulators are investigating the possible sale of unregistered securities to investors, allegedly using schemes to defraud. Securities are stocks, notes and similar investments used to raise capital.

Down confirmed the SEC is investigating some of his companies. But he said he and his staff have followed the law and believes federal investigators are preparing to shut down the inquiry.

"It's not uncommon for companies that raise money from investors like ours to be the focus of these kinds of investigations," said Down, a Klamath Falls native who now lives just west of Salt Lake City. "We are cooperating. We've provided them with documents. I believe that our documents show our companies are in compliance with the law."

SEC officials declined to comment.

The Yamhill County museum is a popular destination for aviation buffs and families alike, a showcase for more than 180 civilian and military aircraft. The crown jewel is the Spruce Goose, the massive wooden plane made by Howard Hughes that made only one flight, on Nov. 2, 1947. The eccentric billionaire then shielded it from public view, in a climate-controlled hangar, until his death in 1976. It's been on display at Evergreen since 2001.

John Rasmussen, president of the museum board, said it was unfortunate The Falls Event Center chose to sell the Corsair and Mustang. Though it was within its rights to sell them, he said, museum staffers have gotten complaints.

"They are two of the more popular planes," he said. "We're getting a lot of people with these questions. How could you allow these people to sell these planes?"

He was not aware of any SEC inquiry into Down's companies, he said.

"What they're doing is separate from us, we haven't heard anything," Rasmussen said. "They don't tell us how to run the museum, and we don't tell them how to run their operations."

The museum was launched by Del Smith, the founder of Evergreen Aviation, a colorful operator of air missions around the globe. Evergreen did plenty of work for the U.S. military and intelligence community. But the museum was plunged into disarray when Smith died, and numerous Evergreen affiliates filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

The museum faced possible dissolution and the prospect of having its assets handed over to creditors unless a deep-pocketed benefactor could be found.

That's when Down showed up last summer and agreed to buy certain assets for $10.9 million. In return, The Falls Event Center, which owns 14 event venues across the western United States, got one of the museum's two buildings, an adjacent water park, a chapel that was later converted into a lodge, nearby farmland and 12 airplanes.

Down's other companies include a financial advisory service, the event venues and a development company. He calls himself a "cause capitalist," someone who makes money so that he's in a position to share the wealth.

The companies employ 1,000 people, most of them in Utah, he said.

In April, Down appeared at the McMinnville facility and told a delighted staff that he intended to build a four-star hotel adjacent to the museum that he predicted would help make Evergreen the top tourist attraction in the state.

Several months earlier, the federal investigators had issued several subpoenas to some of his companies.

Down drew the attention of financial regulators earlier in his career. In 1996, the SEC accused him and his then-company, Investors Dynamics Corp., of operating a "pyramid marketing plan" from 1994 to 1996.

A judge later determined there was insufficient evidence to prove the company operated a pyramid scheme, according to news reports. Down eventually reached a settlement with the SEC -- without admitting or denying the allegations -- that prohibited him from doing business with "any broker, dealer, investment company, investment adviser or municipal securities dealer" for two years. No civil penalties were imposed.

Additionally, two managers who currently work with Down have been convicted of financial crimes.

Clark Gardner was sentenced to seven years of probation last year after pleading guilty to four counts of securities fraud in Utah. He now works for Down's personal finance company, Financially Fit, one of the companies that received a subpoena.

Neal Bergstrom was charged with others in 2006 with misappropriating more than $4 million from clients who'd hired them to handle their payroll. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to 27 months in prison. Bergstrom works for The Falls Event Center.

When asked why he did not disclose this history of clashes with regulators, Down said he believes in giving people second chances, saying those who have made mistakes sometimes make the best and most honest employees. He said he did not disclose their criminal records to investors because they do not hold senior management positions.

Down declined to share any more details of the federal investigation, though he did say his companies have not defaulted on the debt they owe their investors. He said an "enemy of the company or a competitor" is spreading word of the investigation, which causes him great distress.

"My reputation, my integrity in the marketplace, as you can appreciate is of utmost importance to me," he said.

-- Jeff Manning

503-294-7606

@JeffmanningOre

_____

* This post has been modified to reflect that the allegations of federal securities violations came from an SEC order of investigation, not the text of the subpoenas.
BY R. GREGORY NOKES

To someone steeped in the sad history of early Oregon's racism, as I have been in my recent writing, it was a relief to visit Centralia, Wash., the other day and witness how that nearly all-white community honors the African American who founded the town.

I knew the brief outline of the story of George Washington, who was born into slavery in Virginia. An 1850 emigrant on the Oregon Trial, he settled in present-day Washington to avoid the Oregon Territory's exclusion law against blacks. The law posed a threat north of the Columbia River, but less so.

Washington acquired land and became a successful farmer and years later, founded the town that became Centralia. I included these brief few facts in my 2013 book, Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory.

Through the years, I'd passed Centralia without stopping several times. But as I headed to the town for a recent speaking engagement, I resolved to see the park and the plaque, wondering if they'd be hard to find.

They weren't.

George Washington Park is at the center of the city. It hadn't occurred to me the park would actually be named for him, probably because of my awareness of the widespread discrimination against African Americans during the region's early history. And the plaque was more than a plaque. It was a large flat granite memorial in front of the old Carnegie Library next to the park. Washington had donated land for both.

The wording on the plaque is worth repeating:

George Washington was born a slave on Aug 15, 1817 near Winchester, Va., and at birth was given to James and Anna Cochran. As a young man he taught himself many trades and became a champion of equal rights. In 1850 he came west with his foster parents. He staked a squatter's claim at the confluence of the Chehalis and Skookumchuck rivers, built a cabin and operated a ferry and way station known as Cochran's Landing. During the 1855 Indian uprising, he helped build Fort Henness at Grand Mound. After the arrival of the railroad in 1872, he platted and sold lots and named the

new town Centerville, changed later to Centralia.

He became a respected man of means and made liberal donations of land for public use, notably this park during the panic of 1893. He was a one-man relief agency, providing food and jobs and lending money without interest to all who needed it... (Aug. 26, 1905). This town is his monument.

A large mural of Washington and his dog, Rockwood, covers a nearby bank wall. The mural suggests a man at ease, comfortable in his skin and without a care in the world. But the image belies the far-sighted businessman adept at overcoming the limitations imposed upon him because of his race.

When Washington came north, he still was threatened by the exclusion law. Local residents had to petition the Oregon's Territorial Legislature to seal his right to stay. He also wasn't allowed to own land, so his foster father filed the land claim for 640 acres, which Washington later bought. It was this land that became part of the Northern Pacific Railroad route and the town of Centralia.

Washington died in 1905 at 88 and is buried in Centralia's Washington Lawn Cemetery. On Aug 12, three days before his 200th birthday, the town will kick off a year-long celebration with events at the park and a "fun run'' around the boundaries of his land claim.

Centralia's recognition of Washington makes one wonder why Oregon doesn't similarly honor Robin Holmes, another remarkable African American. Holmes came to Oregon as a slave in 1844 from Missouri and wasn't freed until 1850. He also overcame discrimination and made a major contribution to his Oregon community. Although illiterate, he brought a successful 1852 suit against his former Polk County owner to free his three children who were still being held as slaves. Judge George Williams' ruling in favor of Holmes established that slavery was unlawful in the Oregon territory. Holmes and several other former slaves also integrated a white church in Salem.

But there are no memorials, no plaques, no public recognition of the important contribution Holmes made to his community and race.

R. Gregory Nokes is a former reporter and assistant managing editor at The Oregonian. He is the author of "Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory," published by Oregon State University Press in 2013.
Aside from the Eugene prosecution, DNA results from recent testing of old sexual assault kits from Multnomah, Marion and Lane counties has led to indictments in three other cases.

The three other cases are all in Multnomah County.

In two of the cases, women told Portland investigators at the time that they knew their alleged attackers and both underwent forensic exams. Evidence from their kits matched DNA profiles of both men now accused, prosecutors said.

Police and prosecutors have sealed the indictment in the third case and have released few details about the suspect.

The cases:

2010: Steven Guy Tubbs, now 61, was arrested in February and faces charges of first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy and two counts of first-degree sexual abuse. He is accused of attacking a woman on Dec. 2, 2010.

The indictment alleges that Tubbs sexually assaulted a woman who was "mentally incapacitated'' and "physically helpless," apparently under the influence of alcohol at the time while they were among a group partying.

At the time of the alleged rape, Tubbs had a criminal history. He was convicted in 1998 in federal court in Colorado of coercing or enticing a minor for sex by propositioning a federal agent posing as a girl during an online sting. He was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of supervised release and required to register as a sex offender.

By 2000, he had moved to Oregon and was on supervised release for the federal offense. While on supervision, another woman he knew accused him of forcing her to have anal sex as he held her wrists down even though she had told him to stop. She reported it to Portland police. Tubbs then denied assaulting the woman, saying he never heard her say stop. The Portland police detective didn't refer the case to prosecutors, according to federal court records.

After his arrest in the 2010 case, Tubbs posted $75,000 bail and was released from jail the next day. He was rearrested in June in an alleged domestic violence assault on his wife at their Hayden Island condominium, according to court testimony.

A Multnomah County prosecutor urged a judge to revoke Tubbs' bail for violating the conditions of his release and send him back to jail. Instead, the judge ordered Tubbs to forfeit $20,000 of the $75,000 bail and post another $20,000. Tubbs also was ordered not to have any contact with his wife while the case is pending and to wear an alcohol detection bracelet.

Tubbs appeared in the same sixth-floor courtroom in Portland where serial rapist and murderer Ladon Stephens was sentenced to life without parole in 2004 for raping and killing 14-year-old Melissa Bittler. Bittler's case led to a statewide law requiring testing of all sexual assault kits.

2011: Curtis Clint Williams, now 63, was arrested in June and faces charges of rape, unlawful sexual penetration, sodomy, sexual abuse and coercion. He is accused of attacking a 19-year-old woman in downtown Portland on Sept. 30, 2011.

The 19-year-old told police that the man approached her while she was standing near a TriMet ticket machine, complimented her and asked if she'd ride the MAX train with him toward Lloyd Center. They rode the train across the Willamette River to a park and then returned downtown, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The man insisted that the young woman come to his apartment. He walked her to his place at the Alder Hotel. He closed the door and ordered her to sit down and remove her clothes, the affidavit said.

She was scared and said no, but he threatened that "if you don't do what I say, I'm going to do worse,'' the affidavit said.

When she escaped, she called Portland police. She gave an officer the suspect's first name as "Curtis,'' his phone number written on a piece of paper and the address where he lived, according to investigators.

Police identified the suspect as Williams that night, but didn't make an arrest or submit the sex assault kit for testing, court documents indicate. They haven't explained why.

Three weeks before his arrest this year in the 2011 case, Williams is accused of sexually assaulting another woman, 24 and homeless, who he invited back to a Southeast Portland motel on May 18. He held her against her will for several hours, police said. He now faces a rape charge in that case as well.

Williams is also accused of failing to register as a sex offender after a first-degree rape conviction in 1985. Court records indicate he has 13 past probation violations and two other rape charges that were dismissed.

2006: A third case in Multnomah County has led to an indictment in a 2006 sexual assault, but the indictment remains sealed.

The suspect is in custody for a conviction on unrelated charges in another state. Prosecutors wouldn't say where or describe the charges.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian
NEW YORK  Half a century after Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was convicted and hanged in Israel for engineering the deaths of millions of Jews, the bulletproof-glass booth where he sat facing justice has come to New York for a multimedia, you-are-there recreation of the courtroom.

It's part of an exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Jewish Heritage that opened July 16 and runs through Dec. 22, created by a former agent of Israel's Mossad intelligence service that captured Eichmann a decade after he fled to Argentina.

Surrounding Eichmann's actual booth are screens with original video footage  seven minutes culled from 350 courtroom hours  that makes visitors feel like they're spectators at the 1961 proceedings. They hear the voices of survivors who testified against the SS lieutenant-colonel, as well as the prosecutor and the defense attorney.

The balding, 55-year-old German who once planned the routes of cattle-car trains that brought Jews to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and other camps sits stone-faced in footage rolling on a screen right behind the original booth. To the right is another screen beaming the traumatic, tear-drenched testimonies, with one man collapsing to the floor in exhaustion after he speaks.

"Here with me stand 6 million prosecutors," chief prosecutor Gideon Hausner intones in Hebrew, with a subtitled English translation. "Their blood cries to heaven, but their voices cannot be heard."

The trial was held in a Jerusalem theater converted into a courtroom  an appropriate setting for the last act of what unfolds like a sensational cloak-and-dagger story, starring the organizer of Hitler's "Final Solution."

The details drew Avner Avraham, who left the Mossad two years ago to collect materials for the exhibit, which takes its title "Operation Finale" from the code name of the undercover Eichmann mission led by Israel's still-budding intelligence force in the 1950s. Its agents fanned out across Europe and Argentina, assembling the pieces of a puzzle that ended with Eichmann's hanging.

Avraham said the proof they had the right man came down to his left ear.

Eichmann was abducted by the Mossad in 1960 as he got off a bus while heading home from work at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Buenos Aires. They confirmed it was him by comparing his ear to a photo of Eichmann in a pre-World War II German army file.

In 1957, Avraham said, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion "ordered the Mossad: 'I want you to bring one big imported Nazi for one big, huge trial  a live Nazi.'"

Eichmann was drugged for the trip to the airport "because he could start screaming, saying, 'Hey, they take me to Israel. I'm an Argentinian citizen!'" the former Mossad agent said. "I mean, today, you cannot get to the plane with a small bottle of perfume, so you want to bring a Nazi?"

Once in Israel, Avraham said, authorities had Eichmann under constant medical watch and made sure he was well-fed so he could stay healthy for the trial.

Characters who populate the 4,000-square-foot exhibit include cardboard figures of the 11 key Mossad agents, including one woman, who closed in on Eichmann after tracking him for months. He was taken to Israel aboard an El Al plane, camouflaged as a cabin attendant in the airline uniform.

___

Museum of Jewish Heritage: http://mjhnyc.org

___

This story has been corrected to show that the last name of the chief prosecutor is Hausner, not Hauser.
Developer Tom Cody lost all the ground-floor retail tenants of his building on the Northwest Park Blocks and he thinks he knows why.

Customers avoided the tents, tarps and backpacks that filled the leafy corridor north of Burnside. In turn, his tenants looked for shops without dozens of people sleeping or hanging out in front at all hours of the day.

It's not the first time Cody saw his business jeopardized by the city's 4,000-and-growing homeless population.

His firm has developed 33 projects, some up to $300 million  some in neighborhoods where tensions with the homeless population run high. He opposed a preliminary plan for a homeless shelter campus near another one of his Northwest Portland properties, a 300,000-square-foot creative office development.

But now he's part of a business-led movement to do more than complain to City Hall or file lawsuits. He and two other high-profile real estate families have donated empty buildings they own for use as temporary shelter space.

So far, Cody, Brad and Jonathan Malsin and Jordan Menashe have collectively hosted five shelters in their buildings  with possibly more planned. City and county officials are trying to harness the momentum to create a permanent network of business owners who can carry some of the burden of the city's homeless crisis.

Cody and the others readily acknowledge that they need to protect their investments and are getting pressure from city and county leaders to alleviate an affordable housing crisis created by the hot market that they have fanned.

"It's having a very adverse effect on us personally and the city, and that's why we're so committed to working with the Joint Office of Homeless Services," Cody said.

They also recognize that they have the bricks-and-mortar means to provide a quick fix at relatively minimal cost that offers an option to the street.

Cody spent hours researching how to be a better partner to social service workers and advocates  and is starting to carry the torch. He wants to work with the city and county to create a trust of temporary shelters like his, possibly in exchange for tax abatements or development fee waivers.

His pitch to other developers and investors:

"Do you want to step over somebody sleeping on the street to get into your building or do you want to let them in? There's thousands and thousands of square feet of vacant space in the city."

He sees a movement forming. "People are opening their doors," he said.

MAYOR WANTS IN-KIND DONATIONS

Mayor Ted Wheeler has called repeatedly for the private sector to step up  both with financial support and in backing anti-homelessness measures for affordable housing. During the throes of the budget season, Wheeler told a board of homeless advocates, service providers and policy-setters that Portland needs a new source of revenue.

He wants more sustainable community-based funding  though he didn't specify what kind -- he said in the meeting, and more from businesses.

"I want to make sure we're not setting up a house of cards here," Wheeler said of the haggling over how much money to invest in the city-county Joint Office of Homeless Services. "Because I'll tell you, city and county budget priorities ain't it."

In an interview, Wheeler didn't call for a tax on businesses, but wants in-kind donations, like the temporary shelters. His staff is recruiting a ring of real estate players who are willing to offer their in-development buildings as shelter on a rotation -- so if one goes into construction, another one is available.

So say I have a vacant building and I want to help out 

The Portland-Multnomah County Joint Office of Homeless Services has a standing call out to developers that if they have a building that isnt under construction and wont be for several months, it could be used as a temporary homeless shelter.

When someone answers that call, Joint Office Director Marc Jolin walks through it with the developer to check out the layout and its condition. A fire department official will perform safety checks. A representative from Transition Projects or another shelter operator will also see the space to see what upgrades and additions are needed and how many people the building could hold.

Jolin needs to ensure that the building is safe for people to sleep in and can accommodate the necessary number of toilets and showers for 100 or more people.

Its at this point that many buildings are cut because they wont work to house people or the owner is uncomfortable with the amount of work and wear and tear the shelter might cause.

If the developer is still on board, then either the company, the nonprofit operator or sometimes the Joint Office will perform the upgrades. Occasionally, the developer makes the improvements to enhance the value of the building for its future after the shelter. Sometimes space is the only thing that an owner is interested in donating.

In the case of the Bushong & Co. building donated by Tom Codys development firm Project^, the Joint Office paid $60,000 from its city- and-county-funded budget and businesses including Chown Hardware and Providence Portland Medical Center donated heating appliances and fixtures. Project^ spent $30,000 for interior renovations that needed to be done anyway.

The owner and the nonprofit shelter operator sign an agreement. Transition Projects has run all the shelters so far. Sometimes, the Joint Office also signs the contract. The Joint Office carries liability insurance for the shelter.

The owner then essentially functions as the shelters landlord. Owners have the option to shut down shelters if they think its necessary. But mostly, they trouble-shoot and make sure things run smoothly. They dont charge rent. The buildings would remain empty if not for the shelters until redevelopment. But for comparison, commercial rent for the Project^ space would cost $52,000 over the same time  seven months  that the shelter occupied the building.

Jolin said the model is gaining traction as more building owners come forward.

Its taken hold and I think it can continue to be part of our sheltering strategy, Jolin said.

Wheeler wants to add 200 to 300 new beds this way  about a quarter as many as the existing permanent and extreme weather shelters overseen by the Joint Office.

"If we form this cluster of downtown property owners and developers -- or even citywide -- we can ration the supply of shelter," Wheeler said.

He reminds skeptics of the business community's intentions that much of the local real estate industry supported the city's landmark $258.4 million housing bond that Portland voters passed last November to build or preserve 1,300 affordable apartments. Homeowners will pay an extra 42 cents per $1,000 of assessed value on their houses.

Some also lobbied for the inclusionary zoning measure, passed last December by the City Council to require apartment and condo developers to set aside some units for low-income residents. Wheeler predicts more measures to protect tenants and create affordable housing are coming and he wants to shore up business support for them now.

"I see our relationship with the private sector being very much a leveraging relationship. Each party bringing their strength to the table," Wheeler said. "Their side of this deal is if they're going to help us raise support and contribute dollars, it's up to government to make sure we're spending those dollars effectively and wisely."

MENASHE FAMILY STARTS SHELTER PARTNERSHIPS

Jordan Menashe is ready to further that relationship.

He was frustrated when he spoke at the opening of his family's third temporary shelter effort. He called out other developers for not following his family's lead three years ago when they donated the use of their building for the first time  the Washington Center at Southwest Washington and Fourth  to shelter 250 people.

After he was quoted in the newspaper, friends and colleagues deluged him with emails and Facebook messages asking how they could help.

Menashe initially offered the use of his building to the city and county because his father empathized with the homeless plight after two of his siblings ended up on the street with mental health issues. It was also hurting their real estate deals.

The Menashes are one of the most successful real estate families in Portland, with commercial properties throughout downtown, as well as in the suburbs, Washington and Colorado. They have struggled with how to deal with homelessness for years  in 2010, founder Barry Menashe refused to pay fees to a business district that funds cleaning up after homeless people, saying it didn't make the area cleaner or safer.

Even now, Jordan Menashe and his tenants are infuriated by the dirt pit next to his Police Block building near the waterfront where homeless people sleep, shoot up and have sex.

"There's this business side when we're frustrated with people sleeping in front of our doorways and our tenants," he said.

But he also is vocal about the need for more compassion if the city is to tackle homelessness.

"I'm tough as hell during the business day as a negotiator," he said. "But I am the first to acknowledge the people sleeping on the street is just as much my problem as everyone's problem."

In 2015, Menashe coordinated with Dan Saltzman, who was the Portland commissioner in charge of housing under former Mayor Charlie Hales, and the Joint Office to open the first vacant-building shelter.

It was so successful, they kept the partnership going. This past winter, the family again offered its vacant office building at Southwest Fourth Avenue and Washington Street as a shelter for 100 men, women and couples. The Columbia Shelter lasted four months -- two less than originally advertised -- because Menashe thought that construction would start early.

By the time the Menashes needed their building back, another development family had stepped up.

Brad Malsin and son Jonathan offered the old Shleifer Furniture building to take 100 men, women and couples while they wait to start construction to turn it into a luxury hotel. Brad Malsin sits on the board of Multnomah County's homeless services office, A Home For Everyone.

They had opposed the move of Right 2 Dream Too, a camp where homeless people stay for up to 12 hours at a time, from West Burnside to the Central Eastside Industrial District -- where their offices and investments are. The Malsins said the industrial land wasn't suitable for permanent camping. They eventually added their business, Beam Development, to a lawsuit that ended in the state Land Use Board of Appeals halting the move.

Yet Jonathan Malsin said it wasn't about trying to avoid homeless people. It was about improper land use and the fear that Right 2 Dream Too would stay there permanently.

"We own a fair amount of property in the Central Eastside. We're very sensitive and aware of the impact homelessness has in the Central Eastside. From time to time it feels like it has a disproportionate impact," he said. "We felt like if there was something we could do to get people off the street and pull their lives together and find permanent solutions to homelessness -- (Shleifer) felt like something we could do."

'IT'S A CITY PROBLEM'

The private sector hasn't always been an enthusiastic partner.

Affordable housing took a backseat to remaking the city. The Oregonian/Oregonlive reported in 2014, for example, that Northwest Portland's Hoyt Street Properties would ensure that 35 percent of its thousands of units would be available to lower-income tenants  but ended up at less than 30 percent. The city had already spent millions to promote revitalization of the area -- and it flourished into the Pearl District, the city's premier shopping, dining and tourist destination.

At one point, Homer Williams led Hoyt Street Properties. He made part of his fortune transforming rail yards and warehouses into a place where current one-bedroom apartments easily rent for $1,400 and 27 percent of renters spend at least half of their income on rent. For home buyers, one square foot of real estate goes for $518  the Portland average is $323.

City Hall also failed to enforce the conditions it negotiated with developers until the issue became public. The shortcomings on both sides led Hales to declare a housing and homeless crisis. Officials predict it will take years to make up the 24,000 affordable units needed to ease the crisis.

Since then, Williams has become a self-styled ideas man on Portland's homelessness. He's concerned about the private and public sector's ability to serve an aging, fixed-income baby boomer population and younger people who are on track to be in the same boat.

"There's people out there who recognize the problem. And it's a city problem. They're our homeless, not somebody else's," Williams said. "We need to jointly come up with some solutions and play to each other's strengths."

Williams pitched a 400-person homeless services campus and shelter to the Hales administration. When that lost City Council support, he switched to an affordable housing plan now under consideration that hinges on an ambitious land swap and city rezoning effort to build pockets of affordable housing throughout Portland.

Timeline

January 2016:

The Menashes, a prominent real estate family, offer their Washington Center building at Southwest Washington and Fourth Avenue to shelter 80 men.

May 2016:

The Menashes expand the space to accommodate 180 more beds for women and couples who had been staying at the city-owned Jerome P. Sears former Army Reserve building, which closed.

November 2016

: Tom Cody, president of development firm Project^, offers the vacant Bushong and Co. building at 333 S.W. Park Ave. The winter shelter is open for 60 men who are 55 years or older, are veterans or have disabilities. Its made ready for occupants within a month of Cody suggesting it.

January 2017:

The Menashe family again donates the empty downtown Washington Center for winter shelter. For four months, the space now called the Columbia Shelter houses 100 women, couples and men who are 55 or older, have disabilities or are veterans.

May 2017:

Beam Development and Urban Development and Partners, run by Brad and Jonathan Malsin, donate the historic Shleifer Furniture building on Southeast Grand Avenue to be used as a 100-person shelter. It opens as the Columbia Shelter closes. It holds 100 men, women and couples.

Developers like Menashe who are taking on more active roles on homelessness say they're only providing a Band-Aid, while Williams is trying to generate solutions.

However, the balance in private-partner partnerships can be tenuous. Menashe wants to see local officials do more to alleviate the trash and other visible effects of homelessness  especially in business corridors.

The Portland Business Alliance, the city's chamber of commerce, also occasionally sparred with the Hales administration on issues like his attempted "safe sleeping policy." Hales ordered Portland police to stop sweeping homeless people from camps and sidewalks. That frustrated business owners and residents who said they interacted with homeless people more and the tents, tarps and trash outside their doors hurt their livelihoods.

In response, the business alliance launched a campaign that included full-page newspaper ads and a website calling for the city to provide more indoor shelter space and social services. The tone of the campaign largely put the burden for producing solutions and bearing the cost on local government.

Alliance leaders continue to push the new mayor hard on how camping and the detritus of street living affects businesses.

"We need to see some visible evidence that the illegal camping is being managed a little better and I know that is top of mind for the mayor," CEO Sandra McDonough said. "We get so many calls from people who are dealing with trash and behaviors that aren't really acceptable."

But McDonough said the chamber of commerce has always been a partner.

Corporate groups and small businesses have long donated time to nonprofits for cleanup or build days. The Portland Business Alliance members answered a call for donated lumber, appliances and labor to outfit the temporary shelters.

For more than a decade, the alliance has partnered with Central City Concern to employ homeless people to clean up around downtown business corridors. That program might expand across the river soon.

Ed Blackburn, the outgoing director of Central City Concern, said the homeless services nonprofit relies in part on the financial support of business owners and districts. He also appreciates the extra brainpower of people in the private sector working on the issue.

"Writing checks is very important," he said, "but it's also important that they know what's causing homelessness and part of it is figuring out the solutions."

ALLIES ARE BECOMING PARTNERS

Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury sees business community partnerships heading that direction.

The county has long worked to win allies in the private sector. Lately, those conversations are reaching a point of collaboration. She pointed to the shelter effort, where developers saw how hard it is to find suitable spaces to house people, even on a short-term basis.

Likewise, business leaders are getting a bigger seat at the table. Marc Jolin, head of the Joint Office, said that he has made a concerted effort to find more ways for business leaders to take part in policy and planning discussions.

"I think once we had one partner under our belt, it was easy to get others," Kafoury said. "Because then you can have a building owner talking to another building owner. You can show a success."

She wants to see how far those partnerships can go. Both she and Wheeler admit that what the initiatives in place aren't enough to stem the scores of people forced to move onto the streets. But the new wave of business support is a promising start.

"We need a building downtown. We need another shelter that's permanent, and to see whether that is something that can be financially raised by the business community -- people who have really benefited from this thriving economy and this increase in rents and property values," Kafoury said.

"I mean we're always going to want everyone to do more because it takes all of us working together."

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger
Editor's note: This story was produced by student reporters as part of the High School Journalism Institute, an annual collaboration among The Oregonian/OregonLive, Oregon State University and other Oregon media organizations. Read this post for more information about the training program.

By Ryan Nguyen and Sagarika Ramachandran

For the past three winters, Walter Clark has lived at the Men's Cold Weather Shelter in Corvallis.

Clark, 58, wears a gray hat on his bald head and carries a camouflage backpack on his shoulders. His hands and voice shake a little.

At the shelter, Clark could get a cup of hot coffee, a friendly greeting and a safe place to sleep.

"If it wasn't for (the shelter), I probably would have froze to death, the first year I was out here on the streets," he said.

This winter, many homeless men in Corvallis may have nowhere to go. The shelter of last resort, the Men's Cold Weather Shelter, was forced to close. Managers say that, after an exhausting search for a new site, they are unlikely to find a new location by this winter.

Clark is moving in with his fiancee and hopes to be off the streets by wintertime. But he worries about his friends who are still homeless.

"If it closes, there's going to be a lot of people on the street," he said. "It makes me feel a little bit angry, and a little bit sad."

The Men's Cold Weather Shelter was housed in a stone building downtown on Southwest Fourth Street.

Corvallis Housing First, a nonprofit, owns the building and has operated the shelter there for five years. It opened seasonally and allowed homeless men to stay overnight without requiring them to be clean and sober.

It's the only "wet" shelter for men in Corvallis and provided about 40 beds. According to Corvallis Housing First, about a quarter of them are veterans, and about half have moderate health issues.

"They are not the easiest group of individuals," said Brad Smith, board president of Corvallis Housing First.

Smith said that for homeless individuals who have some combination of addiction and physical or mental illness, a sobriety requirement is simply "not realistic."

But the shelter's philosophy didn't sit well with some neighbors.

Last year, a neighboring property owner sued Corvallis Housing First over the alleged behavior of the homeless people at the shelter and nearby.

To settle the case, Corvallis Housing First agreed not to use its building as a shelter after the 2016 season.

The lawsuit was the culmination of years of problems.

Business owners reported incidents of public defecation, trespassing and harassment by people they associated with the shelter.

Peter Ball is the president of Corvallis Insurance Services Inc., a small business down the street. Ball said his employees felt unsafe walking to their cars and that the shelter drove people away.

In his back office, Ball still has an extra-tall can of Budweiser beer he found in the bushes from what he said was a stash from a homeless individual.

"Typically, the people who went into the shelter would hide their drugs and their booze," Ball said. "And then they go out in the morning, and they get their stash. That was a common thing."

Smith said, in retrospect, Corvallis Housing First should have responded more quickly to its neighbors' concerns.

Now managers hope to make a fresh start somewhere else.

Corvallis Housing First has reviewed 27 locations for a new shelter. None worked out. Smith said zoning regulations limit the available land for shelters. The nonprofit is running on a "shoestring operation," narrowing the already limited options.

Some property owners have been hesitant to rent to a homeless shelter.

"One of the realities is that while people conceptually may support the idea of there being a winter shelter, the concurrent reality is that they don't want it anywhere near them," Smith said.

Smith said one irony is that because of the lawsuit, there may be 40 men sleeping outside while their old building sits vacant.

"There's a better than even chance that we will not have a shelter this winter," Smith said.

Jen McDermond, a case manager at the Men's Cold Weather Shelter, points to all of the supplies she's packed up to put in storage. Stacks of mattresses reach the ceiling and plastic containers of socks are piled up in a corner.

McDermond has dozens of clients, and she doesn't know what will happen to them this winter. She said three people died last year, in part, because of exposure to cold weather and complications like frostbite and hypothermia.

"My youngest person who died was 28, and that was three years ago. And he died because he didn't have proper shoes," McDermond said, tearing up.

Without the shelter this winter, McDermond fears for her clients' survival.

"For me, it's about life and death."

-- Ryan Nguyen, Aloha High School

-- Sagarika Ramachadran, Lincoln High School
Editor's note: This story was produced by student reporters as part of the High School Journalism Institute, an annual collaboration among The Oregonian/OregonLive, Oregon State University and other Oregon media organizations. Read this post for more information about the training program.

In the middle of the hallway, Mekdes Hilete stopped, lost among the countless turns and classrooms, while others rushed to class before the bell rang.

School was difficult enough, with its teachers, homework and drama. Entering a new school in the middle of the year, in a completely different country, added countless challenges.

In Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, Mekdes attended a cramped school with often 40 or more students per class. The school had a small field, no gym, and old chalkboards in every room. The classes were long and the teachers were strict, often scolding and hitting students to reprimand bad behavior.

When she had free time, Mekdes watched American movies, especially cartoons and action movies, such as Shrek, Fantastic Four and X-Men. She practiced the characters' accents and studied American societal norms, such as shaking hands when greeting someone.

"I learned American culture through TV," said Mekdes, now 15.

When her mom, who lived in the U.S., asked if Mekdes wanted to move to America, Mekdes was hesitant. She was reluctant to leave her father, her friends and her life behind.

In December 2015, after months of contemplation, Mekdes decided learning in America would be best for her education. She asked her mom to file a sponsorship application to bring her to the U.S. Mekdes immigrated in the middle of her eighth-grade year. After winter break, she started at her new school in Portland.

On her first day, three students gave Mekdes a tour, but it didn't answer all her questions. She wondered how to eat and where to sit at lunch. That afternoon, she went home and broke into tears.

"It was too much," Mekdes said. She compared it to missing a day of class, but on a different scale. "Imagine it as being absent for the whole year."

She reached out to her teachers for additional tutoring and guidance. She stayed up late to read books and finish her homework, especially American history, which she found the most challenging.

Every now and then, during the holidays, Mekdes would long for the celebrations and festivities back in Ethiopia. She missed the family gatherings, the lively dances, and the get-togethers with neighbors to feast. And friends she grew up with were thousands of miles away.

But now, as an incoming sophomore at Jefferson High School, Mekdes enjoys staying after school for clubs and joining sleepovers with her new friends.

Mekdes said she has mixed feelings about her time in America, but in the end, she is grateful to be here.

"There are a lot of feelings, and it all comes together," Mekdes said. "Sometimes there are times when I feel like things are hard, there are times when I feel like I am blessed, and there are times when I feel like I accomplished great things."

-- Ben Nguyen, Reynolds High School
Editor's note: This story was produced by student reporters as part of the High School Journalism Institute, an annual collaboration among The Oregonian/OregonLive, Oregon State University and other Oregon media organizations. Read this post for more information about the training program.

With two days left to find a house and rejections from 11 apartment complexes, a Corvallis couple found themselves on the verge of losing their chance for a stable home.

Kenneth Wiggington, 46, and his wife, Christian, 24, struggled with drug addiction and homelessness. Kenneth Wiggington had a criminal history. The state had taken custody of their young daughter.

That was a wake-up call, Kenneth Wiggington said. The couple entered a substance abuse treatment program, then found space in a shelter with strict sobriety and conduct requirements.

They found work and eventually qualified for government-issued vouchers that would cover part of their rent -- if they could find a place to live within 120 days. Desperate to take control of their life and win back custody of their daughter, the couple began looking for a home. But with each application costing $35 to $50, time and money started running low.

In Corvallis, a small city that's home to one of Oregon's largest universities, the housing supply isn't keeping up with its growing population, leaving many without a place to call home. Rising rents have forced residents and newcomers to other areas.

Only 5.8 percent of rental homes are available, according to U.S. Census data from 2015. Some local housing advocates say the vacancy rate is even lower.

"I'm not proud of the idea of the little housing Corvallis offers," said Ty Pos, director of social services at Community Outreach Inc. The housing nonprofit helps people regain their footing and find a home.

At the same time, the cost of homes is climbing. The Corvallis area's Fair Market Rent, a measure of rental rates set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to determine the amount of housing subsidies, climbed to $930 for a two-bedroom apartment in 2017, up 18 percent from 2010.

The housing shortage goes beyond Corvallis and even Oregon, said Tracy Oulman, Corvallis' housing and neighborhoods coordinator. Income throughout the country isn't keeping up with home costs, she said.

It's not just renters like the Wiggingtons, with major blemishes on their records, who are having trouble finding a house.

As finance director at Community Outreach Inc., Lydia Cline, 48, keeps the books for an organization that helps house people.

Yet every day, she drives for two hours to get to work from her home in Winston.

Even though she applied to rent 20 homes in Corvallis and nearby cities, paying fees every time, she never landed a lease.

Cline's large family of eight made her search even harder, she said, because few available rentals are big enough.

"It's tough," Cline said. "They have a waiting list. They are very competitive."

Oregon State University's flagship Corvallis campus, and its sizable student body, plays a major role in the availability of rental housing.

For the last 10 years, the population of the university has increased substantially, said Kent Weiss, the city's housing and neighborhood services division manager.

The university has found rental housing prices have also displaced its own employees.

"Our staff has to look beyond Corvallis for affordable housing," said Dan Larson, the school's interim dean of student life.

Students often share rentals with roommates, dividing the cost among themselves. Dejane Oliver, 22, and a fifth-year student at Oregon State, moved in with friends. Living with her two roommates, she had to pay only $291 for her monthly rent.

Buddying up helps students afford higher rents and compete with long-time residents and families.

Larson said the school will add 300 beds for upperclassmen, potentially easing the demand for off-campus housing.

The Corvallis city government has also taken steps to address the rising housing costs, said Weiss, the city housing official. But it's seen little development, slowed further by a short supply of land.

"We're struggling a little bit in terms of the supply in Corvallis," Weiss said. "Our rate of development hasn't really kept up."

The city formed a housing development task force, and since 2015, Corvallis has collected a construction excise tax to fund the construction of affordable housing.

For the Wiggingtons, a last-minute availability provided them the home they needed. Late last month, the couple moved into a two-bedroom townhouse.

They've regained custody of their daughter and filled one of the rooms with decorations from Disney's "Frozen."

"This is our home now," Kenneth Wiggington said. "She knows she's coming home."

-- Mekdes Hilete, Jefferson High School

-- Ben Nguyen, Reynolds High School
Cindy Lange-Kubick Columnist Cindy Lange-Kubick has loved writing columns about life in her hometown since 1994. She had hoped to become a people person by now, nonetheless she would love to hear your tales of fascinating neighbors and interesting places. Follow Cindy Lange-Kubick Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

In 1918, Lulu Williams lived at 2676 S. Ninth St. in Lincoln.

Her beau was stationed at the 166th Field Hospital in Baccarat, France.

I know this because a packet containing copies of Lulus letters landed in the newsroom this spring accompanied by an explanation.

That letter was dated Sept. 15, 2013, and placed inside an envelope postmarked May 17, 2017.

Recently, I opened a suitcase that was full of old envelopes with stamps, began the letter with the four-year gap between writing and sending.

"These items were collected for the value of the stamps that were on them, plus for the uniqueness of the franking on the envelopes.

The note explained that although most of the envelopes were empty, a few contained Lulus love letters to a man named Thomas R. Baker  Tommy to Lulu  the object of her lavish desire.

As I read I was drawn back in time and I was full of questions, the 2013 letter continued. Did Tommy survive the war? Did Lulu make it through the influenza epidemic? Did they marry?

And then the mystery writer, whose unsigned letter was inside an envelope with no return address, proceeded to answer his  her?  own questions.

The Sleuth with No Name discovered that during World War I, the 166th Field Hospital was part of the 42nd Infantry, "also called the Rainbow Division" which had sailed for France in 1917 with Tommy aboard and was immediately immersed in combat. Four major campaigns and 264 days of battle with 14,600 casualties.

The writer deduced that Tommy was likely an ambulance driver. Perhaps a combat medic.

In a book I have with the pictures of all of the boys from Nebraska who served in WWI, there is a picture of Tommy  I have not yet found a picture of Lulu. I will continue to search.

The mystery writer was occasionally coy.

Mentioning that Lulu and Tommy married and had a son and a daughter. (But not sharing their names.)

Writing that the couple were buried in the same cemetery but not the same plot. (But not naming the cemetery.)

I have visited their graves. Until I pass on, I will visit them on each Decoration Day and leave a flower or two on their graves.

And finally: The envelopes with their loving magic will not be sold. They will be placed in a special box along with this writing and go into my archives.

And yet, the old letters turned up at 926 P St.

A dozen pages covered with Lulus elegant script.

Envelopes with those missing surnames: Williams for Lulu and Baker for Thomas. Canceled 3-cent stamps affixed on the corners, George Washingtons face in profile. Lulus daring salutations: Dearest Lover. My Dear Lover. My Precious Soldier Boy.

And the young woman's stories of life back in the states unfolding like episodes of "Downton Abbey."

Tales of home: Burwell Evans was here late evening to see us  He expects his call any minute now and is training with the Home Guards at Aurora.

And work: Mr. Kimball, who owns the Rialto Theater building died and we had about fifteen or twenty orders for his funeral  his son, once a sailor boy, bought a beautiful long spray of red roses.

Of gossip: We dont want to spread it around but we are just thunderstruck about news Mr. and Mrs. Andrews have parted. They are the last ones I would thot such a thing about ...

And an epidemic: These are surely terrible times of affliction and sorrow in our land  every day every flower in our store is gone by noon and the demand just cant be filled ...

And love: How I long to see you dear. Until I do may God protect and keep your dear life, for you are my all to me ...

After I finished reading, I wasnt sure what to do next, so I set the mystery aside. And after a few days, I set out to discover more. I drove past the spot where Lulu's house stood only to find it had been demolished long ago.

I found a newspaper story from 1945, a short snippet about a WWII soldier named Walter Baker, son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Baker.

An old city directory offered more clues. An address: 1520 D St. And an occupation for Thomas: designer at Eiche Flowers.

I discovered an obituary for Thomas, 80 when he died in 1971. A member of the VFW and the Lincoln Hearing Society. A third child with another last name: Robert J. Craig.

I found that Lulu died in 1979, with no notice in the Lincoln paper, but I found one for Walter, the boy from the 1945 newspaper clipping, who'd lived for decades after.

The obituary led me to an old clipping about Thomas and Lulus daughter  Lois Baker Verink  who made her operatic debut in October 1949 in Faust at the American Opera Company in Chicago. (And Facebook led me to a man in Wyoming who just might be part of Lulu and Tommy's lineage, too.)

But I couldnt solve the mystery inside the mystery. Who was the owner of the envelope-filled suitcase? Why write a letter in 2013 and wait four years to slide it in a mailbox?

A stamp collector, I decide. (Who but a philatelist might so casually insert the word franking into the first line of a letter to a stranger?)

Last month, I set out to find the couples graves  Thomas in Soldiers Circle at Wyuka and Lulus just outside that ring of white tombstones, her simple granite marker littered with sticks from a recent storm.

There were silk flowers in the urn next to PFC Thomas R. Bakers final resting place, faded red poinsettias and plastic berries, spray painted gold.

I imagined a soft-hearted stamp collector, keeping a promise until I pass on to leave flowers on the graves of strangers he  she?  came to know through a young womans love letters.

And I imagined someone who had loved the stamp collector finding that special box and mailing a packet filled with the past to a newsroom.

Because ...

Someday, someone else may want to open the box and read for themselves about the love  that carried Tommy and Lulu through the war to end all wars.
IDA Ireland is the agency responsible for the attraction and development of foreign direct investment in Ireland. Today we're learning from several sources in Ireland that the chief executive of IDA Ireland has called for a shake-up of the planning system in the wake of lengthy delays to Apple's plans for a data center in Athenry.

Apple's 850 million project was announced in February 2015  but remains in limbo due to a judicial review sought by local residents.

At the time Apple announced plans for a massive data center project in Athenry, it also announced its intention to build a similar project in Denmark. Over two years later, and the Danish center has been completed  with Apple announcing the development of a second centre in that country.

Meanwhile, the Athenry project remains in development hell over a series of lengthy delays  with many fearing Apple could be close to pulling the plug.

According to the Sunday Business Post, IDA Chief Executive Martain Shanahan is now calling for a shake-up of the planning system amid fears the considerable delays could lead to Athenry losing the project.

He says tight turnaround times are needed for big planning permissions  and the prospect of companies simply turning elsewhere is a very real danger. The long-awaited decision on Apple's plans for a data center in Athenry is expected to be delivered in the Commerical Court on Thursday.

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or negative behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.
[Pexels.com / Pixabay / CC0 license]

*****

Recently, I had the distinct blessing (Mt 5:11-12) of being the target of 21 out of [literally] 54 atheists who appeared in a combox of a post on the blog run by atheist Jonathan MS Pearce (and also a second one). It started out on the topic of my critiques of deconversion stories, and then quickly descended into an avalanche of complaining (and, well, lying) about my strict, zero-tolerance-of-insults moderation policy on my blog: then to outright malice and vitriol. I explained till I was blue in the face why I have such a policy, but no matter. As I recently commented:

People get mad when they are banned, just as we have disgruntled former employees, athletes angry when they are ejected from a game, etc. Thats just how it is. But it aint my problem. The umpire (or judge) is always unpopular with the ones he disagrees with.

This was a full-scale, old-fashioned feeding frenzy. This is my term for when virtually everyone in a given online group decides to focus upon attacking and savaging one person with a dissenting view. Anything goes. Any insult is permissible. Nothing is forbidden. Ethics goes straight out the window. Atheists arent the only ones who do it. Christians do it all the time, too (as Ive been decrying and condemning for many years). Its a general human failing, and one of the most despicable ongoing scandals of online behavior.

And thus we are brought to Example #4,978,109 of notorious angry atheist online behavior: a huge problem (at least when Christians dare show up). More thoughtful atheists will decry this phenomenon along with me, and I have publicly stated several times that these types do not represent atheism as a whole, and that atheists I know in person are not like this.

But, that said, it remains a gigantic scandal, and a PR problem for the atheist image. It certainly doesnt make for a very appealing face. Other atheists flat-out deny that it is any problem, and/or say that Christians behave just as badly towards atheists. When Christians do that (and they do, far too often), I roundly condemn it. I dont do it. No one on my blog or Facebook page does it, because I have great people there, and they know I wouldnt allow it, in any event.

Jonathan MS Pearce (as he wrote about) is perfectly content to allow this sort of disgraceful behavior on his blog, not because he himself loves it, but rather, as a necessary evil, for the sake of the principle and value of free speech (as he sees it). I couldnt disagree with him more than I do. But to his credit, at least he was one of only two atheists who stood up for me at all during this debacle. He wrote in the same piece:

With direct regard to Dave Armstrong, . . . well done to him for coming here and suffering the slings and arrows of atheists wrath. It takes a lot of time to read and comment on such extensive and scattered threads as that one, and I commend him for getting involved and defending himself. Goodonya, mate.

The only other atheist to do so was Sastra:

I once knew [Dave] on a debate listserv many many years ago . . . That Dave Armstrong was both intelligent and likeable, by the way. WRONG  but still nice.

I think Dave is generally an honorable person, . . .

*

The rest is almost wholly insults. For those who think angry atheists arent alive and well online and as hostile, malicious, and vitriolic as ever, take a look at what happened in just two comboxes. Imagine what the response would be if I literally wished that some atheist would die (as Raging Bee [apt name!] did below)? Wed never hear the end of how hateful Christians are. All comments were directed personally to me [warning: some may not care for some of the PG-13 language; Ive bleeped out the worst of it]:

Ian Cooper . . . youve sallied out of your little walled castle (presumably because youre looking to increase your dwindling fanbase by grabbing a few of Jonathans Christian readers) . . .

Its not our fault that youve pissed off so many of us. And no ones asking you to argue with all of us. You could just take your knocks, or just go back to your safe space and post another anti-atheist hit piece  you wont find us there, snowflake.

If he was sincere, he wouldnt stifle dissent. He would welcome it and address it. He doesnt do that.

. . . what a ban really says, quite clearly, is Im not smart enough to take this guy on.

. . . when a blogger regularly attacks atheists, preventing them from defending themselves from such attacks is the act of a coward and a bully. A decent, fair and honest person does not pick a fight with someone hes bound and gagged first. If David Armstrong doesnt want atheists to respond, maybe he shouldnt be attacking us in the first place.

Have you read 1984? War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength  and apparently suppression of dissent is true dialogue.

Armstrong allows a few atheists to post to his site  presumably to keep up the pretense that he welcomes critical voices, but its just for show.

All Im saying is that banning critical voices is intellectual cowardice.

Your problem is that you think disagreement is uncivil. [I replied: My view is that uncivil disagreement is uncivil and not worth anyones time]

. . . one hardcore scumbag.

If he was intelligent, likeable and nice, he wouldnt be banning people merely for disagreeing with him on his Patheos page.

[Ian Cooper added, when he discovered this post: He quoted me, seemingly at some length. I skimmed it and didnt bother to read his responses, as Im well aware of the type of disingenuous scumbag he is, so doubtless he will have taken things out of context to make them look as unhinged as possible. Par for the course with a dirtbag like that. But hey, at least I got to get some of my thoughts onto his blog. Even though hes using them for his purposes, at least theyll show his readership that there are a bunch of people who think hes scum.]

josh You cry and bitch about a comparison you dont like and then ban someone else, who didnt make it, for not agreeing with you sight unseen.
News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
Iran's Telecommunications Minister Pledges To "Get Rid of" Foreign Social Media Despite Past Failed Attempts

07/23/17

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

President Hassan Rouhani's Telecommunications Minister Mahmoud Vaezi has refuted criticism that he has been unwilling to block online content deemed immoral by state authorities and has pledged to "get rid of" foreign-based social media networks despite previous failed attempts. At the same time, the minister admitted that some of the demands being made of him by state officials outside the Rouhani government are politically motivated.



cover page of Peivast magazine



The minister was responding to criticism by Assistant Prosecutor General Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, who claimed on July 15, 2017 that the ministry had stalled the blocking of "a list of about 8,000 channels on the Telegram network with criminal content against the people's sacred and national values."

The internet and social media apps are heavily restricted and censored in Iran, with hardline state officials viewing any form of internet freedom as a threat to the Islamic Republic.

Khorramabadi, who is also the secretary of Iran's main internet censorship body, the Taskforce to Determine Instances of Criminal Content, accused the ministry of failing to act despite "several judicial orders."

On July 18, the telecommunications minister fought back, stating that many of the demands have nothing to do with criminal content. He also blamed Telegram, a messaging and social media network, for refusing to comply with state requests to ban certain channels and content.

"We are in contact with officials at Telegram, but they refuse to shut down political channels," said Vaezi in a meeting with a group of conservative members of Iran's Parliament.

"For instance we, like you, would like to see Amad News shut down," he added. "They criticize the Telecommunications Ministry the most."

With "Awareness, Struggle, Democracy" as its motto, Amad News is an independent Persian-language news channel on Telegram with more than 460,000 members. The channel often publishes content critical of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"During the [May 2017] elections, they asked us to close down some of the social media channels that supported one [political] faction or another," said Vaezi, without indicating which authority made the demands. "What do they [the channels] have to do with criminal content?"





Telecommunications Minister Mahmoud Vaezi



With some 40 million users in Iran, Telegram serves as a non-state-controlled source of news and analysis operating alongside the country's severely censored official news media.

Centrist President Rouhani and reformist politicians, which are not allotted anywhere near the same amount of airtime on state media as conservatives, have been increasingly using Telegram to reach the electorate.

Recognizing the app's popularity, hardliners have consistently tried to ban or filter Telegram, while also setting up their own channels to reach voters.

The Rouhani government has meanwhile repeatedly called for less state control over the internet.

This has invited the scorn of not only the agencies that police cyberspace, but also hardline politicians seeking to unseat him.

During his meeting with the MPs, the telecommunications minister announced the launch of four domestically produced social media networks-Salam, Soroush, Wispi and BisPhone-as state-endorsed alternatives to foreign-owned networks currently used in Iran.

"We are waiting for our domestic social media operators to give us assurances that they are ready to launch and then we will get rid of foreign social media networks," he said on July 18 to the conservative MPs.

"It belittles the Telecommunications Ministry to see people going on foreign social media networks," he added. "None of my colleagues are happy about it."

According to Vaezi, some of Iran's domestic social media networks already have more than two million members. When their membership surpasses three million, the companies will be allowed to advertise in Iran, and after reaching five million members, they could apply for state funds for further development, he said.

However, previous attempts to replace popular foreign apps have proven unsuccessful.

"In the past four years we have shut down many social media networks, but people quickly migrated to other networks," admitted Vaezi at the meeting. "When we blocked the Chinese network WeChat, 24 hours later 3.5 million people moved over to WhatsApp, which is an American network. In effect, we went from the frying pan into the fire."

Vaezi had stated a month earlier that his ministry had filtered "seven million" websites during Rouhani's first term (2013-17).

"In the past three years, we have blocked seven million [web] addresses reported to us from authoritative agencies and blocked 121,000 important software and filter breakers," he said during an open session of Parliament on June 6, 2017.

Filtering in Iran refers to the selective blocking of content within a website, as opposed to the complete blocking or shutting down of an entire website.

The minister also claimed that websites and online services categorized as problematic by the state were reduced from eight percent to 1.5 percent by automated "smart filtering" methods.

With some 40 million Iranians using Telegram alone, social media networks in Iran have effectively ended state media's monopoly on information.

On April 20, 2017, three days after Telegram's Voice Calls service was deemed a threat to national security and blocked by the conservative judiciary, a senior commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) revealed Rouhani had opposed the ban.

"In a meeting with Rouhani, we emphasized that allowing Telegram to initiate a voice calling service in Iran would prevent us from having any kind of control. But the president replied, 'Why are you opposed to any kind of technology imported from the West? Telegram is a symbol of technology and modernism. We should import it to our country,'" said General Hassan Nejat, the head of the IRGC's Intelligence Organization.

In mid-March 2017, in the run-up to Iran's presidential election on May 19 wherein Rouhani successfully sought re-election, the IRGC arrested six administrators of pro-Rouhani reformist channels on Telegram.

Nima Keshvari, Ali Ahmadnia, Mojtaba Bagheri, Sobhan Jafari-Tash, Javad Jamshidi, and Saeed Naghdi, who have been denied access to legal counsel since their arrest, will be tried on August 13, 14 and 15, 2017 at Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court presided by Judge Abolqasem Salavati for their peaceful online activities.
The Brong Ahafo Regional minister, Mr Kwaku Asoma-Cheremeh, has cautioned the members of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to eschew backbiting and be united to increase the fortunes of the party.



He was speaking at the party's annual Regional Conference in Sunyani on Saturday.



"this is not the time for blame games, this is the time for reconciliation. If we don't unite and show Ghanaians we are a serious party, we will not be able to win the 2020 elections".



He said serving at all levels in the party was the ultimate thing that could move the party forward hence members should not relent in supporting the party in diverse ways.



Appealing to the delegates to have the party at heart and use the appropriate structures to resolve internal party disputes, he noted that those who wanted jobs should exercise restraint since the Akufo-Addo led government's priority was to create jobs for the youth.



He said the leadership of the party had observed that some members of the party who have not gotten jobs had started talking ill of the party.



"I have hundreds of application letters from the youth seeking jobs. Some of them are on my bed, which I go through every day, but because there are no jobs there is little I am able to do to help. It is the NDC that we should blame," the minister stated.



He reiterated government's commitment to revamping the country's economy through job creation and asked all NPP sympathisers in the region to pray for its success.



Earlier on, the Member of parliament for Jaman South, Mr Yaw Mahama Afful bemoaned the lack of unity amongst the party executives.



The Brong Ahafo Regional Caucus chairman said the internal back-stabbing among members of parliament and other party executives was the reason the region did not get it's fair share of government appointments.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Nebraskas only astronaut, who spent a good chunk of his childhood in his backyard aiming a Sears Roebuck telescope into the night sky, is coming home for the first total solar eclipse in nearly 100 years to traverse that same Nebraska sky.

I wouldnt have it any other way, said Clayton Anderson, the Nebraska native who spent 30 years at NASA and logged 167 days in space before retiring in 2013.

Anderson makes Houston his home now  far from the path of totality where the moon will cover the sun  but on the eve of the solar eclipse hell be in Hastings, the town of his college alma mater, speaking at a black-tie gala in honor of the event.

And on Aug. 21  the first time since the 1400s Nebraska has been in an eclipses path of totality  Astro Clay will descend from the skies (if not space) in a helicopter to the ball fields in Hampton.

The village  seven miles east of Aurora in south-central Nebraska that boasts 400-some residents, one restaurant, a beauty salon and hardware store among its main street businesses  expects 2,000 people to watch the eclipse. And Anderson will be the guest of honor.

Karen Rasmussen Bamesberger, who has been coordinating plans for the eclipse for the past year, was looking for someone who could represent the big event for the small town sitting in its path.

I thought, shoot, 'Astro Clay', she said. We wanted to focus on the kids. Our small schools in Nebraska dont always have the same opportunity as the big schools. I was thinking who could we get for the kids, to bring people to our small town.

Hell come in on the helicopter to give the kids  from both the public and parochial schools in Hampton, as well as those from surrounding areas  a visual connection to Andersons space career.

We wanted to give the kids the idea that this is an astronaut, hes been in space, she said.

Because he has  riding the space shuttle Atlantis in 2007 for a five-month tour of duty at the International Space Station and again in 2010 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery for a resupply mission.

His story, now the subject of a book titled The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut, is a testament to his dogged determination to fulfill those dreams.

Anderson applied 15 times to NASAs elite astronaut corps before he was accepted in 1998 as a mission specialist.

His message on Aug. 21 will likely touch on the themes that experience taught him: daring to be extraordinary by dreaming big, persevering against adversity.

There will be other events on the Hampton ballfield: Members of the Omaha Tribe performing eclipse dances and an explanation of what the phenomenon means in the Native culture; a magician from Omaha performing a solar eclipse show, and fireworks lasting the same amount of time the sun will be hidden behind the moon.

We want to reinforce this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, Rasmussen Bamesberger said.

Anderson will help with that.

He sees the eclipse as an opportunity for schools, a chance to see science in real time, maybe be the spark that ignites another young dreamer.

All those kids in small-town schools that dream of doing something bigger, if they go outside and see what nature does, maybe theyll be excited. ... Being a kid is all about curiosity and finding the hot buttons that push them to go on and do great things.

For a 9-year-old Anderson, the hot button was watching Apollo 8 on television in 1968, the first mission to circle the moon.

I think it was the tension when talking to the flight control team, he said in a phone interview. That tension as we waited, as we listened to the static and they came around the other side (of the moon) and I thought Wow, that is so cool, I want to do that.

It drew him outside at night with his telescope to gaze at the vastness above, and dream.

Who knows, he said. Maybe some day Nebraska will have another astronaut.
Victoria Police say that two men have been hospitalised and a further two arrested after a wild brawl broke out last night outside Melbournes Crown Casino.

Per reports in The Age, the incident occurred just before 10pm when two groups clashed on the corner of Whiteman and Queensbridge Streets in Southbank.

A 29-year-old man was hospitalised with stab wounds to his upper body and another man, aged in his 20s, was also taken to hospital with unspecified minor injuries. A third man, aged in his 20s, also suffered minor injuries.

Two men, aged 44 and 46, were taken into custody and charged with intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury, and possessing a controlled weapon. Both have been bailed and will appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court.

Two men have been charged after three people were stabbed, in a wild brawl between two groups outside Crown Casino. @MScanlan7 #7News pic.twitter.com/r2j7z7jj74  7 News Melbourne (@7NewsMelbourne) July 22, 2017

It is unclear whether the two groups have any connection to each-other.

Source: The Age / 7 News.

Photo: Instagram.
Veteran film at TV actor John Heard, best known for playing the role of hapless dad Peter McAllister in Home Alone, passed away in Los Angeles on Friday. He was 72.

The Santa Clara Medical Examiners Office confirmed his death late on Saturday, local time. The actor was found in a Palo Alto hotel room, where he was recovering from back surgery.

Police were called to the hotel, but Heard was reportedly pronounced dead at the scene. No further information has been released about the cause of his death.

Heard began his career as a stage actor in the 1970s, but is arguably best known for his performances in Home Alone and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.





He also made a memorable appearance as a corrupt police detective in The Sopranos, and the performance scored him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor.

Friends and colleagues have paid tribute, including Cutters Way co-star Jeff Bridges, who remembered Heard as a wonderful actor with dedication to his artistry.

John Heard- what a wonderful actor. We were in the movie Cutters Way together & I got to experience his artistry and dedication first hand.  Jeff Bridges (@TheJeffBridges) July 22, 2017

Rest in peace.

Source: Deadline.

Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Was it a tornado?

A resident of South Lebanon Township captured a video of a funnel cloud in her backyard along Route 897 Saturday. ABC 27 viewer Lindsay Wike shot the video and shared it to the television station.

Confirmed funnel cloud in Lebanon County https://t.co/3Bb6GICMkV  abc27 WHTM (@abc27News) July 23, 2017

The National Weather Service at State College has not officially confirmed it, but meteorologist Paul Head they do plan on investigating.

"As far as we know, we've heard of one tree down in Lebanon County," Head said. "The question then, is, 'was the tree down as a result of lightning or as a result of the funnel cloud?' We have to check it out.'"

In the meantime, the Harrisburg area is in for another round of thunderstorms tonight, some of which may be severe.

There may be patches of showers throughout the day, but the big storms are moving in tonight, starting around sunset.

"It's going to be a noisy night," Head said.

This is an unusual situation for Pennsylvania were most severe thunderstorms occur in the afternoon as opposed to the evening and nighttime, as one would find in the Midwest, he said.

Head advises people to be aware of the potential for overnight weather alerts as the severe storms moves in.

Along with the showers and thunderstorms, damaging winds of 60 mph or greater, hail and localized flooding are possible. Those showers should taper off by late Monday morning.

Visit PennLive.com/weather for your latest weather updates.
Pennsylvania's budget debate will likely re-set next week, not terribly far off from the spot it was last week.

The question is, who can take the next step forward toward passing a $2.2 billion revenue plan needed to balance the already-passed $32 billion state general fund budget?

We shall see.

The House Republican caucus came up significantly short Saturday in an effort to muster a GOP-only 102 vote majority for a plan to close the remaining gap largely by borrowing and raiding special funds that go to uses as varied as farmland preservation and buoying horse racing purses.

House Speaker Mike Turzai tried to make that sale in order to get to a budget that would raise no taxes, but by 4 p.m. Saturday House leaders called the effort off and sent their members home for the indefinite future.

"We're not there," a frustrated Turzai, a Republican from Pittsburgh's suburbs, told reporters after finding only lukewarm support for what he termed an effort to find a tax-free "middle ground" with a plan Senate leadership's been negotiating with Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf.

Turzai then said it is now time for Wolf and the state Senate to show what they're for, noting with a hint of exasperation that they'd turned down House-passed gambling expansion and liquor reform packages.

"We think the Senate needs to send over its tax bill, and tell us what it is," Turzai said. "We also would ask the governor to publicly state what he supports in terms of new taxes...

"If he's not willing to do it and he wants to continue to be absent from leading, then he can have Representative Dermody or Senator Costa do it," the Speaker continued, referring to the House and Senate Democratic leaders.

The parties called out by Turzai Saturday actually do have a starting point to work from:

All sides have been working for weeks on a bipartisan plan that envisions a borrowing against future tobacco settlement payments, major expansions of legalized gambling, a yet-to-be-determined tax increase and a smaller amount of fund transfers to bring the budget into balance.

Among taxes getting serious looks, according to sources familiar with the discussions, have been the extension of a gross receipts tax - something like a sales tax for utilities - to natural gas users; or the elimination of the current state sales tax exemption for basic cable services.

It was that plan that was put on ice last week as Turzai, according to multiple sources, sought to rub out any hint of a tax increase.

"This (Saturday's effort) was something the Speaker wanted to run with, and we (Senate Republicans) allowed him to do it" in a show of intra-party cooperation, Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County, said Saturday night.

But with that effort falling short, Corman said, Plan A is back in focus.

"I think we can move back to close to where we were before, pick up the baton and, hopefully, close quickly... We were not that far off (from an agreement) when things sort of redirected last week."

It might take a few more days of negotiations, Corman added, but he said he and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, hope to bring the Senate back into session next week to move forward.

Earlier, Scarnati's Chief of Staff Drew Crompton, expressed a similar desire to get back to five-party negotiations.

"Hopefully, whoever would like to participate with us, they will. We'll keep an open door to the House, to the Senate Democrats, to the governor, in order to work on a package that can be signed by the governor and can end the 17-18 budget."

Wolf and the Democrats, who were effectively put on the budget bench this week, suggested they are ready to get back to the table.

"Governor Wolf is eager to resume bipartisan negotiations to responsibly balance the budget," Press Secretary J.J. Abbott told reporters via email after Saturday's House fizzle.

House Democrats - only 82 strong in the 203-seat House of Representatives - were intentionally shut out of Saturday's drill, as Turzai attempted to reset the negotiations on his own terms.

But in the GOP caucus room, according to several members who spoke about the closed-door discussions, it became clear that the combination of borrowing and transfers wasn't close to the 102 votes needed.

The plan pitched to House members Saturday would:

* Borrow up to $1.5 billion against future payments due the state from the 1998 multi-state settlement with the nation's big tobacco companies.

That is a component that emerged early in the 2017-18 budget talks and all sides have reluctantly agreed to build it into the plan, primarily to cover a 2016-17 deficit driven by under-performing tax collections.

* Redirect of $300 million in tax proceeds now earmarked for special uses like farmland preservation or affordable housing programs back into the general fund.

Specific restricted accounts were not identified in details that had been made public as of Saturday afternoon. Some sources suggested that one plan would simply leave the governor's office with the discretion to pick those cuts.

* Collect another $150 million in one-time transfers from what the caucus has identified as existing surpluses in the same roster of special funds.

* Sweep $200 million from the Pennsylvania Professional Liability Joint Underwriting Association, the entity set up to provide medical malpractice insurance to doctors and health care facilities having trouble finding coverage elsewhere.

There's been a decline in the need for these policies because of other law changes that, over the last 15 years, have eased the medical malpractice insurance crisis in Pennsylvania. That's meant a decline in the amount of claims paid out by the JUA under its policies. Some argue the association is now holding funds - from premiums paid and investment returns - in excess of what it needs.

The last $50 million is attributed to an unspecified liquor reform proposal. The House passed several concepts earlier this year.

Some GOP members balked Saturday at the heavy reliance on one-time fund transfers. Some fiscal conservatives objected to the proposed level of borrowing, and said they resented being given a choice of doing that or raising taxes.

"To pay for what? The governor's suicidal increases in spending? I'm not paying for his spending," said Rep. Rick Saccone, R-Allegheny County and one of the 'no' votes on the original budget bill.

"There are other alternatives," Saccone said, noting Wolf could have simply line-item vetoed parts of the spending plan to bring the budget in balance.

Rep. Mike Tobash, R-Schuylkill County, on the other hand, suggested if more savings could be wrung out of the state's menu of tax credits, or the Legislature freezes some of its own spending, he could support something "very similar to what we talked about today."

Add it all up, members speaking to PennLive said, and the Republicans were pretty evenly split for and against Turzai's plan.

So, back to the drawing board, and the notes that are already on it.

House Democrats contended Saturday they'll supply the lion's share of votes for a still-unfinished revenue package that carries with it a tax increase, if and when it comes together.

But they noted Turzai and other House GOP leaders have to be willing to let that plan come to the floor.

"They need to allow the members who care about running government, who care about making sure we move forward, the ability to vote on a plan that makes sense," said Rep. Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny County.
Winston Blackmore, who is accused of practising polygamy in a fundamentalist religious community, returns to court after a lunch break in Cranbrook, B.C., Tuesday, April 18, 2017. A verdict is expected Monday in a trial of two former leaders of a British Columbia fundamentalist church who are charged with polygamy. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Sheri Ann Donegan has been presiding over the trial of Winston Blackmore and James Oler, who are accused of having multiple wives.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Bargain hunters are seen at the Sears store Friday, July 21, 2017 in St. Eustache, Quebec. Sears Canada is facing a social media campaign calling for a boycott after the company said it planned on paying millions in bonuses to keep executives on board during restructuring, despite not offering severance to laid-off workers. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
Betty Christensen let herself into Newports new community space Wednesday, marveling at the clean kitchen and its stainless appliances, the tiled floor of the meeting room, the tables and chairs that will help her town come together.

And I felt pretty good, she said. I didnt know whether I was going to live to see it.

Betty turned 90 last month. She'd waited years for this day, but she'd been busy during that time, too. She won't take the credit, but it was Betty who decided her small Rock County town needed a new fire hall and gathering place, and it was Betty who rallied others behind her, and it was Betty who kept them there.

Year after year, they raffled rifles and pigs, held bake sales and rummage sales, graciously accepted donations from friends and strangers.

But their town is small, fewer than 70 people, and their $200,000 goal at times seemed so far away.

And at times, she worried her neighbors would grow tired of giving.

But the whole community has really pitched in. Im surprised that after this many years, they still do help so much.

The need was clear. The Newport Rural Fire District covers 350 square miles of Rock County and, until earlier this year, was housed in a hand-me-down Quonset her husband and longtime mayor, Elmer Christensen, helped assemble in the 1950s.

For years, the volunteer firefighters were forced to park their seven trucks like puzzle pieces, and they burned through $5,000 in propane a year trying to keep the narrow building warm enough the trucks would start when they were needed.

And they were needed during the 2012 fires that blackened thousands of acres of the nearby Niobrara River Valley. Betty remembers watching the trucks leave, and then return to their aging home.

I looked at the old fire hall, and they had to shuffle those trucks in there just perfectly. I thought, 'We need to do something here.' Thats what we started out with, but it got to be more than that.

Down the street, Elmer had helped build the old community center and gym, too, adding a kitchen and bathroom to the former granary, framing a place for the town to get together for funeral dinners, family reunions and wedding receptions.

Time had also been hard on this building  it flooded when it rained, and the steep step up to the kitchen was getting to be too much for Betty and other volunteers.

More than two years ago, they broke ground on a donated piece of land across the street from the old gym. But contractors are scarce in rural Rock County, and progress was slow.

Betty and others were frustrated, but they kept raising money. And they continued to be surprised by the response when the Journal Star charted their progress.

I was just amazed by the people from Lincoln who sent money. Not just once, but many times.

Earlier this year, the fire trucks moved into most of the 6,000-square-foot building, with three bay doors, efficient furnaces and enough room between trucks the firefighters didn't have to worry about their mirrors rubbing.

And late last week, the adjoining meeting room, kitchen and bathrooms were finished. The water was turned on, the sewer connected, and the woman who started it all took her private tour.

Its taken so long, she said. But its a nice-looking building.
In this photo made available by Kensington Palace from the personal photo album of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, shows the princess holding Prince William whilst pregnant with Prince Harry, and features in the new ITV documentary 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy.' Prince William and Prince Harry will pay tribute to their mother, Princess Diana, as the 20th anniversary of her death in a car crash approaches in a TV documentary AuDiana, Our Mother: Her Life and LegacyAu which will air Monday July 24, 2017 on British TV. (The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry/Kensington Palace via AP) NO USE ON THE FRONT COVERS OF ANY UK OR INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINES. NO COMMERCIAL USE (including any use in merchandising, advertising or any other non-editorial use including, for example, calendars, books and supplements).
The evacuated downtown of Mariposa, Calif., is viewed Thursday, July 20, 2017, as firefighters battle a large wildfire in the surrounding hills and mountains. Mariposa normally bustles with tourists on their way to Yosemite National Park. The town's center is made up of old brick and wooden buildings in the holding modern clothing and gift shops, restaurants and wine bars. (AP Photo/Scott Smith)
Thank you! You've reported this item as a violation of our terms of use.

This content was contributed by a user of the site. If you believe this content may be in violation of the terms of use, you may report it.




Mohammed bin Salman (L) and Mohammed bin Nayef

...When MbN left the king's quarters, he was surprised to see MbS waiting for him, the adviser said. MbN was embraced and kissed by MbS while television cameras rolled.

Addiction and intrigue: Inside the Saudi palace coup

On Tuesday June 20 Mohammed bin Nayef, a powerful figure in Saudi Arabia's security apparatus for the past two decades and the next in line to the throne, was summoned to meet King Salman bin Abdulaziz on the fourth floor of the royal palace in Mecca.

There, according to a source close to MbN, as he is known, the king ordered him to step aside in favour of the king's favourite son, Mohammed bin Salman. The reason: an addiction to painkilling drugs was clouding MbN's judgment.

"The king came to meet MbN and they were alone in the room. He told him: 'I want you to step down, you didn't listen to the advice to get treatment for your addiction which dangerously affects your decisions'," said the source close to MbN.

The new details about the extraordinary meeting between the king and MbN that touched off the de facto palace coup help to explain the events that are reshaping the leadership of the world's biggest oil exporting nation.

Reuters could not independently confirm MbN's addiction issues.

A senior Saudi official said the account was totally "unfounded and untrue in addition to being nonsense".

"The story depicted here is a complete fantasy worthy of Hollywood," the official said in a statement to Reuters, which did not refer to MbN's alleged use of drugs.

The official said MbN had been removed in the national interest and had not experienced any "pressure or disrespect". Reasons for his dismissal were "confidential".

Sources with knowledge of the situation said however that the king was determined to elevate his son to be heir to the throne and used MbN's drug problem as a pretext to push him aside.

Three royal insiders, four Arab officials with links to the ruling house of Saud, and diplomats in the region, told Reuters that MbN was surprised to be ordered to step aside.

"It was a big shock to MbN," said a Saudi political source close to MbN. "It was a coup. He wasn't prepared."

The sources said MbN did not expect to be usurped by the often impulsive Mohammed bin Salman, who MbN considered to have made a number of policy blunders, such as his handling of the Yemen conflict and cutting financial benefits to civil servants.

The high-stakes power grab has placed sweeping powers in the hands of the 32-year-old Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MbS, and appears designed to speed his accession to the throne.

Should he get the job, the young prince will preside over a kingdom facing tough times from depressed oil prices, the conflict in Yemen, rivalry with an emboldened Iran and a major diplomatic crisis in the Gulf.

The source close to MbN acknowledged that he had health issues, which were aggravated after an al Qaeda attacker tried to blow himself up in front of him in his palace in 2009. The health issues were corroborated by three other sources in Saudi Arabia and Arab official sources with links to the royal family.

An Arab source with close Saudi links also provided a similar account of the meeting at which King Salman asked MbN to step down because of his alleged drug addiction.

These sources said MbN had shrapnel in his body that could not be removed and he depended on drugs such as morphine to alleviate the pain. One source said MbN had been treated in clinics in Switzerland on three occasions in recent years. Reuters was unable to confirm this independently.

A Palace Coup

The King moved ahead of a meeting of the Political and Security Council. The meeting was due to start at 11 pm, but a few hours before that, MbN received what he viewed as a routine phone call from Mohammed bin Salman. According to the source close to MbN, Mohammed bin Salman told MbN that the king wanted to see him.

In the hours that followed the meeting in which MbN was dismissed, the House of Saud's Allegiance Council, comprising the ruling family's senior members, were informed of a letter written in the name of the king.

Drafted by palace advisers to MbS, it said MbN had a medical condition - drug addiction - and "we have been trying for over two years to persuade him to seek treatment but to no avail".

"Because of this dangerous situation we see that he should be relieved of his position and that Mohammed bin Salman be appointed in his place," the Saudi source close to MbN quoted excerpts of the letter as saying.

The letter was read over the phone to members of the Allegiance Council, while MbN was kept isolated in a room all night, his mobile phone removed, and cut off from contact with his aides. His bodyguards from elite paramilitary interior ministry units were also replaced.

Envoys were sent to council members to get their signatures. All but three of 34 signed. The coup had worked.

Calls by council members who backed MbN's removal were recorded and played to him by a palace adviser to demonstrate the strength of the forces against him and to discourage any urge the 57-year-old crown prince might have to resist.

According to two Saudi sources with links to the royal house, only three members of the council opposed his overthrow: Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, a former interior minister, Abdulaziz bin Abdallah, a representative of the family of late king Abdallah, and Prince Mohammad bin Saad, a former deputy governor of Riyadh. The three could not immediately be reached for comment.

At dawn MbN gave up. He told a palace adviser that he was ready to see the king. The meeting was short. MbN agreed to step down and signed a document to that effect.

When MbN left the king's quarters, he was surprised to see MbS waiting for him, the adviser said. MbN was embraced and kissed by MbS while television cameras rolled.

Soon afterward a pre-written statement was released announcing the king's decision to make his son the next crown prince. This was the clip that would play on all Saudi and Gulf media over the coming hours and days.

House Arrest

MbN remains under house arrest to keep him out of circulation following his overthrow, with no visitors allowed except close family members. He is not taking calls, the source close to MbN said. In the past week he was only granted permission to visit his elderly mother with the new guards assigned to him.

The senior Saudi official said, however, that MbN had received guests, including the king and the new crown prince.

The source close to MbN said he would like to take his family to Switzerland or London but the king and MbS had decided that he must stay. "He wasn't given any choice."

The White House and CIA declined to comment. A senior administration official said Washington knew that MbS was the favourite of the king but "beyond that it's very opaque".

The elevation of MbS had been predicted by some Saudi and Western officials, but it came much sooner than expected with a rushed exit for MbN.

Since King Salman's accession, there had been clear indications that MbS was favoured over MbN, setting the stage for the younger prince to eclipse the formal heir to the throne.

MbS was given unprecedented power by his ailing 81-year-old father, which he used to reorder the top jobs in the political, oil, security, security and intelligence sectors, often without the knowledge of MbN, according to diplomats and Saudi political and security sources.

Since Salman took the helm just over two years ago, MbS has placed his men in key positions. MbS has been interfering in MbN's interior ministry, appointing, promoting and firing officers without informing him.

The succession quarrel, the sources said, began in 2015 when MbN's personal court was disbanded and merged with the court of the king, preventing MbN from bestowing independent patronage and cultivating support. This was followed by the sacking of Saad al-Jabri, MbN's security adviser.

When Donald Trump entered the White House, MbS cultivated contacts in Washington to offset the strong support that MbN had in the U.S. security and intelligence establishment because of his successes against al Qaeda.

The source close to MbN told Reuters the putsch went ahead after MbS struck up a strong relationship with Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.

A White House official declined comment when asked about Kushner's relationship with MbS.

The official, referring to MbN's removal as Crown Prince and MbS' ascension to the post, said:

The United States government also sought not to intervene or to be seen as intervening in such a sensitive internal matter. We have great respect for the King, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Prince Mohammed bin Salman and we consistently stressed our desire to maintain cooperation with the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and its leadership. This message was communicated at all levels of government.

With MbS's sudden ascent, there is now speculation among diplomats and Saudi and Arab officials that King Salman is poised to abdicate in favour of his son.

Quoting a witness at the palace, one Saudi source said King Salman this month pre-recorded a statement in which he announces the transfer of the throne to his son. The announcement could be broadcast at any time, perhaps as soon as September.(Reporting by Reuters staff)

Saudi official dismisses palace coup report as Hollywood fantasy

A senior Saudi official on Wednesday denied that there was anything wrong with the way that crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef was removed from his post in favour of the king's favourite son, Mohammed bin Salman.

Reuters reported earlier on Wednesday that the heir to the throne, Mohammed bin Nayef, had been forced to step aside in an effective palace coup by King Salman bin Abdulaziz because the younger man's judgment was clouded by his addiction to painkilling drugs.

The high official source said the account was totally "unfounded and untrue in addition to being nonsense".

"The story depicted here is a complete fantasy worthy of Hollywood," the official said in a statement to Reuters.

The statement did not refer to Mohammed bin Nayef's alleged use of drugs such as morphine, which he took to cope with pain he suffered after an attacker blew himself up in front of him in his palace in 2009.

The Saudi official said Mohammed bin Nayef had been removed from his post in the national interest and had not experienced any "pressure or disrespect".

The official added that the reasons for Mohammed bin Nayef's removal were "confidential".

Sources with knowledge of the situation reported that Mohammed bin Nayef was under house arrest following his removal from office, but the Saudi official said Mohammed bin Nayef had received guests, including the king and the new crown prince.

Despite suggestions by sources that King Salman might step down in favour of Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi official said the king was "in excellent health". (Reporting by Reuters staff)



Reporting by Reuters / June 19 , 2017
The first time Charles S. Katz Jr. heard of the Mariner East 2 project was in 2015, when a representative of Sunoco Pipeline LP arrived at his house in Glen Mills and said the company was going to bury a pipeline across his backyard, whether he liked it or not.

"I never received any information about this until a representative of Sunoco walked on my property and said, `Here, sign this easement,' " said Katz, 72. He and his wife, Karen, were told Sunoco could take the easement using eminent domain, the right of government or its agent to expropriate private property for public use.

Katz, a lawyer who practices workers' compensation law, sued to block Sunoco's authority, which had been granted by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission in 2014. "I would have liked to have had an opportunity to question the status of Sunoco as a public utility, and I would have liked to have had a chance to challenge the siting of the pipeline," he said.

The Delaware County couple lost in lower court, and on July 3, Commonwealth Court rejected their appeal, the latest of six Mariner East cases in which the court has affirmed Sunoco's eminent-domain authority.

The Katzes are the latest casualties of decisions made by the PUC in 2014 affirming Sunoco Pipeline and its Mariner East project as a public utility. The commission determined that the project, which carries gas liquids such as propane from the Marcellus Shale region to a Sunoco terminal in Marcus Hook, provides "significant public benefits."

The PUC ruling was not uncontested. The commission rejected a recommendation by two hearing examiners that Sunoco is not a public utility because its pipeline service is private, available to only a select few shippers. Three Commonwealth Court judges, in various dissenting opinions, also have questioned whether Sunoco has the legal authority to condemn private property for its project.

But Sunoco has prevailed. With construction of the $2.5 billion project already underway, the chances of blocking it now seem increasingly remote.

The most serious remaining legal challenge is being heard in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, where the Clean Air Council is suing Sunoco on the grounds that Mariner East violates the federal and state constitutions, including Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights Amendment. Judge Linda Carpenter said the constitutional claims before her have not yet been addressed in other litigation.

The case is expected to go to trial at the end of the year, when Sunoco hopes the Mariner East 2 pipeline will be completed. Alex Bomstein, a Clean Air Council attorney, said the courts could order Sunoco to abandon its project.

"We're not seeking damages, but if there's a declaration that Sunoco doesn't have the right to take land, there's a question retroactively about the validity of the takings that have happened," Bomstein said.

Sunoco's opponents say that the propane, ethane, and butane carried in the pipeline are primarily used as raw materials in the commercial production of plastic, and that most of the gas liquids are under contract to be shipped to petrochemical plants in Scotland and Norway. They question the pipeline's public benefit.

The disputed purpose of the Sunoco project has been much litigated since the company announced plans in 2010 to reverse the flow of the 80-year-old pipeline that carried refined products such as gasoline from Philadelphia refineries to Western Pennsylvania. The new plan involved allowing shale producers to send liquids from west to east, where the materials would be shipped out by sea. Hence the name: Mariner.

As Sunoco's plans evolved, it made a pivotal strategic change in 2014 that has proved to be decisive as it navigated a regulatory netherworld between federal and state jurisdictions.

That year, Sunoco was acquiring easements to accommodate an expansion of the project by constructing two additional pipelines, largely tracing the route of the original Mariner East 1 pipeline. The company argued that the project had inherited the public-utility status under which its east-to-west pipeline operated for decades, and that it had the authority to take the easements.

But environmental groups and some landowners argued that Mariner East, unlike its predecessor, was an interstate pipeline that fell strictly under federal jurisdiction  the pipe crosses the state line at its terminus in Claymont, Del. They argued that Sunoco needed certification not from the PUC but from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, without which it would be unable to exercise eminent domain to assemble the necessary easements.

Facing mounting legal challenges, Sunoco made a crucial move in 2014: It announced plans to build "off-ramps" in Pennsylvania to allow propane distributors to withdraw fuel for local sale. Now, it argued, Mariner was both a multistate pipeline and an intrastate project, and qualified as a state public utility to transport "petroleum products," a category that includes gas liquids.

"This sudden change in tactics is a transparent attempt to avoid the fact that the proposed Mariner East project simply is not the type of project for which public utility status should or was meant to apply," the Clean Air Council said in objections filed in 2014 with the PUC.

The commission sided with Sunoco, saying the proposed service would ensure "that Pennsylvania's citizens enjoy access to propane heating fuel." Sunoco has declined to disclose how much propane it has distributed to local markets since Mariner East 1 went into service more than two years ago.

In a separate 2014 proceeding dismissing legal challenges of Sunoco's plans to build pump and valve stations on the pipeline route, the PUC also addressed what it called "serious misconceptions" about Sunoco's public-utility status. It affirmed Sunoco as a public utility, and emphasized that a "public utility" is not required to have a retail component to its business.

Sunoco has cited the PUC's decisions in fending off legal challenges from property owners about its eminent-domain authority. In a precedent-setting 5-2 decision last year, Commonwealth Court upheld Sunoco's power to seize property.

Judge Patricia A. McCullough, one of the dissenters, was troubled by Sunoco's "dizzying array of procedural moves and reversal of course as to its business plans." She maintained that the company should get a certification specifically for the Mariner East 2 project, rather than relying upon authorizations cobbled together from the pipeline's previous lives.

McCullough was also on the three-judge panel that heard the appeal this year of Sunoco's plan to put the pipe across the back of the Katz property on Heather Hills Lane in Glen Mills, Edgmont Township. (The existing Mariner East 1 easement is across a neighbor's yard, so Mariner East 2 would be the first time the project directly touched the Katzes' property.)

The judge said she concurred in the ruling against the Katzes only because she was bound by the court's previous Mariner decision. But she adhered to her objections. "It is my renewed belief that Sunoco continues to take private property without lawful authority," McCullough wrote in the July 3 decision.

Katz said he will appeal the Commonwealth Court decision to the state Supreme Court, but it's a long shot. The state's highest court has tersely declined to hear all other appeals from aggrieved Mariner landowners.
San Antonio police officers investigate the scene Sunday, July 23, 2017, where eight people were found dead in a tractor-trailer loaded with at least 30 others outside a Walmart store in stifling summer heat in what police are calling a horrific human trafficking case, in San Antonio. Read more

Eight people were found dead in the container of a tractor-trailer parked at a Walmart in San Antonio, Tx. on Sunday, and another died while being treated at the hospital, according to police.

"They discovered an alien smuggling venture gone horribly wrong," U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin said in a statement. "All were victims of ruthless human smugglers indifferent to the well-being of their fragile cargo."

A total of 39 people were inside the tractor-trailer, including two school-age children. 20 people were sent to seven different area hospitals, with 17 in critical condition. Thomas Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told the Associated Press that there could have been over 100 people jammed into the truck at one point.

"We got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot here," San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said at a press conference. "He was approached by someone from that truck, who was asking for water. Came back with a water, called the police and we arrived on scene and found eight people dead in the back of that trailer."

A hearse pulled into the parking lot later that morning, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

The driver of the truck was identified as James M. Bradley Jr., a 60-year-old man from Florida. Bradley was arrested and is expected to be charged Monday morning, according to the U.S. attorney's office for the Western District of Texas.

"We're looking at human trafficking crime here this evening," McManus said, noting that the Department of Homeland Security is also investigating the incident.
Led by Steve Ciprani, center left, and Pavithra Nagarajan, right, hundreds of activists march toward the Education Department building in Washington on Saturday. Read more

Steve Ciprani felt inspired after attending the Women's March in Washington in January, and soon wondered if similar energy could be mustered in support of public schools.

The result, on Saturday, was another march, cochaired by the Latin and social studies teacher at West Chester's Henderson High School.

The March for Public Education was far smaller than the women's event, on a steamy day when Ciprani's students were probably more occupied with summer jobs and swimming pools. But the participants nevertheless were fervent, rallying against the Trump administration's support for vouchers and its proposed cuts in federal funding for public schools, among other issues.

"It was hot, but we were pretty fired up anyway," Ciprani said.

Ciprani estimated that as many as 1,500 people joined him in a one-mile walk from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Department of Education headquarters. Satellite marches took place in more than a dozen other cities, including Miami and Detroit.

The effort began when Ciprani and Henderson High colleague Wiaan De Beer, a film teacher, started a Facebook group that garnered 5,000 members within a week. It now has more than 10,000 members.

In addition to opposing proposed cuts to the U.S. Department of Education budget, the group takes a strong stance against vouchers  the idea of allowing parents to use public funds toward tuition for private schools  which it argues will weaken public education.

In testimony on Capitol Hill in May, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos defended the concept.

"We believe parents are the best equipped to make choices for their children's schooling and education decisions, and too many children are trapped in schools that don't work for them," she said.

Though many participants in Saturday's march had Trump and DeVos on their minds, Ciprani stressed that public education is a universal issue, and said the group would work with politicians of all stripes in the future. He said a big focus in the coming year will be on excessive testing.

"We feel kids are being burned out by weeks and weeks of tests," he said.

Along with Ciprani, the group is cochaired by Pavithra Nagarajan, a Ph.D. candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University.
I traveled with my family in Australia for three weeks as a guest of the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, invited to explain what's happening in President Trump's America.

As if there were an explanation.

Of more interest was what I learned from the Australians. To visit this stalwart ally and talk with its people was to see how the United States, in the space of just a few months, has utterly lost its moral authority.

You see it at the street level: Off Sydney's Circular Quay, where, just down the street from the felicitously (if coincidentally) named Trumps Alto Ego salon, Trump lookalikes wearing orange wigs and too-long red ties amuse passersby with boorish antics; on Melbourne's Hosier Lane, a street-art haven now featuring a mural of children throwing rocks at a tank emblazoned with Trump's scowling face; and even in little Port Douglas in the tropics, where anti-Trump graffiti is spray-painted on the trash bin in the marina.

You see it, too, in only slightly more diplomatic terms, at the highest levels:

Paul Keating, the former Labor prime minister, declared in response to Trump's election that Australia should "cut the tag" with the United States.

Penny Wong, shadow foreign minister for Labor, which is favored to win the next election, wrote that Trump's views are "counter to what are core values for most Australians" and suggested Australia orient itself more to the Asia-Pacific region.

Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister, asserted last month that the "U.S.-anchored rules-based order" can no longer be "taken for granted." Turnbull said foreign policy should be determined by Australia's interests "alone."

It isn't just rhetoric. In late June, Australia, one of the coalition partners in Syria, suspended air operations over that country after the U.S. military downed a Syrian jet.

Simon Jackman, chief executive of the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, sees a dramatic rethinking in the country about the United States. Australians, he says, are asking: "So why are we so close to this country again?"

There were already differences on gun laws (Australia's are strict) and inequality (Australia is more egalitarian). But Trump has pushed forward on a new set of issues that offend or frighten Australians: building a border wall, abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the Paris climate-change accord, trying to take away health insurance from millions of Americans (Australia has universal coverage) and making noises about war with North Korea.

"The changing U.S. domestic policy leads people to believe our military policy ought not to be so closely entwined with America's," Jackman said.

Polling by the U.S. Studies Centre finds that in the past two years, the number of Australians who say the United States has the most influence in Asia has dropped by half. More Australians see the United States as a force for harm in the region and in Australia than they did two years ago.

Trump is the reason. When a half-sample of poll respondents were asked the U.S.-influence question with the phrase "now that Donald Trump is president" inserted, negative responses jumped 20 percentage points. Similar results were found in Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.

This is consistent with the Pew Research Center poll of 37 countries released while I was down under. A median 22 percent of those surveyed have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in international affairs, down from 64 percent who had confidence in Barack Obama. The percentage abroad with a favorable view of the United States has fallen by 15 points.

Some of the sharpest drops were among allies. This will have consequences.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland says that America's questioning of "the very worth of its mantle of global leadership puts in sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course." And Germany's Angela Merkel memorably said in reaction to Trump that Europe must "take our fate into our own hands."

This became only more clear after the recent Group of 20 meeting, where Trump was the sole dissenter on the Paris accord and his protectionist talk set off fears that a trade war was forming.

Allies' alienation from the United States will increase, I suspect, when they come to realize what they've seen over the past six months is unlikely to change soon. At almost every stop in Australia, I detected an innocent optimism that the Trump effect would be short-lived: How long until he's impeached? Can't he be removed on grounds of insanity? Surely his fellow Republicans won't tolerate this for long?

I wish I could have reassured them.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) explained why Trump is freaking over the special counsel looking at his finances. The entire Trump Organization, meaning the Trump family could have been laundering money for Russia.

Video:

Rep. Schiff said, First the President is clearly worried that Bob Mueller will be looking into allegations, for example, that the Russians may have laundered money through the Trump Organization. That is really something, in my opinion, he needs to look at because what concerns me the most, is anything that can be held over the Presidents head that could influence U.S. policy, that would be among most powerful form of kompromat. I think its something plainly the President is very concerned about but clearly within the scope of Muellers investigation.

The reason why Trump gets jittery anytime someone goes near his finances is that there are some dark and potential criminal secrets there. The kind of criminal secrets that wouldnt just take down Donald Trump, but also his sons Don Jr., and Eric, his daughter Ivanka, and his son in law Jared Kushner. If Trumps secrets are ever exposed, there is a possibility that it will destroy his business and wreck his wealth.

If the family has been laundering money for the Russians, the officials of the Trump Organization could face criminal charges. Those officials are Trump and his kids. As investigators are following the money, they are finding more trails and threads, which is why the investigation is taking so long, but also why there is a good chance that it will expose this president and his familys financial dealings with Russia.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

In a move that is certain to make the scared president even jumpier, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is demanding that Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort be required to testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Video:

https://youtu.be/mzOxcy3K5tk

Transcript via CNNs State Of The Union:

TAPPER: Nothing to hide. Youre willing to testify under oath, all of that. Except were being told now that theyre going to testify behind closed doors and not under oath.

Is that good enough?

FRANKEN: No. Thats not good enough. They should be under oath.

And I did not know it would be not under oath. It should be under oath. Ill be talking to 

TAPPER: Thats our  thats our understanding.

FRANKEN: OK. Well, thats the first Ive heard of that. You may be right. I dont know.

TAPPER: Are you disappointed  is it  are you disappointed that its  the very least we know that its going to be behind closed doors. Are you very  are you disappointed that Grassley cut that deal?

FRANKEN: If its not under oath I am.

Yes. I think that they need to be under oath. And they need to release all the documents. I mean he didnt say he would testify publicly so  but under oath he said. So he should  he should definitely do that. And I have a lot of questions for him.

TAPPER: Should the transcripts be released? Should the transcripts be released?

FRANKEN: I think they should be.

If Donald Trump wasnt worried before, which he is, he is definitely worried now. The fact that Franken doesnt know if the witnesses will be under oath highlights how shady the motives are of the Republicans on Chuck Grassleys Senate Judiciary Committee. The fact that Grassley cut a deal with Manafort and Trump Jr., but subpoenaed witnesses so that he could question them about conservative Russia conspiracy theories raises many red flags.

Sen. Franken isnt going to let this matter drop, and if the Trump campaign witnesses arent under oath, it will add fuel to the need for an independent investigation, as Republicans will be engaging in a cover-up to protect Trump.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

The following post, written by The Rev. Robert A. Franek, is a part of Politicus Policy Discussion, in which writers draw connections between real lives and public policy.

By now most Senate Republicans along with the general public have lost track of how many versions of the Better Care Reconciliation Act have been discussed since it was first made public after being drafted by thirteen men behind closed doors. The only differences seem to be in how stunningly reprehensible the bill is. Some moderate senators are saying the cuts to Medicaid are too steep while conservatives on the far-right say it does not repeal enough of Obamacare to fulfill their promise.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a vote this week on the health care bill, but has not yet indicated which version of this bill would be put forward or it if it would be straight repeal or some new compromise of repeal-and-replace.

Senator McConnell must also contend with the parliamentary requirement of 60 votes to repeal major provisions of Obamacare including the defunding of Planned Parenthood, abortion restrictions, and the elimination of essential health benefits. Many Republicans in Congress campaigned on these issues, so a bill that does not include these is likely going to be a nonstarter.

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said last Thursday, I dont even know what were proceeding to next week. Senator Collins, a moderate, has been outspoken in recent weeks about her opposition to the Senate version of the health care bill not only because of its callous treatment of the vulnerable but because of the entire process.

To do that without holding a single hearing on what the implications would be for some of our most vulnerable citizens, for our rural hospitals, for our nursing homes is not an approach I can support, Collins said speaking of any version of the bill that includes huge cuts to Medicaid.

Repealing and replacing Obamacare has been a Republican goal since the bill passed in March of 2010. It has been a feature in every election cycle since. Republicans in Congress took dozens of show votes for repealing President Barack Obamas signature piece of legislation, but knew they would never actually have to have a plan. For seven years they trolled the president and the country with lies and disingenuous promises.

Nevertheless, since the repeal efforts began in earnest in early January with votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act through the reconciliation process, the resistance has been strong. Over the past seven months it has gained momentum at town halls and marches across the country. Senators offices have been flooded with concerned citizens showing up and calling in. And as the healthcare bill hangs in the balance, tipping towards defeat, Invisible groups in 40 states erupted in protests last Friday telling their Senators to Kill the Bill.

It is critical to keep the pressure on Senators to defeat whatever repeal-and-replace measure is put before them even as it looks like this reprehensible bill is already in a death spiral. Nothing is final until the votes are cast. Tens of millions of peoples lives are on the line and one-sixth of the countrys economy is at stake. This is only the beginning of the devastation for this health care legislation will eventually affect every person through at minimum higher costs for less care.

Every major piece of legislation is fundamentally more than a collection of policy provisions, it is a reflection of the deepest moral values of our country. Every version of the healthcare bill put forward in the House and the Senate this year is morally bankrupt and thus deserves nothing but defeat.

However, even with the defeat of Trumpcare, the health care discussion is not over. Bipartisan work must be done to address problems in the Affordable Care Act to make it better. And the number of people without health insurance is still staggering and unacceptable 28 million. So rather than counting how many millions will lose their health insurance, we need to be counting how many million more will have it until we join the ranks of every other industrialized country and assure it as a fundamental right to every person.

The resistance must also remain strong in its fight for the care and protection of the all vulnerable ones for the legislative attacks on the poor and marginalized will not end with the defeat of Trumpcare, but will continue in budget plans and tax reform discussions.

People of faith and all committed to the common good united by our deepest shared moral values in the fight to protect our democracy and care for our neighbor and planet be encouraged by these words from the Apostle Paul to the church in Galatia: Let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

A bad Sunday for Trump got worse when his own lawyer Jay Sekulow was asked about the President pardoning himself, and instead of denying that Trump committed any crimes, he said that the Supreme Court would have to decide if Trump can pardon himself.

Video:

.@JaySekulow: Whether president can pardon himself "is a question that would ultimatelyhave to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court." pic.twitter.com/DX1DFakx9e  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 23, 2017

Transcript:

JAY SEKULOW, MEMBER, TRUMP LEGAL TEAM: Well, the president, in that Tweet, stated something thats rather unremarkable, and that is that under The Constitution, under Article Two, Section Two, the president has the authority to pardon.

But I want to be clear on this, George. We have not  and that  and continue to not have conversations with the president of the United States regarding pardons. Pardons have not been discussed and pardons are not on the table.

With regard to the issue of a president pardoning himself, theres a big academic discussion going on right now, an academic debate. Youve got Professor Tribe arguing one point, youve got Professor Turley arguing another point.

And it  while it makes for interesting academic decisions, let me tell you what the legal team is not doing. Were not researching the issue because the issue of pardons is not on the table, theres nothing to pardon from.

Earlier in the same interview, Sekulow said that pardons arent being researched because there is nothing to be pardoned from, which isnt the same as saying Trump didnt commit a crime. Sekulows statement means that they arent researching pardons because Trump hasnt been charged with any crimes yet.

The answer that Sekulow could have given if Trump is innocent is that the President did nothing wrong, so there is no need for a pardon. Jay Sekulow avoided directly proclaiming Trump innocence and instead gave an answer that was more based on process.

Even Trumps own lawyer wont go out on a limb to proclaim his clients innocence. Jay Sekulows answers were interesting because what they didnt say suggested the likely presence of criminal skeletons in Donald Trumps closet.
Our body is designed for a relationship between our brain and the sun. The internal clock is ideally synced for alignment with a sunrise, a sunset and a 24-hour day. Our watches, bedside clocks and smartphones often determine when we wake up, get to work or go to sleep. Has your body adequately adjusted to last weeks time change? Read morePeper column: The sands of time
This letter is in response to Angie Heckmans letter to the editor ("Medicaid woes worry families," July 18) about the delivery of services to children and persons with disabilities through Nebraskas Medicaid program.

DHHS is committed to ensuring access to critical services for Medicaid members. The action we took regarding the states budget preserves continuity of care and avoided across-the-board provider rate reductions.

Additionally, Nebraskas three Heritage Health plans must meet rigorous contractual requirements relating to access to care, including having extensive provider networks, so our states Medicaid members have access to services no matter where in the state they live.

The plans are also required to process 90 percent of claims that are complete and without error when submitted within 15 days of receipt. UnitedHealthcare Community Plan, WellCare and Nebraska Total Care paid more than 97 percent of these clean claims within 15 days in May and June. These payment requirements ensure that providers will remain serving our Medicaid members.

I will also share that each of the Heritage Health plans have care managers that work with high needs Medicaid members, including persons with disabilities, to coordinate care and services. For example, these care managers work with Medicaid members to help them access and develop relationships with primary care providers to prevent unnecessary emergency room visits.

While we continue to monitor the federal health care landscape, we are committed to delivering a high level of service to our states most vulnerable residents.

Thomas "Rocky" Thompson, Lincoln

Interim Director, Medicaid and Long-Term Care for Nebraska DHHS
In Georgetown County's closest race, the board of elections and voter registration certified Scott DuBose's election to the county school board with a margin of victory of just three votes out of 4,343 cast. Read moreGeorgetown Co. elections: DuBose's election to District 2 school board seat certified
Angie Jackson covers crime and breaking news for The Post and Courier. She previously covered the same beat for the Grand Rapids Press and MLive.com in Michigan. When shes not reporting, Angie enjoys teaching yoga and exploring the outdoors.
Im not sure what I was expecting when my colleagues and I kept urging the Legislature to let the state inspector general take a look under the hoods of South Carolina's school districts, but it wasnt what we got from the first such investigation. Read moreScoppe: Inspector general puts SC school districts on notice of new scrutiny to come
When three Somali Minnesotans went to trial in Minneapolis last year on terrorism charges, the New York Times skipped the proceedings. Times reporter Jack Healy arrived in town just in time for the verdicts. Healys article reporting the verdicts, written with freelancer Matt Furber, turned for comment to Burhan Mohumed, a community organizer and friend of the defendants who condemned the verdicts as purely political.

Judge Michael Davis presided at trial. Judge Davis had banned Mohumed from the courthouse for repeated violation of his protocols, yet Healy considered him a go-to guy on the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdicts. I left a little hope that they wouldnt be convicted on a conspiracy to murder charge, Mohumed said. I didnt think they had enough evidence to convict them on that. I think that was an overreach.

Healy and Furber quoted Mohumed again in their follow-up article on community reactionSomali community reaction, that isto the verdict. For some reason, Healy and Furber didnt think to ask any of us who have welcomed and supported the Somali community in the Twin Cities over the past 25 years for our take.

The Times returned to town last week to cover the shooting death of the unarmed and pajama clad spiritual healer Justine Damond by Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor. Concerned about a possible sexual assault occurring near the back of her house, Ms. Damond called 911 for assistance late in the evening a week ago this past Saturday. Driving the squad car, Officer Matthew Harrity responded to the call with Noor. As Ms. Damond approached the drivers side of the car in the alley behind her house, Noor shot her in the abdomen through the open drivers side window. Ms. Damond died at the scene.

Officer Noor has refused to be interviewed either by the department internal affairs or by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is conducting an independent investigation of the shooting. He is resting on his right to remain silent.

Minneapolis police chief Janee Harteau was on vacation at the time of the shooting and several days afterward. Upon her return to town, Harteau decried Noors silence and declared that Ms. Damond didnt need to die.

Idiot Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges is running for reelection. On Friday Hodges fired Harteau. A left-wing cadre turned up at Hodgess press conference to demand her resignation. In Minneapolis the lunatic left is on parade and marching the city ever further to the left.

The Times is an unlikely organ to understand or explain what is happening here. Last week the Times explored the all-important Somali community reaction to Ms. Damonds shooting by Noor in Somalis in Minneapolis shocked and saddened by police shooting. The Times turned to 63-year-old Mahamud Yusuf and one other local for comments. Why? Burhan Mohumed must have been unavailable for comment.

I followed one thread in the terrorism case in the Power Line post A tale of five Muhammads. Perhaps I can draw on Mohamud Yusuf for something similar in this case.

The Times recalls its blinkered coverage of the terrorism case with this look back: [S]ome Somalis here have criticized the tactics used in federal prosecutions of young men accused of trying to join overseas terrorist organizations. Law enforcement tactics in the terrorism case, however, were lawful and appropriate. Somali criticism of them represents a serious problem within the Somali community.

The Times, incidentally, uses the common estimate that some 30,000 Somali refugees reside in Minnesota. The official estimate by the state demographer is 40,000. The unofficial estimate used by the United States Attorney for Minnesota in an agreement reached with Somali community representatives is 100,000. Whatever the number, many must be residing here illegally. Thus the Minneapolis police video linked by the Times (English version below).

Today the Times reconstructs Ms. Damonds shooting in In Minneapolis, Unusual Police Killing Raises an Old Outcry: Why? The Times credits ten reporters on the story. The story mentions Noors possibly problematic record. Despite its length and the resources devoted to it, the story sheds almost no light on an incredibly troubling case.
Since the inauguration of President Trump we have been inundated by leaks of classified information attributed to current and former government officials. These current and former government officials have leaked classified information to their friends at the New York Times, the Washington Post and other mainstream media organs. The leaks have become a flood of crisis proportions.

Two months ago, for example, New York Times reporters Matthew Rosenberg and Adam Goldman relied on their friends among current and former intelligence officials to perform a profoundly malicious act. In their June 2 story Rosenberg and Goldman exposed the identity of Michael DAndrea as the CIA officer newly appointed to run the agencys Iran operations. They explained:

The C.I.A. declined to comment on Mr. DAndreas role, saying it does not discuss the identities or work of clandestine officials. The [current and former intelligence] officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because Mr. DAndrea remains undercover, as do many senior officials based at the agencys headquarters in Langley, Va.The New York Times is naming Mr. DAndrea because his identity was previously published in news reports, and he is leading an important new administration initiative against Iran.

A footnote about those previously published news reports. In the version of the story posted online, Rosenberg and Goldman linked to the Timess own 2015 story by Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo as I have above.

The Times and its gaggle of current and former officials are guilty of mind-boggling irresponsibility. They put a target on DAndreas back. They omitted only DAndreas home address.

They also damaged the national security of the United States to no public purpose. Their action was nasty, gratuitous and, given the Timess role in hyping the alleged outing of Valerie Plame into a crisis of the first order, unbelievably hypocritical. Yet so far as I am aware Marc Thiessen stands alone among mainstream media columnists in calling out the Times for what it did.

Last week at the Aspen National Security Forum New York Times columnist Bret Stephens interviewed CIA Director Mike Pompeo. The interview reflected Stephens knowledge of foreign affairs. It is worth listening to in its entirety (video below). Stephens nevertheless had absolutely no idea what Pompeo was referring to when he alluded to the Timess June 2 story.

At about 27:00 of the video, Stephens asked Pompeo about the use of Wikileaks material by the media or by politicians. After some throat clearing about the First Amendment Pompeo responded:

Ill tell you what your question brings to mind for me. We have an awful lot of folks who have decided that their constitutional duty includes releasing information that they promised they wouldnt put anyplace else.I hope others will figure out what their responsibility to America is. I hope they get it right.

Then Pompeo addressed the Timess June 2 story:

We had a publication  you work for it, Bret  that published the name of an undercover officer at the Central Intelligence Agency. I find that unconscionable.

Pompeo looked Stephens in the eye. Stephens shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Youre talking about Phil Agee, Stephens inquired.

Pompeo wasnt talking about Agee; Agee is ancient history. Agee was of course the rogue CIA agent who outed CIA officers en masse in the 1970s. A traitor and Communist collaborator, he died in Havana. Pompeo was addressing a slightly more pressing matter, a matter closer to home.

Fair enough on the unconscionable score, Stephens conceded, and then returned to the subject of Wikileaks (i.e., President Trumps expressed enthusiasm for Wikileaks during the campaign). Stephens dropped Pompeos challenge to the Times like a hot potato.

Circling around the subject of intelligence leaks, Stephens asked: Should we be enforcing the Espionage Act much more?

Yes, Pompeo responded.

Should we be prosecuting journalists who use this information? Stephens asked.

Pompeo responded: No. Theres an old aphorism that says the law is entitled to every mans evidence. And Ill leave it at that.

I believe that is a newsworthy response. I take it as a preview of coming attractions and I hope Im right about that.
RACINE  An apartment fire Saturday afternoon in a four-unit building caused an estimated $15,000 in damage but caused no injuries, the Racine Fire Department reported.

A caller at 2:14 p.m. reported seeing flames and smoke coming from the rear window of an apartment at 519 Greenfield Road. Firefighters quickly attacked the fire and were able to contain it to just the one apartment.

The four adults and three children who occupied the apartment will work with the Red Cross for temporary housing, the fire department reported. The building was left in the care of the property owner at the scene.

The cause of the fire was under investigation as of Saturday evening.
The debate over climate change and its impact on the planet has become a politically divisive topic in the United States, rankling U.S. allies and stalling legislative agendas.

But for people living on the coast, there is no debate. Climate change is real, and it is going to affect everyone living in the area  specifically on the barrier islands.

While some federal politicians continue to posture, local officials are preparing best practices and procedures to deal with stronger storms and rising sea levels.

The trick is grappling with projections and planning for the future, while not burdening the local tourism economy with damaging regulations and policies.

Some people believe that we should take all development off the barrier beach islands, said John Peterson, director of regional planning and development in Atlantic County. Its a couple hundred years too late. Its a great idea, but its too late.

According to a 2016 report by Rutgers University and the New Jersey Climate Adaptation Alliance, New Jersey coastal areas will experience sea-level rise between 1 foot and 1.8 feet by 2050, even if greenhouse gas emissions are cut back. Sea-level rise after 2050 depends on the amount of emissions.

If nothing is done to slow emissions, its likely the sea will rise between 2.4 and 4.5 feet by 2100, according to the report. A worst-case scenario is sea-level rise of 10 feet in New Jersey, but the chance of that happening by 2100 is less than 1 percent, even if no action is taken on emissions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 with support from the United Nations, projects the frequency of hurricanes hitting New Jersey will not increase. However, maximum wind speeds and precipitation amounts are expected to go up.

There is pretty much a consensus around the globe that this is an important thing, said Marjorie Kaplan, associate director of the Rutgers Climate Institute and one of the authors of the report. In New Jersey ... theres not a consistent approach to dealing with it (across municipalities), and theres no mandate that they do.

Partly that is because officials in New Jersey have only a wide range of projections off which to base decisions.

Peterson said while they know the sea level is rising, there has yet to be a concrete observation of what that rate is and how quickly it will rise in the future.

In the past 20 years, the sea level has risen two-tenths of an inch per year. At that rate, the high tide will be 2 inches higher in 10 years than it is now, he said.

Theres an assumption that its going to accelerate with the global changes, but we really dont know, Peterson said. Were trying to diversify our economy and bring people back to (Atlantic County) ... We dont need people saying the county is going to be underwater in 20 years, when its not.

Still, officials up and down New Jerseys coast have been preparing for rising seas and stronger storms by building stronger infrastructure. Many of these projects started as a result of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

A statewide dune project on New Jerseys beaches has made its way to South Jersey. Work is underway on Absecon Island. The dunes, along with new bulkheads, are to protect the islands cities from flooding during major storms.

Building the dunes is totally funded by the federal government.

Atlantic City Electric has taken steps to increase resiliency by installing new, metal telephone poles to replace aging wooden poles. The company also has been involved in installing microgrids, small electrical grids with their own backup power sources.

Earlier this month, the state Board of Public Utilities awarded $2 million to 13 local entities to conduct studies on how a microgrid could help them during a storm. Among them were Atlantic City, the Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority and Galloway Township, which each received $175,000 for this study.

There are 50 microgrids in New Jersey, including the thermal-energy district in Atlantic City that provides heat, cooling and emergency power to casinos and other facilities.

A lot of the emphasis coming from the state is for infrastructure like hospitals, police stations and utilities, Atlantic County Engineer Mark Shourds said. Were creating a resiliency template for municipal master plans and incorporating resiliency standards in there.

In Atlantic City, the Baltic Avenue Canal is being repaired decades after it first started malfunctioning. When completed, the canal will mitigate city flooding by 75 to 80 percent.

From the federal government, U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo has secured millions in federal grants for communities with flooding issues, including North Wildwood and Wildwood for flooding on Pacific Avenue.

LoBiondo, R-2nd, has consistently broken party lines when it comes to acknowledging climate change. In March, he introduced a resolution that called on lawmakers to accept that climate change is real and poses a serious threat to the country.

The resolution was never posted for a vote.

Back in Atlantic County, Peterson said the rate of sea-level rise is the key for future planning.

From what we see now, we can do things to increase resiliency, Peterson said. We can raise facilities up, we can raise houses higher ... and youre seeing that now. I expect that to continue in the future.
OCEAN CITY  An autopsy revealed an Ocean City woman was strangled Saturday and an arrest has been made, police said.

Denise Webber, 54, was strangled and died Saturday before Ocean City police found her body in her apartment at the Wesley Inn, according to Cape May County Prosecutor Robert L. Taylor and Ocean City police Chief Chad Callahan.

Police arrested Paul Kline, 49, on a murder charge. He is being held at the Cape May County jail and is scheduled for his first court appearance Monday.

The prosecutor said an investigation revealed Kline and Webber were dating and living together at the Wesley Inn in Ocean City.

Ocean City Police responded to Webbers apartment at the building on Wesley Avenue around 8:40 a.m. Saturday and found her body. Officials determined Kline killed her, authorities said.

Murder carries a sentence in New Jersey of 30 years to life in state prison.

Taylor said anyone who has information about the incident should contact the prosecutors office at 609-399-9111, or anonymously through the Cape May County Sheriffs Tip Line at cmcsheriff.net or Crime Stoppers at 609-465-2800.
ATLANTIC CITY  For Gwen Franklin, the 124-year-old historic Church of the Ascension always brought back memories.

Now, thinking of it brings discomfort.

What was once the site of the church is now a pile of rubble at Kentucky and Pacific avenues. Bricks, dust and debris replaced the structure when it was torn down this month. And it will be an empty lot until its fate is decided.

Ive refused to go past there, said Franklin, 84, the former senior warden of the church. The last time I went past, the front of the church was still there. It was just traumatizing.

The church was closed in January 2015 by the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey after it was determined to be structurally unsound, and the building was tough to sustain for its small congregation, according to Canon Phyllis Jones, chief operating officer of the diocese.

Bankruptcy issues curtail capital improvements at Caesars and Bally's ATLANTIC CITY  The lack of capital improvements at Caesars Atlantic City and Ballys Atlant

The worship house was listed in 1986 on the National Register of Historic Places. But following several assessments of the building and its safety, it was prepped for demolition several months ago and pieces began coming down this month, Jones said. The demolition completed last week.

But Franklin, a city resident, said she wasnt aware of the demolition until the day it happened. Some former members of the church think the diocese was wrong to tear down a historic building, or to close it in the first place.

A lot of people are angry, she said. Its not just how I feel, its how a lot of people feel about it.

View Margate and Ventnor subpoenas in federal prescription drug probe A federal investigation into public employees health benefits extends beyond Margate and in

While the building was listed as historic, it is still privately owned by the diocese and its owners are free to make decisions on a property as they see fit.

According to the city Department of Licensing and Inspections, the city did not have a role in its demolition.

A diocesan inspection identified asbestos, which had to be contained and removed before demolition, Jones said. The hole created by the demolition will be filled and the lot will be leveled, but no decision has been made regarding what to do with the space yet.

Jones said the diocese tried to come up with solutions on how to save the building, but it was beyond our capacity to really do anything else.

For us, this was not an easy decision to make, Jones said. We were really struggling.

Glover named new president of Borgata ATLANTIC CITY  Marcus Glover, a veteran of the gaming and hospitality industry for more tha

Many of the former church members were homeless but were supportive when they could be, Franklin said. She had previously expressed fear that the homeless population had something to do with the closure, but Jones said otherwise.

Now, the emptiness of the lot is a larger concern. Franklin said some members of the church asked for artifacts from it before and if it were to be torn down, and she hasnt been able to find out where any of the churchs features went.

I dont know whats happening now, Franklin said. Its frustrating.

Leading up to to the demolition, Jones said other churches in the diocese were asked whether they were interested in any artifacts from the church, although most were not in Atlantic County.

Atlantic City hosts first movie night at Brown's Park ATLANTIC CITY  Dozens of families and movie fans came out for the first movie night held at

Things like vestments, altar furnishings, pews and books have been sent to other churches. The stained glass windows were sent to a convent. Other larger items, such as the large crucifix that sat in the building, were taken by church supply companies that collect items to ensure they go to a proper place, Jones said.

Leonard Aronowitz, 79, who lives a few blocks from where the church used to be, wants to know exactly where the crucifix went, even though he didnt belong to the church.

Aronowitz, who has lived in the city for more than 60 years, said he has expressed concern to several people about the closing, and then the possible demolition, and is now more concerned that its gone. But he said he hasnt gotten any answers or explanations.

He would always walk past the church on Pacific Avenue, he said, and he hopes to see a solution or for something new to come to the area for people who want to worship.

I was stunned to see it torn down, Aronowitz said. I hope to see something good come of all of this.
New Jersey is on track for a physician shortage, but mental and behavioral health providers know all too well what its like to struggle with a limited number of professionals and a growing demand for services.

South Jersey counties have some of the highest ratios of patients per mental health providers in the state, and legislators say providing an incentive such as tuition reimbursement for psychiatrists who work in underserved areas may address the regional shortages.

Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday approved a statewide tuition-reimbursement program that would pay for a portion of medical school tuition for psychiatrists who agree to provide full-time mental health services in designated shortage areas for one to four years.

The states health commissioner will determine, based on health status and economic indicators, geographic areas that have these shortages.

In some of those areas, the demand for services far outpaces the supply.

The decrease in mental health centers in the state has left a void in care for New Jersey residents who rely on these services, Assemblyman John McKeon, D-Essex, Morris, said in a statement. Mostly low-income urban and rural communities are without access to these services.

In Cumberland County, there was only one mental health provider for every 1,380 residents in 2016, the second highest gap in the state, according to data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations County Health Rankings and Roadmaps.

Eligible participants for the tuition program would have to be state residents and New Jersey-licensed physicians who have completed all educational and residency training requirements to practice psychiatry.

Cindy Herdman Ivins, president and CEO of Family Service Association, a United Way nonprofit based in Egg Harbor Township, said shes hopeful this incentive will attract more psychiatrists to South Jersey, particularly ones who specialize in children.

Whenever weve had to search for a child psychiatrist to come on to the team, it can take months, she said. We once went a whole year without someone, because its that great of a challenge.

Ivins said there are a number of things contributing to a rise in the number of people seeking mental and behavioral services, including less stigma associated with getting care, younger generations being more open to seeking help and parity insurance coverage for mental health services.

But the number of psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, therapists and other professionals in the area has not risen at the same rate, experts said.

I have colleagues in the central and northern parts of the state, or closer to Philly, who sometimes have an easier time securing psychiatrists, including advanced practice nurses with psychiatry specialty, Ivins said. We do need more people down here, especially in those rural areas.

Reports show large cities may attract more professionals with offers of higher salaries. Philadelphia has one mental health provider per 490 residents, and New York City has one provider per 140 residents, according to the RWJ Foundation report.

Gail Dembin, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Atlantic-Cape May, said one of the most common concerns she hears from parents and families is about trying to find a mental health provider without a long wait.

It is common for people seeking mental and behavioral health services to wait weeks or months before getting an appointment with a provider. In the meantime, their condition could worsen, Dembin said.

Phil Lubitz, associate director of NAMI New Jersey, said getting more psychiatrists and other professionals to work in the area is essential to providing the best possible treatment.

The shortage has not been for a lack of trying, he said.

Hospitals, nonprofits and other providers have developed mental health education and support programs, temporary treatment services, tapped into telepsychiatry and formed relationships with medical programs at Stockton University, Rutgers University and Rowan University to bring people in.

The reimbursement program would be another initiative that may benefit patients, including children, in South Jersey, Lubitz said.

Its definitely worth the effort, he said.
Residents used to abuse by their elected officials

An area weekly newspaper editorial recently described Gov. Christie as arrogant. Christie is actually arrogant, crass and obnoxious. So what?

Welcome to New Jersey. Those terms describe nearly every politician in this state. One term that definitely doesnt describe any of these elected officials is representative. They relish their power, and dont care one whit about the residents of the state.

How else can anyone rationalize a state with the highest tax structure in the country, the most massive highway toll system in the country, the second most restrictive gun laws in the country (can you say Peoples Republic of N.J.?), that arrests off-duty out-of-state police officers for carrying their firearms into the state, charges people to use beaches, and considers its drivers too stupid to fuel their own cars? Despite the massive tolls, taxes and fees, many jurisdictions cry poor mouth and struggle to balance their budgets.

The worst part of all this is New Jersey natives are like abused children. They have been abused so long, they have become oblivious to it. They think its normal, and that it is no different elsewhere! That is why it continues unabated.

Instead of crying foul about Christies personality, every New Jersey resident should be kicking themselves for allowing themselves to become subjects instead of citizens.

Scott Chilcote

Northfield

Founders didnt intend a church-state divide

Regarding the Noah Feldman commentary, Supreme Court weakens divide between church and state:

The author, Noah Feldman, concludes by saying that the Supreme Courts vote to allow the Lutheran Church of Columbia, Missouri, to receive the benefits of a state-funded resurfacing program weakens the wall of separation between church and state to an unprecedented degree.

Where are the words wall of separation found in the Constitution? They arent! It wasnt until 1947 that those words, quoting Thomas Jeffersons letter to the Danbury Baptists, were introduced in connection with the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Why cite something in a letter to substitute for the previous court opinions on religion and the state?

Furthermore, the phrase wall of separation appears nowhere in the Congressional Record during the debate on the Establishment Clause.

The Founders intended only to prevent the establishment of a single national denomination. That is what they encountered in Europe and fled.

George Washington declared in his Farewell Address, Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness.

Why this unhistorical antipathy toward the church? The kind of divide Feldman speaks of was not in the mind of the Founding Fathers.

Rev. H. James Hutchins

Galloway Township
MIAMI, July 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Seventeen people made it back to the Latin Trade Top 100 Billionaire ranking, a sign of the region's slow but steady recovery, and of stronger currencies.

Among them are Brazil's Nevaldo Rocha, founder of Grupo Guararapes, one of the region's largest textile and garment companies.

Joining Rocha back in the ranking is Mexico's Rufino Vigil Gonzalez, chairman of steel firm Industrias CH. The company has seen positive results through its subsidiary Simec and its operations in Brazil.

A few of the business moguls in the ranking saw triple-digit growth in their fortunes from last year. One such case is Maria Helena Moraes Scriptilliti, co-owner of Brazilian conglomerate Votorantim Group.

Another notable case is the 121 percent growth in the fortune of Julio Ponce Lerou, principal shareholder of Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile, SQM.

But it wasn't good news for everyone. One of the notable losses in the fortunes are Ricardo Salinas Pliego, founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas in Mexico (Elektra, TV Azteca). His fortune dropped 16 percent.

For his part, Bolivian-Brazilian entrepreneur Miguel Krigsner, president of cosmetic company O Boticario, lost 25 percent of his fortune.

The full ranking includes the names, fortunes and percentage changes from last year, plus new features including average age, rankings by country and sources of wealth.

To view and download the Top 100 Latin American Billionaires, visit: http://latintrade.com/latin-trades-top-100-billionaires-ranking-2017/

About Latin Trade

Latin Trade is a leading provider of information and business services to companies operating in Latin America. It publishes award-winning content in Spanish and English for distribution throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States through print and online media. Latin Trade publishes Latin Trade magazine and Latintrade.com.

RELATED LINKS

http://latintrade.com

Media contact:

David Buchanan

[email protected]

SOURCE Latin Trade

Related Links

http://latintrade.com


Since the iconic beauty company was founded in 1963, Mary Kay Inc. has fostered a culture of creativity and innovation and invests millions of dollars in research and development. The company conducts hundreds of thousands of tests each year to ensure Mary Kay products meet the highest standards of safety and performance.

"Mary Kay is on the front lines of innovation and we're excited to announce a beauty industry first in the form of our TimeWise Vitamin C Activating Squares at our annual U.S. Seminar," said Dr. Lucy Gildea, Chief Scientific Officer for Mary Kay Inc. "Pure vitamin C degrades and loses its power over time when exposed to air, light or water, but with the new Mary Kay dissolvable vitamin C square, a serum is enhanced and boosted with a fresh, pure and potent vitamin C elixir. It's a revolutionary skin care innovation in the palm of your hand."

To date, more than 1,300 Mary Kay patents have been granted and in 2016 another 130 patents were awarded. The milestones validate Mary Kay's status as one of the top innovators in the direct selling and cosmetic industries. Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultants will get their first look at the newly launched innovations at the company's annual U.S. Seminar held July 20 through Aug. 4 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas. The convention, comprised of four back-to-back conferences, is one of the largest annual events in North Texas based on attendance, economic impact and hotel room nights.

"We love summers in Dallas because we get to welcome thousands of Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultants from every corner of the country, as well as those traffic-stopping Mary Kay pink Cadillacs, who return to our hometown of Dallas for the company's annual Seminar," said Nathan Moore, President of Mary Kay's North America Region. "As we celebrate the success of our Mary Kay entrepreneurs through recognition, education, inspiration and motivation for the year ahead, the event gives a generous boost to our local economy."

The Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates Seminar 2017 will pump $48 million into the North Texas economy and supports 4,665 jobs in the Dallas area. The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center has hosted nearly 1.2 million attendees for Mary Kay's Seminar since 1974. During this year's event, approximately $5 million in recognition prizes will be awarded including the coveted Mary Kay pink Cadillac.

For more information about Mary Kay's company timeline, positive community impact, rewarding opportunity and irresistible products, click here.

About Mary Kay

At Mary Kay, success lies in our dedication to irresistible products, a rewarding opportunity and positive community impact. For more than 53 years, Mary Kay has inspired women to achieve their entrepreneurial goals in nearly 40 countries. As a multibillion-dollar company, we offer the latest in cutting-edge skin care, bold color cosmetics and fragrances. Discover more reasons to love Mary Kay at marykay.com.

Mary Kay Inc. Corporate Communications

marykay.com/newsroom

972.687.5332 or [email protected]

SOURCE Mary Kay

Related Links

http://www.marykay.com


If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
Pune, July 18 : Police here have booked city Congress leader Rohit D. Tilak, a descendant of legendary freedom fighter Lokmanya Tilak, on charges of rape following a complaint lodged by a woman, an official said here on Tuesday.

"He has been booked under Indian Penal Codes' section 376 (rape) and other charges on Monday night. Further investigations are on in the matter," an official of Vishrambaug Police Station told IANS.

Tilak is the great-great-grandson of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a grandson of former Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Jayantrao Tilak, and son of Dipak Tilak, the Vice-Chancellor of Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth.

His aunt Mukta Tilak is the current Bharatiya Janata Party Mayor of Pune.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Basavraj Teli said that the victim and the accused have known each other since 2015.

Speaking to large contingent of media persons outside the police station on Tuesday, the victim noted that she is under "severe pressure" ever since she registered the complaint against the Tilak descendent who is also a prominent Congress leader.

"I am under constant threats from the family... There is a danger to my life, I have not been keeping well," claimed the woman whose face was covered by a veil.

A lawyer by profession, she has been separated from her husband since over a decade and came in touch with Tilak two years ago at a public function.

She has alleged that he lured her with the promise of marriage and repeatedly raped her, assaulted and threatened her. On at least two occasions in the past, she had even attempted suicide, police said.

Teli said a woman officer of a neigbouring police station has been assigned to investigate the case and proceed further.

A scion of the one of the most illustrious political families in Maharashtra, Tilak had been given a Congress ticket to contest the assembly elections from Kasba constituency twice in the past, but he proved unsuccessful against the BJP candidate.

Besides rape and unnatural offences, Tilak - who is not yet arrested - has been charged on various counts of assault, criminal intimidation and threats to the complainant-victim.
Damascus, July 20 : At least 28 Syrian government soldiers were killed in an ambush near the capital on Thursday, a war monitor group reported.

The rebels set up the ambush in the eastern Ghouta countryside while Syrian forces were attempting to attack rebel positions in the Rihan town south of Douma city, Xinhua news agency quoted the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying.

The Observatory said the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam, or Islam Army, carried out the ambush, which also left many officers and soldiers wounded.
Amman, July 21 : Palestine parliamentary committee at Jordan's Lower House on Thursday expressed its rejection of Israeli violations in al-Aqsa Mosque following a gun attack that resulted in the death of two Israeli policemen.

At a meeting with Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, the committee said the Jordanians reject any violation in the holy mosque, Xinhua reported.

The comittee also called on the international community to shoulder its responsibilities and pressure Israel to stop its violations in Jerusalem.

Safadi pointed out that Jordan was exerting efforts to restore stability and end the tension to prevent any escalation.

Jordan, which oversees the holy Islamic and Christian sites in East Jerusalem including al-Aqsa Mosque, will continue its efforts to ensure the mosque is open to all Palestinians, the minister noted.

Israel needs to respect the status quo in East Jerusalem and refrain from any attempts to alter the status quo in the city, Safadi added.

Last Friday, three Israeli Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces inside the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, after two Israeli officers were killed in an attack.

Israel reopened the compound on Sunday with the introduction of metal detectors and security checks installed at the entrances.

Protests have since broken out in the holy site, with dozens of Muslim worshippers refused to enter the Mosque and prayed outside, considering the security checks a "violation" of the third holiest place for Muslims.
Mumbai, July 22 : Actress Kriti Sanon, rumoured to be dating her "Raabta" co-star Sushant Singh Rajput, is super excited to see him "flying high" and he being in space.

Sushant tweeted his photo, which seems to have been taken at a NASA facility in the US, on Saturday.

He captioned it: "From a miniature rocket to a life size one, this grown up kid will never cease to dream. My mother always wanted her 'Sushant in Space'!"

Kriti was thrilled. "Woah! Flying high literally? I'm sure your mom will be really proud! Keep shining Sush. Super excited to see Sushant in Space."

Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur also went down memory lane and shared his dreams as a child.

"My dream as a kid was to be an astronaut, staring at the night skies for hours, dreaming of finding friends in the milky way. So take me there," he wrote.

Sushant had earlier shared his excitement about heading to a NASA centre to prepare for his next film, "Chanda Mama Door Ke" -- a space adventure.
Bhubaneswar, July 22 : The opposition Congress and BJP on Saturday accused the ruling Biju Janata Dal in Odisha of receiving "dubious funding" and demanded declassification of the party's financial transactions.

They said the funding received by the BJD in the party account during the 2014 general election came from "suspicious sources".

"The party has received money through dubious sources during the last general elections. It should come clean. The chit fund money might have been used by the BJD during elections," said BJP Vice President Sameer Mohanty.

The accusations came following a media report on the same issue.

Mohanty said the Bharatiya Janata Party would raise the matter before the Election Commission, the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department for a detailed investigation into such irregularities.

Congress chief whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the entire financial transactions of the BJD.

"There must be a CBI probe into the financial transactions of BJD. The Naveen Patnaik government, which never loses time to proclaim transparency, should come clean on the issue," said Bahinipati.

The BJD, on its part, took no time to react to the allegation.

Party spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Pratap Deb claimed the report regarding 'dubious funding' was not based on facts and was prompted by vested interests.

He said the party had already made its funding public under the available legal provision.

BJD Treasurer Subash Singh also rubbished the allegation saying it was baseless.

"BJP is trying to defame BJD. All allegations levelled against our party are grossly baseless. We have made all our transactions in a transparent manner," said Singh.
Jerusalem, July 23 : Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned a Palestinian knife attack in a West Bank settlement that claimed the lives of three members of an Israeli family.

Netanyahu on Saturday denounced the assault as an "act of terrorism committed by a reprehensible person incited by wild hatred", and urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the attack, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The security forces are doing their utmost to maintain security and, to this end, will take all necessary measures," Netanyahu said in a statement.

On Friday night, a 20-year-old Palestinian entered a family home in the settlement of Halamish, stabbing to death a father, his daughter and his son before he was shot and injured by a neighbor.

In a post on Facebook, the stabber said he was deeply concerned about the recent violence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in annexed East Jerusalem and wanted to protect it.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a visit to Halamish that the assailant's family home would be demolished in the next few days.

The incident occurred amidst widespread Israeli-Palestinian clashes over the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, East Jerusalem's most contested site. The site is known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and the Jews as the Temple Mount.

The dispute started when Israel installed metal detectors at the entrance to the site on Sunday, following a shooting attack that killed three Israeli policemen last Friday. The detectors are seen by the Palestinians as a violation of the status quo at the Muslim-run compound and an attempt to gain more control over the site.

Anger reached a boiling point on Friday, when Israeli restricted access to the shrine to men under 50. Three Palestinians were killed in the clashes with Israeli security forces that ensued, and hundreds were injured.
RACINE  In an effort to comply with Act 10 and allow district officials more flexibility, the Racine Unified School District is preparing major changes to the employee handbook and plans to present the School Board with an update Monday.

Julie Landry, chief of human resources for Unified, said the handbook changes will touch on several different areas, including policies on management rights, conduct, grievances and more-detailed employee expectations.

I think it will be an opportunity for us to stay competitive and keep us with the trends in personnel policies and work rules, Landry said. Were able to timely make those changes to our handbook and communicate that out to our employees.

The district will update the board on changes to the handbook Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the Administrative Service Campus Building 1, 3109 Mount Pleasant St.

The district was tasked by the board to compare the current employee handbook with the handbook template used by the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

Act 10

One of the largest changes relates to the 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 legislation, which prevents public employees from collectively bargaining for benefits or wages.

The district intends to either eliminate or significantly change the language regarding the Board of Adjustments, which handles many employee benefits.

The current employee handbook states the Board of Adjustments, which meets quarterly, will be comprised of equal representation of the district and the authorized representative of the teaching staff.

It also states that deliberations will be guided by the shared need to maintain the districts financial viability and to maintain a competitive compensation package. Any changes in insurance will be by a vote of 50 percent plus one of the Board of Adjustments membership and will be implemented as soon as feasible thereafter without further action by the parties.

Board of Adjustments legality

Landry said there have been many questions about the legality of the Board of Adjustments.

I believe it is not legal for us to sit down and negotiate employee benefits with employees, Landry said.

At the July 10 work session, Unified School Board Vice President Dennis Wiser also mentioned the language might not be legal.

I would offer a position that adopting this does not preclude collaborative opportunities, Wiser said at the meeting. I would also point out that I am 99.9 percent certain that the existing language of the Board of Adjustments was illegal. To give a single bargaining group the right to legal benefits with the whole district population has to be out of compliance with the law.

School Board member John Heckenlively said getting rid of the Board of Adjustments would be a mistake.

(The Board of Adjustments has) saved the district millions of dollars of health care costs over the years, Heckenlively said. Its a constructive relationship between the union and the administration, and theyre able to come up with solutions that work.

If its a matter of the language to comply with the law, Heckenlively said the district can adjust the language.

I think its foolish to scrap a method thats yielded positive results for the district, he said.

Communication continues

In explaining the changes, Landry said: As an employer, you cant really go work many places and dictate what the work rules are ... thats just how organizations, businesses work. There are work rules and they are established by the management, and as professionals weve got to work and do our jobs.

Landry said she understands some employees might be upset by these changes in the handbook, but it shouldnt be an immediate change in day-to-day operations and will not harm employees.

The district is not out to do anything to our employees, Landry said. We know that happy employees are productive employees. We know the employees that know what the expectations are of them do their jobs better.

The changes to the handbook will be reviewed annually, and Landry said there will be a process for employees to give feedback.

Changes to administrative regulations allow employees 30 days to submit their input via email, which Landry said she likes. However, the process has not yet been defined.

I think its fair. I think its appropriate, she said. I think when employees have to sit back and reflect as to whats caused them the angst on why they dont want the change or are against the changes, and then they have to put that in writing its more thoughtful; its more meaningful.

Landry said communication between district administration and its employees will continue.

I think we do a great job in taking our employee input and feedback on lots of initiatives and things that go on in this district, Landry said. I just dont see how an organization can function without communicating with its employees and valuing their opinions.

Heckenlively expressed some concern about the changes.

To set it up to where you have this authoritarian top-down process to where it comes by decree from the office is a foolish way to run the district, he said. (The set of changes) probably goes overboard in giving management way more power than it needs ... its a management document, its leveraging all the power to managements side.

These changes, Heckenlively said, should include listening sessions with the employees or public.

The School Board must approve changes in the handbook before they go into effect.
Moscow, July 23 : Moscow negatively viewed a the newly released US draft bill on sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, media reports said.

"Extremely negatively", Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Sputnik news agency as saying on Saturday when asked about the Kremlin's take on the draft bill.

US Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on a bill that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday.

The bill reportedly allows sanctions against Russia for its alleged intervention in Ukraine and meddling in the US presidential election, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied in public, Xinhua news agency reported.

Seen as a follow-up to new US sanctions against Russia and Iran announced in June, the bill will be put to a vote at the US House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Cape Town, July 23 : South African President Jacob Zuma has reiterated his call for radical socio-economic transformation to correct the wrongs of apartheid.

South Africa has high rates of unemployment (which hovers around 27 per cent) because of the structure of the economy and labour market -- another direct effect of apartheid, Zuma said on Saturday at the launch of the Truman Magubane Family Foundation in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal Province, Xinhua news agency reported.

The foundation is aimed at supporting underprivileged children in various fields. Magubane, 74, is an anti-apartheid hero and spent 15 years in prison in Robben Island off Cape Town.

Zuma said South Africa continues to suffer the consequences of apartheid policies today even as the government led by the African National Congress (ANC) has expanded access to education for all.

"That is why we speak of radical socio-economic transformation: the fundamental change in the structure, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership and control of the economy," Zuma said.

Citing several reasons for changing the structure of the economy, Zuma said South Africa's economy was built around commodities for export to Europe and later the Americas and other regions.

Even roads and rail were constructed so that they led from the mine shafts and the farms straight to the harbours like Durban, according to Zuma.

"Commodity prices are set in the international market. In other words, the minerals come from our land but we do not determine their price," said Zuma.

The large economies buy minerals from South Africa as raw materials and manufacture goods which they sell back to the country at exorbitant prices, he said.

Capitalism works in such a manner that at times more is produced than what can be sold, resulting in the prices being reduced and commodity-based economies suffer, he said.

Historically all the capital is controlled largely by white men, he added.

"They have to protect their hold on the economy even if it means they have to destroy our spirits and take our lives," Zuma said.

South Africa must re-industrialize so that more jobs can be created, he said.
New Delhi, July 23 : Demonic Resurrection, one of the pioneering bands at the forefront of the Indian metal scene, is out with its new album "Dashavatar", which lead vocalist and founder Sahil Makhija says is a culmination of all the years of work his band has done.

Demonic Resurrection or DR has often been cited as the pioneering force of metal in India alongside Millennium, Kryptos, Inner Sanctum, Bhayanak Maut and Scribe.

In its latest offering, DR has combined Indian mythology with metal, thus giving a new turn to a genre of music which has gained popularity.

The capital city earlier this month saw a metal fest at the "antiSocial" venue in Hauz Khas Village. Mumbai-based extreme metal band DR was there to promote its new album.

Makhija, rhythm guitarist as well as primary songwriter, or as he is known by his stage name, "The Demonstealer", said he was very pleased with the venues and audiences metal bands are receiving in India.

In an interview with IANS, Makhija said that the metal scene in India had evolved at a staggering rate and though it had been largely underground, in the past decade it has garnered a lot of listeners who have begun to appreciate the music.

To a question on what inspired him to go in the direction of Indian mythology for his new album, he said: "My wife told me the story of Narasimha and I was quite fascinated by it. You see I'm an atheist and to me all these stories are just... something I never look at from a religious perspective, To me it is just a story and an interesting one at that. The album is a culmination of all the years of DR, every song in that album is a chapter on one of the avatars."

Asked what got him into metal, Makhija told IANS: "It was just a couple of friends bringing me CDs of various bands. I heard 'Running Free' and I was blown away. I heard 'Phantom Of The Opera' but could not comprehend what was happening. And then I visited classic acts such as Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and all of that, and then I shifted away from it for a while and went into the more extreme stuff, mostly death metal 'cause that was what had my attention the most."

While the album has been largely praised for being very innovative and creative, a few fans criticised it as being a bit "Bollywoodish", with a few even saying that the album was "weak".

In response, Makhija said: "Well I'd say that this is a new one. It's the first I've heard. You see we wanted to try something new here while still keeping it metal, and that is the reason we don't have the tabla and sitar in every song. And if you strip those away and the lyrics, it is still pretty much DR... It is all-around death metal and it is not just suddenly a Bollywood album, I think this is a very shallow mindset."

Asked about his fan base, Makhija said it was awesome, and that those who attend the shows are "very much invested in music" and appreciate it. He said he "shunned" those who said that Indian metal lacks maturity and has no identity of its own, or that Indian bands only "rip off stuff".

"Look boss, now that is the Indian mindset in general. We have a crap mentality. If you listen to Indian metal closely you'll find out that each band has its own style. Basically it's our attitude... someone does well we pull them down. Just a bunch of people being douchebags who are jealous."

(Anand Venkitachalam is a Delhi-based freelance writer. He can be reached at jordanmetalhead@gmail.com)
Mumbai, July 23 : Actor Kunal Kemmu, who was introduced to the "magic of the 70 mm screen" through "Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke", has thanked makers for choosing him in the 1993 film, which has completed 24 years since its release. Kunal says his romance with films still continues.

Kunal is expecting his first child with actress-wife Soha Ali Khan.

"On this day in 1993 I was introduced to the magic of being on a 70mm screen. A romance that still continues," Kunal wrote on Instagram alongside the poster of "Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke".

The actor also thanked the film's director Mahesh Bhatt and superstar Aamir Khan for making him part of the film.

"A big thank you to Bhatt Saab and Aamir sir for making me a part of this amazing film 'Hum Hai Rahi Pyar Ke'," he added.
Bhubaneswar, July 23 : Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Sunday said the allegations about his Biju Janata Dal (BJD) receiving funds from dubious sources during the 2014 general and assembly elections were "malicious, fabricated and false".

"All the allegations are malicious, fabricated and false. If needed, we will take legal action," Patnaik told reporters here on his return after a five-day visit to Delhi.

Patnaik said some parties might be trying to malign his party's image in the process.

A petition has been filed in the Orissa High Court about the alleged dubious transactions in the BJD account during the 2014 general and assembly elections.

The court has directed the Election Commission to dispose the matter within a month.

State Bharatiya Janata Party Vice President Sameer Mohanty said the Chief Minister, who is also BJD President, is trying to divert attention by asserting that his party would take legal recourse on the matter.

Mohanty questioned whether the money deposited in the BJD bank account was alleged commission or funds given by chit fund companies that had duped lakhs of investors in the state.

He said the party would raise the matter before the Election Commission, the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department to ensure a detailed investigation into the alleged irregularities.
Male, July 23 : Police in Maldives have warned that the opposition alliance will not be allowed to stage an anti-government demonstration in MalA on Monday, days after the opposition parties launched a bid to seize control of Parliament through an attempt to impeach the Speaker.

"Everyone come to MalA on July 24 to assure a system of government with separation of powers," tweeted former President Mohamed Nasheed, who has been living in exile in the United Kingdom since he was authorised medical leave from prison in January last year.

Briefing the press late Sunday afternoon, Superintendent Ahmed Shifan said opposition leaders from the four-party coalition would have to bear responsibility for any unlawful gathering, the Maldives Independent reported.

Since its bid to wrest control of the Parliament was foiled after four lawmakers were contentiously stripped of their seats, the opposition alliance has been urging supporters from across the country to converge on the capital and gather outside the Maldivian Democratic Party office at 9 a.m.

A no-confidence vote against Speaker Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed was due to take place on July 24, but the motion was thrown out after the disqualification of four ex-ruling party lawmakers deemed to have fallen foul of a new anti-defection rule imposed by the Supreme Court.

The Speaker has meanwhile decided that the next Majlis sitting will take place on July 31, citing security arrangements ahead of activities planned to mark Independence Day on July 26, Parliament sittings have been suspended since the opposition submitted the second motion with 45 signatures from the 85-member house, prompting the Attorney General to seek the anti-defection ruling after the dramatic collapse of the pro-government majority.

The police have meanwhile cracked down on most opposition activities in MalA during the past two years, including a weekly prayer congregations and gatherings in the opposition's meeting hall.

The last major gathering was a three-day protest by the MDP in November 2015.

On Friday, MP Ali Azim, Adhaalath Party spokesman Ali Zahir and two others were arrested after the police used pepper spray to disperse opposition supporters outside the MDP meeting hall.

Voting was taking place inside the premises for the MDP's youth wing leadership posts when police officers barged in and forced several people out. The riot police officers also cordoned off the area and blocked voters from entering the meeting hall.

The police later told local media that it was unaware of the internal election, the daily reported.

The Maldives Broadcasting Commission, which has imposed hefty fines on the opposition-aligned Raajje TV, has meanwhile warned that action will be taken against TV stations that telecast unlawful gatherings.
Background on the Exhibition

Roy.G.Biv

Images in the Roy.G.Biv exhibition captures urban lifefrom the architectural details in buildings located in the Czech Republic and Romania to upstate New Yorkeach portraying different views on life, people, and their artistic expressions. Their work culminates in a colorful and vibrant exhibition rarely seen in one place.

Thomas Conway, our featured photographer states, The artist-photographer sees beauty not only in the spectacular but also in what others may see as mundane: a wall, a familiar park, scenes from everyday life. It is as if he/she is saying, "Hey, look at this. Have you ever considered how beautiful this is?"

Santiago Robertson, our featured student photographer, has recently graduated from Delbarton and is starting at Princeton in the fall. Santiago adds, My visual arts teacher threw me off balance when she urged me to take a two-year college level art course. That felt like a large and imprudent commitment to an activity unrelated to my career goals. Still, my teacher insisted I had talent and the idea of expressing my creativity, a clearly unexplored aspect of my life, intrigued me greatly. I took the chance and found new fulfillment. Art is a field I definitely plan to pursue in college because I believe it is integral to my growth as a student and as a person and rewards me with deep, lasting satisfaction.

Gallery Curator, Gina Cerbone adds that the concept of Roy.G.Biv. was borne of the love of color. I was impressed with Conroys work where he had these vibrant colors of buildings and alleyways in Europe. Coupling this with the explosion of color in Santiagos perspective on graffiti was a perfect combination for this exhibition.
Pictured: Brenda Brkusic, Executive Producer, Andrew Russell, President and CEO PBS SoCal and Michelle Merker, Associate Producer

PBS SoCal KOCE, the home to PBS for Greater Los Angeles, has been honored with two Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The winners were announced at the 69th Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards presentation on Saturday, July 22 at the Saban Media Center in North Hollywood. The Los Angeles Area nominees were selected by national and Los Angeles-area Peer Group active members within the Television Academy.

Were delighted to be recognized by the Los Angeles members of the Television Academy for the content we are producing locally and in partnership with independent producers, said Andrew Russell, PBS SoCal President and CEO. We strive to deliver high quality programming that informs and inspires our audiences, and that tells stories that arent being told elsewhere.

PBS SoCal Los Angeles Emmys include:

Best History/Culture Programming

Bill W.: The Creative Force Behind Alcoholics Anonymous

Brenda Brkusic, Executive Producer

Kevin Hanlon, Producer

Dan Carracino, Producer

Dahlia Kozlowsky, Co-Producer

Michelle Merker, Associate Producer

Produced in partnership with Page 124 Productions

Best Independent Programming

To Climb a Gold Mountain

Alex Azmi, Executive Producer

The complete list of Los Angeles area Emmy Awards is available at http://www.emmys.com/la.

About PBS SOCAL:

PBS SoCal KOCE is the home to PBS for Greater Los Angeles and Southern California. We deliver the full schedule of PBS programs plus content that is for, about and by the people of Southern California. Our content is available free through four broadcast channels, at pbssocal.org, on our mobile apps, and via connected TV services. And we provide the community with early education resources and cultural and educational experiences through partnerships, events and grassroots outreach. PBS SoCal has offices in Century City, Costa Mesa, and Los Angeles. Connect with us at pbssocal.org Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
RACINE  A man accused of shooting up an Uptown neighborhood was charged Friday after his arrest in a gang task force investigation.

Jordan Goines, 19, of the 900 block of Racine Street was charged Friday with first-degree reckless endangering safety, a felony.

According to the criminal complaint:

Goines was allegedly the trigger man in a drive-by shooting in the 1500 block of Packard Avenue on July 18. Police report finding 18 9 mm shell casings and five parked vehicles with bullet holes located at the scene. No one was hurt in the incident, although police said in the report that pedestrians were present on the street.

Police said they believe the shooting was part of an ongoing feud between rival gangs known as the Dirty Ps and the Northside For Life gang.

Goines was arrested Wednesday. He remained in the Racine County Jail as of Friday evening on a $2,500 cash bond.

Goines is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Racine County Circuit Court on Wednesday.

If convicted, Goines could face up to 7 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
Cookies

What are cookies ?

How do we use cookies?

How to control cookies?

Managing cookies in your browser

see what cookies you have got and delete them on an individual basis

block third party cookies

block cookies from particular sites

block all cookies from being set

delete all cookies when you close your browser

X

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. Cookies are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.Website use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ("Google") to help analyse the use of this website. For this purpose, Google Analytics uses"cookies", which are text files placed on your computer.The information generated by the cookies about your use of this website - standard internet log information (including your IP address) and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form - will be transmitted to and stored by Google including on servers in the United States. Google will anonymize the information sent by removing the last octet of your IP address prior to its storage.According to Google Analytics terms of service, Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website and compiling reports on website activity.We not use, and not allow any third party to use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to this site. Google may transfer the information collected by Google Analytics to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google`s behalf.According to Google Analytics terms of service, Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.You may refuse the use of Google Analytics cookies by downloading and installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics.Cookies are also used to record if you have agreed (or not) to our use of cookies on this site, so that you are not asked the question every time you visit the site.You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed.Most browsers allow you to:If you chose to delete cookies, you should be aware that any preferences will be lost. Also, if you block cookies completely many websites (including ours) will not work properly and webcasts will not work at all. For these reasons, we do not recommend turning cookies off when using our webcasting services.
Speaking at OZY Fest in New York, Bush slammed Trump's chaotic style of governance and failure to focus on his policy goals. He singled out reports that Trump recently suggested that he may attempt to pre-pardon himself to preempt a federal investigation by independent counsel Robert Mueller.

"You get disciplined when your team says, 'No, Mr. President, let's stay focused on these policy objectives,'" Bush said. "Don't disparage people,don't go after Mueller, don't say you're going to pardon yourself or whatever. Don't do all that. Govern."

At times, the governor appeared to slip back into campaign mode, saying that Trump didn't always represent the Republican party, noting he was registered as a Democrat in the district where OZY Fest was being held.

He also said the 45th president wasn't serving as a symbol for the country to succeed.

"The president is the prime minister and the king. He or she, eventually, will be the symbol of the country, and also the prime minister responsible for making government work," Bush said. "And right now, our president doesn't view that job as important. Look at history. History is important. When presidents inspire us, we do better. And that's what we need to get back to."

Asked to prognosticate on the 2020 election, Bush said it was too early to make predictions, noting that Trump changes the political conversation each morning with his tweets.

"He unleashed five tweets today about stuff that jeopardizes his legal situation, insults somebody, goes back to the 2016 election, none of which is relevant to getting tax relief done, regulatory reform done," Bush said. "This is going to be a long ride between 2018 in January, much less 2020."

But the Florida governor also reserved some ire for members of his own party, knocking Republicans who were scared of crossing interest groups or conservative base voters, and suggesting that there should be term limits for members of Congress to spur politicians to act without fear of political retribution.

"If Barack Obama did somethingas it related to Russia and you say, 'This is outrageous,' then when your guy does the same thing, have the same passion to be critical," Bush said.

Pressed on whether Republicans were afraid of Trump, he continued: "Does everything have to be a political calculus? 'Oh my god if I say something, there will be an opponent, and there will be a third-party interest group come and give money to my opponent. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.' This is not what public services should be about."

Bush, who did not vote for Hillary Clinton or Trump during the 2016 election, has been critical of Trump repeatedly since the president took office. In May, he praised the president's appointment of conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, but described the White House as chaotic, and advised Trump to "stop tweeting" because it gives "our enemies all sorts of nuances and insights" into Trump's mind.

Though he ruled out another presidential bid, the former Florida governor appeared alongside a number of other former and potentially future candidates during the summit who were critical of Trump's first six months.

Bush joined businessman Mark Cuban onstage later in the festival where they jousted briefly about education reform, and spoke after Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who delivered a forceful argument for single-payer healthcare.

Former Vice President Joe Biden also make a brief appearance during his wife Dr. Jill Biden's interview with Katie Couric to address 2020 presidential rumors.
Thanks for signing up for our daily insight on the African economy. We bring you daily editor picks from the best Business Insider news content so you can stay updated on the latest topics and conversations on the African market, leaders, careers and lifestyle. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
President Donald Trump pointed out his "complete power to pardon" individuals convicted of wrongdoing in his capacity as president on Saturday.

"While all agree the U. S. President has the completely power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS," Trump tweeted.

Trump's tweet came on the heels of a Washington Post report that said the president and his legal team were looking into the

Seidman said the real question was why Trump would even need to pardon himself, given the protection from prosecution his office affords him and the unlikelihood that he would be charged after leaving office.

"The more serious threat is that Trump would either pardon everyone else or fire Mueller," Seidman said. "My own sense, for what it's worth, is that this outcome is very likely."

But firing Mueller or issuing pardons "would be certain to ignite the kind of political firestorm that we haven't seen since the Saturday Night Massacre," he said, and Trump's political opponents would undoubtedly paint it as obstruction of justice.

Indeed, it appears that Trump and his allies are ramping up their war on Mueller and planting seeds aimed at discrediting his investigation, possibly setting up a scenario in which Trump could fire the special counsel.

Host Ainsley Earhardt pointed out that some members of Mueller's team had donated thousands of dollars to Democrats in the past.

"This is just a witch hunt," Conway said in response, repeating a frequent criticism Trump makes towards the ongoing probe. "It's all a hoax, and now they're going in all types of different directions, but I think that the information you just shared is relevant information for America to have. People should know what folks' past and their motivations and their political motivations are. These weren't minor donations."

Conway's statements echoed repeated criticisms Trump and his allies have made against Mueller's team in an effort to paint them as biased against the president.

"The fact is that the president is concerned about conflicts that exist within the special counsel's office and any changes in the scope of the investigation," Sekulow said. "The scope is going to have to stay within his mandate. If there's drifting, we're going to object."

Sekulow cited the Bloomberg report, which said Mueller's team was looking into, among other things, a 2008 business deal Trump made with a Russian oligarch.

Trump alsopublicly warnedMueller against investigating the Trump family's finances, saying that Mueller would be crossing a "red line" if he did so.

"We're going to see out-and-out political warfare, and not over ... Medicaid," the official told Axios.

That assessment was echoed by Matthew Miller, the former Department of Justice spokesperson under President Barack Obama, who tweeted that "we are headed for certain crisis.
READ MORE: Wisconsin University wins African Universities Day Entrepreneurship Challenge

Speaking at the start of the four-week programme, the Head of the I.T. Department at Wisconsins School of Computing and Technology, Dr Nana Kofi Annan, said: I.T. now cuts across every profession  from medicine and engineering to law, education and entrepreneurship  you name it. It is therefore essential for every individual who wishes to be successful in any field to gain basic I.T. skills.

Nana Amuasi Adomako, one of the participants on the programme, said: The classes have been fun and effective. The teachers are very good and take time to teach the students. I have really improved my knowledge in I.T. From here, I am going to try to create an app to publish my stories or a book in future.

For his part, the Director of Public Affairs & Marketing, Mr Jacob Fynn, said: The free I.T. training programme is one of the key Corporate Social Responsibility activities in Wisconsins calendar, and certainly one of the most rewarding.

So far we have offered three sessions of the free IT programme, and our numbers are growing every year. I am very encouraged to see that young people, parents and guardians are seeing the value of the I.T. skills training we are offering. We hope to see even more students attending our programmes in future.

READ MORE: Ghana Chamber of Commerce president visits school

We wish to also appeal to organisations to partner with us in any way possible, for example by sponsoring prizes, offering short internships to the students, offering volunteer trainers or helping us meet the cost of running the programme. This is all for the good of improving the skills of our young people and equipping them to thrive in the globalised world in which we now live.

Wisconsin International University College, Ghana has offered the free I.T. training sessions three times over the past five years. The programme is mounted during the institutions long vacation period, which runs from June to August. Other free educational programmes such as Sign Language Classes for 8-12 year-olds are also organised during this period.

I.T. is one of the undergraduate degree programmes offered at Wisconsin. The University also offers Law, Nursing, Economics, Communication Studies (with options in Journalism, Public Relations, Advertising), Rural Development & Ecotourism and Business Studies (with options in Accounting, Banking & Finance, Marketing, Human Resource Management).

Postgraduate programmes include MBA (with options in Accounting, Finance, HR Management, MIS, Marketing, Project Management), MSc Environmental Sustainability and Management and MA Adult Education. A new programme in Strategic Management & Leadership offered by Pearson, UK will be mounted from August 2017.

Short courses are also available in Paralegal Studies, Security Management, Forensics & Investigative Psychology and Executive Leadership and Strategy Execution.

About Wisconsin International University College

The establishment of the University College was initiated and facilitated by Dr. John Buuck, President of Wisconsin International University (WIU) in the United States of America and Rev. Dr. Paul K. Fynn of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana in 1998.

It received its Interim Accreditation in January 2000 and began its first programme (MBA) in August 2000. It was thus one of the first private universities to receive accreditation.

Wisconsin International University College, Ghana (WIUC-Gh) programmes are accredited by the National Accreditation Board (NAB). The University College is affiliated to the University of Ghana, Legon, the University of Cape Coast and to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

Wisconsin offers Certificate, Diploma, Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes in areas including Nursing, IT, various Business disciplines, Law, Communication Studies, Economics, Environmental Science and Sustainability and Rural Development and Tourism, among others.

OUR UNIQUENESS

Leaders in International Education

Wisconsin International University College, Ghana is truly international in terms of scope of its course offerings and their global appeal as well as its student and lecturer population mix. There are students and lecturers from over 30 countries.

Career Services Center

Wisconsin has a vibrant Career Services Center, which arranges work placements and internships for students. Students are encouraged to undertake an internship a year, to boost employability and enhance their entrepreneurship skills.

French/Chinese Language

The study of French is compulsory. Students also learn Chinese.

Exchange Programmes
Ambassador Amihere was unhappy that social media should so suddenly became a consuming passion for school children to an extent that undermines academic performance and exposes children to the myriad of character-damaging pitfalls of the information highway.

He was addressing parents and school children at the seventh graduation, speech and prize-giving day of Delsi Montessori School, held at the weekend under the theme Advancing quality education through teacher-parent involvement. Delsi Montessori School, located at New-Achimota in Accra is one of the capitals most accomplished Montessori institutions.

Speaking on the benefits and dangers of social media to school children, Mr. Amihere warned that uncontrolled use of social media among children affects their personality and character formation, weakens the bonds of inter-personal relations within the family and worst of all, exposes children to countless destructive vices.

But it will be pointless to attempt to prevent or ban our children from accessing and using social media because it is such a valuable source of knowledge and information and can be used to support academic studies at school and at home, Mr. Amihere explained.

Since the use of phones at school is prohibited, our parents must start showing an interest in what their wards do on social media back at home and must make it a point to constantly monitor and control when and what their children access on social media.

Delivering the keynote address earlier, Mrs. Ellen Sam, a renowned pharmacist and pastor, stressed that in the grooming of children, a clear distinction needed to be drawn between education and quality education.

Yes. There is a marked difference between education and quality education. People can finish school and still not have the requisite skills to show for it, she contended, adding that quality education serves to expand the childs knowledge base and provides children with capabilities required to make them economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance individual wellbeing.

Mrs. Sam said the responsibility of imparting quality education to children rests equally with parents and school teachers.

READ ALSO: WAEC releases results

Quality education is so complex and exacting that it cannot be given by schools alone. Parents are stakeholders and must get involved. So, as parents or guardians, let us collaborate in every way possible with the schools to provide quality education for our children, she said.

Twenty-nine pupils graduated from kindergarten to primary - a number described by the proprietress, Rev. Mrs. Lawrencia Dafeamekpor, as the highest since the school was founded in 2004.

Delsi Montessori School begun 12 years ago with just six toddlers. Today, we have reason to rejoice because the school has literally graduated through the years to the Junior High School level and here we are, about to induct 29 wonderful pupils from Kindergarten to primary school, Rev. Mrs. Dafeamekpor said.
The MTV Africa Music Awards winner pulled off the classiest note on Instagram that touches on how amazing the marriage to his bae has been.

"Thankful and Blessed to have the support of an Exceptional Woman @thenicolecode by my side, beautiful on the outside but most importantly on the inside, 5yrs feels like a week with you, I would gladly do the time all over again&again  #happy5thanniversary," the rapper's post reads.

Nicole also responded with a matching heartfelt message on her Instagram which also expressed her appreciation of her husband's qualities.

Naeto C, who is the father of two children, a boy and a girl, is the son of Kema Chikwe, a former Minister of Transport and latter Minister of Aviation.
There are many issues facing the United States today. These include the increasing threat from North Korea, the ever-present worry about terrorism, questions about trade agreements, climate change, environmental considerations and, not certainly the least, the possible Russia connection vs. the greatest witch hunt in history. None of these seem to be of more pressing concern than the debate over health care reform. We note that the United States spends far more on health care than any other developed nation, but ranks last in health care equity across the population and behind many other nations in healthy outcomes.

The Racine community, in common with the rest of the country, has questions and concerns about the health care reform bill, written by Congressman Paul Ryan, passed by the Republican-majority Congress and now under debate in the Senate. Questions that deserve answers include worries about the projected 22 million (additional) people losing health insurance, increased costs for the elderly and poor and huge tax reductions for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

There is increasing alarm about the rising costs of health care. We wonder if the bill, or forms of the bill presently under consideration, would include requirements to cover important needs such as pre-existing conditions, maternity care, psychological care and drug addiction. Potential severe cuts to Medicaid, involving the most vulnerable of our citizens, are of great concern.

We also have some trepidation about the secrecy surrounding the health care reform issue, the fact that hearings are closed to the public, conducted by a small group of legislators, with citizens having no input with their representatives.

It has been more than 600 days since Congressman Ryan held a public town hall meeting with constituents in Racine County. We in the Democratic Party of Racine County find this unacceptable. We propose that the community work together to provide for an orderly meeting. This would result in an open flow of give and take between Ryan and his constituents  Republican, Democrat and Independent. Whether you are a Ryan supporter or not, it is important for our democracy that we meet together to effectively and openly discuss our differences.

Congressman Ryans stated reasons for not holding town hall meetings are that he fears for security and that the meetings would be disruptive screaming fests. Instead of meeting directly with his constituents as he has in the past and as other congressmen are doing even now, he has met privately with employees of a specific business. (At a recent meeting at a Burlington business, he took written questions screened by company management.)

He also suggests office hours where constituents can speak with his staff, not with him. He occasionally holds telephone town meetings. These consist of a conference call to a random selection of people where he can speak with a number of people at once. It should be noted that these calls are paid through Ryans taxpayer-funded congressional expenses fund.

Meetings with coerced and captive audiences are unacceptable alternatives to direct, uncensored and in-depth communication with interested citizens.

Everyone knows that the best way to reach understanding is face-to-face, two-way discussion. That type of communication requires meetings at which the people can ask questions of their elected representative and get answers, in the American tradition of town meetings.

As a solution, the Democratic Party of Racine County proposes to assist Ryan in holding an orderly and productive town hall meeting in Racine County. Toward that end, Democratic Party members will help organize the meeting, provide members at the meeting to help maintain decorum and work with Congressman Ryans office and our Republican counterparts to reduce the potential of problems and have a successful meeting.

We in the Racine community are capable of communicating with our congressman appropriately and we ask Congressman Ryan to allow democracy to work  to trust and respect his constituency enough to allow us all to meet together in a traditional town hall meeting.
In post on Facebook, Abebrese recalled when she was censored for raising red flag about Rashida's conduct when she gained fame by raining insults on her ex-boyfriend.

According to her, the actions and inactions of her critics propelled Rashida to the situation she finds herself now.

She recalled: Not too long ago I shared an article on this page written by journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni. I quoted him: Rashida is not a star. Shes not a celebrity. She is not a role model for young girls in her community. Let us not convince them that the best way to get to Accra and be on TV is to have sex and flaunt it or to master the art of verbally abusing others. Rashida is a deviant who deserves our sympathy, not our praises.

As a result of my sharing his article, a lot of comments were written on the post. Many in support of his article and others not in support. The interesting is the amount of bashing I received for even sharing this article. Some said that I was hater and didnt want her to succeed and that I was jealous because she is now famous, completely missing the point, he said.
This was contained in a report published by Punch News earlier today raising hopes that the days of the cultists may soon be numbered.

The activities of the cult group have been one that has brought great fear into the minds of Ikorodu residents, forcing some to abandon their homes for safer environment.

Collaborative efforts between the Lagos State Police and local groups including traditional rulers and others have helped to strengthen hopes of a complete annihilation of the cultists in the end.

Most of the attacks initiated by the Badoo menace have been unprovoked as victims were reported to be in their homes when they were killed.
In a rejoinder, offering bullet by bullet explanation of the allegations raised against her by the Concerns Staff of the EC, Mrs Osei said the contract was signed without her knowledge.

READ MORE: Charlotte Osei accuses her deputies of insubordination

She said, this is illegal, criminal and a breach of the policies of the Commission and the laws of Ghana.

She added: The supporting documents would be submitted to the relevant investigative agencies for their further action.

Mrs Amankwah was last week asked by the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) to proceed on leave for investigations to commence her handling of staff endowment fund.

Mrs Osei has been accused of reporting the matter to EOCO without first seeking to solve the matter internally.

But in her rejoinder, she claims letters she has written to her deputy for answers on the staff endowment fund were never responded to or acknowledged.

She also strongly denied reporting Mrs Amankwah to EOCO but said she supports the investigation into the matter.

She said: The Chairperson has not submitted a petition to EOCO on the Endowment Fund issue.

However, the Chairperson believes that EOCO is the right institution being a fact finding body, to investigate the issue of what the endowment fund contributions of staff, which were not paid into the Fund for eight months in 2014 were used for. This matter has been before the Commission since February 2015 and has not been resolved.

A memo sent by the Chairperson on December 1, 2015, on the issue has not been responded to as of today.

The vouchers indicating the application of the Funds have not been submitted despite repeated requests by the Chairperson and repeated claims by the deputy Chairpersons of their availability.

The Commission cannot by itself, use 2017 funds released by the Ministry of Finance, to repay obligations incurred in 2014, with no documentation and not recorded in the audit report of 2014 as an outstanding obligation, without the report of a separate institution like EOCO.

If there has been any embarrassment to the Commission, it is based on the failure to keep proper accounting records in the matter and the wrongful utilisation of monies belonging rightfully to the staff endowment fund.
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!
Mr Kan-Dapaah is also expected to brief the house on the two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners: Muhammed Al-Dhuby and Muhammed Bin-Atef.

The Supreme Court in June described as unconstitutional the decision by former president John Mahama to accept into Ghana the two terror suspects.

The court in a 6-1 majority decision ruled the action by the then president was in breach of Article 75 of the constitution which required that all international agreements be brought before Parliament for ratification.

The meeting with the national security minister will be held in camera due to the sensitive nature of the issues.

This was disclosed by the Majority leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu during the presentation of business for next week.

Also, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mrs Charlotte Osei is expected to appear before Parliament next week.
READ MORE: Atik Mohammed suspended

In a post on Facebook, he said: "My attention has been drawn to some news that I have been suspended indefinitely.

"It is not true and indeed, no organ of the party save National Congress is clothed with such powers. I will officially be issuing a statement to this effect."

His reaction comes after he was suspended indefinately on Saturday at a extraordinary National Executive Committee (NEC).

He was charged with bringing the party's name into disrepute .

He was also accused of criticising the partys 2016 flagbearer, Dr Edward Mahama.

Saturdays meeting was chaired by Mr Bernard Monah, who also berated Dr Mahama for accepting to serve in the Akufo-Addo administration.

Dr Mahama, 2016 Vice Presidential Candidate, Emmanuel Anyidoho, first Vice Chairman, Dr Woembegu, second Vice Chairman, Henry Asante and third Vice Chairman, Hajia Ajara were reportedly at Saturdays meeting.
READ MORE: PNC supporters demand resignation of Atik and Mornah

He was also accused of criticising the partys 2016 flagbearer, Dr Mahama, on multiple media platform.

Saturdays meeting was chaired by Mr Bernard Monah, who also berated Dr Mahama for accepting to serve in the Akufo-Addo administration.

Dr Mahama, 2016 Vice Presidential Candidate, Emmanuel Anyidoho, first Vice Chairman, Dr Woembegu, second Vice Chairman, Henry Asante and third Vice Chairman, Hajia Ajara were reportedly at Saturdays meeting.

The rest were PNC National Treasurer, Akane Adams, General Secretary, Atik Mohammed, National Youth Organiser and Women Organiser.

Meanwhile, Atik Mohammed has denied reports that he has been suspended. In a Facebook post organ of the party has the power to suspend him save National Congress.
This market is probably where you'll find the materials to make just about anything. From clothes, to even shoes.

Follow our #Pulse36 travel stories on Instagram @pulsenigeriatravel

And talking about shoes, we headed straight for Shoe Plaza.

Everywhere you turn at Shoe Plaza, there's someone building a shoe or part of it.

We went off to meet the President.

Here's we learned from Honourable Christian, the President of Shoe Plaza;

75% of the shoes worn in Nigeria is made in Aba.

There are over 1,000 shops in Shoe Plaza alone with an average of 4 people per shop.

Up to 40,000 footwears are manufactured every week in Aba. My company alone makes up to 1,000 shoes per week, he said.

Now, we had no way to verify these numbers, but they couldn't be far off from the truth even if his numbers aren't accurate.

As far as we've seen, a lot seemed to be going on in Aba, but sometimes, this market is its biggest problem.

People have a problem with Made In Aba products, I started to ask. Mostly because it appears that most of the products seem to be counterfeited. Take for example, we know neither Prada or Zara have factories in Aba. But a few minutes walk in this market, and we'll run into shoes with this brands.

He sat up.

You see, he sighed, we've been trying to educate people that they need to change. But it's a gradual process. We want every shoe that leaves this market to have Made In Aba on it eventually.

Ambitious, but possible.

What about the China factor though?

We still have to get raw materials from China, Christian said. And another problem we have is equipment. There are some finishings that will be best achieved with equipment. In the absence of that, we have to use hand.

Follow our #Pulse36 travel stories on Instagram @pulsenigeriatravel

I have no idea how expensive this machine is, but I imagine the opportunity this is. Imagine a company, or billionaire financing it. He automatically gets a share of Abas 40,000 per week operation.

But moving on, we took a walk round the market, and ran into this guy, Paul Andras.

At first sight, he was just another hustler in Aba, stitching together pieces of leather to form the head of moccasins.

Then we got talking.

I actually started working here during an ASUU strike in 2013, he began.

So I just came here to learn shoemaking instead of just staying idle.

The first conflict came 6 months after, when ASUU called off the strike and he had to return to school at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri.

The money was too good to just leave like that. So I started to balance it. At first, it was hard but I got used to it later.

He's currently working on his final year project and has huge plans when he's done with school in November.

I want to get better at programming language by the end of the year. In fact, I paid about 250k to learn Java at NIIT.

He plans to focus on academic stuff. This shoemaking hustle is temporary.

But how much does he even make?

Paul specialises in building the upper part of moccasins and he averages 100 of these daily.

On some days, he pushes for 150. And this earns him up to 40,000 naira per week.

That's so impressive, when you think of the fact that this single move made him completely independent of his parents financially.

It kind of put things into perspective. This is a guy who was, to me, or any passerby, just another semi-literate hustler in Aba. But not only is he educated, he probably has more skills than I do.

I wonder how many people in the super large market are like him, hustling hard. Striking the balance of paper, between money and a degree.

Follow our #Pulse36 travel stories on Instagram @pulsenigeriatravel

I also wonder what Aba would become with the right influence. Imagine how much this city would fetch for Nigeria if fuelled with the right kind of support.

If Nigeria will ever have an industrial revolution, it will most likely start off in Aba.

1/3, Pound Road, Aba.

Remember what you heard at the end of all your favourite old Nollywood movies?

51, Iweka Road Onitsha, and 1/3, Pound Road, Aba. GRAB YOUR COPY NOW"

Well, we made a quick stop at Pound Road, and what did we find?

Nothing. Just like 51 Iweka, this place was a shadow of its old self.

The only positive to this is that Nollywoods demands outgrew this little addresses.

When we'd seen enough of Aba, we headed for Umuahia.

Tomorrow, we're going to seek the iconic days of Biafra yesterday, and the future.
It bears repeating that we owe a debt of gratitude to our veterans. They put themselves in harms way for us, and they return from the battlefield with wounds both seen and unseen.

Repayment of that debt includes treatment for those wounds, and greater assistance when their experience in uniform, or memories of their experience, leads to difficulty back home.

This includes the issue of homelessness among veterans. Which is why the Southern Centers recent loss of funding to house homeless veterans is so disappointing, and unacceptable.

The state Department of Veterans Affairs announced it lost federal grants for its Veteran Housing and Recovery Program at the Union Grove and King veterans homes. The Racine County program serves 28 people at the Southern Wisconsin Center campus, 21425 Spring St., Dover.

Homelessness, unemployment, addiction and suicide statistics among veterans are much higher than the general public. This is a population that needs and has earned our help, said state Sen. Bob Wirch, D-Somers, who served in the Army Reserve from 1965-71. We should be doing all that we can to help them get back on their feet. This cut in federal funding is just unbelievable.

Federal funding for the Dover facility, known as Cottage 16, is due to end in September. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, plans to write a letter to the states congressional delegation urging the federal government to reconsider the funding cut, Vos spokeswoman Kit Beyer said.

In a letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin released Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., who served in the Marine Corps, said they support efforts to modernize VA programming. But they want more information about why facilities in Dover and King lost the grant and how they can compete for grants in the future.

Given the critical need for the services these particular facilities provide to at-risk and homeless veterans, we are seeking additional information to better understand why the homes at Union Grove and King did not qualify for this federal funding for the first time since 1995 and 1997, respectively, according to the letter.

Wed like to see those questions answered, too. Better still, wed like to see the funding restored.

We applaud the work of Jeff Gustin, co-founder and director of Veterans Outreach of Wisconsin, and the other members of his group. Veterans Outreach has been at work since last year building tiny houses for homeless veterans. Fifteen are planned to be completed before the winter at the Veterans Outreach headquarters, 1624 Yout St., Racine.

With news of services ending at the Southern Center, the effort to finish the homes has intensified, Gustin said.

Even with that facility up and running, there was a still homeless veteran problem, Gustin said. Now with that facility closing, its not going to be good.

Veterans Outreach is a wonderful example of veterans helping veterans, specifically in addressing the issue of homelessness among veterans. But the debt of gratitude is owed by all of us.

We all owe it to the most vulnerable among our veterans to see that their needs are being met.
According to a statement issued by Brig.-Gen. Sani Usman, the army spokesman in Abuja, the terrorists are: Usman Ali, 22, Ibrahim Matukur, 13 and Usman Hussaini 25.

Others are, Ali Baba, Modu Wakil, 15, Usman Mahamadu, 47 years, Goni Bukar, 50, Modu Konto and Isah Ali, 25.

They said that they deliberately surrendered because they had realised their folly and no longer wish to continue with the criminal terrorists and insurgents activities.

Furthermore, they stated that they escaped from the terrorists hideout at Buk village in Damboa Local Government Area of Borno state, the army spokesman quoted them as saying.

Usman also said that they claimed that there were many more Boko Haram fighters willing to surrender because of untold hardship they suffered.

They pleaded for sympathy and forgiveness from members of the community, restating that they were misguided and deceived all these years to believing they were fighting a just cause.

According to Usman, they urge the military authorities to make concerted efforts to reach out to other terrorists in the forest, as they are willing to surrender.

Many terrorists in recent time have been surrendering, including 700 who gave themselves up to troops in June.

In another development, Usman said that troops of 103 Battalion, also on Saturday neutralised three female suicide bombers, who tried to infiltrate their location at Kawuri, Konduga Local Government Area of Borno.
The President met with them in Abuja House, London on Sunday, July 23, 2017, where he's recuperating.

The presidency, in a tweet said:The President sends his best wishes to all Nigerians. He will be back to Nigeria as soon as his doctors give the go-ahead.

The Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo had earlier told Nigerians that Buhari is strong and recuperating.

This is the first public picture of Buhari since he embarked on an open-ended medical vacation on May 7, 2017.

It is the second time Buhari would be embarking on a medical vacation since the turn of the year.

On January 19, 2017, Buhari left Nigeria for yet another medical voyage in London. He returned on March 10, 2017 and confessed that he's never been so ill in his life.

There's been a scramble for power in the president's absence, with acting president Yemi Osinbajo standing in for the ailing Nigerian leader.

Speculation has also been rife that Buhari may just be too incapacitated to make a return to his work desk.
Shettima gave the approval while presenting certificates to 10 youths sponsored by the State Government for a one-year course on electricity generation, distribution and transmission at the National Power Training Institute, Maiduguri, on Sunday.

Malam Isa Gusau, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Communication and Strategy, disclosed this in a statement issued in Maiduguri.

Shettima has directed the State Civil Service Commission to begin procedures for the recruitment of 300 graduates of various fields from the 27 local government areas into the service, Gusau said.

He explained that the 300 slots were created in the service due to successful verification of workers in the civil service during which 10,000 ghost workers were detected on the payroll of the State Government, whom siphoned more than 500 million for more than 20 years.

The government now spends about N2.2 billion monthly for salaries and pensions as against the previous salary bill of N2.7 billion since 1999, he said.

According to Gusau, the saving of N500 million by the government will enable it to employ 300 more graduates for now.

He said the governor had assured that more workers would be eventually employed in other categories of the civil service.
According to reports, Boko Haram members, in the early hours of Sunday, July 23, 2017, engaged the police in a shoot-out.

The Police subsequently arrested five, in Gayawa village of Ungoggo Local Government Area of the state.

According to the Kano commissioner of police, Mr Rabiu Yusuf, The suspects were arrested following on an active intelligence from the Nigeria police force indicating the remnants of the Boko Haram group who escaped from Sambisa forest have started regrouping in some states of the north including Kano state.

It is because of the concern to ensure that they dont attack any location in any state, that the inspector general of police set up a joint police special team under the supervision of CP Kano command which launched a trail mission on the remnant of Boko Haram group in various locations in Kano and its environs.

ALSO READ:Another terrorist attack on UNIMAID fails

The special police team has prevented several attempt in various places in Kano and its environs by this Boko Haram group from attacking innocent citizens in Kano.
The presidential spokesman, in an article obtained from Daily Post, also said that God has the final say on Buharis health issue.

Adesina said The All Progressives Congress (APC), inspired by Muhammadu Buhari, halted the 60-year pipe dream of PDP at the polls in 2015. Has the latter forgotten? No, they wont forget till forever.

But so much is the animus, the antipathy towards the President that they wish him dead. While millions of Nigerians are praying, some elements are rejoicing, and imagining evil. But they forget: man is not God, and Jehovah always has the final say. The descendants of Shimei need to learn vital lessons from their forebear.

President Buhari has tolerated people who have called him all sorts of names in the past two years. If he didnt move against them directly, he could have allowed many Abishais to move against them, and take off their heads.

But not our President, a reformed democrat, a pious man, who has resolved to leave the people suffused by hatred unto God. And will they get their just desserts one day? As night follows the day, they will. If not from man, they will get it from God. Their forefather, Shimei did. He reaped what he sowed.
According to MASSOB, the traders were unlawfully detained since December 2016, and have not been charged to court.

Edeson said We want to bring to the attention of his Excellency , Governor Fayose of Ekiti State about the unlawful arrest and detention of some Igbo traders doing their legitimate businesses around Post Office, Ado Ekiti since Dec, 2016 by the agents of the state government task force.

MASSOB is worried that since last year December, they have not been arraigned before any court or allowed medical attention.

ALSO READ:Fayose is a good reason why rich kids should study in Nigeria

Every efforts to secure their release are being frustrated by Ekiti state security agents. These men are breadwinners of their respective families.
According to Daily Post, the suicide bombers were trying to enter the 103 Battalion base when they were shot dead.

Speaking to newsmen, the Director Army Public Relations, Brig. General Sani Usmam Kukasheka said the suicide bombers were ordered to halt, but they refused.

Kukasheka also said They were, however, challenged severally but continued advancing, declining several warnings to stop. Consequently, the troops neutralized them instantly. The remains of the suicide bombers have since been evacuated from the location.

The general public is please requested to continue to support troops of Operation LAFIYA DOLE and report any suspicious movements of persons to the military or security agencies.
The rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta is in one of four proposed "de-escalation zones" designated in an agreement reached by government allies Iran and Russia and rebel backer Turkey in May.

But the deal has yet to be fully implemented over disagreements on the monitoring mechanism for the safe zones.

The most recent talks in Kazakhstan this month between Russia, Turkey and Iran failed to iron out of the details of the four safe zones.

Russia said that the sides have now signed agreements under which "the borders of the de-escalation zone are defined as well as the deployment locations and powers of the forces monitoring the de-escalation."

It said the sides had also agreed "routes to supply humanitarian aid to the population and for free movement of residents."

Russia said it plans to send in the first humanitarian convoy and evacuate the wounded "in the next few days."

The Eastern Ghouta region is a major rebel stronghold near the capital, and it has been the frequent target of government military operations.
Throwing away any pretence at diplomatic nuance, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel had Thursday also warned German firms against investment in Turkey and spoke of an "overhaul" of the entire relationship.

"Turkey is a social democratic state based on law and no one has the right to interfere in its internal affairs," said Erdogan before heading off on a trip to the Gulf.

Addressing Gabriel's comments, he said: "We (Turkey and Germany) are together in NATO. We (Turkey) are in negotiations to join the EU.

"So the strategic partnership between us is nothing new. We have been partners for a long time. No step should be taken to overshadow this partnership," he added.

Turkey remains under a state of emergency imposed days after the July 15 failed coup which critics claim is being used to go after any opponent of Erdogan. The authorities say the emergency is needed for public security.

The latest crisis was precipitated by the order of a Turkish court to remand in custody a group of human rights activists detained on an island off Istanbul, including Amnesty International's Turkey director Idil Eser and Berlin-based activist Peter Steudtner.

But Berlin was already furious over the jailing in February of Deniz Yucel, Turkey correspondent for Die Welt newspaper, who Erdogan has personally denounced as a "terror agent".

Meanwhile, Turkey accuses Germany of not doing enough to deal with Kurdish militants and suspects from the failed coup who have taken refuge on its soil.
"You must go through that pain to show that you are a man," he told AFP outside the coastal village of Coffee Bay about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Umtata in Eastern Cape province.

"We don't even think of (getting) a medical circumcision because it is the easy way out. We laugh at those who go to hospitals."

Maqegu is one of thousands of youths from the Xhosa ethnic group attending this year's annual winter initiation schools across Eastern Cape province.

After his foreskin is cut off by a tribal elder using a knife, he is kept in the small thatched rondavel hut with two other initiates for up to four weeks, with a "bush doctor" present at all times monitoring their wounds.

The initiates are allowed no contact with women, and spend their time playing cards, applying mud and stoking the smoky fire to try to keep warm.

"If you go to hospital you are weak, you are not a man. Your wound must not be treated with Betadine (disinfectant)," Maqegu said.

"There is special traditional medicine for that and it heals fast."

Secretive ceremony

He revealed tree leaves tied like a bandage around his genitals, which are also covered in a traditional healing ointment and held to one side by string.

The ritual is revered and guarded by the Xhosa people, but the unhygienic conditions -- and abuse by some initiation schools -- exacts a heavy toll.

At least 11 youths have already died during this southern hemisphere winter in Eastern Cape, according to provincial officials, while the government says several hundred have died nationwide in initiation schools since 1995.

Often the cause is infection from a botched circumcision, which can lead to penis amputation surgery.

Circumcision has also been demonstrated to be a powerful weapon in the fight against HIV, by helping to protect men from the AIDS virus.

But specialists -- meeting in Paris from Sunday for a four-day forum on HIV/AIDS -- remain worried about botched operations and poor hygiene.

Other risks include dehydration or maltreatment by initiation leaders, who conduct the secretive circumcision rituals deep in the mountains.

'Recognised as a man'

In another grass-thatched hut, 200 metres away, sitting on a reed mat, is 20-year-old Fezikhaya Tselane, who has just returned from his circumcision rites in the remote bush.

As he nurses the sore wound, his bush doctor sits close by, surrounded by dirty pots, plates and empty beer bottles strewn over the floor.

"I have been waiting for this day. All my brothers have gone through this process," Tselane told AFP, entirely covered in white mud, which is meant to ward off evil spirits as well as preserve body warmth.

"In our Xhosa culture, if you don't go through traditional circumcision you are not recognised as a man.

"Now I can marry, have my own house and kids and not depend on my parents."

Mxolisi Dimaza, chairman of the Eastern Cape provincial health committee, said authorities were determined to curb injuries and deaths in the initiation schools.

"This year a considerable amount of resources were made available so that we do not experience many more deaths," he told AFP after his recent field visit to several initiation sites.

"However, there are still problem areas where we have illegal initiation schools. These are where the school itself is not registered and the initiates are often below 18 years old."

The province has hired 35 4x4 vehicles to patrol initiation practices in a region of steep hills, dirt roads and rough tracks.

It has also passed a law setting out a minimum age of 18, and establishing a registry of accredited bush doctors and schools. From the age of 16, boys can be circumcised with their parents' permission.

Medical risks

Dimaza appealed for any initiates suffering from infections or ill-health to go immediately to hospital, adding that parents should not feel social pressure for their children to have traditional circumcisions.

"It is our culture -- but if the parents want their child to have it medically, we don't object," he said.

The tradition has become tainted in recent years by commercialisation, with some bush doctors charging large amounts of money, while some initiates have been found to be as young as 13.

jpegMpeg4-1280x720Initiation ceremonies have also spread to other provinces such as KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga, boosted in part by UN-backed information that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually-acquired HIV infection by 60 percent.

For one bush doctor, proper care should mean that initiates are able to experience the ritual in a safe and deeply spiritual manner.

"You have to be careful and take good care, otherwise the wound gets sceptic," said Lukholo Marhenene, 21, who has been nursing initiates for three years.

"You must change the leaves often and keep the wound clean and dry.

"During the month I will be attending to him, he stays in the hut. Only his father and other boys who have already gone through initiation are allowed to visit.
That puts her at the forefront of the perilous struggle against the spread of infections as more than three years of conflict and rebel rule have hit vital treatment programmes.

"Everything has worsened," Gurova, from the All-Ukrainian Public Health Association, a charitable organisation, told AFP.

Getting supplies such as condoms, lubricants and hygienic wipes into rebel-held territory remains a constant challenge as they run the gauntlet of checkpoints to cross the tightly guarded frontline.

While Gurova still manages to keep these programmes going, substitute treatments for drug addicts including methadone have stopped entirely.

This has seen users who were being weaned away from injecting themselves turn to dangerous local alternatives -- and bolstered the threat of the spread of diseases.

"There are more cases of HIV infections among users and it is very difficult to make contact with them," Gurova said.

Alongside this problem, activists say there has been a rise in the number of sex workers in the grey zone along the frontline.

Battle for survival

Prior to the start of the conflict in April 2014, ex-Soviet Ukraine -- especially in its eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk -- was already battling one of the most severe HIV epidemics in Eastern Europe.

But thanks to progressive policies the country was making progress and had managed to reduce the rate of HIV infections, most dramatically among young drug users.

After the war flared up in 2014, experts soon warned that the conflict risked jeopardising any gains that had been made.

As Kiev lost control over Donetsk and Lugansk, health services and key treatments for infections were hit.

In 2015, international actors managed to stave off an imminent crisis by negotiating with Kiev and the rebels to keep supplying antiretroviral drugs to thousands of HIV positive people in the separatist territories.

Emergency funds were provided and the United Nations now estimates that about 10,000 adults and children with HIV in rebel-held areas are receiving the drugs.

Prevention hit

But while negotiations have been successful in getting the most urgent treatments through for now, in terms of prevention the situation still looks dire.

Doctor Igor Pirogov, who works at a hospital treating drug users in rebel capital Donetsk, said that the war has seriously disrupted attempts to curb addiction.

"Most of our patients put on a uniform, got a weapon and went off to fight" for the insurgents, Pirogov said.

"Many even said openly that they were using more drugs during the war than when it was peaceful."

The internationally approved opioid replacement treatments that had become the norm in Ukraine have ended.

Due to security restrictions the Ukrainian authorities say they are unable to deliver substitute drugs across the frontline.

For their part the rebels seem to have followed in the footsteps of their backers in Russia -- where methadone is banned -- and turned the clock back on progressive treatments.

Activist Gurova said that about 900 patients had lost access to the methadone programme, leading many to turn instead to dangerous local alternatives.

At the same time she said more women around the conflict zone have turned to prostitution -- also putting them at greater risk.

"There are no jobs, no work, no earnings -- this is the only option for them -- so it all leads to an increase in the number of sex workers," she explained.

Problem for Ukraine

As it has waged war against the insurgents on the battlefield, the government in Kiev has shown a tendency to disown the health crisis in rebel regions.

While the situation in areas under insurgent control has deteriorated, the rest of the country has continued to make headway tackling HIV as authorities have pushed on with the policies that were yielding results.

"The decline in the rates of HIV epidemic growth is encouraging", Pavlo Skala from the Alliance for Public Health told AFP.

But experts warn that any improvements being made risk being undermined by a uptick of infections in Ukraine's rebel-held regions and that Kiev cannot turn a blind eye to the problems happening across the frontline.

"Soldiers stand on the demarcation line between the two territories and they can control the border," Skala said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced what he called "excessive use of force" by the Israeli security forces in the clashes over the Haram al-Sharif compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The site in Jerusalem's Old City that includes the revered Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock has been a focal point for Palestinians.

In 2000, then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the compound helped ignite the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which lasted more than four years.

Tensions have risen throughout the past week because of new Israeli security measures at the compound following an attack nearby that killed two policemen on July 14.

The measures have included the installation of metal detectors at entrances to the site, which Palestinians reject since they view the move as Israel asserting further control over it.

Erdogan, who said he was speaking in his capacity as the current chairman of the summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, called the restrictions "unacceptable".

"I urge the international community to immediately take action to remove practices that restrict freedom of worship at Haram al-Sharif," he said.

Israeli authorities say the July 14 attackers smuggled guns into the holy site and emerged from it to shoot the policemen.

Friday's main weekly Muslim prayers -- which typically draw thousands to Al-Aqsa -- brought the situation to a boil.

In anticipation of protests, Israel barred men under 50 from entering the Old City for prayers, stoking further Palestinian anger.

Clashes broke out between Israeli security forces and Palestinians around the Old City, in other parts of annexed east Jerusalem, in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas freezes contacts

Three Palestinians between the ages of 17 and 20 were shot dead. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported 450 people wounded in Jerusalem and the West Bank, including 170 from live or rubber bullets.

In the evening, a Palestinian broke into a home in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank during a Sabbath dinner and stabbed four Israelis, killing three of them.

The 19-year-old Palestinian was shot by a neighbour, an off-duty soldier, and was taken to hospital.

The Israeli army said he had spoken of the Jerusalem holy site and of dying as a martyr in a Facebook post.

The Israelis killed in Neve Tsuf, north of Ramallah and also known as Halamish, were a grandfather and two of his children, an Israeli military official said. The grandmother was wounded.

Israeli soldiers raided the Palestinian's nearby village of Kobar overnight and arrested his brother, an army spokeswoman said.

Preparations were also being made to demolish the attacker's home, a measure Israel regularly employs because it views it as a deterrent, although human rights groups say it amounts to collective punishment.

Amid mounting pressure to respond to the dispute over the mosque compound, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas announced late Friday he was freezing contacts with Israel.

There was no immediate public reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

'For all Muslims'

"Violence is likely to worsen absent a major policy shift," said Ofer Zalzberg, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

"Netanyahu's mistake was installing the metal detectors without a Muslim interlocutor. It is the coercive character more than the security measure itself that made this unacceptable for Palestinians."

On Saturday, entrances to Jerusalem's walled Old City were open, but heavy security was in place.

The metal detectors also remained at the entrance to the mosque compound.

"Al-Aqsa -- that's for the Muslims, not for the Jewish," said Mohammad Haroub, a 42-year-old souvenir shop owner.

Like hundreds of others, he prayed outside on Friday instead of passing through the metal detectors.

He added that it was not only an Israeli-Palestinian issue.

"Al-Aqsa is not for Palestinians. It is for all Muslims."

Sharon Kopel, a 46-year-old Israeli tour guide leading a group in the Old City, said he felt the metal detectors were unnecessary and politically motivated, but also criticised Palestinians for "lies" about Israel trying to take over Al-Aqsa.

"I don't think it's really effective anyway," he said of the new security measures. "But on the other hand... they brought guns into a holy place."

The Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It lies in east Jerusalem, seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.
But the silver-haired general was condemned to 27 years in prison on Wednesday for profiting from the trade, an extraordinarily rare conviction of a senior member of an army that dominates the kingdom.

The 61-year-old's downfall was hastened in 2015 after investigators uncovered secret jungle prisons in the south where traffickers starved and tortured migrants while holding them for ransom.

The discovery exposed Thailand's horrifying role in a criminal operation that shifted victims from Myanmar to Malaysia, and forced the ruling junta to launch a belated crackdown.

Police followed a money trail that lead straight to Manas, an army hardliner with a passion for bullfighting.

"He was involved in such an obvious way...at a time when the junta was really trying to show themselves to be clean," said Paul Chambers, an expert on Thailand's military.

"He is going down because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Money trail

Manas was first highlighted as a suspect in early 2015 after 98 famished Rohingya were found in trucks in Nakhon Si Thammarat, stopped by a random police checkpoint.

Provincial police -- aided by anti-trafficking NGO Freeland -- used the drivers' cell phones to trace their regular route.

The trail carved through Thailand's southern neck from coastal Ranong, where boatloads of migrants arrived from Myanmar, to malaria-infested camps near the Malaysian border, where they were held in appalling conditions.

Phone and e-banking records from the drivers led to key trafficker Sunan Saengthong, a Ranong politician and businessman who had deposited nearly $600,000 in accounts belonging to Manas.

In May 2015 police found more bank slips revealing that Sunan's nephew had also transferred huge sums to Manas, including some $400,000 in just over a month.

Sunan was jailed for 35 years in a separate trial but his nephew Nattaphat Saengthong and others remain at large.

Around the time of the money transfers, Manas served as a top commander of Thailand's southern security arm.

His job was to enforce its controversial "push-back" policy -- which meant turning around boats of stateless Rohingya who were trying to flee persecution in Myanmar.

But he used this position to do just the opposite, according to last week's verdict, which exposed a matrix of collusion between state officials and businessmen who profited from trafficking.

Witnesses said Manas instructed officers to force back a boat of 265 Rohingya in 2012 -- only to covertly re-route the ship to shore and truck the human cargo south to the jungle prisons.

Manas "had direct responsiblity in the push-back mission and must have been part of this human trafficking network, otherwise the Rohingya would not have been able to return to Thailand so quickly," the verdict read.

Southern 'Big Shot'

The trafficking operation flourished until the 2015 crackdown, with tens of thousands of victims funnelled through a trade worth an estimated $250 million dollars.

Many were lured from the Myanmar-Bangladesh border by brokers who promised jobs, while others were violently kidnapped and forced onto the boats.

The big money was made in Thailand, where jungle camp wardens phoned relatives of the weakest migrants and threatened to kill them if they didn't send more cash.

The young and strong were sold off as labour to Malaysian palm oil plantations or fishing boats, according to Freeland.

All the while, Manas' seemingly inexorable rise up the army ranks continued, with his command stretching over increasingly large chunks of the south.

Months before his arrest in 2015, he was promoted to Lt-General and given the sweeping role of "military advisor".

It wasn't the first time the hawkish officer had hurdled controversy.

He was linked to a 2004 raid on a mosque that left more than 30 Muslim rebels dead in Thailand's far south, one of the early sparks of an insurgency still burning today.

"He had a reputation for often going beyond the law," said Chambers, adding that he was known as a "big shot" in the region.

Manas was the only military man convicted in last week's trafficking trial, which saw more than 60 people sent to jail.

Rights groups welcomed the verdict but warned that many perpetrators remain at large.

"We know not everyone has been accounted for in this trial," said Amy Smith from Fortify Rights, which closely tracked the investigation.
The 23-year-old was seen with blood gushing from cuts on the left side of his face. He said later he had been hit by buckshot.

Far from his first run-in with authorities, as he protests against President Nicolas Maduro's government, Arteaga has become something of a demonstration icon.

"They are not going to frighten me," he said in a video he posted on Twitter. He is seen in a hospital bed with bandages on his face and swollen lips. "We are going to keep fighting."

Earlier this week, a new photograph appeared of him crying and holding a broken violin after military policeman snatched it by the strings.

Messages of support flooded social media and within hours he appeared in an online video playing a new violin donated by a well-wisher.

In another iconic incident, through clouds of tear gas, Arteaga wove calmly with his violin on his shoulder, playing the classic Venezuelan folk song "Alma Llanera."

Immortalized in photographs from that performance during a demonstration on May 8, he said he meant it as a "message of peace."

Three days earlier, he had played at the funeral of a fellow musician killed during the protests, who like Arteaga had trained in an orchestra for poor children.
"No one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," said Erdogan at Istanbul airport before leaving on the two-day trip.

He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying it had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran. Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

Over the last years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has sped up the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

'Saudi, Gulf's elder statesman'

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan is also due to hold talks with Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

The Qatari emir said Friday he was ready for talks to resolve the crisis so long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.

His call received a cold reception from the UAE's state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, who said he hoped the emir had pledged to reconsider Qatar's position.

"Dialogue is necessary, but it should be based on a revision" of Qatar's stance, he tweeted.

Erdogan is likely to get a warm welcome in Doha where Turkey has been loudly applauded for sending in food, including fruit, dairy and poultry products by ship and by plane to help Doha beat an embargo.

Turkey has also benefited, with its exports to Qatar doubling in the last month to over $50 million. According to the economy ministry, Ankara has sent around 200 cargo planes filled with aid since the crisis began.

Erdogan's tour concides with a visit to Kuwait by the EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, who held talks Sunday with Kuwaiti officials.
ILLINOIS CITY  Four cabins and 53 new RV campsites are proposed at Loud Thunder Forest Preserve.

Kai Swanson, president of the Rock Island County Forest Preserve Commission, said its executive committee will vote Aug. 8 on borrowing up to $4.9 million  about $1.9 million to repair the dam and spillway on Loud Thunder's Lake George and about $2.9 million for upgrades to the Deer Haven and Horse Corral campgrounds.

The camping upgrades are part of a report prepared for the forest preserve by Strand Associates. Mr. Swanson credited Forest Preserve District director Jeff Craver with the idea of expanding camping facilities to generate revenue the district could use to pay for repairs needed on the dam and spillway.

"Mr. Craver has been able to find revenue sources that will offset the debt," Mr Swanson said. "One way to do that is to add new amenities at Loud Thunder.

"We think the cabins, along with the pull-through sites, will pay for themselves," Mr. Swanson said. "By doing this, we are creating a revenue source for the next 10 to 20 years."

Mr. Craver said all of the plans are preliminary and, if the committee decides to issue bonds, nothing will happen until September.

"We're excited about doing this, but it's conceptual at this point," he said. "All we've done is conduct a study.

"It's the first time Loud Thunder has had a campground built in 25 years," Mr. Craver said. "The spillway won't provide us any offset on revenue, but the campgrounds would help us offset the annual funding needed to pay the bonds."

At 1,621 acres, Loud Thunder is the largest of the five forest preserves in Rock Island County. It has 21 miles of trails, and its 167-acre man-made lake, Lake George, is stocked with fish and offers canoe and kayak rentals.

Located at 19406 Loud Thunder Road in Illinois City, the park currently has five camping areas with 117 campsites:

 Riverview: 30 primitive (non-electric) campsites along the Mississippi River with boat ramp access, a picnic area, a bathroom and shower building and hiking trails.

 Silva: 19 primitive campsites along Lake George with water access, a playground, a picnic area, a pavilion and flush toilets.

 Indian Meadows: 22 primitive campsites along the west shore of Lake George with water access and a bathroom and shower building.

 White Oak: 25 RV campsites with electricity along the west shore of Lake George with water hookups and a bathroom and shower building.

 Horse Corral: 12 primitive campsites along the west shore of Lake George, including nine equestrian only campsites, with a horse corral, a dump station, horse trailer parking, flush toilets, water access and a picnic area.

The Strand Associates report proposes 53 new RV campsites on 5.5 acres west of the Deer Haven restroom building. Plans call for 35 pull-through sites and 18 back-in camp sites. All camp sites would have 50-amp electric hookups and measure 30 feet wide and 89 feet long to accommodate campers with tow vehicles.

Plans for the Horse Corral area include at least six back-in campsites, with water and electric hookups, measuring 50-by-80 feet to allow room for horse trailers. Electric and water hookups also would be added to 22 existing primitive campsites. Plans also include a horse wash pad with yard hydrant and hitching post.

The proposed improvements also include four individual rental cabins built in the Deer Haven campground around an existing picnic area loop.

The cabins  14-by-52 feet for a total of 728 square feet of space  would have indoor bathrooms, two bedrooms and able to sleep up to six people each. Each would have its own path to Lake George and dock.

"Each cabin will be next to the other in a row, so you won't be able to see your neighbor," Mr. Swanson said.

Mr. Craver said the new cabins would make camping accessible to more people.

"The word 'glamping' can be used," he said. "A lot of people want to get outside in nature, but don't want to leave the comforts of home."

The Strand Associates report estimated that adding the cabins and upgrading the Deer Haven and Horse Corral campsites would generate $73,500 in gross revenue per year. Mr. Swanson said the current RV sites maintain at least 40 percent occupancy.

The campsite additions are designed to help pay for repairs at the dam, which Mr. Swanson said would collapse without improvements.

"Eighteen years ago we received an engineering report that it's failing," he said. "Nothing has been done about it. It's only deteriorating more."

Mr. Craver said the dam, formerly categorized as a Class 3 dam, is now considered a Class 1 high hazard dam. Upgrades to the dam and spillway have been mandated by the state, he said.

"There was no campground below when the dam was constructed," Mr. Craver said. "The Illinois DNR (Department of Natural Resources) found out we had a campground below and people were spending the night. So they concluded there could be loss of life if there was a spill."

Mr. Craver said the forest preserve must install a dewatering tube for overflow in case of a significant rain event. A wave wall also must be constructed and rip rap put in.

"We've had 40 years of wave action and natural deterioration," he said. "It's been recommended by the engineer for some time."

Mr. Craver said he expects the campsite upgrades and repairs to the dam and spillway will increase visitors to Loud Thunder.

"It's very exciting for myself, my staff and my many frequent campers," he said. "They'll be able to use the upgraded amenities. It will hopefully become more of a regional destination."
MOLINE -- Amid the explosion of internet sales, a Wisconsin man is bringing part of the past to the Quad-Cities.

Count Fuller, 65, of West Allis, Wis., embodies the iconic Fuller Brush Man with his jovial nature and touch of eccentricity.

I'm pushing personal contact," he said. "It still has a relevancy in today's world.

Fuller brushes have garnered quite a reputation over the last century, he said.

Mr. Fuller said he has been doing door-to-door sales for more than 44 years. He fully committed himself to the Fuller Brush brand in 1982 and changed his name. He said his prescription butterfly-framed glasses are just a small taste of the Count Fuller of old.

I threw costumes in to make it spicy, and I patterned them in the 1980s after Liberace, he said. The technique turns heads and makes him memorable, Mr. Fuller said, which is all part of his plan.

When I die, everyone in Wisconsin and Illinois is going to know, he said.

Now in its 110th year, the Fuller Brush Co. is an American brand of cleaning products that once was as recognizable as Apple and Walmart are today.

Mr. Fuller said nostalgia is his greatest weapon. His first question to everyone he meets is: "Do you know what Fuller brushes are?" He says his query is either met by a blank stare or a face that lights up and excitedly spills cherished memory in story form.

His Quad-Cities quest for sales ironically started July 11 -- Amazon Prime Day when the massive online marketer filled the internet with deals. But Mr. Fuller found getting a peddler's permit in Moline would take more than a point and click.

His first stop was at Moline City Hall, where he was directed to the finance office at the fire station. There, he was pointed to the police department for a background check, followed by a return to the finance office to learn his permit request would take a few days.

Door-to-door sales is not for the faint of heart, he said after a few hours of working through the process. But his heart isn't faint as he proved during the process by constantly connecting with people he met and dropping a catalog in the Moline Fire Department.

A week later, with his new permit freshly in hand, Mr. Fuller headed out on his Quad-Cities sales trail. His first stop was an independent 40-year barber on Avenue of the Cities. It also was his first taste of rejection.

His second stop -- at Rayz Barber Shop, 3002 Avenue of the Cities, Moline -- proved more positive, starting with a coincidental run-in with a former Fuller Brush Man sitting in the barber chair getting a high-faded flat top.

The barber tested a rubber-bristled broom designed to sweep up piles of hair with ease and liked what she saw.

How many would you like -- two? Mr. Fuller boldly up-sold her, before walking out of Rayz with a fist full of cash and two less brooms to carry home.

I'm the only one doing this in Illinois, he said. No one wants to do this because they're afraid.

"But door-to-door sales teaches people about rejection," he said. "And person-to-person relationships can never be replaced.

For more details, contact Mr. Fuller at 414-870-5740.
A farewell to arms

Choosing the title of a famous American fiction for this short essay has metaphorical significance.
Across the hills and far away

Kumal was merely fifteen when he was accosted one afternoon by his elder brother, who told him that a family in Kathmandu required his services.
Property details:

INVEST IN THE WEST! We are constantly adding to our inventory of quality, cheap vacant land in the Western U.S. We take pride in offering you properties priced well under the competition. We offer prompt, professional and friendly customer service, easy and flexible payment terms, and we never charge you any processing fees or interest. It's time to invest in the west! You're bidding on the down payment for 1.07 acres of land in Sunsites (Cochise County), Arizona. $75 down and $100/month for 20 ...

Price: $ 75 Seller State of Residence: North Carolina Type: Homesite, Lot Zoning: Residential State/Province: Arizona City: Sunsites (Pearce) Property Address: York St Location: 270**, Clemmons, North Carolina

You will be redirected to eBay



Nearby York St
Property details:

Incredible 5 acre Ranch or Farm property in San Luis ValleyTHIS PROPERTY IS GOING FAST Please read and understand this entire add before making a bid:If you have any questions please call or text BEFORE biddingYou are bidding on the down payment only for this parcel. The winning bid accepts the terms in this add. The cash price for the land is $3,959. An additional $200 documentation fee is required. Property Description Own this beautiful piece of land in Costilla County, Colorado. Low, low tax...

Price: $ 100 State/Province: Colorado Seller State of Residence: Indiana Property Address: San Luis, CO 81152, United States Zip/Postal Code: 81152 Zoning: Rural City: San Luis Type: Tiny home, Mobile Home, or RV Location: 811**, San Luis, Colorado

You will be redirected to eBay



Nearby Tiny home, Mobile Home, or RV
Property details:

Two houses are allowed to be build on this large lot...(please check for permits with the city). Great lot in the wonderful city of Hesperia located close to schools freeway and shopping centers. Prime location!!!! This flat level lot is located in a developed area and new construction is very close by. The adjacent lot is for sale as well by the same owner. This property is a very good opportunity for a developer or an investor or anyone who would like to build their dream home. Must Sell!........

Price: $ 52,000 Seller State of Residence: California State/Province: California City: Hesperia Type: Land/lot Property Address: Pinon Zip/Postal Code: 92345 Zoning: Residential Location: D******, Cypress, California

You will be redirected to eBay



Nearby Residential
,



We're sorry, this article is not currently available
Carter Center renews call for poll observation

The Carter Center, which monitors elections globally, has approached the Election Commission Nepal for possible observation of the upcoming polls.
The Congress in Kerala on Sunday suspended its MLA M Vincent from the party post after he was arrested for allegedly raping and stalking a woman, though it defended him saying "the case and his arrest is politically motivated."

"Though the rape charges and the arrest was part of a political conspiracy, considering the complaint of the woman, the Congress has decided to suspend Vincent from the party secretary post, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president M M Hassan told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

He would stand divested of the party post till his innocence in the case is proved, Hassan said, adding, Vincent has told the party that he was confident that he would be able to prove his innocence in the court.

The Congress rejected the demand of the ruling Communist Party of India Marxist-led Left Democratic Front for the resignation of Vincent and said there was no need for it now.

"Party will take a call on that after he is declared guilty by the court," he said.

Terming the arrest as an unusual step, Hassan wanted the police to probe the conspiracy angle to the whole episode.

"The charges against the MLA were converted into rape following political pressure exerted by local CPI-M MLA K Ansalan and some of its local leaders," Hassan alleged.

Hassan also mentioned about media reports on statement of the victim's sister that "it is a case of political conspiracy and the victim is suffering from mental problem."

Stating that the case and further steps against Vincent was taken in a haste, Hassan said the CPIM-led LDF government had not taken any action against its worker in Vadakancherry and NCP MLA A K Saseendhran who were facing sexual harassment complaint by women.

Meanwhile, the CPI-M rubbished the Congress charges that political conspiracy was behind the arrest of Vincent and said the government initiated steps as per the law.

CPI-M State Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the MLA was charged and arrested on the basis of the deposition of the victim, which was very important in such cases.

"I failed to understand the logic behind the Congress party's charge that the case is part of political conspiracy," he said.

The LDF government is committed to protect women from any atrocity and would take stern action against persons who indulge in crime against women, he said.

Vincent, representing Kovalam segment in the assembly, was arrested on Saturday on charges of rape and abatement of suicide under respectively under sections 376 and 306 of the Indian Penal Code.

A Neyyatinkara magisterial court sent him to judicial custody yesterday for 14 days.

The incident came to light on July 19 after the 51-year-old woman attempted to commit suicide by consuming an overdose of sleeping pills and her husband filed a police complaint against the MLA, alleging that he used to repeatedly call her over the phone and harasser her.

The police had said that the MLA had made more than 900 calls to the woman in the past few months.

The police had questioned Vincent for over three hours at the MLA's Thiruvananthapuram hostel on Saturday after which he was arrested.

Photograph: PTI Photo
A 65-year-old Pakistan national has been arrested on charges including of drug-peddling, police said on Sunday.

The arrest comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Rameswaram in the district to inaugurate a memorial for former president late APJ Abdul Kalam on July 27.

Mohammed Yunus, from Karachi, was arrested from a lodge in Ervadi, they said. Ervadi is famous for its centuries-old dargah in Ramanathapuram district.

When he was arrested on Saturday, he neither had a passport nor a visa. He was carrying Pakistani Rupees 2,500 and Rs 3,000 in Indian currency, the police said.

During interrogation, it came to light that he had come to Tamil Nadu illegally by a boat from Sri Lanka.

After travelling to several places, including Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu allegedly in search of a contraband substance, he had come to Ervadi, Q branch district police, which deals with national security, said.

Two others from Ervadi, who had allegedly promised to get him the drug, have also been arrested, they said.

The Pakistani national was produced before a magistrate at his residence in Paramakudi and was remanded to judicial custody.

He is being taken to the Puzhal Central Prison in Chennai, which has a separate cell to house foreigners.

IMAGE: Police take away a Pakistani national, in green trousers, who along with two Indians was arrested in Rameswaram for travelling without valid documents. Photograph: PTI Photo
President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday cautioned the government against using the ordinance route to bring in a law, saying it should be used only in a compelling situation and not taken recourse to in monetary matters.

IMAGE: President Pranab Mukherjee gestures during his farewell ceremony in the Central Hall of Parliament in New Delhi on Sunday. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

At a farewell function in Parliament, he also told the opposition not to disrupt proceedings in the two Houses as it took away from it the opportunity to raise people's concerns.

"I am of the firm opinion that the ordinance route should be used only in compelling circumstances and there should be no recourse to ordinances on monetary matters," he said.

The hour-long function was attended by Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former prime ministers Manmohan Singh and H D Deve Gowda, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, Union ministers, besides political leaders and MPs.

Mukherjee said the ordinance route should not be taken on matters which are being considered or have been introduced in Parliament or pending before a House committee.

IMAGE: President Mukherjee with Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar proceeds to Centra Hall. Photograph: Atul Yadav/PTI Photo

"If a matter is deemed urgent, the committee concerned should be made aware of the situation and should be mandated to present its report within a stipulated time," he said.

The president's remarks bear significance as after repeatedly failing to amend the Enemy Property Act, 1968 in last three years, the Modi government had promulgated five ordinances. The Bill was passed by Parliament in March.

Senior Union ministers were reportedly deputed to convince the president to sign the fourth and fifth enemy property ordinances as he was against promulgating them.

Mukherjee said he was "greatly benefited" from the advice and cooperation extended Modi at "every step".

"With passion and energy, he (Modi) is driving transformational changes in the country. I will carry with fond memories of our association and his warm and courteous behaviour," he said.

IMAGE: President Pranab Mukherjee is garlanded as Parliament bids farewell to him. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

The outgoing president, who will demit office on Tuesday, said he was "mentored" by late prime minister Indira Gandhi whose "steely determination, clarity of thought and decisive action made her a towering personality".

He said she never hesitated to call a spade a spade.

Mukherjee recalled during a visit to London with Gandhi after the Emergency, she had told journalists, "In those 21 months, we comprehensively managed to alienate all sections of Indian people."

Recalling his days as a member Parliament which he entered in 1969 as Rajya Sabha member, Mukherjee said by listening to stalwart in the Treasury and opposition benches, he understood the real value of debate, discussion and dissent.

IMAGE: Mukherjee is presented a scroll by the speaker on behalf of all the MPs. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

"I realised how disruption hurts the opposition more than the government as it denies it the opportunity to raise the concerns of the people," he said.

Mahajan said Mukherjee is respected for his impeccable knowledge of constitutional and parliamentary rules and procedures and exemplary memory of events and precedents.

"You have been a 'guru' from whom generations of parliamentarians have received lessons on the operational dynamics of our parliamentary polity," she said.

IMAGE: Mukherjee was also presented a coffee-table book by Ansari and Mahajan. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

Mahajan said the president's admirable administrative acumen and efficiency have played pivotal roles in shaping appropriate responses to various momentous events and challenges before the nation at large.

Lauding Mukherjee contributions, Rajya Sabha Chairman Ansari said his views and pronouncements on issues of national and international importance have enhanced the stature of the high offices held by him.

IMAGE: Mukherjee gestures after his speech during his farewell ceremony. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

"From the highest pedestal, he has, on several occasions, urged citizens to rededicate themselves to the cause of upholding the democratic values.

"He has spoken with conviction about India's pluralism and diversity being her greatest strength and the need to constantly nurture and protect them," he said.

IMAGE: Former Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and HD Devegowda, BJP veteran LK Advani and Congress President Sonia Gandhi during the farewell ceremony of the outgoing President. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

Ansari recalled that at a farewell dinner for governors and lieutenant governors last week, Mukherjee had spoken about the constitutional design by which "there cannot be two functional executive authorities in a state" and the governor's role, therefore, is "mainly confined to giving advice to the chief minister".

"He (Mukherjee) added that in certain situations, the governor has no discretion but to accept the verdict of the floor test," the vice president said.

IMAGE: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad at the ceremony. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

Mukherjee was presented a coffee-table book by the Speaker on behalf of the MPs.

Later, Mukherjee attended a high-tea in Parliament House.
Raking up a controversy, Aurangabad District Magistrate Kanwal Tanuj has said that those who cannot build a toilet for their wives, should sell them.

He was addressing a public gathering on Saturday on a cleanliness drive in Jamhore village of Bihar's Aurangabad district.

"Due to lack of toilets, women get raped and harassed. It only costs Rs. 12,000 for the construction of the toilet. Is 12,000 more than anyone's wife's dignity? Who can let her wife get raped in return of Rs. 12000?" Tanuj said.

"If this is your mentality then go and sell your wife. Those who cannot build toilet should sell or auction his wife," he added.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday said he was more anxious than anyone else to know the truth behind his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death.

He also said he would cooperate only with the probe agencies in investigation of the case and not with publicity seekers.

"No one in this country can be more anxious than me to know the truth and to see a constructive and clear conclusion to this prolonged investigation," Tharoor told reporters in Bengaluru.

"My responsibility is to cooperate with the authorities and not with obstreperous, self-interested, publicity-seeking people ... I'm not going to cooperate with such people," the former Union minister said.

Tharoor was speaking on the sidelines of a three-day international conference on Dr B R Ambedkar.

Tharoor's stepson Shiv Menon had on Saturday moved the Delhi high court opposing Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy's plea for a court-monitored CBI-led SIT probe into the death of Sunanda Pushkar.

The counsel for Menon, late Pushkar's son from her earlier marriage, has filed an application on his behalf in a pending plea filed by Swamy seeking probe in the death of Sunanda, on the ground that the BJP leader has no locus standi in the issue.

Swamy, in his plea file through advocate Ishkaran Singh Bhandari, has alleged "inordinate delay" in the investigation, claiming that many of the evidence in the case have been destroyed, and accused Tharoor was influencing investigation in the matter.

Sunanda Pushkar was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a suite of a five-star hotel in south Delhi on the night of January 17, 2014.
CPN (MC) for directly elected executive chief: Dahal

CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has said that the party will work towards garnering peoples support for the directly elected executive chief system.
Fake Nepali currency racket busted

Police on Sunday arrested two persons in possession of Rs 174,000 counterfeit Nepali currency and made public amid a press conference at the District Police Office, Morang, today itself.
Body cameras for the Mooresville Police Department have arrived. Find out when they will be used.

Mooresville-Decatur
Indias West Bengal govt bans Nepali TV channel in Siliguri

In the wake of Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling hills of West Bengal, India, the state government in the wee hours of Sunday padlocked the office of the ABN, Indias first television channel to broadcast in Nepali language.
Locals in Bhojpur demand investigation

Locals organised a six-hour vehicular strike at Pyuali Bazaar in Arun Rural Municipality on Saturday, demanding an investigation into the mysterious death of three children in Arun Rural Municipality-3 of Bhojpur.
As the leaves changed colors in the crisp autumn air, a handful of Nelson County entrepreneurs talked about the unique offerings of their businesses, all while promoting Nelsons rural and tourism-based economy.

That was more than eight months ago in October, when a documentary crew visited the county to get footage of Blue Mountain Brewery, Virginia Distillery Co., Bold Rock Hard Cider and the site of the Lockn Festival. Now, after post-production, footage of the interviews with business owners and a quick look at some of Nelsons hot spots for tourism has been turned into a mini documentary for Behind the Scenes with James Earl Jones.

The Behind the Scenes program is produced for use by public television stations. The segment  which is about five minutes long and also was produced in a one-minute version  features a number of topics, such as health, education, travel and more.

The Behind the Scenes program Nelson businesses are featured in focuses solely on how rural economies like that of Nelson County survive and thrive.

Hosted by two-time Tony and three-time Emmy award-winner James Earl Jones, the program will air on public television stations in five markets: Raleigh, N.C.; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Virginia Beach; and Washington.

Were proud of Nelson County and its partners for spreading the good news about where we are, said Nelson County Economic Development Director Maureen Kelley.

Kelley was contacted by staff of the program in the summer of 2016, and she got to work recruiting businesses to participate, she said.

Bold Rock, Blue Mountain Brewery and Virginia Distillery highlight the countys burgeoning craft alcohol business, which draws visitors from outside the area.

The annual Lockn Festival is the countys largest event, drawing more than 20,000 people annually, about 70 percent of whom are from outside the area.

As part of the segment, Lockn co-founder Dave Frey talks about the rural beauty of Nelson County and the community of Arrington, where the festival takes place. And Nelson isnt too far from metropolitan areas, such as Richmond or Washington, he said.

Others, including those representing the county and Virginia Tourism Corp. CEO and President for Operations and Finance Rita McClenny, talked about Nelson being a great place to live, great place to work and a great place to play, citing the countys work to balance economic development with maintaining rural beauty.
NC CWC meet postponed for 2 pm

The Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting of the Nepali Congress has been postponed for 2pm today.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. The aircraft arrayed around the spacious lawn of Maxwell Air Force Base, home of the Air University, mostly represent long-retired types. The largest, however, is a glistening B-52 bomber, which represents a still-employed component of the Air Forces aging fleet: The youngest B-52 entered service in 1962. Sons have flown the same plane their fathers and grandfathers flew.

But then, the average age of all the Air Force aircraft is 27 years; fighters, more than 30 years; bombers and helicopters, more than 40 years; refueling tankers more than 50 years. Americas security challenges change much faster  think of the Soviet Unions demise and the Islamic States rise  than new technologies can be conceived, designed, approved, built and deployed. The F/A-18 and the F-16 were designed about 45 years ago.

On April 15, 1953, two U.S. soldiers in Korea were attacked and killed by a propeller-driven aircraft supporting Chinese and North Korean troops. Since then, no U.S. ground troops have been attacked by an enemy aircraft. Such has been the permissive environment guaranteed by U.S. air dominance, not since Vietnam has a U.S. pilot used his aircrafts bullets to down an enemy fighter plane (although air-to-air missiles downed enemy aircraft over the Balkans).

The Air Forces dominance in controlling the air and in supporting ground troops might have been what an F-16 pilot here calls a catastrophic success, distracting attention from the rapidly evolving challenge of multi-domain, combined-arms warfare on land, on and under the sea, in the air, and in space and cyberspace.

From Dec. 8, 1941, through August 5, 1945  the day before Hiroshima  there were no radical technological disjunctions during World War II. Aircraft, aircraft carriers, tanks and radar were pre-Pearl Harbor technologies. Future wars, however, will be won by information superiority that produces superior decisions. Which means that China gave a chilling glimpse of the future when in January 2007 it successfully launched an anti-satellite weapon.

Beginning with the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, air power has been the first, and sometimes the only, recourse of presidents. In 1991, six weeks of air attacks enabled U.S. ground forces to finish Iraqs army in 100 hours. In 1999, in three months of combat over Serbia and Kosovo, air power sufficed to enable diplomacy to attain the political objectives. In 1991, in the first night of the Gulf War air campaign, U.S. airpower struck more targets than the Eighth Air Force struck in Europe in all of 1942 and 1943.

These recent episodes may, however, be remembered not as harbingers of future conflicts but as punctuations ending an era. In this, its 70th year as an independent service, the Air Force, like the other branches of the military, but more than any other, is being required to rethink its mission in light of rapidly evolving threats and technologies.

The Air Force is in charge of two legs of the nuclear deterrence triad  strategic bombers and Minuteman ICBMs  but also has been delivering 70 percent of the bombs against ISIS. For decades, the Air Forces strategic role was defined by President Eisenhowers configuration of U.S. forces for long-range deterrence of the Soviet Union in order to reduce the need for massive forward-based forces.

In 2009, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who perhaps possesses broader knowledge and experience of national security matters than any American has ever had, said: If the Department of Defense cant figure out a way to defend the United States on a budget of more than half a trillion dollars a year, then our problems are much bigger than anything that can be cured by a few more ships and planes. Indeed, safety might come from buying fewer ships and planes, and more drones.

And developing hypersonic (more than five times the speed of sound) weapons that can strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour. And electromagnetic kinetic weapons (railguns) with muzzle velocities of 5,000 miles per hour, twice as fast as the muzzle velocity of a high-caliber bullet. Directed-energy laser-based weapons operating at the speed of light are about 134,000 times faster than railguns.

What Air Force people call fast movers  fighter planes, the fastest bombers  are mere plodders compared to weapons that are not far over the horizon. And compared to the pace of geo-strategic and technological changes that challenge even the fine Air Universitys capacity to comprehend them.
The United States has the worlds largest and most diverse economy, built and powered by the indomitable American entrepreneurial spirit. Why dont we have the worlds best, most economically competitive tax code?

The last meaningful reform to the IRS code was 31 years ago, but now there is the opportunity to pass real tax reform that encourages economic growth and creates more jobs and higher wages. We can accomplish this if we focus on allowing the free market to do what it does best  generate growth, create jobs, and increase prosperity for every American.

I witnessed this firsthand when I worked at the World Bank. We looked at the economies of developing nations like China and India. In these countries, the average annual per capita income back in the early 1990s was roughly $1,000, which was insufficient to cover even the most basic necessities. Today, that has risen to nearly $10,000, which allows over 2 billion people to meet their basic needs through the dignity of work.

This economic miracle was and is the largest welfare improvement in human history. Two countries shed top-down traditional, communist central-planning for the magic of markets and we are now close to feeding the entire world. It would be ludicrous to move in the opposite direction. Yet the temptation of elites, special interests, and cronies will always be to try to steal power from the people and return to patronage politics and government control.

***

Free markets are about more than just economics. Across the globe, countries with free-market economic systems not only see greater economic prosperity, but individual freedoms also begin to flourish  human rights, womens rights, and political rights. Freedom is infectious. Giving individuals  and the businesses they own  the freedom to spend and invest money the way they see fit spurs economic growth, prosperity, and happiness.

It is easy for politicians to grandstand about the special projects they believe the taxpayer should subsidize, but there is very little evidence that government spending generates lasting economic growth.

For example, the Obama stimulus was a misguided attempt to create economic growth by picking winners and losers, and then doling out taxpayer dollars to favored donors. That is how we ended up with disasters like the green-energy company Solyndra that left taxpayers liable for $535 million in loan guarantees after it went bankrupt.

In contrast, tax cuts have a broad impact that positively affects consumers, mom-and-pop businesses, and large employers. But most importantly, they empower people to make their own decisions on how to spend and invest their money, and that democratization of the economy leads to better outcomes and lasting productivity and economic growth.

***

Right now, the U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. This makes it difficult for us to compete globally and places an additional burden on working men and women.

When analyzing the effect of reducing the corporate tax rate, many fail to recognize who pays the taxes. Corporations do not ultimately pay most taxes, they simply collect them from individuals and forward that money to the government. It is the average American who actually pays corporate taxes, either through higher prices, forgone wage increases, or lower returns on their retirement plans and mutual funds that own stock in those corporations.

While progressives on the left make utopian demands for minimum-wage increases to bring individuals out of poverty, a recent study found Seattles move to a $15 minimum wage likely hurts low-wage workers, with costs outweighing benefits by a ratio of three-to-one.

As opposed to raising wages by dictum, lower corporate taxes enable firms to keep and invest more of their revenue in equipment and expansion. Those investments increase productivity and that leads to real sustainable wage increases. In the real world, the way to successfully promote wage growth is by increasing productivity.

History makes the case that letting people decide how to invest their money leads to broad-based economic growth.

In the 1920s, tax rates were dropped from 70 percent to 25 percent, yet federal revenues rose dramatically. During the 1960s, Democratic President John F. Kennedy saw the power of supply-side tax cuts and generated 5 percent economic growth. And the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s generated 4 percent economic growth that extended with lasting implications into the 1990s.

Tax reform is simply a common-sense policy Congress must pass. When we get people back into the labor force by lowering corporate and individual tax rates, the happiness and economic prosperity of our country will increase. I understand why frustration levels are high across both political parties, but we must get tax reform accomplished to grow the economy and to renew the American spirit.
Maggie Walker

continues to guide us

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

As a graduate of Maggie L. Walker High School (1961), I believe I speak on behalf of thousands of other graduates who were fortunate enough to attend such a distinguished public high school during a time of segregation, when public education was described as separate but equal.

Our teachers and counselors were not only educators, they were often surrogate parents. Our classes were challenging. Our classmates became lifelong friends. How could such excellence become a reality in a segregated school? Maggie L. Walker High School exuded excellence because the staff knew what Walker herself stood for. They knew her legacy, her contributions to her city and to the African-American community and  little did we realize at the time  to the entire nation.

Richmond will now be graced with the elegance by which Walker made her contributions. She dedicated her life to uplifting humanity through a focus on pride, education, thrift, and financial management.

She stressed the need to be involved in entrepreneurship (she founded an insurance company), the need to be involved in journalism (she founded a newspaper), and in retail enterprises. She was a social activist who in 1904 led a two-year boycott on segregated street cars. In 1909, Walker delivered a speech on race unity which could serve as a benchmark for any leader  political or otherwise. From 1910 through 1930, Walker remained active in the NAACP, the National Association of Colored Women, the Urban League, and the national Negro Business League.

Maggie Lena Walker was our own. The recent dedication ceremony was recognition of a most extraordinary human being. Richmond can be proud. Her vision and guidance will never be forgotten as she now reminds us from her position at Adams and Broad Streets that we should always Have faith, have hope, have courage and carry on.

John T. Fleming.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Chris Bayne recalled the days when car-obsessed teenage peers avoided cruising by Roanoke Cement because the plants environs could be dustier than the Oklahoma Panhandle in the 1930s.

Conditions improved along Catawba Road after Titan Cement acquired from Tarmac America a majority interest in the Botetourt County plant in 1992, said Bayne, the corporate energy manager at Titan America. Based in Greece, Titan Cement, the parent company of Titan America, became the plants sole owner in the fall of 2000.

Titan and Roanoke Cement have continued to work to lessen the sites environmental footprint by controlling dust, reducing emissions and focusing on saving energy during the gritty, heat-intensive manufacture of cement  a key component of concrete. The plant also initiated a host of measures in recent years to improve the stream-side habitat and water quality of Catawba Creek.

Recently, Roanoke Cement learned it had won from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency an 11th straight Energy Star award. The award recognizes companies for efforts to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Those efforts have included a deal with Ikea to use sawdust from the Swedish furniture companys Danville manufacturing plant as an alternative fuel to help fire Roanoke Cements kiln, for which the key fuel is coal. Temperatures inside cement kilns can reach about 3,200 degrees.

Regional environmental activist Diana Christopulos praised Roanoke Cements endeavors to run a sustainable, green operation. Christopulos is president of the Roanoke Valley Cool Cities Coalition and Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club and a member of the Roanoke Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Roanoke Cement has an enduring and successful commitment to reducing their energy consumption and their greenhouse gas emissions, and they continue to deliver on it, Christopulos said in an email.

They have been generous in helping other organizations, including local governments, in measuring their greenhouse gas emissions, she said. They have also been a great neighbor to the Appalachian Trail, providing the easement for the Andy Layne Trail that provides access to Tinker Cliffs.

A full evaluation by the state Department of Environmental Quality in August 2016 found Roanoke Cement in compliance with relevant state and federal regulations. Theres been no enforcement action taken against Roanoke Cement since 2006, when the company forgot to monitor for temperature and a few other measures in performing stack testing to demonstrate compliance with federal standards, according to DEQ.

Capturing heat

The Roanoke Cement plant, its adjacent quarry and the Catawba Creek agricultural property the company nurtured in recent years sprawl across about 2,500 acres. The facility typically produces about 3,000 tons of cement a day and employs 177 people. It was Botetourt Countys largest taxpayer in the fiscal year ended June 30, ranking ahead of Appalachian Power, which operates a major substation in Cloverdale; Dynax America; Metalsa; and New River Electrical.

It is Virginias only Portland cement plant, a reality that reflects Roanoke Cements proximity to the right type of limestone. Why is it called Portland cement? According to the Portland Cement Association, a British stone mason obtained in 1824 a patent for a cement he produced in his kitchen that he thought resembled a stone quarried on the Isle of Portland off the British coast.

The raw materials for cement-making at the Botetourt County plant include limestone from its quarry, sand from Craig County, flyash and synthetic gypsum from coal-fired power plants and slag from Steel Dynamics Roanoke Bar Division steel mill.

Lance Clark, Roanoke Cements environmental manager, said the plant has examined converting the primary fuel for its kiln from coal to natural gas, but that option is not yet economically viable.

Meanwhile, a heat-exchange tower captures heat from the kiln and re-directs it to pre-heat raw materials before they enter the kiln. The plants newest bag house is equipped with 2,600 bags that help filter particulate matter  a collective term for fine particles within dust, smoke, soot and other materials that can emerge from industrial processes. Material captured by the bags is cycled back into the cement-making process.

The manufacture of Portland cement also can yield nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Clark said Roanoke Cement monitors its emissions closely, minute by minute, and abides by guidelines set by the EPA and other regulators.

We know whats leaving that stack at all times, he said.

Chopping block?

President Donald Trumps proposed budget would eliminate the EPAs Energy Star program and several other voluntary partnership programs related to energy and climate change. The Energy Star program sets energy efficiency standards for electronics and appliances and houses and buildings.

Trumps budget suggests the program is outside the EPAs core mission and could be run by the private sector.

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, opposes the cut.

Energy Star is a voluntary label  essentially an FYI that a TV or dishwasher or air conditioner is energy-efficient  that helps people know which devices save energy, which can save them money in the long run, Kaine said in an email.

No one is required to buy Energy Star-certified appliances, but millions choose to, and its disappointing that President Trump wants to eliminate a program that saves Virginians money, benefits American companies like Roanoke Cement and is good for the environment, he said.

Roanoke Cement harvests neither tax breaks nor other financial rewards from the Energy Star designation. In fact, the company had to purchase its plaque from the EPA.

Yet Zaklina Stamboliska, a native of Macedonia who became manager of the Botetourt County plant two years ago, said Titan Cement values the recognition, which has become an annual event.

They told me, Whatever you do, dont lose it,  she said.

Bayne said participation in the Energy Star program has provided important access to industry mentors and information shared by other cement companies about best practices. He said yearly audits from the program assess the health of Roanoke Cements energy management program.

Clark and Stamboliska said messages from Titan Cement have been clear and consistent: The Roanoke Cement plant should remain focused on energy conservation and reduction of greenhouse gases no matter what direction debate about climate change takes in Washington, D.C.
Pilgrimage befouled

One of the most revered holy places in the world for the Hindus is the Pashupatinath temple, situated on the banks of the Bagmati river.
HANOI, Vietnam -- Hanoi teems with sidewalk life. Motorbikes beep as they zoom past, pushing you closer to the woman washing chickens on the sidewalk who's crouched in front of a cafe packed with people drinking egg coffees or local beer.

It's also a city where the crammed sidewalks will have you tripping over tiny blue chairs. The plastic seats are ubiquitous on streets where food is made on grills and carts and tops of buckets, just waiting for someone to plop down with a bowl of food from one of the myriad vendors.

For someone who would not self-describe as an adventurous eater, the prospect of street food was exhilarating and frightening. That's why we decided to start our trip with a guided street food tour, leaving it to an expert to pick the gastrointestinal-friendly places and explain the unfamiliar options.

We opted for the Hanoi Street Food Tour (hanoistreetfoodtour.com), a well-reviewed company that runs tours in the city's buzzing Old Quarter. We chose the three-hour Hanoi Street Food Tour By Walking at a cost of $20 a person. The company also offers morning and nightlife-focused tours.

If you want the full Hanoi experience, they also sell scooter tours. But after nearly being hit by these fast-moving motorized bikes on more than one occasion, we thought it wise not to imperil others (or ourselves) with our rookie driving.

The walking tour starts at the office at 74 Hang Bac St., where you can buy tickets. We recommend swinging by in person; we easily got tickets for that day, and going there ensured we were at the right place. In Hanoi, businesses sometimes copy another business's name, like a hotel or restaurant, and set up shop. Unsuspecting tourists can end up at the copy cat place instead of the real deal.

Standing back on a corner from the wave of scooters, our guide, Teddy, started by asking about food allergies. She checked to see if we were comfortable sharing our eats. To help us survive the manic traffic, she'd yell "sticky rice" as a cue for us to wade in together to stay out of harm's way.

We meandered to our first stop through an alley full of hanging lingerie for sale, typical for a city where shopping is organized by blocks with similar stock.

Arriving at Bun Cha Ta, Teddy explained that most restaurants are known by numbered addresses. Many are named solely by their dish -- like bun cha, a pork and noodle dish -- and locals remember that dish, and where to find it. In this case, locals would describe it as the place serving bun cha at 21 Nguyen Huu Huan St., as opposed to "Bun Cha Ta."

Climbing winding stairs, we arrived at a small room on the upper floor, where we dined on soup filled with fragrant barbecued pork. Our guide explained how to eat it -- add a chile or two, but "just leave it" for flavor, don't eat it -- and detailed the broth's mix of vinegar, honey and water.

It didn't take long for us to appreciate the challenge of a food tour with eight stops.

One thing missing from the night's menu? The Vietnamese rice noodle soup pho, which, in our tour guide's opinion, isn't the city's main delicacy.

"Tomorrow you can have pho, but not today," she told us.

In Vietnam, eating is a process. Small bowls accompany each meal so that diners can perfect the taste to their liking.

It's normal, Teddy said, to spend 10 minutes fiddling with add-on ingredients to get it exactly right.

Balance is key. Diners tweak their culinary concoction to get the ideal mix of sweet and sour, salty and spicy.

Next, we made our way to a place serving papaya and beef salad. A bit different from other papaya salads in the region, this one was light on spice and big on crunch thanks to the peanuts.

Not only did we get to learn about Vietnamese food and how to eat it; we also got to see how it's made. At the next stop, a woman preparing a steamed rice pancake called banh cuon waited patiently as our guide explained the process. Then, in front of our disbelieving eyes, she picked up a bamboo stick to effortlessly create an ethereal sheet from the batter.

Some in our group attempted the same. None succeeded.

Walking to the tiny room behind her, we sat at a table to eat the finished product, dipping it in fish sauce and vinegar with individually added garlic.

Here is where stomach-space rationing began. After just three stops, we were all stuffed. And next on the list? A plate with four different fried foods, including the sweet doughnuts that vendors sell on the street.

We diligently ate one of each. Our guide explained their provenance, along with tidbits on which people like certain foods. Her parents, for example, love crunchy fried spring rolls. But she and her friends consider that the food of an older generation.

Sensing our filling stomachs, Teddy started dishing out tips. The next place, we'd be eating crab noodle soup. The money, she said, was in the broth. Skip the noodles if need be.

For dessert we tried sticky rice and ice cream.

Flexibility was an asset for this food tour. When, for example, an American currently teaching in Bangkok mentioned how she loved black sticky rice and yogurt, our guide subbed that in. And when jackfruit came up, she asked a proprietor to slice some samples of the giant tree-borne treat.

Beer, of course, was also on tap. Our guide joked that the bia hoi, or draft beer, could be likened to water. Nonetheless, we tried some on a slim street filled with tiny tables and waiters proffering menus. Cups of beer in hand, we drank en route to our final stop for banh mi sandwiches.

We ate them with egg coffee, a local favorite. The whipped egg, Teddy explained, keeps the coffee underneath warm.

Stuffed with food, information and restaurant recommendations, I considered this a great crash course for understanding the nuances of local cuisine -- one that took trial and error out of the equation. People on a food tour can typically trust they'll be taken to stomach-friendly places. After all, happy tourists aren't sick tourists.

That said, if you accidentally swallow a chile after the guide's warning not to, that adventure's on you.
A board member and an employee of the Alleghany Humane Society have been charged with stealing a dog that was being held at the animal shelter.

After the dog was picked up as a stray and taken to the shelter in May, its owner complained that it was not returned to him, Alleghany County Commonwealths Attorney Ed Stein said.

Additional details were not available. Lt. Col. Matthew Bowser of the county sheriffs office, which investigated the case and filed charges last week, declined to comment, except to confirm that felony charges are pending against two people.

Waneta G. McKinney of Gap Mills, West Virginia, and Melissa S. Lawrence of Covington are charged with larceny of an animal and conspiracy to commit larceny, according to court records.

McKinney is a member of the humane societys board of directors and volunteers at the shelter; Lawrence is an employee there, director Trisha Deaton said. Deaton declined to comment further.

The humane society has a contract with Alleghany County to serve as the public shelter for stray and abandoned animals.

McKinney and Lawrence both have prominent attorneys. Virginia Sen. Creigh Deeds of Bath County, who represents Lawrence, declined to comment.

John Fishwick, a Roanoke lawyer and former U.S. attorney, represents McKinney. While he also declined to talk about the details of the case, Fishwick said in a written statement: We look forward to a public court proceeding where we will vigorously contest these allegations.

A preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 21 in Alleghany County General District Court.
A Crozet man who spent nearly 15 hours on the lam was recaptured Saturday morning after an Albemarle County resident spotted him in a Mill Creek neighborhood.

Matthew Michael Carver, 26  an inmate at Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail  was caught without incident just before 10 a.m. Saturday in the Mill Creek area of Albemarle County, according to police.

Carver was then taken to the University of Virginia Medical Center after complaining of minor injuries, and he is currently in the custody of the regional jail.

At about 7:20 p.m. Friday, Carver, shackled and handcuffed, kicked out the rear window of a Louisa County Sheriffs Office patrol car while being transported to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail after a court hearing on a probation violation charge.

Carver vanished in the area of Scottsville Road and Lyman Hills Drive. The deputy was not injured during Carvers escape.

Police from multiple agencies  including the Charlottesville Police Department, Albemarle County Police Department, Henry County Sheriffs Office, Louisa County Sheriffs Office and Virginia State Police  soon swarmed the area and set up a command center near Piedmont Virginia Community College. The search also was aided by a Virginia State Police helicopter, multiple bloodhounds and K-9 units and the Albemarle County SWAT team.

Authorities searched for Carver throughout the night. But police said it was an observant citizen who noticed a suspicious man matching Carvers description that eventually led to his recapture by an Albemarle County police officer, according to police spokeswoman Madeline Curott.

What were most thankful for are the citizens in the area, Curott said. They listened to us, they were looking out for each other, they were staying vigilant  and, ultimately, that is what led to the recapture of Matthew Carver.

By using the Code RED reverse 911 system in a two-mile radius on Friday night, Curott said police were able to get word out quickly and warn residents to stay indoors.

When Carver was finally captured, police said he was no longer wearing his black-and-white jail jumpsuit, but they would not say whether he was still shackled and handcuffed.

Police also are still investigating how he kicked out the window of the Louisa County cruiser.

Prior to his escape, a Louisa County sheriffs deputy was returning Carver to ACRJ after a probation violation hearing in Louisa County court related to a shoplifting charge, to which he pleaded guilty in 2015.

In June, Carver was arrested after he allegedly attempted to break into a Crozet house and stole a nearby Honda CR-V. Police eventually found Carver driving the CR-V, and he was arrested after he abandoned the vehicle.

Carver, who had been wanted on six unrelated felony warrants, is charged with nine felony counts in that case: Five counts of breaking and entering, two counts of abduction and two counts of theft of automobiles. He also faces two misdemeanor counts of destruction of property.

In addition to his previous charges, Carver now faces a felony charge of unlawful escape with force, as well as misdemeanor charges of fleeing from law enforcement; petit larceny, first offense; and vandalism or destruction of property.

Police said additional charges may be pending.
PM agri project raises farmers access to modern farm tools

Kiran Chaudhary, a farmer based in Kailali district in the far-western region of the country, no longer has to toil for up to three months every year just to plough six bighas (approximately 4 hectares) of her field.
WISE COUNTY  Tammy Duncan sported a toothless grin as she slid out of the dental chair minutes after an oral surgeon cut away portions of her jaw.

Numbing agents mitigated what could have been an immensely painful experience, but finally receiving direly needed dental care  in her case, surgery to accommodate the fitting of dentures  was the true source of her bliss.

She wrapped Dr. Gregory Zoghby in a tight hug and then did the same to his assistant.

Praise the Lord, Im going to get my teeth!

By the end of the day, Duncan, 52, would have a new, full set of pearly whites, and her boyfriend  who was elsewhere at the clinic being fitted for glasses  would see her clearly for the first time in a long while.

This was the scene on Friday from the Remote Area Medical clinic, an annual event that provides free medical, dental and vision services to some of the poorest residents in Southwest Virginia.

As the health care debate rages in the nations capital, patients and providers at the RAM Clinic are anxious for change. Most of them have a resounding demand for politicians in Washington, D.C.: Fix the nations health care system.

Located near the Virginia- Kentucky border, the clinic at the Wise County Fairgrounds attracts residents from a wide area. The clinic, the largest of the year, has 1,400 volunteers who serve thousands of people in one weekend.

At 5 a.m. Friday  the first day of the clinic  RAM founder and British philanthropist Stan Brock stood at the entrance of the clinic as volunteers prepared to let people through the gate.

Hundreds arrived at the fairgrounds in the dead of the night to secure a decent spot in line. They slept in their cars or pitched tents as they waited for the clinic gates to open. Before the sun crested the surrounding mountains, volunteers had given out all of the numbers for the day and began turning people away.

How many people are here for the dentist? Brock said. How many people are here to see the eye doctor?

In the sea of people tightly clustered around the entryway, many raised their hands in response to both questions.

For a lot of folks, the clinic is one-stop shopping  their only shot at receiving health care for the year.

Mr. Trump really needed to be here, Brock said. Theres been absolutely no change in the number of people that come to these events since the day I started it in the United States.

Brock founded RAM in 1985, and this weekends clinic marked the 869th such event. Although the majority of the free clinics are conducted in the U.S., Brock originally formulated the idea as a way to serve people in impoverished and developing nations.

Ninety-odd percent of what we do is here [in the U.S.] because of this, Brock said, gesturing to the clinic behind him. Lets fix it, and then we can start concentrating on these other places that we were formed to help.

Tonia Large, 61, and her granddaughter Isabella Mullins, 12, held coveted tickets Nos. 1 and 2 for Friday morning  a result of being in line early on the previous day.

Like 60 percent of the patients at the RAM clinic, Large and Mullins sought dental care. People in Southwest Virginia depend on RAM, Large said. Because of the clinics proximity to their home, Large and her family attend nearly every year.

Large, who doesnt have health insurance, criticized the Affordable Care Act as unaffordable.

I do know that with health care, unless people come up with something with premiums that people can afford, people are still going to be doing without, she said.

Its bad everywhere, but here with coal gone, very few jobs in this area, theres nothing really here. You dont have many opportunities to get a good job so you can afford to pay high premiums.

Like many of the residents in far Southwest Virginia, Large voted for President Donald Trump in November because he promised changes to the countrys costly health care system.

Shes still waiting for him to deliver.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act by whatever means necessary.

While the Affordable Care Act needs to be reformed, repealing the signature legislation of former President Barack Obamas administration is not an option, said Teresa Gardner Tyson, the executive director of The Health Wagon, who helped start the RAM Clinic in Wise County 18 years ago.

The Health Wagon is a Southwest Virginia mobile health provider and nonprofit organization . Some 98 percent of its patients are uninsured, and many show up with life-threatening conditions because they have put off health care , she said.

To be honest, I would be ashamed to be a politician in Washington right now, she said. To take insurance away from one person is really unconscionable.

In an attempt to show the need for more accessible health care in Virginia, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, invited U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to visit the RAM clinic with him Friday. McConnell represents Kentucky and has been leading Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He declined McAuliffes invitation.

McAuliffe, who has visited the clinic each year of his governorship, toured the facilities Friday with a large entourage that included Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring and Secretary of Health and Human Resources Bill Hazel. Behind the scenes, several state Republican and Democratic lawmakers volunteered at various stations throughout the clinic.

McAuliffes slow-moving group weaved through dental chairs and ophthalmic testing devices as the governor paused to shake hands, have his blood pressure tested and pose for a flurry of photos with attendees. At one point, a cluster of volunteers just out of his earshot speculated about McAuliffes presidential ambitions.

As the entourage passed by, Beth McLoughlin, a member of the Norton Lions Club, shouted, We do what Congress doesnt do. The RAM clinic volunteer in her ninth year elaborated that she meant RAM serves people. Congress doesnt.

During his tour, McAuliffe reiterated his call for Virginia to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which would provide coverage for 400,000 more Virginians. State Republicans have consistently blocked his efforts to do so .

Those 31 states who expanded, their health care is in much better shape, he said. But the lack of a legislature to give us the authority to go expand Medicaid has really impacted Virginia.

But expanding coverage isnt the same as expanding benefits. Although states must provide dental and vision care for children covered by Medicaid, some states do not extend coverage of those services  the same services many seek at the RAM clinic  to adults.

Republicans want everyone to have the ability to obtain affordable health care, Republican Party of Virginia Chairman John Whitbeck said in a statement.

Democrats want to throw more money at a system that just isnt working  a system that Obamacare is making worse, he said. Democrats want people to have health insurance. We want people to have health care.

As Republicans have failed to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, the health care law appears as though it will remain on the books, making it imperative to expand Medicaid during the next General Assembly session, McAuliffe said. The end of McAuliffes four-year term will coincide with the start of the 2018 General Assembly session.

McAuliffes visit left a bad taste in the mouth of Salem dentist, Steve Alouf. A founder of Benchmark Dentures, Alouf spent the weekend fitting patients with dentures, but said the politicization of the clinic takes away from everything positive the volunteers work toward all weekend.

People help people, he said. Politics dont help people.
Police start probe into Banepa deaths

The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police has initiated investigation into the deaths of four of a family in Banepa.
By Nathan Auldridge

Auldridge is a brain tumor survivor, who works as a support provider for individuals with disabilities. For background, he referred to The Healing of America by T.R. Reid as a source for studying how healthcare systems around the world differ. He is from Salem.

After surviving cancer 11 years ago, insurers charged me discriminatory prices to cover my preexisting conditions. After exhausting COBRA in 2013, all I could find was a six-month policy requiring me to pay $1,203 a month for my narcolepsy medicine until I met a $5,000 deductible. That year 55 percent of my small income as a support provider for people with disabilities on healthcare, leaving me with only $8,000 to live on.

Over the past four years with the Affordable Care Act, I have saved $35,000. My premiums are $400 less per month, and I pay just $10 each month for refills of that same monthly medication, even before I reach my $850 deductible. This years plan will cost me 8 percent of my income, allowing me to spend more to support local businesses.

The Senate bill appears to do more to protect patients than the House plan to replace the ACA with Ayn Rand- style social Darwinism. But it still contains devastating cuts to Medicaid, an essential program for disabled adults trying to live outside of institutions.

Because Medicaid costs less than for-profit insurance, the ACA provides funding for states to expand the program to cover low-income individuals and families. Phase 1 of the GOPs Reverse Robinhood scheme would go beyond repealing the expansion. The House and Senate bills cut roughly $800 billion by converting Medicaid into per capita block grants for states. This strategy undermines services for the disabled, those with mental health and substance abuse challenges, and older Americans who have out-lived their life savings. Rural hospitals and communities facing the opioid epidemic could be directly impacted by the inflexible nature of such grants to cover a states expanding needs.

Phase 2 directs YUGE tax cuts almost exclusively at the wealthy. The GOP bills repeal taxes that fund the ACA subsidies helping lower-income people purchase insurance. These tax cuts would not benefit the vast majority of Americans, but would save millionaires hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Senate bill seemed better than the House bill at preserving protections for preexisting conditions. Yet both allow states to grant waivers to insurers to offer plans that do not cover essential benefits, reinstate lifetime limits and apply annual caps on coverage. Policies for people like me with preexisting conditions would undoubtedly cost more and cover less.

Both versions repeal the mandate requiring everyone to take personal responsibility for their medical liabilities. While I understand why this is unpopular, its necessary to disperse the costs of medical care across the entire population.

The House forces those who let coverage lapse to be charged extra if they re-subscribe. The Senate replaces this mandate as with a six-month waiting period to reenroll. Both are insufficient to encourage younger, healthier subscribers to sign up. Even Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has pointed out if healthier subscribers neglect to enroll, insurance prices would escalate in the kind of death spiral Republicans falsely ascribe to the ACA.

The walls which divide us seem insurmountable, but there are still compromises we can get behind. We can adopt aspects of the German Bismarck Model to remove the for-profit insurance leech from the throat of our healthcare system. This model preserves private market choices, yet requires insurers to be nonprofit. Plans still compete on capitalist terms with different premium to deductible ratios, and fringe benefits. Our current system already requires insurers to spend 85 percent of premiums directly on patient care. We should study how other countries responsibly limit surplus insurance profits to further reduce costs to patients.

In Germany, all insurers and all providers collectively negotiate prices for all services annually. Insurers automatically pay for any care prescribed by any licensed medical providers, without deference to networks or prior authorizations. This removes some barriers to selling insurance across state lines, which U.S. insurers say are complicated.

With the inclusion of a public option for consumers to buy into, patients in underserved locations could gain better access affordable healthcare. A public option would also act as a pace car on the market, by giving private insurance a reasonable standard to compete against.

This system eliminates the profit motive for insurers to deny legitimate claims, and substantially reduces overhead costs in medical billing. Rather than fighting claims, this system has insurers competing to pay bills quickly.

Voters should urge our lawmakers to consider the needs of we, the people, and offer Americans a compassionate way forward. In the richest country in the history of our planet, everyone should be able to afford quality healthcare.
Reassuring the neighbours

Nepal must be prepared to face a national security issue. Is the country prepared for a crisis that may be inevitable? Cheerful news stories in the media about a rise in Gross Domestic Product and the country securing the third position in the Sustainable Development Goals index among South Asian countries have brought smiles all around, but a close look at reality proves disturbing.
(Agencia CMA Latam) - Argentina's president Mauricio Macri hosted the closing ceremony of the Summit of Heads of State of Mercosur and Associated States which began yesterday in Mendoza. It is the last summit presided by Argentina before transferring the presidency pro-tempore to Brazil.

In his speech, Macri said that in the 21st century "Mercosur is the central space we have to strengthen economic relations between us and the world." He also recalled that next year would be held for the first time a G-20 summit in South America, in which "we will focus on a problem that concerns us all: employment."

Leaders will analyze the bloc's trade agenda, focusing on the future free trade agreement with the European Union and the strengthening of internal exchanges.

Leaders are also expected to address the severe political, economic and social crisis in Venezuela, suspended from the bloc in December 2016 for failing to comply with regulations.

Attending the meeting are the presidents of the four permanent members: Macri (Argentina), Michel Temer (Brazil), Tabar? V?zquez (Uruguay) and Horacio Cartes (Paraguay). Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Bolivia's Evo Morales attends as leaders of "associated states." Representatives of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as Mexico, take part as "observer states."

by Agencia CMA Latam

For comments and feedback: 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.
Six NC cadres face action in Kaski

Nepali Congress has taken disciplinary action against six cadres in constituency no. 4 of Kaski district.
Surkhet set to get new industrial estate

The government has initiated the process to build a new industrial estate in Surkhet. The industrial area is being established as part of the governments plan to build at least one industrial estate in each of the seven provinces in the country.
Dear Editor,

Re: The P.Ms term

It is a must. For any progression, we need fresh ideas and fresh eyes to move us to a better future.

I believe a government needs to invest in its people for a better future. Happier people will make sacrifices for positive progression.

Limiting terms to any leader will only enhanced the growth of our nation.

Our people should be the foundation of our nation and not new buildings. Make our people the true foundation before you can build new infrastructure upon them. Allow them to be the pillars of new buildings by creating jobs. Create better trades with other country or island nations.

Having a new P.M every ten years may invite Samoan overseas to contribute more or invest more in our island. Most Samoans oversea feels they will be strong arm by this P.M and his cabinet by filling their pockets first before you can start a business. It is a sad consensus from our overseas families.

Limiting terms for P.M is a must to improve the lives of all of our people. Not just the rich.

T. Leone
Dear Editor,

Steve, graduate of Primer 1, we meet again. I am happy to educate you further.

Of course the H.R.P.P. write new laws to put their agenda into action. That is the whole point of being the government dumbo.

The system works like this - the people vote in the government to put their ideas into action. They have the full power to do so because the people voted for them to do so. A government that does nothing for 5 years is a waste of time.

They are getting paid for doing nothing.

Legally, in a parliamentary system, a government that cannot pass its own budget will fall.

New elections are called and the people must vote in another government to govern. In a presidential system, a government that cannot pass its budget will meet gridlock if the other party controls the American parliament (congress).

Therefore, nothing happens for years and those politicians just get paid to do nothing. That is good for a developed country but not good for a developing country which needs to action and flexibility, not years of obstruction and backroom deals.

Anyway, he doesnt write new laws all by himself. He has 11 other members of Cabinet to confer with and it is those ministers that usually author bills from their ministries.

There are also 47 other members of the HRPP and caucus members who vote and have their input in the powerful parliamentary committees, the public through public consultation have their say, and 50 MPs in parliament who all have their say in the laws.

Many H.R.P.P members openly voice opposition and criticise ministers all the time in parliament. Much more than other parliamentary systems.

PS Jeffrey
Dear Editor,

I am saddened by the sudden decision for the Head of State His Highness Tupua Tamasese Efi to step down.

What a shock to Samoa and everyone who respect His highness in Samoa and abroad?

We are all Pharisees when it comes to the letter of the Law. Are the man made laws more important than the faaaloalo and ava fatafata we have for our King! Politics seem to dominate the mentality of the Corpus that made these decisions.

Perhaps underneath all, is the uncircumcised struggle for this Corpus to rise to a level that cannot be reached by consensus within the ava fatafata in the faasamoa.  O le tupu a ia o le Tupu. The King is the King.

There are only two Kings of Samoa. I do not have to apologize or elaborate on that.

This Corpus, I am talking about is totally accountable to the now former King. Could it be fair to say that you are digging slowly your own graves? (I mean this Corpus!)

Thanks.

V.J

The Kings Supporter.
Gene drive  the technology developed by UC San Diego scientists to rapidly push targeted genetic changes into a population  got a push last week with a $14.9 million federal grant to develop defenses against mosquito-borne diseases threatening the United States.

But gene drive probably wont work as well in nature as it has in the laboratory, according to a study also released last week. The report found that the technology, also known as active genetics, likely would spur quick emergence of new resistance measures by the affected creatures.

Both developments underscore how just how fast gene drive has evolved from an esoteric concept to a lab-tested technology that, in theory, could allow humanity for the first time to rapidly spread self-perpetuating genetic changes into nature.

Advertisement

Because of this potential, the technology is being carefully studied in tightly controlled laboratory environments while policy-makers weigh the benefits and risks, including how to respond if a genetic modification causes unforeseen complications. The concern is that gene-drive changes could irreversibly harm ecosystems, a prospect that must be weighed against the potential to save thousands of human lives a year from malaria and other diseases.

Gene drive couples a desired genetic change with a mechanism that copies the change to any unmodified genes. Its performed with the popular CRISPR gene-editing technology, which allows fast editing at multiple places on the human genome.

This marriage of CRISPR and gene drive was demonstrated for the first time in animals by researchers Ethan Bier and Valentino Gantz at UC San Diego. Earlier, a team led by Harvard University geneticist George Church had demonstrated gene drive in yeast.

Bier and Gantz showed gene drives potential by using fruit flies; their findings were published in a landmark 2015 study in the journal Science. The two scientists propagated a trait for yellow coloration.

Then later working with UC Irvines Anthony James, Bier and Gantz extended the technology to mosquitoes, engineering them to resist infection by the malaria parasite.

Its this invention that UC San Diego might bring to India to fight endemic malaria, under a $70 million grant from Indias Tata family.

And with the new $14.9 million grant from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, or DARPA, UC Riversides Omar Akbari plans to lead research to fight the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases that threaten the United States. Joining him will be Bier, Gantz and James.

While the two projects target different diseases, both use the same underlying approach developed by Gantz and Bier and extended to mosquitoes with Anthony James.

Heres how it works: Most genes come in pairs, one inherited from each parent. The altered gene contains a copying mechanism that searches out any unmodified corresponding gene. So after an egg is fertilized, the modification would jump to any unmodified genes.

Bier and Gantz proved their concept is effective in fruit flies by giving them the yellow coloration, a recessive gene variant. With just one parent carrying the altered gene, the fruit flies produced yellow offspring. In the fertilized eggs, an engineered chain reaction had converted the corresponding unaltered gene into the altered gene variant.

Importantly, that process also occurred in subsequent matings. All else being equal, gene drive causes the number of modified genes in a population to increase exponentially.

Resistance factor

But all things are not equal, according to the new study on resistance in nature, which was published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

In particular, technical aspects of how CRISPR works make it likely that resistance would develop to the modified genes, the study stated. The technology doesnt work all the time, and when it fails it can produce gene variants coded for resistance that cant be converted by gene drive technology.

This effect is compounded by the genetic diversity of many animal populations in the wild, the new report said.

The study experimented on two types of gene drives, including one similar to what Gantz and Bier devised.

While certain gene drive strategies may be able to tolerate some level of resistance, the study said, the specific outcome of such strategies will still depend strongly on the fitness costs of the payload and the drive itself.

This wrinkle means that gene drive faces two barriers to adoption: that it might work too well, and that it might not work well enough.

Bier said both concerns are well-known and neither comes as a surprise. Hes been exploring ways to thwart resistance, and DARPA, the defense agency, is researching safety concerns through its Safe Genes project.

Overcoming resistance

One possibility for overcoming gene drive resistance is to pair the disease resistance trait with one that gives male mosquitoes equipped with it a huge mating advantage over other males, Bier said.

This idea was advanced by UC Santa Barbara researcher Craig Montell, Bier said. Montell is one of the University of California scientists working under the DARPA grant.

Moreover, Bier said, there are ways to construct a gene drive to avoid triggering certain resistance mechanisms, or to circumvent them.

To address safety concerns, multiple layers of research and regulatory oversight are proceeding to hopefully get a better handle on how gene drive would work in the wild, and what are the potential harms and their likelihood, Bier said.

These steps are already being taken for the UC San Diego-India work as part of the $70 million Tata grant, he said. So while this new project is not connected to the original one except for the use of a common technology, it can work in parallel with the original projects safety reviews.

Theres also a cultural benefit from the DARPA work, Bier said.

Suspicion of such projects that are aimed at developing countries is high in some quarters, because it could be viewed as using those nations as test subjects for something Americans view as too risky to use in their own country.

I think it will make it very clear that were not just trying to push this technology on the developing world untested in some type of do-gooder way, but were actually very seriously considering using it on ourselves, Bier said, emphasizing that this was his personal view. Thats what were hoping to do, and were confident enough in the technology that we would propose doing so.

Further reading

RNA-guided gene drives can efficiently bias inheritance in wild yeast

The dawn of active genetics

Engineered genes can self-propagate

Modified mosquitoes block malaria

Genetic engineerings new frontier

Indias Tata gives UC San Diego $70M in hot area of genetics

UC San Diego gene drive technology offers life-transforming power

Resistance complicates use of gene drive to control dangerous pests

DARPA funds UC gene drive research against mosquito-borne diseases

Resistance may rapidly stop gene drives

Science Playlist  On Now In a first, scientists rid human embryos of a potentially fatal gene mutation by editing their DNA On Now Space station flyovers visible from San Diego this week 0:55 On Now UCSD's 'ghost drivers' begin testing people's reaction seemingly empty cars 1:29 On Now 10 interesting facts about Mars On Now Kids can add years to your life On Now LA 90: SpaceX launches recycled rocket On Now Big passions, big giving: Malin Burnham 2:30 On Now Big passions, big giving: Darlene Shiley 2:40 On Now Big passions, big giving: Joan and Irwin Jacobs 2:45 On Now Ocean temperatures warming at rapid rate, study finds

bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1020
Californias stem cell agency has awarded $5.8 million to UC San Diego researchers to develop a new variation of cancer immunotherapy.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM, approved the grant last week to adapt CAR T-cell technology to fight cancer stem cells. These deadliest of cancer cells have stem cell-like properties that enable them to survive treatments against them and grow profusely. One surviving cell can re-create an entire tumor.

CAR T-cell therapy, pioneered by Dr. Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania, has been used against blood cancers. While not all of those gravely ill patients have survived, a number have experienced dramatic and long-lasting remissions.

Advertisement

UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center physicians led by Ezra Cohen will experiment with the therapy to deal with a variety of hard-to-treat solid tumors. These include head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, triple-negative breast cancer, pancreatic cancer and ovarian cancers. The preliminary research that yielded this potential treatment was funded by the San Diego-based Immunotherapy Foundation.

Heres how CAR T-cell therapy works: Doctors genetically engineer a patients T cells, part of the immune system, to recognize a protein, called an antigen, on cancer cells so they can destroy them.

The T cells are given what is called a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR. This is an artificial construct that can recognize the antigen on cancer cells, signaling the immune system to attack. The antigen targeted varies with different versions of the technology.

The T cells are removed from the patient, given the cancer-fighting receptor construct, grown to sufficient numbers, then re-infused into the patient. The cells act as living drugs. They tend to stick around in the patient, ready to grow and attack again if the cancer recurs.

While this has been demonstrated in blood cancers, solid tumors pose a more difficult problem, because immune cells have more limited access to the interior of these tumors.

Cohen, associate director for translational science at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, is a specialist in head and neck cancer. Among his patients: Ricki Rockett, the drummer from the band Poison.

Rockett, facing amputation of his tongue when he met Cohen, was given another kind of cancer immunotherapy, two drugs called checkpoint inhibitors that remove a molecular cloak that cancer cells use to hide from the immune system.

The treatment worked. The cancer disappeared, and Rocketts tongue was saved.

Its one year after his complete response, and hes still cancer-free, Cohen said. Rockett also went on tour with the band.

 Rikki Rockett, drummer from the band Poison, describes his joy at being put into complete remission from tongue cancer with immunotherapy, preserving his ability to talk to his children.

Building on past research

Cohen said the newly funded work with CAR T cells builds on earlier UC San Diego research that identified a receptor on some cancer cells as a promising new target. Its made in both solid tumors and blood cancers, but not in normal cells.

The receptor, tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor or ROR1, is the target of a drug now being tested by Cohens colleague Dr. Thomas Kipps in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The drug, a monoclonal antibody called cirmtuzumab, is named after CIRM, which funded the research that produced the drug.

ROR1 is produced almost exclusively in the embryonic and early fetal stage, and helps the nascent tissues migrate to the right parts of the body, Cohen said. It appears to have virtually no use after that stage. So it appears to be a safe target. Thats been a challenge to find with cancer stem cells, because their genetic activity somewhat resembles that of normal stem cells.

For obvious reasons you dont want to eliminate all the stem cells in a persons body, Cohen said.

Theres some hints ROR1 might be produced in certain precursors to B cells, which are immune cells that make antibodies, he said. Its possible to live without B cells, as in the case where drugs destroy B cells to stop B-cell lymphoma.

The new project was sparked by Kipps research indicated that ROR1 was produced in high amounts in the hard-to-treat cancers. Cohen began thinking of how this knowledge could be applied with CAR T-cell technology

Cohen said preclinical research has already been performed for the new project. In cell culture tests, CAR T cells with the ROR1 receptor kill cancer stem cells with the receptor in those difficult cancers.

Funding for that research came from the Immunotherapy Foundation, created by San Diego philanthropists Ralph and Fernanda Whitworth in 2015 after Ralph Whitworth was diagnosed with cancer. He died of the disease in September 2016.

Christina Martinez, the Immunotherapy Foundations executive director, said Whitworth met with Cohen after his diagnosis, and became personally interested in advancing the research.

It was a serendipitous encounter, but he really saw the potential for a lasting partnership in his ability to be able to make a long-term contribution to the area of immunotherapy, Martinez said. This project was just one that fell under kind of an umbrella of projects that he was interested in and funding at UCSD. So he and Fernanda seeded that initial investment.

Results maturing

To further improve cancer immunotherapy, the Whitworths established the Immunotherapy Foundation. Fernanda Whitworth, president and co-founder, said shes pleased with the progress.

Ralph and I liked that these projects were designed to be tightly interconnected to leverage information and allow efficient movement into the clinic, she said. Today, I am proud to see this rational, focused approach is working.

Aside from his work at the Moores Cancer Center, Cohen is co-director of the San Diego Center for Precision Immunotherapy, a collaboration with the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology.

Cohen said the new CIRM grant will fund work to generate more data on safety and efficacy needed before the therapy can be tried in people.

CIRM was created in 2004 by California voters with $3 billion in funding to accelerate stem cell research and treatments. UC San Diego researchers have received at least 95 CIRM awards, totaling more than $177 million.

For further reading

An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer

Fighting cancer with modified killer T cells

Cancer researcher describes breakthrough

Cancer gene therapy advances

Gene, immune therapy help cancer war

Immunotherapy means options, results in cancer fight

Chimeric antigen receptor T cells: a novel therapy for solid tumors

Science Playlist  On Now In a first, scientists rid human embryos of a potentially fatal gene mutation by editing their DNA On Now Space station flyovers visible from San Diego this week 0:55 On Now UCSD's 'ghost drivers' begin testing people's reaction seemingly empty cars 1:29 On Now 10 interesting facts about Mars On Now Kids can add years to your life On Now LA 90: SpaceX launches recycled rocket On Now Big passions, big giving: Malin Burnham 2:30 On Now Big passions, big giving: Darlene Shiley 2:40 On Now Big passions, big giving: Joan and Irwin Jacobs 2:45 On Now Ocean temperatures warming at rapid rate, study finds

bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1020
Solana Beach native Jenny Williams drew on her experiences as a traveler and aid worker in Africa while she wrote her debut novel, The Atlas of Forgotten Places. It tells the story of two women whose paths cross when an American volunteer supposedly on her way home disappears in Uganda.

Williams went to Torrey Pines High School before getting degrees at UC Berkeley and Brooklyn College. She lives now in Seattle, where she works as a UX (user experience) writer at Google.

Shell be at the Del Mar Library Saturday at 1:30 p.m. to discuss the novel.

Advertisement

Q: Tell me about the title?

A: The title was the last thing that happened for this book. We were looking for something that captured some of the bigness of the scope but also the intimacy of the storyline. And there are some maps that are in the story itself, so theres a kind of double meaning there.

The title also speaks to a part of of the world that is often overlooked  it doesnt get a lot of international media attention  and also to some of the characters in the novel, who have places in their own memories that are painful or difficult and they have buried them in some way.

Q: Why did you want to write about Africa?

A: For a couple of reasons. One is that I lived in Uganda for about half a year. I had spent a lot of time backpacking and traveling through many countries in Africa but I spent most of my time in East Africa, in Uganda particularly, and it was just a place I was really fascinated by. I thought it had a really interesting history, a history that I didnt know much about. I like to write about things that fascinate me and haunt me.

There was also a sense that I would love to bring this world to a new audience. Theres so much non-fiction written about Northern Uganda and the Lords Resistance Army and Joseph Kony, but at the time I started writing the novel there was no fiction that had reached the international audience. It felt to me like an opportunity to share some of those stories.

Q: What do you hope readers will think about?

A: I hope they think about a lot of things. Certainly the question of what is an individuals responsibility when we hear about a crisis or a tragedy that happens very far away from us. Building a sense of understanding, compassion, and also asking ourselves, what is the appropriate response? Rather than a sort of instinctual, white savior kind of gallivanting in and saying, We know the answer, stepping back a second and questioning that. The balance of compassion and empathy with honoring local communities and the responses they are taking up themselves.

Q: This book has a number of sacrifices that people make to help others they love. What drew you to that?

A: Im not sure I have a good answer for that. I think Ive always been most moved by those kinds of acts of sacrifice. When I read a news story about someone helping another person in a moment of crisis, someone who didnt have to be there, who really sacrificed something of themselves, those are the stories that bring me to tears. I guess I felt drawn to explore those moments in this novel.

Q: There are secrets in this book, too, secrets that are slowly revealed. What do you like about secrets?

A: John Gardner, who wrote this beautiful book called On Becoming a Novelist, said something like a character can have secrets but a story shouldnt have secrets  that its not fair to manipulate the reader in that way by keeping secrets from them as this sort of omniscient narrator.

But of course the characters can have secrets because all of us have secrets. And I think thats part of what it means to be a complex human, that there are things about ourselves that we feel perhaps ashamed of or guilty of or we dont know how to bring those things into the light. So that felt to me an important attribute to give my characters, an honest attribute.

Q: One of the main characters, Sabine, volunteers in part out of guilt for her familys past. What motivated you to volunteer in Africa?

A: Part of the reason is I actually had a fairly cynical view of aid work by the time I had gotten to Uganda. I had worked for a small independent publisher in San Francisco and I had worked on the book The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, which was one of these books that really skewered the notion that the U.S. was always going in to do good in developing parts of the world. So I was a little disillusioned about what aid could do but I also felt like I needed to see it for myself.

That was my motivation for being there. And I wanted a reason to stay longer in the country. My boyfriend at the time and I had been backpacking, and when youre backpacking you see a lot of places and you cover a lot of territory, but I really wanted to know what it was like to stay in one place and get to know it in a more intimate way.

Q: Did your experience change your view of aid work?

A: It did and it didnt. What it taught me is that on a macro level, aid is extremely complex and it is not always a positive thing. But on a micro level, certainly individual people benefit greatly from the things aid provides, especially in crises. The basic things like food and shelter. Those things are necessary for individual people. So I guess I left it with more questions than answers and thats maybe what drove me to write the novel. Fiction is a really wonderful space to explore questions without answers and bring readers on that journey, too.

Q: The ending is left open. Why did you write it that way?

A: I came into the novel with more questions than answers and when I finished writing it, I had yet more questions. I wanted to give readers that space. I think tying something up too neatly at the end gives people permission to kind of close the book and set it aside. Thats not what I want people to do with this novel. I want people to have the ending open up something in a new way and continue to mull these stories and these characters and wonder what is going to happen next.

Thats more true to real life. It isnt always neat, particularly in this part of the world. Joseph Kony is still at large. I started writing this novel years and years ago and the U.S. and Uganda have now sort of officially pulled out of the hunt for him so there is no neat ending.

Q: Is that why you like to write, too? To discover things about yourself and your subject matter as youre doing it?

A: Absolutely. I think Steve Almond (an essayist and short-story author) said writers should write about what haunts them or what you cant get rid of by any other means. I certainly have felt that way about the material that went into the novel. I wrote short stories about it, I wrote poetry, I wrote a little graphic novel about these things and I just kept coming back to the material until I had the space of a novel to really work through some of it.

The Atlas of Forgotten Places, by Jenny D. Williams, St. Martins, 368 pages

john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-2236
Tamakoshi 3 hydro project stuck in limbo

The Investment Board Nepals (IBN) plan to initiate global bidding process to develop the much-awaited Tamakoshi 3 Hydropower Project is in limbo, as the government has failed to approve the projects implementation modality.
Room 11 at Comic-Con International on Sunday was a big hit, even if there wasnt a long line to get in.

Taking the place of Hollywood stars at the front of the room was illustrator Kristian Sather, slowly drawing fruits and vegetables with funny faces projected on a screen to his right.

The scribbles of dozens of pencils echoed throughout the hall as tiny hands copied Sathers movements. More than 100 children and parents attended the cartooning workshop Sunday morning, a chance for the youngest attendees of Comic-Con to flex their creative muscles.

Advertisement

Its fun because I can draw monsters, said Arianna Silvoso, 6, of Los Angeles, who turned Sathers strawberry illustration into a strawberry monster with ram-like horns and spiky hands.

Her mother, Christina Silvoso, said the drawing session and other kids activities on Comic-Cons closing day were a nice break from the madness of the convention.

Its great because the regular adult activities arent as fun for them, she said. They get tired of walking around after a while and the panels get boring for them. They want to have interactive activities.

1 / 17 Charles Choe and his daughter Amelia Choe from Carmel Valley look over a photo that Amelia snapped while at Comic-Con on Sunday afternoon. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 17 Nakawe Sagehorn from Anaheim along with her Luke Dias play the video game Street Fighter at Comic-Con. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 17 Fans travel between levels during the last day of Comic-Con on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 17 Nina Church from Tierrasanta carried her daughter Audrey Church up on her shoulders while walking the exhibit floor during Comic-Con on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 17 Charleen Apuan tried to convince her son Brandon Apuan to walk up to the Walking Dead booth at Comic-Con. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 17 Nicholas and Amanda Levitt from Oceanside carry their children on their way into the exhibit floor for Comic-Con in San Diego. Nicholas is carrying Grayson and Amanda is carrying Cameron. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 17 Michael McLucas from Escondido hold the hands of his children, Jacob and Natalie as they walk about the convention center during Comic-Con on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 17 Linda Limcolioc from Mira Mesa along with her sons Peyton (l) and Collin (r) walk the convention center during Comic-Con on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 17 Fans travel between levels during the last day of Comic-Con on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 17 Charles Choe and his daughter Amelia Choe from Carmel Valley took a brief break while at Comic-Con on Sunday afternoon. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 17 Desmound Russel (l), Jimmy Wilson (m) and Carter Russel (r) from Los Angeles watched a short video on their cell phone while at Comic-Con on Sunday afternoon. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 17 Comic-Con ends their convention with kids day on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 17 Comic-Con ends their convention with kids day on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 14 / 17 Joseph Alba and Kashika General helped their daughter Kassie with her lego building skills at Comic-Con on Sunday afternoon. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 15 / 17 Joe Gomez carries his daughter Brooklyn Madison Gomez on his shoulders as they head for the exhibit floor for Comic-Con in San Diego. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 16 / 17 Nina Church from Tierrasanta carried her daughter Audrey Church up on her shoulders while walking the exhibit floor during Comic-Con on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 17 / 17 Tristan Conner dressed as Batman powers up before hitting the exhibit floor for Comic-Con in San Diego. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune)

This years Comic-Con will likely be remembered most for a new Justice League trailer, announcements of a Batman movie, new seasons for Daredevil and Iron Fist, a preview of the latest Avengers movie and confirmation of a second Wonder Woman movie.

The panels arent exactly kid-friendly. Hours in line are difficult enough for adults and sitting in a cramped meeting hall has its own challenges. Language could be a problem, too. Ben Affleck, addressing rumors he was being ushered out of his role as Batman, told the Hall H crowd Saturday that the character was the coolest (expletive) part of any universe.

Steve Miyamoto of Fullerton took his 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son to the convention, but said even the inclusion of a kids-themed day was a nice contrast to so many adult-themed shows and movies dominating the event.

Its nice for them to have something to do, he said. It seems like the activities on all the other days are mostly not for kids. Its ironic because it started as a comic con.

Most of the big announcements of Comic-Con were lost on younger attendees. San Diego friends Alexander Calarasus, 8, and Jason Adelstin, 9, said they were most excited about the latest Star Wars film, The Last Jedi.

Disney kept its Star Wars franchise away from Comic-Con for the second year in a row, although it5 did have a display on the convention floor. Calarasus and Adelstin were dressed as clone troopers, a major part of the Star Wars prequels that are no longer part of the new Disney-led films.

I just want to see if they are going to stay good, Jason said of concerns the Jedi would turn evil in the newest film.

Parents might have their concerns, but it was hard to find a child not excited about the happenings Sunday, despite the occasional crying baby.

Tijuana resident Carlos Breitling brought his three kids to the convention. Leo, 4, went as Iron Man; Carlos, 5, as Thor; and Alejandra, 10, as Catwoman.

They want to see the costumes, he said. They were so excited to see Power Rangers and Marvel characters.

Most parents said their children enjoyed seeing costumed players most, despite all the kids-themed events aimed at them yesterday.

In addition to the cartoon workshop in the morning, there were several events Sunday highlighted for kids by Comic-Con in program schedules: Marvels Spider-Man cartoon premiere, Lego Scooby-Doo and DC Super Girls premieres, manga tutorial, Niko and the Sword of Light panel and an entire room for viewing childrens films.

Of course, it wasnt just adults who dressed up.

At their first Comic-Con, Alina Salyer, 11, of Santee dressed as Marvel Comics heroine Ms. Marvel and her sister, Aubree Salyer, 8, dressed as Rocket, a popular character from the Guardians of the Galaxy film.

Hes one of my favorite characters, Aubree said of Rocket. Its really cool how Rocket and Groot (another Guardians character) fight and I like how they work together. But they work alone sometimes.

The kids theme might be a good idea for getting the next generation into comic books, said Rancho Bernardo resident Nina Kim, who came with her 10-year-old daughter, Aria.

If youre trying to bring kids into creativity and different kinds of pop culture, she said, its a nice way to introduce them.

Arianna Silvoso, 6, of Los Angeles, shows off a strawberry monster she drew as part of cartooning shop held at Comic-Con International (Phillip Molnar/San Diego Union-Tribune)

San Diego friends Alexander Calarasus, 9, and Jason Adelsin, 9, dressed Sunday as clone troopers from the Star Wars prequels. (Phillip Molnar/San Diego Union-Tribune)

Business

phillip.molnar@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1891 Twitter: @phillipmolnar
The state has picked a senior Los Angeles schools administrator, Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, to lead the troubled Inglewood Unified School District.

The Inglewood school system, which is located just east of Los Angeles International Airport, has long struggled with low academic achievement and declining enrollment, including the last five years under state control.

Melendez was named Thursday by state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, who also asserted that Inglewood has been making progress recently.

Advertisement

Thelma Melendez has a strong combination of leadership skills and experience managing school districts, Torlakson said in a statement. She will continue the districts positive momentum.

Melendez, 59, has been serving as head of the Office of Educational Services in the L.A. Unified School District. She was also superintendent of Pomona Unified and Santa Ana Unified, and she served as assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education in the U.S. Department of Education under President Obama.

Before joining L.A. Unified, she worked as the top education advisor to Mayor Eric Garcetti.

The Inglewood school community has the ingredients for greatness, and it will be an honor to lead the district into the next phase of progress for all students, Melendez said. I am eager and ready to roll up my sleeves to get to work.

Melendez will have plenty to take on.

According to state test results, 29% of Inglewood students are proficient or better in English, up from 26% the prior year. Only 16% are proficient in math, although that is up from 14% the prior year.

The district of 12,570 students is 58% Latino and 39% black. About 3 in 10 students are learning English and nearly 8 in 10 are part of low-income households.

The state took over Inglewood Unified in 2012, as a condition of an emergency loan package of up to $55 million. The loan must be repaid within 20 years.

Under state control, the top leadership post has been a revolving door. Inglewood district graduate Kent Taylor accepted the job in October 2012. The veteran administrator lasted less than three months because, according to the state, he had made unauthorized agreements with the teachers union.

Taylors deputy, La Tanya Kirk-Carter, handled the post on an interim basis for half a year, followed by Don Brann, who once had led a nearby school system.

Next up was Vincent Matthews, who stepped in two years later. Matthews long-term strategy included increasing enrollment by 4% a year, starting in 2018-19. Enrollment has declined every year since 2010. In March, Matthews accepted a job as superintendent in San Francisco.

Under California law, emergency loans place a district under state control, and the local elected board loses its authority and becomes an advisory body.

The state retains control, through its appointed administrator, until the district is fiscally stable and the loan is repaid. A required recovery plan typically also includes steps to improve a districts community relations, governance and pupil achievement.

howard.blume@latimes.com

@howardblume

ALSO

Another jolt for L.A. schools as civic group seeks a role in fixing school district

L.A. school board salaries more than double to $125,000 a year

New pro-charter L.A. school board seeks emergency motion to put students first
Twelve refugees arrived in San Diego County in June, the lowest number of new arrivals in over a decade, according to data from the State Department.

San Diego County has been known for taking in the most refugees of any county in California since 2009 because it has been a hub for Iraqi arrivals, who first began resettling in large numbers in late summer of 2007. The June arrivals are from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Kenya.

The countys arrivals have dropped significantly since President Donald Trump first signed an executive order in January that paused the U.S. resettlement program and reduced the number of refugees that the U.S. would accept per year by more than half, to 50,000 from 110,000.

Advertisement

As refugee advocates and the federal government fought in court over the legality of the order, which was rescinded and replaced in March, refugee arrivals stopped and sputtered, with increasingly small numbers getting flights to their intended new homes in the U.S.

Thats the opposite of the trend for previous years when summer months saw surges in refugee arrivals in the county, sometimes more than 700 in one month.

San Diego County was fifth in the state for arrivals in June, taking in fewer refugees than Los Angeles and three other counties.

Imperial Beach resident Ernie Griffes opposed his citys designation as a welcoming city because he was concerned more refugees might settle there, and he supported Trump in part for his immigration platform.

Griffes worried that a large refugee family might move in on his street and he wouldnt know who they were or whether theyd been vetted sufficiently. He called it a big problem for quiet, little communities.

Griffes said hes glad that arrivals have slowed, as Trump promised they would.

This is what is intended as the nation tries to digest culturally and financially the strains on neighborhoods and resources of non-citizens demanding services and support of all kinds that even citizens cannot get, Griffes said via email. This is a part of what the president was elected to do, and were pleased to see it happening.

Robert Moser, Catholic Charities executive director, said the court battle over Trumps order has created a constant uncertainty for refugees and resettlement agencies.

You dont know today whats going to happen tomorrow because yesterday what you expected to happen didnt, Moser said over the phone. Its really, really hard to explain or convey what the impact is or will be other than the fact that the numbers have practically just stopped.

Moser began working in refugee resettlement in 1980, and remembers waves of refugee arrivals that mirrored conflicts that erupted around the world. Refugees began arriving at least few years after a conflict started, he said, because of the time it takes to process and screen them.

 Join the discussion on Facebook

In 1951, after World War II and the Holocaust, the United States gathered with other members of the United Nations to create an international protocol for handling refugees. The document does not commit any country to taking in a specific number of refugees.

Under U.S. law, the president decides each year how many refugees the country will accept, and Congress approves funding for those arrivals. Congress codified todays refugee resettlement program in 1980.

Moser said that since then, hes seen cycles of welcoming and discouraging refugee resettlement in the U.S. After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, refugees stopped coming amid security concerns. Gradually, he said, arrivals built up to last year with the largest number hed seen since 1994.

I expect that long after Im finished doing this work, refugees will still be coming in waves and in drifts depending on whats going on, Moser said.

In the mid-90s, the county tried to get rid of its refugee resettlement program twice, Moser said.

The issue was the carrying capacity versus the caring capacity, Moser said. You still hear it today.

All four of San Diegos resettlement agencies have received an outpouring of donations and support, he said, which outweighs any hate mail or other harassment they get.

It gets meaner over the years, but in my experience, its never been the characteristic response of San Diegans, Moser said. I think for the most part San Diegans appreciate the fact that were a diverse community.

At the end of June, the Supreme Court allowed parts of Trumps executive order, which had been blocked by lower courts, to go into effect for individuals who didnt have bona fide relationships with people or organizations in the U.S. The court gave examples of bona fide relationships but did not fully define the term, which launched another round of legal battles over the executive order.

The number of refugee arrivals for the federal fiscal year, which started in October, reached 50,000 this month, the total allowed for the whole year under Trumps order. Under current court decisions, those who have family already in the U.S. can keep coming despite the cap, and refugees who had been scheduled to come but do not have family ties will not be allowed in.

One family from Kazakhstan was scheduled to arrive this week, according to David Murphy, executive director for San Diegos office of the International Rescue Committee. The family had members in the U.S., so they were not blocked by the cap, and the mother and father ended up on a plane to their new home. Their daughter was split into a different case and did not have a flight booked to come with them. They are still hoping she will be able to join them.

They were afraid to speak to media, Murphy said, because they worried it would affect their daughters case.

Theyre very distraught, Murphy said over the phone.

The International Rescue Committee, one of four resettlement agencies in San Diego, knows of 98 refugees with such ties who were scheduled to come this year, Murphy said. None are scheduled to come next week, and 17 of them are scheduled for August.

He lamented the up-and-down that refugees planning to come to the U.S. this year must be feeling. Refugees travel with a couple of suitcases, he said, so right before they leave, they get rid of most of the belongings that they acquired during their years in the camp.

Its a poor policy when you have to get all the lawyers involved and figure out what it means, Murphy said.

He did not know how many, if any, of the 98 currently expected refugees would actually arrive in San Diego.

Murphy said resettlement agencies are anticipating that 50,000 will be the new annual cap on arrivals going forward.

Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence

Follow me on Facebook for live updates about immigration news

kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter
Reihane Taravati, an outspoken social media activist, was riding in a taxi the other day when she received a stern reprimand from the driver.

Unbeknownst to Taravati, 26, her headscarf  which Iranian women are required to wear as a show of modesty  had slipped down the back of her head, leaving most of her hair exposed.

Fix your scarf, or the undercover [moral] police will see it, the cabbie told her. He worried about receiving a ticket in the mail, which would cost him about $30.

Advertisement

As Taravati relayed this story while sipping tea with friends in a Tehran cafe, a debate was raging in the Iranian capital that combines two things that people here obsess over: cars and the way women dress.

Specifically: Is the car a public space, where women must clothe themselves modestly in accordance with Islamic laws, or a private space in which Irans ruling clerics have tolerated a bit more personal freedom?

In this traffic-choked city, private vehicles are the latest battleground in Irans ongoing culture wars, which Tehran denizens are watching ever more closely after the May presidential election.

There is growing tension between President Hassan Rouhani, who comfortably won reelection and has said that Irans police should not be empowered to enforce adherence to Islam, and hard-line clerics who favor a stricter interpretation of religious laws.

President Rouhani has reiterated over and over in the past year that a police officer is not authorized to poke his nose into peoples private lives and enforce what they perceive as Gods preferred lifestyle, Taravati said.

Questions over what is often referred to as bad hijab  a lax interpretation of the official dress code that requires women to cover their hair and figures  tend to rise in the summer along with Tehrans temperatures, which frequently touch 100 degrees in July.

Last week, in the closely watched Friday sermon at Tehran University, a leading cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, took on the issue directly, saying: Private cars are not the private sphere.

Kermani invoked the forcible removal of the hijab in the 1930s by Irans former secular government, led by Reza Shah Pahlavi, and argued that those who flouted the dress code were thumbing their nose at the ideals of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

I have heard that in some cars women do not wear hijab at all, he said. You who dont have proper hijab, you are violating the countrys independence. I thank law enforcement for trying to enforce the Islamic hijab.

In the political Shiite Islam that prevails in Iran, there is no concrete boundary between what is private and what is public. Moral police have been known to break up private parties attended by both men and women and arrest people for posting Instagram selfies because they are seen as immodest.

This month, reformist news sites reported that satellite dishes had been seized from the rooftops of private residences in two districts of Tehran. The dishes are officially outlawed  hard-liners view them as a weapon of cultural invasion  but a common feature of middle-class households.

You who dont have proper hijab, you are violating the countrys independence.  Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, Iranian cleric

Since taking office in 2013, Rouhani has insisted that peoples private lives should be protected from the regular police force and the moral police. But since May, Irans judiciary, which is close to the clerical establishment, has tried to further curtail the social freedoms that Rouhani promised.

The invisible part of the car, such as the trunk, is a private space, but this does not apply to the visible parts of the car, Hadi Sadeghi, deputy head of Irans judiciary, said this month.

Golnar Ramesh, a 28-year-old tour guide, said the postelection backlash against Rouhani supporters was a predictable turn in the rivalry between conservative and reform-minded Iranians.

In public, women and men should have the right to choose what they wear, Ramesh said. That is the meaning of the 24 million votes given to President Rouhani. It has become a repetitive and vicious pattern to crack down on freedom of choice for clothing after elections, whenever the hard-liners lose.

Shiva Ershadi, a 30-year-old interpreter who works with Afghan refugees in Tehran, recalled driving her car one evening in February 2016 after parliamentary elections in which moderates and reformists won a sizable victory. She was stuck in traffic when she heard a loud banging noise  it was a Basij paramilitary soldier, in plainclothes and sporting a beard, warning her to fix her hijab, which had fallen off her head.

He was mad with rage and saw people like me responsible for [the election] loss, Ershadi said.

The logic behind [the hard-liners] argument is flawed and demagogic. The police consider people as potential sinners who must be punished whenever they are caught, rather than regarding them as respectful citizens entitled to the right of privacy.

Not all Rouhani supporters endorse the view that the car is private. Monireh Turkmanazar, a 66-year-old attorney, said anything visible on the streets should be considered part of the public domain  and subject to police monitoring.

I think the opposition  whether based abroad or inside Iran  are raising a minor, irrelevant issue to raise pressure on reformists and moderates.

A reformist human rights defender, Saleh Nikbakht, said that because both cars and houses have roofs and windows, both should be considered in the private domain. But the frequent raids on houses show that the private sphere in Iran has been under attack, he said.

Hard-liners argue that when the police see through car windows that clear crimes are happening, then they can arrest people, said Nikbakht, 61. They do not want to distinguish between a woman without a scarf and a true criminal.

Taravati  the free-spirited activist who in 2014 was arrested for participating in an online video set to the hit Pharrell Williams song Happy  said the enforcement of Islamic dress was an attempt by hard-liners to punish Rouhani supporters.

Private life in the car, in the house and in the apartment must be respected, she said. That is what we voted for, and it is time for the president to deliver.

Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Follow @SBengali on Twitter

ALSO

American researcher sentenced to prison in Iran, the latest foreigner jailed on espionage charges

Dogs, Deepak Chopra, Instagram weddings and other signs of change among Irans middle class

Iran bans womens Zumba aerobics classes
Drug war bloodshed in Mexico has spiked to record levels, with more homicides recorded in June than in any month in at least two decades.

Prosecutors opened 2,234 homicide investigations last month, according to government statistics released Friday. Thats an increase of 40% over June of last year and 80% over June of 2015.



For the record: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the 2,234 homicide investigations opened last month were an 80% increase over June 2014. The number is an 80% increase over June 2015.

Rising demand for heroin in the United States and a bloody power struggle inside one of Mexicos most powerful drug cartels have put the country on track to record more killings in 2017 than in any year since the government began releasing crime data in 1997.

Advertisement

The 12,155 homicide cases opened from January to June make 2017 the deadliest first half of a year.

Though violence used to be concentrated in a handful of states, it is now rising nationwide, with 27 of Mexicos 32 states recording an uptick in homicides compared with last year.

That includes states that are home to formerly tranquil tourist destinations including Cancun and Cabo San Lucas, which have each been the site of deadly shootouts.

Guerrero, home to the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, had the highest number of homicides this year, with 1,161 cases opened since January.

The explosion of violence appears linked to the arrest and extradition of former drug boss Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, who is preparing to face trial in the U.S. next year on drug and murder charges.

Guzmans sons have been fighting another clique for control of the powerful Sinaloa cartel since his arrest last year. The cartels instability has allowed other criminal groups, including the Jalisco New Generation cartel, to move in, driving violence in Mexicos northwest.

A Tijuana woman washes blood from in front of her house, where her husband was shot and killed in broad daylight in April. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

This month, 26 people were killed in a pre-dawn firefight between a faction of the Sinaloa cartel and members of another rival gang, according to authorities in Sinaloa state.

While many government critics say its time for Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to revisit his drug war tactics, which include targeting top cartel leaders and having soldiers act as police in many communities, his government appears more interested in deflecting blame to Mexicos neighbor to the north.

In recent months, top government officials have implored their American counterparts to work on reducing domestic demand for drugs if they want to make Mexico safer.

Drug trafficking is a shared problem that will end only by addressing its root causes, Mexicos foreign ministry said in a statement last month after President Trump tweeted about Mexicos rising levels of violence.

In recent years, Mexico has surpassed Colombia to become the largest supplier of heroin to the U.S. Security analysts say the opioid epidemic in the U.S. has left cartels flush with cash, which has allowed them to step up the warfare.

What else is driving the bloodshed is a matter of opinion.

Some law enforcement officials have blamed the countrys ongoing transition to a new criminal justice system, which seeks to give more rights to accused criminals. Under the new system, people caught with illegal weapons are no longer automatically sent to jail before their trials. That means some criminals are being released, they say.

Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope says he believes another structural problem is more likely to blame for the increase in killings: Impunity.

Only one in five homicide cases leads to arrests, and few result in successful prosecutions. That means that in Mexico, its simple to kill somebody and get away with it, he said.

Its easy, he said. And its cheap.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Twitter: @katelinthicum

ALSO

Months after deportation, they do what the Mexican government will not

Mexican soccer fans are reluctant to give up a favorite chant  an anti-gay slur

The worlds smallest porpoise has caused a big battle in Baja California
When Nathan Fletcher ran for mayor of San Diego he was caught in a political vise both times, taking heat from the right and the left.

Theres that potential again as the former assemblyman runs for county supervisor. But were a long way from the 2012 and 2013 elections. And so is Fletcher.

This past week former Assemblywoman Lori Saldana, who has been a favorite of the political left in the past, said she was joining Democratic attorney Omar Passons and Fletcher in next years race to replace Supervisor Ron Roberts, who is termed out.

Advertisement

Saldana was a Democrat for much of her political career until she left the party to become an independent a few years ago.

Fletcher was a rising star as Republican assemblyman and a Marine veteran who saw his share of combat. But he left the party after the local GOP endorsement for mayor in 2012 went to Councilman Carl DeMaio. Fletcher said at the time that the party had been increasingly moving away from the values that attracted him to it in the first place, so it was difficult to stay put.

He became the target for Democratic Rep. Bob Filner and DeMaio, both of whom advanced to the mayoral runoff that was won by Filner. Some polls had showed Fletcher would beat either of them in head-to-head matchups, so it was in both their interests to team up on him. Their surrogates were harsh on Fletcher, particularly on the Republican side where some seemed to take his defection personally.

He soon became a Democrat but there was a similar dynamic in the 2013 mayoral race with Councilmen David Alvarez and Kevin Faulconer, a Democrat and Republican respectively. He again failed to make the runoff despite endorsements from Gov. Jerry Brown and then-Attorney General Kamala Harris.

But that was then. Fletchers party registration is no longer a new thing. He was a delegate for Hillary Clinton last summer and has discussed veterans issues at the White House with President Barack Obama and others.

He has established strong ties to leading Democrats, not the least of which is his wife, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, whom he married in January. Shes been a rising star herself since she burst on the Sacramento scene in 2013 after showing her political savvy as a labor leader in San Diego.

Many top Democrats and community activists have flocked to endorse Fletcher for supervisor as has SEIU, one of the more powerful labor unions in town. And the day after Saldana jumped in the race, Fletcher announced the endorsement of former San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye, an icon among many San Diego progressives.

Fletcher obviously has expanded his support within the Democratic Partys infrastructure since his last run for mayor and no doubt has sought to mend fences with those who questioned whether his party-shifting was a motivated by political expedience rather than guided by his moral compass.

But heres the big difference this time around: No big-name Republican. At least not yet. GOP leaders would love to knock him out as they did before, but just sharpening their attack game alone wont do.

The question is what Bonnie Dumanis, who won four terms as district attorney, is going to do. She recently stepped down before completing her final term and much of the discussion of her early exit was focused on handing off the job to her top deputy, Summer Stephan, who can run as interim DA for the permanent post next year.

But Dumanis has also said shes interested in running for supervisor and has been encouraged by Republican leaders. Shes now is in position to be a full-time candidate without a heavy-duty day job, and she has strong name ID and a good resume  which doesnt seem to have been tarnished much by her connection to convicted Mexican businessman Jose Susumo Azano Matsura.

But shes had a long, successful career and her one venture to break out on to new political turf didnt go so well. She also ran for mayor in 2012 and wound up fourth, behind Fletcher. There was clearly no love lost between the two also-rans in that race.

Though shes demonstrated crossover appeal in the past, the political demographics of the 4th Supervisorial District make it ripe for a Democrat.

Shes kept a low profile since leaving office and no other prominent Republican is being mentioned for the race these days. What shell do is anybodys guess.

Where have you gone, Bonnie Dumanis? The local GOP turns its lonely eyes to you.

Issa walked the plank, not happy about it

Republican House members like Rep. Darrell are reeling from a one-two punch over the failed health care legislation  thrown by their own party.

The pressure was on during the spring  from President Donald Trump and Republican leaders  to approve the House version of the bill that would have denied coverage to millions. Issa said he wasnt wild about the measure but said his vote for it was a means to keep the bill moving, with the intent that there would be improvements.

Critics werent buying that explanation and have hammered him for his vote ever since.

Then when the Senate version  which critics didnt like any better  collapsed, Issa and his House colleagues were left holding the bag.

The Senate dropped the ball, he said, according to Talking Points Memo. They had almost a blank palette and they scribbled on it and came up with nothing. ... Senator McConnell and [Senate Republicans], they failed to do their job.

Issa wasnt the only one fuming in the TPM piece, which was headlined: House GOP After Senate Ocare Collapse: We Walked The Plank For This?

Tweet of the Week

Goes to Sara Libby (@SaraLibby), managing editor of the Voice of San Diego, regarding a story by VOSDs Ry Rivard

Portlandia, but for California: San Diego County workers are negotiating over their right to wear flip-flops.
Something big is coming to Hemet this summer. The new exhibit, Valley of the Mastodons, opening at the Western Science Center (WSC) in August is a combination of spectatorship and science in action.

Visitors will recognize the traditional-style exhibit featuring fossils from dozens of individual mastodons. But a two-day workshop, when nearly a dozen researchers from across the U.S. will study mastodon fossils in full public view, is novel.

According to museum staff member Brittney Stoneburg, participating researchers will study the mastodons in real time, presenting their findings as part of the exhibit. Stoneburg notes that members of the public will be able to interact with the scientists during museum hours.

Advertisement

Kathlyn Smith, PhD, Assistant Professor of Geology & Curator of Paleontology Department of Geology and Geography & Georgia Southern Museum will be one of those researchers.

The Western Science Center has an amazing collection of mastodon fossils that I had a brief opportunity to study last summer, said Dr. Smith in a statement. While studying them, I began to realize how different they were  in size and shape  from mastodons from other regions of the country. Im thrilled to find out what new ideas and research opportunities this meeting of the mastodon minds will produce.

Other participating researchers include Chris Widga (East Tennessee University), Jeremy Green (Kent State University), Dr. Grant Zazula (Yukon Department of Tourism & Culture), Eric Scott (Cogstone Resource Management), Gregory Smith (Vanderbilt University), Dr. Bernard Means (Virginia Commonwealth University), and Kathleen Springer (USGS).

Dozens of mastodons were unearthed in the Diamond and Domenigoni valleys near Hemet during construction of the Diamond Valley Dam, hence the unofficial name The Valley of the Mastodons. According to Dr. Alton Dooley, Executive Director of the Western Science Center, half of all mastodons found on the west coast reside at the Western Science Center.

Still, few of the WSCs fossil discoveries have been extensively studied. Earlier this year, Dr. Dooley cited long-term sustained efforts to study the collection and utilize it as a basis for scholarly research and publication as an ongoing priority.

The Diamond Valley Lake fossils are having a major impact on our understanding of Ice Age California, and mastodons are a big part of that story, said Dooley. WSCs mastodon collection is the largest on the west coast and one of the largest in North America, and were proud to have this opportunity to advance scientific and public knowledge of these interesting animals.

An Aug. 4 reception is planned for museum members. The official opening to the public is Aug. 5. Valley of the Mastodons exhibition will be on view through early 2018.

The Western Science Center (2345 Searl Parkway, Hemet) is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays, closed on Monday, and certain holidays.

Admission is $8 for adults; $6.50 for ages 62+, and for students ages 13 to 22 with student I.D.; $6 for ages 5-12; and free for those younger than 4 years old, for active duty military (individual) with I.D., and for members.

The Western Science Center (a 501(c) 3) non-profit organization with a mission is to inspire our community to discover the past, explore the present, and promote a sustainable future.

Online: westerncentermuseum.org

Email: temecula@sduniontribune.com
CORCORAN, Calif. (AP)  California corrections officials say they are investigating the death of a state prison inmate as a possible homicide.

They said Wednesday that a 43-year-old inmate was found unconscious in his cell at California State Prison, Corcoran, late Tuesday afternoon.

The inmate was pronounced dead at the prisons medical facility. His name was not immediately released because relatives had not been notified.

Advertisement

He was originally sentenced in San Diego County for armed robbery, but later had time added for drug possession, assault and conspiracy to commit a crime as a second striker in prison.

Officials said the victims cellmate is considered a suspect. He is serving a life sentence for a Kings County murder.

The prison has nearly 3,400 inmates 50 miles south of Fresno.
Two North Park gangs have been indicted in what federal authorities called a massive criminal enterprise that focused primarily on the sex trafficking of teenage girls and young women across the nation.

The case illustrates how profitable prostitution has become for street gangs  members can be seen in YouTube videos holding gold chalices and scepters worth thousands of dollars to symbolize their pimp status  and it shows how far a gangs activities can spread through use of the Internet and social media.

The kind of sex trafficking described in this indictment is nothing less than modern-day slavery, said U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy at a news conference. Unfortunately, more gangs are expanding from traditional pursuits like drug dealing into this lucrative business.

San Diego police and other agencies arrested 14 gang members and associates in San Diego Wednesday morning, while another two were nabbed in Arizona and one in New Jersey.  John Gibbins (John Gibbins)

The FBI, San Diego police and other agencies arrested 14 gang members and associates in San Diego Wednesday morning, while another two were nabbed in Arizona and one in New Jersey.

Four others were already in custody and three remain at large.

As part of the racketeering conspiracy, the defendants are accused of taking girls and women by force or luring them into prostitution, traveling to cities across 23 states and selling sex in hotel rooms, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Related Human trafficking survivor helping others

Investigators identified 60 female victims, including 11 who were minors as young as 15.

The indictment also alleges other crimes as part of the conspiracy, including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, robbery and drug trafficking.

The murder accusation relates to the 1995 killing of Tariq Khamisa, a 20-year-old pizza deliveryman who was gunned down during a robbery.

SWAT officers secured this tattoo parlor and upstairs apartment in the 5600 block of El Cajon Boulevard.  John Gibbins (John Gibbins)

Local defendants are expected to make their first court appearance Thursday afternoon in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Major.

One of the raids occurred in the El Cerrito neighborhood. During the arrests on El Cajon Boulevard near 58th Street at 8:40 a.m., an item was found that was believed to be an explosive device. A bomb squad later determined the object to be a harmless mortar round, police said.

In connection with the arrests, agents also seized various items including two guns, six luxury cars, more than 50 pairs of Air Jordan sneakers, flat-screen televisions and thousands of dollars in cash. They also found 20 to 30 marijuana plants.

Duffy said this is the second time her office has used the racketeering statute to go after a street gang. The first was in April 2011, when 39 alleged members of an Oceanside gang were indicted in connection with a sophisticated prostitution operation involving women and underage girls.

Of those defendants, 34 have pleaded guilty and are facing severe sentences, Duffy said.

According to the indictment, the crimes were led primarily by a group that law enforcement dubbed BMS, a combination of two gangs in the North Park neighborhood. They cooperated with multiple other street gangs, whose members managed prostitutes, booked hotel rooms, handled money and distributed drugs.

Members of BMS are really akin to a crime family whose members were all working together to commit various crimes for one purpose, Duffy said. And that purpose was simply to earn money for the organization.

The defendants are accused of obtaining their victims in various ways. Some forced women and girls into prostitution and maintained their obedience through threats and violence. Others lured victims through promises of a glamorous lifestyle.

Duffy said the victims were often recruited through social media  including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter  with gang members starring in rap videos with lyrics centered on their pimping activity.

Some defendants attended parties around the country called Players Balls that glorify gangsters, pimps and prostitutes. One defendant, Robert Banks III, 33, could be seen in a photo posted on Facebook, in which he poses at a Las Vegas gathering with a pimp cup and pimp stick and with a woman on each arm, Duffy said.

Prostitutes were sometimes branded as if they were property, with tattoos of gang monikers, a pimps name or even bar codes, according to the indictment.



Authorities stressed that not all of the victims were troubled children or runaways. Many of them had attended school regularly and socialized with friends and family, but fell prey to skilled manipulators.

These are not somebody elses children that have been victimized, these are our little girls, said Robert Howe, assistant special agent-in-charge of the San Diego FBI office.

Medical and psychological services were offered to each of the victims, authorities said.

Among the many criminal acts outlined in the indictment, defendant Hakeem Tayari Dunn, 33, is accused of conspiring with three other people who aren't charged in this case to kill the pizza deliveryman in January 1995.

Months after the slaying, the victims father, Azim Khamisa started a foundation that works with schools to promote nonviolence. He founded it alongside the grandfather of then-14-year-old Tony Hicks, who was identified as the gunman and tried as an adult.

My message is that violence is a learned behavior, no child is born violent, Khamisa said Wednesday. We have to do more of this kind of education so kids dont end up in gangs.
Advertisement

A federal indictment of 119 San Diego County gang members,including a Mexican Mafia boss arrested in a pre-dawn raid of hisSan Marcos home, portrays a sprawling, well-organized criminalnetwork that ran drug dealing on the streets of North County andeven extended inside the Vista jail.

Rudy Espudo, 39, controlled Latino gangs in North County anddemanded taxes from drug dealers and gang members as tribute to"La Eme ---- Spanish for The M and a nickname for the MexicanMafia, according to the indictment.

Authorities also said that gang members smuggled drugs into thecounty-run Vista Detention Center and sold them for the MexicanMafia, punished opponents and relayed orders with ease to and fromthe outside.

The indictment, which contains prosecutors reasons forarresting and charging 51 North County gang members, describes themoney-driven politics and inner workings of several local Latinogangs.

Some of the gangs have rivalries, but their leaders all obey andmake payments to La Eme, a relatively small and powerful cabal ofabout 200 people spread out over several states.

They operate in state prisons and county jails. In the Vistajail, they smuggled drugs and conducted gang business, theindictment said.

On North County streets, the mafia and gangs under its control,or surenos, also shook down drug dealers and robbers, demanding ashare of their ill-gotten gains, according to the indictment.

Sureno, Spanish for southerner, is a term that describes agang member who is loyal to the Mexican Mafia but not a member.

Law enforcement agencies involved in the raids have declined togive details about the criminal organization beyond those in theindictment. They have also refused to release photos of any of thearrested.

Several of those arrested were expected to appear next week infederal court.

Paying taxes

The indictment is replete with discussions about taxes or"rent paid to Espudo.

In some cases, Espudos associates were demanding monthlytribute from local gangs: the Westside and Diablos of Escondido,Varrio San Marcos and Varrio Fallbrook Locos. The gangs, likeanyone else, were reminded and threatened about due dates andassessed late fees for tardy payments.

On Jan. 15, 2011, the Westside gang fell $2,000 behind onpayments, the indictment says. A sureno in Vista jail told thethen-leader of the Westside gang, also in jail at the time, thatEspudo was going to put a green light on Westside ---- theMexican Mafias blessing and encouragement to attack the gangsmembers, according to the indictment.

He said Westside gang members arrested from Dec. 25, 2010,onward would be attacked in jail.

The sureno told the Westside leader to smuggle drugs into thefacility and (the sureno) would oversee their distribution in orderto fulfill the Westside gangs tax payment, the indictmentsays.

On Feb. 4, the sureno notified a Westside member that the greenlight had been lifted.

Authorities say that on Aug. 23, 2011, Gregorio Puebla, asureno, laid down La Emes law for a drug dealer. He told her shewould have to pay taxes. ... It doesnt matter if its your(expletive). Youre slinging in the city, anyone slinging in thecity has to pay taxes ... whether you like it or not, theindictment says.

If you get caught lying, you know, or try to dodge, dodge thatkind of (expletive), youre going to get into some serious(expletive), the indictment says.

Typically, serious trouble involved being beaten and robbed,the indictment says.

Jails under mafia control

The document hints at one of the most troubling aspects of theMexican Mafia, described in North County Times interviews with gangexperts and current and former gang members: Juvenile hall, jailsand prisons dont hinder its criminal operations.

In fact, La Eme counts on them.

The Mexican Mafia formed within the California Department ofCorrections in the late 1950s, and uses the institutions to educateand indoctrinate its members and foot soldiers.

La Eme also doesnt tend to include Mexican citizens, typicallypreferring Chicanos (Mexican-Americans), and is fiercelyanti-black. In state prisons, it has alliances with whitesupremacist groups.

Espudo appears to be a product of La Emes system.

He was born in the Imperial Valley, moved to Escondido when hewas 8, and became involved with gangs at 15, according to hismother. The indictment said he joined the Diablos street gang.

Before long, Espudo was arrested as a juvenile. Thats when histrue education most likely began.

Their grammar school is juvenile hall, said Richard Valdemar,a retired Los Angeles County Sheriffs gang investigator who spentmuch of his 30-year career investigating the Mexican Mafia.

Their high school is jail, and prison is their college. Theygraduate sophisticated in criminal behavior ---- they come outthoroughly brainwashed, physically fit, clever manipulators of thesystem.

In juvenile halls ---- institutions run by the California YouthAuthority ---- street gang allegiances remain strong. Kidsbelonging to rival Latino gangs carry their rivalries with them andfight one another while in custody.

Management by obscurity

Most of the kids know little or nothing about the Mexican Mafia,Valdemar said, and probably are oblivious to the fact that theirgangs kick drugs and money up to a La Eme boss, and current andformer gang members.

Any adult who is arrested and put behind bars in San DiegoCounty will spend time in a county jail. Those convicted of seriousor violent crimes are eventually sent to state prison.

In county jail, individual street gang affiliations begin tosoften as racial solidarity becomes more important. Latino gangsband together in alliance against black gangs.

This is where the Mexican Mafias influence begins to take hold.Inmates learn that even their gangs answer to someone higher, andthe most dedicated could be named a sureno ---- a foot soldier ofthe Mexican Mafia, Valdemar said.

Surenos retain their street gang affiliations but pledge theirtrue loyalty to La Eme, he said. Once the surenos get out of jail,they impose La Emes rules on their own gangs.

Those gangs become known as sureno gangs, loyal to La Eme. Themost trusted members become associates of the Mexican Mafia, andsome rise to become candidates for membership, the highest rank inthe Mexican Mafia, he said.

Its a democratic organization. There is no official hierarchyamong its members, or carnales, and major decisions, such asinducting a new member, require a vote, according to the indictmentand Valdemar.

In prison, the real laws are written by La Eme. Some mafiamembers or associates serving long sentences claim a prison andrule it from within.

Latinos must ask the mafia bosss permission to fight oneanother and must follow any orders he hands down ---- whether itssmuggling drugs, relaying messages or killing another inmate.

Crazy from early age

Espudo, known as Crazy or Crazyboy, had risen to powerthrough this system. He was a carnal, the indictment said.

He wasnt physically imposing; he wore glasses, but even as ateen, was known for his willingness for violence, according tosomeone familiar with him who asked not to be named.

In June 1996, when he was 24, Espudo and another gang memberused a gun to carjack a person who was passing out fliers for ahigh schools anti-gang event at Washington Park, according to pastNorth County Times reports.

Espudo accepted a plea deal: He pleaded guilty to one count ofcarjacking and one count of having a prior assault conviction.

In return, prosecutors dropped charges of robbery, evading apolice officer with reckless driving, receiving stolen property,possessing a concealable firearm and resisting a police officer---- crimes that would have doubled his sentence if he wereconvicted at trial.

He was sentenced to more than a decade in prison. It was notclear when he was released, but he had been a carnal in Escondidofor two to three years after his release, according to the sourcefamiliar with Espudo.

Still, older gang members tend to be wiser, more deliberate andmore motivated by cash than blood lust, gang experts have told theNorth County Times.

Espudo appeared to reflect that.

Low profile in North County

He lived in relatively quiet neighborhoods not associated withgang activity ---- an apartment on Nordahl Road in San Marcos, notfar from Walmart and Costco, and a condo in the Cape Concordneighborhood on Escondidos east side, a cozy area with an activehomeowners association.

On Aug. 15, he ordered his associates to remove graffiti from atree near his home. And, in a move that seemed contrary to ganglife in general, he ordered gang members in San Marcos andEscondido to stop tagging entirely about a month later.

Valdemar said this probably wasnt a benevolent act.

Mexican Mafia members have also been known to order an end todrive-by shootings. But it isnt just to be nice, he said.

The aim is to lower the gangs profiles and to prevent intergangviolence that doesnt result in profit. Tagging wars between rivalgangs can lead to intergang conflict and violence, which Espudo wasprobably trying to stop in order to focus on making money, Valedmarsaid.

Violence amid power vacuum?

Espudo was being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center inSan Diego, a federal prison, and is scheduled to appear in federalcourt at 9 a.m. Monday, said U.S. Attorney spokeswoman DebraHartman.

Valdemar said the indictments and arrests represented impressivework by law enforcement agencies.

Itll take a while for the Mexican Mafia to get back in placeafter this, he said. I would say it would be several monthsbefore they find themselves a leader again and try to reorganizethe group.

While the arrest was a good thing, its a mixed blessing,Valdemar said ---- it leaves a power vacuum.

The Latino gangs and unaffiliated thugs and drug dealers mightclash over territory until another Mexican Mafia member rises topower to take charge of North Countys criminal activity oncemore.

Correction:

Rudy Espudo, who was accused by authorities last week ofcoordinating gang activity in North County as a member of theMexican Mafia, was born in the Imperial Valley, moved to Escondidowhen he was 8 and became involved in gangs when he was 15,according to his mother.

In a previous version of this story, we reported incorrectlythat Espudo was born in Escondido and joined a gang at age 11. Weapologize.
Duo held with psychoactive drugs worth Rs 1.1 million

Police arrested two persons in possession of a huge cache of pharmaceutical drugs from Budhanilkantha Municipality-7 in Kathmandu on Sunday.
Martin Griffin was born an Episcopalian; he spent his highschool and college years studying Roman Catholicism because he"felt a call to the priesthood, and he became a Franciscan friarafter college.

But Griffin didnt feel at home in the Roman Catholic Church,and chose to leave it in 1998.

Advertisement

Instead, he joined the American Catholic Church, one of manyindependent Catholic or Old Catholic churches in the UnitedStates that are not part of the Roman Catholic Church. By someestimates there are more than 200,000 independent Catholics in theUnited States alone, compared with 77 million Roman Catholic Churchmembers.

Like other moderate and independent Catholic churches, theAmerican Catholic Church tries to be inclusive, diverse and"pastorally sensitive to the needs of the people, said LouBordisso, presiding bishop of the California Diocese for theAmerican Catholic Church, who ordained Griffin this summer asFather de Porres.

I didnt feel the (Roman Catholic) communal life was strongenough to meet my emotional, social and spiritual needs, saidGriffin, who is the principal at San Pasqual High School inEscondido. He researched other churches for years before choosingthe American Catholic Church.

Griffin, of Chula Vista, said independent Catholic churchesrespect the pope, but dont believe in papal infallibility, whichmeans the Pope cant err when defining the churchs moral andreligious beliefs. However, they do practice the same sevensacraments as Roman Catholics, and believe in the apostolicsuccession of bishops.

Clerical celibacy is optional among independent Catholics, andmarried people may be ordained, according to the Web site forIndependent Catholic Churches International(www.independentcatholics.org). Also, contraception is treated as amatter of personal conscience between husband and wife.

Bordisso, of Vallejo, said he considers the American CatholicChurch to be interdependent with Roman Catholic and Protestantchurches, as well as other religions.

I think interdependency is the whole business of having aworking relationship, and having a pastoral outreach and mutualrespect for each other, he said.

Women may be ordained as priests in the American CatholicChurch, and the clergy often work secular jobs while they servethe church. Bordisso is a family and relationship clinician.

For Griffin, life as an independent Catholic priest isenjoyable. He works with high school students during the week andis associate rector to about 20 parishioners on the weekend. Heworks for St. John the Beloved, a part of the moderate CatholicChurch of America, another independent Catholic Church. SinceGriffin is American Catholic, but San Diego County doesnt have achurch, he received special permission from Bordisso.

Griffin said he was drawn to becoming an American Catholicpriest because the church focuses on salvation and notcondemnation.

Our belief is that we arent called to judge, but we are calledto bring the gospel to those who want to receive the sacraments ofthe church, he said.

Bishop Thomas Abel is presiding bishop over St. John the Belovedin Hillcrest and All Saints Parish in Carlsbad, both part of theCatholic Church of America. We typically attract individuals whohave felt sidelined or not a part of the Roman Catholic Church,"Abel said.

They should not be sidelined with the church, but should bedrawn in so that they can live out their sacraments, he said.

Abel said the Catholic Church of America is smaller than theAmerican Catholic Church, but they share similar beliefs.

We can love people who are hurt and broken, and we try tominister to them, he said. We think that the power of theEucharist (Holy Communion) is so strong and loving that it has thatsaving grace.

Rodrigo Valdivia, chancellor of the Roman Catholic Diocese ofSan Diego, declined to comment on the independent Catholic churchesin order to avoid controversy.

Julie Byrne is the Msgr. Thomas J. Hartman Chair in CatholicStudies at Hofstra University in New York. She has studiedindependent Catholic churches for five years and is working on abook called The Other Catholic Church. According to Byrne, thereisnt an organization in the United States that oversees all of theindependent Catholic churches, and they arent as well known as theRoman Catholic Church.

She estimates that at least 230,000 people in the United Statesare independent Catholics, compared with 77 million RomanCatholics. However, in Europe, the Old Catholic church is knownwell, she said.

She said independent Catholic churches are difficult tocharacterize, because their beliefs range from liberal toconservative.

It would be really hard to sum up how the different churchesbreak down in terms of commonality, Byrne said.

Old Catholic churches have been in the United States since thebeginning of the 20th century, she said. Their roots stem from thefirst Vatican Council in 1869-70, if not earlier. After Vatican I,some Catholic leaders broke from Rome over the papal infallibilitydoctrine.

In my education about Catholicism, the Roman Catholic Churchsupposedly never split, author Byrne said. There have actuallybeen lots and lots of groups that started.

She said the hot spots for independent Catholic churches inthe U.S. include California, Chicago, Texas, Florida and NewMexico. She also said there are more than 150 separatejurisdictions of independent Catholic churches.

Rebecca Moore, chairman of San Diego State UniversitysDepartment of Religious Studies, said many people have joinedindependent Catholic churches because they disagreed with certainparts of their (Roman Catholic) teachings.

What we see today is people are more willing to step out ofMother Church, so to speak, for reasons of their conscience, shesaid. People are concerned about issues of exclusion in terms ofnot just membership, but inclusiveness of the clergy.

Janine Stock, who is now a Catholic Church of America priest forthe All Saints parish in Carlsbad, said she left the Roman CatholicChurch because she felt a calling -- something that tugs at you,pulls you, calls you -- for the priesthood. However, RomanCatholic women are prohibited from pursuing this calling.

When you are a child, you dont know you have thoseboundaries, she said, adding that she felt it was very difficultto have a barrier placed in front of you, and an artificial one atthat.

She said she has trouble finding the words to describe how itfelt to be ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church of Americain November 2004.

I cant even tell you what was going on through my heart thefirst time I gave Communion to someone, she said. There is not afeeling like it.

She said she likes the inclusiveness of the independent Catholicchurch.

Everybody has a voice, because we believe the theology and thedogma has already been described in the creed, she said.

All Saints Parish: The Rev. Janine Stock. Sunday Mass at 5 p.m.at Pilgrim United Church of Christ, 2020 Chestnut Ave.,Carlsbad.

St. John the Beloved Cathedral: Bishop Tom Abel, the Rev. ThomasBeckman, the Rev. Martin De Porres Griffin. Sunday Mass at 11:30a.m. at the chapel of University Christian Church, 3900 ClevelandAve., Hillcrest, San Diego.

For more on parishes of the Catholic Church of America in SanDiego County, seehttps://www.oldcatholicroman.org/or call (619) 295-1489.
A large radar device recently installed at Carlsbads Ponto Beach is part of a federal crackdown on drug and immigrant smuggling along the California coast.

The device, which can track any vessel within 20 miles, could help law enforcement agencies spot and apprehend smuggling boats or terrorists before they get to shore. It is the first of its kind in the country.

Advertisement

Federal officials have begun to focus more on securing the coastline after sharply reducing smuggling by air during the past 25 years, said Keith Jones of the Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, which is run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

We have a very good handle on the air game and now were trying to respond to this new threat, said Jones, noting that smuggling along the coast has been on the rise. Were targeting small vessels, which have been challenging for us.

Thats where the Ponto Beach radar device, which sits atop a cliff high above the ocean, can make a difference, Jones said. It expands the governments surveillance reach about fivefold, because most shoreline radar devices can only track vessels within four miles of the coast.

Since the radar device was installed in early August, data from Ponto Beach has been flowing into the operations center in Riverside, which has a large surveillance room similar to NASAs Mission Control in Houston.

New software allows officials in Riverside to combine that data with smaller radar detectors, footage from police and Coast Guard cameras along the shore, and data from government planes flying over the coastline.

The goal is to launch a coastal surveillance system later this year that integrates all available data in one place, while also adding new information from devices like the one in Carlsbad, Jones said.

Wed love to have them up and down the coast, but were not sure how many well have, he said, noting that the devices are expensive. It could be dozens or it could be hundreds.

The radar device was installed on a 60-day trial basis to determine whether the data it gathered would be useful. Jones said officials have been pleased with the results so far.

He said Carlsbad was chosen because its in the governments geographic threat vector.

Several small boats smuggling both immigrants and drugs have landed on the shore near Ponto Beach in recent years. Police and Coast Guard officials have made some arrests, but they also concede that some boats are probably landing undetected late at night or before sunrise.

Jones said the increase in smuggling by boat is because of heightened security at the international border and government efforts to eliminate smuggling by air.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, air smuggling was a huge problem, he said. We hope to slowly and steadily make the same progress with maritime smuggling.

Thomas Tomaiko, a program manager for the borders and maritime division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, stressed that law-abiding boat operators wouldnt be harassed.

The overwhelming majority of small vessels operating in and around the United States coasts and in our ports and inland waterways are engaged in legitimate activities, he said.

However, a small number are platforms for illegal or illicit activities, such as human and drug trafficking, and may be used for waterborne attacks on our maritime infrastructure.

At Ponto Beach on Wednesday, swimmers and sunbathers criticized the gray radar device as unattractive. But they also said smuggling was a large enough problem that such efforts were warranted.

Its a little distracting, said Gina Eckert, referring to the constantly spinning 12-foot bar atop the device. But were looking this way, at the ocean, not up there. And they need things like that so they can see whos out there.

The device, which is along the western edge of Carlsbad Boulevard just south of Avenida Encinas, has raised a lot of eyebrows since it was installed, lifeguard Erik Burgan said.

Jones, the Customs and Border Protection official, praised the state Parks Department, which oversees Ponto Beach, for allowing the radar device to be installed on short notice without any hassle.
The niece of the elderly Valley Center couple killed last week by a suspected drunken driver said the crash has left a gaping hole in her family.

Retired school teachers Carl and Eunice Ackermann were out for their morning walk on July 7 when a car driven by 20-year-old sailor Earl Smith Jr. struck them from behind, just 1,500 feet west of the home theyd shared for more than 30 years. Carl, 79, and Eunice, 78, were killed instantly.

Eunices niece, Hilary Trzynka, said she and her family members have been crushed by their loss.

It is so senseless that one small decision can have so many terrible repercussions for so many people, said Trzynka, of Beaverton, Ore. My aunt and uncle were taken early from lives that were fulfilling and enjoyed ... Even the driver changed his life in horrible ways that I would hope for no one.

Prosecutors say Smith was driving at 75 mph (20 miles over the posted limit on the two-lane road) and was distracted by his cellphone GPS when he veered off to the right shoulder and hit the couple. Smiths blood alcohol content measured 0.12 percent 90 minutes after the crash. Californias legal limit for driving is 0.08 percent.



Art Cunningham, an Old Castle Road neighbor who was the first person to the scene of the accident, recalls hearing the impact that morning and then a car horn being honked repeatedly. When he drove his truck up the hill, he found Smiths car turned around facing the other direction with its air bags deployed and its front end and windshield smashed. Smith climbed out of his car and told Cunningham that he believed he had hit something but wasnt sure what it was.

Cunningham searched the area and found Eunices body against some boulders lining a nearby driveway, but Carls body was thrown more than 50 yards down the street into some roadside brush. It was clear from their significant injuries, Cunningham said, that they died instantly.

Last week, Smith pleaded not guilty to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and two felonies related to accident. He could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Trzynka said she and her brother, Andrew Trzynka of Portland, Ore., will work together to settle the couples estate. She also plans to adopt the Ackermanns cat Herbie, a 6-year-old American shorthair, that is being cared for at the county Department of Animal Services shelter in Carlsbad. Although there were initial reports that the Ackermanns left behind an elderly dog, Trzynka said the dog died from old age a few months ago.

Valley Center residents described the couple as a fixture in the community. They walked hand in hand each morning and evening on the streets around their Old Castle Road home.

Trzynka said she believes the couple met and married in the 1970s when they were both elementary school teachers in Vista (Carl at Monte Vista, Eunice at Olive). Carl grew up in Point Loma and served as a dentist in the navy before earning his teaching credential. Eunice was raised in North Dakota and moved to California after graduating from a teachers college there.

She said that the Ackermanns life in retirement was filled with volunteer activities for schools, animal shelters, libraries, elder hostels and arts organizations. They traveled the country in their RV to see the desert wildflowers, participated in archaeological digs and prided themselves on their self-sufficiency, growing much of what they ate. The night before she died, Eunice called Trzynkas mother in Oregon to talk about plans for her apricot trees.

Friends said the childless couple was so devoted to each other, they would have wanted to go together. Trzynka confirmed that the Ackermanns were a close and tight couple.

Their focus was on each other, she said. Carl was the most important thing in Eunices life and he felt the same way. They were an insular unit.

Trzynka said the couples bodies have been cremated and the family will consult their will to determine if they had any final wishes for burial or a service.

Eveleen Crouthamel, a senior library associate at the Escondido Public Library (where the Ackermanns volunteered for the past 15 years), said she plans to organize a memorial service in consultation with Trzynka and would appreciate help from interested members of the Valley Center community.

Dave Fernstrom and his wife, Vicky, lived just down the street from the Ackermanns for more than 20 years. He said he frequently spoke with the couple and was impressed by how they cared for their neighbors by picking up trash and alerting them to sprinkler leaks.

They were blessed souls and a special part of our neighborhood and we will miss them forever, Fernstrom said. My wife and I have often saw them holding hands, as they took their morning walks, and we would always give a friendly wave and remark how we hoped to be that close and active at that age.


The small island of Caye Caulker was split in two by infamous Hurricane Hattie in 1961. The storm also caused thousands of people to evacuate the then capital, Belize City. Hattieville, now a village (and home to the Belize prison), was set up as a refugee camp for over 10,000 people.

Today, on Caye Caulker, there seems to be some disagreement about the Splits origins  if a smaller passage was made larger by the hurricane or if it was man-made after the storm.

Either way, ever since I moved to Belize  and for many years before that  the beach area at the split has been a centerpiece for those living on and visiting Caye Caulker. A place for swimming, enjoying the sun and sand, for water sports, for beer and music. The main users were the many backpackers and international budget travelers, often people in their 20s, and the locals. The Lazy Lizard Bar is probably the most visited in Belize.

A few years ago, some more significant changes started. The long-time management of the famous Lazy Lizard bar was evicted and some major infrastructure changes started to occur. The land was for sale and rumored to be sold. Speculation swirled. Would this public watering hole get closed off?

I visited and wrote a blog about my visit to the Split and the Lazy Lizard a few days ago. It looks quite different. Shiny and new  with a very different vibe. Let me offer up a definition of the word that occurred to me last Thursday.

Gentrification: Gentrification is a process of renovating a neighborhood or area so it conforms to middle class taste. I always like to refer to the urban dictionary for definitions as well. Here is their primary definition of the word Gentrification.

The Split now looks gorgeous. But, on my brief visit this week, the local reggae and dancehall music was replaced by Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks. The crowds of young people and locals were now families and mid-aged American tourists.

Things seem different. But, like I said, this was a 1 hour look around.

There are now some serious alternatives to hanging out at the Split. There is the neighboring Sip N Dip with the hammocks, swings and reggae. (Seen in lime green)

And just north, Koko King. Check out this video. I have to get over there for a day.

So let me just share some of my pictures over the years. Here are some of my posts about visits to the split from the last six years. The place is gorgeous and was gorgeous. Take a look.

And here is a picture of the Split in 2005.

2011

I am not sure what the Lazy Lizard Resort was  but I am finding reference to it in it the Panama Papers  the biggest financial data leak of offshore information ever.

Interesting

Here is the view from the bar.

And in 2011, the reality show, the Bachelor was filmed in Belize. Lots of non-disclosure agreements signed by 100s of people but I managed to pry a tiny tip from someone and I did my stake out  SUCCESSFULLY  on Caye Caulker. That blog post had hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The massive staff of The Bachelor episode (over 50 people) had a big party at the Lazy Lizard later that week.

2012

I attended Lobsterfest in Caye Caulker for the very first time  and declared it my favorite lobster festival. The Split was PACKED for the event.

There was a (somewhat treacherous) pole for kids to climb out on.

And the deep and fast flowing water was seriously eating away at the sand

2013

I went on a 3-part walk around Caye Caulker and took LOTS of pictures. Part One, Part Two and Three.

The wall was being re-enforced and a new deck was put up.

The Reggae Boat was still parked there.

2014

More docks

And on a sunnier day, Flyboarding!

I think the end of the sea wall was sagging a bit more into the water.

And a picture of the seawall along the edge  now it has been totally filled in. Tons of sand.

There are lots more pictures in this post.

And Lobsterfest  always a scene!

And then, in the fall of 2014, the lease was ended and the split closed.

There was a court case and then a Lazy Lizard with no Liquor License.

New management came in and the bar re-opened soon.

The seawall was being fortified and by the end of 2015, the large concrete building (hotel? condos?) was being pulled down.

Space was being rented to new businesses

Lots of changes and upgrades happening. Which is a good thingI think.

Upstairs was turned into a bistro

Hurricane Earl came in summer 2016 and did some serious damage.

Can you believe that all of THIS was about a year ago?

And then by spring of 2017 major construction was underway

And a new mural  I loved them all. Would be so great if they were saved somewhere.

Things are looking gorgeous  on my most recent visit, the concrete building was gone, the sea walls, pristine, all white sand and clear swimming area.

The only thing that makes me antsy is this: lots of money was put into these upgradeslots. Does that mean that there will be MAJOR changes to Caye Caulkers most known site? Probably.

Uncertainty makes me antsy.
A group of diverse but like-minded individuals, the members of ARC have come together in their common desire to fight hatred, bigotry, intolerance and violence because of the harm these antisocial behaviors cause to our society. In that effort, we will not use or sanction the use of illegal actions (such as violence or intimidation) in pursuit of our desired aims and if we learn of anyone who does use these unethical methods we will report those individuals to the authorities. Instead, we will use the guarantees found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ensure freedom of legal speech and expression.
Professor Abel Mendez, Director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory and a planetary astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico, and colleagues may have solved the mystery of the strange signal  dubbed the Weird! Signal  from the nearby star Ross 128. According to the team, the best explanation is that the signal is a broadband radio transmission from one or more Earth-orbiting artificial satellites.

On May 12, 2017, Professor Mendez and co-authors observed a group of nearby red dwarf stars (Ross 128, Gliese 398, Gliese 436, Wolf 359, HD 95735, BD +202465, and K2-18) with the 305-m (1,000-foot) radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico.

The astronomers detected an anomalous radio signal during the observation of Ross 128, a low-mass red dwarf and one of the nearest stars to the Sun at a distance of only 10.96 light-years. The signal lasted for around 10 min and was in frequencies between 4.6 and 4.8 GHz.

They proposed three main explanations for the source of the strange signal: (i) unusual stellar activity; (ii) emissions from other background objects; or (iii) interference from satellite communications.

Each of these potential solutions has its own problems, and so the mystery here was that we were not able to accurately distinguish between these working hypotheses, Professor Mendez explained.

There were other less likely possibilities, such as ground radio interference, data processing errors, among several others.

However, many people were more interested in the signals as potential proof of transmissions from an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization, he said.

Statistically, this is always the last consideration, not because such civilizations are impossible, we humans are an example, but because other possibilities had frequently arisen and no extraterrestrial civilizations have been detected yet.

He added: other unexplained signals, like the Wow! Signal, are commonly cited outside of academia to be proof of extraterrestrial communications. Unexplained here does not mean inexplicable; it just means we are not able to tell which is the precise source from many possibilities.

This was precisely the case of our signal from Ross 128, which we now call the Weird! Signal.

We discussed our results with many other radio astronomers, but came up with no definitive answers. This finally motivated us to request the help from SETI Berkeley and the SETI Institute teams.

The new observations of Ross 128 were carried out on July 16, 2017, with the Arecibo Telescope.

The Breakthrough Listen science team at the University of California, Berkeleys SETI Research Center joined in this campaign and simultaneously observed the star using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT).

After a careful analysis of the observations we performed last Sunday from the Arecibo Observatory, together with SETI Berkeley using the GBT and the SETI Institutes Allen Telescope Array, we are now confident about the source of the Weird! Signal, Professor Mendez said.

The best explanation is that the signals are transmissions from one or more geostationary satellites.

This explains why the signals were within the satellites frequencies and only appeared and persisted for Ross 128; this star is close to the celestial equator where many geostationary satellites are located.

This fact, though, does not yet explain the strong dispersion-like features of the signals; however, it is possible that multiple reflections caused these distortions, but we will need more time to explore this and other possibilities.

_____

Abel Mendez et al. 2017. The Weird! Signal.

J. Emilio Enriquez et al. 2017. Breakthrough Listen Follow-up of the Reported Transient Signal Observed at the Arecibo Telescope in the Direction of Ross 128.
HARTSVILLE, S.C.  One thousand kilometers in seven days. Thats what Coker College professor Julia Fisher will shoot for while competing in the Mongol Derby endurance horse race.

Starting Aug. 9, Fisher will have 10 days to finish the race, but to be ahead of 35 competitors, she will need to complete the derby in just a week.

The race, which recreates Genghis Khans ancient horse messenger postal route, takes place in a remote region near the Mongolia capital, Ulaanbaatar. The course takes riders through steppe, desert and mountainous terrain.

Riders have from sunup to sundown each day to race the course. They will reach a checkpoint every 25 miles where they will get a new horse and restock supplies such as food and water. If riders can reach a checkpoint by nightfall, they can sleep there. If not, they will be camping out under the stars. The race is featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the worlds longest horse race.

Fisher began riding in 2008. A fellow Coker College professor recommended she take riding lessons to relieve stress and fill time after her two children, now adults, moved away.

I can pretty much say from there the rest is history, Fisher said. If Im going to do something, Ill jump in with both feet. My life became the barn and the horses and school. That was it.

A friend at the barn introduced her to endurance racing and invited Fisher to borrow her horse for 25-mile races.

Its just addictive," Fisher said. "Im sure its the same kind of thing as people who are addicted to motorcycles or race cars."

The next year Fisher bought a 10-year-old Egyptian Arabian horse named Maya and started competing more often. Since then, she estimates she has raced 900 miles in 25-mile races and 1,100 miles in 50-mile races.

Most of her racing is in South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Florida and Georgia, but in 2013 Fisher began researching other areas. Thats when she came across the Mongol Derby.

I was just watching the calendar and trying to keep aware of what was going on, and something came up about this crazy race in Mongolia, she said. I thought, What the heck? Nobody I knew knew anything about it, so I started doing research.

Fisher tracked down two women who competed in the 2013 race and learned all she could from their experiences. She wanted to race in the derby eventually but was wary because of her age.

When Lynn (Hamilton) did that ride, she was the oldest person, and she was 55 at the time, and I was already 60-whatever, Fisher said. She just kept saying, It doesnt matter how old you are, its how old you feel  if you can do it.

Last year, Fisher decided to apply for the race. She had one goal to meet, however, before doing so. Because of weight limitations for the rider and gear during the race, Fisher wanted to lose 40 pounds. By the time she applied in August of 2016, she had lost 50 pounds. She found out two months later that she had been accepted into the derby.

I turned 65 in October, she said, It was a great birthday present to get.

Since then, Fisher has been spending months preparing for her trip: buying gear, researching the derby, working out and riding as much as she can.

Besides the physical aspect, the race organizers warn competitors of the psychological drain they will face. Being in a remote area alone can take its toll on a person. Fisher however, is ready and excited for the challenge.

Its an opportunity to commune with the universe, Fisher said. I dont want to get weird about this. Im not a particularly religious person, but this has been one of the most attractive things about the riding Ive been doing in general in terms of going out on trails by myself. I really like being out there by myself: just me and my horse. Theres just something magical about it.
Ron Cortes/Ronald Cortes

There have been six reports of drones flying into San Francisco International Airports restricted airspace since the start of the year.

The latest incident occurred just before noon Monday, when pilots in two planes reported a 2-foot-wide drone hovering 3,500 feet over Hunters Point  well over the 400-foot legal limit.
One man was killed and two other people were injured Saturday morning when a minivan collided with a sedan, causing it to overturn on Taylor Boulevard in Pleasant Hill, the California Highway Patrol said.

The accident happened about 10:14 a.m. when a minivan traveling south on Taylor, just north of Withers Avenue, veered to the left from its lane and collided with the car, which then overturned, CHP spokesman Brandon Correia said in a news release.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

San Franciscos Ed Lee  already the highest-paid mayor in the state  just got a $24,000 raise, bringing his salary to $326,527 a year.

Lees 7.9 percent raise is more than double the 3 percent that most city workers received this year.

And hes not alone. As of July 1:

District Attorney George Gascons pay went up $18,814, to $286,015.

City Attorney Dennis Herreras salary rose $20,843, to $269,523.

Public Defender Jeff Adachis went up $6,109, to $247,909.

Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, up $12,091, to $243,699.

Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu, up $10,207, to $203,288.

And Treasurer-Tax Collector Jose Cisneros, up $3,783, to $191,968.

Only Adachi and Cisneros came in under the 3 percent bar.

Lees pay hike edges the mayor past Police Chief Bill Scott, who makes $323,076 annually, and Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, who gets $317,408.

Unlike rank-and-file city workers and their department head bosses, whose raises are negotiated with the city, elected officials pay is set once every five years by the San Francisco Civil Service Commission. Its based on the pay of similar positions in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

For example, when it comes to the D.A.s salary, the commission looked at Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeffrey Rosen  at the high end, $343,760  and Marin County District Attorney Ed Berberian, bringing up the rear at $229,882. The five-county average determined Gascons $286,015 salary.

Because San Francisco is both a city and a county  and because counties do not have mayors  Lees salary is figured based on the salaries of Bay Area county administrators. Those range from a high of $359,423 in Santa Clara County to a low of $269,277 in Marin.

Interesting to note: Bay Area counties pay their elected officials and appointed county managers way more than statewide officials.

For example, Gov. Jerry Brown gets $190,100 a year  and hes the second-highest-paid governor in the country, behind Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf.

So now that the Civil Service Commission has done its once-every-five-years salary reset, what happens for the next four years?

The officeholders will be eligible for cost-of-living increases of up to 5 percent a year, every year, until 2022.

Fired up: San Francisco firefighter Jessica Lee had just finished the three-hour drive from her home in Mariposa early Tuesday to start her shift at Station 51 in the Presidio when she got a text from her moms boyfriend, saying flames from the Detwiler Fire were bearing down on the town and that everyone was being evacuated.

Lee, 27, jumped in her car to race back home  the second half of a round-trip drive she has made six times a month for the past two years. However, this trip was different. At one point, Lee was forced to make a U-turn when flames began shooting up the hillside over Highway 140.

When she finally arrived, family members had gathered their belongings. But when decision time came, they opted to stay  and Lee climbed on the roof to lay out a hose.

They stayed through the week, without lights but using power from a portable generator to keep the water running and the food from spoiling in the refrigerator. By Friday, after the arrival of several fire crews  including one from South San Francisco  Lees spirits were lifted. And the family home was safe.

Im supposed to be back to work (in San Francisco) on Sunday, but Im going to use sick time to be here, Lee told us when we reached her by phone.

There were a lot of people who have been devastated, and really we are very lucky, Lee said. It could have been a lot worse.

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.

Fly with me: There have been six reports of drones flying into San Francisco International Airports restricted airspace since the start of the year.

The latest incident occurred just before noon Monday, when pilots in two planes reported a 2-foot-wide drone hovering 3,500 feet over Hunters Point  well above the 400-foot legal limit.

One of the pilots, flying a Virgin America jet, put the drone at 6 miles north of SFO. The second, unidentified pilot spotted it at 4 miles out.

Neither pilot reported the proximity of the drone to their aircraft, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor told us. He said the sightings did not have any effect on operations.

SFO spokesman Doug Yakel said none of the other incidents this year resulted in delays or problems.

And lets hope it stays that way.

Play ball: While the Oakland As ponder a new stadium closer to the city center, team chairman emeritus Lew Wolff and his Southern California business partners have just won city approval to build an 18-story Marriott Hotel and Residence Inn downtown.

The $90 million-plus project at 1431 Jefferson St. would include 276 rooms, ground-floor commercial space and a five-level parking garage. It would be among the first major new hotels in Oakland in years.

The hard work begins now, Wolff told us, meaning his group must still finalize drawings and pull together the financing.

If all goes according to plan, construction could begin next spring.

Looks like Wolff will be leaving his signature in Oakland after all.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross
When a solar eclipse darkens the sky next month, California energy regulators have a small request:

Dont turn on the lights.

Or, if you must, please make sure theyre LEDs.

The Aug. 21 eclipse that will completely block the sun across a wide arc of North America arrives at a time when California is relying more and more on solar power. During past eclipses in the United States, no one had to wonder how the events would affect electricity supplies. Now they do.

The California Public Utilities Commission has created a website, www.caleclipse.org, that asks state residents to pledge to conserve electricity during the eclipse, which will begin just after 9 a.m. and last almost until noon. If they dont, the state will have to get electricity from fossil fuels.

The organization that manages most of Californias electricity grid insists theres no danger of the eclipse causing power failures.

The California Independent System Operator, which runs 80 percent of the grid, has been planning for the eclipse since last year. Conservation during the event would be nice but unnecessary.

Were confident weve got this handled, said Steven Greenlee, spokesman for the Independent System Operator. The thing about an eclipse is, its very predictable.

While grid managers say the event will be manageable, it does pose a challenge.

ERIC ADAMS/NYT

California has enough large-scale solar power plants, most of them built within the past five years, to generate a maximum of 10,000 megawatts of electricity. A megawatt is a snapshot figure roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by 750 typical homes in a given moment. Electricity from those plants starts trickling onto the grid soon after sunrise, surges rapidly in midmorning, and hits a plateau around 11 a.m.

The eclipse will strike just as the morning solar supply begins to increase.

The path of total eclipse  where the moon completely covers the sun  will steer north of California, leaving the sun partially obscured throughout the state. But it will still make a difference.

In the Mojave Desert, which has more installed solar power than any other part of the state, 65 percent of the sunlight will be blocked, according to the Independent System Operators estimates. In the southern San Joaquin Valley, another region packed with solar plants, sunlight will drop by 69 percent.

As the eclipse deepens, the grid will lose about 70 megawatts of solar power per minute, Greenlee said. By 10:22, production from large-scale solar power plants will drop to 3,143 megawatts  almost two-thirds lower than normal for that time of day.

Then, as the eclipse passes, solar power production will jump by about 90 megawatts per minute until full sunlight returns. (The rebound will be more dramatic than the dip, because the sun will be higher in the sky.)

Grid managers will not only need to replace the missing megawatts. They will also need to supply more electricity to California homes whose rooftop solar panels will be dimmed by the eclipse.

Fortunately, other grid managers have dealt with this.

In the months before a 2015 eclipse in Europe, analysts wondered how the event would affect electricity supplies. Germany had roughly 40,000 megawatts of solar capacity at the time, raising fears that power fluctuations caused by the eclipse could wreak havoc with the grid.

It didnt. Chaos failed to ensue.

California officials consulted their German counterparts to glean lessons. One small result: The Independent System Operator has lined up a little extra capacity  about 200 megawatts, from small natural-gas power plants  to have in reserve. (Natural gas produces greenhouse gases when burned, which is why the state utilities commission would prefer not to use it.)

It is a challenge  its something we havent seen before at this magnitude, Greenlee said. But we have a pretty good idea how it will behave.

David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dbaker@sfchronicle.com Twitter @DavidBakerSF
Mike Slavko, the hyped-up DJ best known to Bay Area rock radio fans as M. Dung, has died.

Mike (and trust me, he wouldnt want to be referred to as Mr. Slavko, as obituary style dictates) passed away June 30 in a San Francisco hospital after suffering a variety of ailments. He was 59.

Soon after KFOG went from beautiful music to rock in 1982, program director Dave Logan tapped Mike, who was doing production work, to host the Sunday Night Idiot Show. He called himself Dung Boy, spun oldies and raved like a son-of-a-Wolfman Jack, sputtering inane phrases like O-DEA?, YOW! Buh-DAY and Ay-WAY!

Dung was very excited about music, Mike told The Chronicles Sam Whiting in a 2012 profile, and I try to convey that to my listeners.

He said he first did the Idiot Show on college radio in Allendale, Mich., in 1977.

Logan met him in Grand Rapids, Mich., where they worked at WLAV-FM, which aired the Idiot Show. It was, Logan said, a free-form mixture of roots rock, immaculate soul and excellent oldies. It exploded from the radio with a funky groove and furious intensity.

A year after his debut on KFOG, Mike also was given the morning show, with a name change to M., minus the dung. He swiftly became a big success, Logan recalled. No one who heard his show ever forgot him.

After leaving KFOG in 1992, Mike revived his oldies show on other stations and online, at www.idiotshow.net. He also did podcasts, and his features can be found on Soundcloud.

But in recent years, he eschewed radio jobs (I got tired of being fired for a living, he told Whiting) and, living in an apartment in San Mateo, worked as a lab administrator. I lead a very boring existence, he said. Divorced, his only close family was his daughter, Antigone, a musician.

Then, he met and got engaged to Judy Crum in 2013. But, soon after, he began ailing. Since he didnt have adequate health coverage, Crum started a GoFundMe campaign, and Mike filed reports. Early in 2016, after a hospital stay and visits with specialists, he wrote, So far, Myelofibrosis (a blood cancer), rheumatoid arthritis (and) diabetes are the biggest issues, with a few smaller ones to boot.

In midyear, he reported that hed also with Mike, added loss of vision to Mikes list of woes. He also had heart problems, but somehow remained cheerful. He posted a message: Well, your old Dung Boy is happy to say he survived a heart attack. ... The cardiologist at Valley Care in Pleasanton did an amazing job. I am lucky to be alive.

In the end, it was all too much. In her Facebook note to supporters, Crum wrote: He knows he was loved by his fans, and was always surprised that people remembered him after all this time.

Personal note: KFOG management apparently considered Mike better at being a personality than an interviewer, so when, in late 1986, the morning show went to London for a week of live programs, with a parade of rock artists visiting its pop-up studios at Capital Radio, program director John Rivers invited me along, to conduct the interviews. Our guests included John Entwistle and Kenney Jones of the Who, Ronnie Wood of the Stones, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Sir Bob Geldof, Robert Cray, Rod Argent, Scott MacKenzie, Wang Chung and Maggie Bell. Truth is, M. Dung joined in on numerous chats and held his own. He loved music, and it showed. And the guests were amused by his verbal antics.

That week in London, working alongside Scoop Nisker, Kevin the Rat Radich, Rivers and producer Trish Robbins, remains a highlight of my radio career, with thanks to a certain Dung Boy.

R.I.P.: Two other radio-related losses: Molly McGovern, wife of Terry McGovern for 50 years, died June 30 after battling brain cancer for some five years. The lovely Molly will be missed by Terry, sons Brendan and Anthony, and many friends. ... Claude Hall, legendary radio columnist for decades in Billboard magazine, who coined the term easy-listening in 1965 to describe a radio format, died July 7 in Las Vegas, after taking a fall.

Weed on the Walk: Steven Seaweed, who retired from KSAN (The Bone) on June 30, capping 44 years in the biz, got a nice surprise two days before he signed off. He got word that he would be the first DJ to be inducted into the Bammies Walk of Fame, in front of Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. The news was delivered in person by Kenny Wardell of BAMmagazine.com and BAM Radio. No date has been set for Seaweeds induction.

BTW, the DJs last song was by Led Zeppelin. Something about, Its time to ramble on ...

Ben Fong-Torres is a Bay Area freelance writer.
NORFOLK, Va. - A defiant President Donald Trump unleashed a flurry of nearly a dozen tweets Saturday morning, asserting that he has the "complete power to pardon" aides, family members and possibly even himself - an apparent response to the special counsel's widening Russia probe.

The president also decried "illegal leaks" in the "FAKE NEWS." He lashed out at a Washington Post report of previously undisclosed alleged contacts between Attorney General Jeff Sessions - at the time a U.S. senator and senior adviser to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign - and Russia's then-ambassador to the United States. In a tweet, Trump called the disclosures an illegal new "intelligence leak." The charge was part of his continuing effort to try to shift the public focus to what he claims is a partisan attempt to undermine his presidency.

The president's assertion of his pardoning authority came days after The Post reported that he and his legal team have discussed his power to pardon those close to him and even himself.

Shortly after his barrage of tweets, which started just after 6:30 a.m. and lasted nearly two hours, Trump flew to Norfolk, where he injected a small dose of partisan politics into the ceremonial commissioning of an aircraft carrier.

Speaking aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford, Trump extolled the virtues of the "wonderful, beautiful but very, very powerful" nuclear-powered warship named after the 38th president. "We will win, win, win," Trump said. "We will never lose." But he also decried the budget compromise known as sequestration, which requires mandatory and corresponding military and domestic cuts.

Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post.

Trump promised to try to restore higher levels of military funding but also urged the audience of about 6,500 - many in uniform - to help him push through Congress this year's spending plan, a budget in which he said he will seek an additional $54 billion in defense spending.

"I don't mind getting a little hand, so call that congressman, and call that senator, and make sure you get it," he said to applause. "And by the way, you can also call those senators to make sure you get health care."

But Trump's brief appeal created a potentially awkward tableau at a ship-commissioning event largely intended as ceremonial: a commander in chief offering political remarks and what could even be construed as an order to the naval personnel he commands.

The president's 17-minute speech aboard the massive vessel, as well as his frenzied social-media assertions Saturday - which veered between proclamations of innocence and expressions of frustration - came as Trump struggles to stabilize his presidency, just six months in. He and several family members, including his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, are potentially facing mounting legal questions in special counsel Robert Mueller III's investigation of Russia's attempt to tamper with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

And on Friday, Trump set off the most dramatic, if potentially unintended, overhaul of his White House staff so far when he installed financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director. That move triggered an unexpected chain reaction of one resignation (White House press secretary Sean Spicer's) and one promotion (that of deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Spicer's former spot at the briefing room lectern).

Trump's early-morning tweets Saturday revealed a president who is still exasperated, if not downright angry, over the cascade of controversies muddling his tenure, including a Russia probe so expansive that the question of presidential pardons has spilled out into public view.

Although one of Trump's attorneys, John Dowd, described as "not true" and "nonsense" the notion that Trump's legal team was working to undermine Mueller's probe - including by exploring the president's pardoning authority - Trump's Saturday tweets seemed not only to confirm the Post article but also to signal the potential of future issues emerging. (The only crime "so far," Trump wrote, "is leaks against us.")

Trump aides said the president is merely curious about his powers and the limits of Mueller's probe.

The Trump legal team's discussion of pardoning authority is purely theoretical, according to two people familiar with the ongoing conversations. But if Trump pardoned himself in the face of Mueller's investigation, he would set off a legal and political firestorm, first around the question of whether a president can use the constitutional pardon power in that way.

Trump's hypothetical questions, however, may be further complicated by a recently unearthed 1998 memo obtained and published by the New York Times, in which the legal scholar Ronald Rotunda wrote to independent counsel Kenneth Starr opining that on the basis of his extensive analysis, a sitting president can be indicted on a charge of a criminal offense.

That conclusion contradicts a 2000 Justice Department memo finding that to indict or criminally prosecute a sitting president would "undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions."

The rediscovered 56-page analysis was written in the context of Starr's investigation of Bill Clinton in the Whitewater real estate affair. It examined the U.S. Constitution and existing laws and legal precedents, including Supreme Court opinions involving Clinton and President Richard Nixon. The Rotunda memo concludes that "no legal precedent has ever concluded that the president is immune from the federal criminal laws. In fact, the cases have suggested the contrary."

The analysis notes that the Constitution carves out certain limited immunities from prosecution for members of Congress, proving that the framers were aware of "how to draft immunity language" - but did not do so for the office of the president.

"The contemporary sources suggest that the Constitution provides no criminal immunity for any president who commits crimes in his personal capacity," the memo states. Elsewhere, it adds: "No federal statutes recognize, or purport to recognize, any presidential immunity from criminal indictment."

In no small irony, this chain of reasoning emerged in the context of a Republican desire to prosecute Clinton - yet now could be neatly used by Democrats to make a case against Trump.

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.

On Saturday, in one of his many tweets, Trump continued his campaign to discredit Mueller's Russia investigation as based on leaks of information from political enemies aiming to undermine him. The Post reported late Friday that U.S. intelligence officials had intercepted communications in which Russia's ambassador to the United States told his superiors in Moscow that he had discussed campaign-related matters and policies important to Moscow last year with Sessions, then a U.S. senator who had endorsed Trump.

Trump also restated on Twitter his view that Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency should be under greater scrutiny, and he contended that his son Donald Jr. "openly" disclosed emails concerning a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer during the campaign - even though the younger Trump did so only after the New York Times obtained the emails and was preparing to publish a report on them.

Sessions, who is now attorney general, had failed to disclose his meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during his confirmation hearing; when the occurrence of the meetings was made public in news reports, he insisted that he had met with Kislyak only in his capacity as a senator and had not discussed campaign issues.

But The Post's reporting indicated that U.S. intelligence intercepts showed Kislyak telling Moscow that he had had "substantive" discussions with Sessions on matters including Trump's positions on Russia-related issues and on prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.

Trump was not the only member of his administration attempting damage control on Twitter this weekend. The newly installed Scaramucci also began deleting his previous tweets - some of which had been critical of Trump and the policies that Scaramucci will now be promoting. And he announced his decision, of course, on Twitter.

"Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets," Scaramucci wrote, explaining that his previous views had "evolved" and that he does not want them to be a "distraction" from the president's agenda.

- - -

Chris Mooney contributed to this report.

- - -

Can the president pardon himself?

Video embed coding:

http://wapo.st/2tn5ng9
Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

Water disputes are a fact of life in California, and the recent drought has only increased the stakes in their outcomes. Thats why it is concerning that a Merced Democrat wants to change the resolution process.

In California, one agency administers water rules, plans and policy, while another issues permits and enforces water laws. Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, says a perception of bias taints State Water Resources Control Board policing efforts and dissuades many from rightfully contesting fines or cease-and-desist orders. His remedy, AB313, would create a new entity to hear challenges to enforcement actions and then make recommendations to the state water board.
While Democrats are celebrating the Republican pratfall on health care as a short-term victory, they have a long-term problem that could cripple their chances of regaining power: a public perception that they stand for little besides opposing President Trump.

Its true of adults in general  only 37 percent of respondents to a recent poll said Democrats stand for anything  and it is even bad among Democrats: Twenty-seven percent feel their party mainly stands for being anti-Trump. The Washington Post/ABC News poll also found 52 percent of all adults believe the partys main characteristic is being against Trump.

As Hillary Clinton learned, focusing too heavily on Trump is not a winning strategy.

Yet as Democrats try to figure out their identity and message, theyre going to have to wrestle with an equally important question: Should they shift strategy to focus on wooing back the working-class white voters who left them for Trump, or on broadening the coalition  people of color, Millennials and progressive whites  that gave President Barack Obama two terms? Or can they do both?

On Monday, Democratic leaders, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, will take a first step toward addressing those concerns when they unveil a policy road map  titled A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future  for winning back control of Congress next year.

Regardless of whats in the plan, it will fuel the partys internal debate over which voters it should spend its time, money and resources trying to attract. The question pokes at deep-rooted, uncomfortable feelings about race and class that America hasnt resolved, let alone any political party or leader.

But two San Franciscans are tackling the question, trying to help the Democratic Party figure out what to do next.

Best-selling author Steve Phillips (Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created A New American Majority) wants the Democratic Party to forget its obsession with chasing working-class, white Trump voters.

UC Hastings law Professor Joan C. Williams, author of the new book White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, said that while she agrees with much of what Phillips says, its not a zero-sum game between going after African Americans and going after the white working class.

While the two share the same goal  returning Democrats to power  theyre approaching it from different perspectives, which they discussed during a recent episode of The Chronicles Its All Political video podcast.

Phillips, a civil rights lawyer, said Clinton would have won the presidency if Democrats had made more of an effort to reach out to African Americans, who are the partys most reliable supporters.

Since the party didnt try hard enough to attract voters of color, fewer turned out for Clinton in longtime blue states like Wisconsin and Michigan. That difference provided Trumps margin of victory, said Phillips, who founded Democracy in Color, a campaign and media platform.

That argument is bolstered by former Obama pollster Cornell Belcher, who saw the repercussions of weak outreach when he recently studied Millennials of color in Florida and Wisconsin who voted for third-party candidates or didnt vote in 2016 after previously supporting Obama. Many may agree with Democrats on the issues, but feel little party loyalty.

These voters, Belcher wrote in June, feel neglected and taken for granted by the Democratic Party. Beyond their issues being widely ignored, they also implied that candidates never spoke to them and physically never came to their neighborhoods.

Phillips fears Democrats will make the same mistake next year. He expects the party and other left-leaning groups to spend $750 million on the 2018 midterm elections and worries that little of it will go toward grassroots organizing in communities of color.

If all the time, energy and attention is going toward the Trump voters, said Phillips, a senior fellow at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, it fuels and exacerbates the situation where theres a lack of connection between Democrats and people of color.

Williams said Democrats  particularly its leaders  have alienated working-class white voters by not addressing stagnating wages. The repercussion on election day: Roughly 1 in 4 working-class voters who chose Obama in 2012 didnt cast their ballot for Clinton.

Peter Prato/Special to The Chronicle

The left professes to care about diversity and level playing fields, but they can barely look class issues in the eye, Williams writes in her book.

Working-class white voters gravitated to Trump, Williams said, not because of any bold economic policy he was proposing, but because they finally heard a mainstream American politician saying, You are the forgotten people, and we understand what you want are decent jobs that lead to a solid, middle-class standard of living.

Phillips disagreed, saying Trumps appeal to whites was rooted in racism.

He did say, You are the forgotten people, and he also said, Its these Mexicans who are coming in here and taking your jobs. Its these Muslims who are coming in here and taking your jobs, Phillips said. That appealed to people on a deeper level in a way than I think people are willing to acknowledge in terms of racism in society.

Democrats have been sifting through feedback since election day, polling and interviewing Americans in swing districts across the country, trying to diagnose how the party lost its way.

That research, which will start rolling out Monday with the new policy proposals, has led to the conclusion that voters want an economic message and they want it to be simple. While Clinton may have posted scores of economic proposals on her campaign website, researchers found they blurred into background noise, so voters tuned into none of them.

Pelosi and other party leaders believe its a false premise that the party has to choose between reaching out to working-class whites or people of color. She believes the Democrats new message will cut across demographic and racial lines.

Theres a lot that the black community, the Hispanic community, the blue-collar community has in common: economic security, Pelosi told The Chronicle this month. Instead of separating people out, (the message has to be) about the economic stability of Americas families.

Pelosi attributed much of the partys disconnect with voters of all colors to miscommunication, likening it to a relationship thats gotten off track.

If your spouse doesnt think youre communicating, youre not communicating, Pelosi said. You may think youre communicating, but if they dont  youre not. Our message did not come out in the presidential campaign.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli

Its All Political

To see a Facebook live video of Joe Garofoli, Steve Phillips and Joan C. Williams discussing Democratic strategy: http://bit.ly/2tLq2d5
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

It didnt seem like an extraordinary request, even in rural Argentina in my fractured gringo Spanglish. But the shopkeeper just shook his head.

No tengo cigarros.

It had taken a while just to agree on the Spanish word for cigar. The guy, probably the owner and only employee of a corner store in Alta Gracia, kept saying cigarrillos  cigarettes. No cigarros.

You would expect to find cigars for sale in just about any city or village in Latin America, no less in the town where stogie-chomping revolutionary Che Guevara spent his wonder years. Not at this store, apparently.

I had been exploring nearby Cordoba, a sprawling, overlooked city with most of the culture and history of Buenos Aires but only a tiny fraction of the tourists and tango bars. Id read that Guevara had lived in the town of Alta Gracia  about an hour by bus from Cordoba  from 1932 to 1943, and that the home was now a museum.

As a big fan of quests, I took the bus to Alta Gracia with the goal of seeing the museum and saluting the man who helped change world history (good and bad) by smoking one of his trademark cigars there. (He also was known for the beard, the beret and his penchant for socialist revolution, but beards are scratchy, Communism turned out to be a flop, and theres a no-beret clause written into my wedding vows.)

It had to be a cigar.

From the bus station, I wandered toward the museum through residential streets, past monuments and public parks, stopping at each shop that looked as if it might stock Montecristos or Partagas from Cuba.

At the first store, I learned the word for cigars, but I wasnt able to understand the owners explanation for why he doesnt stock them. (I also learned that illustrating the difference between cigars and cigarettes in pantomime is nearly impossible  at least not in a dignified way.)

It was the same at the second shop, and by the third I was indignant. Che Guevara grew up here, right?

Pero no tiene los cigarros? I asked, even pointing to a postcard on a shelf with the image of the hometown hero grinning and puffing away.

No, senor.

The fourth corner store was a couple of blocks from Museo Casa del Che and seemed barely bigger than a minivan.

Its because of the government, the woman said in English. No imports come in, so we dont get cigarros.

I must have looked dejected.

Try the ice cream. I heard once he liked ice cream.

I was embarrassed. It hadnt dawned on me to ask locals about Che  I had assumed I already knew. When he lived in Alta Gracia, he was 4 years old to 15  little Ernesto. He didnt start with cigars until he was a full-fatigue revolutionary. It occurred to me that its too easy to travel to places and seek things that confirm our expectations, instead of looking for things that defy them  which is what travel ought to be about.

Sheepishly, I asked where there was an ice cream shop.

Take your pick, she said, grinning a little like Che in the postcard.

After visiting the Museo Casa del Che  ironically one of the most capitalist-priced museums in Argentina  I strolled back toward the downtown, past the peaceful Tajamar Lake and the fort and 17th century church that now house a museum about the Jesuit estancia that established the town of Alta Gracia.

Half a block beyond it, an heladaria, an ice cream shop. The first of many, apparently. It turns out there are about a dozen heladarias within a square mile of a town that only has 48,000 people. I had not expected that.

There was still time before the bus back to Cordoba, so I popped into the Grido Helado near a public plaza in front of Iglesia Nuestra Senora de la Merced (Our Lady of Mercy church). I parked on a bench beneath a tree with two scoops of dulce de leche  possible something young Che did when the Argentine sun was more oppressive than usual.

Before finishing the rapidly melting dessert, I raised the cone to salute Che and, apparently, his sweet tooth. The quest was complete.

Just not how I expected.

Spud Hilton is the editor of Travel. Email: shilton@sfchronicle.com. Instagram and Twitter: @SpudHilton
1. Yes. Taxpayers are funding its operation; they should have a voice in the naming process.

2. Yes. The city should operate with a spirit of inclusivity. Residents will be responsive.

3. No. Public input can be problematic; rejection of suggestions can be divisive for residents.

4. No. Residents elect council members to make decisions on their behalf. No input is needed.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say whether public input would be more of a benefit or a hindrance.

Vote

View Results
MARIPOSA  Beneath the sweltering foothill sun, Miki and Jai Crawford stood in the front yard of their daughters home eyeing an odd but deliberately placed pile of stuff: two trash bags filled with clothes, several bins of family photos and a few pieces of small furniture, including an old sewing machine and a cuckoo clock.

The items, strewn across a tarp next to an oak tree Friday, were all that the couple managed to rush out of their three-bedroom house before it burned in last weeks explosive wildfire west of Yosemite National Park.

While what survived was little more than memories of raising three children in their home of 22 years, the Crawfords spent the recent morning taking stock of what they had  and, more importantly, what they would need going forward.

Their first order of business would be going to the thrift store to buy a couple of suitcases to put their possessions in. After that, the decisions would get tougher. How long would they stay with their daughter? Where would they go next? Would they rebuild, and could they even afford to?

Disruptive wildfires are a fact of life in California. And this years fire season, while still young, is on track to be one of the worst. Residents up and down the state will see skies continue to clog with suffocating summer smoke, and thousands in small towns and rural hills have already begun the tiresome drill of evacuating their homes until danger passes.

The worst nightmare is loss of life. But short of that, very little comes close to the hardship of losing everything.

Michael Macor/The Chronicle

Its overwhelming, Jai Crawford, 50, said as he put his arm around his wife and squeezed her shoulder tightly. I guess were just going to have to take it day by day.

While the Crawfords have not been back to their property since the fire hit  the area has remained under mandatory evacuation  their son, Michael, has. And what he found couldnt have been more disheartening.

Just like the homes on either side of them in the community of Mount Bullion, a few miles northwest of Mariposa, the Crawfords house was reduced to a pile of chalky debris. It would hardly have been recognizable if not for the huge stone chimney poking through the rubble.

My son sent a picture, Jai Crawford said. I was devastated.

Complicating their situation, the Crawfords dont have insurance. They said coverage is hard to get in the fire-prone region, at least something affordable. They also dont have much savings.

Jai works maintenance at the dump in Mariposa, and Miki, 56, makes crafts that she sells at local fairs. Their income has been enough to get by, they said, but not enough to sock away extra money.

Amid the somber talk of their future, Miki Crawford felt a pang of comfort when she realized the wisdom  and luck  of her impromptu decision earlier in the week to pack out her sewing machine. Now she can continue to work, she said, and though that probably wont produce the kind of windfall they need to get their lives back in order, it will at least help  and take her mind off the fire.

Their recollections of the night they left are hazy. Firefighters banged on their door at 2 a.m. Tuesday to warn them that the blaze was swiftly approaching. The couple left within minutes, gathering up their six dogs and the few things theyd thrown together the day before, all the while expecting that theyd be back in their house soon.

There have been so many fires here, you dont really think its going to come through, Miki Crawford said. When it does, theres just no way you can ever be ready.

Sixty-three homes have burned in the Detwiler Fire since it began last Sunday, fire officials say. The inferno has raged across some 75,500 acres of mostly rangeland and wooded hills at the southern end of Californias Gold Country. Occasionally, though, it has plunged violently into populated pockets along Highway 49. The cause is under investigation.

With the fire, the total area turned to ash in California since Jan. 1 has grown to nearly 200,000 acres, about twice what usually burns by this time of year, according to state and federal figures. The activity, officials say, is because of a wet winter that left behind an unusually thick proliferation of combustible grass and brush.

In historic downtown Mariposa, which remained shut down to all but firefighters until Friday afternoon, residents and merchants were already doing what they could to help fire victims.

Bob Borchard, owner of Betts Gold Coin tavern  which at 167 years old is said to be the oldest occupied building in the Mother Lode  was preparing to open the bar after a four-day closure and serve food and drinks to locals.

Putting the kitchen together is going to take some logistics, but at least we can get a beer out on the table, he said. Thatll provide a little bit of comfort.

While Borchard was turning on the tavern lights, the president of the towns Chamber of Commerce stopped by to talk about fundraising. The plan is to hold a money-making event soon, but whether the 2,000-person community can meet even a fraction of the need remains to be seen.

Several aid groups, including the American Red Cross, were inviting donations while victims like the Crawfords were accepting contributions through individual GoFundMe accounts.

Back at daughter Louisa Allens home a few miles from the towns center, the couple said they werent sure how much money they would need to get a new place to live. They want to eventually put a modular unit on their property so they can stay there. One day they hope to rebuild.

Most of what they are thinking about, however, is the old house. It is hard to grasp the reality that it is gone.

On Sunday, we were swimming in our pool with our four grandchildren, Miki Crawford said, as she clutched one of the surviving photos that showed her home with colorful jasmine growing out front. We need to get out there and see for ourselves what happened. Then we maybe can begin to think more about whats ahead.

Chronicle staff writer

Benny Evangelista contributed to this report.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander

Donations

The Crawfords GoFundMe account: www.gofundme.com/mikiandjai

American Red Cross: www.redcross.org/donate/donation

Detwiler Fire, west of Yosemite National Park

Acres burned: 75,500 acres

Containment: 40 percent

Buildings destroyed: 63 homes, 68 other structures

Fire personnel fighting the blaze: 4,645
LOS ANGELES  Awad Lsallum has been waiting for a heart for 40 days at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. One of the worst parts of a long hospital stay, he said, can be not having a clear picture of what your situation is, or even who is taking care of you as the days drag on.

But now, at least at Cedars-Sinai, theres an app for all of that. Actually, theres a whole tablet. The hospital is offering some patients the option to check out iPads during their stay for free, to provide more insight into their own health. The program offers a glimpse of how Apple is trying to further tap into the $3 trillion health care market.

For hospitals, using these mobile devices can present patient health data in an accessible way, making it easier for patients and doctors to speak to each other. For Apple, its a larger effort to focus more heavily on services rather than only products  a move that guarantees steady income and engagement, even if individuals arent buying as many devices.

Apples the only one that Ive seen that has the most concentrated strategic vision within the companys DNA to do this as a calculated part of their business, said analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies.

Many consumer tech companies have been angling to get into the health tech market for years. Fitbit data  step counts, heart rate, etc.  have been used in medical trials on mobility. Google has been investing in advanced medical research, such as work to combat aging.

In the past two years, Apple released its Health app and Apple Watch. The Cupertino company also employs 13 exercise physiologists and specialists, plus 29 nurses and medics at a testing lab it uses to develop health and fitness tech near its headquarters. Apple recently bought the sleep-tech company Beddit, and is reportedly working on a glucose-monitoring device for diabetics that wont pierce the skin. And it is taking extra steps to move beyond the realm of consumer devices to put more Apple technology into hospital rooms  including into the hands of patients.

The Cedars-Sinai program, which began last year, is limited but has helped improve communication between doctors and patients, hospital staff said. So far, only people who have heart conditions, like Lsallum, and women who have just given birth have been able to participate. The hospital chose these patients because they tend to want a lot of immediate data, hospital officials said.

Patients have used the iPads to address a common gripe: finding a better way to keep track of all the practitioners in the seemingly endless rotation that takes care of them. The patients have also viewed their own health data, such as heart rates or glucose readings, and learned what those numbers mean. And they can watch or read educational material about their procedure from the iPad through the hospitals app, which can make it easier for nurses to know and mark what the patient has reviewed.

For practitioners, this has led to better conversations, because the patients have more informed questions and feel that they are more a part of their own care.

I would say it quells anxiety for patients, said Shaun Miller, a physician at Cedars-Sinai who also serves as its associate chief medical information officer.

And as part of the discharge procedure, patients set up an account to get access to their health records and education information once they leave the hospital. Patients who have been through the pilot program are better at following their doctors instructions once theyre home.

It hasnt all been smooth sailing. There is a concern that giving patients too much information, or information they may not understand, could lead them to worry more than necessary. After all, its common for an abnormal lab or unexpected change in a particular vital sign to turn out to be an anomaly. Ultimately, Cedars-Sinai decided to delay sharing some results with patients for at least a day to allow doctors to review and explain the information. Part of designing these apps is also figuring out the limits of what data can do, Miller said.

Issuing devices to patients is just one approach for changing the way people use tech in hospitals. John Halamka, a physician and health sector chief information officer who has looked for years at ways to integrate consumer technology and hospital tech, said another approach is to let patients access similar information, but using apps on their own phones.

As technology firms and the medical industry continue building partnerships, some companies worry they may face oppressive regulations from the Food and Drug Administration. The FDAs rules on which apps and devices it regulates are still a work in progress. So far, Apple and others have avoided regulation because their products dont make diagnoses or try to replace existing medical equipment.

When asked for comment about its strategy toward health tech, Apple pointed to remarks that CEO Tim Cook made this year.

The things that interest us the most are things where we can bring our ability to integrate hardware, software, services into something thats magical, and enriches people in some way, Cook said at a spring startup conference in Europe. If you look at some of the things that do not drive revenue, but have massive interest in them from our teams, health is very much one of those.

Hayley Tsukayama is a Washington Post writer.
WASHINGTON  Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on sweeping sanctions legislation to punish Russia for its election meddling and aggression toward its neighbors, they said Saturday, defying the White Houses argument that President Trump needs flexibility to adjust the sanctions to fit his diplomatic initiatives with Moscow.

The new legislation sharply limits the presidents ability to suspend or terminate the sanctions  a remarkable handcuffing by a Republican-led Congress six months into Trumps tenure. It is also the latest Russia-tinged turn for a presidency consumed by investigations into the Trump campaigns interactions with Russian officials last year.

Trump could soon face a decision: veto the bill  a move that would fuel accusations that he is doing the bidding of President Vladimir Putin of Russia  or sign legislation imposing sanctions his administration abhors.

A nearly united Congress is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message, said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The White House has not publicly spoken about the compromise legislation. But two senior administration officials said they could not imagine Trump vetoing the legislation in the current political atmosphere, even if he regards it as interfering with his executive authority to conduct foreign policy. But as ever, Trump retains the capacity to surprise, and this would be his first decision about whether to veto a significant bill.

Congress has complicated his choice because the legislation also encompasses new sanctions against Iran and North Korea, two countries the administration has been eager to punish for their activities.

A sanctions package had stalled in the Republican-led House for weeks after winning near-unanimous support in the Senate last month. Democrats accused Republicans of delaying quick action on the bill at the behest of the Trump administration, which had asked for more flexibility in its relationship with Russia and took up the cause of energy companies, defense contractors and other financial players that suggested that certain provisions could harm U.S. businesses.

The House version of the bill includes a small number of changes, technical and substantive, from the Senate legislation, including some made in response to concerns raised by oil and gas companies.

But for the most part, the Republican leadership appears to have rejected most of the White Houses objections. The bill seeks to punish Russia not only for interference in the election but also for its annexation of Crimea, continuing military activity in eastern Ukraine and human rights abuses. Proponents of the measure seek to impose sanctions on people involved in human rights abuses, suppliers of weapons to the government of President Bashar Assad in Syria. and those undermining cybersecurity, among others.

Matt Flegenheimer and David E. Sanger are New York Times writers.
WASHINGTON  The White House indicated Sunday that President Trump would accept new legislation curtailing his authority to lift sanctions on Russia on his own, a striking turnaround after a broad revolt by lawmakers of both parties who distrusted his friendly approach to Moscow and sought to tie his hands.

If it passes, as now seems likely, the measure will be the first time that Congress, with both houses controlled by fellow Republicans, has forced its will on Trump on a major policy matter. That it comes on an issue as fraught as Russia illustrates how investigations into possible collusion between Moscow and Trumps team during last years election have cost him politically.

Trump found himself in a no-win position, as lawmakers eager to punish Russia for its interference in the election and its aggression toward its neighbors dispensed with the usual partisan divide. Trump, who has made it a priority to establish warm relations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, lashed out in anger at both parties Sunday.

As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians! Trump wrote on Twitter. He then added: Its very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.

The outburst contrasted with the efforts of his staff to argue that the sanctions measure had been improved. With little chance of blocking it, the White House was left to declare that changes to the original legislation made in an agreement announced over the weekend were enough to satisfy the presidents concerns.

The administration is supportive of being tough on Russia, particularly in putting these sanctions in place, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new White House press secretary, told ABC. The original piece of legislation was poorly written, but we were able to work with the House and Senate, and the administration is happy with the ability to do that and make those changes that were necessary, and we support where the legislation is now.

In reality, while the changes made the measure somewhat more palatable to the White House and to energy companies that objected, they mainly provided a way for the president to back down from a confrontation he was sure to lose if the sanctions bill reached the floor of the House. The Senate passed the original version of the bill, 97-2, and the new version, which also includes sanctions on Iran and North Korea, may come to a vote in the House as early as Tuesday.

Sen. Benjamin J. Cardin, D-Md. and a longtime leader in pressing for more sanctions on Russia, particularly for human rights abuses, put it bluntly on Fox News Sunday. If he vetoes the bill, Cardin said, we will override his veto.

Peter Baker is a New York Times writer.
Residents were forced to evacuate as firefighters battled a blaze at a multi-unit apartment building near the UC Berkeley campus on Sunday morning, officials said.

The fire started around 9:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Metropolitan apartments on the 2300 block of Durant Avenue between Dana and Ellsworth streets. Crews had the fire quickly under control after clearing the building as a precaution, Berkeley fire officials said.
The candle burned into the CPU and a fire started, giving off thick black smoke and setting alight the curtains and louvres. Luckily the door to the room was open.

On 11 October 2016, my son Martin, 12, lit a candle at 9pm during a blackout, went to the toilet, came back, placed the candle on top of a computer CPU in our room and went back to bed. My daughter Darhlia, 8, and I had long gone been asleep.

AS YOU read this, I take this moment to ask for your kind help.

To say Marlene Potoura has had a run of bad luck is a terrible understatement. The writer and educator is a single mother who in recent times has seen her pre-school business collapse and been evicted after her flat caught fire and was ransacked by thieves. Marlene has experienced the very worst of what Papua New Guinea can be. A few of her friends have assisted with funds but now I am widening this to include PNG Attitude readers. After you read Marlenes story, if you feel you can assist, please donate to her at: Marlene Potoura, Account 1006258444, Bank South Pacific, Port Moresby. Marlenes address is c/- Sylbeez Learning Centre, Lae, Morobe Province. This is an urgent and legitimate plea for help - KJ

My children's nanny, sleeping in the next room, was woken by the smoke and used our clothes to try to extinguish the fire.

The three of us in the bedroom narrowly escaped the fire suffering only the effects of smoke inhalation.

I get goose bumps and my heart pains when I recall this. My kids and I would have lost our lives if the nanny had not stayed the night.

As the fire progressed it seemed the entire population of the Four Mile area ran into the Nazarene churchyard and our flat.

The power came back on as people broke into our unit with the three of us coughing and choking.

Two men ran in and assaulted me and the nanny and stole some of our possessions.

The night was terrifying and chaotic and ended with the landlord's people evicting us from the flat at 4am with just our back packs.

We sought refuge with people I'd met in Lae and have been virtually homeless since then.

We were all traumatised. I took time off work and withdrew my kids from school.

I informed the police about what had happened, but they - knowing I am a single parent - weren't much help. They wanted money.

Theres much stress and difficulty in dealing with police and these kinds of issues in PNG.

The fire came at the worst time as I had just I closed my private school due to family issues and unpaid bills.

I owe K7,000 and I have reached the deadline for payment this month.

Meanwhile I have re-opened my Learning Centre, but cannot operate it properly because I have few resources.

I have worked hard to get our lives back in order, the kids are in school again, but I struggle to keep up.

I feel suffocated. I feel it is a hard burden to keep bearing alone.

I wrote an article about this personal disaster which was published in PNG Attitude and in the book, My Walk to Equality.

I asked Keith Jackson if he would publish an appeal for me and he said yes, but I slept on it and decided to just contact people I call friends.

Keith has now persuaded me to share my story with PNG Attitude readers and told me he will ask them to help.

Any assistance you give me will be recorded and I will try to repay the money when I get back on track.

If you have the heart to help me, please contact me at mpotoura@gmail.com and you can also donate to the bank account shown at the top of this story.

I apologise in advance if I caught you at an inappropriate time or if this embarrasses you. Thank you for reading this.
KABUL  Taliban fighters overran a second district headquarters in as many days on Sunday, this one in western Ghor province, the provincial police chief said.

At least eight police officers were killed in separate battles against Taliban militants, who have stepped up their attacks in the north and west of the country laying siege to district headquarters, said Mohammad Mustafa Moseni.

Early Monday, a suicide car bombing in a western neighborhood of Kabul killed 12 people and injured an additional 10, said Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish. All the dead and wounded were civilians.

In Ghors Taywara area, Moseni said the Taliban made four assaults on district headquarters Sunday and that we had no choice but to retreat.

After capturing Taywara, Taliban fighters stalked the corridors of its hospital looking for wounded Afghan National Security personnel to kill, said provincial public health department director Ghulam Nabi Yaghana. He said he received reports that four or five patients were slain.

The area is remote, and telephone communication is sporadic, he said in a phone interview from the provincial capital of Ferozkoh. He said Taliban militants entered the hospital early Sunday. Its believed all the dead are military or police personnel, he said.

The Taliban, in a statement to the media, announced the capture of Taywara district headquarters. The statement, however, said 46 Afghan government security forces were killed. The Associated Press could not independently verify either death toll.

In northern Faryab provinces Lawlash district, two police officers were killed late Saturday when Taliban fighters used the cover of darkness to attack the district headquarters, setting fire to police buildings, Abdul Karim Yourish, provincial police chief spokesman, said Sunday.

Government offices as well as the police headquarters were located inside the compound, he said.

In recent days, the Taliban have launched dozens of attacks in Afghanistan, temporarily closing a key highway between the capital Kabul and northern Afghanistan. The attacks reflect the Talibans efforts to apply pressure on government troops and police across the country and not just in their strongholds in the south and east of Afghanistan.

Amir Shah is an Associated Press writer.
KABUL  The United States confirmed that an air strike during a U.S.-supported operation against Taliban insurgents killed Afghan National Police officers.

Twelve officers died in the errant U.S. strike, Helmand provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar Safi said Saturday. The death toll in Fridays bombing was determined after a inspection of the area in the Gereshk district, he said.

In a statement, the United States confirmed the strike and offered its condolences to the families of the security forces.

While much of Helmand province is under the control of Taliban, Afghan national security forces have been waging fierce battles to retake territory. NATO and U.S. troops are in Helmand to assist Afghan troops.

Safi said the dead were police officers who were operating with the army in the area. He said they had recaptured the post from the Taliban when the air strike occurred. On Friday, Helmand Gov. Hayatullah Hayat said it was believed the police officers were not in uniform, which may have resulted in mistakenly identifying them as Taliban fighters.

Among the Taliban fighters killed in fighting in Helmands Gereshk district was Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhunzadas 25-year-old son, Hafiz Abdur Rahman Khalid, according to Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Meanwhile in neighboring Kandahar province, insurgents kidnapped as many as 60 people in several attacks on buses that took place over the last four days, provincial governors spokesman Samim Khpolwak said Saturday.

Seven passengers were killed, while another 20 people managed to escape, he said. The remaining 33 are still being held by insurgents.

Khpolwak said the buses were traveling from Kandahars Shah Wali Kot District to neighboring Uruzgan province.
RAMALLAH, West Bank  An exiled Palestinian politician who quietly negotiated a power-sharing deal for Gaza with former archenemy Hamas discussed the details for the first time in an interview, saying he expects it to lead to a swift opening of the blockaded territorys border with Egypt and an easing of crippling power failures.

The Egypt-Gaza border crossing is expected to open by late August, and funding has been secured for a $100 million power plant, Mohammed Dahlan, a former Gaza security chief, said in a phone interview from the United Arab Emirates.

Dahlan said his relations with Gazas newly elected Hamas chief, Yehiyeh Sinwar, helped forge the once unthinkable alliance. The two grew up in the tough streets of southern Gazas Khan Younis refugee camp before joining rival camps, the Islamic militant Hamas and the mainstream Fatah movement.

We both realized its time to find a way out for Gaza, said Dahlan, 55, adding that both sides had learned lessons from the destructive rivalries of the past.

The deal, backed by Egypt and the UAE, is still in the early stages of implementation. There are no guarantees of success, but all involved appear to benefit.

It enables Egypt to contain Hamas, the militants on its doorstep, through new security arrangements. Dahlan has a chance to return to Palestinian politics. And cash-strapped Hamas can prolong its rule through the promised border opening.

If it goes ahead, the deal could deliver a crushing blow to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who presides over autonomous enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Abbas has a toxic relationship with Hamas, which seized Gaza from him in 2007, and with Dahlan, a former top aide he sent packing in 2010. A Hamas-Dahlan alliance would further sideline the 82-year-old Western-backed Abbas and undercut his claim that he represents all Palestinians.

The objectives of the Dahlan-Hamas deal  ending the border blockade, reviving Gazas battered economy  could also weaken Palestinian statehood aspirations by creating a mini-state in Gaza.

For more than two decades, Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, have unsuccessfully sought to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in negotiations with Israel. Israel, which captured those territories in the 1967 Mideast war, withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but keeps a tight grip on the rest.

The territories sit on opposite sides of Israel, which has deepened the geographic separation with strict travel bans.

Dahlan dismissed concerns that his deal with Hamas will gradually turn Gaza into a separate entity.

We are patriots, not separatists, he said, adding that he would do everything in his power to prevent a further drifting apart of the Palestinian territories.

The millionaire with far-flung business interests in the region and close ties to leaders of Egypt and the UAE said he no longer aspires to replace Abbas.

I have no ambitions to be president, he said. Maybe that was the case when I was younger, but now I see the situation.

Mohammed Daraghmeh is an Associated Press writer.
1 Hungary politics: European Union leaders and Hungarian American billionaire George Soros are seeking a new, mixed, Muslimized Europe, Hungarys antimigration leader said Saturday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Hungarys border fences will block the EU-Soros effort to increase Muslim migration into Europe. While Hungary opposed taking in migrants who could change the countrys cultural identity, Orban said Hungary would remain a place where Western European Christians will always be able to find security.

2 Poland protests: President Andrzej Duda sees flaws in contentious legislation adopted by the Senate that gives politicians significant influence over the nations Supreme Court, his spokesman said Saturday. Andrzej Lapinski stopped short of saying whether the president would reject the bill, which was approved by the Senate on Saturday has led to nationwide protests. Democracy icon and ex-President Lech Walesa told protesters Saturday in Gdansk that the separation of powers into three branches was the most important achievement of his Solidarity movement.
YASIN BULBUL/AFP/Getty Images

KUWAIT CITY  Turkeys president entered the diplomatic crisis gripping Qatar and four other Arab nations Sunday, traveling to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as part of a three-country gulf tour intended to help break the impasse.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the fifth high-level visitor from outside the gulf to try to resolve the dispute since it erupted on June 5. The top diplomats of Britain, France, Germany and the United States all have been through already, underscoring the depth of concern the crisis is causing well beyond the region.
The New Zealand dollar rose to a 10-month high amid ongoing headwinds for US president Donald Trump and a 3 percent drop in the price of crude oil.

The kiwi traded at 74.39 US cents as at 8am in Wellington, having touched 74.61 cents in New York on Friday, the highest since September last year, from 74.22 cents in Asia at the end of last week. The trade-weighted index slipped to 78.71 from a month-high 78.82 in NewYork on Friday.

The US dollar index dropped to a 13-month low on Friday as crude oil and Treasury bond yields fell and White House press secretary Sean Spicer became the latest member of Trump's team to leave. The failure of the Republican-dominated US Senate to agree on reforming Obamacare has doused optimism Trump will be able to enact policies seen as giving a boost to the US economy including tax cuts and infrastructure spending. Traders will be watching this week for the Federal Open Market Committee meeting and any talk that a third rate hike this year is less likely.

"The US dollar and bond yields fell amid a 3 percent slide in oil prices. Apart from oil prices, the resignation of the White House press secretary also attracted market attention. Fed fund futures yields priced the chance of a December rate hike at around 43 percent," said Imre Speizer, senior markets strategist at Westpac Banking Corp.

The kiwi rose to 94.01 Australian cents from 93.74 cents on Friday in New York, returning it to where it had been left in Asia at the end of last week when the Aussie dollar lost ground when Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Guy Debelle underscored "the fact that other central banks increase their policy rates does not automatically mean that the policy rate here needs to increase" and talked down the Aussie dollar, in a speech published on the central bank's web site.

The kiwi traded at 63.73 euro cents from 63.67 cents in New York on Friday and rose to 82.65 yen from 82.54 yen. It traded at 57.22 British pence from 57.18 pence and gained to 5.0335 yuan from 5.0274 yuan.

(BusinessDesk)

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

The Warehouse Group FY23 First Quarter Sales Update

PEB - Interim Financial Results to be Announced 24 November 2022

EROAD H1 FY23 Results and Conference Call Details

MFB - Appointment of Chief Executive Officer

HFL - Annual report for the year ended 31 August 2022

November 11th Morning Report

GMT - Customer demand supports strong first-half operating result

EVO - Embark Education announces Special Dividend

BLT - Strategy reset and revenue growth

Mainfreight Half Year Financial Results 30 September 2022


By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent.

Agree
Canberra's mental health system is in the grip of a "crippling shortage" of psychiatrists, after nine left ACT health in the past 12 months and eight vacancies across the system are yet to be filled.

The union representing doctors at Canberra Hospital has also raised concerns for patient safety inside the adult mental health unit, which has been forced to operate with only one psychiatrist during some shifts in recent months.

The Canberra Hospital's adult mental health unit is suffering under a 'crippling' shortage of psychiatrists. Credit:Karleen Minney

Australian Salaried Medical Officers' Federation ACT secretary Stephen Crook said the "crippling shortage" of psychiatrists had followed a period of instability in the ACT's mental health workforce since former Chief Psychiatrist Peter Norrie left the position last year.

Despite raising the crisis with Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris and ACT Health's "senior management", Mr Crook said it appeared the complexities of mental health care provision and the "dangerous effects of excessive workload" on staff were not being recognised.
It was the bold idea that began in the ACT Legislative Assembly, rattled the prime minister of the day, and raised the hackles of one of the world's most powerful media moguls.

And almost 20 years since Prime Minister John Howard scuttled a scientific trial into the effectiveness of providing prescription heroin to addicts, former ACT independent MLA Michael Moore believes its time to start the conversation about it again.

Former independent ACT MLA Michael Moore is reflecting on 20 years since an Assembly-initiated study into prescription heroin drew the ire of the nation's media. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Mr Moore was the chair of an ACT parliamentary committee on HIV, illegal drugs and prostitution, which recommended a study into whether providing heroin by prescription to dependent users could improve their health and reduce crime in the community.

The trial required the federal government to approve the manufacture of or import of the drug.
Modern building materials, a solution for "hangry" patients and a Tuggeranong business with a plethora of pharmacists came under the spotlight at the Telstra Australian Capital Territory Business of the Year awards on Saturday night.

Fyshwick company ABS Facade was named overall winner and took the medium business award.

Telstra Business Award winners ABS Facades. Credit:Julian Andrews

The company provides custom-made building solutions for the construction industry with high-profile projects to its name including Canberra's Infinity Towers and Perth Stadium.

Telstra branded channels director Mike Tregurtha said: "ABS Facade's unique point of difference lies in its development of industry-first techniques and products, which have enabled the business to constantly stay ahead of the curve.
Australia's big banks have slammed the brakes on project finance lending to expand the coal industry since late 2015, but are still lending billions for other fossil fuel developments, environmental finance group Market Forces says.

ANZ and Commonwealth Bank, previously named as the largest lenders to fossil fuels, both signalled they were actively reducing loans to some carbon-intensive sectors including the coal industry, with CBA linking this to the Paris climate change agreement in 2015.

Westpac and National Australia Bank have also toughened their stance on lending to coal mining recently, as all four banks are targeted by environmental groups.

Even so, critics of all four banks maintain much more action is needed in order to meet the climate change targets that banks say they support.
At least five car makers in Australia have recalled their vehicles over dangerous airbags, only to refit them with a similarly faulty product, an investigation by consumer group Choice has found.

The manufacturers are among 14 affected in Australia by a worldwide recall of Takata airbags, which have now killed 18 people and injured more than 180 worldwide. The death of a man in Sydney last week was also likely caused by the faulty airbag.

The airbags have the potential to explode and send metal shrapnel and other material into the cabin of a vehicle, because the gas used to inflate the bag can become volatile over their lifespan of around six years.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has launched a further investigation into how the recall has been handled, "urgently seeking" information from the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, which is monitoring the recall.
Investors are committed to bricks and mortar with more than $100 million of office and retail assets changing hands across Sydney in the past week at competitive yields and prices.

It comes as large investors await the outcome of the sale of the Blackstone portfolio of malls, worth about $3.5 billion. The retail portfolio includes Top Ryde City in Sydney and Melbourne's Greensborough Plaza, along with Westfield malls bought from Scentre, Warrawong, Strathpine and Figtree.

Cook Property Group has purchased the strata titled Entrada Shopping Centre in the heart of Parramatta for $41.32 million.

One of the latest sales was the office tower at 8 West Street, North Sydney, which sold for $60 million on a sub 5.5 per cent yield to an offshore buyer, while the New Zealand-based Cook Property Group paid $41.32 million for the Entrada shopping centre, Parramatta.

The vendors sold to take advantage of the strong demand for the higher-yielding properties at a time of mixed performance of the sharemarket and low cash rates.
In wealthy countries like Australia it's easy to forget why we vaccinate our children. Immunisation has been so successful that few of us can remember the horrors of the diseases they prevent. This is one reason why we are now once again seeing outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough.

However, for some of our regional neighbours, it's a very different story. As a former deputy head of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, I regularly visited immunisation programs in places like Indonesia and watched as parents in rural villages stood patiently in long queues outside health clinics, sometimes having walked long distances, so keen were they to see that their children were protected through immunisation.

Women hold up signs criticising vaccination in Australia. Credit:RICHARD MILNES

This stark contrast is due to the fact that parents in Indonesia know only too well how dangerous these diseases can be. Measles kills more than 134,000 people a year worldwide, or 15 deaths every hour  mostly children under five years  with the risk of dying increasing for children living in poverty. The good news is that measles vaccinations between 2000-2015 have prevented more than 20 million deaths. However, because it is highly contagious, immunisation coverage for measles needs to be high; when coverage drops below 95 per cent outbreaks will occur.

Similarly, for millions of mothers and their children in developing countries, rubella (also known as German measles) poses a serious and ongoing threat. While the infection itself is mild, if a pregnant woman is infected with rubella particularly in the first trimester of pregnancy, the risk of the virus passing to the fetus is extremely high. This can lead to babies being born with severe disabilities including blindness, deafness, heart problems and intellectual impairment. It can also result in stillbirths.
More Australians are dying from accidental opioid overdoses each year, with prescription painkillers rather than heroin now accounting for two-thirds of the fatalities, latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows.

An analysis of finalised ABS data by researchers at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre found 68 per cent of the 668 overdose deaths in 2013 were related to pharmaceutical opioids  a far cry from the heroin epidemic of the 1990s when the majority of opioid deaths were caused by illicit drugs.

The death rate has more than doubled among addicts aged between 35 and 44 since 2007. The death toll is expected to rise.

"We expect further increases once the deaths data for 2014 and 2015 are finalised," said lead author Amanda Roxburgh.
Qantas has denied it is banning alcohol, perfumes and other liquids bought at airport duty-free shops in Manila following a report in News Corp papers on Sunday.

However the airline confirmed it is doing its own bag searches and beefing up security over concerns Islamic State militants may carry out an airborne terrorist attack.

The move follows an insurgency in the Philippines by foreign-led jihadists who since May 23 have occupied the city of Marawi in the country's south.

A Qantas spokesman said there is no change to the standard inbound restrictions enforced by the Australian government that ban liquids, gels and aerosols over 100 millilitres.

Any liquids including alcohol and perfume and bottles of water over 100ml purchased at air-side duty-free shops will not be taken off passengers, the spokesman confirmed.
The anthology was edited by PNG writer Rashmii Amoah Bell (pictured) and published by PNG's Pukpuk Publications.

The evocative anthology is a collection of more than 40 essays, short stories and poems which capture the daily challenges faced and positive contribution made by the women of PNG to improve community and nation.

This evocative anthology will have its Sunshine Coast launch at a panel presentation at the second annual Sunshine Coast International Readers and Writers Festival on Saturday 12 August in Coolum Civic Centre.

FOR the first time in publishing history, female writers from Papua New Guinea have had their voices heard about their daily struggles in life with the compilation of the women's anthology, My Walk to Equality.

Ms Bell is an important voice in PNG writing who is regularly published on the PNG Attitude blog which has been the platform in bringing her views on socio-economic development in Papua New Guinea to a significant readership.

Ms Bell writes essays and opinion commentary to convey her views on issues including anti-social and criminal behaviour, mental health, development aid and gender equality. Several of her essays were published in the 2015 and 2016 Crocodile Prize anthologies of the best PNG writing.

Ms Bell will be joined on the PNG panel by several of the 44 female writers who contributed to the anthology plus Pukpuk Publication's Phil Fitzpatrick.

Also on the panel is PNG author Daniel Kumbon with his latest book, I Can See My Country Clearly Now - A Traveller's Tribute to His Own Country.

Mr Kumbon, a much-travelled journalist, was born in Enga Province, university educated and is now back working among his own people. He is a Papua New Guinean who has been successfully able to blend the rich traditions of Melanesia with the requirements of a modern state.

In his book, the award-winning writer tells of his travels to the old world and the new and reflects on how his many experiences revealed PNG to him in a new light.

Brisbane journalist and author Sean Dorney completes the panel. Sean, the author of The Embarrassed Colonialist, is a fellow at the Lowy Institute.

After reporting on the Pacific with a particular focus on Papua New Guinea for more than four decades, Mr Dorney left the ABC in August 2014.

During his time with the ABC, he won a Walkley Award for his coverage of the Aitape tsunami and was both deported and awarded an MBE by the Papua New Guinean Government.

He is also the author of Papua New Guinea: People, Politics and History since 1975 and The Sandline Affair: Politics and Mercenaries and the Bougainville Crisis.

The PNG panel will be staged from 11.15am to 12.15pm on Saturday 12 August in Coolum Civic Centre.
Almost two years after the death of greyhound trainer John Burrows in the small NSW central west town of Portland, police have made a breakthrough in the case that shocked the close-knit community.

Police are urging the community to help them put together the final pieces of the puzzle surrounding the death of the popular 58-year-old father of three.

Investigators have determined that the improvised explosive device (IED) which killed Mr Burrows early on the morning of July 24, 2015 was detonated remotely with a radio-controlled receiver.

Chifley Local Area Command crime manager, Detective Chief Inspector Luke Rankin, said someone in the small community of 2000 near Lithgow must have information about the origin of the radio-controlled receiver.
A row has erupted over the choice of former senator Graham Richardson to deliver a key address at next weekend's NSW Labor conference, with a senior member of the party's left faction slamming it as "unbelievable".

Meredith Burgmann, a former president of the NSW Legislative Council, told Fairfax Media she and others were appalled at the decision to pick Mr Richardson to deliver the prestigious life members' address.

"I think the decision to ask Graham Richardson to speak on behalf of the Life Members is unbelievable," said Ms Burgmann, who is also being given life membership at the conference on Sunday.

"Richardson has been involved in eight major scandals in his career from Balmain Welding to Swiss bank accounts. Many of us Life Members joined the Party in the '70s to root out the sort of behaviour that he exemplifies."
It was a match Ralph Kelly, an avid Wests Tigers fan, should have been able to enjoy trading friendly barbs with son Stuart, an Eels fan, over.

Instead - after losing Stuart to suicide last year - Mr Kelly and wife Kathy started the inaugural Stay Kind NRL match in their son's memory, which on Sunday saw more than 30,000 punters turn out to support the initiative.

Aaron Woods of the Tigers is tackled by the Eels defence during the round 20 NRL match between the Wests Tigers and the Parramatta Eels at ANZ Stadium. Credit:Brendon Thorne

The match, a thrilling clash between the Parramatta Eels and Wests Tigers at ANZ Stadium, saw the Eels pip the Wests Tigers by a single point.

Befitting the occasion, the match was played in good spirits, absent of any major controversy.
Two teenage girls have been rescued from the base of a cliff at North Head, near Manly, after becoming trapped by the rising tide.

The girls, believed to be English tourists, were spotted by eagle-eyed Westpac Rescue Helicopter crew who were returning to base after being called to rescue a surfer in distress at Freshwater Beach.

The Westpac Rescue Helicopter winches two girls to safety from the rocks at North Head, near Manly. Credit:Seven News

Instead of flying straight back to base, the helicopter performed a coastal patrol due to the hazardous conditions.

Westpac Rescue Helicopter chief executive Stephen Leahy described the rescue as "fortuitous".
The transition of Brisbane's most recognisable landmarks from past to present day have been shown as part of resident Nick Verburgt's pursuit to document the city.

Thennnow was first envisioned by Mr Verburgt in 2013, when he and his sister Julia set out to document the houses of where their father who recently passed away had lived.

Nick Verburgt has launched his historical photo project, Thennnow. Credit:State Library of Queensland and Nick Verburgt

"We were just going to take photos, and that's when I thought this might be a nice way to do that little project I had in mind," Mr Verburgt said.

"It was just going to be for my uncles and aunts as a family sort of thing."
All eyes were out to sea on Sunday morning and into the afternoon as the silhouette on the horizon gradually became bigger and clearer until the 20-storey-high US aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, had arrived at the Port of Brisbane.

The 300-metre vessel, with 3000 sailors on board, reached the port about noon, and sailors were expected to disembark and be taken into the CBD by a fleet of waiting buses and taxis.

Crowds watch the USS Ronald Reagan dock at the Port of Brisbane on Sunday. Credit:Darren England/AAP

Brisbane Greeters, with information packs and maps of the river city, waited for the sailors to appear at the Grain Wharf, which was also used by the USS George Washington two years ago during Exercise Talisman Sabre.
HealthKit co-founder Alison Hardacre says the health care industry is "ripe for disruption". New York Ranking: 1 Entrepreneur: Elizabeth Galbut, co-founder of SoGal Ventures Jenny Houden is the co-founder of Task Retail Technology.

Elizabeth Galbut has global ambitions for SoGal Ventures which she runs out of New York, ranked as the top city worldwide for female entrepreneurs. New York ranked strongly on all the WE Cities indices but fell below other cities in terms of cost, but Galbut sees the cost of living in New York as just part of the cost of doing business there. Anna Rakoczy is the founder of Homemade Cooking. Credit:Picasa Women come across the same stumbling blocks everywhere. It's trying to get that recognition and respect we should have. Jenny Houden, Task Retail Technology co-founder. The 28-year-old co-founded SoGal with her Stanford University classmate Pocket Sun two years ago with the goal of building a global female entrepreneur community.

"We want to redefine the next generation of entrepreneurs and investors," says Galbut. Clare Harris is the founder of Talking Tables. The pair are making fast tracks with SoGal reaching 50,000 millennial women around the world and recently opening its first branch in Australia. SoGal bills itself as the first cross-border female-led Millennial venture capital firm and it targets investments in early-stage startups in the United States and Asia with female or minority founders or a primarily female customer base. Over the past 20 months, SoGal has invested in 40 start-ups of which two have been acquired.

Galbut says she moved to New York because of the diversity of opportunities there. "What's great about New York is you really have the spectrum of industries, everything from biotech to media to pure technology and software, artificial intelligence companies, robotics, then things like education and industries that you may not typically find in Silicon Valley," she says. Galbut says there are strong networks for female entrepreneurs in New York. "Because there is this much bigger breadth it is not as competitive as Silicon Valley, it's actually really collaborative," she says. "Entrepreneurs work together and maybe share investors that have not been a good fit for them. It's a really good sisterhood of female entrepreneurs. Out of all the places that I've lived it's by the far the best." The international outlook of New York is also a plus for Galbut.

"Because of our global footprint we are helping a lot of the businesses go global and New York is a wonderful place to do that as well," she says. Sydney Ranking: 11 Entrepreneur: Jenny Houden, co-founder of Task Retail Technology It took a while for Jenny Houden to be comfortable referring to herself as an entrepreneur.

Holden runs Task Retail Technology with her husband Kym and sons Daniel and Dean. "It was my husband's idea, he came home and decided we were going to do this," Houden says. "I used to say 'I'm not the entrepreneur, I'm the reluctant entrepreneur'." Now Houden realises the key role she plays in the enterprise software business which employs 55 staff worldwide, operates in three countries and turns over around $10 million a year. "He's the sales person but doesn't handle any of the accounts or the money or the set up or the invoicing or the admin so that indirectly became my job," she says. "It took a while for me to say 'Hang on, I do have a story, I do have something to say, I do run this business and I do have a lot of responsibility in this business'." Houden is based in Sydney and says it never crossed her mind to be located anywhere else.

"We talk about life balance," she says. "Family is very, very important. At this stage of my life I'm 62 and I want to stay put with my family. I think a woman in business in Sydney can thrive just as much as a woman anywhere could. I don't see any barrier to where we are living. I don't believe we need to be in the United States. That said, we may temporarily relocate my son, [Daniel] who is the chief executive now to the United States." Houden says being able to talk to other female entrepreneurs is important. "I have a small network but I have a network I feel very comfortable with and I can reach out and share the good and the bad," she says. "It's always nice to have someone who understands how you deal with things from an Australian perspective." While the WE Cities research shows access to capital is a problem for female entrepreneurs in Australia this has not been an issue for Houden as Task Retail is self funded. "Part of that is because I control the money and I am the most risk adverse in our family," she says. "My fear is that you bring somebody in as a percentage share in the business and you can lose a bit of control for the culture."

Holden says for female entrepreneurs the challenges are global. "Women come across the same stumbling blocks everywhere," she says. "It's trying to get that recognition and respect we should have." Bay Area (San Francisco and surrounds) Ranking: 2 Entrepreneur: Anna Rakoczy

Australian Anna Rakoczy moved to San Francisco to complete a masters degree at Stanford University but decided to stay and team up with a classmate to launch Homemade Cooking in 2014. "My passion and mission is to empower millions of people around the world  to learn how to take back control of their eating and their health, by learning how to cook quick, easy and tasty meals," Rakoczy says. Homemade Cooking grew to eight locations in California with a team of 12 chef and nutritional instructors until Rakoczy became pregnant and decided to change Homemade Cooking's model to an online program. "Now there's only about five people on my team, including part-timers and some expert consultants I work with," Rakoczy says. "Yet the model I'm working on is a much more high-margin, scalable model and all the fundamentals are solid." Homemade Cooking has turned over just under $500,000 since starting in 2014.

Rakoczy says the biggest benefit of being based in San Francisco's bay area is "total immersion" in all things start-up and entrepreneurial. "This means being exposed to all the latest technologies, as they happen, and having a first or second degree connection to all the people making those things happen," she says. "This means you assess your own products and progress against these very high standards, including extremely quick cycles of testing, failing, iterating and ultimately improving - and you have amazing access to the world-leading experts in fields ranging from coding to growth hacking to community building to financing." Rakoczy says this environment attracts "A grade players". These networks and access to talent propelled the Bay Area to its second spot on the WE City's Index alongside funding which the Bay Area outranked other cities both in levels and gender proportion. But Rakoczy says there is a disadvantage to the way funding operates in the area with the venture capital funding model geared towards betting on 100 small start-ups in order to find the next billion dollar business to get their return on investment.

"The downside to the entrepreneur is that this can promote raising more money than you need, and pitching a bigger growth vision and total addressable market than you otherwise would," she says. "And then as the entrepreneur, you are in the difficult position of spending huge amounts of money to meet those insane growth targets, sometimes before the business fundamentals are in place." Rakoczy is expanding Homemade Cooking throughout the United States with plans to offer the program in Australia and to an international audience by 2018. But despite the appeal of San Francisco Rakoczy does want to return home eventually. "My husband, Dan, Baby Ellie and I are probably going to stay in San Francisco for the next few years and are then planning a return to Australia," she says.

London Ranking: 3 Entrepreneur: Clare Harris, founder of Talking Tables "Products that get the tables talking," is what Clare Harris has built her company on. "We create coordinated stylish party products sold through wholesale," she says. Harris started Talking Tables in 1999 and it now employs 65 staff and turns over 16 million ($26 million) a year.

The business has global reach operating through distributors in Australia and Japan with expansion to the United States on the cards. "Although there are cultural differences there are commonalities," Harris says. The WE Cities index found London especially excels as a base for female entrepreneurs in the quality of its workforce. It's a finding Harris agrees with. "It's full of young people they are energetic, they are creative," she says. "It's full of art, it's full of street theatre. There's a fantastic energy and that suits you if you are agile."

London's location in Europe with easy access to other key markets is also a benefit for Harris. "If you want to expand you can easily get on a plane to go to New York or wherever," she says. "If you have a product in a place like Selfridges lots of retailers will see it." London also provides networking opportunities for female entrepreneurs. "There are groups," Harris says. "It's supported." Harris says there are few disadvantages to her location.

"Property is expensive, so it's expensive to rent a building and it's expensive for your staff to rent staff but I think that's the only disadvantage," she says. Brexit also looms as impacting on several of Harris' staff. "I'm quite an optimist that we'll have those people stay," she says. "It is an issue but at the moment I don't feel my staff are nervous about it. We'll see what happens. We will deal with the hand that is given." Melbourne Ranking: 17

Entrepreneur: Alison Hardacre, co-founder of HealthKit "We want to be the Xero of healthcare," says Alison Hardacre. Founded in 2012 HealthKit provides software on the cloud that integrates patient records, invoices, bookings, financial reports and Medicare claims for practitioners and allows patients to search for medical practitioners. HealthKit aims to streamline the process of medical appointments with payments processed automatically at the time patients make an appointment. "Practitioners don't need more patients but as patients we need more appointments," Hardacre says. The core software for HealthKit is free and the start-up makes money from add-on products. It has 20,000 users signed up to the platform and has raised $4.5 million in funding.

The start-up has 20 employees and is growing at 5 to 10 per cent a week turnover is estimated at just under $5 million. While Sydney may have ranked higher than Melbourne on the WE Cities index Hardacare is happy to stay put for now and says if she did relocate it would be internationally. "Moving cities the process would be the same as moving countries on a personal level; business-wise it might be more complex to move countries," she says. "For me, moving to Sydney is not something I would see as benefiting the business significantly. I find the Melbourne Sydney rivalry issue generally and specifically to start-ups to be quite boring. I think people who talk about probably should focus a bit more on their start-up." Hardacre says access to talent is an issue for all start-ups in Australia. "As we've grown and the startup sector has expanded it's become easier to attract talent because people are not scared of going to a start-up anymore and there is a lot more focus on start-ups and innovation in Australia. It's a really big jobs opportunity in Australia."

But Hardacre says getting the right staff is also difficult in places like San Francisco. "As I understand it, in San Francisco the high cost of living means people have to demand very high salaries even when they are a graduate and that's not the case in Australia so that makes things easier," she says. "I think in the health space Australia's health system is extremely complex from a funding point of view and so understanding Australia's health system has made it very easy to understand other countries' health systems." For Hardacre the key issue is the funding available for female entrepreneurs. "The disadvantages over time have been the lack of capital, which is changing, but does make it difficult to compete, say, with companies in the States that might have raised in the hundreds of millions and might have very similar traction to us," she says. "That's been a problem. I regard the lack of capital as a market failure and so on any level, regardless of your political persuasion, that's when government should step in. Yes, there are range of programs, and the R&D tax concession is fantastic, but you have to have the money to spend to get the R&D tax concession." The reporter travelled to San Francisco for the Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network Summit as a guest of Dell.
Speeding up Dart says he has stories of small businesses submitting online loans to fintech providers of up to $10,000 on the Tuesday and the money being in their account by the Friday. RateSetter's Daniel Foggo says peer-to-peer lending will continue to grow. "I don't know of any banks that could work that quickly," he says. "Fintech companies speed up the ease of applying for, and obtaining, money, which can be very important at certain times." Neil Slonim from thebankdoctor.org says the quick service is a boon to SMEs.

"One of the most attractive features of fintech lending is the absence of the need for property as security," he says. "Many small businesses owners, particularly younger people starting out with their new business, simply do not have property they can offer as security. Some have property but with limited equity, whilst others are simply not prepared to put a family home at risk." Slonim has more than 30 years' experience in senior leadership positions in business banking, corporate banking and credit within the National Australia Bank group. Fintech companies speed up the ease of applying for, and obtaining, money which can be very important at certain times. Cameron Dart "Fintech lenders can provide quick access to funds to those small businesses that don't want to deal with the banks or the banks don't want to deal with," he says. Fintech lenders can be well suited to small businesses which don't or can't offer property as security, may not have been in business for a long time or may have a blemished credit history."

Rapid takeup An EY FinTech Adoption Index 2017 report, 'The rapid emergence of FinTech' released in late June 2017, reveals that "50 per cent of consumers use FinTech money transfer and payments services and 65 per cent anticipate doing so in the future". The report also states that "33 per cent is the average FinTech adoption globally, up from 16 per cent in 2015". The survey was based on more than 22,000 online interviews across 20 markets with further information revealing that "FinTech has achieved initial mass adoption in most markets, which will continue to gain momentum with new services and new players driving adoption". "It's still very early days for fintech in Australia, with the industry here a good five or six years behind the UK and the US," says Daniel Foggo, chief executive of RateSetter. "But with the very concentrated Australian banking market we see greater opportunities for growth here than many overseas markets, so we're starting to catch up quickly.

"We are starting to see companies gain traction across peer-to-peer lending, payments, wealth management, data and some additional niche areas, and we're already starting to see some successfully build permanent alternatives to the old ways of doing things." The RateSetter group in the UK turned over 18.5 million in its 2015 financial year, and since launching in Australia in 2014 has paid out more than $A6,563,018 in interest. RateSetter in Australia facilitates more than $10 million a month in loans and has 7100 registered lenders. Foggo believes peer-to-peer lending will continue to rise around the world. "Much as we've seen in other industries with the likes of Amazon, Airbnb and Uber, peer-to-peer lending offers better value and convenience to customers by leveraging technology and cutting out middlemen and excess costs," he says. "Specifically, peer-to-peer lending allows investors to earn strong, stable returns from a well-established asset class, which until now has remained the privileged domain of the banks. It also allows borrowers to benefit from better rates, faster turnaround times and superior customer service."

Early adopters Beau Bertoli, joint chief executive of Prospa, which has been in operation for more than six years now and which anticipates recording $215 million in turnover this financial year, believes the online adoption of applying for credit with fintech companies has given them an advantage. "The demand is there to help many fintech businesses not just survive but flourish," Bertoli says. "Traditionally, Australian customers are early adopters, and increasing use of technology means people expect to do things online quickly and easily, any time of the day or night, which includes financial transactions. "Fintech's are designing innovative ways for customers to manage their finances and cash flow needs. This isn't going away anytime soon." Carnell believes the comprehensive survey that is being launched with the help of Fintech Australia and the Bank Doctor will help clarify fintech's role and responsibilities.
Drug decriminalisation and heroin-injecting rooms around the world are being studied first-hand by one of Victoria's top police officers, despite the Victorian government's continued opposition to a supervised injecting centre.

Assistant Commissioner Rick Nugent has joined a cross-party group of MPs for a study tour of Europe and North America, where some of the world's most progressive responses to drugs have been introduced.

The Andrews government faces increasing pressure to test out an injecting room in Richmond. Credit:Getty Images

Supporters of changes to drug laws hope Mr Nugent's decision to join the tour will result in widespread changes in dealing with illicit substances in Victoria.

The tour will take in Portugal, where drugs have been decriminalised, and Canada, where injecting rooms have been established and the government is also legalising and regulating cannabis.
WA Police are searching for two men who allegedly attacked and robbed a Perth taxi driver in Queens Park on Saturday.

"At about 2:40am, a male taxi driver collected two men from Stanford Street in Maddington," Sergeant Andrew Maher said.

A 37-year-old man remains in a critical condition after the stabbing. Credit:Georgia Matts

"Before reaching the destination the men told the driver to stop at a set of units on Sevenoaks Street, Queens Park.

"One of the men exited whilst the second man attempted to take money from the console of the vehicle. He was stopped by the driver. The man then got out of the taxi and on doing so attempted to take the drivers jewellery off his wrist, failing that he has attempted to take a bag from the foot well of the driver. The other male has returned and also tried to take items from the driver. The men managed to take a sum of money from the console."
Canadian police have called off the search for Melbourne woman Sophie Dowsley, who went missing in the Canadian wilderness 15 days ago.

Her family had previously called on the Australian government to provide extra resources to find her, but now say they accept the 34-year-old may never be found.

Canadian police had called in sniffer dogs and rescue teams from four districts over the weekend to search for Dowsley, who went missing in Canada on July 8, when she went on a hiking trip with her partner, Greg Tiffin, 44.

His body was found by a dive team at Statlu Lake on July 18, but Ms Dowsley's family had hoped she would be found alive.
Bangkok: East Timor's Fretilin party has opened the way for the formation of a broad-based unity government to rule the tiny nation for the next five years as it led counting of votes in Saturday's national elections.

"Now the campaign is over, there are no opponents, there are only compatriots who want to work together," Mari Alkatiri, the secretary-general of Fretilin, told supporters at the party's headquarters in Dili.

An electoral worker shows a ballot paper in Dili, East Timor, on Saturday. Credit:AP

With 88 per cent of votes counted, Fretilin led with 30 per cent of the vote late on Sunday.

Mr Alkatiri, a former prime minister, said his party would hold talks with Xanana Gusmao, the country's independence hero, whose National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) was running second with 28 per cent of the vote.
An external view of Mosul's main hospital complex shows damage after it was retaken by Iraqi forces. Credit:AP Why IS failed to take advantage of their windfall is not clear. US officials and nuclear experts speculate that the terrorists may have been stymied by a practical concern: how to dismantle the machines' thick cladding without exposing themselves to a burst of deadly radiation. More certain is the fact that the danger has not entirely passed. With dozens of IS stragglers still loose in the city, US officials requested that details about the cobalt's current whereabouts not be revealed. A fireball explodes in the air above the shattered streets of west Mosul on July 3. Credit:Kate Geraghty They also acknowledged that their worries extend far beyond Mosul. Similar equipment exists in hundreds of cities around the world, some of them in conflict zones.

"Nearly every country in the world either has them or is a transit country" through which high-level radiological equipment passes, said Andrew Bieniawski, a vice-president for the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative who once led US government efforts to safeguard such materials. Nadhm Hamid shows the scars on his 11-year-old son Yaser caused by a chemical weapon that came through the roof of his home in Mosul. Experts have watched anxiously over the last three years for signs that Islamic State had discovered radioactive materials in the city. Credit:Kate Geraghty "This," he said, "is a global problem." Mosul's darkest day The worries began within hours of Islamic State's stunning blitz into Iraq's second-largest city.

As TV networks showed footage of triumphant terrorists parading through Mosul's main thoroughfares, intelligence agencies took quiet inventory of the vast array of military and material wealth the Islamist militants had suddenly acquired. The list included three Iraqi military bases, each supplied with US-made weapons and vehicles. It also included bank vaults containing hundreds of millions of dollars in hard currency, as well as factories for making munitions and university laboratories for mixing chemicals used in explosives or as precursors for poison gas. US officials also were aware that IS had gained control of small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium - the remnants of Iraq's nuclear projects from the time of Saddam Hussein's presidency - as well as some relatively harmless radioactive iridium used in industrial equipment. But a far bigger radiological concern was the cobalt. Intelligence agencies knew of the existence in Mosul of at least one powerful radiotherapy machine used for cancer treatment, which could potentially provide IS with a potent weapon.

In 2015, the Institute for Science and International Security, a non-profit organisation in Washington that monitors global nuclear threats, began conducting research to answer the basic questions: How many machines were in Mosul? Where were they deployed? And exactly how powerful were they? The group obtained documents showing that two different medical centres in Mosul had obtained cobalt-60 machines in the 1980s. Other records showed that at least one of the devices was in active use as recently as 2008, and in the following year Iraqi officials had sought replacement parts, including new cobalt-60 cores, for both. From the records, the institute's experts could draw broad conclusions about the cobalt inside the machines. In a draft report written in November 2015, research fellow Sarah Burkhard calculated that the radioactive cores, when new, contained about nine grams of pure cobalt-60 with a potency of more than 10,000 curies - a standard measure of radioactivity. A person standing one metre from the unshielded core would receive a fatal dose of radiation in less than three minutes. The institute quietly shared its findings with US intelligence and military officials in late 2015 but declined to publish its report, fearing that IS occupiers would benefit from the information. The Washington Post became aware of the report last year but agreed to a US government request to delay writing about it until after Mosul's liberation. Because cobalt-60 decays over time, the potency of the Mosul machines' 30-year-old cores would have been far less than when the equipment was new, but still enough to deliver a lethal dose at close range, the report said.

David Albright, the president of the institute, noted that groups such as IS have long discussed the possibility of using such material in a dirty bomb, a simple device that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive debris across densely populated urban terrain. Such a bomb would probably not cause large numbers of casualties, but it can be enormously effective, he said, as a weapon of terrorism. "The worst case would have been [IS] widely dispersing the radioactive cobalt in a city, causing panic and an expensive, disruptive cleanup," said Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and former UN weapons inspector. "There would likely not have been that many deaths, but the panic could have been profound, leading to the emptying of parts of the city as residents fled, fearful of the effects of radiation." The hunt for cobalt-60 There was one question that US officials and private researchers could never conclusively answer during the months of IS occupation: Where was the cobalt exactly? In strife-torn Mosul, there were no publicly available records about the city's two radiotherapy machines since 2008, when one of them was mentioned in a scholarly article. The last known addresses were a teaching hospital and a cancer-treatment clinic, both on the western side of the city, in neighbourhoods that were among the last to fall to Iraqi government troops and the militias allied with them.

Finally, recently, Iraqi officials offered an explanation, saying that both machines had been in Mosul throughout the IS occupation, but not in the places where the terrorists might have thought to look for them. They had been placed out of commission for several years because of a lack of parts and had been put in storage in a building owned by the University of Mosul, somewhere in the city's eastern side. They were still there when health officials from Nineveh province went to look for them after that sector of the city was secure, said Laith Hababa, a physician and head of the provincial health ministry. The machines are now in secure storage and "weren't used by [IS]", Hababa said. US officials and nuclear experts expressed relief over what, by all accounts, had been a near miss. Some speculated that the terrorists never learned of the whereabouts of the machines, although that explanation seemed unlikely, given the terrorists' efficiency in looting university buildings across the city. Albright said the task of removing the cobalt cores may have been viewed as too difficult or too risky. Or maybe the group's commanders were just too busy, especially during the later months of the occupation, as government troops closed in.

"Its leaders were preoccupied elsewhere," Albright said, "and [perhaps] did not learn about the sources in Mosul, or have a chance to think through the opportunities." Leaders of IS and al-Qaeda are known to have sought materials for a dirty bomb, a threat that has added urgency to efforts by US agencies and private groups to improve security for machines with heavy concentrations of cobalt-60, or other radioactive elements such as caesium-137, which comes in a powdery form that is even easier to disperse. The machines are a necessary fixture in many cancer clinics around the world, but in Western countries efforts are underway to replace the most dangerous models with new technology that cannot be easily exploited by terrorists, said Bieniawski, the former Energy Department official. His organisation, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, has raised money to try to speed up the transition, but for now, he said, older machines such as the ones in Mosul are commonly found in developing countries where the risk of theft or terrorism is greatest. Loading
Accused Australian drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury is reportedly under pressure to inform in return for a reduced jail sentence in Colombia.

The 22-year-old is facing 20 years in a Colombian prison after 5.8 kilograms of cocaine was allegedly found inside 18 headphone cases in her luggage at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota last month.

Accused drugs mule Cassandra Sainsbury.

Loading

News Corp Australia says prosecutors will not agree to a plea bargain to substantially reduce her sentence unless she gives them details of who arranged the drug deal.
Dubai: Iran and Iraq signed an agreement on Sunday to step up military cooperation and the fight against "terrorism and extremism," Iranian media reported, an accord which is likely to raise concerns in Washington.

Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan and his Iraqi counterpart Erfan al-Hiyali signed a memorandum of understanding which also covered border security, logistics and training, the official news agency IRNA reported.

Iran's Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan. Credit:AP

"Extending cooperation and exchanging experiences in fighting terrorism and extremism, border security, and educational, logistical, technical and military support are among the provisions of this memorandum," IRNA reported from Tehran.

Iran-Iraq ties have improved since Iran's long-time enemy Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003 and an Iraqi government led by Shi'ite Muslims came to power. Iran is mostly a Shi'ite nation.
Washington: A day after news came out about US Senator John McCain's brain cancer diagnosis, his one-time political opponent urged him to think about his political future sooner rather than later - and expressed interest in the possibility of her taking over his Senate seat.

"I hope Senator McCain is going to look long and hard at this, that his family and his advisers are going to look at this, and they're going to advise him to step away as quickly as possible, so that the business of the country and the business of Arizona being represented at the federal level can move forward," Kelli Ward, who lost to McCain in last year's Republican primary and is now running to unseat Senator Jeff Flake, said during an interview with an Indiana radio station.

In a statement posted later on her website, Ward said McCain's cancer is "both devastating and debilitating" and he "owes it to the people of Arizona to step aside" when he's no longer able to perform his duties.

McCain's office announced Wednesday that he'd been diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer. The diagnosis, which followed a surgery to remove a blood clot above the left eye, raised questions about when and if he will go back to the Senate.
Marijuana plants in Quincy, Massachusetts. Legislators there are trying to rewrite a law passed by voters that legalised recreational marijuana. Credit:New York Times A measure by the legion that would permit VA doctors to give their patients the sign-off they need to access medical marijuana in states where it is legal was approved by a key Senate budget committee earlier this month on a 24-7 vote, with nine Republicans voting in favour. The measure is among the veterans-related marijuana legislation getting new traction at an otherwise challenging time in Washington for pot advocates. "This is one marijuana issue a lot of Republicans are interested in," said Sarah Trumble, deputy director of social policy at Third Way, a centrist think tank that advocates easing federal restrictions on cannabis. The Essence cannabis dispensary in Las Vegas. The sale of marijuana for recreational use became legal in Nevada on July 1. Credit:AP "It's the baseball and apple pie of marijuana."

The legion's involvement has helped lure new lawmakers to the debate, such as Republican Matt Gaetz, who co-authored a bill that would recategorise marijuana as a drug with therapeutic value. Longtime marijuana proponent Dana Rohrabacher, an Orange County Republican, constantly raises the issue of veterans on the House floor. "It is a travesty," he said in one recent speech. "They are given opiates instead of maybe something they can derive from marijuana. ... And our veterans end up killing themselves because now they are addicted to an opiate." Such thinking is driven by a 2015 National Bureau of Economic Research white paper that found opioid overdose deaths are 16 percent lower in states where medical marijuana is legal. It has all put VA leadership in an awkward spot. Soon after the legion began its push in May, VA Secretary David Shulkin acknowledged evidence is emerging that cannabis maybe helpful in treating veterans, and it is something the agency intends to examine.

But Mr Shulkin is bumping up against powerful forces in the Trump administration tacking hard in the reverse direction on pot. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pressing Congress not to renew a rider that prohibits federal law enforcement from targeting medical marijuana operations in states where they are legal. In a letter to congressional leaders, he stressed that marijuana has no accepted medical use under federal law. The increased profile of veterans comes years into an effort by researchers to conduct a federally approved study of the potential benefit of using pot to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Federal regulators had long refused to approve such a study, in large part because marijuana was determined by their agencies to have no medical use. A study was finally cleared in April 2016, but even now researchers find themselves confronting obstacles. They are permitted, for example, to use only marijuana grown at a federal research facility in Mississippi which lacks the concentration of active ingredients available in the products sold in dispensaries. "It's been a seven-year battle," said Sue Sisley, principal investigator for the study, which is being conducted by the California-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

"There is so much government red tape surrounding cannabis research." Even in states where marijuana is easily available, veterans find themselves self-treating complicated illnesses, often with little more guidance than that offered up by the bud-tender at the point of sale. "You have patients who are not fully informed of the risks and benefits cannabis poses, and you have practitioners not informed about what their patients are doing," said Steve d'Angelo, executive director of Harbourside Health Centre in Oakland, one of the country's largest dispensaries. "It is a recipe for medical mistakes." When Dan Schmink returned from the Army ailing from chronic back pain, broken ribs and psychological issues, the Arizonan said he discovered marijuana could bring him some relief.

Mr Schmink tried to get guidance from his VA doctors, but it just led to warnings about illegal drug abuse. "For the most part I never talk about it because you don't know who will flag," he said. He dove into Google Scholar to figure out what he could on his own. It was rough going at times. He recalled "full-blown panic attacks" while self-medicating. Now he shares his findings with other veterans through a group he founded called Southwest Healing Group, but what he'd really like to see is veterans able to consult their VA doctors about their use. In states where the laws are more restrictive, veterans face higher barriers.

Therese Carrozzino left the Army in 2013 addicted to Percocet. The 26-year-old from New Jersey said her military doctors left her feeling she had little choice but to take the painkillers. "If I didn't take my medications, they would've kicked me out and I wouldn't have had any benefits," she said. "So I took the medication as prescribed and ended up becoming addicted." Ms Carrozzino finally turned to medical marijuana a few years ago as she transitioned off the prescription drugs. "I made it through with the help of smoking joints and just trying to stay alive," she said. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed a new law in September to help enable veterans to access medical marijuana, which is highly restricted in the state. Carrozzino applied for her medical marijuana card two months ago, at a cost of hundreds of dollars she did not have to spare.
Washington: New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci hasn't always shared the political views of the administration he now serves.

In previous tweets, the Wall Street financier called Hillary Clinton "incredibly competent" and appeared to be at odds with his new boss on issues such as gun control, climate change, Islam and illegal immigration.

But on Saturday, the day after he became Trump's communications director, he announced on Twitter that he's deleting his old tweets, which he said are only a distraction.
What the Caribbean region needs is so simple: rapid, reliable mobility at reasonable rates. What makes it so difficult? It is almost as short and simple to explain. There are two players; the aviation industry and the governments. The aviation industry is not really the problem. They have the equipment and the crews. They have fixed costs and calculate what is needed to make a profit. One could argue about how cost-effective they are and what is considered a reasonable profit margin. And thats it. Yet, one should also consider the entrepreneurial risks they are taking.

On the other side, you have the governments. For one, they have no risks in the aviation operation. Just benefits. Yet, they want a random tax contribution per passenger; no particular calculation. Mind that landing fees are different than taxes, and they do have a particular justification. So, what justifies the passenger tax? Inter-island or international, it doesnt make a difference.

Major airlines are polite to governments. They listen politely when representatives of tourism or airport authorities are courting, or flirting, and trying to convince them to come on over. However, the operators dont tell governments where to go; they just dont put the destination on their schedule. Except for one airline, or rather one airline boss, who is well-known for telling anyone where to go, or in clear text expressing that they can shove it. Ryanair decided in October last year that it would drop 16 routes and 600 jobs after an Italian governments tax hike. It would also result in 800,000 client losses according to their calculations. Their explanation: "Ryanair had no choice but to close two of its 15 Italian bases, and move its aircraft, pilots, and crews to countries that have lower tourism costs. The tax increase will seriously damage Italian tourism, and it would hand a golden opportunity for growth to destinations in Spain, Portugal, and Greece that have lower tourism costs.

Governments love Low-Cost Carriers because they lure tourists with low fares. Exactly for that reason, they believe that the LCC will bring the oh-so desired passengers by the masses. Yet, then they slam the air passenger duty on top of the fares, to the extent that those are nearly double. Does that make sense? So, before the passengers dont show up and seats remain empty, the airline doesnt open a route or terminates it. That does make entrepreneurial sense!

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return," according to a quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Anyone who is less than a genius may tell you that when the taste of flight fare turns from sweet to bitter, he will not turn his eyes skyward in all directions anymore.

Governments can argue until they turn blue or green why a passenger tax is needed or why they believe it is justified. They may even feel proud and protzy when they believe that they won the argument. However, the tourists have the last word in determining what price is acceptable for their vacation budget. Monies that had to work and save a whole year, to make their dream retreat come true. Taxes are not a dream incentive; they are a repellent. For tourists, there are plenty of options near and far in the geography, where the temperatures are warm, the platinum beaches are lined with palm trees, and where they are received with open arms. Governments can try to have it their way; but tourists for sure will find it their way...., somewhere else.

By Cdr. Bud Slabbaert
PHILIPSBURG:--- Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Telecommunication and Transportation (TEATT) Melissa Arrindell-Doncher, accompanied by supporting staff from her cabinet, the tourism authority and Bureau Telecommunications and Post St. Maarten, attended the 33rd Annual Conference and Trade Exhibition of CANTO, which took place from 16th to the 19th of July in the Dominican Republic.

CANTO is Caribbean's premier Telecommunications event that caters to ICT professionals, regional governments, and regulators, and was going under the theme: Reimagining ICT as a tool for Growth & Development.

During the conference, a wide variety of international telecom experts gave lectures on a wide variety of Telecom topics such as Safe City & Smart City concepts, Digital Economy, broadband development, 5G deployment, global technology trends, content development and challenges & opportunities in the Caribbean region. A large Telecom trade exhibition formed an integral part of the CANTO convention, whereby vendors from all over the world showcased their state of the art products & services.

Minister Arrindell-Doncher participated in a wide variety of sessions, panel discussions, round-table-discussions, lectures, and was in particular truly amazed by the SMART City & SMART Tourism concepts. The minister had had the opportunity to conduct face to face meetings with key players in the global Telecom Industry, and theyve indicated that they are all willing to provide assistance to St. Maarten. The Minister stated: I recognize the need for St. Maarten to make ongoing efforts to further enhance communication services on the island, and safeguard our precious tourism product by utilizing same technology. Top ICT services are needed to cater towards our tourists, and at the same time will allow us to collect more data from our tourists. This data is vital for our cruise conversion programs, and will eventually have a positive effect on our economic growth.

The minister continued; "we were very pleased with what we were able to achieve from our presence at CANTO. From being able to support our local regulator in the regional discussions, convening with my fellow ministers across the Caribbean to discuss new telecommunication trends and policies, and the potential business opportunities we were able to explore the country with huge telecom companies; we know what comes back to St. Maarten with great prospects for better telecommunication in St. Maarten.

The Director of BTP, Mr. Anthony Carty  also present at the CANTO conference - outlined that Telecom regulators have an important role to play in accelerating broadband development in their respective nations. Its our task to promote and advocate new technology solutions and to advise and support the Minister of Telecoms by all means. The mere fact that 44 regulators from the Caribbean attended the conference  an all time record at CANTO  illustrates that we are all taking our role very serious, and making ongoing efforts to provide guidance to the industry. We must realize that only by working together we can achieve great things, and Im therefore pleased with the active involvement and participation of the Minister, her cabinet, the Tourism director, and the Staff, Management & Supervisory Board of our Telecom providers. They were all present during the CANTO forum, and we had the opportunity to have several in-depth discussions and strong debates on how to improve communication services on our great island.
THE HAGUE:--- The Minister Plenipotentiary of Sint Maarten, the Honourable Mrs. H. Doran York in a press release, stated that the figures for students leaving Sint Maarten on their own to continue their studies in The Netherlands have been rising steadfastly over the past year.

For the past months and especially the last weeks, the Cabinet of Sint Maarten has been assisting students who have ventured out on their own to the Netherlands to pursue their education. These students are known as "free movers".

Minister Doran-York stated, that this for her, has indeed been much to her pleasure, as it is a good thing to see our young people independently seeking to enhance their education. Many of these students have done extremely well in the past and she encourages many more youngsters on Sint Maarten, to pursue this route in the event, for whatever reason, they do not qualify for a local scholarship on Sint Maarten, but feel that they will be successful when applying directly to the DUO in the Netherlands.

The Minister mentioned, however, that it is very important to have a place to register arranged before the date of travel. Despite the message sent out from her Cabinet a few months ago, pertaining to this very same issue, absolutely none of the students that came to the Cabinet seeking assistance, had previously arranged an address to register upon their arrival.

This issue has caused many of the students, countless sleepless nights, and it is sometimes heartbreaking to experience. While some eventually, with some assistance are able to secure a place to temporarily register, others are still seeking to be registered and therefore cannot proceed and may eventually have to return to Sint Maarten.

Minister Doran-York once more points out, that in the event persons start contemplating pursuing their studies in The Netherlands on their own (as free movers), and are planning to attend a learning institution on the level of MBO, HBO or at the University, then there are certain criteria in place, that they must be aware of.

First in foremost, is that they must have a place to register temporarily until all is arranged. Without them being registered at an address, the process will be unable to start. When they register in a municipality, they receive a BSN (the registration code). Without this being properly arranged, the student will not be in a good position and nothing much can be done including applying to rent an apartment, opening a bank account etc, and all other efforts will prove futile.

The Cabinet of Sint Maarten has been very successful in assisting the free movers with registering for schools, seeking to house, making calls to schools or the civil registry on Sint Maarten among other things.

Minister Doran-York stated that her Cabinet has and will continue to do all in their power, to assist all students coming to The Netherlands, whether they already have study financing from Sint Maarten, or if they are applying directly to Holland for a scholarship.

She ended the press release by stating that it is not in the favor of the students to travel to The Netherlands without first having a place to register as is mostly very costly and stressful for them.
Everything you need to know about No. 20 Notre Dame's game vs. Army Saturday in Philadelphia
Brussels, July 23, 2017 (SPS) - Sahrawi Minister, representative of the Polisario Front for Europe Mohamed Sidati on Sunday urged the European Union (EU) to intervene to end the escalation of Morocco's repression against the Sahrawi people and force it to stop its occupation and oppression policy.

We call on EU for urgent and firm intervention with Morocco to put an end to its escalation of repression and to stop its occupation and oppression policy, wrote Sidati in a letter sent to the head of the European diplomacy Federica Mogherini.

Warning EU on its responsibility in the occupation and colonisation policy of Western Sahara led relentlessly by Morocco, Mohamed Sidati affirmed that this policy dangerously exposes UNs peace operation in Western Sahara.

Sidati called EU to condemn the unjustified sentences pronounced Wednesday against the prisoners of Gdeim Izik group and demand the release of all the Sahrawi political prisoners. (SPS)

062/090/APS
T he Independent Police Complaints Commission has launched an investigation after a 20-year-old man died following a police chase in east London.

Officers chased the man on foot after attempting to stop a car in Kingsland Road, Dalston, in the early hours of yesterday morning.

The man has been named locally as Rashan Charles, from London.

He ran into a shop where he was seen trying to swallow an object before being taken ill, Scotland Yard said.

CCTV footage posted on social media under the hashtag #justiceforRash appears to show an officer restraining a young man inside a shop. A second man in plain clothing then comes to assist him.

A spokeswoman for the IPCC said the video was being investigated in connection with the incident.

CCTV footage: Screen grab of footage being investigated over the death of Rashan Charles in Dalston / CCTV

A Met Police spokesman added: "The man entered a shop in Kingsland Road, where he was seen to be trying to swallow an object.

"The officer intervened and sought to prevent the man from harming himself, but he was then taken ill."

Paramedics were called and before they arrived police officers, including a force medic, provided first aid, the Met said.

The man was then taken to the Royal London Hospital, where he was pronounced dead around an hour later.

Police scene: The incident happened at Yours Locally in Kingsland Road / PA

His next of kin have been informed.

A post-mortem examination and formal identification are to take place.

Pictures emerged of people laying floral tributes outside Yours Locally and a barber shop next door.

Erem, who owns the barber shop but did not want to give his full name, said he had seen Mr Charles, known as Rash, about 15 hours before he died.

"He was a humble young man," Erem said, "he was really known in the area."

He said the young man knew how to speak to people: "He was very mature for his age."

"I'm in shock myself," he said, adding he would often speak to the young man outside his shop.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the incident, and the Directorate of Professional Standards has also been informed.

Tributes: A man lights a candle at the scene of the incident / PA

The IPCC said it had launched an independent investigation at 3.10am on Saturday - less than an hour-and-a-half after police pursued the man.

It said it had obtained evidence "which indicates an object was removed from his throat at the scene".

CCTV footage from inside the shop and police body-worn video has also been gathered and viewed.

Floral tributes: People lay flowers outside the shop in Kingsland Road / PA

Investigators are keen to speak to any witnesses who were in the Kingsland Road/ Middleton Road area of Hackney.

Chief Superintendent Simon Laurence offered his condolences to the mans family in a statement and urged the public to avoid speculation over what caused his death.

The borough commander for Hackney said: "In the early hours of Saturday, 21 July, officers attempted to stop a car on Kingsland Road, E8.

"A man, who was in the car, was pursued on foot before entering a shop where he was seen to be trying to swallow an object. He was then taken ill.

"He was taken to hospital by the London Ambulance Service where, sadly, he died later that morning. Our thoughts remain with his family and friends.

"The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has launched an independent investigation to establish what happened and has viewed the officers' body worn video.

"There is likely to be speculation over the next few days regarding what led to this man becoming ill, so I would encourage people to keep up-to-date with the IPCC's statements, as and when they are released.

"All police officers are fully aware that they will be asked to account for their actions - officers are not exempt from the law and we would not wish to be."
A man has been charged with murder, rape and kidnap after a teenage girls body was allegedly found in a fridge in a suspected honour killing in south-west London.

Scotland Yard said a 33-year-old man has been charged with murder, rape and kidnap of a 19-year-old woman.

He is further charged with rape, attempted murder and kidnap of a second victim, a woman aged in her 20s.

A second man, aged 28, is accused of kidnapping both the 19-year-old woman and the woman aged in her 20s.

Police and Forensic Officers in Kingston / Nigel Howard

The teenager was found dead at a house in Coombe Lane West, Kingston on Wednesday.

A post mortem examination carried out on Friday gave her cause of death as an incised wound to the neck.

The second victim was taken to a south London hospital with stab wounds on Wednesday evening and is being supported by specialist officers.

Police said formal identification of the teenager has not yet taken place.

Both men, who have not been named, are due to appear before Wimbledon Magistrates' Court on Monday.
D emand for flights to London is soaring as wealthy shoppers eye luxury goods made cheaper by the Brexit-hit pound.

Private Jet company carrier GlobeAir said flights to the UK capital had increased by 53 per cent in the first five months of this year compared to 2016.

It comes as separate figures show the number of luxury stores opening in the British city are outpacing rival capitals across the globe.

Busiest flight day of the summer

Mauro De Rosa, chief marketing and sales officer of GlobeAir, said: "A significant proportion of luxury goods are purchased outside of a shopper's home market, and a combination of the fall in sterling and more luxury stores opening in London has been a massive boost for the capital's luxury retail market.

Harrods: Tourists are flocking to London to buy luxury goods / Alamy Stock Photo

"This has had a knock-on effect on other sectors that are closely linked to this, including private aviation.

"Indeed, the number of private jet flights we operate to London from Europe has increased dramatically."

Since the Brexit vote sterling has dropped 14 per cent versus the US dollar, 15 per cent against the euro and 11 per cent versus the Chinese renminbi - making the price of luxury products more competitive in London.

Earlier this month, British fashion house Burberry said the weak pound had helped drive a 3 per cent rise in retail sales in the three months to June 30 and Mulberry announced a 21 per cent rise in annual pre-tax profits.

Additional reporting from PA.
T he BBC is wilfully ignoring positive Brexit stories and shows a clear pattern of unbalanced reporting, the International Trade Secretary has claimed.

Liam Fox has called for a face-to-face meeting with the corporation's boss, Lord Hall, to discuss the way "important" announcements from his department are being covered.

But the Liberal Democrats accused him of behaving like a "tinpot dictator" and claimed the move was a "blatant attempt at intimidating" the BBC.

In a letter seen, Mr Fox said the BBC had chosen not to report annual foreign direct investment figures released by the Department for International Trade despite being contacted about them by his team.

The BBC also turned down an interview opportunity with him during a visit he made to Paris, it said.

"I understand that the BBC cannot cover every story and I appreciate too, that despite its best efforts, the corporation cannot always guarantee total impartiality," the letter said.

"However, I believe that we are now seeing a clear pattern of unbalanced reporting of the UK economy and, when it comes to the work of my department, evidence of the corporation wilfully ignoring positive economic data when we publish it."

Liam Fox denies sending tweet that's on a huge screen behind him

Liberal Democrat chief whip Alistair Carmichael said: "This is a blatant attempt at intimidating the BBC and undermining the independence of our media.

"The BBC shouldn't be bullied into publishing government propaganda and has rightly stood its ground.

"Liam Fox is acting like a tinpot dictator. He can't blame the media for his inability to deliver on all the trade deals promised by the Brexiteers."

Additional reporting by Press Association.
A ctivist Owen Jones has led a rally aimed at unseating Boris Johnson in his west London constituency.

Labour supporters gathered in Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Sunday to knock on doors in the area in a bid to unseat the Foreign Secretary at the next General Election, whenever that may be.

Hundreds of people had planned to attend the event and many posted pictures of themselves out canvassing under the hashtag #UnseatBoris.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer and Labour MP for Battersea Marsha De Cordova were among those to give speeches at the rally.

Britain's Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, leaves 10 Downing Street after a Cabinet meeting / REUTERS

The case for campaigning to replace Boris Johnson with a Labour MP is so overwhelming it barely needs writing, Mr Jones wrote on the Facebook event page.

He added: Johnson who only opportunistically backed Brexit because he thought it would help his political career.

Johnson who had a radio interview so calamitous that if he was - say - a black woman, his career would be over.

"Johnson who reduces this great country to an international laughing stock as Foreign Secretary.

The former London mayor saw his majority slashed by half in Junes general election, taking 23,716 votes, a majority of 5,034 ahead of Labours Vincent Lo.

The Tory politician won with a majority of 10,695 votes over his Labour rival in 2015.

Mr Johnson is making his first official visit to New Zealand this week with stops in Wellington and Kaikoura.
A post-traumatic stress charity has issued a stark warning about poor mental health support for frontline staff and revealed members of the emergency services reached out for help in the wake of recent major incidents.

Around 30 police officers and firefighters have been in contact with PTSD999 seeking support with the condition following the Grenfell Tower fire and recent terror attacks.

Dany Cotton, commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, said the welfare of staff was paramount after the Grenfell disaster, while the Metropolitan Police said it had specialist programmes in place after recent high profile events.

Steve White, chairman of the Police Federation, and Sean Starbuck, lead officer for mental health with the Fire Brigades Union, said care was improving but raised concerns over cuts to resources.

PTSD: Officers have contacated the charity in the wake of recent atrocities / Getty Images

Rank and file officers spoke out about a culture of mistrust with managers in both the police and fire service, with staff not coming forward for help due to fears over the impact it could have on their job.

Simon Durance, co-founder of PTSD999, said: "Evidence from blue light services staff and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) sufferers suggests the needs for staff suffering from PTSD are not being met.

"Many charities just signpost and actually don't deliver any treatment or diagnosis, and too much money is wasted talking about doing stuff and none spent on doing anything like treatment."

Grenfell Tower Firefighters - In pictures 1 /32 Grenfell Tower Firefighters - In pictures A firefighter pours water over his head after battling a huge fire at the Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey apartment block in North Kensington, London EPA Firefighters spray water after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west Londo PA A firefighter investigates a floor after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London PA Firefighters rest as they take a break in battling a massive fire that raged in a high-rise apartment building in London AP A firefighter close at the scene after a fire engulfed the 27-storey Grenfell Tower in west London PA Emergency services close to the scene after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London Alex Lentati The moment a resident is carried out of the Grenfell Tower block by fire bridgae and riot police carrying shield Sky News Emergency services close to the scene after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London PA Emergency services close to the scene after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London Alex Lentati Emergency services gather close to the scene after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London PA Firefighters rest as they take a break in battling a massive fire that raged in a high-rise apartment building in London AP Firefighters wait to start their shift after a massive fire raged in a 27-floor high-rise apartment building in London AP Firefighters stand amid debris in a childrens playground near a tower block severly damaged by a serious fire, in north Kensington, West London REUTERS Emergency services gather close to the scene after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London PA Firefighters react as a huge fire engulfs the Grenfell Tower AFP/Getty Images Emergency personnel operate during the fire at the Grenfell Tower, a 27-storey apartment block in North Kensington, London EPA A firefighter rests during the ballte against the blaze at Grenfell Tower Jeremy Selwyn Emergency services close to the scene after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London Nigel Howard A London Fire Brigade worker moves air tanks close to the scene of a fire that engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London PA Firefighters spray water after a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London PA Fire crews rest as they take part in the operation to put out a fire in a high rise apartment block in London AP A firemen reacts after battling a huge fire at the Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey apartment block in North Kensington, London EPA Residents were trapped "screaming for their lives" as flames raged through a 27-storey tower block in Notting Hill Alex Lentati Emergency services spray water towards a fire that engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London PA

One police officer, who supervises staff that attended the incidents at Manchester, Grenfell Tower and London Bridge, said the Met's response was "a lot of smoke and mirrors when the job isn't actually doing very much."

Many officers were at breaking point given their workload, he said, while most staff did not trust management enough to seek help.

"They were going into flats at Grenfell and seeing families basically huddled together - it just doesn't bear thinking about," he said.

Police: Officers said the trauma programme was not being delivered by people with adequate training / Reuters

"Some officers feel there's nothing for them, not unless they go to their own GPs and seek help themselves."

First pictures from inside Grenfell Tower

The Met is rolling out the trauma risk management (TriM) programme, a specialist programme to treat and prevent PTSD which has been used in the military.

But one officer said TriM was rushed in and was being delivered by "current police officers who have done a one-day training course".

London Bridge and Borough Market terrorist attack 1 /40 London Bridge and Borough Market terrorist attack Police and paramedics treat an injured person Daniel Sorabji/AFP/Getty Images A woman is helped to an ambulance at London Bridge Daniel Sorabji/AFP/Getty Images Armed police at London Bridge Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Emergency personnel tend to wounded on London Bridge Yui Mok/PA Wire Daniel Sorabji/AFP/Getty Images Daniel Sorabji/AFP/Getty Images Debris and abandoned cars remain on London Bridge Chris J Ratcliffe/AFP/Getty Images People walking down Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Armed Police officers on London Bridge Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire People flee along Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Police officers outside the Barrowboy and Banker Public House on Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Shocked onlookers in Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Police sniffer dogs on London Bridge Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire People run down Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire A helicopter lands on London Bridge Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire An armed officer on London Bridge Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Police officers on Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Emergency personnel on London Bridge Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Armed police on Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Armed Police officer looks through his weapon on London Bridge Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire People run along Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Police at the scene on Southwark Bridge Carl Court/Getty Images A paramedic rushes to the scene Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire An armed officer on London Bridge Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire A paramedic at the scene Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Armed police on Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Emergency personnel on London Bridge Yui Mok/PA Wire Police officers outside the Barrowboy and Banker Public House on Borough High Street Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire People are lead to safety away from London Bridge Carl Court/Getty Images

Another Met source said it may work in the military but was "pointless" in the police.

He said there was poor understanding of PTSD among senior officers in the Met and an unwillingness to support those suffering.

He added that unsatisfactory performance orders have been made against officers with PTSD, while he knew of officers being bounced between occupational health and the NHS for treatment.

The Met has recently outsourced its occupational health service, having identified "a number of vulnerabilities and service gaps" from running it in-house.

Similar concerns were raised by former firefighter Gary Thornett, who recently retired after 30 years with the London Fire Brigade.

He said: "The culture has changed a lot in recent years but many of the guys are still not getting the help they need.

"It's all done internally and there's a real distrust there about management and the impact it could have on their job.

London Fire Commissioner Ms Cotton said all those involved at Grenfell were spoken to individually by a counsellor before they went off duty, and had access to further counselling when they returned to work.

A spokeswoman for the Met said that the large number of incidents in 2017 has meant drawing upon contingency plans to provide sufficient clinical staff in order to support officers and staff affected directly or indirectly.

"Ongoing support programmes, particularly for Grenfell, are also in the planning and will include an ongoing presence of clinical staff on site for access when needed, she added.

She said the impact of a traumatic event on an officer's mental health "can rarely be predicted and should not be underestimated", and that officers seeking help through occupational health were treated with sensitivity and confidentiality.
The national FFA Organization awarded a $1,500 Americas Farmers Grow Ag Leaders scholarship to Grant Maser of Gering High School. The scholarship is sponsored by Monsanto Fund. Maser plans to use the funds to pursue a degree at Nebraska Wesleyan.

This scholarship is one of 1,888 awarded through the National FFA Organizations scholarship program this year. Currently 115 sponsors contribute more than $2.7 Million to support scholarships for students.

For 33 years, scholarships have been made available through funding secured by the National FFA Foundation. This generous funding comes from individuals, businesses, and corporate sponsors to encourage excellence and enable students to pursue their educational goals.

The 2017 scholarship recipients were selected from 8,337 applicants from across the country. Selections were based on the applicants leadership, academic record, FFA and other school and community activities, supervised agricultural or work experience in agricultural education and future goals.

The National FFA organization provides leadership, personal growth and career success training through agricultural education to 649,355 student members who belong to one of 7,859 local FFA chapters throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The organization is also supported by 225,891 alumni members in 1,934 alumni chapters throughout the U.S.
The Nebraska Farm Business published results from their 2016 Farm Financial Averages program in May. The data included is from farms and ranches across Nebraska that participate in their financial analysis program. The data is a result of the averages from the individual farms which the producers can use as benchmarks, but also provide a source of actual farm-level information to gauge the financial health of the producers in Nebraska.

There were many positives that were highlighted in the 2016 data, including an increase in the average net farm income, lower family living costs and a smaller net worth loss than in 2015. However, there were also some areas of concern, specifically the average debt load, working capital and excellent yields.

It may seem strange to be concerned about excellent yields in 2016, but its important to remember not to take them for granted. If we think about how the changes from 2015 to 2016 may correlate into an outlook for 2017, it is a concern. As we project income out into 2017 and 2018, it is hard to assume that we will be able to again achieve record high yields so we have to forecast with an average yield. When we use an average yield the loss of income is significant. For example, average soybean yields in 2016 were almost 72 bushels per acre. The 20-year average is only 59 bushels per acre. Even if yields in 2017 come in 10 bushels below the record high, a producer would be short $90 per acre (with a $9.00 per bushel payment). The average producer included in the data has about 500 acres of soybeans. That is $45,000, which is just about all the profit generated in 2016.

Another area that is starting to show some interesting data is the split between operations. When we look at the average income split by the high-profit one-third and the low-profit one-third, we see a spread of $416,344. Some of that is certainly due to the struggles in the livestock industry, especially the cattle feeding sector that experienced significant losses for a second year in 2016, but we are seeing that divide within the crop industry as well. The average net return per acre for irrigated corn was $95.49 per acre for the high one-third and -$77.72 for the low one-third. While some of this difference was definitely due to slightly higher yields (210 vs 200 bu/ac) and slightly better marketing ($3.32 vs $3.25), there was also a $90 per acre difference in costs. As we saw with the yield example above, a $90 per acre difference is significant on the whole farm level. The biggest differences per acre are fertilizer, machine cost and land cost. It shouldnt be much of a surprise that the large increases in both machinery and land costs during the past 10 years are now significantly impacting operations. For those producers who have not made adjustments to their operations (re-evaluating cash rents, selling equipment that is not returning to its investment, holding off on trades, etc.), the impact of higher costs is translating into lower profits, tighter working capital, and higher debt loads.

The 2016 data certainly provides some hope in the 2017 and 2018 outlook in that we saw the first increase in net farm income since 2012 and turning that corner is a big step. The other story it tells is of concern as while the average has turned that corner, not all individual operations have made those adjustments. Without another year of record high yields, those producers who havent made adjustments could be looking at a tough loan renewal.
Six Rwandan Scholars who have been working this summer at the UNL Panhandle Research and Extension Center will give a final presentation of their summer work on July 27.

The presentation will start at 2 p.m. in the Bluestem Room at the Panhandle Center. It will be open to the public. Each student will give a short presentation on their summer research.

The Rwandan students have been working and learning at the Panhandle Center since mid-May. They will return to the Lincoln campus at the end of July. They have been housed at Western Nebraska Community College dormitories, and also paired with local host families in the local community.

The scholars study in Lincoln during the academic year. This is the second academic year that Rwandans have been welcomed to the UNL College of Agricultural Sciences (CASNR) as CUSP Scholars. CUSP stands for CASNR Undergraduate Scholars Program.

In 2015, CASNR welcomed the first Cohort of seven CUSP Scholars, followed by an additional 49 in 2016 for a total of 56 scholars. CASNR is positioned to host up to 180 Rwandan students over the next eight years. They are pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Integrated Science that is focused on conservation agriculture, entrepreneurship, leadership, and innovative thinking.

According to the CASNR Deans office, These scholars represent the talent needed to move Rwandas agricultural sector forward. They have committed to return to Rwanda upon graduation to serve in critical areas across research, extension, and training.

The students include:

Didier Ndenga, a freshman pursuing a bachelors degree in Integrated Sciences. He is mostly interested in Mechanized System Management, which is his minor and area of concentration. Didier is working for Integrated Weed Management Specialist Nevin Lawrence.

Germain Intwari, a freshman integrated sciences major with a concentration in plant pathology. Rwanda, as other countries within the equatorial region, is experiencing crop yield reductions due to plant diseases. Germain is working for Plant Pathologist Bob Harveson.

Joviale Uwase, a freshman student majoring in Integrated Science, with a concentration in Mechanized Systems and Management. Joviale is working for Soil and Nutrient Management Specialist Bijesh Maharjan.

Liliane Umuhoza, a freshman in Integrated Science major with a concentration in irrigation. Liliane is working for Alternative Crops Breeding Specialist Dipak Santra.

Peace Munyana, a sophomore majoring in integrated science with a minor in agronomy. Peace is working for Dry Edible Bean Breeding Specialist Carlos Urrea.

Tonny Ruhinda, a freshman pursuing a degree in Integrated Sciences with a minor in mechanized systems management. Tonny is passionate about irrigation technology so as to develop irrigation systems in his country. Tonny is working for Soil and Nutrient Management Specialist Bijesh Maharjan.
Nearly four dozen residents from around the valley and Wyoming attended the 2017 Water Tour to learn about an intricate system in which every cog, from people to reservoirs, works together to deliver the vital liquid to the places it needs to be.

Robert Busch has been conducting tours since the beginning. He had a keen interest in water, having grown up on a farm and irrigated with his father. After attending a meeting, Busch was scolded about some of the ideas he had about the North Platte water system.

I didnt realize how naive I was, Busch said. I wanted to go and look for myself.

He went to the Scottsbluff/Gering United Chamber of Commerce for help and two weeks later a tour was organize.

What an eye opener it was for me, Busch said. When I got home, I looked at water totally different.

He has been helping to educate citizens about how our water systems work ever since.

The two-day water tour began in 1989 and has continued to be popular over the years. The trip takes participants to Seminoe Dam, the Fremont Power Plant, Pathfinder Dam, Mills Computer Center, Gelndo Reservoir, Guernsey Reservoir and a final stop at the Whalen Diversion Dam.

This years trip saw participants endure a grueling first day with temperatures nearing 100 degrees. As the bus carrying participants made its way along the winding roads to Seminoe Dam, participants who were looking out the window saw many deer and several antelope walking in the fields and relaxing on grass.

One of the most important lessons of the tour is knowing that after years of fighting with upstream neighbors, farmers and state officials now sit down and work out equitable deals about how much water everyone needs.

Its a good perspective on where your water comes from and learning that your upstream neighbor isnt so bad after all, said Jeff Cowley, with Wyomings engineering office.

When the water does begin to flow, the same story plays out year after year. Everyone feels their upstream use up all of the water and everyone downstream gets a raw deal. But with technology and minute control over the water, that doesnt happen.

The water that technically begins in the mountains eventually makes its way down to Scottsbluff. Along the way, every molecule is accounted for as it moves along a system of reservoirs before entering canals for farming.

The system is gravity fed from streams to reservoir to reservoir along pipes that range from 600 psi to 1,200 psi, without the need for costly pumping of water at every stage of the journey.

In Wyoming, your downstream neighbors are always kept in mind. If you arent putting the water to use, you are injuring your downstream neighbors.

Busch explains on the tour the complexity of the water system. He wants people to understand the cooperation between Nebraska and Wyoming and why its important they continue to communicate with each other.

They get along well and communicate well and there is a fair division of the water, Busch said. "Its a never-ending struggle with water, the division of it and keep sending water to the tail end.

In total, there are seven reclamation dams. Seminoe is the farthest and the first stop on the tour.

The Seminoe Reservoir has more than a million acre-feet storage capacity. It is reached through a bumpy, dirt road that winds its way through a jagged valley before opening up to picturesque reservoir, which is also used for recreation. On the way, a large pronged antelope stops eating to watch the tour bus go by.

The Fremont Canyon Power Plant sits at the bottom of a canyon, processes water from the Pathfinder Reservoir. Built in the 1960s, the plant is accessed through a controlled tunnel three-quarters of a mile long.

Maintenance at the plant, and all the plants along the North Platte Project system are completed in the winter.

The Pathfinder Dam was completed in 1911. Materials were hauled from Casper, Wyoming, in wagons, hitched with dozens of horses and mules to a single wagon to transport cement. Concrete was mixed on site. The dam was constructed using wooden derricks, horses, mules and manpower to move the estimated 10,000 pound blocks.

It was the first dam built on the river. Initially, it released water for irrigation to the Whalen Diversion Dam.

At the Bureau of Reclamation Wyoming office in Casper, nearly two dozen computer screens monitor every drop of water and every change in a system that covers Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana.

Glendo reservoir was built so water could be released from upstream in the winter time. Before water hits the reservoir, the North Platte River widens and the water slows from a roaring torrent to a calm flow. Glendo was completed in 1958 as the only dam built specifically to control flooding.

Built in 1927, Guernsey is the second oldest dam. It is the final reclamation area on the North Platte River before water hits the Whalen Diversion Dam, which diverts water into Fort Laramie Canal and Interstate Canal which distribute water to farms in Wyoming and Nebraska.

The North Platte River projects have harnessed the rivers for the benefit of everyone. Since the first project waters were delivered in 1908, there has never been a complete crop failure. Irrigation water, endangered species, recreation, municipal and industrial water, power generation, flood control and fish and wildlife have all been helped by the system controlling the flow of water.

The trickle of water from the snowcapped mountains in northern Colorado became a stream, turning into a torrent along the Wyoming plains. It is the lifeblood of farmers hundreds of miles away in western Nebraska.

There is a tremendous amount of cooperation every day, said Jeff Fassett, director, Nebraska Department of Natural Resources. Its a system that works every day.
More than two dozen floats were making preparations around Burkholder Education Center in Alliance well before 9 a.m.

Floats from banks to community organizations decorated and put the final details into place before getting in line for the Alliance Heritage Days Parade.

National Park Rangers Anne Wilson and Tony Mincu taped signs to their float from the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument.

For the past few years, Agate has had a float in several parades. This year, they have participated in the Fourth of July parade in Crawford, Oregon Trail Days and Fur Trade Days. They will also be in the Scotts Bluff County parade, the Harrison parade and possibly the Minatare parade.

Its a fun time for Wilson and Mincu, who spent their day in outreach, and not just on their float. Whenever they go somewhere in uniform, people ask them questions about the park service and which park they are from. Participating in parades also raised awareness to Agate and the entire park system.

Its a good community outreach, Wilson said. Its good to get out and be seen in the neighboring communities to let them know were here and what we have to offer.

By 9:15 a.m., members of the community had their spots staked out along the sides of the road. From Black Hills avenue to Highway 2, fans set up folding chairs and coolers and looked for the best spot to catch the parade. When the parade began, spectators cheered as the parade went by.

The First State Bank float had a large birthday cake to celebrate Nebraskas 150th anniversary. The bank also sponsors the crowning of the grand marshal, who sits on the float as it travels down the parade route. Spectators were treated to seeing Harold and Mimi Roller serve as grand marshals of the parade and ride with the giant birthday cake. Every float and vehicle had a person walking nearby to toss candy, Frisbees and other items to spectators.

The Alliance FFA is 80 years old this year. Their float not only celebrates the parade theme of Back to the 60s, 1860s that is, but the Alliance FFA as well. The float was covered with items you would see in the 1860s in this area.

There were a lot of covered wagons, said Lori Walla, of the Alliance FFA. Agriculture was also a big part of our history.

Walla said the Alliance FFA also participates in the parade because giving back to your community is something the organization does.

Its a form of community service for us, Walla said. Its also a good way to let the community know were out here.
Libraries in the Panhandle in the path of the 2017 total solar eclipse are bracing for an influx of readers over the next six weeks.

The libraries are encouraging residents to come in and check out their books.

Sherry Preston, public services librarian at the Gering Public Library has several adult books about astronomy and the solar system as well as a childrens book, Eclipses by Nick Hunter, which discusses the phenomenon.

Once the summer reading program in Gering concludes at the end of July, Preston will be creating informational displays and showcasing their books for the public as well as pamphlets and other handouts to help local residents prepare for the eclipse.

Preston expects interest in the eclipse will begin to pick up over the next few weeks.

Sometimes, when there is something going on, people want more information and they will come in looking for it, Preston said.

The Lied Scottsbluff Public Library also has several eclipse and science related books for the publics reading pleasure. Noelle Thompson, library director, Lied Scottsbluff Public Library, has made purchases of eclipse- and science-related books for readers.

The thing about learning is it doesnt occur in isolation, Thompson said. The eclipse comes, so you want to learn about the moon and then the sun and then space. Then you want to learn about all the possibilities in the universe.

In Alliance, the Friends of the Library Foundation requested Library Director Stephanie OConnor spend money specifically on books about the eclipse. They ordered them in April and put them out on display as soon as they arrived, but they didnt begin circulating that much until the middle of June.

People tend to be more excited more toward the last minute, OConnor said. With Alliance being on the path (of totality) we thought it would be a huge disservice to patrons to not have the books.

Preston has a limited amount of solar eclipse glasses the library will be giving out. Staff will also be helping out at the Five Rocks Amphitheatre on the day of the eclipse. The library will be closed for a time in the morning of Aug. 21, but will be open in the afternoon.

OConnor also had some help from Pat Gross with the Western Library Systems. Gross provided links to activity books for children. Although the Alliance Library ordered 100 each of the activity books, she said they are selling like crazy and she expects her inventory will be soon be gone.

Books at the Lied Scottsbluff Public Library include childrens books, non-fiction related to science and the eclipse and fiction books where eclipses occur and are part of the story. One of the newest additions is Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Its written for people who arent into science, Thompson said.

More books are on the way. The Lied Scottsbluff Public Librarys book club will be reading The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut by Clayton Anderson and Sharpie: The Life Story of Evelyn Sharp, Nebraska Aviatrix by Diane Ruth Armour Bartels. Both stories are about Nebraskans.

The Lied Scottsbluff Public Library also has many more e-books on Overdrive, American Eclipse by David Baron and When the Sun Goes Dark by Andrew Fraknoi and Dennis Schatz

With all those options, there is a book for every person and a person for every book, Thompson said.

For more information about books in Gering, contact the Gering Public Library at 308-436-7433.

The Alliance Public Library is also hosting a Science Fair with an eclipse theme for children in grades K-12. Each age group will win a prize and their projects will be on display eclipse weekend at the Alliance Library. OConnor admits shes biased, but she hopes people come to see the library during their visit. OConnor has several other activities for the community leading up to Aug. 21. For more information, contact the Alliance Library at 308-762-1387 or visit http://libraries.ne.gov/alliance/.

The Lied Scottsbluff Public Library will be open during the eclipse, though Thompson doesnt think anyone will actually be visiting that day. Scottsbluff has been given a limited amount of solar eclipse glasses from STAR Net, which will be distributed a week before the big event. For more information about available books, contact the Lied Scottsbluff Public Library at 308-630-6250.
As suspected drift from dicamba took a toll on farmers the past two growing seasons, Monsanto  the Creve Coeur-based agribusiness company that helped give the herbicide newfound prominence with its introduction of dicamba-tolerant crop varieties  publicly urged growers not to spray illegal kinds of the product while new formulations supposedly less prone to drift waited for regulatory approval.

But a class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in St. Louis accuses company sales representatives of secretly giving farmers assurances that using unauthorized or off-label spray varieties would be all right.

This was Monsantos real plan: publicly appear as if it were complying, while allowing its seed representatives to tell farmers the opposite in person, the suit alleges, based on farmer testimony. Their sales pitch: assure purchasers that off-label and illegal uses of dicamba would be just fine.

Thats one of many allegations in the suit to place blame from soaring complaints of dicamba damage on companies that produce the weedkiller and accompanying seed varieties.

Monsanto, BASF, DuPont and Pioneer are the agribusiness and chemical companies associated with the herbicide named as defendants in the case. Plaintiffs include seven Arkansas farms affected by alleged dicamba drift this year, though more may be added, according to Paul Lesko, a St. Louis-based attorney with Peiffer Rosca Wolf, the law firm representing the plaintiffs.

The suit outlines the shifting circumstances that have surrounded suspected dicamba damage since Monsanto first released dicamba-tolerant cotton in 2015 and brought resistant soybeans to market the following year. Corresponding herbicides produced by the defendants werent available for either growing season, only gaining approval since late 2016. Their absence led many growers with dicamba-tolerant seeds to allegedly turn to more drift-prone  or volatile  forms of the herbicide, leaving their fields unharmed but putting nearby growers with nonresistant crops at risk.

But even though the new, proper forms of the herbicide are now available, alleged misuse of dicamba has shot to new heights in 2017. Hundreds of complaints have poured in to state officials in Arkansas and Missouri alone, with reports of other suspected damage emerging in places such as Tennessee, Mississippi, Kansas, Illinois and Indiana.

Citing weed and crop science experts from affected states, the suit claims this years damage was a foreseeable consequence of the much larger rollout of dicamba products, pointing to continued concerns about their tendency to vaporize and drift, even when applied properly.

Following (the label instructions) as they are now is a Herculean task. Talk about threading the needle  you cant spray when its too windy. You cant spray under 3 miles per hour. You got to keep the boom down  there are so many things, said University of Tennessee weed management expert Larry Steckel, in an excerpt from the suit. It looks good on paper, but when a farmer or applicator is trying to actually execute that over thousands of acres covering several counties, its almost impossible.

The suit says the defendants actually benefit from rampant drift, because it pressures farmers to adopt dicamba-tolerant seed to avoid damage.

Monsanto officials said last month that the technology accounts for one of the largest launches in company history. Those sales, the lawsuit contends, amount to illegal monopolistic behavior, as farmers rush to adopt the product. Theyre not necessarily buying a product because its better and meets their needs, theyre buying it because its a defense mechanism, Lesko told the Post-Dispatch.

Monsanto and BASF cited their efforts to educate growers about correct application of dicamba.

We remain confident in growers ability to follow all application requirements and abide by the law, Monsanto said in a statement. The (Environmental Protection Agency) spent nearly seven years reviewing and analyzing data and research conducted before issuing a label. The lawsuit is wholly without merit, and we will defend ourselves accordingly.

DuPont declined to comment on the litigation, but said this year thousands of growers have used these products properly and successfully.

Lesko, though, maintains that the cropping system skews benefits to the companies, and not to farmers.

Its kind of a cycle and it only benefits the defendants. As harm increases, more farmers have to purchase the defendants products, said Lesko, adding that theres already concern about a lack of diversity in agriculture.

This cycle needs to stop, he said. Its never good to have just one type of crop out there.
By all accounts, the sinking of the Titanic merits a paragraph or two in the history books. But the incident gets just a footnote in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, the musical now playing at the Muny.

The infamous shipwreck makes its way into the shows title (Molly got her moniker by surviving, after all), but its only referenced in one scene on board the lifeboat. By the time ship meets iceberg, Molly has already cemented herself as unsinkable, but The Unsinkable Molly Brown isnt about the Titanic and mostly isnt even about Molly Brown. Its a love story thats equal parts heartwarming and contrived  but captivating all the while.

Plucky, calico-clad and Denver-bound, Margaret Call me Molly (Beth Malone) arrives in Leadville, Colo., to the chagrin of the local mining community. Her mere presence as a woman is believed to be bad luck, and the near-immediate death of a miner doesnt quell anyones superstitions.

Molly visits newly widowed Julia (Whitney Bashor) to apologize for causing her husbands death. The meeting requires an impossible suspension of disbelief  that a grieving widow would allow an aggravating stranger to stay with her instead of kicking her through the door and locking it behind.

But Molly always gets her way, which to one end shows her determination but to another limits her storyline. Mollys character barely evolves; instead, its those around her who are given a rounded arc through their shifting feelings toward Molly.

Annoyance to tolerance to endearment to love  Mollys continued foisting is her buoyancy.

Meredith Willsons The Unsinkable Molly Brown was a Broadway hit in the 1960s, and it had been a Muny staple. But playwright and lyricist Dick Scanlan retooled the show to better reflect the real Molly Brown (of Hannibal, Mo.). By trying to more accurately reflect Molly, Scanlan ends up putting her on a pedestal while letting the characters around her to flatten and fade.

The three primary miners  Italian Vincenzo (Justin Guarini), German Erich (David Abeles) and Chinese Arthur (Paolo Montalban)  reflect the diversity that really existed in mining towns, but the trio seems to have been written in service of a throwaway joke (An Italian, a German and a Chinaman walk into a bar ).

Mine owner Horace Tabor (John Hickok) is a crotchety penny pincher, but his wife, Baby Doe (Donna English), is the real brains of the operation. Julia is the constant friend whose main job is to reaffirm Molly. Louise Sneed-Hill (Patty Goble) is the uppity foil representing the high-society stereotype.

These characters, while brilliant and diverse, are only ever defined in their relationship to Molly  which, given shes the titular character, may be an unfair critique.

The roles are well-played, though. The Unsinkable Molly Brown is an enjoyable, lighthearted show because of its actors and impeccable work by director Kathleen Marshall. The relatively simple staging of the production  primarily one or two set pieces per scene and none of the Munys usual ornately painted booms  worked to the shows benefit.

Its in the latter scenes where the most memorable moments are created, largely between the inspired work of Malone as Molly and Marc Kudisch as her husband, J.J. Brown.

They bring to life the couples love-hate relationship  Molly devoted to J.J. but always championing her own causes; J.J. trying to support Mollys work but still wanting a wife in the traditional 1890s sense. Malone and Kudisch bring that tension naturally.

Its this love story at the heart of the show that makes the story worth it. While Molly is a fascinating woman who accomplished so much in her life (running for Senate even before women could vote, her endless philanthropic efforts, setting up one of the first juvenile courts), complexity comes from the capacity for change. Molly and J.J.s relationship is ever-changing, even if Molly is self-assured from the start.

If the love story gives the show its legs, then its the music that really gets it off the ground. From the booming opening number Colorado, My Home to the raucous ditties Belly Up to the Bar, Boys and Cuppa Tea, the songs let the players voices shine and give the audience something other than Mollys legend to grab hold of.
FRANKLIN COUNTY  A man was killed and another injured in a head-on crash Saturday morning in Franklin County, the Missouri Highway Patrol reported.

Eric J. Schroeder, 35, of House Springs, was driving a 2003 Chrysler Concorde east on Highway 50 near Wildwood Ridge about 11:40 a.m. when he crossed the center line and struck a westbound 2016 Ford E450 head on, the patrol said. The pickup truck was driven by Eric A. Stanley, 58, of St. Louis.

The men were taken to Mercy Hospital in Washington, Mo., where Schroeder was pronounced dead and Stanley was treated for moderate injuries, the patrol said. Both men were wearing seat belts.
Something went wrong, please try again later.

Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later.

Mark Hughes admits Stoke are still in the hands of Manchester City as they try to bring in Fabian Delph.

Delph is in a gang of players left in the UK and out of any first team plans by Pep Guardiola as Man City go on a pre-season trip to the United States.

But the 27-year-old midfielder, who joined from Aston Villa for 8m two years ago, still needs to sort out contractual issues before being allowed to leave, either on a long-term loan or on a permanent deal for about 10m.

Hughes wants to bring in another central midfielder after letting club stalwart Glenn Whelan join Villa for a fee that could rise to 1.5m. Stoke City are also open to serious offers for Giannelli Imbula, who continues to be linked with moves to France, Italy and Turkey.

But progress on bringing in Delph, also reportedly wanted by West Brom, has not been quick.

Hughes told the Sentinel: "I think that one is more dependent on Man City. It hasn't moved forward for maybe a couple of weeks now and that's where we are with that one."

Stoke continued their pre-season programme yesterday with a 1-0 win at Amiens, courtesy of a goal from Mame Diouf. Next up they take on Sheffield United away on Tuesday.
Cllr Jason Fojtik, right, pictured with supporters and members of Stratford for Europe before Mondays meeting at Elizabeth House. Photo: Mark Williamson S68/7/17/6904

VERY disappointed! Was Cllr Jason Fojtiks (Lab, Clopton) summing up of the outcome to a post-Brexit motion he tabled at a full meeting of Stratford District Council on Monday.

Cllr Fojtik first tabled a motion in April to discuss how the council could engage with the European community in Stratford district more closely but his motion was amended with 22 councillors voting in favour of the amendment proposed by Cllr Chris Saint, (Cons, Shipston North), leader of the council.

Im very disappointed. They have changed the whole meaning of my motion to allow a mechanism to be put in place for the district council to take on board the rights of EU citizens living in the Stratford to be part of the decision making process in the local area, Cllr Fojtik said after the meeting.

His post-Brexit motion was scheduled to be discussed on two previous occasions but these were postponed and the matter referred to Mondays meeting of the council.

The motion reads, as it did previously: The Council welcomes all EU citizens, who are expatriates from the other 27 EU Member States, and recognises the valuable role they play in our local economy and the provision of public services in Stratford-on-Avon District. EU citizens are an important part of our local community and add to the cultural vitality of the District.

The Council therefore resolves:

To establish a mechanism to increase the involvement of EU citizens in local decision-making. Calls on the Government to end the uncertainty regarding the status of EU citizens currently residing in Stratford-on-Avon by guaranteeing their right to live and work in the UK in the event of the UK leaving the European Union

This is a motion this council can take the lead in this county and in the country to set an example of moral leadership and to demonstrate our compassion and true support for all residents in the Stratford district particularly EU citizens who need support and friendship at this very difficult time for them. They have worked hard, paid their taxes, integrated, raised families and put down roots, Cllr Fojtik told councillors on Monday.

However, Cllr Saints amendment reads:

The council welcomes all EU citizens who are expatriates from the other 27 EU member states and recognises the valuable role they play in our local economy and the provision of public services in Stratford-on-Avon district.

The council supports the government, as a priority in the forthcoming negotiations, in its efforts to end the uncertainty regarding the status of EU citizens currently residing in Stratford-on-Avon district and the UK as a whole, as well as UK nationals from Stratford-on-Avon district currently living in the remainder of the European Union.

Full story in this weeks Herald.
Trains stranded in Karachi and other areas of Sindh resumed their journeys Sunday morning following a protest by drivers which resulted in halting of trains at Sukkur's Rohri Station.The Millat Express and Karakoram Express scheduled to travel from Karachi to Faisalabad and Lahore, respectively  left for their destinations around 5am.

The trains are being operated by substitute drivers, officials explained, adding that they are looking for other alternatives to resume operations of the remaining trains.Negotiations are also under way between the Pakistan Railways management and the protesting drivers in Sukkur. Between Saturday and Sunday night, several engine drivers of Pakistan Railways stopped their trains at Rohri Station, causing distress and inconvenience to numerous passengers.

The drivers were reportedly protesting to demand better salaries and reemployment of terminated staffers, among other things.In a press conference, Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique said all railways operations will be back to normal within 48 hours.

Rafique invited the protesting drivers to return to their duty and offered to negotiate.

Those who do not return to work will be going home, said Rafique. He informed that 13 protesting drivers have been arrested and warned that terrorism cases would be registered against them.

Passengers' woes

"There's no water or food here and it is terribly hot. Adding to our woes, shopkeepers have bumped up prices of basic items fivefold!" one of the passengers at Rohri Station lamented.

"We have kids with us and they are getting worried," said another."Officials at this station are unaware of any developments and are redirecting us to one another, shying away from responsibility," complained another passenger.

More than 200 drivers had already submitted requests for holidays and said that they were determined to make the protest effective.

"Trains coming in from various other cities will be halted here at Rohri Station," one of the drivers said when the protest went under way.Speaking after news of the protest made airwaves, a Pakistan Railways spokesperson commented on the situation and said that strong action will be taken against the protesting drivers. "We will have cases registered against them under the Anti-Terrorism Act," the spokesperson stated.While the requests for the five-day-long holiday have been denied, the spokesperson explained that the justified ones will be approved.

The spokesperson, noting that the protesting drivers desire their fired colleagues be reinstated, stressed that Pakistan Railways "will not be blackmailed by drivers involved in bloody accidents".

Trains at 13 stations in the Sukkur Division were halted when the protest began.

Khyber Express and Sukkur Express, going to Karachi, were parked at Shahdadpur Station, while Shalimar Express (Karachi-Lahore), Allama Iqbal Express (Sialkot-Karachi), Pakistan Express (Rawalpindi-Karachi), and Fareed Express were stopped at Rohri Station.

On the other hand, Tezgam, en route from Karachi to Rawalpindi, was halted at Begmaji Station.
The White House is demanding the release of all Americans currently being held in Iran and says President Donald Trump is "prepared to impose new and serious" consequences on the country if they are not released and returned.

A statement released by the White House Friday said the Trump administration is "redoubling" its efforts to bring home Americans "unjustly detained" abroad.

The statement mentioned three Americans specifically by name: Robert Levinson and Siamak and Baquer Namazi. Levinson has been held captive in Iran for over 10 years and The Namazis were taken during the Obama administration, according to the statement.

"The United States condemns hostage takers and nations that continue to take hostages and detain our citizens without just cause or due process. For nearly forty years, Iran has used detentions and hostage taking as a tool of state policy, a practice that continues to this day with the recent sentencing of Xiyue Wang to ten years in prison," the statement read.

The statement urged that Iran is responsible for the care and well being of all US citizens it has in its custody. It added that Trump is willing to impose new consequence unless all "unjustly imprisoned' American citizens are released by Iran.

Another American, Chinese-born Xiyue Wang, was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran after being convicted of spying. Wang was arrested in Iran last summer while doing scholarly research in connection with his Ph.D. dissertation, a Princeton University statement said.

The White House announcement comes at the heels of a new administration policy -- banning Americans from visiting another country known for imprisoning Americans -- North Korea.

The State Department announced on Friday it will authorize a geographical travel on US nationals visiting the country because of "mounting concerns over the serious risk of arrest and long-term detention."

The decision follows the June release of US citizen Otto Warmbier, who was arrested last year while on a sightseeing tour to North Korea. After being held prisoner by North Korea for 17 months, Warmbier was handed over to the US in a vegetative state. He died a few days later in Ohio.
During a Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) press conference, Journalists from different media houses protested on Sunday against manhandling of a female journalist by the officials of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) hospital in Islamabad.

The journalists demanded registering First Information Report (FIR) against the officials involved in giving special protocol to the under arrest chairman Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Zafar Hijazi and manhandling journalists.

Earlier talking to media, the victim female reporter, Saba Bajeer said she was subjected to assault and FIA officials tried to confiscate her phone when she took a couple of photographs of Hijazi, on Friday.

On seeing her holding her phone in hand, some FIA officials in civil dress forcibly made her delete the pictures and shoved her by holding her arm, she said.

Read more: FIA manhandles female reporter for taking Zafar Hijazis photo

The reporter of Channel 24 claimed that FIA personnel assaulted her for taking photographs of the SECP chairman. She also claimed that Hijazis son also used foul language against her.

When one colleague journalist of Saba, Irfan Malik, tried to intervene, he was also badly thrashed.

FIA Assistant Director Tahir Tanvir an FIA inspector and several other officials manhandled me, said Irfan.

It is pertinent here to mention that Zafar Hijazi has been remanded to FIA for four days. He was arrested on Friday after Special Judge Central Tahir Mehmood refused his plea for bail extension in a case pertaining to record tampering of the Sharif familys companies.

Minister of State for Capital Administration and Development Division Tariq Fazal has assured the journalists to register an FIR within 24 hours against all those involved in the condemnable incident.

He said the PIMS hospital lied in his jurisdiction and he assured to take strict action against the administration officials involved in misbehaving with journalists.
A Khasadar personnel was martyred and another injured when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off in Khyber Agency's Sheen Drang area on Sunday, security sources said.

The injured personnel was transferred to a hospital in Peshawar after the blast occurred.

Security personnel cordoned off the area soon after the blast occurred.

Khyber Agency is among Pakistans seven semi-autonomous tribal districts near the Afghan border, rife with homegrown insurgents and foreign militants.

A Fata Research Centre report said earlier this year that the incidence of terrorist attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas increased by 72 per cent in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the last quarter of 2016.

The Pakistan Army had launched Operation Raddul Fasaad (RuF) in February following a spate of terror attacks in the country, which claimed more than a hundred lives and left hundreds others injured.

The operation seeks to eliminate the "residual/latent threat of terrorism", consolidating the gains made in other military operations, and further ensuring the security of Pakistan's borders.

Hundreds of suspected terrorists have reportedly either been killed or arrested in raids carried out by security personnel since the start of the operation.

Earlier this week, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Khyber-4 under RuF to "wipe out terrorists" in the Rajgal Valley area of Khyber Agency.
With the sword of disqualification dangling over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Papers case, banners have propped on Sunday in the provincial capital calling him to step down, and his younger brother, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, to replace him.

Jane Do Jane Do Mian Sahib Jane Do, Ane Do Ane Do Mian Shahbaz ko ane tho (let go, let go, Mian Shahib let office go and let come, let come, let Mian Shahbaz come), read a banner placed up outside the Lahore Press Club.

The banners inscribed with similar slogans have been displayed outside the provincial assembly and other places across the city.

These banners have popped up at a time when rumours about rift within the party over the imminent disqualification and possible successor of the prime minister are rife.

The Supreme Court had earlier on Friday reserved its verdict after hearing both parties arguments over the findings of the Panama JIT report.

The party has decided not to go into confrontation with the judiciary and accept its decision. However, the sources said, the party is also mulling over the names to replace the premier if he gets disqualified by the apex court.
A US airstrike killed 16 Afghan police and wounded two others in Helmand province, officials said Saturday.

The incident took place Friday as Afghan security forces were clearing a village of Taliban elements, Salam Afghan, Helmand police spokesman, told AFP.

In the strike, 16 Afghan policemen were killed including two commanders," he said.

"Two other policemen were wounded, he added.

Omar Zwak, Helmand provincial governor spokesman, confirmed the strike and gave the same account.

It occurred in Gereshk district in Helmand, large parts of which are under Taliban control.

During a US-supported (Afghan security) operation, aerial fires resulted in the deaths of the friendly Afghan forces who were gathered in a compound, a Nato mission in Afghanistan said in a statement..

We would like to express our deepest condolences to the families affected by this unfortunate incident, it said, adding there would be a probe into what happened.

The US is the only foreign force in the coalition conducting airstrikes in Afghanistan.
The harmonies of Southern Gospel will return to the Lincoln Theatre stage next Saturday when Higher Call comes to Marion, featuring a native son of the community.

On Saturday, July 29, the Marion Kiwanis Club will host a performance by Higher Call at the Lincoln Theatre at 7 oclock.

Higher Call calls Monroe, N.C., its headquarters but travels throughout the region sharing the gospel message of Jesus Christ through song

Three members of the quartet, Barry Williams, Todd Griffin and Ric Mull, call North Carolina home, but the groups fourth member, Allen Mays, boasts Marion as his hometown.

According to the Kiwanis Club, Allen is well known to his classmates at Marion Senior High School and Emory & Henry College as a young man with a beautiful tenor voice. He started singing gospel music in his youth group at church. It was this influence that cemented his love for singing and desire to share the gospel through song.

On Higher Calls website (http://www.highercallqt.com), Mays reflects on his youth group experience and says, "I love singing and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ and feel it is a honor to sing for my Lord.

Mays also comments about his excitement about singing with Higher Call.

The group has three CDs, The Classics, Sing It Again, and its newest release, Telling the Story. Visit Higher Calls website to listen to a sampling of the groups music. The group also has a presence on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Tickets for the groups Marion concert are $15 and may be purchased online at www.thelincoln.org or from any Marion Kiwanis Club member.
Jason Cerone

By Ben Axelson | baxelson@nyup.com

Ben Stiller and his crew are still on site in Upstate New York, preparing to film scenes for his upcoming Showtime series, "Escape at Dannemora," based on the true story of convicted killers David Sweat and Richard Matt escaping from Clinton Correctional Facility in 2015. Stiller will direct the series.

Upstate New York photographer Jason Cerone snapped several photos of Stiller and his crew in the Northern New York towns of Dannemora and Malone. Take a look.

Don't Edit

Jason Cerone

Stiller was in Dannemora visiting the manhole from which Matt and Sweat escaped before leading authorities on a chase through Upstate NY for several weeks.

Don't Edit

Jason Cerone

According to locals, Stiller has visited two restaurants in Malone, NY, several times over the last year. He is reportedly planning to shoot a scene at Sansone's, where he can be seen taking a picture on a phone in this photo.

Don't Edit

Jason Cerone

Stiller also took the time out to take a few photos with curious onlookers. The taller man with glasses and a beard is Emmy award-winning film producer Scott Hornbacher.

Don't Edit

Jason Cerone

Malone village police were on site for crowd control during the site visit.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Jason Cerone

Stiller and his crew are known to be holding open casting calls for women aged 30 to 60 and men aged 20 to 60 on July 22 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Plattsburgh's Strand Central Theatre.

Don't Edit

Jason Cerone

Stiller and crew were previously spotted on a rainy day in June in Plattsburgh, NY, at locations around the Clinton County Government Center, City Hall and a well-known monument across from City Hall.

Don't Edit

Jason Cerone

The eight-episode series is reported to star Benicio del Toro as Richard Matt, Paul Dano as David Sweat and Patricia Arquette as Joyce Mitchell, the Dannemora employee who aided in their escape.

Don't Edit

Jason Cerone

Don't Edit

Ben Stiller isn't the first person to take a creative shot at retelling the harrowing story of the escape from the Dannemora prison. "NY Prison Break: The Seduction of Joyce Mitchell" was a Lifetime movie about the breakout that focused on Mitchell's side of the story.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

MORE 2017 CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS: Which stars visited Upstate New York this year?

You might not realize it, but Upstate NY sees its fair share of famous people over the course of a year. Check out all the stars who have popped up across the region so far this year.
Microsoft and Johnson Controls this week unveiled Glas, a smart thermostat that runs on Microsofts Windows 10 IoT Core, a special operating system designed specifically for smaller devices. Glas also utilizes Microsofts smart voice assistant Cortana and its Azure Cloud to help users save energy while monitoring air quality in the home.

Heating and cooling of a residential home accounts for around 48 percent of energy use, making it the largest energy expense for most families, noted Johnson Controls, a provider of HVAC, fire and security systems, and maker of the first electric room thermostat.

In commercial buildings, heating and cooling accounts for approximately 40 percent of energy costs.

With Microsofts Cortana voice services built-in, Glas could become a core part of a smart home play.

More Than Temperature Control

Thermostats that can be controlled remotely via a smartphone or other device generally have been increasing in popularity, but a key plus for Glas is that it is more than a thermostat. It includes sensors that can detect when people are in the room, and adjust the temperature accordingly.

Like competing smart environmental devices, including those from Nest and Hive, the Glas smart thermostat is designed to lower energy costs by maintaining desired temperatures in parts of a building that are used more, while maintaining appropriate temperatures in areas that are infrequently accessed.

Unlike other wall-mounted units, Glas provides continuous monitoring of both indoor and outdoor air quality.

From the little we know, this looks like a Nest-comparable device, said Roger Entner, principal analyst at Recon Analytics.

Smart home thermostats with some value-add is a growing market, especially in states like Massachusetts that subsidize intelligent thermometers, he told TechNewsWorld.

The air quality and AI is just a value-add to the dumb thermometer most Americans have in their home that drives their air conditioning and heating, Entner added.

Glas Talking

Voice control could be a distinguishing feature for Glas. Users can tell it the temperature that they want and adjust other settings.

Johnsons Glas is the first thermostat to use Microsofts Cortana technology to support voice commands/controls, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

That sets it apart from Google Nest, which doesnt support voice directly  though it can be managed vocally with a Google Home device, he told TechNewsWorld. Similarly, the Eccobee4 thermostat can be used with Amazon Alexa.

Crowded Smart House

For Microsoft and Johnson Controls, it is now a question of whether its partnership product is coming to the market too late or is arriving just in time for the smart home revolution.

This looks mostly like catch-up ball to me, suggested Roger Kay, principal analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Amazon and Google are already in this market. Both have cloud services, smart assistants and AI capabilities, he told TechNewsWorld.

Microsoft is a latecomer, but not too late, because the IoT market is just taking off  sort of better late than never,' Kay added.

The smart thermostat market is still a niche market, however, and may stay that way for a while, due to costs.

At US$250, a Google Nest is about 10 times the cost of a basic digital, programmable thermostat, noted Pund-ITs King. Thats likely to change as digital assistants, like Google Home and Amazon Alexa become more common and provide voice-enabled equivalents of universal remote controls.

Home or Office

From the information available so far, it does seem that Glas targets commercial properties more than consumers homes.

That makes sense strategically, since Johnson is known for its HVAC, fire and security systems  but it also underscores some key Glas features, including air quality controls and the ability to sense when people are present in a space and automatically adjust its settings, said King.

While those points may interest some consumers, theyd be more valuable to businesses looking to better manage their facilities and related costs, he explained.

This could be a product that finds itsr market in business settings, but then reaches homes in another version, especially if it should become the central command station in either environment.

The battle is for the IoT hub in the home, office or other building, said Endpoint Technologies Kay.

Apple wants in on this, too, he added. This is mostly about not being outflanked in an evolving market  really the least tapped market of the big three: endpoints, cloud and IoT.
Tesla's Lyndon Rive and Elon Musk boldly claimed in March that its Powerwall 2 can be the solution to South Australia's energy crisis and even went so far as to guarantee a complete set-up within 100 days of contract signing or it's free.

International and local clean energy storage providers also rose to the challenge but the final results of negotiations reveal that the Australian government has chosen to take Musk up on his guaranteed service.

That is not to say other companies were snubbed. In fact, all clean energy companies interested in offering their products and services for the region had to undergo a bidding process. It is just that Tesla still won the bid and decided to back up Musk's guarantee.

"This week, through a competitive bidding process, Tesla was selected to provide a 100 MW/129 MWh Powerpack system to be paired with global renewable energy provider Neoen's Hornsdale Wind Farm ... Tesla was awarded the entire energy storage system component of the project," Tesla announced.

100-Day Guarantee

Both Musk and Australian Premier Jay Weatherill declined to say how much the entire project actually costs; however, the Tesla CEO projected a loss of about $50 million or more if the company fails to deliver on its promise.

"We actually insisted in the contract that we be held to the hundred days or it's free. That's what we said publicly, that's what we are going to do," Musk confirmed at a press conference on July 6.

That is why Musk also said Tesla will make sure to have everything up and running within the agreed schedule, which means South Australia will have a functional 129 megawatt-hours of storage capacity to pair with its windmills by December 2017.

This will be the highest power battery system in the world by a factor of 3. Australia rocks!! https://t.co/c1DD7xtC90  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2017

World's Largest Clean Energy Storage

Once the system is up and running by the end of 2017, Tesla's Powerwall 2 systems would be able to provide clean energy to roughly 30,000 homes in South Australia, which is about the number of homes that are severely affected by the energy crisis. This will also make the facility the world's largest lithium-ion storage project, but that is not all. According to Musk, the storage system also offers efficiency and cost-effectiveness for both the government and the consumers because the batteries can be charged when the cost of production is high and discharged when it is low. "It's a fundamental efficiency improvement for the grid," Musk said. Premier Weatherill is proud that South Australia is the leading nation when it comes to renewable energy, if his tweets below are any indication.

Worlds largest lithium ion battery will be installed in #SouthAustralia under a historic agreement between #Neoen #Tesla & SA Gov! pic.twitter.com/GcfrwOzD9g  Jay Weatherill (@JayWeatherill) July 7, 2017

South Australia is already leading the nation. Today, we lead the world. pic.twitter.com/1mEJoNC0ma  Jay Weatherill (@JayWeatherill) July 7, 2017

Battery storage is the future of our national energy market. The world will follow SA's leadership in this space  Jay Weatherill (@JayWeatherill) July 7, 2017

Watch Musk speak about Tesla's historic agreement with the South Australian government below.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
"Dialogue and negotiation in Venezuela, found at the Paris Forum for Peace, three friends: the governments of France, Argentina and the Republic of Colombia," said the president... | Read More
By Ruth Anderah:

Judicial officers have also given government a one month ultimatum up to the 23rd August 2017 to increase their salaries threatening to lay down their tools.

The resolution for an industrial action has been reached at the extra-ordinary General meeting by the Uganda Judicial officers Association (UJOA) convened at the Kampala High court premises.

In the meeting 185 judicial officers, High court judges, Magistrates and Registrars voted not to step at their places of work if government does not commit in writing to increase their salaries.

The officers refused to yield to the pleadings of justice and Constitutional affairs minister Kahinda Otaffire who first labored to convince them await an official communication government within 3 months.

The minister had also proposed to the judicial officers to give him some time table the Administration of Justice Bill in parliament to be enacted into law so that the judiciary is independent of the public service.

The judges demand that the chief justice is paid 55 million shillings per month and the lowest officer who is the senior principle magistrate Grade two gets 12.6 million shillings.

This has come at a time when prosecutors from the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, had just returned to work from an industrial action following an agreement with government to raise their salaries in 3 months.
Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily!

Your notification has been saved.

There was a problem saving your notification.

{{description}}

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
After spending a half-century serving life without parole for a murder committed as a teenager, Henry Montgomery is now preparing for a parole hearing, a shot at freedom capping years of litigation over a case that stretched from a Baton Rouge district courtroom to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declared his automatic life without parole sentence unconstitutional.

But courts have yet to reckon with scores of other Louisiana inmates who, like Montgomery, were convicted of murders committed as juveniles and automatically given no-parole life prison terms. Those sentences, the Supreme Court ruled, should be doled out only to the rarest and worst young killers.

A freshly signed state law, the product of two years of contentious haggling in the Legislature, is expected to turn the trickle of inmates seeking new sentences into a stream this fall as cases left on hold while lawmakers negotiated a compromise begin churning back through the criminal justice system.

Going forward, almost all convicted killers under the age of 18 will be sentenced to life with parole  only those found guilty of first-degree murder can be blocked from eventually asking to be released from prison.

But the law created less certainty for the hundreds of inmates found guilty in prior decades. In those cases, district attorneys can request court hearings to determine whether any of the already convicted prisoners should be given a chance at parole after at least 25 years behind bars. There are nearly 300 such inmates, though it's unclear how many have, like Montgomery, already received new sentences.

As prosecutors dust off scores of old case files as a November deadline to request resentencing hearings looms, public defenders in many parishes  already staring down budget crises  are fretting over the potential costs. The hearings before a judge, designed to determine if inmates are truly "the worst of the worst" juvenile murderers, can require extensive (and expensive) research into an inmate's childhood, including school and mental-health records.

Just who will pay for that work  and just how much work is constitutionally required to sort out the rare, hopelessly corrupt killers from the redeemable defendants  remains unaddressed by the law. Some public defenders and juvenile justice advocates warn that court battles could drag on for years.

"There are a lot of questions about these hearings that will now need to be resolved through long and messy litigation," said Aaron Clark-Rizzio, executive director of the Louisiana Center for Children's Rights, a New Orleans-based nonprofit that's lobbied to abolish juvenile life without parole sentences.

Compromise legislation

Clark-Rizzio and other juvenile justice advocates had hoped to abolish such sentences, arguing the high rate at which prosecutors in recent years have successfully pursued life without parole leaves the state in flagrant violation of the Supreme Court rulings on this subject. For the older cases of already sentenced prisoners, they wanted only the state Parole Board to pick up the job of determining who should be released.

The state Senate endorsed a version of the bill that would've done just that. But the proposal faced fierce resistance in the House  where lawmakers hewed more closely to policies favored by the influential Louisiana District Attorneys Association  forcing the bill's original author, Baton Rouge Republican Sen. Dan Claitor, to hammer out a compromise.

Claitor, an attorney and former Orleans Parish prosecutor, said many of the gripes about the law are signs of a good compromise leaving both sides unhappy. Though some details may require additional legislation in coming years, Claitor said, the law represents "a huge step in the right direction."

"I think the vast majority of reasonable people in the middle are satisfied," said Claitor. "On the baseline question of whether we've followed the Supreme Court's direction, I'd still say we have."

But some advocates were less charitable in their assessment. Chris Murrell, director of the Promise of Justice Initiative in New Orleans, said he feared the state's district attorneys would continue aggressively pushing no-parole sentences for teenage killers, a sentence Murrell said is rooted largely in the "outdated, racist notion of super-predatory young men." This could be done by charging more defendants with first-degree murder, he said.

Louisiana and other states began holding sentencing hearings for juveniles convicted of murder following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 decision in Miller vs. Alabama that judges needed to consider a range of factors  including a child's maturity, capacity to change and any history of mental illness or abuse  before ruling out the possibility of parole.

Since that decision, Louisiana judges have held hearings for dozens of juveniles who've pleaded guilty or been convicted by juries of murder. A review of Louisiana Department of Corrections data and media reports by The Advocate identified at least 38 cases sentenced since the Miller decision, with more than half of the defendants receiving life without parole.

Only six of the defendants in cases reviewed by The Advocate were convicted of first-degree murder. Three were sentenced to life without parole while three others received the possibility of parole eligibility.

Despite Supreme Court rulings, parole opportunities for juveniles convicted of murder in Louisiana uncommon A pair of teenagers walked up to a security guard in a New Orleans East apartment complex on

The high clip at which juveniles have received life without parole in Louisiana comes despite Supreme Court mandates that life without parole sentences, even for those convicted of murder, should be reserved only for juveniles who show "such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible."

Earlier Supreme Court rulings had already declared life without parole unconstitutional for juveniles convicted of any crime besides murder.

Difficult old cases

The surge of decades-old cases, though, poses a host of new challenges for the courts and attorneys on both sides. Evidence has likely been destroyed while witnesses and relatives have moved on or died. For some, the case files themselves have been misplaced and police reports  banged out on typewriters and never entered into computer systems  have proven elusive.

Hillar Moore III, the East Baton Rouge district attorney, said his office is working to contact relatives of victims in the killings but faces serious challenges in older cases. Moore's prosecutors have turned to old newspaper obituaries and online databases to track them down. When they do find them, Moore said, most are shocked that the cases have suddenly been reopened.

Moore said his entire office will review the roughly 30 pre-Miller juvenile life without parole cases in the coming weeks, using a pair of recent resentencing decisions by Baton Rouge Judge Richard Anderson as guideposts.

"I believe we're going to be able to handle these fairly expeditiously and I think you'll probably see a minimal number of hearings," Moore said. If prosecutors waive court hearings, inmates will be able to take their requests for relief directly to the state Parole Board.

Anderson granted Montgomery, who was described by prison officials from Angola as a model inmate, the chance at parole. But the judge again sentenced Anthony Johnson, convicted of killing Daniel Magee a decade ago when he was 17, to life without parole.

"It doesn't appear the defendant has changed a whole lot," Anderson told Johnson at the hearing, referring to a prison record littered with disciplinary write-ups.

The dozens of sentencing hearings already carried out in Louisiana have varied widely, with some stretching for hours and others consisting of little more than a parent's tearful testimony.

That inconsistency, according to defense attorneys, suggests a fundamental problem with the proceedings. Properly preparing for the hearings can be very expensive  Jay Dixon, the state public defender, has estimated the bills can run $50,000 to $75,000 per case  and nearly all the defendants are impoverished clients of the state's already stretched public defenders.

In south Louisiana, where destructive hurricanes have washed away documents and scattered families, chasing down foster care records or former neighbors can be a daunting and time-consuming enterprise.

But unlike in death penalty cases, where public defenders can access special funds to pay for investigators and expert witnesses for similar sentencing hearings, there's currently no funding mechanism to cover the significant costs of digging up mitigating evidence in juvenile murder cases.

"There's just not funding for it," said Carol Kolinchak, a longtime public defender who now tracks the cases for the Louisiana Public Defender Board.

With district attorneys still mulling how many older cases to bring back for resentencing, Murrell said he fears prosecutors in at least some parishes will at least file for hearings in nearly all of them  triggering expensive background investigations by defense attorneys to prepare for possible hearings.

Jerome Matthews, a private criminal defense attorney, repeatedly begged for funding from the courts while representing Dexter Allen, who was convicted earlier this year for the 2015 double-murder of a Metairie father and son.

Allen, who was 17 years old at the time of the killings, had attended schools in several states after his family was displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Matthews said. There was no money to pay for mental health experts, Matthews said, and an investigator who volunteered to work for free couldn't track down all of the school records.

After a brief hearing, a Jefferson Parish judge sentenced Allen to life without parole. Matthews said a number of key questions about his client's childhood, mental health and other factors brought up by the Supreme Court went unanswered before sentencing.

"He didn't have a fair hearing and he didn't have fair representation, either," Matthews said. "The DA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars prosecuting him, the court spent tens of thousands of dollars for the trial. You think they could find some money somewhere for a proper hearing before saying you have to go away for the rest of your life and there is no possibility to be released."
Gov. John Bel Edwards' longtime differences with John White may be headed for the courtroom, again pitting a governor against the state superintendent of education.

White spent parts of two years  2014 and 2015  battling then Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal in courtrooms over the Common Core academic standards.

Now a new legal battle is brewing, this time a possible fight over White's job status initiated by a Democratic governor who vowed two years ago to replace White as the chief of public schools.

Any such dispute could continue for months, including stops in the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge, the First Circuit Court of Appeal and even the Louisiana Supreme Court.

"I think this could go on for a long time because there are so many steps in the process," said Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana.

The issue that sparked the potential dust-up was a lawsuit aimed at removing White, who has held the $275,000 per year job for 5 1/2 years.

White was hired by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2012, and confirmed that year by the state Senate. He works on a monthly contract because there is not enough support on BESE for a long-term agreement.

The lawsuit, filed by 14 critics of the superintendent, said White should have faced a second Senate confirmation by now because a new BESE took office in January 2016. Without that confirmation, they said, the court should declare the office vacant.

Nineteenth Judicial District Judge William Morvant, of Baton Rouge, tossed the legal challenge on July 10.

Morvant said the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to challenge White's job status. But the judge said some officials could do so, including Edwards.

In a surprise, the governor told his statewide radio audience last week that he generally agrees with the lawsuit.

"As I understand the law, he needed to be re-confirmed in order to continue to serve," said Edwards, himself an attorney.

"We are looking at that situation," he said. "He is not under contract, so we are looking at that."

"But it may be something that has to be litigated," Edwards said.

Just what the governor's review consists of, and when a decision will be made, is unclear. His office would not say. However, longtime critics of the superintendent, using petitions and other steps, are urging the governor to take the issue to court.

Others say the issue simply needs court review.

"If you put all the politics aside, I think there are legal issues that need to be determined," said Scott Richard, executive director of the Louisiana School Boards Association.

Richard said that, while his views are nothing personal against White, the superintendent is the head of an agency and responsible for billions of dollars in education funding.

"How long can the state superintendent remain on a month to month contract and make long-term decisions for the state?" Richard asked.

White and Edwards have vastly different views on how to improve Louisiana's long-suffering public schools.

Despite earlier comments, governor stands down on bid to replace Education Superintendent John White Gov. John Bel Edwards is putting off his vow to try to replace state Superintendent of Educa

Edwards is aligned with the state's two teacher unions  the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the Louisiana Association of Educators -- as well as the Louisiana School Boards Association. All three groups have clashed with White for years over vouchers, charter schools and teacher evaluations.

In addition, Edwards' comments came just ahead of White's annual job review by BESE, which is set for Aug. 16.

White has gotten favorable reviews from BESE for four consecutive years. Last year, he scored 3.166 out of 4 on the state's rating system.

Despite earlier squabbles, John White gets positive job review from BESE State Superintendent of Education John White, who has squabbled with two governors in the pa

But he also operates on a monthly contract because backers lack the eight votes on the 11-member BESE to extend the agreement. Critics also lack the votes needed to fire him, even with the governor's three appointees.

The annual evaluation could morph into discussions on White's job status, and a wide range of scenarios are floating around.

"I am going to continue to work for the children of Louisiana until that board tells me to stop," White said July 19 on the Jim Engster radio show. "This has been the greatest professional blessing of my life."

How any Edwards court challenge would play out, if it happens, is hard to predict.

It could be dismissed or White could be ordered to go through a second Senate confirmation process, where he would have a good chance of winning approval again.

A judge could even rule that the office is vacant, which would trigger an appeal but still shake up Louisiana's education establishment.

Leaders of Louisiana's top school board say they are on solid footing.

"Speaking on behalf of BESE, it is our position that the law is clear and that it is BESE's responsibility to select a superintendent," said BESE president Gary Jones, who lives in Alexandria.

"Having said that, it is clear that the majority of the board at this time still feels like Superintendent White is providing the leadership necessary," he said.

State Sen. John Milkovich, D-Shreveport, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, did not return a call seeking comment. Former state Rep. Brett Geymann, one of the plaintiffs, declined comment.

Erwin, whose group is often aligned with White on public school issues, said the legal challenge that Edwards may join is an extension of years of criticism of White over Common Core and a wide range of accountability measures.

"This is just more of a fight between factions that don't like the superintendent," Erwin said.
The collapse of the "neoliberal consensus" is as apparent in Oz as it is in Trump's America and Brexitting Britain, but our big-business people are taking a while to twig that their power to influence government policy has waned.

Their trouble is the way the era of micro-economic reform initiated by the Hawke-Keating government in the 1980s eventually degenerated into "bizonomics"  the pseudo-economic belief that what's good for big business is good for the economy.

The Coalition is becoming less willing to do the bidding of big business and Labor has realised getting tough with business has more upside than down. Credit:Dominic K Lorrimer

Part of this is the belief that when you privatise a government-owned business, or outsource the delivery of government services to for-profit providers  when you move economic assets and activity from the "public" column to the "private" column  you've self-evidently raised economic efficiency and wellbeing.

Provoking an engrossing debate between economists, Dr Mike Keating, a top economic adviser in the (no relation) Keating era, used a post and a rejoinder on John Menadue's blogsite to claim the early reformers believed that who owned a business wasn't as important as whether privatising it would make its industry more competitive or less.
It's a shame for a number of reasons. While there is a spectrum of talent (ranging from brilliant thinkers to apparatchik hacks) in Parliament, most people who go into lawmaking do so with the finest of motivations. They get worn down by the relentless, abnormal brutality. The personal and family sacrifices they make are wrenching. Mental ill-health, often self-medicated with alcohol, abounds. It's a devilishly demanding job, and much diligent and oft-unreported work is done in communities and in parliamentary committees. Most citizens want our political class to thrive; it's in our interests that we have decent, enlightened representatives.

A contemporary case in point is the brazen campaign by former prime minister Tony Abbott to undermine the Coalition government and convince his colleagues to reverse their dumping of him. Few people want the nation to have to endure this tawdry B-grade film about bastardy and sclerosis yet again. Yes, there have long been rivalries in politics (Peacock/Howard, Hawke/Keating, for example), but the sheer number of prime ministers we've had in the past 10 years suggests things have gone too far.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott wants to undermine the Coalition government and convince his colleagues to reverse their dumping of him. Credit:Andrew Meares

After a desultory decade dominated by internecine strife and a revolving door on the prime ministerial suite, polls and the historic rise in support for fringe parties and independents show people are understandably disillusioned and disappointed that so many of our lawmakers appear to put personal interest ahead of public interest.

Paul Keating, then prime minister, in 1992. He was dazzlingly good at setting a bad example. Credit:Peter Morris/Fairfax Media

But, instead of focusing sufficiently on improving the nation, they tend to end up in tribal battles driven by a raw and unseemly lust for power, rather than altruism. When was the last time you heard an inspiring political speech about power being a means to noble ends, rather than the goal itself? When did you last hear a beautifully crafted exposition of what those ends should be and how best to achieve them? On the other hand, when did you last hear denigration, shouting, derision, base insults, obfuscation and dissembling?

Where is the contest of ideas and imagination? More effort is spent on bloody-minded opposition than seeking to compromise or collaborate to engineer decent policies to increase opportunities for individuals, businesses and communities. The absurdity of the marriage equality debate epitomises the dysfunctionality; the leaders of both main groupings support it, the majority of lawmakers support it, the majority of Australians support it, but our lawmakers cannot deliver this long-overdue removal of a glaringly evident injustice.

The problem is exacerbated by the widespread use of outmoded ideological language that obscures rather than illuminates debate. Here's a challenge, if you will. Next time you find yourself or someone you're talking with using "left" and "right", ask what you or they actually, specifically mean? It can lead to an interesting discussion; people often struggle to define these archaic terms.

Ideology is the enemy of good policy. No-one has a monopoly on truth or morality. Most people, whatever their political affiliations, do, though, share fundamental human values, and herein lies much fertile common ground for changing things that need improving, like Indigenous outcomes or taxation rules, and protecting things that do not need changing, like the rule of law and property rights. Politicians of all hues agree on far more than they squabble over.
Prominent conservatives within the Coalition are split over whether to hold a postal vote plebiscite on same-sex marriage to stymie a push by Liberal moderates for a conscience vote on the issue.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has backed the idea and the Queensland Liberal National Party passed a motion at its state convention last week calling for the Turnbull government to conduct a postal vote.

Nationals MP George Christensen says he will cross the floor to back the bill in the lower house. Credit:Andrew Meares

Unlike a regular poll, a postal-vote plebiscite would not require legislation to establish, would not be compulsory and and would be far cheaper to administer.

Nationals MP George Christensen, who opposes same-sex marriage, said: "We have been roadblocked by Labor and the Greens in the Senate.
Psychologist Janine Clarke from The Sydney ACT Centre says Roselyn's situation is far from an isolated experience. "Changing family relationships seem to be an inevitable consequence of a marital breakdown." Clarke says the situation Roselyn found herself in with Bree  when an ex's friend or family member decides to choose sides  is a common one, and that it happens because many people think it's too hard to stay friends with both parties. In such cases, she says, people tend to side with the person they knew first. That's not always the case. Sometimes sides are created following a split, such as when Stella*, 54, got divorced 14 years ago. While she had hoped to continue her friendships ("I was very naive"), she was swamped by the "blatant sabotage" fed to her friends by her ex. "He went around telling everyone that I had been unfaithful to him but, because he loved me, he'd turned a blind eye," she says. She couldn't believe how quickly her friends believed him and promptly turned their backs on her. "I ended up with no friends, and eventually moved town to get away from their petty slander and nastiness." The shattering of friendship groups is not uncommon in acrimonious splits, says Clarke. When things become really nasty, people may shun both parties. "If a choice appears necessary, or when things become uncomfortable, people generally decide not to see either one." But that's not the only reason friends abandon ship. Other friendships change because people don't like confronting unpleasant situations.

"When someone passes away, people can find it difficult to know what to say or do to be helpful, so it's the same response when someone they know is going through a divorce," says Clarke. She says avoiding the person altogether is a way for people to avoid having to confront uncomfortable feelings. That happened to a man she knew who told her that, after his divorce, he was treated "like a social leper" by other parents in the school yard. Those parents acted like "divorce was something awful you could catch". While Roselyn says she was spurned by some friends, she no longer sees that as negative. After all, she says, if a friendship doesn't weather the storm of divorce, it wasn't worth holding on to. Besides, once those disposable attachments have been shed, there's more room in your life for the people who really matter. Since her divorce, Roselyn has reconnected with her aunt and cousin, and has found that her relationships with the people who stuck around are so much stronger. Clarke agrees that the changes in friendship dynamics post-divorce can be a hidden blessing: "I recall one woman telling me that one good thing about her divorce was that it had sorted her friends into true friends and acquaintances."

Bridget*, 46, experienced those kinds of changes following her divorce 12 years ago. While some friendships floundered, she was surprised that others strengthened. She nominates one couple in particular: "I always believed they would choose my ex-husband's side, as they were his friends first and foremost, but that was far from true." After her divorce, they stood by her and she now considers them among her closest pals. "I can call them in the middle of the night and they will be with me in a flash to help out," she says. Bridget also suffered the loss of a few friendships following the breakup of her marriage. She was devastated when one woman she thought of "like a sister" walked out of her life. "The minute I told her I was leaving my ex, she said, 'Oh my god, that's terrible.' But the first thing she did after that was get on the phone to him." Bridget's then father-in-law also "dropped" her immediately. He rang her up, called her many "colourful" names and demanded she return every present he'd ever sent her. In contrast, her mother-in-law phoned her in tears, begging Bridget to stay with her son and remain part of the family. While Maria*, 44, didn't think her relationship with her in-laws would undergo such dramatic changes following her divorce eight years ago, she couldn't have predicted the turn it would take. Instead of leaving her, as their son had done, Maria's parents-in-law supported her ferociously. Within weeks of the separation, they had moved into Maria's house to help with her two young children as she struggled to find her feet as a newly single mother. "My father-in-law was great in taking the kids out while my mother-in-law made cups of tea and listened," Maria says.

They also offered emotional support in the form of reassurance, constantly telling her she was doing a great job and letting her know that they wouldn't abandon her. "Successful relationships with ex-family members have a key feature," says Clarke. They're pursued because the friendships themselves matter, making them rewarding for both parties. When the "friendship" is continued because it's aiming to serve another purpose  "such as trying to get back at the ex-partner, or keeping tabs of what the ex-partner is doing"  it's likely to implode. While Maria remained close to her in-laws during the turbulent period immediately following her separation, Clarke says it's more usual for relationships to go through a period of upheaval during which friendships cool. Once the divorce dust has settled, people may then reconnect with former family members and their ex's friends. To maintain a harmonious relationship, Clarke says it's important for both partners to make a conscious effort not to involve family members in the "unpleasantness" of divorce. In other words, once the foundation of the relationship has been rocked, new boundaries need to be enforced. Maria discovered this first hand. A quasi "code of silence" ensued  Maria's erstwhile in-laws never probed her about the complexities of the marriage breakdown, and she never tried to turn them against their son. The relationship flourished because of a fine balance between what was spoken and what remained unsaid.

Maria's bond with her ex's parents has changed again now her children have grown up. They still speak on the phone every few months and catch up in person when they can, but it's not as intense. "Our relationship is now not so much a daughter-in-law/mother-in-law relationship but an old friendship with the bond of the kids as an added benefit," says Maria. The presence of children in a divorce certainly adds incentive to prevent a rift between ex-family members. Melanie*, 49, credits her four children with keeping her relationship with her former partner's family intact. Following her divorce 10 years ago, Melanie and her ex-husband made a pact that they would always "respect and support" each other as co-parents. This allowed their relationships with each other's families to continue. "There was no need for family members to take sides," she says pragmatically. Melanie was particularly keen to continue her close relationship with her then sister-in-law, who was heavily pregnant at the time of Melanie's divorce. "I didn't want to miss out on being an aunty to my niece and couldn't imagine not having ongoing contact with my sister-in-law."
Controversial former federal Labor MP Belinda Neal has been expelled from the party after a tribunal upheld charges she engaged in "unworthy conduct" related to branch stacking.

NSW Labor's Internal Appeals Tribunal recommended Ms Neal's expulsion on Monday morning, following revelations by Fairfax Media in February.

Belinda Neal has been expelled from the Labor Party. Credit:Nick Moir

Party officers acted on the recommendation shortly afterwards. NSW ALP general secretary Kaila Murnain tweeted: "The Party Officers today adopted the decision of the Internal Appeals Tribunal and resolved that Belinda Neal be expelled from NSW Labor".

Fairfax Media revealed Ms Neal was charged under party rules by 75-year-old ALP member Lisa Young, who alleged that, "on several occasions" in 2015, Ms Neal attended her Woy Woy home "and asked me to sign the Woy Woy branch book".
NSW Liberal party members have voted overwhelming in favour of a push by allies of former prime minister Tony Abbott to give all local members a vote in state and federal preselections.

At an extraordinary party convention at Rosehill racecourse on Sunday, more than 1200 attendees voted 748 to 476 to support the so-called Warringah motion put forward by the federal electorate conference in Mr Abbott's seat of Warringah.

The decision is a major victory for Mr Abbott and his key allies, Walter Villatora, who is president of the Warringah FEC, and retired major general Jim Molan.

"At every step of the way this has been contested by people who want the Liberal party to be an insider's club," Mr Abbott said, after receiving rousing cheers from many of the attendees.
A man has been robbed, tied to a chair and beaten in a Deception Bay house on Saturday morning, according to police.

It will be alleged a 21-year-old local man was invited into a Lockyer Parade home about 9.30am, where a man known to him and another unknown man attacked and robbed him.

Police have charged a man with armed robbery, deprivation of liberty and torture. Credit:Marina Neil/Fairfax Media

Police will also allege the victim was then bound to a chair, beaten and choked, before being led outside and ordered into the boot of a car.

However, the man managed to escape and find a nearby resident who raised the alarm. Paramedics treated the man for facial and hand injuries.
A man has been charged with arson, after a caravan and shed were allegedly set alight on a north Queensland property during Saturday afternoon.

Officers found the two structures engulfed in flames after responding to a disturbance on Ethel Street in Watsonville, near Atherton, about 1pm.

Police have charged a man after he allegedly pulled a knife, before setting a caravan and shed alight. Credit:Rob Gunstone

Police said a 61-year-old man and the 72-year-old male resident of the caravan, who were known to each other, became involved in an argument before the younger man produced a knife and started making threats.

When the resident fled to find help, the other man allegedly set the caravan alight, before being found by responding officers and taken into custody.
Donna Anderson: "She is still my little sister and if there is a chance I can find her, I am going to take it." Credit:Tony Moore She then asked support from developer Pro Active Development's Steve Anderson  no relation  who now owns the bushland. He agreed to let Ms Anderson search the land. His company has applied to build townhouses on the site. Dean Mundy uses ground-penetrating radar to search land beside the Phillips' old family home at Riverview. Credit:Tony Moore She finally then won the support of ScanMan Services to search the bushland for Ms Phillips' body. Their search began early on Sunday.

"I just want to thank all these people," Ms Anderson said. "I really do. I believe in God and I think there is a chance. Sharron Phillips has been missing since 1986 and is presumed dead. "I want to find Sharron and I want to find out the truth," she said. "And I am having this done at no cost to the taxpayer. "If there is a chance I can find my sister  and she is still my little sister  then I am going to take it.

"She doesn't deserve to be lying in an unmarked grave." ScanMan owner-operator Dean Mundy said he had worked with police investigations before. He used a mobile ground-penetrating radar unit that can measure as much as five metres underground. "What we are looking for is a shadow on the screen or a change in the sub-surface strata," Mr Mundy said. "And that would prompt the question: what is that?"

He said he had found bodies in previous searches. "Yes, I have successfully," he said. "Usually that is remapping a graveyard, but it is possible to locate a body, absolutely." He said he recently worked with a Bendigo family to locate a body, though no remains were found. Ms Anderson and her brother Darren have offered information to guide his search on the McCosker Street site.

"I'm trying to capture as much data as we can and then I'll go back and process that," Mr Mundy said. Ms Phillips, 20, went missing 31 years ago on May 8, 1986. Her yellow Datsun Bluebird ran out of petrol about 11pm near the Wacol Migrant Centre on Ipswich Road and she called her boyfriend for help. Her body has never been found and no one was charged despite hundreds of leads in a case that captured the public imagination in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ms Anderson in May 2016 triggered the first major search for Ms Phillips' body for a decade by speaking publicly for the first time about her younger sister's disappearance.

With two of her brothers, Robert and Darren, they asked for the bushland beside the family home to be searched. They said it had never been searched for her sister's body. That was confirmed by two previous detectives investigating the case, retired detective inspectors Bob Dallow and David Danslow. The first story published by Fairfax Media prompted a witness to come forward to cold-case detectives with information about a taxi driver. Detective Inspector Damien Hansen last year described that information as "credible" and police teams instead searched for three weeks at a drain under Cobalt Street at Carole Park.

The 2016 searches found nothing. Donna Anderson said the search was a "waste of taxpayers' money" because the informant had come forward to police previously. Police in 2016 did not search the block of land beside the Phillips' family home, despite the three siblings requesting a search, which they said was linked to inconsistencies in their father Bob Phillips' alibi on the night Ms Phillips disappeared. "There is no evidence that would support the statutory requirements for the Queensland Police Service to conduct a search of the property, which has been previously explained to the Phillips family," police said in a statement to questions posed by Fairfax Media. "The Homicide Squad is not in a position to comment on the specifics of the investigation so as to maintain operational integrity."

Ms Anderson however argues there are four reasons why the land should be searched: 1. It has never been searched for Ms Phillips' body. 2. She doubts her now-deceased father's alibi that he drove to Gilgandra that night to collect one of his trucks. 3. Townhouses are to be built on the land and it is the last time it can be searched conveniently by ground-penetrating radar. 4. She is unhappy with interview notes taken by police in interviews with her mother Dawn and father Bob that she was recently allowed to view for the first time.

She said three detectives in May 2017 showed her parents' statements. "They consisted of three pieces of paper," she said, disgusted. "I wasn't even allowed to take notes." "This could be the last opportunity to search the land. "And while I can never be 100 per cent sure Sharron's body could be there, it is the one glimmer of hope that we have had in 31 years.
A 15-year-old boy riding a motorbike has suffered serious injuries after colliding with a Hyundai Getz.

Major Crash officers are investigating the crash which occurred in Wilson on Saturday night.

Police want anyone who saw either vehicle before the crash to contact Crimestoppers. Credit:Rohan Thompson

At about 11.40pm the boy was riding on Braibrise Road near Snow Street when he hit the car as it was turning into a driveway, police said.

The boy, whose bike was unregistered, was taken to Royal Perth Hospital, while the people in the car were uninjured.
Washington: Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on sweeping sanctions legislation to punish Russia for its election meddling and aggression toward its neighbours, they said on Saturday, defying the White House's argument that US President Donald Trump needs flexibility to adjust the sanctions to fit his diplomatic initiatives with Moscow.

The new legislation sharply limits the President's ability to suspend or terminate the sanctions - a remarkable handcuffing by a Republican-led Congress six months into Trump's tenure.

Trump could soon face a decision: veto the bill - a move that would fuel accusations that he is doing the bidding of the Kremlin - or sign legislation imposing sanctions his administration abhors.

"A nearly united Congress is poised to send [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message," said Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Don Damond was comforted by friends after his fiancee, Justine Damond, was shot by police. Credit:AP Minneapolis has an unenviable record of high-profile police killings, vigils and protests, but Page's attendance at a memorial for Damond was a personal first. In the past, the extent of her involvement was to send pizza, with particular instructions for the delivery guy to hand the boxes to the "people holding placards"  not to the cops watching them. In one breath, this 37-year-old editor of journals on sociology gets it  cops do amazing work. But then she tells Fairfax Media, she was so offended by the presence of the cops, observing a vigil that was a response to one of their colleagues killing Page's friend and fitness buddy, that she locked eyes with one of the officers and stared him down. People pay their respect to Justine Damond at Freshwater Beach during a vigil on Wednesday. Credit:Kate Geraghty "What shocks a lot of people in this equation is that Justine is the tiniest sliver of a pie chart that is overwhelmingly black and poor. I understand that well-meaning white people in Minneapolis care about this issue  but till now, they didn't have a stake in it.

"And if that's what it takes to get them personally involved, I'm all right with that. If it takes a victim like themselves for them to better understand, that'll be a good outcome from a terrible situation." Police officer Mohamed Noor has been named as the one who fired at Justine Damond. Credit:AP Here Page draws a careful distinction. Yes, the Aussie motivational speaker, yoga teacher and healer was an exceptional person, but the circumstances of her death are very unexceptional: "Lots of other communities go through the heartache we're experiencing and all victims of violence are exceptional to those who knew them." The victims are many. By the count of The Washington Post, Damond is the 541st person to have been killed by police gunfire in the US this year. And nine more have been killed in subsequent days  with none getting any of the wall-to-wall media attention lavished on Damond. Minneapolis knows some of the victims too well. Before Justine Damond there was Philando Castile, in July 2016; and before Castile, there was Jamar Clark, in November 2015. These three died in a span of less than three years.

Mohamed Noor, Damond's killer, is refusing to be interviewed  by investigators and by the media. But coming just weeks after the acquittal of an officer charged with shooting Castile in July 2016 and with observers pointing out that Clark's killers weren't even charged, the Damond death continues a narrative that punctures claims by Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges that her city gets it and is reforming. "I've learned a lot of lessons," Hodges said this week. The city, she claimed, had been into police reform since before the wave of protest sparked by Clark's death, adopting body cameras; improving training and policies; embracing community policing, to increase public safety and trust in the cops. "There's not another city in this country that has done more and is doing more to advance 21st-century policing," she told Fairfax Media. But the first Somali-American elected to the Minnesota state legislature, Ilhan Omar, begs to differ, arguing that a response to Damond's killing that narrowly focuses on the failure of the cops to activate their body cameras won't solve "inherent" problems.

"The current officer training program indoctrinates individuals of all races into a system that teaches them to act first, think later, and justify with fear," Omar said. "It's time we explore solutions beyond improved training and [the use of] cameras to capture evidence. We need to look at a complete shift in the culture of the police department, away from the use of lethal force and deadly weapons." And where Hodges sees an embrace of the Obama administration's "six pillars of reform", Christy Lopez, who served as deputy chief in the Obama Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, sees a police department that wants to change being confronted by its own entrenched culture. Asked about the spread of police killings in Minneapolis, Lopez told Fairfax Media: "It underscores how difficult it is and how long it takes to reform, and how the hardest parts are the ones that make the greatest difference  and are the ones that don't get done." And at Georgetown University's Law Centre, Professor Rosa Brooks puts the ongoing police killings crisis in a more multi-dimensional policy framework, which she describes as "brutal and racist". Chiding the media and others for a "too simplistic" focus on police killings, she wrote in Foreign Policy last year: "A closer look at the data suggests that America does not, in fact, have a problem with [just] racist police violence  America has a violence problem, and a racism problem, and a policing problem.

"Too often, all three problems intersect, with results inscribed in blood." Incredibly, the US has about 18,000 separate state and local police departments and 73 federal law enforcement agencies  all of which, pun not intended, are a law unto themselves, with their own policies on recruitment, training, discipline, equipment, weapons and operating procedures. So the rate at which police kill people in states with thinly scattered populations like Wyoming, New Mexico and Oklahoma is as much as 10 times the rate for some of the most populous states, such as New York. In Oklahoma City, the number of killings by police in 2015 was almost identical to that for New York City, where the population is almost 14 times greater. And in the 10 years to 2014, Chicago paid a staggering $US500 million to settle claims of police misconduct  and hundreds more cases are pending. Surveys of cops produce a litany of reasons for what's gone wrong  the media gives them a hard time; people don't appreciate the risks they take; too much is expected of them, particularly in dealing with social problems; and too many people resist arrest  none of which appears to be applicable in the death of Justine Damond.

Bravery means different things from one department to the next. Cemented in Minnesota lore is the story of the medals given to the cops who staged a massive raid on a Vietnamese family who returned fire  before the family realised the attackers were cops and before the cops realised they had the wrong house. Reform-minded police chiefs come under intense pressure  from the rank and file, from police associations and from politicians who hew to the bare-knuckled law and order tropes of Donald Trump. There is a suspicion that recently sacked police chiefs in Salt Lake City and in Cincinnati were let go because of resistance to their reform efforts. And before his resignation last year, Dallas police chief David Brown was under the hammer, despite impressive results from reforms in his six-year tenure  excessive use of force complaints dropped by about 90 per cent and assaults on cops and police shootings were down markedly. Brown rooted out his bad eggs  sacking the cop who beat a detainee with a flashlight, sprayed him with mace and kicked him, all while the man was restrained. And he used social media to shame others who were fired for misconduct.

After a wave of police killings and retaliatory attacks last year, one of which took the lives of five of Brown's officers in Dallas, University of Virginia law professor Barbara Armacost wrote of the "remarkable unanimity" in more than a century of academic research and investigations on policing. But then she quoted University of South Carolina criminology professor Geoffrey Alpert: "We know what needs to happen next but we just keep studying the question instead of doing something about the answers we've arrived at." Armacost urged police chiefs to get on board with reforms. Pleading that instead of falsely blaming "rogue cops" for embarrassments, she said only "top-down, systemic" reform of police departments would work  community policing; training in de-escalation and the use of non-lethal tactics; more diversity recruitment; and improved data collection and transparency. One of the Trump administration's less apparent efforts to undo the Obama legacy is Attorney-General Jeff Sessions' war on a series of ground-breaking deals under which the Justice Department extracted commitments from dozens of dodgy police departments to reform  under judicial oversight and with threats of punishment for any backsliding. Places like Ferguson, Missouri, signed on, in the wake of national protests after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown, who was unarmed, black and young. Chicago and Baltimore, law-and-order black holes, were wrapping up similar deals when Sessions moved to block them  creating a bizarre turnabout in which cities are fighting a Department of Justice bid to remove reform programs imposed by that very department. Sessions denounced the Obama administration report on which the Chicago reforms are based as shoddy.

And he railed against the type of investigations that produced the report as "dangerous", claiming they vilify the police and weaken departmental morale. And despite challenges by criminologists, Sessions continues to argue that the reform agreements will spark a spike in serious crime. As the Obama reform program is derailed, the Carnegie Foundation's Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on democracy and the rule of law, pours cold water on hopes that Damond's death in Minneapolis could be a catalyst for change in a situation that chiefly affects black Americans. Activists are heartened by a hoped-for parallel with drug abuse  when blacks were the victims of the 1980s-1990s crack epidemic, addicts and dealers were thrown in jail and no one seemed to care. But with white, working class Americans as victims of a current opioid abuse epidemic, Washington and America have become compassionate. "[But] history shows that police brutality and shootings doesn't stop until the middle class decides it's had enough," Kleinfeld told Fairfax Media. "And, yes, in this case Damond is middle class, but she's not American  so there won't be that galvanising effect  you need leaders who can make an incident like this into something, who can turn a tragedy into a movement." Letta Page cradles her coffee, ruminating on Kleinfeld's logic. Page says that Damond was troubled by the culture of violence in the US: "Justine talked of people caring for each other and all the violence upset her, it offended her."
A former Texas A&M doctoral candidate found not guilty by reason of insanity in the stabbing of a nurse at The Med will be required to make daily contact with MHMR, go to counseling, report to a probation officer monthly and abide by a curfew, according to conditions recently set by District Judge Steve Smith.

Smith ruled last month during a civil hearing that 27-year-old Yuchen Lei would not be sent to a state-run mental health facility. His defense attorney and prosecutors agreed almost a year ago on the insanity plea for the incident at the College Station Medical Center in January 2014. The nurse suffered a punctured lung and was hospitalized for several days but did not suffer permanent damage.

Lei's attorney, Shane Phelps, said Lei believed at the time of the stabbing that the Chinese government was targeting him for creating a type of digital currency. Further testimony last month revealed that Lei suffered from a mental illness that, when untreated, can cause him to experience psychotic episodes.

Phelps argued last month it was safe to release Lei -- a Chinese citizen who came to America on a student visa in 2013 -- from the county jail because he had been voluntarily taking his medications and had made significant progress since 2014.

Jessica Escue and Ryan Calvert, assistant district attorneys, had argued that Lei should be temporarily committed to a state-run mental health facility, a "sort of mental health halfway house," as Escue described it in her closing argument. Lei has been in jail since March 2014. Smith ruled last month that Lei would be released, but would remain in the county jail for 30 more days while he created a treatment plan to which Lei would be required to comply.

Smith's conditions, which were released Friday, include having no contact with the victim or his family, a limit of three hours per day on the Internet, no drugs or alcohol and required drug testing to ensure he's adhering to treatment. He will be monitored in Brazos County.

Phelps said he was "gratified by the decision" and commended Smith for listening to the evidence and doing "what the law compelled him to do," adding that he believed the conditions of his client's release would "ensure the public is safe and give Mr. Lei his life back."

Escue said their position remained that Lei should be committed, but they, too, were "grateful that the court granted every condition of release we asked for," which she said made them "hopeful these conditions will be enough to ensure the safety of the victims and the community."

Though grateful for Lei's release, Phelps called the three years Lei has spent in jail a "very frustrating process."

"I have developed a pretty healthy concern bordering on contempt for the way the criminal justice system handles the mentally ill," he said.

Overcrowding at state hospital

Phelps filed two documents in January and April 2017, stating in the latter that Lei was "illegally confined and restrained of liberty in the county jail," thus violating his U.S. and Texas constitutional rights. According to the writ, Lei's continued jailing violated his right to due process, since Lei should have been given a hearing within 30 days of his acquittal or transferred to a state mental health institution as he awaited his civil commitment hearing. Court documents show the writ was denied on May 9, almost nine months after Lei's acquittal; Phelps said the January writ was partially upheld, but authorities transferred Lei to the state mental health hospital shortly thereafter.

In a document obtained by The Eagle that Escue filed in response to the April writ, Escue wrote that the court's failure to hold a hearing "before the expiration of the deadline does not necessitate the dismissal of the case or the release of the defendant," citing case law.

The order for Lei's release to the state hospital was signed in September 2016, but authorities transferred him four months later to North Texas State Hospital's Vernon Campus -- the only maximum security mental health hospital in the state and only facility to which he could legally be sent -- since bed space was not available until that time, according to court documents.

Escue said after Friday's hearing that there were "too few beds [and] not enough space to get it done in 30 days," referring to the reasoning for Lei's delay in being sent to a state mental health institution.

Likely to be released

Court documents state that the Brazos County District Attorney's Office, which has spoken with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, multiple times, believed Lei "is unlikely to be deported by the federal government."

According to those documents, Lei filed an asylum request that, after being denied by an immigration court, was overturned by the Board of Immigration Appeals for the U.S. Department of Justice. The court documents state that the board found that the immigration judge who had denied Lei's asylum request had failed to "sufficiently take into consideration the persecution" Lei would face in his homeland because of his pro-democracy political opinions, mental illness and religious beliefs.

Testimony last month from Lei's mother, Yan Li, who came to the U.S. on a visa shortly after her son's initial arrest, revealed that it has been difficult for her to come to terms with her son's mental illness, given the cultural stigma associated with it in China.

Court documents state that, based on Escue's exchanged emails with an attorney from the Department of Homeland Security and an ICE agent, it is "unlikely" Lei will be deported back to China, regardless of whether he is granted asylum.

Because Lei is a Chinese citizen, the documents state, DHS would need the Chinese government to provide valid legal travel paperwork for Lei to be returned to his home country. Court documents state that a DHS attorney and ICE agent informed the state that it's unlikely China would cooperate and give DHS the appropriate legal travel paperwork to accept Mr. Lei back into the country, given that "DHS has had repeated problems deporting even dangerous Chinese citizens as a result of China's refusal to issue these travel papers."

The court documents go on to state that, should Lei be denied asylum and China refuses to issue travel documents, Lei's fate would be turned over to the U.S. State Department. The DHS attorney and ICE agent told the state, according to court documents, that Lei would likely be released from immigration custody should this scenario occur, allowing him to be "free to live in Brazos County unmonitored by the federal government."

Lei remained Saturday in the county jail on the immigration hold. He can remain for up to 48 hours before immigration agents come to pick him up and transport him to Houston. An official at the Brazos County Jail said ICE could pick him up as early as Monday.

If ICE makes it to the jail by the deadline, Lei likely will be transferred to an immigration detention center in Houston. Phelps said Lei may be eligible to post bond as he awaits the outcome of his asylum request.

Phelps described Friday's hearing the culmination of an "arduous three-year ordeal that should have taken a whole lot less time than it did."

The defense attorney said he understands the tension prosecutors and judges face when weighing community safety with constitutional rights, but he believes the criminal justice system has to be revamped to treat mentally ill people as sick individuals, "instead of just criminals."

Phelps, who said he believes Lei is harmless, said his client's experience in the U.S. has been a "real tragic story," where a "brilliant, superstar student" became afflicted with a mental illness that altered the course of his life.
LOS ANGELES  Five years ago Best Buy Co. looked like a retail dinosaur, another victim of e-commerce juggernaut Amazon.com and other online sellers.

The big-box electronics chain was suffering dwindling sales and profits in good part because of showrooming, when shoppers would come in to a Best Buy store to check out televisions, computers and other items in person, and then buy them at cheaper prices on Amazon or elsewhere online.

Best Buy also was struggling with executive turmoil and facing a buyout threat from a major stockholder. The chain in 2012 named a new chief executive, Hubert Joly, but the Frenchman came from the hospitality field and had no retail experience. His appointment stunned analysts, with one saying that fixing Best Buy was a herculean task even for an accomplished retail executive.

But Joly has proved up to the task so far. Under his turnaround plan, Best Buy has rebounded to remain one major U.S. retailer thats holding its own in the face of Amazons relentless growth and the conventional retail industrys slump.

Best Buy came out the other side successfully to defend itself against Amazon, said Peter Keith, an analyst with the investment firm Piper Jaffray & Co.

As more consumers shift to online shopping, other bricks-and-mortar retailers have closed thousands of stores in the last year. A few have filed for bankruptcy protection, including rival electronics chain RadioShack.

Best Buy still operates 1,600 outlets, and Joly views the stores as a great asset even as Best Buy also moves increasingly to online sales.

We dont see ourselves as a brick-and-mortar retailer, were a multichannel retailer that combines the stores, Best Buys website and its phone app to boost sales, Joly said in an interview. And hes planning to expand Best Buys services, including its Geek Squad support arm, to generate more product sales.

Best Buys sales and profit have stabilized and its stock price, which closed at $55.79 a share Tuesday, has soared more than fourfold since late 2012, far outpacing the broader market.

But Best Buys overall annual revenue has remained flat because the consumer-electronics industry as a whole is growing less than 3 percent a year, according to some analysts.

While economic conditions are gradually improving and will likely boost consumer spending, individuals are buying fewer of the big-ticket items that sustained rapid growth in the past, the research firm IbisWorld said in a recent report.

Consumer interest in big-ticket items, such as TVs and personal computers, has waned due to market saturation and slowing innovation, the firm said.

Thats keeping pressure on Best Buy, based in Richfield, Minn., to keep wringing more profit from each dollar of revenue if it hopes to maintain its momentum. Joly (pronounced jo-lee) already has shown it can be done.

His first move was to match rivals prices, especially those at Amazon, so that in-store shoppers no longer needed to buy elsewhere. We had no choice, we had to take price off the table and match online prices, Joly said.

That appeals to customers such as Scott Vellman of Los Angeles, who bought the Battlefield 1 video game for his Xbox One player at a Best Buy store in LA last week after Best Buy matched its $50 price on Amazon. I bought it here (instead of online) because I didnt want to wait for it to ship, Vellman said.

Best Buy next sped up its delivery times, in part by expanding its national distribution centers, and beefed up its website and phone app so that customers could order online and pick up their products at the stores or have them delivered.

Many of the DVDs and CDs that once were a staple of Best Buy stores were cleared out, leaving room for Best Buy to invite such electronics vendors as Samsung, Microsoft and Verizon to set up stores within the stores inside Best Buys outlets.

That enabled Samsung, for instance, to have 1,400 stores in the U.S. in our stores, which would have taken years to build on its own, Joly said.

The inside-store vendors also include Pacific Sales, a seller of appliances, fixtures and other household products that Best Buy bought in 2006, along with Magnolia, a Best Buy unit that sells premium audio and visual gear.

Best Buy shed its Chinese and European businesses in 2015. The company also has stripped $1.4 billion from its annual operating costs by renegotiating supply agreements and real estate leases and by closing more than a dozen large stores and 40 smaller ones, among many other steps.

The company plowed a chunk of the savings into better training its employees so that they can explain products to shoppers, which Joly believed was crucial because new technology often is confusing to many consumers.

Best Buy, with 125,000 employees, has done an excellent job improving customer service, Keith said in a recent note to clients.

Juan Ortiz, who was at the Los Angeles store to buy a Nest Cam security camera, noticed the difference.

If Im going to spend a few hundred (dollars) on a security system, I want to talk with the employees and make sure Im getting the best one, Ortiz said. It also helps that they explain everything. If I got it on Amazon, Id be on my own.

Best Buy also is rolling out an in-home advisory service, where consumers get a free consultation on how to connect products in their homes, including TVs, computers, video games, thermostats and home-security networks, among others, and how they can be controlled by voice activation.

The consultations could lead to consumers buying more products or services, such as those provided by Best Buys Geek Squad. Currently, those services account for only 5 percent of Best Buys revenue.

Amazon also is quietly rolling out a program of free smart home consultations, as well as product installations for a fee, the website Recode.net reported last week.

Joly was not alarmed.

Theyre seeing the same thing were seeing  that customers need help  and are trying to address that, he said of Amazon. Just looking at a product on the shelf or a site doesnt necessarily tell you what you can do with it.

Whats already clear is that many shoppers still prefer peering closely at products on Best Buys shelves rather than relying solely on the internet.

I like picking out toys here because I can look at them, 11-year-old Miguel Molina of Los Angeles said after he bought a Roblox pirate toy. On the computer, theres only pictures.
Local police officers and first responders will be serving up dinner at Texas Roadhouse beginning Monday as part of its annual Tip A Cop Week fundraiser that benefits Special Olympics Texas.

From 3 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, officers will serve tables and work for tips at Texas Roadhouse in College Station. All gratuities collected by first responders will be donated to Special Olympics Texas at the end of the shift. Last year's event raised $29,000. The group has set $30,000 for this year's goal.

Each night also will feature a theme. On Monday, children dressed as police officers will get a free kids meal with the purchase of an adult entree. On Tuesday, Bryan and College Station firefighters will join police officers in waiting tables. On Wednesday, the wait staff will dress as robbers for Cops and Robbers night, and on Thursday wait staff will wear Law Enforcement Torch Run T-shirts in honor of the statewide Tip A Cop event, which will be taking place at more than 50 Texas Roadhouse locations statewide.

Donations may also be mailed to Bryan Police Department, Attn. Sgt. Jason James, 303 East 29th St., Bryan, Texas, 77803
August 17, 1926 - July 19, 2017

Lois Andrews Mullinix, 90 years old, loving wife, mother and devoted Christian woman, answered her long-awaited call home to the Lord on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. She was caring, always had a positive attitude, and was happiest when she was doing for others.

Lois was born on August 17, 1926, in San Benito, Texas, to Julian and May Belle Andrews. She met a handsome man home on leave from the Navy and married William Ralph Mullinix on April 18, 1946. He preceded her in death on May 6, 2002 after 56 years of marriage. She was also preceded in death by her parents, her sister, Doris Vauter, and brother, James Andrews.

She remained primarily a resident of the Rio Grande Valley until moving with her husband to Bryan, Texas in 1982. While in the Valley, she was a member of the Price Road Church of Christ in Brownsville, TX, where she served as a vibrant and loving Sunday School teacher for many years. She was currently a member of the A&M Church of Christ, and worked thousands of hours volunteering with the Retired Senior Volunteer Program of Brazos Valley, usually working as a hairdresser in nursing homes and encouraging her grandchildren to join her and sing Bible songs to the residents.

Lois is survived by her son, Mark Mullinix and wife, Brenda, of Richmond, Texas, her daughter, LuAnne Criswell, and husband, Jack, of Willis, Texas, grandchildren Brent Mullinix, Brittany (Chris) Scheefer, Beth (Steve) Ciske, Steve Mullen, Jenny (Jeff) Musumeche and Bobby (Marissa) Criswell as well as 15 great grandchildren, along with loving nieces and nephews and a host of friends. The family wishes to extend special appreciation to her long time neighbor, Roger Sheridan, who was faithful in visiting nearly every week, for years after she moved into assisted living, the members of A&M Church of Christ who also visited and encouraged her weekly, and the staff of Magnified Nursing and Rehab, who were compassionate and loving caregivers.

A memorial service celebrating her life will be held at Memorial Funeral Chapel, 1515 South College Avenue, Bryan, TX on Tuesday, July 25, 2017, at 2:00 PM with Kelly Davidson from the A&M Church of Christ officiating. Private interment will follow at Rest-Ever Memorial Park, Bryan, Texas.

In lieu of flowers, please make memorials to the Sunny Glen Children's home in San Benito, Texas, or Dell Children's Hospital-Cancer and Blood Disorders, Austin, Texas in honor of her great-granddaughter, Brylee Mullinix, or the charity of your choice.
Ten years ago, the Texas A&M Mays Business School started the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans. The intensive educational and networking program, free for a select group of veterans across the country, had its largest class this year, and on Saturday, the 24 participants -- who each developed intricate plans for successful businesses -- presented their ideas.

"This is the largest class we've ever had," said Blake Petty, director of the Texas A&M Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship. "They would say they're the best class ever. But most importantly, we have an underwriter this year. Reynolds and Reynolds' corporate office has underwritten this program so that we can have EBV every year."

Petty explained that it costs the university, partners and donors $5,000 to sponsor each participant. With this new partnership, Mays Business School can guarantee the continuation of the program for years to come. Petty noted the bootcamp can be extremely beneficial for participants, as most service members transitioning out of the military don't have the same training and opportunities as civilians to create and manage a business of their own.

"A majority of [participants] have not yet started a business," Petty said. "A handful are in business already, but most are in the concept or idea phase. The best part of this program is that those at the concept phase can completely change it while they're here. ... There are a lot of opportunities out there for the placement of veterans into jobs, but if one wants to become a job creator, they will have the resources but no training. The VA doesn't offer this; there's no other structure for veteran entrepreneurship."

Former service members from across the country apply yearly for a slot in the summer session in College Station. Those who are selected spend a week in town, receiving 40 hours of classroom time and 12 hours of one-on-one tutoring. Each participants receives meals, room and board and access to libraries and databases at no charge. At the end of the week, the veterans present a breakdown of their idea to a board of mentors and business owners, who give the project a final review.

Army veteran Michael Geraci, an Aggie now living in Fort Worth, presented his proposal Saturday afternoon in hopes of garnering support for a company that's been in the works since fall 2016. Geraci is an employee of a commissioning company, working with building developers and engineers, and wants to act independently in a similar aspect by selling an energy system patented by Texas A&M. Though Geraci would be working separate from the university, he would be acting as a sort of "energy realtor," peddling Texas A&M's innovative energy system to building owners who want to save money on their electric bills.

"I'll go out and market the system for [A&M]," Geraci explained. "Say, for example, I'll go to an airport and talk to the airport owners about reducing energy usage and making their system better. They'll then have Texas A&M to do all the work."

Though starting Geraci Consulting has been a dream of Geraci's for years now, he believes it was essential to receive help from EBV and the Mays Business School first. Geraci's bachelor degree from Texas A&M -- which he received in 1996 -- is in construction science, and his post-military work experience only provided a portion of the training he feels he needed.

"I wanted to go through this before I launched my business to the outside world," he said. "I met people who have gone through [EBV] before, and they talked about how beneficial it was for them. It's refined methodology on how to launch, start and run the business."

Jeanne Sterling, an Army veteran from Louisiana, served for more than 20 years. After retiring, she entered the retail realm as a human resources manager, but a traumatic life event inspired the already creative woman to press forward with a unique business idea. Sterling wants to design a smartphone app comparable to Uber, but specifically for roadside assistance. She explained that her app NOTOW will provide stranded motorists with immediate access to other vetted app users who can perform tire changes, offer rides, unlock cars or drop off gasoline cans.

"The idea actually came from my own experience waiting for a tow truck. I had three kids in my car late at night, and my daughter was sick and needed to go to the emergency room. We waited an hour and 15 minutes for the tow truck, and my husband was deployed at the time. It just affects your sense of safety and security, waiting and waiting. I though that there has to be better way."

Initially Sterling's idea for a business centered only on relieving the burdens of tow trucks and had nothing to do with smart phones. But after attending EBV, her mentors suggested the idea of streamlining the service into a smartphone app. Program leaders have provided her connections to app builders, and Sterling is confident she can soon begin her work on the company when she returns home.

John Anderson, one of the EBV mentors, who was with Merrill Lynch for over 43 years, said EBV is a well-run program that offers a great benefit.

"As a mentor, I find my participation to be very rewarding for several reasons," he wrote to The Eagle after the conclusion of the program on Saturday. "Helping entrepreneurs helps not only the individuals but also our nation. Helping veterans, especially those with service-connected disabilities, is even more rewarding. Many of the veterans have become friends, we stay in touch, and the CNVE/EBV staff and the mentors remain available for additional advice and assistance."

To learn more about EBV at Texas A&M and other universities, visit ebv.vets.syr.edu.
For most, a car is just something that takes them from point A to point B, but for Brenda Nunley, the 50-year-old Ford Thunderbird sitting in her south College Station driveway takes her back to the past.

"I think I got many a ticket in this car," Nunley said as she gazed affectionately at the Venetian yellow T-Bird, reminiscing about the trips she'd taken in the family vehicle her father brought home when she was 8 years old.

Nunley's father, Joseph Zemanek Jr., traded in a '55 Ford for a '67 Thunderbird in March 1967, eventually paying $5,530 for the new car.

Mark Nunley, Brenda's husband, said Zemanek "liked to drive it in parades" and "show it off," brandishing the luxury car for all to see.

Zemanek was featured in a Dallas Times Herald news story on March 14, 1967, that described him as a "one-car owner." The article explains that not only did Zemanek's '55 Ford sell that day at Dallas's Maher Brothers Ford, but the first-generation American of Czech descent had meticulously recorded each time he put gasoline or oil in the car, had it lubricated or performed maintenance on the vehicle, noting each instance in a "rather tattered and worn" log book.

"He was very, very meticulous about everything," Brenda Nunley said of her dad, who was born in the U.S. after his mother and father sailed -- separately, before knowing each other -- into Galveston on a boat from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s.

As an adult, Zemanek became a physicist for Mobil, issuing 39 patents with the company before retiring in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Mark and Brenda went to Texas A&M University, graduating in 1977 and '78, respectively, before moving to Houston. They had two children, both of whom also went to A&M, where they met their husbands. Brenda and Mark have grandchildren -- or "future Aggies," as Brenda calls them -- on the way.

The Nunleys moved back to College Station in April after living in Houston for almost 40 years. A friend towed the Thunderbird on a flatbed trailer to their new home; Brenda and Mark couldn't bear to leave it behind or sell it in Houston.

"It means a lot that it meant so much to him," Brenda said of the T-Bird's significance to her father, who -- as he did for the '55 Ford -- tracked every bit of maintenance he performed on the car in a little book that remains in the Thunderbird's glove compartment.

"Things are things, but he took the time to keep it in excellent shape," said Mark, to whom Zemanek left the Thunderbird when he died almost two years ago.

"It's a throwaway world now," Brenda said, making personally significant items such as the Thunderbird all the more priceless.

The vehicle doesn't run at the moment -- Mark said it needs a new fuel pump -- but even more important than whether it can be driven is the symbolism it holds for Brenda and her family. Zemanek died in October 2015, Brenda's mother died in April of this year, and her sister died in March 2014.

"There's just a flood of emotions when you go back and see your whole childhood," Brenda said as she blinked back tears, talking about a car that's become more than just four wheels and leather seats.
The GOP's red wave foundered nationally, but it swept away Democrats in Iowa
Our two families live so far away from each other that its accurate to say that we reside on opposite sides of the planet. Yet we visited the Pieris family in their home country of Sri Lanka because we are so close. Despite the unlikelihood of people from around the world becoming friends, our connection was immediate and only grows stronger with time.

We met Heshani Pieris through the Flagstaff International Friendship Program (FlagFriends) in the fall of 2015 when she was a freshman at NAU. Students from other countries are matched with local families (or individuals) based on interests, hobbies or profession. The purpose of the program is to promote international and cross-cultural understanding and provide international students with local connections to enhance their experience while studying in this country. The demands on the family are minimal as they are simply asked to get together with their student once a month.

FlagFriends offers students a chance to get to know the culture of the United States better and families learn about their students country and culture. Mostly, its just a lot of fun for everyone.

In the past, we have had very positive experiences with students from the Netherlands and from Australia. We were excited to be matched with someone from Sri Lanka. We knew little about this country other than that visitors to it say that it is gorgeous and that the food alone is worth the trip. (Following our travels there, we know both of these claims to be true.)

We knew right away that Heshani and our family were a good match. The first time we got together, we went out for frozen yogurt and looked at the starry sky. An astronomy and physics major, Heshani chose NAU specifically because of the opportunities here in that area.

Our dark, high-altitude skies offer the best star viewing she had ever experienced. She is from Colombo, Sri Lanka, which is a big city. Few stars can be seen from there due to the typical brightness of a big city, so that first night we got together in Flagstaff was the first time she had ever seen a shooting star or the Milky Way. We love the skies here and were so happy to be able to offer Heshani this experience and to share it with her.

We were equally happy to take her to Lowell to see a blood moon eclipse some weeks later. We have a lot of other things in common, too  were all rabid Harry Potter fans and share many other literary interests, enjoy online trivia, and traveling.

One of the great things about connecting with international students is introducing them to typical American experiences. When an international college student carves a pumpkin or attends a Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, it gives you a new appreciation for the fun traditions that our own culture offers.

Hanging out with us on Halloween and seeing all the costumed trick-or-treaters was definitely a new look into our culture. Though its not uniquely American, sharing a snowball fight and the building of a snowman with Heshani was special to our family. Having come from the tropics, these activities were totally new to her and seeing her love them was magical.

Its all just fun for our family, but to her parents it is different. We can understand how much it means to them that we are close by and happy to help their daughter out if she needs it. As parents, we can hardly imagine what it would feel like to drop your child off at college in a foreign land on the other side of the world!

(Our two towns are so far away, that when we were in Sri Lanka, we joked that when people asked us where we were from, we could honestly answer by just pointing straight down and saying, Were from there.)

The first time we met Heshani, she and her parents, along with her older sister Toshini, had flown here from Sri Lanka and were spending a week in Flagstaff getting her settled here. Feeling a kinship with these parents who were soon to be as far away from their daughter as is possible without going into orbit, we promised that we would make sure she bought a bike helmet, that she had the proper boots, hat, gloves and clothing for our winters and that we would do whatever we could to help her adjust to school in a new country.

One of our favorite experiences in Flagstaff was celebrating the Sri Lankan New Year in April. We surprised Heshani with a traditionally decorated table, some traditional foods, and music from home. The process involved a lot of secret help from her parents, because we needed to learn how to make a variety of foods, with changes to account for translations of the recipes, substitutions of ingredients not available here, conversions from the metric to imperial measurements, and altitude adjustments for the baked goods.

It is endearing how grateful the Pieris family is for the little things we do. Their gratitude is kind and wonderful, but also over the top. Im not complaining, though, because their kind feelings towards us prompted them to invite us to Sri Lanka. They said that if we covered our airfare to get there, they would take care of the rest. We hesitated only briefly because going to Sri Lanka was never something we had considered.

Within hours of their offer, our whole family had independently come to the same conclusion: We should go! We are so glad that we did! Heshanis family generously paid for and arranged everything in country.

It was an amazing trip, so much so that Im robbed of the fun of exaggerating about it, because the truth is so full of superlatives. We saw amazing wildlife, Buddhist temples and ancient sites from thousands of years ago. We played on the beach and snorkeled in the Indian Ocean, seeing lionfish and puffer fish among many others. We went white water rafting, hiked in the rain forest, and went on safari.

We saw 107 species of birds, including Sri Lanka Jungle Fowl (the national bird of Sri Lanka), Brahminy Kites, Asian Paradise Flycatchers, Indian Peafowl, Green Bee-eaters, Purple Sunbirds, a White-tailed Sea Eagle, a Legges Hawk-Eagle, Indian Pond Herons, and Sri Lankan Hanging Parrots. We visited a cinnamon plantation as well as a moonstone mine.

Though the sites we visited and the experiences we had were beyond thrilling, there is no doubt that the best part was sharing it with the Pieris family. We found common ground philosophically, though we come from a variety of religious backgrounds. They are devout Buddhists, while we come from a Judeo-Christian heritage.

It was fascinating to us when Heshanis father, Channa, commented that many aspects of the way we live our life match Buddhist teachings. For example, we enjoy what we do during our travels and dont worry about what we dont end up doing. Weve always emphasized to our kids that being disappointed about what we dont see is not allowed.

(That worked out well on our safari because we did not see a leopard, which we had high hopes of seeing. We were too busy focusing on what we did see  elephants, mongooses, Painted Storks and elephants  to be disappointed.) We learned that the Pieris family considered any kindness to their daughter to be evidence that Buddhist ideals are manifested in many who are not Buddhist.

We have lived abroad as well as traveled to many countries, and that is true of their family as well. When two families, no matter how different in terms of culture, language and heritage, have both experienced a variety of countries, it is easy to see that we are more alike than we are different.

Our time together in Sri Lanka enhanced the friendship we had developed by Skype and over e-mail. We walked around their yard together, sharing knowledge about trees, fruits, insects and astronomy with one another. We played with their dog, a lovely cocker spaniel named Sammy.

They introduced us to a variety of traditional Sri Lankan foods including pastries, curries, breads, fruits and vegetables. Heshanis mom, Sandya is a professional baker and an absolutely amazing cook. The food she made for us during the time we were at the Pieris house was the best in Sri Lanka, and that is saying something in a country where the food is always listed as a highlight by anyone who travels there.

Our experiences through FlagFriends have been so incredible that we are guilty of telling our friends about it in the hopes that they will participate also. Its such a gift to truly live an experience that embodies the idea that friendship does not know cultural bonds. It was so amazing to visit Sri Lanka and learn about a new culture first hand.

We are thrilled that we will be Heshanis local family until she graduates. Most of all, we are happy and so grateful that we have met Heshani and her whole family and that we will all be friends for life.
Ethnic food choices in Holmen are about to expand.

Pa Houa Vang and her husband, Chao Thao, plan to open Taste of Thai restaurant in a few weeks in Suite 106 at 205 S. Holmen Drive. Remodeling is underway in the former location of The Pizza Oven, which closed its Holmen restaurant last year, soon after opening its current West Salem location.

Well hopefully open in mid-August, Vang said last week. We will have Thai food.

Vang said she and her husband were born in Thailand and have worked in several restaurants over the years. We both grew up in Thailand and know a lot about Thai culture and food, she said.

Thao moved to the La Crosse area in 1992, and Vang came to the area in 1995.

Vang said her husband has always dreamed of owning his own business, and they chose the Holmen site partly because of high traffic counts. Also, she said, Theres not a lot of restaurants or (restaurant) variety in Holmen.

The Holmen Village Board approved beer and wine licenses for Taste of Thai at its July 13 meeting.

Construction is underway on a new Verve, a Credit Union location thats scheduled to open in November at 110 Hale Drive, across the street from where a new Festival Foods is being built in Holmen.

Verve broke ground for the new location on June 28. Verve will move its Holmen branch office there from its current leased location at 515 Amy Drive.

Verve officials said the relocation will give Holmen-area members access to more services through innovative technology; more space in a larger, standalone building and easier access through a more convenient location just off of South Holmen Drive. The new office will feature video conferencing to allow members to connect with a Verve employee at any location.

Our decision to relocate our Amy Drive location aligns with our goal to continue to improve our services for our members and better serve our communities, said Kevin Ralofsky, Verve president and CEO.

Deb Walters opened Fresh Coat Painted Furniture and Boutique on Wednesday at 1824 George St. in La Crosse.

The business sells furniture, home decor and Dixie Belle Paint paints, stains, finishes, patina sprays, furniture wax and paint brushes.

The furniture is all older furniture, and its made well, Walters said. She paints most of the furniture she sells, and some of the home decor that she sells. The business has both new and used home decor.

Walters began painting furniture about six years ago and had sold some before she decided to go into business earlier this year with a booth in The Craft & Vendor Marketplace in downtown La Crosse. After three months there I just needed more space, and moved the business to the George Street location, she said.

Store hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. For more information, call the store at 608-615-1100 or visit its Facebook page. It will have a website soon.

Laura Markham opened The Cut Barbershop and Salon on July 5 in the former Corner Cuts salon location at 3001 State Road in La Crosse.

She cuts hair for men, women and children and also offers waxing and hair coloring services such as highlights, balayage and fashion colors.

Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. However, Im very flexible with those hours and try to work with clients to accommodate their schedules, Markham said.

I have rented a chair for about six years, Markham said of her decision to open her own business. I really wanted to open a shop where people felt they could come relax and forget about their work day. Markham, who uses certified organic color, said she loves introducing new color techniques and has found a passion for barbering.

For more information, call the barber shop and salon at 608-780-2156 or visit its Facebook page.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NEW HAVEN  Nury Chavarria seemed to have found some peace of mind Saturday as she sat with her youngest child in the Fair Haven church where she sought sanctuary Thursday to avoid being deported to Guatemala.

We have a lot more friends now, she said with a tired little smile. I feel better when I have a lot of people around for me and my family.

She and her two sons and two daughters have been through an emotionally wrenching past week, the low point coming Wednesday night when federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials denied her a stay of deportation.

But rather than obey the order to get on a plane and fly to Guatemala, she accepted the sanctuary offer from Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Church. She moved into a small but comfortable living space with her 9-year-old daughter, Hayley.

Their future is uncertain. An ICE official Friday labeled Chavarria a fugitive, but ICE agents generally avoid invading places of worship.

When Chavarria was asked Saturday how long she imagines she will remain in the church, she replied, I dont know yet. My lawyer is working on it.

She conceded she might be there for many weeks. But Ill be comfortable. We have a lot of good people around here all the time. The pastor (Hector Otero) is a very nice person.

Meanwhile, Chavarrias supporters in the community and beyond continue to rally behind her. They will hold a prayer vigil Sunday at 7 p.m. outside the church.

She said her kids, who range in age from 9 to 21, dont understand why she was ordered to leave America, and she doesnt understand it either. She is not a U.S. citizen, but her sons and daughters are, and she has never been arrested. She has had a steady job with a housekeeping company for 15 years.

But she is an undocumented resident, having fled Guatemalas political turmoil at age 19 and. She was denied asylum here. Now 43, she has lived in America for 24 years. Her home is in Norwalk.

When she was asked again Saturday during the interview with a Hearst Connecticut Media reporter to try to explain how she got into this situation, she noted she applied for asylum upon her arrival in 1993 and did at least receive a work permit.

But in August 1999 they said I had to leave the country, she said. I got a notice in the mail. But I didnt leave. Ten years later, they began looking for me. I applied to stay every year and they always gave permission to me.

Chavarria was expecting another annual extension June 21 when she went to see ICE officials in Hartford. But she got a big surprise.

They told me I had to leave the country by July 20. They put an ankle bracelet on me. There was no time to ask questions. I was in shock. Hayley was with me and we both started crying.

Chavarria added, I didnt know what had changed.

She didnt realize that, unlike under the Obama administration, her low enforcement status had been upgraded. Under President Donald Trump, immigrants with her status, even those without criminal records, are now a priority.

Her story has drawn sympathy from Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, all of Connecticut. And financial support is coming in via gofundme.com/NuryChavarria, set up by the nonprofit Parents Together to raise money for Chavarrias children.

Her eldest son, 21-year-old Elvin Martinez, has physical limitations from cerebral palsy, which made Chavarria even more reluctant to go back to Guatemala. She is the sole supporter of her family.

While Chavarria was speaking with a reporter Saturday afternoon at the church, Martinez and his sister, Lindsay Chavarria, 18, arrived to visit her. They had a tearful reunion, with hugs all around.

This is the first time Ive seen them since I left the house Thursday, Chavarria said.

Asked how she had elected to seek sanctuary rather than accept deportation, she said, It was a hard decision. I didnt know what to do. But Im happy to be here because I can keep in touch with my family and my little one is with me. If I go back to my country, I wouldnt be able to see them for maybe 10 years.

Hayley was bouncing around the large room which includes the partitioned area where she is living with her mom. Asked how she is feeling, Hayley said, Good. Yesterday I had a surprise: it was like a new birthday party.

She explained that on her real birthday, June 27, she had not been happy because she and her mom were worried about the deportation threat.

Hayleys only down moment Saturday came when she was headed out shopping with Kica Matos, an immigrant rights worker for the Center for Community Change, and realized her mother couldnt come with them.

Im sad my mom cant come, she said. But if she takes one little step ...

Before she departed, Hayley said, Ill show you my room. She and Chavarria went into the partitioned space, which has beds and bags full of supplies. One of the bedspreads has the words laugh, live and love.

Chavarria said she is very thankful to the many people who have sent gifts. She said Saturday a package arrived from a Waterford woman with supplies for Hayley, including crayons and drawing pads.

Chavarria said such support makes me more strong to continue.

When asked what she would say to Trump if he were to visit the church, as Murphy suggested, Chavarria replied: Im a good, hard-working lady. I have no criminal record. I came to this country for work, to get a better life. And I pay taxes, since 1993.

She added, I hope that maybe the president will think about all the families, that its not a good thing to separate families. All the political things I dont know. But he should have more compassion for all of us.

rbeach@nhregister.com; 203-680-9345; @rbeachNHR on Twitter
We can approach the miracles and mysteries of the Bible, accepting the possibility of their essential historicity while allowing for elaboration, exaggeration, and the misunderstandings of the pre-scientific mind.

I have had a terrific time researching and writing my new book The Mystery of the MagiThe Quest for the True Identity of the Three Wise Men. My own attempt at Biblical sleuthing got started when Dr. Matthew Bunson asked for an article about the origins of the magi for a Christmas edition of The Catholic Answer.

Thinking that just maybe the Old Testament prophecies about the magi indicated their true origin, I began investigating to whom, where, what, and when the prophet Isaiah was referring when he wrote,

Herds of camels will cover your land,

young camels of Midian and Ephah.

And all from Sheba will come,

bearing gold and incense

and proclaiming the praise of the Lord. All Kedars flocks will be gathered to you,

the rams of Nebaioth will serve you;

they will be accepted as offerings on my altar,

and I will adorn my glorious temple.

It turns out that Midian, Ephah, Sheba, Kedar and Nebaioth are all Arabian tribes. That set me out on what has turned out to be an exciting quest to discover the historical basis for the Magi storygathering evidence that they came from Arabia, not Persia, India, China, Ethiopia, the Himalayas, or the legendary land of Shir.

The quest to discover the historical wise men raised some interesting points about the question of historicity in the Bible. In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.Tolkien has Galadriel say, History became legend and legend became myth. For very interesting historical reasons, this is exactly what happened to the Magi story more than any other New Testament tale.

To explain how this happened I used the analogy of King Arthur. If you go to Somerset in the Damp Lands you can visit an Iron Age fort called South Cadbury, which some archeologists think might be the location of King Arthurs Camelot.

If you climb the lane, cross the stile, dodge the cow pats, and avoid the stinging nettles, you can stand on the crest of a hill and look out across the Somerset lowlands to see the hill of St. Michael standing high over Glastonbury. We camped out on the fort, and in the morning the mists rise up so you can almost imagine mystical Glastonbury (where Arthur was allegedly buried) as the misty isle of Avalon that Tennyson mentions.

Most historians believe the Arthurian legends are based on the exploits of a Celtic chieftain who fought the Anglo Saxons or the Romans. However, through Malory, Tennyson, T.H. White, Walt Disney, and umpteen other movie makers and storytellers, the Arthurian history became a legend and the legend became a myth. The Sword in the Stone has precious little to do with Cadbury hill fort, except that there does seem to be a mound in a field here and a chunk of a battle axe there, here a rumor and there a legend that reminds us that there really was a King Arthureven if he had nothing to do with Launcelot, Guinevere, Merlin, or Madam Mim.

My research for The Mystery of the Magi took me back to the basic story and the simple historical facts. My work also introduced me to a new friend. Professor Sir Colin Humphreys is an eminent scientist from Cambridge University, UK. A physicist, he is president of the Institute of Materials Science, Goldsmiths Professor of Materials Science and head of the Rolls Royce University Technology Center. He is also a fellow amateur investigator of biblical miracles and mysteries. I sent a manuscript of my book to Professor Humphreys, and he was kind enough to read it and express his enthusiasm.

Professor Humphreys main area of research has been a decades long investigation into the miracles of Exodus. In his book The Miracles of Exodus he explores, with a scientists thoroughness, all the natural explanations for the miracles in the Book of Exodus. Not only that, he painstakingly explains why the traditional site of Mt Sinai is incorrect and triumphantly identifies the real Mt Sinai. He also explains and locates the Israelites trek across the desert, pinpoints the Red Sea crossing, and discovers the secret of the quail, the manna, the water from the rock, and more.

Professor Humphreys is a kindred spirit because, like me, he takes a common sense view about the miracles and mysteries in the Bible. Never dismissing the possibility of a genuine miracle, he also understands that the stories of the Bible were experienced and recorded in a pre-scientific age. Furthermore, the history became a legend and the legend became a myth. Over the centuries, to a greater or lesser extent, the stories were elaborated or exaggerated. The extra Biblical traditions, the musings of theologians, speculations of spiritual writers, interpretations by artists and poets all contributed to a cultural and religious understanding of the stories which was often far from the simple facts recorded in the Bible.

When all the accretions are pared away, Matthews simple account of the Magis visit to Bethlehem is very straightforward and historically believable. Likewise, Professor Humphreys continually points out how (after a bit of research) the Book of Exodus turns out to be accurate in its description of locations, customs, geography, politics, culture, and anthropology of its time. In fact, many of the details could only have been recorded by eyewitnesses.

Happily, there are an increasing number of writers who are researching the essential historicity of the Bible. It is refreshing too to find a new generation of Bible scholars who are taking the research seriously. The British Biblical scholar Margaret Barker has observed that over the last fifty or sixty years so many new discoveries have been made using advanced technologies, forensics, expert archeological techniques as well as new textual and manuscript evidence that the outworn skepticism of the typical liberal New Testament scholars is dwindling and dying out.

A careful path can be trod, therefore, between the unthinking, unblinking literalism of the fundamentalists and the unthinking, unblinking dogmatism of the liberal skeptical scholar who believes like Rudolph Bultmann that we can know next to nothing about the historical Jesus. Instead, we can approach the miracles and mysteries of the Bible, accepting the possibility of their essential historicity while allowing for elaboration, exaggeration, and the misunderstandings of the pre-scientific mind.

In other words, We allow for miracles, but we always look for the natural explanation first. This is a common-sense approach not only for Biblical interpretation but also for the pastoral care of the religiously hysterical, the superstitious, and the credulous.

In most cases, we can find beneath the accretions and elaborate traditions the simple foundation of historical facts. This is important because history matters, and history matters because if something really happened, then it was real, and reality matters because truth matters.

Insisting on the miraculous just because the Bible says it, and that settles it is unsustainable. Such an approach does not produce faith. It produces more doubt. On the other hand, dissing and dismissing the Bible as so much pious fiction also wont do. The believers with blinders have had their day, but so has Bultmann and his blind devotees.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is The Three Wise Kings, Atlas Catalan, 1375, Fol. V. This file is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Pope Pius, who had done more than anyone to make the Christian victory at Lepanto possible, is said to have burst into tears when news of it reached him.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross 

G.K. Chesterton (Lepanto)

For those who are familiar with G. K. Chestertons glorious poem, Lepanto, St. Pius V will always be the pope who called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross. His heroic holiness during the crisis of 1571, when it looked as though the forces of Islam were once more threatening to overrun Europe, deserves to be branded on the conscience and consciousness of all civilized people. This aspect of Pius papacy, seen in the context of his other achievements, was summarized by his eighteenth century biographer:

Zeal for the Kingdom of Christ was our Holy Popes predominant virtue; for while he was thus employed in restoring the Faith in Europe, and propagating it to the most distant parts of the known world, he was as industrious in his endeavours to stop the progress of the common enemy of our most holy religion, who took advantage of the divisions of Christendom, and attacked Malta. [1]

The common enemy of our most holy religion was, of course, Islam, in the form of the Ottoman Empire. The siege of Malta, to which the anonymous biographer refers, actually took place in 1565, the year before Pius became pope, but one of his first acts as pontiff was to send large sums of money to Malta so that the fortifications could be rebuilt and a new town could be erected on the rubble of the old. He also declared the first year of his papacy a Jubilee, exhorting the faithful to penance and almsgiving to obtain the victory from God over the militaristic might of the Muslims. Apart from his financial support for the Knights of Malta, he also sent money for the fortification of towns throughout Italy, furnished monthly contributions to the besieged Christians of Hungary, and worked tirelessly to bring the major Christian powers together for the defense of Christendom. In 1571, a year after the Turks had attacked Cyprus, thereby threatening to dominate the Mediterranean, Pius was instrumental in the founding of the Holy League, an alliance of nations and city states, including Spain and most of the states in what is now modern Italy. Although he tried to persuade the Holy Roman Empire and France to join the League, they both refused. The Empire preferred to maintain its truce with the Ottoman Turks, while France was actually in league with the Muslims, forming an anti-Spanish alliance with them.

Pius sent his blessing to Don John of Austria, the commander-in-chief of the Holy Leagues fleet, urging him to leave behind all soldiers of evil life, and promising him victory if he did so. As the Christian fleet headed west to meet the Turkish fleet in battle, Pius ordered public prayers, and increased his own supplications to heaven. As for the Battle of Lepanto itself, which took place on October 7, 1571, we could do worse than to take up Harry Crockers action-packed and triumphalist strain:

When the two forces collided, it was the largest naval engagement in the history of Christendom. Galleys crashed into each other, grappling hooks secured them, and armed men leapt at each others throats, arrow against harquebus, scimitar versus sword, blasting muskets meeting charging pikes.

At battles end, 7,500 Christian combatants were dead, compared to between 20-30,000 Turks. On a brighter note, thousands of Christian slaves, perhaps as many as 12,000, chained below decks as rowers for the Turkish ships, had been freed. The Christian victory was a devastating blow for the Ottoman Empire, which lost all but thirty of its ships, and was the most decisive naval battle since the Battle of Actium in 31BC.

Pope Pius, who had done more than anyone to make the Christian victory possible, is said to have burst into tears when news of the victory reached him. In gratitude for this triumph and the devastating blow that it had dealt to the power of Islam, he instituted the Feast of Our Lady of Victory [2] to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Lepanto. He also added to the Litany of Loreto the supplication Help of Christians (Auxilium Christianorum), in honour of the role that he believed the intercession of the Blessed Virgin had played in bringing victory to the Christian forces.

On May 1, 1572, a few short months after the victory at Lepanto, Pius V died. He would be canonized in 1713, the official recognition that the Holy Pope who had founded the Holy League had gone to bask in a Glory beyond all the victories that this world has to offer.

This is an extract from Joseph Pearces book, Heroes of the Catholic Reformation.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

Notes:

[1] Anonymous, The Lives of the Saints, Volume 2, op. cit., p. 241

[2] Now usually known as the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Church still celebrates the victory of Lepanto every year on October 7.

The featured image is Papa pio V rida a don giovanni daustria il titolo di vicere di sicilia dopo la battaglia di lepanto (c. 1600-20) by Francesco Brizio. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license and appears here courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. It has been brightened for clarity.
WHITEFISH BAY, Wis.  Food has a way of bringing people together  in nourishment, in service and in just plain ole good company. The fish fry at Holy Family Catholic Church in Whitefish Bay is one of the best around, according to those who have devoured the golden, fried cod.

At the fish fry, there is a sense of community. Some would even argue it is an extension of family that comes together for the meal and fellowship. There is one thing that is for sure: It is Father David Zampinos happy place.

You might not be able to tell just by looking at him, but Father Dave Zampino is unlike most Catholic priests. He is married, and he has kids  eight of them.

My oldest child is David, Father Dave told WITI-TV. My next child is Maria. Then comes Thomas. Then Elizabeth. Then John Paul. Then Theresa. Then Philip. Then Gianna.

To understand how Father Dave got to this position as a married Catholic clergyman, you have to go back to the beginning.

Father Dave was brought up in an Episcopal church outside of Baltimore City, where his dad was a bishop. That is when he, too, felt that calling to serve God.

I honestly dont remember a time when I didnt at least have some thought of it, said Father Dave.

He met his wife, Michele Soirez, and they married in June 1989. He then spent 11 years serving as a deacon, and then a priest in the Charismatic Episcopal Church before answering a different sort of call  a call to Catholicism.

It was something that had been in the back of my head for a number of years, said Father Dave.

The process of converting, and then becoming re-ordained in the Catholic faith took 10 years, and much of it was political.

Two changes in popes. Then Archbishop Listecki replaced Archbishop Dolan, and every time something happens, understandably, the Vatican moves slowly, said Father Dave.

The most glaring question surrounding this is how can a married man become clergy without abiding by the sacred vow of celibacy? For the answer, you have to go back several decades.

With the changes and some disarray in the Anglican Communion, there was a larger movement of ministers, even bishops, who decided they wanted to return to the Catholic Church, explained Father Paul Hartmann, judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

In 1980, Pope John Paul II decided to allow married men to become priests in certain situations. There is, however, a significant distinction between allowing married men to become priests and allowing priests to marry.

Father Zampino grew up in a home with Charismatic Episcopal denomination. His father was very influential in it, so he began to express his desire to serve that ministry in that setting. The call was always there, so thats why we would make a special consideration for a married man to become a priest because the context that it became to blossom, the vocational call, was beyond his control, said Hartmann.

Im one of those exceptions, but there are still rules that apply to me. If, God forbid, something should happen to my wife, I would be bound by a vow of celibacy effective immediately, said Father Dave.

Father Dave was ordained on April 15, 2016.

On tax day. Ill never forget that anniversary, said Father Dave.

The ordination took place at St. Margaret Mary parish in Milwaukee, making him one of just a handful of men in the state to be accepted into the church as a converted, married clergyman.

This is something is still obviously relatively new. Theres always going to be questions. I have no problem with questions, said Father Dave.

Anything we dont understand we think is weird and odd, said Hartmann.

The uniqueness of Father Daves situation also brings opportunity  especially for parishioners.

They know I can talk honestly about working through marital issues or issues with kids or what have you because its something that we live, said Father Dave.

Because Father Dave does have a family to support, things are a bit different. For example, he lives at home in Milwaukee with his family, not in the rectory like other priests.

Any parish that accepts me for an assignment knows that I have some priority balancing issues and thats just the way thats going to be, said Father Dave.

He said there also has to be understanding on his familys part as well.

Theyve been wonderfully supportive. They really, really have. I couldnt do it without my wifes strength, said Father Dave.

At Holy Family, Father Dave is just like any dad, gathering his family around the dinner table for a good meal. This dads table is just a tad bigger as he serves not only his family as dad, but everyone who welcomes him as Father.

There are less than 200 priests in the United States like Father Dave. As a married member of clergy, he can baptize, witness marriages, anoint the sick, say Mass, and partake in any duties or sacraments other Catholic priests can perform. However, there are a couple of restrictions. Father Dave can never become a bishop or pastor of a parish community.
President Jackie Pollock welcomed 19 members of Trinity Lutheran Womens Missionary League to the July 14 meeting at the church.

Pastor Snoberger informed members with news of Trinity Lutheran School. He spoke on the increased membership for the coming year. There will be several new teachers, with their installation on Aug. 6. At the same time there will be a re-dedication of the present teachers and workers of the school. He then led the group in prayer and a scripture reading of Psalm 9.

An opening prayer was given by Marlene Behm and the mites devotion was presented by Stephanie Karsten.

Lois Niemoth reported on the Altar Guild. Their next meeting will be at 9:30 a.m. Aug. 29.

Behm reported there were 24 visits made to shut-ins by members and she played her accordion during 26 separate visits. The Funeral Committee served two funerals this month.

Trinity Lutheran Church LWML will host the Nebraska South District Board of Directors workshop and meeting on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018.

Deb McDonald and Marilyn Linder-Bombeck served as hostesses.

The next Trinity LWML meeting will be at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 11 and the mission project will be supplies for Trinity Lutheran School.
Diane Millers baby has hit a milestone.

Miller, manager of Island Oasis Water Park who refers to it as her baby, celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Grand Island destination with nearly 50 people Saturday morning.

Leis were draped around each guest, creating the fun environment that Island Oasis aims to constantly create. Lifeguards and water park employees even sang summer songs, such as Catch a Wave to get everyone in the mood during the celebration.

A handful of past city council members who were involved in bringing the water park to the city were in attendance, as well as some current city council members, former and current water park employees and even mascot Pelican Pete.

Several people spoke about the water park, including Miller, Mayor Jeremy Jensen and Grand Island Parks and Recreation Director Todd McCoy.

Jensen mentioned the nostalgia of Island Oasis and that he was 18 years old when it opened. He said the water park adds value to Grand Island and people wanting to stay in the city. Jensen said when people come into town for big events, they often want to make a vacation out of it. With places like Island Oasis, it helps entertain those people and makes them want to come to Grand Island.

If the city doesnt offer those vacation-type of things, theres always a chance that those people stop coming, Jensen said.

He added the young people who work there are very important and work hard.

I think we need to constantly thank you guys for everything you do, Jensen said.

Steve Paustian, former G.I. Parks and Rec director, was there for the birth of the water park. He spoke and said it wasnt a popular idea back in the day and some people were against it. However, he said, it added to the city.

There were no water slides at that time in the state of Nebraska, Paustian said.

Former Grand Island City Administrator Zachary Zoul spoke of the importance of the park.

At the time, this was a bold idea, Zoul said of when the park was in the works. He said at the time, Island Oasis was the first municipally-owned water park in the country.

This had Grand Island on the leading edge, Zoul said.

Miller, who has been manager since the park opened, said on opening day in the early 90s they had to turn people away because it was filled to capacity within two hours. She outlined the progress the park has made, with the addition to the lazy river and, 15 years ago, the addition of the speed slides.

She said she hopes to be with the park for much longer and hopes to see it evolve even more.

My vision is to get a childrens splash pad, Miller said. This is my baby and Im not getting ready to give it up to a foster parent yet.

McCoy said in the coming years to keep the water park going, it will take facility maintenance and the efforts to continue to recruit great staff. He said theres some opportunity for expansion in the future and mentioned Millers childrens splash pad idea could be an option.

Miller, who was a teacher before being appointed manager of Island Oasis, credited her many employees and right hands, including fellow former teacher Emily Soderman. Soderman has been with the park since it was two weeks old. Shes the bookkeeper and the concession stand manager at Island Oasis.

When you like the people youre working with, 25 years is nothing, Soderman said.

The young employees, many who were in attendance, think of Miller as a mom. Some even call her that.

Miller said though her job isnt always easy, shes blessed by the visitors and employees she gets to meet.

The park opened at noon Saturday after the celebration and offered concession specials along with prizes throughout the day.
Once upon a time  in 1990  the State of the Nebraska had both the ability and the will to dramatically cut property taxes for school districts like Grand Island. The legislation that sharply increased state aid was LB1059.

It also forever changed the relationship between state aid and property taxes for Nebraskas K-12 schools.

According to statistics provided by the Nebraska Department of Education, the state provided $131.012 million in state aid to all K-12 school districts during the 1989-90 fiscal year. After LB1059 was approved by the Nebraska Legislature, the amount of state aid more than doubled to $311.476 million. That allowed the Grand Island Public Schools and every other Nebraska school district in the state to dramatically slash its general fund property tax levy.

The GIPS general fund tax bill for the owner of a $100,000 home dropped by $592 or 30 percent the very first year, decreasing from $1,969 the year before LB1059 went into effect all the way down to $1,377 the year after it became law.

Yet today, Nebraskans still yearn for property tax relief.

Virgil Harden, GIPS director of finance, says property owners are almost surely better because of LB1059. But Harden said that from his perspective, it seems as though lawmakers created a system that greatly boosted state aid to K-12 schools and dramatically lowered property taxes, but were unable to create a system that was fully sustainable for more than 25 years.

Harden said that even if Nebraska lawmakers wanted to once again increase state aid by nearly 2.4 times, it would be impossible because the state does not have a strong enough revenue flow.

More to the story

When it comes to school district property taxes, the general fund is the biggest part of the story, but it is not the entire story. The GIPS total property tax bill also includes the special building fund and the bond fund. According to archived news stories from The Grand Island Independent, those three levies added up to a total tax bill of $2,162 for a $100,000 home for the 1989-90 fiscal year. In 1990-91, the year when LB1059 took effect, the total GIPS tax bill for all three levies was $1,613, still a drop of 25.4 percent.

To ensure all that additional state aid would provide property tax relief and not just extra money for local schools to spend, state lawmakers placed a sliding budget lid on school districts that ranged from 4 percent to 6.5 percent. They also placed a 4 percent budget lid on cities, counties and community colleges to help force property taxes down.

Grand Island residents pay property taxes to many other local subdivisions of government such as Hall County, Central Community College, the Central Platte NRD, Hall County Airport Authority, Educational Service Unit No. 9, the City of Grand Island and the Hall County Agricultural Society, which is in charge of the Hall County Fair.

For the 1989-90 fiscal year, all those combined levies added up to a property tax bill of $3,457 for the owner of a $100,000 home.

Fortunately, a full revenue stream from a new 1-percent city sales tax allowed the city of Grand Islands property tax levy to drop from $0.7074 to $0.5340 per $100 of valuation, a decrease of 24.5 percent for the 1990-91 fiscal year. As a result, the owner of a $100,000 home paid a total property tax bill of $2,729 that year.

Roller coaster ride

LB1059 was never perfect.

School district superintendents were complaining about the unpredictability of the state aid their districts received each year. They said huge state aid swings created correspondingly big swings in school district property taxes.

A July 1995 Independent editorial explained the problem from the GIPS perspective. It said that in November 1994, the Nebraska Department of Education informed GIPS the district would receive a $100,000 state aid increase for the coming year. By March 1995, the Nebraska Department of Education projected that GIPS would get a $2 million increase. By July 1995, the actual state aid to GIPS decreased by $700,000 compared to the previous year.

Lawmakers have tried to ensure that K-12 state aid resulted in actual property tax relief. They initially lowered the maximum property tax levy for school districts to $1.10 per $100 of property valuation. They next lowered that lid to $1 per $100 of valuation. The current school district levy lid is $1.05 per $100 of valuation.

The most recent action by the Nebraska Legislature to provide property tax relief is to remove the school district minimum general fund levy of 95 cents per $100 of valuation. Previously, if a school district violated that minimum levy, it would have lost some of the revenue it receives in the form of an allocated income tax rebate. The year before that minimum levy was eliminated, Northwest Public Schools had a general fund levy of 95.2 cents. For the current school year, its general fund levy is 88.2 cents per hundred.

So why do people still clamor for property tax relief?

Property taxes assessed by other units of local government are not the reason. Hall County Assessor Jan Pelland said the 2016-17 consolidated property tax rate is just over $2.173 per $100 of valuation. Thats a total property tax bill of $2,173 for the owner of a $100,000 home, which is far better than the $3,477 property tax bill homeowner paid in 1989.

Ag land values

Appreciation of property values is likely one reason people feel burdened by property taxes, especially if they own farm ground.

Sharon Placke, Grand Island Northwest business manager, said ag land values for the 2010-11 fiscal year were $230.49 million or 42.8 percent of the school districts total valuation. Currently, ag land values have risen to approximately $580 million or 58.7 percent of the school districts total valuation. Placke said that is almost entirely due to appreciation in the price of farm land.

In 2010-11, Northwests residential valuation was approximately $198 million or 35.8 percent of the total valuation in the school district, Placke said. The current total residential valuation is approximately $246 million or 23.5 percent of the total valuation in the district.

Harden said various classes of property values within the city of Grand Island have also appreciated since LB1059 took effect, At the same time, he said, people know that many more homes, retail outlets and commercial buildings have sprung up in the school district since 1990. Consequently, the school districts higher valuation is a combination of both appreciation and new construction. He noted it is impossible to keep separate tallies for appreciation versus new construction over a long period of time.

Harden said a bigger problem may be an antiquated state tax system.

Our economy is changing, he said. The state does a good job of collecting sales tax from brick-and-mortar stores. But even though Nebraska is now collecting sales tax from Amazon, Harden questions whether it is receiving all potential sales tax revenue from other online retailers.

He also questioned if Nebraska is giving too many sales tax exemptions for services such as dry cleaning, accountants and attorneys. Harden also questions whether business tax incentives are too big a drain on state coffers.

According to the Nebraska Department of Education, state aid to all school districts across the state dropped by 18.5 percent in fiscal year 2011-12. The year before that big percentage drop, more than $1 billion in state aid was distributed to all the school districts in Nebraska. Nebraska has never exceeded $1 billion in state aid since that time, although it is getting close again.

Harden sees fiscal 2011-12 as perhaps a turning point.

It seems like the dialogue has shifted so much from, Is the distribution formula working fairly for everybody? to Do we even have the revenue to fund the distribution formula? he said. Its almost that fair and equitable is secondary to how much money is in the (state) bank.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, July 22 2017

Collusion between the City Council and the Jakarta administration has reemerged after former governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama was forced to step down from his post, Center for Budget Analysis executive director Uchok Khadafi said.

Uchok said he had been alerted to an alleged violation relating to the floor area ratio (KLB) limits of some buildings, including a 13-story building in Pantai Indah Kapuk, Penjaringan, North Jakarta.

The council became free after Ahoks departure. I just got information about how city councilors assisted the violation process of the projects, Uchok said on Friday as quoted by tribunnews.com, adding that the case should be investigated.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Bandung-based artist Tisna Sanjaya shows his support for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which has been under a barrage of attacks from lawmakers. In a street performance in Bandung on Friday, he painted what he called Potret Diri sebagai Kaum Munafik (A Self-Portrait of the Hypocrites).(JP/Arya Dipa)(KPK), which has been under a barrage of attacks from lawmakers. In a street performance in Bandung on Friday, he painted what he called Potret Diri sebagai Kaum Munafik (A Self-Portrait of the Hypocrites).(JP/Arya Dipa)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Nethy Darma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura  Sun, July 23, 2017 23:25 1937 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97aa090a6 1 National aviation,plane-crash,Papua,Grand-Caravan,Enggang-Air,Sinak Free

A small cargo plane skid off the runway at Sinak Airport in Puncak regency, Papua, on Saturday. The pilot Tommy Hendratno and copilot Ihsan Ryzky were reportedly uninjured.

The incident occurred only four days after another cargo jet skidded off the runway at Wamena Airport, also in Papua.

The Enggang Air Grand Caravan single-propeller plane had departed from Nabire with about 1 ton of diesel fuel on board. Around 12:30 p.m. local time the plane landed at Sinak but the crew failed to bring the plane to a halt before the runway's end.

The weather around the airport was reportedly foggy during the time of the incident, as it has been raining every day for the last two weeks.

Read also: Small plane crashes in Wamena, killing five

Sinak Airport head Dani Djoko told The Jakarta Post the crashed airplane had been removed to the apron and the airport was operating normally on Sunday. National Transportation Safety Committee and Transportation Ministry personnel will arrive at Timika tomorrow to start the investigation, he said.

Last Tuesday, a Boeing B737-300F operated by PT Tri-MG Intra Asia airline skidded about 100 meters off the Wamena Airport runway before coming to halt in a small ditch. Carrying around 15 tons of building materials and food supplies, the plane had departed from Mozes Kilangin Airport in nearby Mimika regency.

All four crew and a passenger were evacuated from the aircraft and there were no reports of injuries.

Sinak Airports skid-off was the fifth aviation incident across Papua in 2017. (kuk/bbs)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, July 23, 2017 13:09 1938 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97aa03158 1 Destinations surabaya,walking,destination,surakarta,Yogyakarta,Bukittinggi,#destination,pedestrian Free

Indonesia has been dubbed the country with the laziest walkers in the world.

At least, thats what a group of researchers at Stanford University have concluded.

The study found that the average Indonesian only walks a total of 3,515 steps a day, significantly lower than the average person from Hong Kong, who typically reaches 6,880 steps a day.

Still, walking remains one of the best ways to travel, allowing you to explore the nooks and crannies of a city.

While many Indonesians assume that walking is something that can only be conveniently done in other countries, here are four cities across Indonesia that are great for traveling by foot, as compiled by kompas.com:

Yogyakarta

A post shared by Aviation Enthuasiast (@muhamadfarhangunantika) on Jul 20, 2017 at 6:17am PDT

This laid-back city has a number of pedestrian-friendly areas. Many people will agree that it is far easier to truly experience the beauty of Yogyakartas rich culture by walking in the city, especially when exploring spots like Jl. Malioboro.

Youll be able to walk on the sidewalk that runs along the entire street, as parking on Malioboro is now regulated, which ensures that the sidewalks are accessible for pedestrians.

Other than Jl. Malioboro, must see places where you can explore the local culture by foot include the areas around the Kraton (palace), Tamansari and Kotagede.

Read also: Yogyakarta: One day, eight destinations

Bukittinggi

A post shared by Devi Zuliastuti (@devizuliastuti) on Jul 22, 2017 at 7:04am PDT

Known for the popular Jam Gadang, a clock tower that acts as the citys major landmark, this city in West Sumatra has a selection of unique destinations to visit on foot. The city itself is not too big and generally has a nice, cool air, making walking around very convenient.

After spending some time admiring Jam Gadang, you can also explore Ngarai Sianok, a spectacular canyon that boasts natural views and the local sights. From there, still on foot, you can also stop by Goa Jepang, or the Japanese Cave, where you can learn about World War II.

There is also a selection of walking tours that you can take. There is the Heritage Tour, where you can visit founding father Mohammad Hattas home, or the Culinary Tour in the Upper Market and the Lower Market, just to name a few.

Surabaya

A post shared by Faizal Rachmansyah (@fzlrachmansyah) on Apr 7, 2017 at 7:49pm PDT

Unlike the other two destinations, this one is a metropolitan city, but who says that you cant enjoy a metropolitan city on foot? Try walking around Surabaya, where youll be able to experience the hustle at the heart of the city without worrying about getting run over by a car.

Similar to some of the other cities on this list, Surabaya also has a number of interesting walking tours that you can fit into your schedule. You can try walking along Old Town Surabaya, from Jembatan Merah to Tugu Pahlawan, which is rich with the history of the City of Heroes.

Read also: 5 must-visit destinations in Surabaya

Surakarta

A post shared by Mam Reni (@renita_rsd) on Feb 20, 2017 at 6:55pm PST

Surakartas personal tagline, the Spirit of Java, does not disappoint. A city with a friendly community and a plethora of cultural treasures, Surakarta has long been a magnet for tourists looking for adventure.

The streets throughout the city are organized and the sidewalks are well-cared for, allowing you to explore the city on foot with ease.

You can start by walking from Slamet Ryadi, the main road, and make stops at Mangkunegaran Palace, Loji Gandrung, Sriwedari Park, as well as Balekambang Park. Be sure that you also set some time aside to go shopping at Triwindu Market and the Solo Grand Mall.

Not far from there, there are many other fascinating historical destinations such as the Danar Hadi Museum and the Radyapustaka Museum. (tha/kes)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, July 23, 2017 12:05 1938 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97aa01ca7 1 News Jember-Fashion-Carnival,tourism,Tourism-Ministry,Jember,#tourism,Carnival-City,carnival Free

Tourism Minister Arief Yahya has awarded Jember regency in East Java by naming it Indonesia's Carnival City for its international standards.

The award comes in time for the 16th annual Jember Fashion Carnival (JFC).

"Everyone recognizes the world-class JFC and to realize that the Tourism Ministry has established Jember as a Carnival City," Arief said in a statement, as quoted by Antara news agency on Friday.

Read also: Four Indonesian destinations named best dive sites in Asia by CNN

The carnival's theme this year is "Victory of Unity in Diversity," Arief noted, saying that the it could inspire other festivals in Indonesia to celebrate the same values.

The minister said the title, which has officially been conveyed through a decree, aimed to put the spotlight on Jember to raise awareness of the event internationally sphere.

While the high standard creativity delivered at JFC is able to attract foreign tourists, Arief said capitalization of the commercial and financial value of the event still needs to be upgraded and better managed. (liz/kes)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, July 23, 2017 14:05 1938 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97aa0478f 1 News Lake-Toba,Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,foreign-tourists Free

Lake Toba is set to host Spanish orchestra group Vinculos from July 27 until Aug. 2.

Education and Cultural Ministrys Culture director-general Hilmar Farid said the ministry initiated the event to encourage cultural, social and educational exchange between the two countries.

Read also: 2017 Lake Toba tourism calendar released

This doesnt only act as a diplomatic medium and cultural interaction between Spain and Indonesia, but also a tool to promote tourism in Lake Toba as one of Indonesias ten priority destinations, said Hilmar.

Among the groups scheduled activities in the area are visiting special needs children at the Ephata school in Luguboti Tobasa district, participating in music workshops with elementary and junior high students in Bakara village, and exploring traditional houses in Sianjur Mula-Mula village.

Read also: Paradise awaits: Pulau Macan village & eco resort

[Around 50 members of Vinculos] will also visit Lumban Suhi-suhi Samosir village where they will meet Batak ulos weavers, Hilmar added.

Vinculos is an initiative made by Siero Chamber Orchestra (OCAS) Spain who champions for social and cultural integration through music. The group has performed in 12 countries, conducted more than 300 music concerts using more than 150 musical instruments and held about 100 workshops and masterclasses.

After Lake Toba, the Madrid-based group is slated to travel to the Thousand Islands, also one of Indonesias 10 priority destinations. (kes)
Tentang Situs Slot Online Resmi MGS88 Nama Situs  MGS88 Minimal Deposit  Rp. 10.000,- (Sepuluh Ribu Rupiah) Proses Deposit   2 Menit Metode Deposit  Bank Transfer,  Pulsa,  E-Wallet Judi Online Terbaik  Slot Online,  Judi Bola,  Casino Online,  Togel Online,  Tembak Ikan Provider Slot Gacor Mudah Maxwin  Pragmatic Play,  PGSoft,  MicroGaming,  Habanero Slot Gacor Gampang Menang  Gates of Olympus,  Sweet Bonanza,  Wild West Gold,  Starlight Princess Win Rate 98%

RTP Live Slot Gacor Tertinggi Hari Ini Terbaru Terlengkap

Selamat datang di halaman RTP live dan informasi soal slot gacor hari ini dari situs MGS88 yang setiap hari selalu update. Berdasarkan RTP Live MGS88, Anda bisa mendapatkan informasi tentang slot online yang saat ini yang sedang Gacor atau onfire dengan persentase yang terbukti akurat, ini bisa menjadi rekomendasi anda sebelum memilih permainan slot online di situs MGS88. Cek RTP Slot sekarang juga bosku

Klik Provider Slot Untuk Mengetahui RTP Slot Secara Real Time

Selamat datang bagi kalian yang sedang mencari situs RTP Live terlengkap dan terkini hari ini. Sangat sesuai jika Anda mengunjungi website MGS88 RTP live untuk informasi tentang permainan slot yang lagi gacor dengan slot RTP yang terupdate. Persentase kemenangan yang kami berikan tentunya diambil dengan data yang sangat valid dan hanya untuk permainan slot yang tersedia di situs MGS88. RTP yang tersedia juga akan selalu diperbarui setiap hari berdasarkan level kemenangan yang diberikan kepada member kami.

Memang sih untuk bermain slot itu tergantung hoki dari setiap pemain, Namun RTP live atau bocoran slot dari yang kami sediakan ini adalah data autentik dari banyaknya pemain yang telah bermain dan mencapai kemenangan tinggi. Sederhananya, kalau banyak pemain yang menang di dalam 1 permainan slot, karena itu permainan slot tersebut akan mempunyai persentase RTP yang sangat tinggi.

Namun kami tegaskan sekali lagi, ini bukan sebuah paksaan kami situs MGS88 untuk anda bermain di game slot yang mana. Ini bisa dijadikan sebagai referensi atau tolok ukur, boleh dicoba kalau anda mempunyai feel yang kuat dalam memainkan permainan game slot. Anda dapat mengakses kapan saja dan di mana saja selama anda siap bermain. Jangan ragu untuk bertanya ya seputar pola putaran terhadap kami, sebab kami juga menyediakannya loh.

Apa itu RTP Live?

RTP Live ialah informasi mengenai persentase tertinggi saat ini dari hasil RTP Live dengan bocoran kemenangan pemain saat ini. RTP Live merupakan singkatan dari Return To Play atau bisa juga diartikan sebagai Return to Player. Karena itu, para pemain slot sekarang jika ingin mengetahui seberapa besar kemenangannya, bisa dengan memainkan permainan yang akan dimainkannya dan bisa untung dengan mudah dan tentunya maksimal.

Apa itu RTP Slot?

RTP Slot juga dikenal sebagai return to player atau pengembalian ke Pemain. RTP slot ialah persentase dari nilai pengembalian semua uang yang dipertaruhkan pemain dari waktu ke waktu. Dengan kata lain, RTP juga dianggap sebagai salah satu fitur slot yang mengembalikan uang pemain saat pemain kalah.

Persentase digunakan untuk menghitung RTP dalam permainan slot. Misalnya, jika slot memiliki RTP 97%, itu berarti untuk setiap 100.000 koin yang hilang di slot, slot dapat mengembalikan 97.000. Jika Anda mengetahui RTP sebuah permainan slot, Anda dapat memutuskan permainan slot mana yang akan dimainkan tanpa kerugian besar.

Apakah Angka Persentase RTP Slot Itu Penting?

Biasanya pemain slot itu tidak memperhatikan RTP dalam permainan yang akan dimainkan, biasanya setelah anda mengisi saldo utama anda akan langsung buru-buru memainkannya. Yang terakhir 90-96% mempengaruhi jumlah kemenangan. Semakin tinggi jumlah RTP yang digunakan, semakin luas peluang untuk mendapatkan keuntungan.

Akan namun itu segala tak secara 100% menjamin kemenangan kau dalam bermain, RTP itu cuma sebagai kalkulasi pengeluaran anda saja selama bermain slot.Dengan adanya RTP, kau dapat mengerjakan pengaturan atas uang yang akan kau pertaruhkan nanti pada ketika bermain.Untuk itu pada ketika kau bermain slot dan telah mengalami banyak kekalahan di satu permainan, direkomendasikan kau pindah ke permainan slot lainnya yang RTP nya lebih tinggi dari permainan yang tadi kau mainkan.

Keuntungan Menggunakan Bocoran RTP Slot Hari Ini

Situs MGS88 Akan dengan senang hati akan beberapa keuntungan yang didapatkan jika anda bermain slot dengan menggunakan RTP Live yang telah disediakan. Berikut Keuntungannya :

Peluang Kemenangan Meningkat Tentu saja, saat bermain slot online, menang adalah hal yang paling penting. Di sinilah RTP berperan sebagai metode atau metode baru yang akan membantu Anda memilih permainan slot persentase tinggi. Mendapat variasi dalam Memainkan Game Slot Pastinya banyak pemain slot online yang hanya memainkan 3-5 permainan slot saja. Namun dengan RTP Live slot akan memberikan banyak game slot lain yang bisa anda coba. Tentunya semua permainan slot memiliki potensi kemenangan yang besar, jadi jangan hanya mengandalkan beberapa permainan saja. Menambah Pengalaman Dalam Bermain Slot Keuntungan terakhir adalah Anda tentu saja menambah pengalaman dan keahlian dalam permainan slot online. Dengan berbagai macam permainan slot yang dimainkan, Anda pasti mengetahui karakteristik dari setiap permainan slot yang Anda mainkan. Akibatnya, Anda pasti bisa dianggap sebagai pemain slot yang andal, yang pasti akan meningkatkan peluang Anda untuk menang besar menggunakan RTP.

Daftar 8 Situs Dengan RTP Slot Live Tertinggi Hari Ini

Ada banyak penyedia mesin slot online di internet. Tetapi tidak semuanya memiliki peluang tinggi atau RTP Live Slot yang sangat tinggi. Tapi jangan khawatir, berikut ini adalah situs slot gacor yang akan memberikan bocoran slot dengan RTP Live Tertinggi:

RTP Live Slot Pragmatic Play (RTP Slot 97.85%) RTP Live Slot PG Soft (RTP Live 96.15%) RTP Live Slot Habanero (RTP Slot 95.89%) RTP Live Slot CQ9 (RTP Live 98.83%) RTP Live Slot Spade Gaming (RTP Live 94.99%) RTP Live Slot Micro Gaming (RTP Slot 95.39%) RTP Slot Live Top Trend Gaming (RTP Live 96.14%) RTP Slot Live JOKER123 (RTP Live 97.45%)

Itulah Daftar 8 Provider Slot Gacor dengan RTP Live teratas diatas tentunya kami analisa terlebih dahulu. Anda bisa membuktikannya langsung dengan mengklik banner atau meprovider game slot yang sudah tersedia di atas. Saran kami yaitu Anda harus memainkan semua penyedia slot di atas untuk mencapai peluang kemenangan terbaik.

Daftar Slot RTP Live Tertinggi Sering Kasih Jackpot

Selain mempertimbangkan RTP Slot Gacor yang ada, sebenarnya ada banyak faktor penting untuk menang dalam permainan judi online. Sebab ada banyak game yang memiliki fitur dan mekanisme unik dan bisa membantu anda meraih Jackpot yang sangat besar.

Berikut ini akan kami ulas daftar 5 game slot paling populer karena sering memberikan jackpot:

RTP Live Gates of Olympus Gates of Olympus adalah game slot teraneh dan terbaik di Indonesia. Karena permainan mesin slot ini paling populer karena kakek Zeus dapat mengizinkan pengganda x500. Selain itu, fitur dan mekanik Gates of Olympus juga sangat menguntungkan untuk memenangkan Grand Jackpot. Secara teoritis, RTP slot langsung Gates of Olympus bernilai 96,50%, yang berarti peluang Anda untuk memenangkan MaxWin cukup tinggi. RTP live Sweet Bonanza Sweet Bonanza adalah permainan slot terpopuler kedua. Game slot bertema buah dan permen yang lezat ini sepertinya akan menarik banyak perhatian karena tergolong slot gacor yang mudah menang. Secara teoritis, slot Sweet Bonanza RTP bernilai 96,48%, yang berarti peluang Anda cukup tinggi untuk memenangkan jackpot. RTP Live Wild West Gold Wild West Gold adalah permainan slot bertema koboi yang juga populer di kalangan penggemar konspirasi. Permainan slot Wild West Gold sendiri kerap menawarkan kejutan jackpot bagi para pemainnya. Selain itu, nilai RTP Live Slot menunjukkan indeks tertinggi hari ini, yang berarti sangat layak dan sangat direkomendasikan. RTP Live Starlight Princess Slot Starlight Princess ini memiliki gaya dan fitur yang mirip dengan Gates of Olympus. Perbedaannya hanya pada desain dan karakter gamenya saja, karena memiliki fitur dan mekanik yang sama tentunya RTP slot teoritis pada game slot ini sama yaitu 96,50%. RTP Live Cash Elevator Mungkin sebagian dari Anda baru mengenal slot Cash Elevator. Namun dari data benchmark yang diungkap, ternyata banyak sekali yang menikmati permainan slot ini. Dengan fitur dan mekanisme unik seperti Lift up and down asli, slot ini juga memiliki slot RTP Live dasar 96,64% yang juga memiliki mekanisme yang sangat menguntungkan untuk memperlancar tingkat kemenangan besar.

Bocoran Jam Main Slot Gacor Hari Ini

Dalam bermain permainan slot online itu tidak bisa dilakukan dengan sembarangan yah. Jadi, Jika anda bermain pada waktu tertentu seperti yang akan kita bahas sesaat lagi, ada kemungkinan anda untuk mendapatkan kemenangan lebih tinggi. Jam RTP Slot Gacor merupakan bocoran jam main slot yang akan memberikan anda kapan waktu yang pas dalam bermain game slot.

Tentu saja seluruh provider slot online memiliki jam tertentu dalam memberikan peluang kepada para pemainnya untuk mendapatkan kemenangan. Disini kami akan memberikan anda Bocoran Jam Slot Gacor yang Paling Akurat Hari ini:

Jam Slot Gacor Pragmatic Play 02:30 WIB - Jam 05:25 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Habanero 14:26 WIB - Jam 17:38 WIB Jam Slot Gacor CQ9 00:45 WIB - Jam 05:53 WIB Jam Slot Gacor PG SOFT 14:25 WIB - Jam 17:35 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Joker123 17:41 WIB - Jam 20:42 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Microgaming 22:30 WIB - Jam 00:35 WIB

MGS88: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Pay4D Resmi dan Terpercaya

MGS88 adalah situs game slot online Gacor terbaru yang bermitra dengan Pay4D, Pay4D sendiri merupakan daftar situs game slot online terpercaya dengan berbagai macam permainan judi yang mudah dimenangkan seperti Game Bola, Casino Online, Slot Pay4D, Tembak Ikan dan Pay4D Online Permainan togel seperti Singapura, Hongkong, Sydney dan lain-lain. Tujuan utama kami adalah menjadi situs judi online Pay4D yang menyediakan layanan judi online terbaik di Indonesia.

Kami juga salah satu situs resmi PAY4D di Indonesia yang pasti akan membayarkan semua kemenangan kepada semua member kami, karena kepercayaan dari semua member kami adalah prioritas utama kami sebagai mesin slot 4d Asia terbaik di Asia, khususnya di Indonesia.

Dalam melakukan sistem transaksi sistem simpanan dapat dilakukan dengan mudah melalui mobile banking dan electronic banking berupa bank BCA, BSI, BRI, BNI, Cimb Niaga, Permata dan Mandiri. Selain itu, transaksi e-wallet juga tersedia melalui Dana, Gopay, LinkAja dan Ovo serta dapat digunakan untuk pulsa tanpa dipotong.

Untuk mempermudah dan kenyamanan dalam melakukan registrasi atau melakukan setiap transaksi, MGS88 menyediakan layanan live chat dan Whatsapp terhubung langsung dengan customer service online 24 jam.

Mengenal Istilah Dalam RTP SLOT

Di slot RTP Live Anda akan melihat berbagai fitur yang mungkin tidak Anda pahami masing-masing. Namun jangan khawatir, disini sebagai situs slot gacor MGS88 kami akan memberikan penjelasan lengkap mengenai tentang istilah yang ada di RTP SLOT dibawah ini.
VP Boakai (L) & Speaker Nuquay (R)

Photo - Courtesy of FPA

That Ambassador Joseph Boakais pick of Representative Emmanuel Nuquay as vice standard bearer made winners and losers an understatement. Its indisputable, even though it was much a crime in the view of some UPists for me to have pointed to it in Part One of the series. Of more than a dozen of calls received from friends and readers over the opinion piece, a few of them were crudely dissenting. From the perspective of the dissenters, the Boakai-Nuquay ticket is God-sent; it got no blemish, and the losers are rather the opposition and the winners are UPists. Losers and winners in Boakais Nuguay pick, they contend, is a figment of critics imagination.



But despite the few riotous reactions to the opinions in Part One, there is something crystal clear beneath the dark armpit of the UP architecture: Unity Party as it was before the Nuquay pick, along with all the euphoria for a Boakai presidency from within and without, is never going to be the same again. Crisis has set in. Disgruntlement never thought off is seething about. Harmony has shrunk and ongoing efforts to downplay the aftereffects of the Nuquay selection and to heal the resultant internal disquiet and instability will hardly return the party to status quo ante.



The point is, Vice President Boakai had raised so much expectation and it is unspeakably hurtful to betray expectation mostly in politics. It is needless to say that enormous expectation was built up as promises to various interest groups were rationed like nutritional foods in war time. Boakai made friends with and sought to unite politically heterogeneous groups, and each of the groups had believed deeply in him and the promise of proving his running mate. However heterogeneous the then pro-Boakai groups had been, they were all unanimous in the strategy of keeping a distance from the outgoing standard-bearer, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, not only because she leaves behinds a troubling legacycolossally poor output on the domestic frontsomething that is highly unfavorable in a highly volatile campaign periodbut also because not too many of the high profile persons in the interest groups have faith in the Presidents political games. Thus, keeping Sirleaf out of the UP as subtly as possible, even if it means pushing her on the Liberty Party, was a shrewd overture that newcomers and outsiders as well as the mainstream UP had seemingly consented to. Some of Boakais public statements on questions of perceived or real relationship between him and his boss lady, President Sirleaf, provided solid though faint clues about the strategy to lift the outgoing standard bearer and her excess baggage off the back of UP. And I still believe the Nuquay pick is like a stab of two-edged sword not only in the back of new progressive forces that were being purportedly formed to take Boakai to the Executive Mansion but also is a disturbing wedge that prematurely exposes the 2017 UP standard bearers untrustworthiness, something that is clearly damaging to the cohesion of the progressive post-Sirleaf forces.



For the sake of politics, UPists would perpetually disagree with assertions in Part One of this series perhaps until they get a rude awakening in the eventualities of things in the next few weeks. Meanwhile there are several other troubles spilling over from the Nuquay pick that Ambassador Boakai and other UPists will be able to get from Part Two of the series. But it takes only a pragmatic heart and a sixth political sense to see and appreciate the hovering troubles.



To understand and appreciate some of the troubles, one first must ask: Whos the Emmanuel Nuquay? What has been his political trajectory in the last few years? If honest integrity test was performed on him, how would he fare? As a young manhis age purportedly being a factor in his pick, whos Nuquays role model? Who are his pals? Or simply ask: Considering all those that Boakai really put into the vetting and due diligence process of picking his running mate in the last two or more years, did Nuquay stand out prominently and chiefly? And more importantly, does Old man Boakai feel politically secured and comfortable having the Gibi offspring and representative as his principal deputy to whom he owes an obligation to see and deal with at any moment?



There is a tickling but compelling feeling for a critical mind to give adequate time in pondering every single question above. No one is sure if standard bearer Boakai or his team does have that feeling, giving the clouds of complexity and uncertainty that hang over the integrity of his campaign and fears that loom over the stability of his regime were he to win the October polls.



Firstly, a very critical issue portending doom for the Boakai camp is the report which, I know, UP fanatics will battle fiercely. And this is about an invisible hand that shoved Nuquay in the throat of the Vice President and Standard Bearer along with his inner circles. Politics again will not allow them take this assertion seriously, but it is an open secret now that Nuquay was never even at the 10th place on Boakais VSD choice list if the Margibi representative was ever a consideration initially. So, while the Vice President was grappling with the multiplicity of outstanding possible picks, shuffling his cards here and there, he was consistently pestered into considering a batch of recommendees from the Executive Mansion. This means while the UP base and its newfound coalition of new forces were plotting to silently divorce the outgoing standard bearer, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, this Messi of Liberian politics, was also counterplotting in a bid to entrench her claws deep in the flesh of her vice president of 12 years. Should he pick from the pool of new forces and get set for an all out war with politically shrewd Sirleaf who was already charged venomously for Boakais gravitation toward risky radicals or should he sacrifice his UP base along with the coalition of new forces and make amends with them later?



Madam Sirleaf reportedly made threats, which she intensified particularly when Boakai and his team had already shot a couple of her recommendations down flat. The intensification of threats by Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic Liberia, a longtime international civil servant and activist, a Nobel Laureate, meant a lot to just a former Agriculture Minister and a mere Vice President under the madam, Joseph Nyumah Boakai. Ambassador Boakai, who has been a pal of the Madam for the last forty or more years, knows the color of threads she uses to sew garments. She is assumed to be very powerful. She is hugely connected. And others say shes vindictive. Ignoring her threats, shooting down her final recommendee would be an all out warfinancial and material asphyxiation, political strangulation and international embarrassmentgreat weapons she has got at her ready disposal.



The proof of President Sirleafs coercive hand in the Nuquay push is clear like the sky in the summer. The UP vice standard bearer said it. His acceptance speech which was largely a tribute to President Sirleaf says it. Its Madam Sirleaf who brought him into political limelight, he said. Secondly, during his first main press conference following his pick, Nuquay confessed he was never a factor in Amb. Boakais VSB pick. In fact he said he had printed his campaign materials and paraphernalia in preparation for his representative showdown in Margibi County. Surely, VP Boakais search for his VSB predated these campaign preparations by Nuquay. The Old-man began this whole thing many years back. So how did Nuquay get factored into all this?



Three things must be closely considered in finding answers to that question. Firstly, Nuquay has earned mission possible name or mission man portfolio for the Executive Mansion. As House Committee Chair on Ways, Means & Finance and subsequently Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nuquay was a perfect fit to complete presidential projects at the Lower House. From bending representative colleagues hands behind their back to baffle LECs US$42m scandal to plotting a 30-year duty free for Farmington Hotel, all of which reportedly had the shadows of the President hanging over them, constitute a bit of Nuquays mission-possible deals for the Executive Mansion. Secondly, Nuquay reportedly did not envisage the headship of the Lower House, just as he didnt in the VSB pick. In the spirit of complimentarity, the Executive Mansion would prefer the likes of him in prestigious positions. So, while a lot of representatives sought the deposal of former Speaker Alex Tyler and to be replaced with Hans Barchue of Grand Bassa County, the powerful forces knew there was no better agent than Nuquay. So, in a near-mysterious way, Barchue was dumped by the way side for the least-expected but Executive Mansion-sanctioned Nuquay. The powers of bills in Ghana-must-go bags during a dawn-time negotiation got it all possible.



Thirdly, there is a strong ego and imperative for soft-landing after 12 years of presidency. And with colossal audit and media reports charging wanton loot and pillage of state coffers on the books, coupled with TRCs risky recommendations, any outgoing regime will definitely desire soft landing. The array of progressive forces, particularly of indigenous extraction appearing to be linchpin of Amb. Boakais new political movement posed present and clear threat to the pursuit of soft landing. The mainstream Sherman-Paye faction of the Unity Party is also not a lesser threat at all. They all constitute dangerous antithesis to post-presidential comfort. They needed to be subverted. And the perfect fit was none else but mission possible Emmanuel Nuquay. Boakai and the UP had to risk all other considerations to have him as the VSB.



Essentially, therefore, formerly estranged forces headed by President Sirleaf are the winners. The Sherman-Paye UP extraction is a loser. Its needless to say the rise of heretofore these erstwhile estranged forces that has come in the form of mission-possible Nuquay is neither a win for Standard Bearer Boakai. In fact, what worries most pundits is that the Nuquay preference has left the Standard Bearerand God for bade his presidencywith added responsibility. And that responsibility is for Boakai not only to consistently check out where his vice standard-bearers loyalty lies, but also what deputy Nuquay will possibly be talking, plotting and scheming with his outside masters. This could take Boakai a lot of Tubman-style PROs. Its scaring and it will be an interesting match to watch.

We are facing some technical difficulties with our comments scripts. Please use the Facebook comments space provided below:


Given the century-long, continuous path of hypocrisy and political infidelity by the nations political rulers, the Liberian State is heading to an explosion much, much more deadly and all-inclusive than we have seen and experienced in the past, we argue and predict that, if and only if, nothing is done, now, to arrest and prevent the prevailing risen/rising level of lies, deceit, thievery, dishonesty, graft & greed, and indeed, general moral decadence on the part of the very same political rulers and their associates.

This negative socio-cultural, economic and political behavior is so self-evident, known and felt by the majority of the nations population - poor, hungry, un-educated and exploited - that it needs no elaborate lecture or delineation. However, for emphasis and to capture the negative impact of this behavioral condition, it is necessary to cite a few, relevant, significant examples:

1) Slum Democracy

This condition is the result of ignored, unplanned rural-to-urban migration by parents of the under age-30 children. Although relatively un-educated, they populate Monrovias slum enclaves. Now the nations angry, hungry, unemployed and forgotten majority, they dominate and control, will dominate and control, the politics of today and the future. Recently, the youths of Clara Town Community attacked VP Boakai, who was invited as an honoree.

2) The National Legislature  First Branch of Government

This law-making Branch of Government makes laws with loop-holes intended for obedience-disobedience. The Code of Conduct debate is an excellent example. Others are Legislative violations of the laws against dual citizenship (Alien & Nationality Law and Article 28 of the 1986 Constitution) and law against foreign citizens membership of the National Legislature (Article 30 of the 1986 Constitution).

In addition to their generous salary/wage allowances, the Legislative County Caucuses have taken into the private pockets of its members Social & Economic Development Funds provided by the National Government. Examples are the J. J. Dossen Memorial Hospital and the Cape Palmas High School in Maryland County and the Bong County Technical College, now closed by the President for a reported US $6 million fiasco. Indeed, the law-makers, lawyers and their political associates are the Major Law-Breakers in the country. They flout the PPCC law at will in procurement of goods and services. These are, simply, examples, the tip of the iceberg or excesses against the country and people.

3) The Executive  Second Branch of Government

This exposure may, very well, include Mrs. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the 12-year term President of Liberia, now retiring, may, perhaps, have served illegally as President of Liberia in violation of Article 52(a-c) of the 1986 Constitution. Moreover, there appears to be several, troubling questions regarding diplomatic, political, economic and executive management decisions that require answers.

This exercise must begin with the President herself, and her (1), Special Development Fund; (2), Foreign travel allowance; (3), Housing & Offices, since, for almost twelve years, the President has been holding offices at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; (4), Accounting of the Executive Mansion rehabilitation/repairs.

It will be, and is, exposure of all the Honorables holding management positions in the political leaderships of government who are, also, citizens of foreign countries in violation of Law. The Executive Branch of Government leads with, almost, all ministers, agency heads and top executives of state enterprises who, apparently, are foreign citizens:

a) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Liberias diplomatic face to the world, is apparently infested with foreign citizens and Liberian permanent residents of foreign countries.

b) The Super Ministry of Finance & Development Planning (or Development Stealing) is dominated by foreign citizens. This Historic corrupt agency is over-staffed, over-paid and the senior-most dishonest agency of government.

c) The Liberia Revenue Authority (or Revenue Stealing), the off-shoot of the Ministry of Finance & Development Stealing, is, also, dominated by foreign citizens, over-staffed, over-paid Revenue Stealing Authority.

d) State-owned, revenue-generating Enterprises  notably, the NPA, LPRC, NOCAL, LWSC, LEC and related others  are known enclaves for foreign citizens, public dishonesty with corrupt practices.

e) The National Elections Commissions (NEC) will occupy the spotlight of this very important undertaking, because the NEC makes, apparently, subjective, corrupt decisions about issues, the objective facts of which are hidden from the people.

4) The Judiciary  Third Branch of Government

Cllr. Jerome Korkoya, Chairman of the National Elections Commission (NEC), dragged before Associate Justice Philip A. Z. Banks, III, of the nations Supreme Court, in Chambers, on charges of being citizen of a foreign country (USA) with overwhelming, validated evidence. The Supreme Court Associate Justice, His Honor Philip A. Z. Banks, III who, himself, is highly likely to be US citizen, dodged the inevitable decision of guilty verdict against Cllr. Korkoya and issuance of the requested Writ of Prohibition, by recommending that Petitioner (prosecution) takes advantage of the statue by filing a petition for Declaratory Judgment at the Civil Law Court, a lower court.

This suggestion appears to be consistent with Liberian, traditional legal gymnastics which baffle, delay and, eventually, deny justice, because sending the case to lower court, the proven, traditional Den or Storehouse of Liberian legal gymnastics of jury-tempering for cash payments; judges decisions in favor of the highest bidder; massive public dishonesty and corruption; baffling, delays, and denials. The suggestion is tantamount to sending a hungry cat to a house of mice or a hungry lion to a den of antelopes!!

Examples of political control and manipulation of the courts by politics are shown in implementation of the law - Code of Conduct  proposed and guided by the Executive Branch and passed into by the law-makers. The Supreme Court, earlier, held that the law is constitutional and, therefore, legal. But in the laws application, the Supreme Court rendered it toothless and useless by legal gymnastics, based on politics and political control. For, the Court held, recently, in the case of Messrs. Kanwea, Sulunteh and Mills Jones that although they violated the law, but must be permitted to contest.

Indeed, these are the reasonable basis for our argument and prediction that unless we act, now, this nation and people will be in for a re-awakening of another disaster, much, much more destructive than what we had seen and experienced. Because Prevention is better than Cure, we recommend the followingpeaceful and patriotic action:

1. That Cllr. Jerome Korkoya be prosecuted and removed as Chairman of the National Elections Commission(NEC);

2. That the President of Liberia be prosecuted as an accessory, because she knowingly-appointed Cllr. Korkoya who is legally incompetent to hold such position and, thereby, aided/abetted Cllr. Korkoya in the commission of the offense. Therefore, the President must resign or be impeached upon refusal;

3. That the entire corrupt NEC, dominated by illegal dual citizens, be removed and that a new NEC be re-constituted; and

4. That the October 10, 2017 scheduled Presidential/General Elections be postponed to a reasonable date to include superintendents and chiefs of counties, and mayors of cities, consistent with the announced Policy of National Decentralization & Local Governance for necessary Change, Reforms and credible Transformation, for the survival of us all

We are facing some technical difficulties with our comments scripts. Please use the Facebook comments space provided below:


Several public meetings this week in Watertown

Here's a look at who's meeting this week and what they'll be discussing.
Fans of the American TV series ER or Greys Anatomy, or of Robin Cooks medical thrillers, will enjoy Tripti Sharans tales from the gynaecology ward. She keeps the focus on the patients and her emotions, particularly her exasperation at the plight of women who are not empowered like herself  this is an enduring thread running through the stories. Her powers of expression prevent the mundane or the distasteful from becoming abhorrent.

But there is enough blood and gore to satisfy those partial to medical thrillers. Doctors see so much of human misery but can only guess at the precipitating factors that bring people for treatment.

The author relates to us as much as she knows of her female patients stories, changing our own perception of doctors, who seem so clinical and brusque in the few minutes they spare for each case. As per the blurb, this book written by a celebrated doctor and inspired from real life experiences, explores issues ranging from the largely preventable complications experienced during pregnancies, myths and superstitions surrounding them, to emotionally wrenching situations like postpartum depression.

These compelling stories also touch upon topics that society tries to hide under the carpet, such as domestic violence, perversions, altered sexual orientation, rape and incest.

What will no doubt strike the sensitive reader is the implacability of the women who come for treatment, battered into fatalistic acceptance of their lot by a patriarchal society. Their silence is deafening, as most of them do not reveal their entire predicaments despite prodding, disregarding the fact that without full disclosure, the line of treatment cannot be planned properly. But then Indian women are conditioned to neglecting their health in the larger interests of the joint family.

The description of one such woman could apply to so many others, She went numb with shame and grief. She lived in a dumb stupor Among the more macabre stories, heres a glimpse of those that stand out, a rape victim from a village does not utter a word when subjected to medico-legal examination; she later dies of ill health and the crime against her is dismissed because her hymen is still intact.

The pregnant woman with a haemoglobin count of three, which meant years of poor nutrition and neglect, who has an enormous load of housework, leading the doctor to think, Even livestock in the villages are better looked after. Her husband is unwilling to donate blood on the grounds that is a duty of her brothers, reminding us why Indian society regards the girl child as a life-long burden.

He takes her away without treatment, only to return a week later when she is in labour. The poor woman dies during childbirth. The author gives us the shocking statistic that anaemia is a leading cause of maternal death in our country  a condition that can easily be treated with proper diet and medical care. Then there is an unmarried girl with an injury that remains unexplained until it turns out she has hurt herself; if the truth had come out, it would have been a stain on her character.

A village girl wearing her school uniform has a full-term pregnancy but has never gone to a doctor. The author concludes the description of this shocking case with the words, A little girl in her crumpled school uniform and red ribbons would keep knocking at my conscience for a long time. A widow with a septic abortion, who faces the possibility of being shamed for life if her family comes to know the exact nature of her ailment. An HIV positive girl, whose father sold her as soon as she turned 15, is now happily married and wants a baby.

The authors own reactions and normative statements come through the narrative clear and strong  without that, each chapter would read like a newspaper crime report without back stories. As she puts it in one episode, In a fraction of a second, the concerned relatives were gone and in their place, sneered the moral brigade.

Among the patients who completely baffle urbanites like us is a tribal woman with a captivating smile whose uterus had been pierced by an arrow, killing her unborn child, after she was accused by her own community of practising witchcraft. In the same category falls the woman from Jharkhand married into a Haryana family, who is too exhausted by the load of housework to conceive a baby. The string of horror stories should not give the impression that life in a gynaecology ward is a pool of misery.

There are moments of joy, of course, when a brand new human emerges from the chaos of joint families and uncertainties of arranged marriages. For most women, labour was a celebration, preceded by nine months of indulgence by their families On this day, it was not a baby, but a mother, who was born, writes the author.

What were the motivations that prompted a busy doctor to write about her patients in the middle of a busy career? She explains, Through stories I have tried to decipher the conundrum of womens lives at every step and alongside gives a much broader perspective of the factors that interplay in the professional career of a dedicated doctor.

Every story raises a curtain and promises to be a revelation. I, a young ambitious doctor, early in my post-graduate days, dreamt of changing society. I nursed notions that the bad would one day be exposed and punished, and truth shall finally triumph. However, as they say, time is the biggest teacher.

Something inside me had rebelled at this blatant abuse of a woman. Not all women who populate the book are victims. Among the stream of patients, some are more intriguing than others, especially if the story behind their predicament remains a mystery. Truly memorable is the case of a nurse who fakes being pregnant in order to steal a baby from a woman who delivers in the hospital.

Fortunately, she miscalculated that the diffident couple from the village would accept the loss of their baby without a fuss and the parents get back their bundle of joy. The unfortunate fallout of her daring deception is that members of the staff who unwittingly helped her also come under a cloud in the courtroom drama that follows. To end on a positive note, Finally, the tension of the labour room broke with the shrill cry of a healthy baby girl.

The sight of the wailing baby made her suddenly quiet, and a tender smile lit her face. Soon, all grievances were forgotten and the whole family was united in celebrations. I marvelled at the strange psyche that plagues Indian families. Too many people, too much drama. But yes, things were never boring in our great Indian joint family.

(The reviewer is a senior editor, The Statesman, New Delhi)
Citing non-availability of "sufficient evidence", the Canadian government has told India that there is no threat to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and has concluded its investigation into the matter.

In a communication to the Indian authorities, Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has stated that the investigation had been conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Sources in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi told IANS that the Canadian authorities, in the communication, has said that the RCMP investigation has determined that there is no evidence of direct physical threat made towards Amarinder Singh.

It further stated that there was "not sufficient evidence" to file criminal charges or proceed against anyone. The Canadian government said that in view of the findings, the investigation had been concluded.

The Indian High Commission in Canada had lodged a "formal complaint" to Global Affairs-Canada (Canada's foreign office) in April following a threat publicly issued to the Punjab Chief Minister by pro-Khalistan elements during a Vaisakhi Day event in British Columbia's Surrey city.

The threat was part of the hate speeches made by Sikh radicals operating out of Canada.

Videos of the Vaisakhi Parade in Surrey on April 22 were sent to the Canadian foreign ministry as proof.

Indian authorities had also objected to the public display of Khalistan floats with images of slain separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other terrorists, pictures of AK-47s and photographs of former and serving army and police officers who are on the hit-list of Sikh radicals.

MEA sources said that the Canadian authorities were cautioned about the "anti-India propaganda" of the Khalistani elements as India was anticipating trouble. The Canadian foreign ministry, responding to the early warning, said it would take "necessary action".

However, the Khalistani elements were allowed to have a free run and even issued threats on loudspeakers to Amarinder Singh in front of hundreds of people from the Indian community who participated in the April 22 parade. The Canadian provincial police and security agencies were present when all this happened, the sources told IANS.

Amarinder Singh on Friday again stressed the need for Canada to rein in the radical elements, who were "trying to use Canadian soil to spread strife and divisiveness in India".

The Chief Minister raised the issue with Jalandhar-born Canadian MP Rameshwar Singh Sangha, who met him in New Delhi on Friday.

"Such elements, including Khalistani supporters, could not have any impact on the Canadian political environment but they could influence the people of India and vitiate the atmosphere here," Amarinder Singh pointed out.

"The Canadian government should crack down on these forces and ensure that they do not have a free run on social media and other public platforms, the Chief Minister added.

The Amarinder Singh government had, in April, cold-shouldered visiting Canadian Defence Minister of Indian-origin Harjit Singh Sajjan as he travelled to various places in Punjab.

He had refused to meet Sajjan, the first Sikh to be the Defence Minister of a Western country, accusing him and other ministers of Punjab origin in the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of links to radical elements demanding a separate Sikh state of Khalistan.

No minister or senior officer of the Punjab government went to welcome Sajjan or even accompany him during the visit.

Amarinder Singh made it clear that he "would not meet any Khalistani sympathisers".

He was annoyed with the Canadian government since April last year when he was denied permission to visit that country, which has a sizeable Punjabi Diaspora, in the run-up to the Punjab assembly elections. A radical organisation, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), had complained to the Canadian government against the visit.

The Congress leader had to cancel his trip after being told by the Canadian authorities at the last minute that he could not be allowed to visit the country for holding political rallies and meetings. The visit was aimed at wooing influential Non-Resident Indian (NRI) groups in Canada.
The Maharashtra opposition on Sunday failed to project a united front a day before the start of the assembly's monsoon session, with the Nationalist Congress Party skipping the customary combined opposition meeting convened by the

Instead of the usual joint media briefing on the opposition strategy to corner the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena combine, both the Congress and the NCP addressed separate press conferences.

The development came barely a week after cross-voting in the July 17 Presidential election, with both parties claiming that their flock voted in favour of United Progressive Alliance candidate Meira Kumar who lost to National Democratic Alliance's Ram Nath Kovind.

Simultaneously, all opposition parties boycotted the traditional session-eve tea party hosted by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday afternoon.

Talking to the media, Leader of Opposition in the assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil (Congress) and Leader of Opposition in the legislative council Dhananjay Munde (NCP) raised similar issues that they plan to raise during the monsoon session.

These include pending implementation of the farm loan waiver scheme announced last month, controversies surrounding land acquisition for the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway, and malnutrition deaths.

Fadnavis didn't miss the opportunity to take potshots at the opposition on their session-eve differences.

"They (Opposition parties) are now opposing each other. We were also in the opposition, but despite our differences, we jointly went for media briefings," he said.

However, Vikhe-Patil appeared to downplay the issue when questioned about NCP's absence.

"We are united. All is well within the united opposition parties. The NCP wanted to speak on certain other issues, so they are addressing a separate media conference," Vikhe-Patil claimed.

State NCP President Sunil Tatkare blamed the Congress for the session-eve discomfiture and cited 'lack of communication' from the other side.

"There was no communication from the Congress on how to go about during the monsoon session," he said.

Both parties attacked the government on the farm loan waiver, claiming that the ruling coalition had fooled the farmers in the name of writing off their debts.

Fadnavis said he found the entire fracas 'strange'.

"I have got two letters  one from the Congress and other parties, and another from the NCP. There are no new points in them and both the letters are in a common text format," he said mockingly.

Now, all eyes will be on the Congress and the NCP during the monsoon session.

The Maharashtra government plans to take up 21 bills, including 14 new and seven pending ones, during the session.


Police on Sunday arrested three overground workers (OWGs) of militants in summer capital Srinagar and recovered an AK-47 rifle from their possession.

Police sources said here on Sunday that three OWGs of militants were arrested in Tengpora (Batmaloo) area of Srinagar city.

"They were arrested while moving in a car. One AK-47 rifle has been recovered from the possession of these OWGs," sources said.

OWGs are described by the security forces as facilitators of militants who arrange hideouts, ferry weapons and keep an eye on movement of the security forces to alert militants during crackdowns and search operations.


Hitting out at Pakistan for "aiding and abetting terror", NDA's Vice Presidential candidate M Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday reminded it not to forget what happened in 1971 in a reference to the Bangladesh War in which it faced a humiliating defeat.

Naidu was addressing the annual Kargil Parakram Parade here, held in remembrance of soldiers killed in a war with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir's Kargil sector in 1999.

"Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them, they should recall what happened in 1971 Terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion," he said.

Criticising Pakistan for "mixing terrorism with religion" as its state policy, the former Union Minister asserted that Kashmir is an integral part of India and "not an inch" of it will be ceded.

He also urged Pakistan to shun the path of confrontation.

"We are a peace loving people. We never attacked any country. We don't want war, we don't want confrontation. We want to have peace and good relations with our neighbours, but they should also reciprocate," Naidu said.
President Pranab Mukherjee will address the nation on Monday, his last day as the President, a communique from Rashtrapati Bhavan said.

The address will be broadcast from 7.30 p.m. on the national network of All India Radio (AIR) and telecast over all channels of Doordarshan in English, followed by Hindi versions, it said.

Broadcast of the address in English and Hindi on Doordarshan will be followed by broadcast in regional languages by Doordarshan's regional channels.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will hold extensive talks with her Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Monday during which focus is expected to be on the issue of 39 Indians kidnapped by the ISIS three years back from Mosul city.

Al-Jaafari's visit from July 24 to July 28 to India comes two weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the liberation of Mosul, the second biggest city in his country, from the ISIS, which marked a major milestone for the Iraqi security forces.

In their talks, the two sides will to take stock of bilateral relations and explore ways to enhance cooperation in areas of energy and trade.

Iraq has been one of the major suppliers of crude oil to India.

On the visit by al-Jaafari, the external affairs ministry has said the two sides will discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.

"The visit is expected to add further impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement," the MEA had said on Friday.

As liberation of Mosul brightened chances of information about the kidnapped Indians, Swaraj, in a meeting with their relatives last week, had said that they might be languishing in a jail in Badush in northwest of Mosul where fighting was going on.

However, a media report from Badush yesterday said the jail now is an abandoned structure and has been unoccupied for weeks.

Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh was sent to Iraq days after the Iraqi PM announced victory in the fight to liberate Mosul.

Swaraj had told the family members that an Iraqi official quoting intelligence sources had told Singh that the kidnapped Indians were deployed at a hospital construction site and then shifted to a farm before they were put in a jail in Badush.

She had said Al-Jaafari may bring fresh information about the kidnapped Indians, mostly from Punjab.

The volume of bilateral trade in 2016-17 was nearly USD 13 billion.

"Iraq contributes significantly to India's energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to us (over 37 MMT during 2016-17)," the MEA has said.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is also scheduled to meet the Iraqi foreign minister who will be accompanied by a senior-level official delegation.

Al-Jafaari will travel to Mumbai on July 26 and will be back in Delhi on July 27.
Rajasthani food is a perfect blend of traditional Indian culture, nutritious food and rich spices for the taste buds. Khandani Rajdhani in Park Street offers the wholesome dining experience of Rajasthan to the food crazy city of Kolkata. The restaurant has a traditional and cultural ambiance. It emits a family like vibe that is why it's called Khandani, said

Soumali Chakraborty, marketing manager, Rajdhani Thali.

The large steel platter laid out beautifully attracts people from all communities for the ultimate maharaja style experience.

The guests are welcomed with Aarti and a Tikka on the forehead as part of the tradition. They believe in the age 

old saying of Atithi Devo Bhava and treat their guests with hospitality.

The thali consists of 26 different dishes like Dal Bati Churma, Paneer Rajwadi, Aloo Kofta Lasuniya, Palak Moong Dal, Phulka, Puri, Papad, Jodhpuri Khichdi, Steamed Rice, Butter Milk, Pineapple Jalebi and many more.

Each katori is a medley of colours, textures and flavours that complements each items on the plate. To keep the food highly authentic, the entire kitchen staff are from Rajasthan. The chefs are trained at the head office of Rajdhani at Mumbai and are called corporate chefs.

These chefs then go to different outlets of the restaurant on a rotation basis to train the outlet chef.

The place is specific about the size, colour and quality of the vegetables it buys from the vendors. There is a chef

to specially check the texture, freshness, smell, colour and taste of the food before it is served to the guests. The restaurant has a sign on the kitchen door that says Rasoi mai apka swagat hai. People enter the kitchen not just to give complements but can also make their own Roti! This also gives the customers the chance to see the hygiene and authenticity of the food.

There is a traditional copper plate at the entrance of Rajdhani. The delighted guests can hit the plate with a stick

before leaving. The reply to this is Hao Jo which means Do come back in Gujarati. This practice is called Aao Thali

Bajao through which the guests express how much they loved the food and the service.

Apart from Rajasthani food, the restaurant also serves extraordinary Gujarati and Maharashtrian food. Jazzed

up items such as Pizza Dhokla and Mogerdal Bhakarwadi are definitely a must try. Undhiyu is a Rajasthani Food Festival celebrated during the winter with great enthusiasm on a regular basis.

This makes the guests feel closer to the culture and tradition. Not only this, Mango Festival is also celebrated in the months of summer. The serving staff are really hospitable and urge the guests to take more in a kind yet persuasive manner.

Khandani Rajdhani truly is the King of Thali.
Unfortunately, the democratic process, prevailing in the rest of India, has not been allowed to take its roots in Jammu and Kashmir. This country had an opportunity to retrieve the situation in 1975.

While the Sheikh returned to power after his release from imprisonment, he agreed to accept Jammu and Kashmir as

an integral part of India by getting a resolution passed by the state Assembly on condition that all the Acts and Ordinances issued by New Delhi since 1953 would be reviewed.

The Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah agreement was never placed before Parliament. Neither did the promised review materialise.

New Delhis mistakes were compounded when the National Conference (NC) government led by Farooq Abdullah was suddenly dismissed in 1984, to be followed by an alliance between the NC and the Congress (I). The cumulative effect of these developments and attempts to treat Kashmir as a rebellious province has been the alienation of the people, particularly those living in the Valley.

Our neighbour in the West has been taking advantage of this, although the condition of the Kashmiris living in Azad Kashmir, and in Gilgit and Baltistan, under Pakistans control, is no better.

The demand for independence, raised by Kashmiris from time to time, has been used more as a bargaining point in

negotiations with New Delhi and did not enjoy overwhelming popular support till the 1990s when a virtual insurgency had

erupted in Kashmir because of the central governments policy towards the state that was determined by the exigencies of power in New Delhi.

The militancy had reached its peak in the early 1990s and continued till the middle of the decade, aided and abetted by Pakistan from where hordes of jihadis belonging to JeM, LeT and sundry other pro-Pakistan militant organisations,

infiltrated to the Indian side of the LoC to support the separatists and militants.

In response to the murders, kidnapping, extortion and violence perpetrated by the militants, the police and the security forces often resorted to extra-judicial action, and kept people under detention, without trial, for long periods, thereby alienating the populace.

The human rights situation deteriorated and according to the US State Departments country profile on human rights,

based on published sources, 2300 people were killed in Kashmir in 1991, including 900 civilians, 1300 alleged militants and 155 members of the security forces.

Perhaps for the first time the Muslims in the Valley sided with the separatists, and the much talked about Kashmiriyat ~ a tradition of harmony and tolerance based on the Sufi culture, the hallmark of Kashmir ~ lost its significance as the Kashmiri Pundits had to leave their home in the Valley in search of safety and security.

Nearly 200000 Kashmiri Pundits are now living in Jammu, Delhi and other places. Intolerance is being fuelled by the activities of the ultra-nationalists in India, bent identifying nationalism with Hindutva, which is antithetical to the secular spirit of the Constitution.

The situation in Kashmir improved after the setting up of an elected government in 1996, under the leadership of Dr

Farooq Abdullah, and by the beginning of the present century a semblance of normality was restored, with elections being held to the Assembly in 2002 and 2008 peacefully, partly because of the improvement in India- Pakistan relations, especially during the years 2004-07.

Adoption of several measures by the government to ameliorate peoples grievances and their disenchantment

with the activities of the militant separatists also contributed to these developments.

But some of the basic problems of the state such as the imbalances in the economic development of the three regions of the state ~ Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh ~ and the issue of distribution of seats to these regions with their distinctive identities for election to the Assembly and Parliament needed attention.

But the political class failed to look beyond the immediate gains. That the fragile peace could be broken at any time was demonstrated by the crisis over the Amarnath land issue in 2008 that pushed Jammu and Kashmir almost to the edge, and again, in September-October, 2014 in the aftermath of the devastating floods.

This was the result of skewed development policies pursued by successive governments. The anger of the people ntensified over the non-fulfillment of promises relating to reconstruction. Kashmiris blamed both the state and central governments for their woes. The governments iron-fist approach to deal with the traders strike, called to protest

against the governments failure to provide relief to the people, only worsened the situation.

Thus the condition was ripe for further trouble in Kashmir and the spark was provided by the killing of Burhan Wani in July 2016. After his death, a new brand of militancy was palpable in Kashmir as the youth took to the streets and pelted stones at the security forces to vent their anger.

Unable to cope with the situation the security forces retaliated by firing pellet guns at the stone-pelting youth, thereby killing some and incapicitating several others. This created a

cycle of violence which has alienated large segments of the population.

The unprecedented violence in Kashmir today, leading to the death of both civilians and security personnel was triggered by the decision of the Election Commission to hold the by-election in the Srinagar constituency, and the election to the 11 seats in the State Legislative Council,

despite warnings from the Home Ministry that the situation was not propitious for holding the election. The situation is fast moving out of control and urgent steps are imperative to contain the crisis. But the government seems to be clueless.

The explosive situation that prevailed in Kashmir in 2016 in the wake of the killing of Burhan Wani was

brought under control, thanks to the operations of the security forces who had also suffered casualties, and especially after the onset of the winter that led to a decline in infiltration from across the LoC.

But this was a temporary lull, as no serious attempt was made to reach out to the people and address their grievances. What was required was a dialogue with all the stakeholders, including the separatists, (the APHC) leaders, and even the protesting youth, as suggested by Lt. Gen. DS Hooda, with long experience of working in Kashmir in different capacities, to search for a middle ground.

The former Prime Minister Vajpayee did not hesitate to talk to the Hurriyat leaders, and his efforts did bring about at least a semblance of normality in the state as witnessed in the first decade of this century. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti is now advocating a similar solution. The Army Chief should desist from making tactless statements that only fuel controversies.
Wei, a Chinese farmer hated seeing a squalid temple on the daily walk to his field in the Fujian province. He had no money for paint or masonry. He just took a broom and cleaned it thoroughly. He did it every week and, before leaving, lit incense. One night he was told in a dream that he would be rewarded for his good work: he would find a treasure

in a cave behind the temple. He was to share it with his neighbours.

He found nothing but a single tea shoot in the cave. He took it home, planted and nurtured it, and, when the bush grew, he gave cuttings to all he knew. He even made money by selling the cuttings in the market. Everybody agreed it was best tea they had ever tasted, a real treasure.

The plant came to be known as Tieguanyin, the goddess of mercy. Now the goddess presides over her merciful potion in millions of home, a drink the world most consumes second only to water. Are you bored or tired? Drink some tea. Are you distressed and unhappy? Try a cup of tea. Are you happy? For Heavens sake, celebrate with a large pot of tea.

These, at least, were the counsel of my dear father. He loved tea.

He would nevern dream of letting his wife, let alone his undiscriminating son (me), buy tea; he went to a special store and had the storekeeper mix different black teas to his specification. The day he retired from work, he even took over

the ritual of making the morning tea; mother happily relinquished, for she continued to work. I gladly stayed away from their dawn debut. I did not care to leave my bed that early. In any case  now it may be revealed  I did not care for fathers strong brew.

My pedestrian palate took many years more to wake up to the charm of tea. I love even its short, simple name. The Chinese who have discovered all sorts of unpleasant things like diabetes to decimal fractions seem to have found tea as the ultimate solace. They called the stuff te in Min Chinese and cha in Mandarin Chinese. The Dutch took a leading role in tea trade and popularized the term tea, which entered French and Spanish with minor variation, while the Portuguese traders settled in Macau adopted the Cantonese variation cha and brought it into Persian, Turkish,

Korean and Japanese.

How did it all begin? The idea of pouring boiling water on the cured leaves of Camellia Sinensis and getting a beverage

probably started as a medicinal exercise, until the Han dynasty in China made it into an elite drink at the start of the Common Era. The Tang dynasty, which started larger cultivation in mountains, helped the practice grow.

In Indias Himalayan region too tea was extensively used as a drink with a medical value. Slowly tea became fashionable in the Netherlands, Germany and France. Catherine of Braganza brought her taste to the English court in the 17th century when she married Charles II and the British started the practice of mixing milk and sugar with tea.

Black tea soon outpaced green tea in consumption and the tea trade multiplied swiftly. To break the Chinese monopoly, the British tried several times in the 19th century to bring plants from China secretly and plant those in their Indian colony, until they found native plants in Darjeeling and Assam and in Sri Lanka.

They even offered free land to Europeans who agreed to cultivate tea. Good tea isnt easy to cultivate. Tea plants require acidic soil, warm climate and at least fifty inches of rain. They take a long time to mature: three years to harvest and

five to nine years to produce seeds. There are of course many strains, classified mainly by leaf size: the Chinese are small, the Assamese large and the Cambodian intermediate.

The plants can grow large, but they are pruned to be accessible for harvesting every two weeks. Only two inches of leaves and buds, called flushes, are picked at a time. In tea cultivation quality is paramount. Tea processing is no easier. White tea is wilted (water-extracted) but unoxidized (panroasted); popular black tea, called red tea by the Chinese, is fully wilted and oxidized; oolong tea is wilted and partly oxidized; green and yellow tea are both unwilted and unoxidized. Tastes vary, and the industry seems eager to respond with a larger variety.

All loose and bagged tea is blended, with varied tastes in mind. There is also tea to which a special flavor is added. For a change I have had tea with bergamot, as in Earl Gray, or tea with orange flavor, as in Constant Comment. Tea with mint is very common.

Tea for me is also memory. Tea is my parents sitting on the deck and sipping a morning cup before the world or children

interrupted their peaceful hour. Tea is my college mates thrusting a stained cup at me in a smoke-filled cafeteria to celebrate an electoral victory.Tea is my favorite professor, Amlan Datta, telling me that tea is not just for taste but also for flavour and I should try jasmine tea.

Tea is the Roys passing me a steaming cup after another on a breezy terrace in Jodhpur Park. Tea is the only pathetic item I could afford when I persuaded a pretty coed in the university to join me in a restaurant. Tea, glorious

tea, is what we drank in abundance when I and fellow oarsmen won a minor event in a rowing regatta. Tea, bitter tea, is

what I agonizingly sipped in a hospital cafe when my baby daughter underwent surgery. I have had tea in tiny clay pots in Indian railways stations, in plastic cups in Colombian buses, in delicate china in Hong Kongs legendary Peninsular Hotel, from Janes large Chinese teapot, from my Russian neighbors showy samovar, from shiny, nondescript

machines in Virginias motels, from the tiny Vietnamese contraption a friend gave me.

I remember drinking tea with shift workers in a factory where I was an intern, with actors during break in a play I was

stage-managing, with guerillas in Kathmandu, refugees in Cuba, tourists in Venice and students on a boat from Germany to Switzerland.

Through all these memories is the strongest one: mother, then a sprightly young woman, offering me my first cup of

Darjeeling tea in India. India has changed a lot since I lived there. One way it hasnt is that people still offer a cup of tea the moment I step into a home. I never say No.

(The writer is a Washington-based international development advisor and had worked with the World Bank. He can be reached at [email protected])
Digital holograms  3D images recorded using lasers  may be our best bet for finding alien life, scientists say.

No probe since NASA's Viking program in the late 1970s has explicitly searched for extraterrestrial life. Rather, the focus has been on finding water.

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus has a lot of water, but even if life does exist there in some microbial fashion, the difficulty for scientists on Earth is identifying those microbes from 790 million miles away.

"It's harder to distinguish between a microbe and a speck of dust than you'd think," said Jay Nadeau, research professor at California Institute of Technology in the US.

Enceladus has enormous geysers, venting water vapour through cracks in the moon's icy shell, regularly jet out into space.

When the Saturn probe Cassini flew by Enceladus in 2005, it spotted water vapour plumes in the south polar region blasting icy particles at nearly 2,000 kilometres per hour to an altitude of nearly 500 kilometres above the surface.

Scientists calculated that as much as 250 kilogrammes of water vapour were released every second in each plume.

Since those first observations, more than a hundred geysers have been spotted.

Water blasting out into space offers a rare opportunity, said Nadeau. While landing on a foreign body is difficult and costly, a cheaper and easier option might be to send a probe to Enceladus and pass it through the jets, where it would collect water samples that could possibly contain microbes.

Some strategies for demonstrating that a microscopic speck is actually a living microbe involve searching for patterns in its structure or studying its specific chemical composition.

"Looking at patterns and chemistry is useful, but I think we need to take a step back and look for more general characteristics of living things, like the presence of motion," he said.

To study the motion of potential microbes from Enceladus's plumes, Nadeau proposed using an instrument called a digital holographic microscope that has been modified specifically for astrobiology.

In digital holographic microscopy, an object is illuminated with a laser and the light that bounces off the object and back to a detector is measured.

This scattered light contains information about the intensity of the scattered light and about its phase  a property that can be used to tell how far the light travelled.

With the two types of information, a computer can reconstruct a 3D image of the object  one that can show motion through all three dimensions.

To study the technology's potential utility for analysing extraterrestrial samples, researchers obtained samples of water from the Arctic, which is sparsely populated with bacteria.

With holographic microscopy, Nadeau was able to identify organisms with population densities of just 1,000 cells per millilitre of volume, similar to what exists in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, such as subglacial lakes.

That low threshold for detection, coupled with the system's ability to test a lot of samples quickly (at a rate of about one millilitre per hour) and its few moving parts, makes it ideal for astrobiology, Nadeau said.
Around 47,000 Sudanese expatriates are expected to return home from Saudi Arabia within coming days, Sudanese Expatriates Organ has said.

"Around 33,000 Sudanese will return from Riyadh and 14,000 from Jeddah, 60 per cent of them workers and craftsmen, maximally by Monday," said Karar Al-Tuhami, Secretary General of the Sudanese Expatriates Organ, at a press conference on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Al-Tuhami added that the returnees would hold right to go back to Saudi Arabia in case they adjusted their status.

"We are working to avoid any economic impact for the return of this great number, where all the state's bodies and institutions are working harmoniously to reintegrate the returnees in the society," he said.

He further noted that Sudan's Embassy in Saudi Arabia has completed all procedures for the Sudanese returnees, saying that some of them will leave Khartoum for other states of Sudan.

Last March, the Saudi authorities launched a "Nation without Violator" campaign, availing illegal expatriates three months to adjust their status or leave the country if they fail to pay penalties.

The illegal expatriates who don't leave within the time frame will be forcibly deported or face punishment.
South African President Jacob Zuma has reiterated his call for radical socio-economic transformation to correct the wrongs of apartheid.

South Africa has high rates of unemployment (which hovers around 27 per cent) because of the structure of the economy and labour market  another direct effect of apartheid, Zuma said on Saturday at the launch of the Truman Magubane Family Foundation in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal Province, Xinhua news agency reported.

The foundation is aimed at supporting underprivileged children in various fields. Magubane, 74, is an anti-apartheid hero and spent 15 years in prison in Robben Island off Cape Town.

Zuma said South Africa continues to suffer the consequences of apartheid policies today even as the government led by the African National Congress (ANC) has expanded access to education for all.

"That is why we speak of radical socio-economic transformation: the fundamental change in the structure, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership and control of the economy," Zuma said.

Citing several reasons for changing the structure of the economy, Zuma said South Africa's economy was built around commodities for export to Europe and later the Americas and other regions.

Even roads and rail were constructed so that they led from the mine shafts and the farms straight to the harbours like Durban, according to Zuma.

"Commodity prices are set in the international market. In other words, the minerals come from our land but we do not determine their price," said Zuma.

The large economies buy minerals from South Africa as raw materials and manufacture goods which they sell back to the country at exorbitant prices, he said.

Capitalism works in such a manner that at times more is produced than what can be sold, resulting in the prices being reduced and commodity-based economies suffer, he said.

Historically all the capital is controlled largely by white men, he added.

"They have to protect their hold on the economy even if it means they have to destroy our spirits and take our lives," Zuma said.

South Africa must re-industrialize so that more jobs can be created, he said
Donald Trump's new communications chief has deleted tweets in which he shared views contrary to the US president's own, saying they were a distraction.

The day after he started his new job on Friday, Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier, cleared up his Twitter trail of remarks in which he differs from Trump on illegal immigration, climate change, Islam and even gun control.

Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction. I serve @POTUS agenda & that's all that matters, the new man on the White House job announced on Twitter.

A bit later, Scaramucci followed up with The politics of 'gotcha' are over. I have thick skin and we're moving on to @POTUS agenda serving the American people.

In a 2012 comment he tweeted, he appeared to back many causes long championed by Democrats, describing himself as for Gay Marriage, against the death penalty, and Pro Choice.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer abruptly resigned Friday in protest at Scaramucci's hiring.

In a written statement, Trump said he was grateful for Spicer's work and praised his great television ratings  a reference to Spicer's keenly watched, combative and often- satirised news briefings.

Spicer's departure marked rising tensions in an administration that has seen its legislative agenda falter at the same time it has been buffeted by an investigation into alleged collusion with Russia.
The story behind Asroy is quite heartening. One winter night in December 2009, we wanted to bring warmth to the people sleeping on the streets of Dhaka, says Dr Saeem Arafat Hossain, the president of Asroy.

We distributed warm clothes to them. But in trying to find the root of the solution to end the vicious cycle of poverty, solving the problems of education and proper health care would have to be prioritised. Hence, we decided to work on providing education and healthcare.

Dr Hossain completed his MBBS from Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College. At the beginning, the organisation had a mobile or a floating school at a park in Farmgate, Dhaka.

The whole idea of the school was to reach out to children, who were otherwise unable to attend. The student body of this school consisted of the children on the street.

However, according to Dr Hossain, maintaining the floating school became logistically challenging. Eventually, the founders of the school moved to a permanent address in Hazaribagh, and began providing low-cost education to slum children. In terms of funding, Asroy runs completely on personal donations.

People from all walks of life and several organisations provide both financial and structural support for the day-to-day activities of this noble initiative.

The organisation also encourages people to donate a certain amount of money on special occasions and holidays, raising funds through street and social media campaigns, according to Rokaiya Shatadru, the communications officer at Asroy, also a third year Microbiology student at the University of Dhaka.

The school follows the national curriculum from Play Group to Class V and prepares the children for the Primary Education Completion examinations.

We also offer extra-curricular activities like music, art, and moral science lessons for the cultural and mental development of the children, as we believe that by engaging in these activities, they will become responsible and well-rounded individuals, asserts Sumit Biswas, the head of education at Asroy and a biochemistry student at North South University.

The volunteers at Asroy are mainly students of different public and private universities of the country. After Class V, the children at Asroy are affiliated with different mainstream schools. All the students who finished Class V from our school in the last two years are now in different high schools, including two government high schools, says Dr Hossain proudly.

The students of Asroy have had a 100 percent pass rate in their Primary Education Completion examinations since they first appeared in 2015. Furthermore, a regular programme of Asroy is health camps, during which groups of doctors and medical interns volunteer free health check-ups and provide some basic over-the-counter medicines to the underprivileged families.

In November 2016, Asroy hosted a dental health camp for its students, which included oral hygiene maintenance procedures, brushing techniques, management of immediate tooth pain, and dental check-ups, bearing in mind that slum children do not have the privilege of paying regular visits to dentists.

Since its inception in 2009, Asroy has served around 11,000 patients in 16 different medical camps throughout Bangladesh, and most recently, sent immediate help to Nepal during the earthquake of April 2015. They have also helped rebuild a school in Nepal.

Although the members of Asroy have had many notable triumphs, their beginnings were certainly not without obstacles. According to Dr Hossain, one of the biggest challenges on their journey to opening Asroy was convincing the parents to send their children to school.

The parents would rather use the labour of their children as the treatment for poverty than allow them to pursue an education, but they need to understand that having an education is the path to a brighter future  for their children and the country, he says.

Echoing Dr Hossains views, Dr Naima Afroz, a graduate of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and the vice-president of Asroy, says that these children are most vulnerable, so without proper guidance and knowledge, they do not reach their full potential and often end up taking to criminal activities.

This is something the team of Asroy hopes to change. So, they made it their mission to go from door to door in slums and persistently speak to the families to make them see why their sons and daughters deserve an education.

The dedicated individuals behind Asroy truly show the value of sharing what you have for the betterment of others. Moving forward, the Asroy team hopes to establish schools and clinics in each district of Bangladesh, and enhance the position of social work in the country.

(The writer is a student of literature at North South University)


remaining of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
Mansfield Town Clerk Marianne Staples is among the many city and town clerks in Massachusetts who are concerned that same-day voter registration will soon be a reality.
Organisation: Engineers

Without Borders Canada (EWB)

Partner Organization: Salaama

Vocational Education Center Limited (SVEC)

Duty Station: Uganda

Start Date: Full-time

Training in Toronto (accommodation provided) beginning October 1st 2017,

departure for placement October 22nd 2017

About Us:

Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB) is a Canadian NGO that invests

in people and social ventures to create a thriving and sustainable world.

Bolstered by its network of 36 chapters and 1,600 members, EWB provides seed

funding, talent and mentorship to social enterprises throughout sub-Saharan

Africa.

About EWB Fellows Program:

The EWB Fellows Program exists to develop a cadre of Systems Change

Leaders by equipping them with the opportunities, competencies and skills

needed to build a more thriving and sustainable world. Every year we recruit

25-30 outstanding people for a 12-month Fellowship, placing successful

candidates in one of our early-stage Ventures located throughout sub-Saharan

Africa or with our partners. This Fellowship opportunity is with Salaama

Vocational Education Center in Lyantonde, Uganda

About SVEC:

The Salaama Vocational Education Center (SVEC) is located on a 20-acre

campus in Lyantonde, a town of about 70,000 people. It officially opened to its

first students in 2013, following a multi-year process of consultations,

design, and construction. Today, the boarding school serves 200 students across

its programs. SVEC is a registered organization in Uganda, with an independent

board of directors. It offers vocational training at post-secondary National

Certificate and Directorate of Industrial Training Level following the Ugandan

government examined curriculum in Agriculture, Automotive Mechanics, Building

Construction, Woodwork Technology, Hotel and Intuitional Catering and Fashion

and Garment Design.

Job Summary: The Innovation

and Institutional Sustainability Specialist will build innovate and establish a

sustainable operational plan to transform this institutions form of technical

education. In this role, you will be a catalyst in transforming the norm for

youth technical education in Uganda. Your expertise will be leveraged to

discover, pilot and implement micro-innovations to increase the sustainability

and viability of vocational training. Success is establishing a successful

model others can look as best practice. You will be charged with leading the

identification and implication of key changes at the school to improve

operational efficiencies and effectiveness, maximize staff performance, and

increase sustainability to ensure students continue to receive exceptional

quality training for years to come. The incumbent will prioritize operational

efficiencies, financial accountability, sustainable programs and opportunities

for entrepreneurial ventures which provide a viable learning experience and

income generation to ensure students continue to receive exceptional quality

training for years to come. Your impact will be in helping to set up processes

and programs that build the long term viability of SVEC.



Responsibilities: Key Duties andResponsibilities:

The incumbent will maximize teaching and

management staff effectiveness through process improvements, clear

mandates, and evaluation.

Establish a revenue model that includes a

diversification of revenue sources (currently student fees and donor

funds).

The jobholder will also identify

opportunities to reduce operating costs while maintaining the high

standards of learning.

Inspire and motivate local staff in their

roles and create opportunities for staff to grow and excel beyond their

mandates.

Identify and establish relevant community,

regional, national or international partnerships that align with the

values and mission of the school.

Support both the local staff and

international directors to augment/expand governance systems and reinforce

local participation.



Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:

The applicant should hold an undergraduate

degree in related field

At least two years experience in a field

related to community development, project management, non-profit

operations, business operations or entrepreneurial initiatives

Expertise in financial management and

revenue development

Be a self-starter with strong initiative

and developed organisational skills

Proficient written and verbal

communication skills in English

Stakeholder management and relationship

building skills

Computer literacy skills i.e. proficiency

in software such as Quickbooks and Microsoft Project

Previous experience in managing a

cross-cultural team is desired

Good understanding or familiarity with

Ugandan context is an added advantage

Keen interest in educational training and

rural community development

Compensation: All costs

relating to the placement are either paid for directly by EWB (airfare,

insurance, vaccinations, trainings) or indirectly through a living stipend,

which covers food, living expenses, local travel, etc. Fellows also receive an

honorarium to assist with repatriation costs. The stipend covers basic living

expenses for a modest lifestyle in your placement country. You should not

expect to save money during this year or use the stipend to cover previous

expenses (e.g. student loans).

Additionally, EWB offers a range of benefits including insurance, a

settlement allowance, professional development opportunities, and more.

How to Apply:

All candidates are strongly encouraged to send their applications for

the EWB Fellowship by following the following two steps:

Step 1: Under the subject line Sustainability Specialist,

Salaama Center, submit your CV/Resume to ltfrecruitment@ewb.ca

Step 2: Complete the following online application form. Click Here Complete the following online application form.

We highly encourage applicants to apply for more than one role as this

is a highly competitive program. If you would like to submit your candidacy to

more than one role, please fill out separate forms.

Applications will be reviewed, and interviews scheduled on a rolling

basis, so please submit your application as soon as possible. If the posting is

still on our website, consider the role available.

th July,

2017 Deadline: 24July,2017
But the tribe has a long way to go
Delhi-based bands like Parikrama and Bipul Chettri & The Travelling Band are set to perform here on Sunday to highlight the violation of human rights in Darjeeling.

People of Darjeeling have been witnessing an indefinite agitation for a separate state of Gorkhaland for over a month.

Subir Malik of Parikrama told IANS: "We at Parikrama are extremely pained about the recent incidents that have taken place in the hills of Darjeeling. We share the concerns of the local population and hope the powers that be can help bring a peaceful solution without any more loss of innocent lives. We hope this concert helps highlight the gravity of the situation there."

Chettri says he and the bands are participating in the concert in the hope that the national media highlights the "high-handedness of the police force in the Darjeeling hills which have resulted in the loss of so many innocent lives along with the clampdown and blackout of the local media and the ban on the internet for the last month or so".

Pavithra Chari of Shadow & Light also wishes to spread the message of peace, harmony and justice among everyone.

Pranai Gurung of BLU is deeply saddened by the ongoing incidents in Darjeeling.

"We extend our support and voice to our brothers and sisters and hope that through our collective voice some sense prevails and peace is restored," he said.

Smiti Malik of Chayan & Smiti is hopeful that the Sunday event can contribute to encouraging some dialogue and awareness towards the ongoing unrest in Darjeeling.
Eight Jammu and Kashmir policemen, including an assistant sub-inspector, were beaten up by some army men in civvies when asked to stop at a check post in Ganderbal district.

While the police on Saturday said an FIR was lodged against the Army personnel involved in the incident, the Army called it "a minor altercation" and said the issue has been resolved.

The soldiers were returning after performing the Amarnath Yatra, when on Friday evening they were signalled to stop at a check post by the policemen in Gund area, 62km from here.

"The infuriated soldiers then thrashed the eight policemen and also ransacked the Gund police station," the police said.

Police said the Army personnel in civvies were stopped as all movement of pilgrims on the highway was disallowed after 7pm due to security reasons.

State police chief S.P. Vaid has taken up the incident with "the corps commander who is looking into the incident and had promised action", police said.

Defence ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said in a statement: "A minor altercation took place yesterday (Friday) between some Army personnel returning from Amarnath Yatra in civil dress and the JKP personnel at Gund."

"No major injuries were suffered in the incident. The matter has been resolved by personal intervention of senior officers. Measures to prevent recurrence have been taken," Kalia said.

The injured policemen were admitted to hospital.

Former chief minister Omar Abdullah sought investigation into the incident.



He tweeted: "Why would the Army beat up Jammu and Kashmir police personnel in a police station? This requires immediate clarification/action by the authorities."

Senior separatist leader, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, took a dig at the Army.

Umer Farooq said: "Sad to hear about the severe beating of Kashmiri policemen by Army, by virtue of being Kashmiri, even those who aid state oppression not spared."




Nine soldiers were among 11 people killed in border skirmishes this month between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

Amid one of the worst fatalities in recent times, the month also saw over 110 livestock falling prey to shellings and firings by Pakistani army in which nearly 35 structures, including over two dozen houses were damaged along the LoC in Rajouri district alone.

"The month has seen greater ceasefire violations along LoC in the state. The aim was to engineer infiltrations and push in more and more militants in J&K," said a senior Army officer, adding that Indian forces too aptly retaliated to the shellings by Pakistani army.

The security agencies attribute the increased shelling and firing by Pakistani army to their support to the Pak-based terror group Jamaat-ud-Dawa's "Year of Kashmir" campaign to make the LoC "more active to highlight the Kashmir issue."

Known as Lashkar-e-Taiba earlier, JuD has now named itself Tehreek Azadi Jammu and Kashmir (TAJK).

On July 21, 28-year-old rifleman Jayadrath Singh was killed when Pakistan army resorted to firing at Indian Army posts in Sunderbandi sector of Rajouri district.

Singh belonged to village Bhagwanpur of Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Mamta Devi.

A juniour commissioned officer, Subedar Shashi Kumar, who was grievously injured in an unprovoked ceasefire breach by Pakistan in Naushera on July 18, died at Udhampur Command Hospital on July 19.

Subedar Kumar was a native of Galon village of Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Santosh Sharma and children.

The July 18 ceasefire violations by Pakistan also saw two Army jawans, Jaspreet Singh and Bimal Sinjali killed in Naushera and Nowgam sectors of Rajouri and Kupwara districts respectively.

Eight people, including five jawans, had suffered injuries that day.

"More than 110 livestock were reported dead and two dozen houses damaged.

A total of 35 structures including private houses, government buildings including schools, were damaged in recent mortar shelling in Nowshera," said Rajouri Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Choudhary.

On July 18, Pakistani troops also targeted school children, shelling their schools and trapping 217 of them in in 3 schools in Kadali and Seha areas of Rajouri near the LoC for six hours. The Army and state police, however, rescued and evacuated them to safer places in bullet-proof vehicles.

Earlier on July 17, one Army jawan and a girl were killed when the Pakistan army violated ceasefire twice in two sectors and resorted to firing at Indian Army posts and civilian areas in Rajouri and Poonch districts.

On July 15, another jawan, Lance Naik Mohmmad Naseer, 35 was killed and yet another injured in Pak shelling along the LoC in Rajouri district.

Two other jawans, Lance Naik Ranjit Singh and Rifleman Satesh Bhagat, both of Jammu, were killed along LoC on July 12, in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of North Kashmir sector.

Four days earlier on July 8, jawan Mohmmad Showkat, who was on leave, was killed along with his wife, when his house was hit by a Pakistani army's mortar shell in Poonch sector.

Four people were injured.

The officials said there have been 23 incidents of ceasefire violations, one attack by Pakistan's notorious Border Action Team and two infiltration bids by Pakistan- backed militants in June in which four people, including three jawans were killed and 12 injured.

On June 29, two Indian Army jawans were injured when Pakistani troops fired from small arms and shelled mortars on forward posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Poonch district.

Even on the occasion of Eid-ul Fitr on June 26, the Pakistani army had fired small arms and automatic weapons and shelled mortars along the LoC in Bhimbher Gali sector of Rajouri.

On June 22, in the third such attack this year, a team of Pakistani special forces sneaked 600metres across the LoC into the Poonch sector and killed two Indian jawans, but lost one Border Action Team (BAT) member in retaliatory action.

It had carried out the attack at around 2 pm on an Army patrol party in the Gulpur belt of Poonch on 22 June under heavy cover fire by Pakistani troops.

In the firefight, two Indian soldiers, Naik Jadhav Sandip, 34, of Aurangabad and Sepoy Mane Savan Balku, 24, of Kolhapur were martyred.
After Nitish Kumar met Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday amidst growing speculation of a rift between the two parties, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has denied allegations that there is an air of tension in the grand alliance.

Speaking to ANI, RJD leader Manoj Jha said the people in the alliance are together.

"Whatever is being said in the media is all speculation and we don't pay much attention to speculation," he said.

Pointing a finger at the BJP for allegedly using the situation to their advantage, Jha accused the saffron party of trying to manipulate the recent mechanisms.

Recently, the tension between the grand alliance of Congress and RJD had grown as Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was facing increasing pressure to oust Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav from the cabinet after charges of corruption were proved against him. The CBI registered a corruption case against Lalu Yadav, his wife Rabri Devi and son Tejaswi Yadav on allegations of awarding the tender for development, maintenance and operation of hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2006.

The RJD supremo, however, refuted the allegations against him and called it a political conspiracy hatched by the BJP.

The Congress is saying the alliance will hold strong against these allegations and that the true perpetrator will be punished.

Meanwhile, the BJP is mounting pressure on Nitish Kumar to oust Tejashwi Yadav from the cabinet.
In a move, seemingly motivated by the late C.K. Prahlad's dictum about the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Reliance Industries, which launched the 4G VoLTE mobile service a year ago, have now targeted the huge market of basic phone users, untouched by premium services like videos on demand.

At the annual general meeting in Mumbai last week, Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh D. Ambani, announced, Today, Jio is going to reinvent the conventional feature phone with a revolutionary device, an unmatched Indian innovation, 'Made in India' by young Indians and for all Indians: India ka intelligent smartphone: Jio Phone.

JioPhone is a truly revolutionary phone that will transform the lives of 500 million feature phone users, he added. The phone will harness the Jio 4G network that won 100 million plus initial subscribers, most of whom are known to have stuck with the service even after it went from free to fee.

He gave details of the tariffs for the JioPhone:

On the JioPhone, voice will be free, for which it is currently charged at Rs 1.2 to 1.5 per minute in India. Jio will give them access to unlimited data on the JioPhonefor Rs 153 per month (with a Fair Usage Policy limit of 1/2 GB per day).

Jio engineers have created an innovation: a special and affordable JioPhone TV cable that connects JioPhone with any TV, not just a smart TV, so that all JioPhone users can enjoy viewing on the big screen of their existing television sets. This needs them to opt for an additional Rs 309 pack that would allow them to daily watch almost 3-4 hours of videos of their choice on a large screen. For users, who might find it difficult to commit to Rs 153 per month, Jio is offering two sachetsa weekly plan for Rs 53 and a two-day plan for Rs 23.

Finally, JioPhone will be available for an effective price of zero. Jio plans to collect a one-time, security deposit of Rs 1,500 with every JioPhone, refundable after 36 months upon return of the phone.

The scheme launches on August 15 with pre-booking from August 24 and delivery starting September.

JioPhone will make the 2G feature phone obsolete, Ambani said in conclusion.

Is it a good deal?

Giving away a phone for very little upfront payment, against a commitment to subscribe to a service for a fixed tenure, may seem radical in India, but is standard practice in the West. Operators like Verizon have used it for years, bundling a service package with a heavily subsidised iPhone.

However, it is difficult to understand why Jio would require customers to return the phone after five years. By then, customers would have paid over Rs 5,500 in monthly subscription, and the phone, in all likelihood, would be obsolete. By 2020, India will probably see early rollouts of 5G services.

Coming to the handset itself, the announcement during the AGM made jointly by Ambani scions Akash and Isha confirmed that this was a candy bar type phone with a 2.4 inch QVGA display that is 240 by 20 pixels. It is 4G LTE ready and comes pre-loaded with Jio Music, Jio Cinema and JioTV apps. A long press on number 5 activates an SOS message that gives selected recipients the phone's location. Its main attraction for feature phone users will be the voice assistant that has hitherto been available only on smart phones. It is ready for use in e-pay applications using the Universal Payment Interface. Another smart phone feature that will soon be available is NFC or Near Field Communication that will facilitate 'tap and pay' at POS terminals. Details like memory size, camera, etc. were not revealed and whatever has appeared in the media seems to be mainly hearsay.

Mukesh Ambani said the phones would be made in India in the last quarter of this year, implying that early supplies might be imported.

Is it a smartphone as Ambani flashed on screen during his speech? The JioPhone seems to be a hybrida feature phone with some smartphone features. The small, relatively low-resolution screen and the lack of touch would make this primarily a feature phone. It is the 4G LTE network and the much cheaper data pricing that gives it the feel of a smartphone package.

It remains to be seen if JioPhone is indeed the giant killer that early media hype is making it.
In August 2015, the normally docile Jain community hit the streets, inflamed by a ban that the Rajasthan High Court imposed on Sallekhana, also known as Santharathe religious practice of fasting to death. The court order came on a petition by an activist, Nikhil Soni, who equated Sallekhana with suicide. Though the Supreme Court overturned the order, argument over the practice did not die down. In fact, it found new life when 13-year-old Aradhana Samdariya died after 68 days of fasting in Secunderabad nine months ago.

To be fair, Jain customs lend themselves to simplistic interpretations, especially since the word Jain means conqueror of the senses. It is one of the oldest Indian religions, and has two main sects: Shwetambara (meaning white-clad) and Digambara (sky-clad). Vardhamana Mahavira, a prince who turned ascetic 600 years before Christ, is the last in the line of 24 tirthankaras or spiritual pioneers of this ancient faith. (Shwetambaras believe that the 19th tirthankara, Mallinath, was female, a claim that Digambaras dismiss).

Shwetambaras wear white clothes, while Digambaras reject all material possessions, including clothes. While the scriptures, beliefs and rituals, like image-worship, vary between the two sects and multiple sub-sects, the basic principle remains the same: a total observance of ahimsa (non-violence). The process of initiation (diksha) into the monastic order involves the extremely painful process of plucking out the strands of hair one by one.

Is Jainism fundamentally atheistic? While there is no concept of a supreme creator in the religion, Jains believe in paramatma or soul in a liberated state. Writes Jeffery D. Long, associate professor of religion and Asian studies at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, in his book Jainism: An Introduction: Every jiva [spirit or soul] has been associated with ajiva [non-soul]. It is the dissociation of jiva from ajiva that is the chief aim of Jain asceticism. Karmic matter is attracted to jiva, due to passions like raga [attraction] and dvesa [aversion]. The soul has to purify itself of karmic matter, giving rise to absolute knowledge [kevalajnana] to break itself from the cycle of samsara [birth, death and rebirth].

But, what about the image of Jainism as a religion promoting self-harm? The practice of Sallekhana actually is an expression of the highest form of humanity and benevolence. It has to be sanctioned by a spiritual head. As Long mentions, the Digambara scholar Samantabhadra, who had an incurable disease, was denied permission for Sallekhana as his intention was to put himself out of pain.

A nuanced portrayal of the faith is difficult, but not impossible, to come by. The writer William Dalrymple, for instance, describes an encounter with the Digambara nun Prasannamati Mataji, exploring loss and life, in his book Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. Another example is the layered, but more turbulent story of Maitreya in Anand Gandhis film Ship of Theseus.

These complexities are exactly what make it possible to view Jainism through a monochromatic lens. Take the different forms of worship by the Jains. As Jinendra Prasad, a Digambara from Wayanad in Kerala, says, We have all forms of abhisheks and worship in our temple. We use flowers, but Shwetambaras dont. You will also notice that our idols are completely naked.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has suspended all cooperation as he and the international community continue efforts to bring al-Aqsa and Har Habayis to the world forum.

Since the placement of metal detectors on Har Habayis, Jordan, the PA and Muslims around the world have come out demanding their removal, fearing Israel has shown its sovereignty over the holy site and this they cannot accept. The placement of the metal detectors followed Israels unprecedented closure of the Temple Mount on an erev Shabbos through Sunday morning, barring Muslims from the holy site along with Jews and other visitors for a first time.

Speaking on PA Television, Abu Mazen spoke of the threat presented to al-Aqsa by Israel, demanding the removal of the metal detectors. He and others accuse Israel of violating the status quo on Har Habayis, opting to ignore the fatal Islamic terror attack on the site that left two Israeli policemen dead and a third wounded.

The attack led to Israeli security forces checking the site, uncovering guns and other weapons and ammunition, which led to the metal detectors.

Israels cabinet last week decided the metal detectors would not be removed. It remains to be seen if Israel will remain firm amid mounting pressure.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has joined the growing choir of critics accusing Israel of violating the status quo on Har Habayis. In his statements, he stated the international Islamic community will not remain silent.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed reporters Sunday in Istanbul before departing on a visit to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.

He says: No one can expect the Islamic world to remain unresponsive after the humiliation Muslims suffered with the restrictions at the Noble Sanctuary.

Earlier this week, Israel installed metal detectors at the holy site in response to the deadly terror attack by Arab terrorists there which killed two Israeli policemen and let a third wounded. The metal detectors are the latest excuse for Islamic outcries, seeking to portray Israel as jeopardizing the future of al-Aqsa Mosque while the world perceived by the Islamic community as an encroachment on Muslim rights and have led to protests in the Muslim world.

Erdogan called on Israel to remove the detectors in a phone conversation with President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday, 16 Tammuz.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
A Jordanian man was shot to death and an Israeli man was wounded in a violent incident at the Israeli embassy in Amman on Sunday evening, a security official and a news site linked to Jordans military reported.

The Hala Akhbar site said the violent incident also included a stabbing.

It said the Israeli man was in an unstable condition and that the Jordanian died after suffering critical gunshot injuries.

A security official confirmed a Jordanian had been killed and an Israeli wounded, but would not provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident with the media.

The site says one of the wounded was in critical and the other in an unstable condition.

Israels Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

The incident comes at a time of mounting tensions between Israel and the Muslim world over metal detectors Israel installed at a Jerusalem shrine revered by Muslims and Jews.

Jordan is the Muslim custodian of the site. On Friday, thousands of Jordanians staged an anti-Israeli protest in Amman.

(AP)
Broken promises: George Burbidge has run a series of failed firms

Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday's ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.

J. C. writes: Over the past two to three years, I have received offers for my carbon credits, which I bought for 16,000. I have rejected offers of as much as 24,000 because each time the buyers wanted me to pay in advance for some sort of bond. I have now been approached by Taylor Marshall & Associates Ltd. I am inclined to reject this offer too, but am I right to do so?

When you contacted me you believed that Taylor Marshall was also after an upfront fee, in exactly the same way as the fly-by-night firms which have contacted you in the past. You believed this because of the sequence of events.

You were called by Taylor Marshall, based in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, with an offer of help to recover cash you had invested in rip-off carbon credits. You then received a letter from the company saying it operated on a no-win, no-fee basis.

But you then received another call from someone who referred to a recent letter. He told you to expect 24,154 for your near-worthless carbon credits, but you would have to pay 950 upfront to what he described as a credit house.

You assumed this was a follow-up call from Taylor Marshall because its letter was the only one you had received about your investment. But the company has told me: Taylor Marshall does not request any payment from a client prior to the commencement of any claim and fees are only charged if a claim has been successful.

This assurance came from the companys owner, George Burbidge. I did ask him how he knew you were a victim of a carbon credits scam in the first place, but he did not explain.

I also asked him who he could claim against, since all the scam firms that sold carbon credits seem to have disappeared, or have been ordered to close.

Burbidge replied that he hoped to make a claim against the FCA, though I doubt if the Financial Conduct Authority, which does not regulate carbon credits, would be happy to fork out.

We are not prepared to discuss this matter any further, he added. Really? I let Burbidge know this was not the first time his name had crossed my desk. He was the sole director of Thornton Ridge Land Developments Ltd, a land banking company which sold house-size plots of greenfield land in Northamptonshire as an investment.

In 2009 the local authority warned: The land does not have any residential development value whatsoever at the current time and the district council as the local planning authority would strongly resist any planning application for the erection of one or more dwellings on any of the parcels currently being offered for sale.

Burbidges company failed to file accounts, which were legally due, and it was compulsorily struck off by Companies House.

Burbidge also ran Verity Claims Ltd which asked victims of solar panel scams for 495 upfront so it could sue the Government for compensation for them. That also failed to file accounts and came under investigation by Trading Standards.

Officials at Companies House began moves to have the company struck off, but Burbidge got in ahead of them and put it into liquidation.

Burbidge then decided he would discuss the matter further. When he talked about claiming from the FCA, he really meant the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, he said, on the grounds that while the companies which ripped you off were nothing to do with the watchdog, your paperwork might have been handled by a separate trust company, which may have come under the compensation umbrella.

One reader said they had an account with Barclays for years, but in April more than 19,000 of their savings were moved to something called Reconcile

He ended by warning me: In the unlikely event that you decide to publish unsubstantiated defamatory statements, we will be taking the appropriate steps through the courts.

Happily of course, none of this is either unsubstantiated or defamatory, so the courts need not be troubled.

If Barclays pays 2,000 for this mix-up, then Ill eat my words

S. Q. writes: I have had an account with Barclays for years, but in April more than 19,000 of my savings were moved to something called Reconcile. I found Barclays had placed my account under review and realised I was being investigated, which I found absurd. The money was returned, but I was told to bank elsewhere. So I opened an account at NatWest. Now Barclays has closed my accounts, withholding more than 17,000 in savings and 200 in my current account.

I have long been critical of a system which lets banks close customers accounts, with hints of wrongdoing, but then bans those banks from producing any evidence that customers can contest.

What you describe suggests you are suspected of money laundering. Naturally, Barclays would not comment on this, but did agree to release your funds.

Sadly, it made a mess. You told me Barclays sent a bankers draft to take to your branch, but the branch refused to honour it because, of course, your account had been closed.

I contacted head office and this was quickly put right, but you then claimed 2,000 to 3,000 compensation for distress, inconvenience and sleepless nights. Barclays has offered 100. Personally, I would have suggested 200, so if you succeed in claiming 2,000 or more, let me know and I will eat the next edition of The Mail on Sunday.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.
Holidaymakers are being warned to think twice before flexing their everyday plastic when spending abroad. With every transaction in a shop, hotel or bar, a combination of poor exchange rates and hidden card charges can quickly spoil the memory of a good holiday.

This dent in the pockets of holidaymakers will be made bigger by the impact of the weak pound.

Sterling is worth 12 to 14 per cent less than it was on the day of the Brexit vote, when compared with currencies such as the US dollar and euro. Thanks to the Brexit effect, travellers now get $91 and 94 less for every 500 they change, compared with this day 13 months ago.

Hidden charges: Holidaymakers are being warned to think twice before flexing their everyday plastic when spending abroad

Joanna and Mark Aitchison, from Cardiff, knew they were getting less spending money for their sterling when holidaying on the Balearic island of Majorca in May. As a result, Joanna worked hard at finding a low-cost flight and a half- board hotel deal to offset the reduction in their spending power.

But when the couple returned home from their week-long trip they realised they had been caught by the hidden card charges trap.

Dozens of unexpected small charges added to transactions made on Joannas debit card  for drinks, lunches and gifts from local shops  pushed up the cost of what was meant to be a bargain holiday.

Joanna, 43, who runs a directory business with Mark, says: I use my debit card all the time at home so I did not think anything of doing the same abroad.

The couple put a 1,000 deposit for a hire car on the card and paid for their hotel stay once they arrived, unknowingly racking up fees for both transactions.

Joanna adds: We already knew the exchange rate made our holiday spending quite expensive. But then to discover I had been charged for each purchase on my debit card felt a little sneaky. We had a budget for the holiday and because of this we went over it.

With every transaction in a shop, hotel or bar, a combination of poor exchange rates and hidden card charges can quickly spoil the memory of a good holiday. This dent in the pockets of holidaymakers will be made bigger by the impact of the weak pound

Research shows that the Aitchisons are not alone in making bad holiday spending decisions.

Around 7 per cent of all money spent on holiday will be withdrawn from a cash machine while around 16 per cent of holiday spending is done on debit cards. Currency card provider FairFx estimates that in total bad holiday spending decisions cost Britons 5 billion every year.

Matt Hall, head of savings at bank Santander, says: Holidaymakers pockets are already stretched but, by using a cost-effective payment method, they can at least make sure they do not inadvertently throw more money away. We would advise everyone to spend a bit of time checking out any fees or charges before making a decision about how to pay for their holiday spending.

Rachel Springall, financial expert at money data scrutineer Moneyfacts, says: While consumers get protection from theft when using their plastic abroad, some debit and credit cards will charge eye-watering fees each time cash is withdrawn or a purchase made.

A typical debit card charges 9.50 when consumers withdraw 200 of cash abroad while some credit cards can charge nearly 12 before interest is applied.

Last week, the Treasury announced a ban on the charges that many online retailers  and some shops  apply when processing purchases made via a debit or credit card. This will apply from the start of next year and be Europe-wide. But it will not stop banks applying foreign usage fees or overseas cash machine providers charging a fee for withdrawing cash.

Here is how to avoid falling into the tourist spending trap.

Cash is king

If you do prefer to pay in cash when abroad, then be sure to get your currency ahead of travelling.

Comparison websites such as Travel Money Max can flag up the best rates and the nearest branches where currency can be bought. Many foreign exchange companies will deliver your spending money for a small fee or let you collect in person for free.

Feeling burned: Mark and Joanna Aitchison were hit by card fees after visiting Majorca

Peer-to-peer

Websites such as WeSwap now let you buy currency from people who have come back from holiday with spare dollars or euros.

The idea is that both buyer and seller get a better exchange rate than on the high street. But the downside is you have to wait seven days to get it unless you want to pay a fee, so it is not for those heading off on a last-minute getaway.

Money you buy is loaded on to a card, like a currency card (see below), and you can then withdraw cash from an ATM. But there are charges if you only withdraw small amounts.

Currency traps to avoid

If you pay for anything on plastic while abroad remember to always use the local currency. It means you will not fall prey to so-called dynamic currency conversion where the local bank sets the exchange rate in its favour, not yours.

Do not exchange your money at the airport. A bureau de change in a departure lounge knows you are a captive customer so will invariably offer you a dismal exchange rate.

If you have left it to the last minute it can often be better to wait until you get to your destination before buying your dollars or euros.

Stick to your holiday budget. It is easy to overspend when you are converting foreign currency into pounds in your head.

Downloading a budgeting app where you can log each purchase can help you keep track of your holiday spending.
We round up the Sunday newspaper share tips. This week, Midas takes a look at CentralNic, the Sunday Telegraph mines the data on Glencore while the Sunday Times considers whether it's time to build an investment in Morgan Sindall.

MAIL ON SUNDAY

Centralnic is a big player and a vital part of the internet, says Midas.

The firm owns and sells top-level domain name suffixes, the letters that immediately follow the dot on website addresses.

Its share price is 51p and this should rise considerably as the business expands.

Today there are about 1,200 new, top-level domains and CentralNic is the worlds leading distributor, with six of the top 20, such as .online, .website and .xyz.

The company was listed on AIM, Londons junior stock exchange, in 2013 when the domain name revolution was just starting. The shares were priced at 57p and CentralNic was purely a distributor.

In other words, it sold the right to use these suffixes to website registrars such as the American firm Go Daddy or the German firm 1&1, which then sold them to individuals and firms.

>> Read the full Midas column here

Recently, however, CentralNic has expanded into the end-user market, becoming both a wholesaler and retailer. At the end of 2015, the firm paid 18 million for Instra Group, an Australian-based domain name registrar aimed at emerging markets. The acquisition was astute.

Today, there are 100 million websites worldwide, most run by North Americans or Western Europeans. But firms in emerging markets are rapidly moving online. As they do, they need a reliable registrar.

Having acquired Instra, CentralNic is well positioned to benefit from this as thousands of businesses in regions such as Asia and the Middle East launch websites.

The acquisition is already reaping returns. In 2016, CentralNics turnover rose 113 per cent to 22 million, while underlying profits were up 68 per cent to 5.5 million. Further rapid growth is expected over the next few years, both organic and from future acquisitions.

There are hundreds of small firms operating in the top-level domain industry, but the sector is expected to consolidate over the next few years, creating a handful of dominant players.

CentralNic, run by ambitious Australian Ben Crawford, is keen to participate in the consolidation process. If all goes well, that should mean expanding to a certain size before being taken over by a giant in the industry.

Midas verdict: CentralNic did not have the easiest debut on AIM. The shares doubled in the first few months, only to collapse to 25p as enthusiastic buyers came and went. Today, however, at 51p the stock is a bargain. Crawfords strategy is entirely logical and the shares should go far. Buy.

Staying power: Glencore's chief executive Ivan Glasenberg has headed up the company since 2002

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Glencore shares are up more than fourfold from their nadir early in 2016, and there is every hope that better will follow, says James Ashton in the Sunday Telegraphs Questor.

Commodity prices are stronger than expected and Chinas growth has finally picked up to 6.9 per cent, reassuring investors.

Barclays has forecast a decent results season for the miners.

Keeping a lid on supply should create scope to carry on paying down debts and boost cash returns.

However the question remains whether chief executive Ivan Glasenberg will choose to use it to pay investors or for further deal making.

In May, Glencore declared it had made an informal approach to grain trader Bunge regarding a possible consensual business combination says Questor.

Glencore shares are worth a short-term punt at this point in the cycle but for fewer shocks in this sector, investor might be better off looking at Rio Tinto, says Questor. Could Mr Glasenburg even resist considering Rio  another company he has long coveted  now Glencores balance sheet is back to strength? Another reason the shares remain a risky buy.

SUNDAY TIMES

Its not been an easy road to redemption since Morgan Sindall founder John Morgan had to return as boss after a profit warning, says Inside the City.

But lately the Warwickshire company can do little wrong, says John Collingridge in the Sunday Times regular column.

It is winning lots of smaller details that add up  to 2.6billion of new contracts by the last count.

The large number of smaller contracts means it does not have risky exposure to a few larger projects.

It also has room to grow, and unlike most of its listed peers, has a substantial cash pile.

The share price has already risen by 119 per cent in a year to 12.84, while an unscheduled update announced that trading was substantially ahead.

Buy, says Inside the City.
Supermarkets are frightening shoppers into throwing away hundreds of pounds of perfectly good food every year by using best-before labels. Here, The Mail on Sunday reveals some of their sneaky secrets  and how you can beat the shops at their own game and cut your grocery bill by a third. We also report on how a crackdown on the scare tactics adopted by supermarkets could revolutionise the way we food shop.

More than seven million tons of unused food is scraped into kitchen bins every year, more than half of which is still good enough to eat.

Households spend an average 57 a week on groceries  3,000 a year  according to the Office for National Statistics. But a family of four is thought to throw away 700 of this food as waste.

Waste & Resources Action Programme says the seven million tons of food that are wasted each year costs shoppers 13 billion. Every day, we throw away an astonishing one million bananas

A major reason for discarding food is the confusing hotchpotch of labels that tell us when we must eat it by. Behind these sell-by, best-before and display until labels is a multi-million pound sales ruse where shops encourage us to buy more food than we need.

The Government aims to crack down on this deception. The Food Standards Agency and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs have joined forces with the not-for-profit Waste & Resources Action Programme to draw up a blueprint for change.

A spokeswoman for the Food Standards Agency says: We want better food labelling as there is far too much food thrown out that is perfectly edible.

Earlier this year, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee criticised supermarkets for their role in creating food waste  by misusing best-before dates and throwing out good fruit and vegetables not deemed to be the right shape.

It concluded: We believe the current date labelling on food is potentially misleading and unnecessarily confuses customers.

In response, the British Retail Consortium, representing retailers, says: Anything that creates a better understanding of best-before food labelling and helps stop food waste is welcomed by the industry.

A major reason for discarding food is the confusing hotchpotch of labels

Crack the code of best-before labels

Shoppers need only take note of use-by and best-before labels. The use-by information should be heeded as it is reserved for highly perishable food such as poultry, red meats and fish. If you sniff the contents and they do not smell right then go no further  you could suffer a dose of food poisoning.

Best-before is more an indicator of quality than a health alarm bell. It is used for frozen, dried and tinned food and once it expires the food may lose flavour. Under European Union law it is illegal for shops to sell produce that is beyond its use-by date but they can sell produce past its best-before date.

You need not take any heed of food labels such as display until, consume within and sell-by. These are simply added for shopkeepers to shift stock. It is expected that as a result of the Government review only use-by dates will survive, on perishable goods such as eggs, dairy products, meat and fish. Their shelf life may also be extended by a day or two.

Throw perishables a lifeline

Waste & Resources Action Programme says the seven million tons of food that are wasted each year costs shoppers 13 billion.

Every day, we throw away an astonishing six million potatoes, three million apples, one million bananas, a million unopened yogurt pots and almost half a million ready meals. The charitys Kirsty Warren says: You can cut waste easily. For example, storing potatoes in a dark cupboard rather than a fridge makes them last much longer and if they grow sprouts they will taste just as good.

For apples a fridge is the best storage area as it can extend their life by several weeks. Bananas should be kept separate from other fruit and can be frozen if they are not going to be eaten quickly. Yogurts can be turned into ice cream if they are close to their use-by date.

The biggest waste in terms of cost is meat and fish  accounting for almost a fifth of all food needlessly thrown out and worth 2 billion a year. This is followed by fresh vegetables and salad. Warren says: The freezer acts like a pause button on food. So do not forget it is there. Try to have a freezer meal one day a week.

Saving a packet: Heidi Brown, with son Fin, uses online shops which discount food

The best way to bag a best-before bargain

A growing number of shops offer discounts on food near the end of its shelf life.

Heidi Brown, 34, from Eastbourne in East Sussex, knocks 500 a year off her food bill by shopping this way.

She lives with partner Chris Tuppen, 37, son Fin, aged four, and daughter Emmie, four months. Heidi, an office administrator, uses online shop Approved Food. It sells products close to  or past  their best-before date; food that could otherwise be dumped in landfill sites.

Rivals include Clearance XL and social supermarket Nifties which runs online store Dont Waste The Taste.

Kirsty Warren of charity Waste & Resources Action Programme says: Often with food it is the packaging that has dated. For example, a cereal box advertising a major sporting event once it is over can be hard to sell so is often sold at a discount store.

Beat inflation with supermarket sweep

Buying groceries when supermarkets reduce prices can keep a lid on food bills. Most supermarkets slap a yellow reduced sticker on food at specific times of the day  a great way to pick up a bargain. Both Tesco and Co-op often start such sales  25 per cent reductions  at 8am while Sainsburys and Asda commence at midday. By 5pm, the reductions can be as much as 50 per cent.

The biggest discounts  up to 75 per cent off  are from Morrisons and Co-op, between 7 and 9pm.

Support a food bank

Despite a third of the countrys food going to waste we are still charitable enough to stock food banks which feed more than a million people a year.

The majority of food banks are run by charity Trussell Trust. It has a 400-strong network of food banks countrywide. It relies on donations made through schools, churches and supermarkets.

Volunteers sort through the items and pass them on to vulnerable families  usually giving them three days worth of non-perishable food.

Those targeted are usually picked on the advice of health or social workers and are given vouchers to claim their food. For details of your nearest food bank  as well as how to help  visit website The Trussell Trust.
A controversial proposal by the insurance industry to water down the benefits payable from a popular type of financial protection cover has been widely criticised.

If the move goes ahead, experts say it will cause irreparable damage to the appeal of protection insurance and harm the industrys already tarnished reputation as consumers accuse it of using technicalities to avoid payouts.

The controversy is centred on critical illness insurance which is sold by most leading insurers including Aviva, Legal & General and Royal London.

A controversial proposal by the insurance industry to water down the benefits payable from a popular type of financial protection cover has been widely criticised

The cover provides a pre-determined lump sum payment if the policyholder suffers a serious illness. The illnesses that result in the most claims are cancer, heart attack, stroke and multiple sclerosis.

It is often sold alongside life insurance and arranged when people buy a home. Last year, more than 400,000 policies were bought. A 25-year policy with 100,000 of initial cover would cost a 35-year-old around 24 a month.

Yet the insurance industry is now concerned that the cover has become too generous, paying out on cancers that ten years ago would not have been detectable as quickly.

Last year, insurers paid out more than 1 billion in claims, meeting 92 out of every 100 claims met.

A review of the cover available under critical illness insurance has now been ordered by the Association of British Insurers. It has set up a working group to ensure the product remains viable in the long term.

Among its proposals is for all stage one cancers (a cancer that is relatively small and contained within the organ it started in) to be excluded from full payment. Instead, diagnosis would trigger a partial payment  25 per cent  only.

The insurance industry is concerned that the cover has become too generous, paying out on cancers that ten years ago would not have been detectable as quickly

So if someone had cover for 100,000 and got stage one stomach cancer, they would only receive 25,000. The industry argues that many stage one cancers are no longer critical because five-year survival rates are close to 100 per cent.

It also fears that as such cancers  thyroid for example  become more easily detectable, it will be hit by a tsunami of claims.

If the proposal gets the go-ahead, the reduced payouts would apply to new policies only.

Protection adviser Alan Lakey is singularly unimpressed with the move.

He disputes the reasons for the curtailment in cover, saying many stage one victims  especially those with pancreatic or brain cancer  do not survive five years.

Cancer is cancer, he argues. It is a serious condition and critical illness insurance should cover it. By reducing the quality of cover, it would undermine consumer confidence in the product and cause it irreparable damage.

David Hollingworth, of mortgage broker London & Country, says: Being told you have the wrong type of cancer will not compute with consumers. The moment they feel insurers are trying to wheedle their way out of paying, cynicism around this cover will explode.

The Association of British Insurers says the proposal is merely up for consultation and no final decision has yet been made.
Staff perks have risen above the 8 billion mark for the first time this decade, according to accountancy group UHY Hacker Young.

The value of taxable benefits employees received as part of their remuneration packages has increased by more than 5 per cent to 8 billion in 2015/16 from 7.6 billion in the year earlier.

The increase was double that of average wages, which rose just 2.2 per cent in the same period.

On the up: Staff perks have risen above the 8 billion mark for the first time this decade, according to accountancy group UHY Hacker Young

Staff perks including company cars, free accommodation and private health insurance often have a lower tax rate than they would if they were paid to staff as salary.

The accountancy firm said the 10 per cent rise in employees receiving private medical and dental insurance in the five years to 2016 was one of the biggest areas of growth.

Company cars are the highest-value perk, with their worth increasing 18 per cent over the last five years to 4.3 billion, despite the number claiming this benefit rising only one per cent.

Andrew Snowdon, partner at UHY Hacker Young, said: After a lull in the use of job perks during the credit crunch and its aftermath, businesses are now getting back to using taxable benefits as a way of recruiting and retaining top talent.

The increase in the number of people receiving private medical and health care coincides with a period where people are living longer and realising that they need to take care of themselves and their families.

'It is something that many employees would consider using if it was not in their remuneration package and is therefore a very popular perk.
Online flights search engine Skyscanner increased its turnover by 44 per cent last year as the company expanded to include hotel and car hire.

The company, which is majority-owned by Chinese travel giant Ctrip, was founded in 2003 by computer programmer Gareth Williams and two friends after Williams, a keen skier, became frustrated with the process of searching multiple websites to find the best prices for flights.

His idea was to create a single website which could collect, collate and compare prices for all commercial flights. It is now used by 50 million people a month.

Online flights search engine Skyscanner increased its turnover by 44 per cent last year as the company expanded to include hotel and car hire

Accounts for the year ending December 31, 2016 show sales grew from 110 million to 158 million while pre-tax profits slipped from 11 million to 7.3 million due to a one-off equity share payment relating to the acquisition by Ctrip.

However, operating profits almost doubled from 10.5 million to 19.4 million.

Skyscanners three founders flew up the rich lists as a result of Ctrips acquisition last December. Williams fortune is estimated at 215 million.

Skyscanners directors said: The companys long-term strategy is centred on owning a greater part of the travel journey from destination selection through to post-travel engagement.

The value of tickets sold through the website reached 9.9 billion last year, equivalent to 20.7 million bookings.

The company recently signed a deal with Microsoft to provide flight prices through its personal assistant app, Cortana.
I was so irate, incensed and flabbergasted when I read the Times of Swaziland about the harassment of unimaginable proportion by the members of our army, who allegedly stripped and searched passengers who were travelling by a kombi from a vacation in Mozambique.

While writing this letter, I am so livid and I wonder if we still have Parliament in our shores. Why are our MPs quiet when the public is treated like thrash (imfucuta) by the unruly army?

We are all aware of how a proper search is conducted not in this embarrassing manner (Bekunene sonkhe siyakwati kusesha hhayi lomhlolo). Even suspected terrorists are not subjected to such degrading and inhumane treatment under the convoluted claim that they are being searched. This appalling treatment of civilians by the army must be strongly condemned.

The armys authorities need to start teaching their troops how to execute their duties effectively under the constitutional dispensation. This wayward behaviour will land the country in trouble and can have a potential to chase prospective investors. The army must know that the international community read such stories and they really tarnish the image of the country. I am further disheartened that the army always gets away with all immoral deeds. The army public relation officer always justifies the inhumane acts by soldiers. He always utters gibberish to protect his wayward troops even when they are on the wrong side of the law. Even in this case the soldiers will escape scot free to continue their senseless acts.

What gets me hot under the collar is that the soldiers encroached on SRA responsibility in this issue. Only Swaziland Revenue Authority (SRA) not USDF is obligated to tax goods and search for contraband. The soldiers duty is to protect their country borders. I wonder who gave them the order to start body searching innocent people to a point of stripping them.

This just confirms the fact that the army is out of hand and needs to be effectively controlled urgently. Yes the government is so fortunate to be ruling the most docile nation but at least we must be treated with dignity and respect.






Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

By Gina Martinez

State Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) honored Daniel Kim, a captain in the United States Marine Corps, after his return from a recent tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Kim, also a Queens native and an NYPD police officer in the 111th Precinct, was called back into active duty and began his tour in November 2016 and finished in June.

The assemblyman thanked the captain for his service and praised the sacrifices and hardships that he and all other members of the military have endured on behalf of all Americans.

In return, Capt. Kim presented a distinctive American flag to the assemblyman, which was flown during combat operations in his time in Afghanistan. The flag was accompanied by a certification saying it was flown by Sgt. Tyler M. Miles, of the Marine Corps, over the United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 2. Kim acknowledged the assemblymans years of public service on behalf of his community when presenting the flag.

Ron Kim said he was thrilled to welcome back hometown hero Capt. Kim from his latest tour of duty in Afghanistan. Kim said it is difficult to overstate the bravery and dedication that he and other members of the military show each and every day to protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans.

Danny grew up in our local community, and is an NYPD officer in the same neighborhoods he was raised in  his hard work and sacrifices exemplify the very best of Flushing, Queens, and New York, Ron Kim said. My family and I are truly honored to be presented with this American combat flag from his tour of duty.

Capt. Kim said it was powerful to see the amazing work community leaders continue to provide to a place we call home.

Its a blessing to be afforded the opportunity to have continued this service abroad in Afghanistan, he said. Witnessing the dedication to duty of service members, my thoughts and prayers go out to all those abroad who are protecting our nations freedom. I feel fortunate to have returned home safely. I thank Assemblyman Kim for the support and attention he has shown to those who serve and protect all members of our community.
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
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Show More Show Less 3 of 3





BETHLEHEM  A person was charged with boating while intoxicated after police responded to a vessel that came ashore on the Hudson River late Saturday night.

Bethlehem police said they responded to the river in the Glenmont area around 10 p.m. The two occupants on the vessel, which appeared to be a two-seat motorboat, were not injured, but one was charged under the Navigation Law. Police did not release the identity of the person charged, or what caused the boat to run ashore.
HALFMOON  Three people lost their home in a fire in Halfmoon on Woodridge Circle Saturday afternoon, according to the Northeastern New York Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Volunteers from the Red Cross provided emergency housing aid, food and clothing to the two adults and child in Saratoga County.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The festivities of highly-influential comic convention Comic-Con International San Diego officially began Wednesday and the action won't stop until Sunday, July 23.

FLASHBACK: Hottest cosplay costumes from San Diego Comic-Con 2016

Expect plenty of costumes, celebrities and industry surprises. The convention's website is packed with information that will make many fans want to hop a plane to California at this very moment.

Story continues below...

Fans in the know are expecting to get more detailed intel on heavily-anticipated film properties like a "Tomb Raider" reboot, Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One," "Blade Runner 2049," "Ocean's Eight," and maybe even more footage from "Deadpool 2."

BATTLE STATIONS: Legal battle brewing between Comic-Con, comic-con

Big TV franchises like "Game of Thrones," "The Walking Dead" and "Westworld" are also expected to make some major announcements.

Of course being a comic convention, it brings out the best and brightest stars of cosplay, the folks who spend all year perfecting screen-worthy costumes
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Phoenix

Gun-friendly Arizona is trying to avoid deadly encounters between police and people behind the wheel by teaching armed drivers how they should handle themselves when they are pulled over.

Arizona, which allows residents to carry weapons without permits, recently changed its rule book for the road in a bid to avoid confrontations such as the one that killed Philando Castile. The Minnesota man, who had a gun permit, was fatally shot during a 2016 traffic stop after telling an officer he was armed.

Arizona is among a small number of states instructing drivers on what to expect during traffic stops. It appears to be the first to use its driving rules to address situations in which motorists are armed.

Democratic state Rep. Reginald Bolding said Castile's death inspired him to seek changes to the state's driver's manual. He said the revisions were necessary because Arizona does not require gun permits and some owners have not been trained to handle firearms.

"The goal was to create a set of standards," Bolding said.

The new edition of the driver's manual, published about a month ago, advises drivers with guns to keep their hands on the steering wheel during traffic stops and tell officers right away that there's a firearm in the car.

It also tells drivers not to reach for anything inside the vehicle without getting permission first. And officers can take possession of guns, for safety reasons, until the stop is completed. The firearms would be returned if no crime has been committed.

Lawmakers in Tennessee, Virginia and Illinois have enacted laws over the last year that require driver education courses to teach people how to react when they are pulled over.

Unlike the guidelines published in Arizona, none of the laws explicitly mentions what to do when armed motorists are stopped.
Norfolk, Va.

With flag-hoisting, gun-firing, horn-blowing fanfare, the Navy opened a new era Saturday as it commissioned the first of a generation of more powerful, technologically advanced aircraft carriers that will transform the fleet in decades to come.

President Donald Trump presided over the commissioning ceremony for the nuclear-powered Gerald R. Ford, the first in a new class of aircraft carriers in 42 years. Although the carrier took longer to build and cost more than initially expected, it nonetheless represented a milestone for the Navy as it seeks to modernize in a world of ever-changing national security challenges.

"American steel and American hands have constructed a 100,000-ton message to the world: American might is second to none," Trump said to a crowd on a sweltering below-deck hangar that will transport warplanes to the world's danger zones. "And we're getting bigger, better and stronger every day of my administration, that I can tell you."

Named for the 38th president, the Ford is roughly the same size as the Nimitz-class carriers welcomed into the fleet in 1975 by Ford, but it packs more punch. The superstructure is smaller and farther back on the ship, which will allow it to launch 33 percent more flight missions a day using a new catapult and landing system. With nearly three times as much electricity, digital navigation and touch-screen technology, the ship will have a smaller crew and should save $4 billion over 50 years, according to the Navy.

But its path to this day was not always smooth. The ship cost $2 billion more than the initial $11 million estimate and took two years longer than expected to finish because of problems with the new catapults. Even now, it will require an additional four years of trials before deployment, costing $780 million more, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

Trump complained about the costs to Time last spring and suggested returning to using steam catapults because the new system "costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it's no good." But he is also entranced with the carrier, having visited it once before, and he made no mention of its troubles Saturday as he celebrated the "wonderful, beautiful" warship.

"When it comes to battle, we don't want a fair fight," he said. "We want just the opposite. We demand victory, and we will have total victory, believe me."

He touted his proposal to increase military spending and asked sailors to call members of Congress to support it.

Joining him for the ceremony were governors, lawmakers and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Susan Ford Bales, the president's daughter and the ship's official sponsor, gave the command to "bring her to life." To the strains of "Anchors Aweigh," the flag was hoisted, sailors in white uniforms reported to stations and radar dishes began to spin.
Berlin

Esther Thiane, a student in Berlin, does not know yet if she wants to marry a man or a woman  but now she can choose without worrying about the legality either.

Germany's president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, signed marriage equality into law Thursday, and the nation's first same-sex marriages are set to take place in October. Supporters like Thiane had a chance to celebrate in Berlin on Saturday at the Christopher Street Day Parade, an annual event named for the New York City street synonymous with gay pride.

Thousands of people participated in the parade, which one marcher, Marco Hirscher, 28, described as a "huge party for our rights."

Last month, the German parliament, or Bundestag, swiftly debated and approved marriage equality. Now, activists and lawmakers say that the next steps include revising the constitution's anti-discrimination article so it provides protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Such a change would require approval from two-thirds of parliament's 630 members.

"We don't just want the same law. We want the same constitutional protections," said Axel Hochrein, a board member of the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany.

Activists have spent years lobbying for such a constitutional change, but it is unclear whether conservatives will allow it, said Volker Beck, a Green Party lawmaker and a longtime champion of gay rights. "Today, we celebrate our gay pride," Beck said Saturday.

A softening in conservative opposition to gay marriage enabled parliament to legalize same-sex marriage in June.

After two major political parties made legalization a condition of any future coalition with the Christian Democratic Union, Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, Merkel, who ultimately voted against the law, said the issue should be decided as "a question of conscience, rather than something I push through with a majority vote."

Days later, parliament voted 393-226, with four abstentions, in favor of same-sex marriage.

At Saturday's march, Pia Ernsberger, 19, said she could barely find words to describe what the vote meant to Berlin's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population. "It feels like we can go out and show who we are, like we are today, and it's just amazing," Ernsberger said. "We don't need to hide."

In recent weeks, some members of the conservative bloc  particularly within the Christian Democratic Union's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union  have also raised the prospect of bringing the law before Germany's Constitutional Court.

"In order to achieve legal clarity, I suggest that the Constitutional Court should be called upon," Johannes Singhammer, vice president of the Bundestag and a member of the Bavarian Christian Socialist Union, said this month, according to the German news media. "It would be faster, however, if a state government were to do this  for example, the Bavarian government."

However, with September elections approaching, activists see a potential constitutional challenge as a politically motivated but probably empty threat meant to appease disenchanted conservative voters. Since Merkel opened the door to same-sex marriage, the far-right Alternative for Germany party has tried to attract such voters by denouncing marriage equality and questioning its legality.

Pointing to the political pressures unique to elections and broad public support for same-sex marriage  according to available polling, a strong majority of Germans favor equality  Hochrein said the conservative bloc is poised to move on to other issues after September.

"They are trying to show their voters, before the election, that yes, they do oppose this law, but after the election we are convinced this topic will disappear from their agenda," Hochrein said. "They know it would be a bruising, damaging fight for them, and that the president only signs things into law that he believes could not result in a Constitutional Court ruling against his signature."

Beck, the Green Party lawmaker and fervent gay rights supporter, said that while conservative lawmakers could legally file an appeal with the Constitutional Court, such a development would not be cause for concern.

"The people support and want this, and Parliament has approved it, and I am sure that the Constitutional Court would decide in our favor," he said. "But for now, we celebrate."
Changing news may not be thrilling news

Monolith Solar is working with a new banker once again as it seeks to finance the construction its much-awaited new headquarters in Slingerlands.

Monolith announced back in 2014 plans to build the $4.6 million headquarters. At first, Kinderhook Bank was supposed to provide the financing. Then it was Berkshire Bank, and finally KeyBank, through a U.S. Small Business Administration loan.

Monolith blames the delays on its rapid growth and the financing of the large solar farms that has tied up a lot of its capital. Many of Monolith's solar farms are financed through KeyBank.

Monolith lined up $680,000 in tax breaks through the Bethlehem Industrial Development Agency, and company officials have been providing regular updates on its financing situation to the IDA board.

And so the IDA board must have been thrilled last month when Monolith's president, Steve Erby, told them that Trustco Bank was now providing the financing with a loan closing expected by July 30.

Don't expect change until after the 'I do's'

Regardless of whether SUNY Polytechnic Institute decides to go ahead and sell Kiernan Plaza, the former Union Station in downtown Albany, it sure is a great place to hold a wedding reception.

SUNY Poly acquired the building in 2013 for $3 million to create a "smart cities" technology center that would attract large employers downtown and serve as a test lab for Big Data firms like IBM and others.

The idea appears to have lost steam, and now as SUNY Poly looks to pare back its budget and real estate holdings, it may look to sell the building.

SEFCU, which has its headquarters in the 1900 Beaux-Arts building, has been rumored to be interested. The head of SUNY Poly's real estate arm, Fuller Road Management Corp., however, says the building is not on the market, although an appraisal has been done.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter.

Based on the photos on the websites of caterers and event planners, the Kiernan Plaza lobby is one of the best places to hold a wedding reception in the Capital Region. And we know of at least one wedding booked there for the fall, so we wouldn't expect any drastic changes until after that.

Another idea

If SEFCU does buy Kiernan Plaza, they could really get some sales and marketing mileage out of it.

Imagine, SEFCU could not only host your wedding, but it could also help couples and their families finance the reception, pay for the honeymoon and get a mortgage on their first house  even pay for their future kids' college.
Farming is by far one of the most physically and mentally demanding jobs in Ireland today. Figures show that farmers continue to work the longest hours with some even going the whole working year without taking time off.

This in the long run effects both their health and their physical ability. Farming can be a hazardous activity that presents a wide range of threats to health.

The principle causes of farmers ill health are associated with manual handling, lung problems, infections and noise.

Of farmers with occupational ill health, 50 per cent suffer from chronic back pain.

In order for farmers to maintain good health the following should be considered:

n always think safe lifting: When lifting always bend your knees to avoid hurting your back or pulling something.

n reduce lifting: Basically avoid carrying loads all at once, take your time and if needs be use a mechanical device to lift them. Getting someone to help out is always a good option.

n assess your load at all times: Take a look at the job ahead, if it is too heavy get help or else lift it mechanically.

n avoid slips and trips: Keeping the farm yard tidy at all times will help prevent having slips and trips. Ensure there is good lighting in the farmyard and buildings.

n cover all open wounds: Cover cuts and any open wounds with a waterproof plaster or dressing to avoid infection.

n keep vermin at bay: Control vermin by putting a control programme in place on the farm.

n reduce noise: Use ear plugs or earmuffs in noisy areas.

n remember sun protection: Farmers spend long hours outdoors especially during the summer months so skin is constantly exposed to the suns rays. Wearing sun protection is vital to protect your skin and prevent skin damage.

Undoubtedly, your health is vital in order to be effective as a farmer.

Taking time off from the farm to unwind and spend time with their family should be a priority every year for the farmer.

This is where FRS Farm Relief Services can help.

FRS work with farmers throughout Ireland helping them to take the time out that they deserve.

Experienced operators are sent out to the farm to take over while the farmer is away. This enables farmers to head away leaving their minds at ease.

Jeremy O Hanlon from County Cork has been using the FRS service for six or seven years.

I have the same guy, James Barry, coming to me from FRS for the past six or seven years so he knows all the ropes. Im delighted to be getting the same lad every year. Im happy with that because I know he will get the job done and I can enjoy the holiday with my family knowing that theres a confident guy running the show, he said.

FRS also offer a Membership Benefit Scheme which provides sickness and accident support that entitles members to the services of an experienced FRS operator to cover the work on the farm while the farmer is getting back to good health.

Micheal Byrne from Greystones availed of his FRS membership and was delighted with how it helped him out when he needed it most:

I would not hesitate what so ever in recommending the scheme to other farmers. It did benefit me no doubt about it. In this particular case it was definitely value for money. It was well worth it, said Michael.

For more information on what FRS has to offer and how we can help you when you need it the most visit www.frsfarmrelief.ie or call FRS Roscrea on 0505-21166 or FRS Cahir on 052-7441 598.
Mega Millions numbers for Friday, Nov. 11, 2022

Here are the winning Mega Millions numbers and results for the lottery jackpot drawing on Friday, Nov. 11, 2022.
Very good news about Greece and a signal to the markets ahead of an exit from the programme in 2018. The confidence is there! Moscovicis post noted

In a tweet posted on Friday, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Pierre Moscovici on Friday expressed satisfaction with the news that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has given approval in principle to a new Greek programme of 1.8 billion euros after a board meeting on Thursday.

Very good news about Greece and a signal to the markets ahead of an exit from the programme in 2018. The confidence is there! Moscovicis post noted.

In statements to AFP, Moscovici stressed the news was a new positive indicator of the international partners returning confidence in Greece and a very positive signal to the markets.

The IMFs participation opens the way for a future disbursement that is, of course, less significant than that of the Europeans but welcome and useful, nonetheless, for the Greek economy, he added.

Moscovici is due to visit Greece on July 25, when he will meet Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos.

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

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Michael W. Pendergrass License: CC-BY-SA

Photo Source:pixabay.com

Source: ANA-MPA

Source: thenationalherald.com
Standard & Poor's extended a much-needed fillip towards the Greek government on Friday by revising its outlook to positive from stable, a day after the IMF extended a paltry "precautionary" line of credit (1.6 billion euros) to the country until the bailout program ends in August 2018, but thoroughly linked to various conditions.

The international ratings agency affirmed its B- credit ratings for the country.

The abstracts of S&P's reasoning notes:

"We believe recovering economic growth, alongside legislated fiscal reforms and further debt relief, should enable Greece to reduce its general government debt-to-GDP ratio and debt servicing costs through 2020. We have therefore revised the outlook on Greece to positive from stable while affirming our 'B-' long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings. The positive outlook indicates our view that, over the next 12 months, there is at least a one-in-three probability that we could raise the ratings."

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

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: B64 License: CC-BY-SA

Source: naftemporiki.gr
The Bahrain International Airshow 2018 has confirmed that United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) has been added to its roster of participants after returning from MAKS 2017.



At a signing ceremony which took place on July 19, UAC confirmed that all its subsidiary companies would participate in the show including Sukhoi, Ilyushin, Tupolev and Irkut.



Bahrains Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications, Engineer Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, attended the Russian aviation showcase to meet with a variety of Russian organisations including Rostec, Russian Helicopters, Rosoboronexport, National Space Agency and Roscosmos to discuss their participation in the forthcoming show which takes place from November 14th-16th, 2018.



He also met with newly appointed sales agency, Global Business Link (GBL), members of the Russian-Bahraini Business Council.



Speaking from MAKS, Mohammed, said: We have had a very busy schedule here at MAKS, with many expressing their keenness to participate in BIAS18. The Bahraini Government is committed to building stronger ties with Russia and working together so that both our countries benefit from the fast growth in Russia and the GCC. Russian businesses have participated at BIAS since the inaugural event and we are delighted to see their continued support.



Yousif Mahmoud, head of the Bahrain International Airshow, who was also attending MAKS added: The Bahrain International Airshow provides the perfect venue to explore business opportunities in Bahrain and the Middle East. Our exceptional civil and military delegation programme means that the event is becoming more and more attractive to companies looking to showcase their aircraft or other technological advances in aviation.



The Bahrain International Airshow will take place from November 14-16, 2018, and is the fastest growing airshow in the Middle East. While the show has grown, it still retains the unique qualities of its first show in offering an exclusive business environment for high-level business meetings. Its civil and military delegations programme is unparalleled and the exhibition feature hall has allowed even more international businesses to participate in the show. Furthermore, its unique location at the Sakhir Airbase means it can display just about any type of aircraft. With the show still more than a year away, chalet and exhibition space is already 75 per cent sold or reserved. - TradeArabia News Service
Russia will supply a large batch of tanks to Iraq this year, according to the Russian Tass news agency in a recent report.



Vladimir Kozhin, the Russian presidents aide for military technical cooperation, revealed that the contract was significant and would likely be followed by other deals, added the Iraq Business News report.



The total sum of the contract may exceed $1 billion and will be facilitated through Russias Uralvagonzavod Corporation (UVZ), the supplier of the tanks, it said.



According to the Tass report, Iraq made the decision to purchase the Russian military hardware following the successful performance of the tanks in Syria.
US-based Sallyport Global Holdings has been awarded a six-month service contract, for a not-to-exceed amount of $133.8 million, to provide base operations support, life support and security services at Iraqs Balad Air Base, said a report.



Sallyport is a global provider of protective, security and mission support services to government and commercial clients worldwide.



This contract is expected to be complete by January 30, added the Iraq Business News report.



This award is the result of sole-source request by the government of Iraq, it said.
Iran has launched the mass production line and delivery of Sayyad-3 missiles, designed and constructed by the Iranian scientists and experts, said a report.



Irans Defence Minister General Hossein Dehghan said Sayyad-3 high-altitude air-defense missile has been designed with a range of 120 km and a 27-km flight altitude against airborne threats at medium and long range, accoring to the Mehr News agency report.



It said a number of Sayyad-3 missiles have already been delivered to Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base.



Sayyad-3 is designed based on the latest technologies in the world and is capable of fighting with various types of threats, including drones, stealth aircrafts, cruise missiles, helicopters, and various types of other aircrafts with high maneuver, speed and altitude in their operational range, Dehghan noted.



The missile can track 30 targets and engage 12 of them simultaneously. The system is integrated into the early warning radars operating at the strategic level to maintain a situational picture of the entire airspace, and employs a locally manufactured fire control radar, he added.


Latvian airline airBaltic has set a new world record as its newest CS300 turnaround for the first commercial flight took only 50 minutes after delivery from Canada.



Martin Gauss, chief executive officer of airBaltic, said: I am happy to announce that we have welcomed our sixth CS300 aircraft in Riga and our fleet size is continuing to grow. We have yet again demonstrated our professionalism as the launch operator of CS300 aircraft by achieving the world record for the fastest turnaround for the first commercial flight. I am very proud of our team who achieved this goal.



The sixth airBaltic CS300 aircraft, registered as YL-CSF, arrived in Riga on July 21 at 11:15, Riga time. The flight time was 7 hours and 25 minutes and the aircraft covered 6 470 km non-stop distance between the Canadian and Latvian airports.



At 12:06, Riga time YL-CSF initial turnaround was finished and the aircraft departed for its first commercial flight BT641 to Zurich at 12:17. It is the first time that turnaround for the inaugural CS300 commercial flight has been carried out so promptly.



Thus far, airBaltic has completed more than 2,163 scheduled flights and flown over 5,523 block hours with the brand new Bombardier CS300 aircraft. In total airBaltic has carried more than 245,131 passengers on the CS300 aircraft.



By the end of 2019 airBaltic is planning to have 20 Bombardier CS300 aircraft on its fleet. With an average jet fleet age of only 2 years, airBaltic, as an all-Bombardier operator, will have one of the youngest jet fleets in Europe.



AirBaltic CS300 aircraft currently operates on such popular routes as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Rome, Moscow, London, Paris, Vienna, Athens, Madrid and others.



The new Bombardier CS300 aircraft, with a total of 145 seats, offers excellent flying experience with such benefits for passengers as wider seats, larger windows, more hand luggage space in the cabin, improved lavatories and more. The new aircraft is also much quieter  with four times smaller noise footprint. Moreover, at the moment, it is the greenest commercial aircraft in the world, as it is the first aircraft to have a transparent declaration of the life-cycle environmental impact, helping to reduce CO2 and NOX emissions by 20 per cent and 50 per cent respectively.



AirBaltic serves over 55 destinations from its home base in Riga, Latvia. From every one of these locations, airBaltic offers convenient connections via Riga to its network spanning Europe, Scandinavia, the CIS and the Middle East. In addition, airBaltic also offers direct flights from Tallinn and Vilnius. - TradeArabia News Service


Ludhiana, July 22

Team of Dr Kalam Model United Nations conference and Initiators of Change under a project Dr Kalam Rural Leadership programme organised a skill development seminar at Government Senior Secondry School Jawadi.

The project is being guided by District administration by ADC (D) Surbhi Malik. The students at the school were given motivation to contribute in the progress of Punjab and were also made aware about techniques of good communication skills. The seminar was led by Arjun Jethi and Harmohit Singh from the organisation.

They said the team is working with four rural schools for the development of students. In all, 50 best students from these schools will particpate in the event.  TNS
Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, July 22

Eight policemen were injured in an alleged assault by soldiers in civvies in central Kashmirs Ganderbal district, the police said today. While a police station was also ransacked, the Army described it as a minor altercation.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

A senior police official said the incident happened after a vehicle was pulled over at a checkpoint at Sonmarg resort last night. The checkpoint was set up to prevent vehicles carrying Amarnath pilgrims from moving beyond the evening deadline, the official said.

The occupants  all soldiers returning from pilgrimage  however, thrashed a police officer and breached the checkpoint. The vehicle was stopped at another checkpoint a few kilometres down the road at Gund.

At Gund, they thrashed more policemen. After reinforcements arrived, they were taken to the police station, Ganderbal SP Fayaz Ahmad told The Tribune.

An Army unit arrived at the police station and assaulted those present. They also damaged the police station, the officer said. Eight policemen, including two officers, were injured and were taken to hospital, he added.

Another police official posted in Gund claimed two companies, with around 120 personnel, from a nearby Army unit forcibly entered the police station and ransacked it. They damaged LCDs, computers and other infrastructure, he said.

A case has been registered at the Gund police station under eight sections, including attempt to murder.

The SP said Army officers had assured a court of inquiry against those involved. The police would wait for the Armys findings before initiating any legal action, he added.
Ananya Panda

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 23

India is still to come on track when it comes to safeguarding the rights of children if the disturbing figures of minor girls forced into matrimony are anything to go by.

Believe it or not, every third child bride in the world is an Indian and the country is home to more than 30 per cent girl child marriages.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The revelations by a recent report of child rights NGO ActionAid India speak volumes of how the country with little fear of the child marriage prevention laws continues to be plagued by a patriarchal mindset of the medieval times in the 21st century.

Child brides account for 30.2 per cent of the currently married female population of the country and elimination of this alone could contribute 5 per cent to female literacy or 27 million more literate women. This in turn could increase the countrys GDP by 1.7 per cent, observes the report  Elimination of Child Marriage in India: Progress and Prospects  released this week by ActionAid India here.

Elimination of girl child marriages can avoid 27,000 neonatal deaths, 55,000 infant deaths, 1.6 lakh child deaths along with bringing down maternal mortality which is caused due to complications in teenage pregnancies.

In the course, India may move closer to its Millennium Development Goals of child and maternal health at a time when it contributes 22 per cent to 6.3 million annual under-five deaths globally and is still to achieve its maternal mortality rate of 103.

Going by the report, nearly 103 million Indians living as on March 1, 2011 were married as children, i.e. before reaching the age of 18. Of this, 85.2 million were girls.

A perusal of the new set of upsetting findings brings out that every hour nearly 150 child marriages are taking place in the country. Of the every 28 child marriages per minute in the world, at least two take place in India.

With the countrys share to the global figures standing at 33 per cent, the prevalence rate of child marriages is higher in India than that of several African countries, including Somalia, Nigeria, Eritrea and Zambia, as per the report.

Child marriages in India (103 million) are more than the total population of Philippines (100 million) and Germany (80.68 million).

Releasing the report, Shabana Azmi, celebrated film actor, social worker and chairperson of ActionAid India, said: Patriarchy is at the root of child marriage and it has to be tackled to eliminate child marriage. Spreading education and building confidence amongst girls enable them to resist child marriage and chart their own lives.

Child marriage is not only a human rights or gender issue, it has serious consequences on Indias demographic, health, education and economic progress, points out author of the report, Dr Srinivas Goli, Assistant Professor, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Women comprise half of the population and if we cannot combat child marriage, it may increase extent of unhealthy and unskilled labour force that can be great hindrance to the economic prospects of the country which is aspiring to grow in double digits, she asserted.

Beating the common perception, ActionAid India Executive Director Sandeep Chachra said, The prevalence of child marriage can be seen across all social groups, including urban areas, thus a strict correlation cannot be drawn between low income, residing in backward areas and child marriage.

Underscoring the need for awareness, Sandeep underlined, Apart from strengthening the implementation of laws, it is also important to strengthen the agency of girls as well as boys to resist and eliminate the practice of child marriage.
Chandigarh, July 23

Citing non-availability of sufficient evidence, the Canadian government has told New Delhi that there is no threat to Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh and has concluded its investigation into the matter.

In a communication to the Indian authorities, Canadas Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has stated that the investigation had been conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

According to sources, the Canadian authorities said that the RCMP investigation has determined that there is no evidence of direct physical threat made towards Capt Amarinder.

It further stated that there was not sufficient evidence to file criminal charges or proceed against anyone. The Canadian government said that in view of the findings, the investigation had been concluded.

The Indian High Commission in Canada had lodged a formal complaint to Global Affairs-Canada (Canadas foreign office) in April following a threat publicly issued to the Punjab CM by pro-Khalistan elements during a Vaisakhi Day event in British Columbias Surrey city.

The threat was part of the hate speeches made by Sikh radicals operating out of Canada. Videos of the Vaisakhi Parade on April 22 were sent to the Canadian foreign ministry as proof.

Indian authorities had also objected to the public display of Khalistan floats with images of terrorists, pictures of AK-47s and photographs of former and serving Army and police officers who are on the hit-list of Sikh radicals.

MEA sources said the Canadian authorities were cautioned about the anti-India propaganda and the Canadian foreign ministry, responding to the early warning, said it would take necessary action. However, the Khalistani elements were allowed to have a free run and even issued threats on loudspeakers to Capt Amarinder.

The CM had yesterday again stressed the need for Canada to rein in the radical elements, who were trying to use Canadian soil to spread strife and divisiveness in India. He raised the issue with Jalandhar-born Canadian MP Rameshwar Singh Sangha, who met him in New Delhi. IANS
Chandigarh, July 23

Citing non-availability of "sufficient evidence", the Canadian government has told India that there is no threat to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and has concluded its investigation into the matter.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

In a communication to the Indian authorities, Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has stated that the investigation had been conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Sources in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi said that the Canadian authorities, in the communication, has said that the RCMP investigation has determined that there is no evidence of direct physical threat made towards Amarinder Singh.

It further stated that there was "not sufficient evidence" to file criminal charges or proceed against anyone. The Canadian government said that in view of the findings, the investigation had been concluded.

The Indian High Commission in Canada had lodged a "formal complaint" to Global Affairs-Canada (Canada's foreign office) in April following a threat publicly issued to the Punjab Chief Minister by pro-Khalistan elements during a Baisakhi Day event in British Columbia's Surrey city.

The threat was part of the hate speeches made by Sikh radicals operating out of Canada.

Videos of the Baisakhi Parade in Surrey on April 22 were sent to the Canadian foreign ministry as proof.

Indian authorities had also objected to the public display of Khalistan floats with images of slain separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other terrorists, pictures of AK-47s and photographs of former and serving army and police officers who are on the hit-list of Sikh radicals.

MEA sources said that the Canadian authorities were cautioned about the "anti-India propaganda" of the Khalistani elements as India was anticipating trouble. The Canadian foreign ministry, responding to the early warning, said it would take "necessary action".

However, the Khalistani elements were allowed to have a free run and even issued threats on loudspeakers to Amarinder Singh in front of hundreds of people from the Indian community who participated in the April 22 parade. The Canadian provincial police and security agencies were present when all this happened, the sources said.

Amarinder Singh on Friday again stressed the need for Canada to rein in the radical elements that were "trying to use Canadian soil to spread strife and divisiveness in India".

The chief minister raised the issue with Jalandhar-born Canadian MP Rameshwar Singh Sangha, who met him in New Delhi on Friday.

"Such elements, including Khalistani supporters, could not have any impact on the Canadian political environment but they could influence the people of India and vitiate the atmosphere here," Amarinder Singh pointed out.

"The Canadian government should crack down on these forces and ensure that they do not have a free run on social media and other public platforms, the Chief Minister added.

The Amarinder Singh government had, in April, cold-shouldered visiting Canadian defence minister of Indian-origin Harjit Singh Sajjan as he travelled to various places in Punjab.

He had refused to meet Sajjan, the first Sikh to be the defence minister of a Western country, accusing him and other ministers of Punjab origin in the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of links to radical elements demanding a separate Sikh state of Khalistan.

No minister or senior officer of the Punjab government went to welcome Sajjan or even accompany him during the visit.

Amarinder Singh made it clear that he "would not meet any Khalistani sympathisers".

He was annoyed with the Canadian government since April last year when he was denied permission to visit the country, which has a sizeable Punjabi Diaspora, in the run-up to the Punjab assembly elections. A radical organisation, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), had complained to the Canadian government against the visit.

The Congress leader had to cancel his trip after being told by the Canadian authorities at the last minute that he could not be allowed to visit the country for holding political rallies and meetings. The visit was aimed at wooing influential Non-Resident Indian (NRI) groups in Canada. IANS
Kulwinder Sandhu

Tribune News Service

Moga, May 2

Responding to the Indian governments complaint to the Canadian government regarding perceived threats to Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh during the April 22 Khalsa Parade in Canada, the human rights group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has termed it as a nefarious attempt to curb the freedom of expression of Sikhs living in Canada.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The rights panel said no threats to life were issued to Amarinder during the parade and all those who participated in it were law-abiding citizens of Canada.

In a statement issued to The Tribune, the SFJ has stated that Canadian Sikhs had a constitutionally protected right to express any political opinion, no matter how discomforting it might be for the Indian Government, including propagating for Sikh homeland Khalistan.

On April 22 during the Khalsa Day parade in Surrey, British Columbia, thousands of Sikhs followed the Khalistan float with the images of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers who were killed in Punjab during militancy.

Calling the Indian Governments complaint against SFJ to Global Affairs Ministry of Canada as frivolous, Attorney Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal adviser to SFJ, claimed, Separatism is not terrorism and SFJ always works within the framework of law.

Captain Amarinder is a human rights violator as per the international laws and we are waiting for him to be in Canada, America or European Union Countries so that we can hold the Punjab CM accountable for all the atrocities committed on the Sikhs and prosecute him for crimes against humanity, Pannun said.

In April 2016, SFJ blocked Amarinder from addressing public rallies in Canada by initiating a private prosecution seeking his arrest warrants for his culpability in the torture of Sikhs in Punjab during his tenure as CM of Punjab between 2002 and 2007. Now, again, the SFJ has filed a defamation suit against Amarinder in a Canadian court.
Chandigarh, May 25

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday said he is not afraid of threats to his life from pro-Khalistan elements and that there was no question of enhancing his security.

Three videos are rocketing around the Internet in which men, suspected to be based in Canada, are seen giving threats to the chief minister and Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

He dismissed media reports that the Punjab government has sought Z-plus security from the Centre for him and Bittu, saying the state police was "more than capable of protecting the people, including Congress leaders".

"There is no question of approaching the central government for more security. I have full faith in the capabilities of Punjab police, which is doing an excellent job," the chief minister said.

Singh in a statement said he was more than ready to take on "such forces which are trying hard to disrupt peace and harmony in Punjab. I will do everything in my power to thwart their nefarious designs".

The chief minister said he and his government will not be cowed down by the threats from such "spineless people who do not have the courage to come to Punjab and openly confront him".

He said if pro-Khalistan elements came to Punjab, his government will "take suitable action to ensure that they do not get away with their cowardly threats and attempts to revive terrorism in the state".

The Punjab government will retaliate in a suitable manner to ensure that peace in the state is not disturbed at any cost, he said.

An official spokesperson in the Chief Minister's Office also said Singh was not going seek additional security in the wake of the threats.

The chief minister has clearly told his officials and colleagues in the government that there should be no move on their part to scale up his security cover, the spokesperson said.

He said organisations like Sikhs for Justice, which was purportedly behind some of the videos doing the rounds on social media, "were being supported, overtly or covertly, by certain Indian-origin members of Canadian Parliament".

These elements were bringing a bad name to the NRI Sikh community and diluting the latter's contribution to the development and progress of those countries, including Canada, he added.  PTI
Washington, July 22

A Punjabi man has been convicted of using a fake identity to obtain US citizenship, an immigration official has said.

Balbir Singh, alias Ranjit Singh (50), faces up to 10 years in federal prison, a maximum $250,000 possible fine, revocation of his citizenship and enforcement of his outstanding deportation order.

As per Acting US Attorney Abe Martinez, Balbir had previously attempted to obtain asylum under false pretences.

When that attempt failed, an immigration judge ordered his deportation from the US, making him ineligible to ever become a naturalised citizen.

A resident of Houston, Balbir, instead of leaving the country, changed his name, date of birth, the manner in which he entered the US and his familial history so that he could obtain lawful immigration status, and later naturalisation, based on a marriage to a US citizen.

US District Judge Ewing Werlein set the sentencing for October 13.  PTI
Tribune News Service

Sangrur, July 22

Residents of Ladda village today gheraoed Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) officials for two hours after a heated exchange over checking of suspected power theft cases.

Villagers alleged that the officials misbehaved with them. They were released after police intervention.

A team comprising Dhuri SDO Pradeep Garg, Assistant Additional Engineer Pushpinder Singh, six junior engineers and 10 linemen went to Ladda village.

When the team detected that a power meter in a house had been tampered with, the owner called other villagers and they gheraoed the officials. Villagers started misbehaving with us. As we tried to leave the village, they held us hostage for around two hours. We will lodge a police complaint after discussing the matter with our seniors, said the SDO.

Dhuri block general secretary of BKU (Ugrahan) Harbans Ladda said the officials misbehaviour upset the villagers.

We sent our team to get the PSPCL staff freed. We will take legal action against villagers after getting a written complaint, said Vijay Kumar, SHO, Dhuri Sadar police.
The Arizona Daily Sun recently sat down with Flagstaff Unified School Districts new superintendent Mike Penca to discuss his plans for the new school year.

Penca was hired by the FUSD Governing Board in April and arrived in town about three weeks ago. He comes from Mason City Schools in Iowa, where he has served as a teacher, a principal for the last 20 years and most recently an interim superintendent for the last year.

Q: Do you have any ideas from your last district that you want to bring to FUSD?

A: Penca said he doesnt have any concrete ideas on what he wants to improve in the district just yet. Hes been busy meeting one-on-one with all of the Flagstaff Unified School District Board members and with the principals of each school. Hes also visiting each school to see how they function and talking with staff.

Im learning how the district does business. Im really impressed with the quality of teachers and employees who work for the district. Im really honored to be working with them, he said.

He does plan to continue work on improving the districts school buildings. A report on the maintenance needs of all the districts buildings is supposed to be submitted to the FUSD Governing Board in the next few months.

Penca said he was also impressed with how STEM -- science, technology, engineering and math -- has been integrated into the schools. He wants to continue to work with teachers and principals on integrating more technology into the classroom. He hopes to get to a point where the district has a 1-to-1 technology ratio for students, like his last district did.

However, technology shouldnt be the be all and end all of education, he said. Its a tool to help with learning and help students keep up with the changes of technology in the real world.

Q: AzMerit scores are due to be released at the end of August. This is the first year that the Arizona Department of Education will be releasing letter grades for individual schools, as well as student test scores. Do you have any ideas as to how to improve student test scores?

A: Penca said he hasnt had a chance to review last years AzMerit scores or learn exactly how the scores are calculated by the state. But once the scores are released, Penca wants to work with teachers, principals and the community on what students and the community need.

Q: Arizona recently expanded its voucher program to allow more students to be eligible for it. The state has also struggled to fund education over the last few years. How will you deal with these situations?

A: I think states everywhere have seen a reduction in funding for education, he said.

Its not really a new situation -- schools and districts will continue to have to adapt and change to meet the circumstances, Penca said. Although, Arizona recently granted schools additional money for teacher pay.

Flagstaff is also a community that has a deep connection to and support for its schools, Penca said. He was struck by how many people along the Fourth of July parade route were cheering not only for FUSD but individual schools in the district. There are also hundreds in the community who donate through the states tax program to the district and volunteer their time in district schools.

Q: What about attracting quality teachers to the district? Arizona has some of the lowest teacher pay in the nation.

A: Flagstaff is a destination town, Penca said. Its unique. It has the university and so many outdoor activities. People want to live here.

Its one of the reasons why he decided to apply for the position, he said. He and his wifes first trip to Arizona was about 10 years ago to visit his sister, who lives in the Tucson area. They drove through and stopped in Flagstaff on the way to visit the Grand Canyon and fell in love with the town.

We were just struck by the vibe of the downtown and the city, he said. Something about it just grabbed us.

They returned to the area two years ago when their daughter was looking at colleges to attend and felt the same vibe, he said.

We always thought of it as a place that we wanted to live, maybe after we had retired, he said.

So when he saw the opening for superintendent, Penca said he was excited at the idea of living here and took the chance. He said he was surprised and excited to be one of the finalists sitting in the auditorium at Sinagua Middle School in March interviewing with students, staff and the board.

Penca also said that its not just Arizona that is having problems attracting teachers.

People are not getting into the teaching profession, he said. Theres been an erosion in the support for public education. Its hard work, but it can be very rewarding.

Q: How did you get into education?

A: I was drawn to teaching because of my high school chemistry teacher, Penca said. He challenged me to think by asking open-ended questions.

Penca said it taught him to look at the world in a different way and inspired him to become a teacher. He started as a kindergarten teacher at Mason City Schools in Iowa more than 20 years ago.

Kindergartners come in so open to learning. Theyre so curious. Theres so much you can do mold their learning at that age. Its very rewarding, he said. You really see the impact that you make on students and families.

He later served as a principal at three schools in the district, before taking on a position as a district administrator in 2010. He served one year as an interim superintendent for Mason City Schools before that school district hired a new superintendent.

Penca said he moved into the administrative positions because he liked working with the bigger picture and could help more students.
Jasmine Singh in Kapurthala/Amritsar

Just how many people are addicted to drugs in Punjab? The state government data appears to suggest the situation is not as bad. (Out of the 2.77 crore population of the state, only 0.06% were found abusing drugs, which is the lowest percentage across the nation, former deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal claimed in February 2016, citing a 2015 study). But facts are such that you may be astounded if you look at it from a different perspective:

The 2015 AIIMS study translates to 837 opioid-dependents per 100,000 people in Punjab, or 0.84% of the states population. This alone is more than three times as much as the corresponding all-India figure for all types of drug dependents, based on a Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment estimate of three million drug dependents nationwide, which is 250 per 100,000, or 0.25% of the Indian population.

Punjab was home to 56% of Indian opium users, said a 2004 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report.

In the maze of data is hidden a dangerous trend: addiction among young mothers and married women. The situation could be gauged from another fact: In Amritsar, a first-of-its-kind women de-addiction centre has come up. This is how some of the victims look like: Sunken eyes, blank expression  Ms A (name withheld on request), mother of a two-month-old baby, sits in the patient chair at Civil Hospital Kapurthala, trying to avoid eye contact. Her fingers are fidgety as she clenches them in a knot. She is there for her daily dose of de-addiction medicine.

Wiping tears off her face, she tells her story. I started taking heroin to give my husband company. Now that he is dead and I have a small baby to look after, I want to leave drugs, she says. I cant afford the drug  I have no money, she stares at her knotted fingers.

Dr Sandeep Bhola, consultant psychiatrist and International certified addiction professional (ICAO-II), Kapurthala, treats at least 10 women addicts daily. Most are addicted to heroin. Since we do not have lodging facility, these women are given the de-addiction dose at a separate centre, says Dr Bhola.

He says the findings of the Punjab Opiod Dependence Survey (PODS), conducted between February to April 2015 by an NGO and AIIMS were startling: of the opiod dependents in Punjab, nearly 1% are women. But what about women who do not come forward for treatment because of social stigma? asks Dr Bhola.

Unlike men, only 5% of such women ask or for help, fearing social pressure. Shame and guilt are the two reasons that prevent women from seeking help, says Dr Jagdeep Pal Singh Bhatia, who is credited with opening the first women de-addiction centre, The Hermitage, in Amritsar. He cites poor health conditions in families, lack of communication, abusive behaviour, trauma, depression, over-curiosity as some of the reasons behind drug addiction among women.

Family rehab home

At The Hermitage, Dr Bhatia treats nearly a dozen girls and women in the age group of 18-55 years from across Punjab, Jammu, and even abroad. He says The Hermitage is basically a family rehab home that offers family-structured programme. Without family support, addicts cannot kick the habit. So, we request parents or at least one parent or husband to be a part of our de-addiction programme. We counsel the addicts and encourage them to get back to their normal lives with complete faith in themselves.

Women drug addicts at The Hermitage are brought either by their family members or a victim has to convince ones parents to take them to a de-addiction centre because they cannot accept the fact that their girl, or wife is into drugs. Sabia (name changed), an addict from abroad, was brought by her grandparents when she was visiting them in Amritsar. Young, beautiful and hopeful, Sabia took to drugs because of her loneliness. I was a shy child. I wouldnt share my problems with my parents. I dropped out of school thrice. And then I was detected with a problem, and finally I took to this...But now I am so much better, she says a faint smile.

There are others who got into drugs to give company to their boyfriends, who later cheated on them for the same reason, shattering their self-esteem. A girl from Punjab started taking drugs because she felt her parents did not understand her at all. They didnt let me pursue the career of my choice; they opposed everything I did, she says.

Wheres the dope?

The drugs are easily available, says a victim. Sometimes we have it home-delivered: one missed call to a dealer means one puddia (a dose), and two missed calls are equal to two puddias. Of the women who approach Dr Bhatia, around 60% are on opium, 17% on alcohol, and the rest on tobacco. We get women patients with party drug and heroin addiction as well, he says.

Smrita, a sociologist from Jalandhar, describes how a girl from a prestigious university in Punjab was forced to dance at weddings, and then took to striptease to procure money for drugs. This is how many women get into flesh trade. I have also heard from women addicts how they were physically manhandled by their bosses and colleagues when they came to know about their addiction problem.

Sikand Shetty, a counselor from Mumbai, offers tips to at least five girls daily. For married women seeking counseling from drug de addiction is a taboo. So, they come to me on the pretext of being treated for depression. I get calls from Delhi, Chennai and Chandigarh. The first thing they request is secrecy. Society does not expect married girls to take to drugs. I treated a married woman from a rich Punjabi family in Ludhiana a year back, her husband requested me to erase all her record for Rs 10 lakh.

The answer seems to lie in the safe and nurturing environment of the centre and then at home. Aftercare is vital. The main concern of all doctors is to integrate the women addicts back in society, says Dr Romesh Mahajan, project director, Red Cross drug De addiction centre. He has successfully treated 67 women, mostly married. All of them are now well-settled and happy. Their families hated them for taking drugs. Today the same families love them and say it in as many ways as they can.

Dr Shivinder Singh Gill, former vice-chancellor, Baba Farid University, is in favour of government-run de-addiction centres. I think private de-addiction centres are unfit to handle women addicts because of many reasons. One, women addicts like others also suffer from either heart or liver problems at the same time. So they need good and trained doctors along with a de-addiction routine. Women de-addiction has many implications like marriage or property issue. Some women are sometimes declared drug addicts so that they can be disowned from the property, he said.

The findings of the Punjab Opiod Dependence Survey (PODS), conducted between February to April 2015 by an NGO and AIIMS are startling: of the opiod dependents in Punjab, nearly 1% are women. But what about women who do not come forward for treatment because of social stigma? Dr Sandeep Bhola, Consultant Psychiatrist & International certified addiction professional, Kapurthala
Baghdad, July 23

The police arrested 12 persons suspected of belonging to the Islamic State terror organisation and 13 imams of mosques in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, officials said.

Ninevehs police chief Wathiq al-Hamadani said on Saturday that the detainees included a prominent IS commander accused of killing several police officers. The commander was arrested in the eastern part of the northern city of Mosul.

Al-Hamadani added that most of the other 11 detainees were suspected IS militants accused of committing crimes against civilians in eastern Mosul, Efe news reported.

According to the police chief, some of the detainees admitted to killing government officials and police officers.

Abu Bakr Kanaan, head of Islamic affairs in the Iraqi province, said the security forces detained 13 mosque imams in the city of Mosul for not delivering unified sermons in their respective mosques.

Kanaan said that seven of the detained imams were released shortly afterward.

Iraqi forces expelled IS combatants from Mosul (which had been the extremists main bastion in Iraq since June 2014) after more than eight months of fierce fighting.  IANS
Beijing, July 23

A Chinese government housing vice-minister has lodged a $10 million defamation lawsuit against controversial billionaire Guo Wengui in New York over claims made by the exiled tycoon that she had engaged in corruption and provided sexual favours.

Huang Yan, vice-minister of housing and urban-rural development, filed the complaint with the New York State Supreme Court on Wednesday, saying Guos false and outrageous claims, made in a video published on YouTube in May, had caused her severe emotional distress and mental anguish.

A copy of the filing was reviewed by Reuters.

It is the first legal case brought by an individual Chinese government official since Guo began making accusations of high-level Communist Party corruption, and represents an exceedingly rare instance of a senior serving official pursuing legal action against an individual overseas.

Huangs complaint says Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, had falsely alleged that she helped real estate developers secure project approvals by providing sexual favours to a Beijing government official, and in turn received property assets from the developers who benefited.

Guo has falsely and repeatedly claimed that Plaintiff Huang has engaged in various nefarious actions, including, but not limited to: sex scandals and corruption, the complaint said, adding that Guos statements had damaged Huangs reputation among a large number of people, and caused many to doubt her capabilities as a professional and a government official.

Guos corruption allegations have come in a politically sensitive year, with the Communist Party keen to ensure a key five-yearly congress to be held in the autumn goes off without a hitch.

As with other defamation cases against him, Guo said he welcomed the lawsuit as an opportunity for both sides to air facts in the open.

This is very normal, he told Reuters, adding that he believed Huang had been instructed to take action by the Chinese government. I welcome it, this is a good thing. Huangs defamation suit was filed by lawyer Kevin Tung, who is also representing a group of Chinese creditors who are suing Guo for $50 million in funds they say he owes them.

We believe that these lawsuits are meant to put pressure on Mr Kwok to stop speaking out against the Peoples Republic of China, said his lawyer Josh Schiller, of Boies Schiller & Flexner.

It adds to a long list of legal actions taken against Guo in the United States, including by movie star Fan Bingbing, conglomerate HNA Group, real estate developer SOHO China and journalist Hu Shuli.

It also comes amid a sustained and coordinated Chinese government campaign to discredit Guo, since it requested an Interpol red notice to be issued in April and declared him a criminal suspect. Reuters
The following dates have been announced regarding back-to-school activities for Coweta Public School. Superintendent Jeff Holmes said classes are set to begin on Thursday, Aug. 17.

At all grade levels, all new enrollees must provide proof of residency, original birth certificate, custody papers (if applicable), immunization records and previous school records. Proof of residency would include, among others, a current utility bill or lease agreement.

New enrollees of Indian descent are urged to provide their Tribal Enrollment or CDIB cards.

For more information, please call your childs respective school campus office.

Central, Northwest and Southside Elementary Schools

 Monday, Aug. 7  New students enroll from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and 1-3:30 p.m.

 Wednesday, Aug. 16  Student room assignments will be posted on classroom doors at 2 p.m. Also, a Meet Your Teacher event is planned from 2-3 p.m. for all students in pre-k through 3rd grade.

 For more information, call Central at 918-486-2130, Northwest at 918-486-6559 or Southside at 918-279-0480.

Mission IGC, Heritage IGC

 Monday, Aug. 7  New students enroll from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and 1- 3:30 p.m.

 Monday, Aug. 14  4th grade students may pick up class schedules from 1-1:30 p.m. An orientation and tour will be held from 1:30-2 p.m. in the school gymnasium. A 4th grade Meet Your Teacher event will be held from 2-3 p.m. in the fourth grade classrooms (rotation).

 Tuesday, Aug. 15  5th grade students may pick up class schedules from 9-9:30 a.m. A 5th grade Meet Your Teacher event will be held from 10-11 a.m. in classrooms.

 Wednesday, Aug. 16  6th grade students may pick up classroom assignments from 9 a.m. to 12 noon.

 Thursday, Aug. 24  Meet Your Teacher event for 6th grade students from 6-7:30 p.m.

 For more information, call Mission at 918-486-2186 or Heritage at 918-486-8590.

Sloat Junior High

 Thursday, Aug. 10  New student enrollment from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and 1-3:30 p.m.

 Thursday, Aug. 10  All 7th grade students may pick up schedules from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and 1-3:30 p.m.

 Friday, Aug. 11  8th grade students may pick up schedules from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and 1-3:30 p.m.

 Wednesday, Aug. 16  A Meet Your Teacher event for all 7th grade students is planned from 2-3 p.m.

 All students must pay a $25 technology fee and will be assigned a chrome book to use during the school year.

 For more information, call Sloat Junior High at 918-486-8590

Intermediate High School

 Thursday, Aug. 10  New student enrollment from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and 1-3:30 p.m.

 Friday, Aug. 5  9th grade students may pick up schedules from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and 1-3:30 p.m. Students must be accompanied by a parent/guardian in order to pick up schedules.

 Students who plan to drive will need to provide vehicle information, proof of insurance, appropriate licensure and $15 to purchase a parking permit. Make checks payable to Coweta Intermediate High School.

 All students must pay a $25 technology fee and will be assigned a chrome book to use during the school year.

 For more information, call the I-High at 918-486-6103.

Coweta High School

All students must pay a $25 technology fee and will be assigned a chrome book to use during the school year.

 Thursday, Aug. 10  New student enrollment from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and 1-3:30 p.m.

 Tuesday, Aug. 15  Seniors will pick up schedules from 4-7 p.m. Juniors will pick up schedules from 5-7 p.m. and sophomores will pick up schedules from 6-7 p.m.

 Students who plan to drive will need to provide vehicle information, proof of insurance, appropriate licensure and $10 to purchase a parking permit. Make checks payable to Coweta High School.

 For more information, call Coweta High School at 918-486-4474.
OKLAHOMA CITY  Oklahoma charter schools are not allowed to base enrollment decisions on a students past academic performance, income level or the abilities of their parents.

However, on their applications, several charter schools in the state require parents to explain their childs academic abilities in detail, pledge a commitment to volunteer at the school or have the student submit an essay.

In an analysis of applications for the states 29 charter schools, The Oklahoman found some asked for nothing more than a students name and contact information.

However, some applications require a recommendation from a teacher, ask for details on a students discipline history or if they have received special education services.
Pipelining: Second District Congressman Markwayne Mullins bill to take the State Department out of international pipeline considerations passed the House without much difficulty last week.

Intended to prevent the delays that have hampered construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada through the northern plains, Mullins legislation would give permitting authority to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Democrats opposing the bill said it undermines safety and environmental protections.

We hear a lot of stuff about it damaging the environment. It doesnt, Mullin told Roll Call. Were talking about crossing a border and taking a situation that was held up for eight years, with the Keystone Pipeline, and making sure it has a transparent and consistent approach on how we regulate these permits.

Hard work: Sen. James Lankford was among five Republican senators signing onto legislation that would take away the National Labor Relations Boards authority to hear labor disputes.

The Protecting American Jobs Act would move that responsibility to the federal courts. The bill would also strip the NLRB of rule-making authority.

Republicans have been upset by the board, established in 1935 to enforce federal labor law, because of several Obama-era decisions deemed favorable to unions.

Dots and dashes: U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe spoke out against higher renewable fuel and fuel efficiency standards in a speech on the Senate floor last week. ...

Lankford joined Republican lawmakers seeking to repeal the Consumer Finance Protection Bureaus arbitration rule, which makes joining class-action suits against financial institutions easier for consumers and bars fine print mandatory arbitration clauses that Democrats say lending institutions use to cheat borrowers.

Lankford said the rule is another example of a rogue federal agency circumventing Congress with a rule that burdens the American people with yet another costly regulation. ...

Inhofe introduced legislation restoring benefits for veterans enrolled in post-secondary or career and technical education programs. ...

Lankford was on the program of the Western Conservative Summit in Denver this weekend. Sponsored by Colorado Christian Universitys Centennial Institute, the conference is considered a major conservative gathering. ...

Lankford said he doesnt want the Trump administration to return two diplomatic compounds seized from Russia in retaliation for election meddling, as has been speculated. I hope they dont do it, Lankford told The Hill. Theres no reason to do it. ...

Thomas Coon, Dean of Oklahoma State Universitys Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, testified before a House committee investigating rural infrastructure.

 Randy Krehbiel, Tulsa World
Robert Taylor knew he had to get to know Janet Corwin the first time he saw her.

An airman cadet in 1944, Taylor was attending a church in Denver when he saw Janet and her family introduced as new members.

Robert had only one problem. He had been in the service for just six weeks, something he didnt think would fit with Janets father, a captain.

A guy with less than a month and half in the service, Robert Taylor said. Fella, youre out of your god-fearing mind. But we hit it off anyhow.

More than 70 years later, the story of how the Taylors met still gets laughs. The couple celebrated their 70th anniversary Saturday in the same room at Spirit Life Church where they celebrated their 50th anniversary in 1997.

Robert, 93, and Janet, 90, brought every photo album and piece of memorabilia they could to the anniversary celebration. Janet brought her wedding dress and prepared many of the decorations.

On every table in the church hall were trivia questions the Taylors had prepared about their marriage.

It took $32 to pay for their three-day honeymoon to Turner Falls in 1947. They have lived in 27 cities and, despite Roberts best efforts to explain himself, the groom didnt quite make it to the wedding on time.

The groom was out flying that day, he said. And I ran in at the last second, threw my hat on the table and quickly changed for the wedding.

At Saturdays celebration, the Taylors requested only one song. Robert and Janet held hands for How Deep is the Ocean, which holds more meaning to them than most could imagine.

Robert Taylor served in the Air Force until retiring as a colonel, flying both nuclear alert patrols and combat missions over Vietnam in a B-52 bomber.

When Robert was deployed to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, Janet flew to the small Pacific island base to spend a month with her husband.

Robert flew missions dodging North Vietnamese fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles, then came home to the island to see his wife.

Offshore from Guam is the Marianas Trench, home to Challenger Deep, the deepest point in the ocean. The song reminds them of that time, when Roberts return from a mission was never guaranteed.

It means total love for each other, Robert Taylor said.  How deep is the ocean, how high is the sky? If I ever lost you, how much would I cry?

Its a readmission of love for each other.

The crowd, which included two people who attended the wedding in 1947, was made up mostly of other Spirit Life Church members.

Harley Hunter has known the Taylors since they joined the church in 1978. He said they are the perfect example of what people should aspire to be.

Theyre always here, Hunter said. They always participate, and if they dont participate, its because theyre leading.

Janet knows how to put on a party. Shes a decorator. Matter of fact, I helped her carry stuff in yesterday for this and shes in her 90s. Thats just who she is.

The Taylors didnt accidentally make it 70 years. There were rough spots, times when Robert would be away for months at a time.

Through all that time, Robert Taylor said, he never thought they wouldnt make it this far. To make it work, he said both people have to give 105 percent every day.

For Janet, its easier than that.

Take it one day at a time, she said. Take it one day at a time and with the Lord.

Marriage can last, and people need to know that.
A man suspected of robbing a Walgreens in Sapulpa on Saturday morning fatally shot himself when officers approached him later in the day.

The robbery occurred about 9:30 a.m. at Walgreens at 11 W. Taft Ave., Sapulpa Police Maj. Mike Reed said.

By 6 p.m., officers had tracked a suspect to the area of 6 W. Bryan Ave. The man shot himself as officers confronted him in an alley between some nearby businesses, Reed said.

Police are still investigating the incident and have not released the mans name.
OKLAHOMA CITY  Beekeeping is one of the few jobs that requires a full suit even in the Oklahoma heat, but one family gladly suits up to save pollinators.

Bee colonies have been declining for many years, and Tonya Wells and her family are on the forefront of the fight to save them.

Tonya Wells, her father, Paul Leathers, 74, and her daughter, Brianna Wells, 16, work to save bees throughout the Oklahoma City metro area.

Calls to the family come at all times of the day  one recently from United Rentals Pump Solutions in Yukon, where a swarm had landed on a pallet.
OKLAHOMA CITY  In the past few years, Oklahoma lawmakers have passed more than a dozen bills that later were found to be unconstitutional. Sen. Kay Floyd wants to determine how much that has cost the state.

Her idea is among 44 interim studies approved last week and assigned to legislative committees. Committee chairs will have the final say on whether a study is conducted.

Officials with the Attorney Generals Office, which defends the state in legal challenges, have said they cant put a dollar amount on what the challenges to bills have cost because their staff members are salaried. Floyd, an attorney, said it would not be difficult to track how much is spent defending unconstitutional bills if attorneys kept track of billable hours.

In addition to the cost for attorneys, the courts have in the past awarded attorney fees to those who brought successful challenges to state laws.

The courts have repeatedly struck down bills that contain more than one subject.

Many of the bills later found to be unconstitutional were seeking to put more restrictions on abortion.

The state Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that a privately funded Ten Commandments monument on the Capitol grounds was unconstitutional and ordered it removed.

Floyd, D-Oklahoma City, said it is not just the money spent defending the bills. She said there is a non-monetary impact  loss of credibility in government.

If you have lawmakers who cant pass legislation found to be constitutional, that erodes how people look at their government, she said.

Floyd has requested the interim study in years past, but it was never done. She hopes this year will be different.

Her request has been assigned to the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Kim David, R-Porter. David was not available for comment.

In the last legislative session, Floyd said, there was a lot of discussion about whether various bills were constitutional.

Some significant bills passed last session have drawn legal challenges in the Oklahoma Supreme Court, including a bill to add a $1.50 smoking cessation fee to cigarettes.

The states high court is expected to hear oral arguments on the challenges Aug. 8.

Sen. Ervin Yen, R-Oklahoma City, has an interim study on deaths and near deaths during dental procedures. He said the study will look at Oklahomas situation and whether rules or legislation need to be crafted.

Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tem Mike Schulz, R-Altus, has an interim study focused on apportionments, or tax dollars taken off the top to fund various items, such as education and transportation, rather than being put in the General Revenue Fund.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes and fees paid by Oklahomans are being spent via apportionment, Schulz said. Apportionments act like automatic paycheck deductions and are useful to ensure priority expenses are paid reliably.

But they also greatly reduce the flexibility to shift resources away from lesser priorities because of unexpected or unforeseen costs like a home repair, or in the case of state government, budget shortfalls brought on by economic contraction.

Senate Minority Leader John Sparks, D-Norman, is seeking hearings on his interim studies on school consolidation and the capping of superintendent salaries.

Sparks said Republicans have said education funding will increase once schools are consolidated and caps are placed on superintendent salaries. He said it is time to find out if Republicans are serious or just using those issues as excuses.
A crisis intervention pilot program will begin a data gathering effort next week as it seeks long-term funding opportunities as part of the Tulsa Police Departments push to implement community policing initiatives.

The Community Response Team will start to collect data July 31 on diversion, operations and prospective staffing. The pilot program, which launched in January as a one-day-a-week effort, works to aid people in mental health crisis.

The teams aim is to treat a person in mental health crisis on scene to avoid costly hospital visits, in-patient behavioral health stays or jail time. In turn, helping that person in the field may lessen calls to 911 and create more efficient uses of emergency services.

The three-person unit is comprised of a Tulsa police officer, a Tulsa Fire Department paramedic and a mental health professional from Family & Childrens Services. The CRT program at the moment is reliant on personnel from its partners putting in volunteer time.

Sgt. Shane Tuell, a police spokesman, said the department will look at data such as the average time an officer is on a call with a person in a mental health crisis, with associated costs and resource usage. The department also will evaluate diversionary options in lieu of what police would typically do, Tuell said.

For example, a burglary report might turn out to be a mental health situation instead. Rather than cite or arrest the person for filing a false report, Tuell said, police can obtain help for the person.

If you start servicing what their needs are, it can lessen the calls for criminal services down the line, Tuell said.

The CRT monitors 911 for mental health calls in real time. The team dispatches to relieve or assist the officer on scene, or de-escalate a situation.

Police Chief Chuck Jordan in a news release about the CRT last week said his department is working on a variety of complementary programs with local partners to evolve and expand crisis intervention approaches.

Mayor G.T. Bynum in the news release touted progress in implementing recommendations submitted by the Tulsa Commission on Community Policing.

Forming community partnerships is an integral step in strengthening community policing efforts in Tulsa, Bynum said. The Tulsa Police Department and Tulsa Fire Department are removing barriers between city departments and non-profit collaborators to deliver better service to the citizens we serve.
Tulsa Public Schools exceeded its goal to reduce out-of-school suspensions, reporting a drop of about 26 percent district-wide in the 2016-17 school year.

The total number of days for which students were suspended saw a larger decrease  43 percent  meaning students received 21,000 more days of instruction than in the previous school year, according to district officials. Students were suspended for a total of 27,481 days in the 2016-17 school year, compared to 48,464 the previous year.

While agreeing with the idea of not suspending students, because suspensions dont usually change students behavior, Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association President Patti Ferguson-Palmer said schools need more support to deal with disruptive behavior.

We need strong, counseling-based behavior intervention, and thats hard to fund in these lean times, Ferguson-Palmer said. We need more support for teachers and administrators. Kids and families need more support for the issues underlying the behaviors which are causing problems. Until we deal with underlying issues and have the resources to truly intervene and support, just having fewer suspensions isnt solving the problem.

Based on community feedback in forums organized by TPS officials while they were developing the districts five-year strategic plan, called Destination Excellence, district leaders set a goal to reduce suspensions by 5 percent in the 2016-17 school year, said Ebony Johnson, executive director of Tulsa Public Schools Student and Family Support Services.

That goal was then communicated to school leaders in a leadership institute ahead of the 2016-17 school year, and teachers underwent training in a method called No-Nonsense Nurturing, which provides a basis for classroom management that would effectively reduce the need for suspensions, Johnson said.

The district also added supports for new teachers, ensured that counselors were aware of supports and alternatives to suspensions and trained deans of students on interventions and restorative practices, she said.

By Oct. 31, Tulsa schools reported 49 percent, or 928, fewer suspensions than at that same time in the 2015-16 school year, according to TPS. As of Jan. 26, suspensions were down 41.5 percent compared to the previous year.

By the end of the 2016-17 school year, TPS had reported 6,032 suspensions, compared to 8,113 in 2015-16.

During the school year, Johnson said, district leaders had to clarify, due to misunderstandings, that they were asking schools to exhaust other options before suspending students, rather than to stop suspending students altogether.

Ferguson-Palmer said some schools had stopped suspending students and sent kids with disruptive behaviors back to the classroom where many teachers are told the students behavior is the teachers fault for not establishing a relationship. Thats pretty difficult when you have 30 other students who need your attention.

Johnson, who has served as a teacher and school principal, said she sympathizes with teachers who have larger class sizes, because she knows that makes a difference in managing student behavior.

While she believes the district is on the right track to better engaging children in school, Johnson said TPS will continue to face the challenge of ensuring that schools are getting the continuous help and support that they need, so that we dont overwhelm the schools, and that they feel supported as we make these shifts and these changes.

Johnson said the district is rolling out professional learning opportunities to help schools reduce the three main types of behaviors that can result in suspensions: fighting, disorderly conduct and disruptive conduct.

One TPS school where no students were suspended in the 2016-17 school year was Anderson Elementary, which serves about 340 students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade.

In previous years, students at the school faced suspensions for behavior that was consistently so disruptive that teachers couldnt teach, and other interventions didnt stop that behavior from persisting, said Tracy Thompson, who is going into her sixth year as the schools principal.

Even before it was made a district-wide goal, school staff and administrators discussed how to avoid suspending students, because they recognized that suspensions often only lead to more suspensions rather than improving students behavior, Thompson said.

The key to reducing suspensions at Anderson, Thompson said, started with a change of mindset among the adults in the building, coupled with collaboration between teachers, administrators and families.

You have to shift the mindset first, Thompson explained, by asking, What is best for the student? How do you help them solve problems? How do you even help them recognize they have a problem to be solved?

I think when you start with the adults, and then that relationship begins to build, it gets much easier.

Thompson said it takes a lot more time and effort to handle students behavioral problems by counseling, problem-solving and relationship-building, rather than by suspending them.

But what does (suspending students) solve? You cant suspend to good behavior, Thompson explained. And its a hardship on our families, too.
Australian Story this week reveals a fathers radical experiment to help his autistic teenage son -as a trip to Africa shows how the brain adapts to change.

Dr James Best threw away the rule book on autism, deciding to take his son Sam on a backpacking trip across Africa.

Rather than keeping him to routines and wrapping him in cotton wool, he wanted to expose his 14-year-old son to uncertainty and unpredictability.

It was based on the idea that adolescence represents a particular opportunity for learning, similar to that during infancy when the brain is highly receptive to change.

The program follows father and son for six months as they travel from South Africa to Uganda via Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya.

Dr Best set up a daily program of exercises and challenges for his son as they trekked across the African continent, hopping on and off buses, shopping in local markets, visiting schools and churches, and coming face to face with wildlife on safari.

By the end of the trip, there was a clear improvement in Sams ability to hold conversations and look after himself.

I really think it is much more likely that Sam will be able to do things like have a relationship and have a job now than it was at the beginning of the trip, Dr Best told Australian Story.

The project has been hailed as ground-breaking by autism researcher Dr David Trembath of Griffith University.

Dr Trembath, who studied video footage of Sams interactions in Africa, says it may shake up the field of autism.

Usually what we do is we take a research environment and we try and replicate the real world, he says.

What were doing here is were taking the real world and were attempting to wrap research around it.

8pm Monday on ABC.


1980s music legends The Romantics, (featuring Wally Palmar, Mike Skill, Rich Cole and Brad Elvis), best known for their mega hit singles What I Like About You and Talking In Your Sleep, will be performing at the Orleans Arena: KKLZ 96.3 Super Summer Bash presents the legendary Boy George with special guests The Romantics, Farrington and Mann featuring original members of When In Rome UK, Tiffany, Tommy Tutone, and Nu Shooz in Las Vegas on August 25, 2017.

The band is releasing two new singles and touring the US in celebration of their 40th Anniversary.

The Romantics have been busy in the studio recording new music since 2015. The first two songs released that year was an original song titled Coming Back Home and a first time holiday recording for the band  a rock and roll rendition of the holiday favorite Deck The Halls. 2016 ushered in two more releases  remakes of some of the bands favorite songs, Daydream Believer and We Gotta Get Out Of This Place.

For 2017, much to the excitement of Romantics fans worldwide, the band released two new singles on June 16th  Hush and I Fought The Law. These releases will be available to fans first as digital downloads, before CD and Vinyl versions will also be made available. A full original album by The Romantics will be released soon.

To purchase The Romantics new singles: iTunes: [Click Here]

Google Music Store : [Click Here]

: Amazon: [Click Here]

The Romantics, a high energy rock n roll new wave band from Detroit, formed in 1976. The bands first show was on Valentines Day at the My Fair Lady Club in Detroit, opening for the New MC5 in 1977. For three years following the band hit the road, performing at now legendary venues such as Bostons Rathskeller, CBGB in NYCs Bowery, Philadelphias Hot Club, and Clevelands Agora Ballroom to name a few.

Originating in Detroit at a time where music and culture were gritty and explosive, The Romantics were influenced by stylings ranging from 1950s American rock and roll, Detroit iconic bands such as the MC5, Mitch Ryder, The Stooges, the earlier recordings of Bob Seger, and Motown R&B laced with 1960s North American garage rock as well as the British Invasion. After signing with Nat Weiss Nemperor record label, The Romantics achieved popularity in the United States and internationally, not only on the strength of the bands well-crafted pop songs and energetic live shows- but they were equally recognized for their look.

The Romantics

Wally Palmar  vocals, rhythm guitar, harmonica, Original member

Mike Skill  lead guitar, vocals, Original member

Rich Cole  bass guitar, vocals, Original member

Brad Elvis  drums, percussion (2004-present)

The Romantics are still touring and currently feature 3 original band members on the front line up, Rich Cole, Wally Palmar and Mike Skill. Drummer Brad Elvis joined The Romantics in 2004 and has been the longest seated drummer with the band, fondly earning him the tag line as the bands 2nd original drummer. Rich Cole rejoined the band in 2010, (after leaving in the 1980s) reviving the bands 3-part harmony allowing The Romantics to perform songs from their first two albums live for the first time since his departure.

The Romantics 2017 Tour Dates:

July 01  Naperville, IL  Naperville Ribfest w/B52s, The Flock Of Seagulls

July 03  Middletown, OH  Smith Park: Broad Street Bash 4th Celebration

July 04  Sunrise, FL  BB&T Center: 4th of July celebration w/Baha Men

July 08  Ft. Wayne, IN  Rock of The 80s Tour at Headwaters Park w/The Smithereens, The Motels, Bow Wow Wow

July 21  Kansas City, MO  Crossroads KC: Rock of the 80s w/The Smithereens, Bow Wow Wow.

July 28  Prior Lake, MN  Mystic Lake Casino Hotel w/Blind Melon

Aug 01  Denver, CO  Summit Music Hall w/The Fixx

Aug 05  Norfolk, NE  DeVent Center w/Rick Springfield, Lita Ford, Tom Keifer, Vixen

Aug 12  Middelkerke, Belgium  Radio Nostalgie Beach Festival w/ various artists

Aug 18  Park City, UT  Deer Valley Resort: Snow Park Outdoor Amphitheater w/Smashmouth, Cracker

Aug 25  Las Vegas, NV  Orleans Arena: KKLZ 96.3 Super Summer Bash presents the legendary Boy George w/ special guests The Romantics, Farrington and Mann feat. original members of When In Rome UK, Tiffany, Tommy Tutone, and Nu Shooz

Aug 26  San Jose, CA  SAP Center iHeart 80s 103.7 Birthday Bash w/ Boy George, A Flock Of Seagulls, Tiffany

Aug 30  Reno, NV  Golden Nugget Resort BBQ Cookoff

Nov 24  Norman, OK  Riverwind Casino

Dec 31  Canyonville, OR  Seven Feathers Casino Resort: New Years Eve Concert
Widespread spring frost has wrought havoc with French wine production which is set to fall to a record low this year, 16 percent off the average of the past five years, the French ministry of agriculture says. (Photo: AFP/Nicolas Tucat)

"At 37.6 million hectolitres (993.3 million gallons) the 2017 harvest is set to come in 17 per cent lower than in 2016, and 16 per cent below the average of the past five years," the ministry's statistics bureau Agreste said on Saturday.

As such, the traditional August to October harvest of the world's second largest wine producer "could be historically low and inferior to that of 1991, which was also hit by severe frost."

The cold wrought havoc notably in southwest France, with Bordeaux suffering along with neighbouring Charente, as well as Alsace and Jura in the northeast. Some losses are also anticipated in the Burgundy region, Languedoc and the southeast.

The Mediterranean region was hit by a problem of a different variety as wind and rain caused the phenomenon of "coulure" where grapes, most notably the grenache variety in the Rhone valley, fail to develop properly after vines have flowered.

But wine sommeliers urged a bit of patience, dispelling the gloom with the old wine adage: "August makes the grapes, September makes the wine".

"It is still too early to draw a conclusion about the quality of the wine this year which will depend on the weather up to the grape harvest, and the conditions of the crop," said Philippe Faure-Brac, who held the title of world's best sommelier in 1992.

"At the moment, the weather conditions are not at all bad," he said, but admitted the quantity of wine production "will be economically very tight, that's for sure."

Some vineyards have a system of reserves, like those producing Chablis or Champagne, holding back from selling a part of the production year to year as insurance to help ride out those times of poor grape harvests.

"For instance 2016 was a huge vintage - that will allow some regions to manage their volumes and quality," said Faure-Brac.

But not all wine regions practise the same system, and only about 25 per cent of French winegrowers have insured against severe weather.

Vineyards "with little stock" and "not much cash flow", after being hit by hail and frost last year, are going to be in a "difficult" situation this year, said Bernard Farges, president of the national AOP/AOC committee.

"We are working with the ministry to put in place measures to improve insurance and savings regimes," he said - although that won't relieve problems this year.
The Government has assigned the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) to build a development roadmap for a competitive coal market as there are new coal suppliers.

The State would gradually reduce its control in the market while ensuring supply and demand balance.

Deputy minister Hoang Quoc Vuong held a meeting with the Viet Nam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin) and Dong Bac Corporation in the northern province of Quang Ninhon on Thursday to study the roadmap to ensure national energy security for socio-economic development.

The ministry would submit the proposal to the Government for approval with an aim to have a coal market which ensures local households consumption, prices follow supply and demand and export markets are actively built.

Following the meeting, the ministry would also work with coal consumption households to resolve the industrys difficulties. It would submit documents to the Government instructing Electricity of Viet Nam (EVN) and Viet Nam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) to continue buying coal from Vinacomin and Dong Bac Corporation this year.

The ministry would also allow the export of coal that does not depend on quota to help Vinacomin and the corporation balance their finances.

Vuong said coal demand has been diversified. EVN and PetroVietnam have developed several thermo-power plants with consumption of some 10 million tonnes of coal. Vinacomin also has its own thermo-power plants and BOT projects.

It is forecast that coal demand for electricity production could reach more than 100 million tonnes by 2030. Viet Nam would have to import some 80 million tonnes of coal, while local production would be 50 million tonnes per year.

Therefore, the ministry said the Government should have new policies for market development.

Vinacomins general director Dang Thanh Hai said the group has signed nine long-term contracts to provide coal for thermo-power plants.

Vinacomin suggested that the Government allow it to be active in building production and business plans based on long-term contracts to ensure suitable inventory and effectiveness.

Hai proposed to export on a long-term basis coal which local thermo-power plants do not need for electricity production to help Vinacomin be active in consumption markets.

He added that Vinacomin and EVNs power plants have not yet reached an agreement on coal selling prices for the period of December 26, 2016 to February 28, 2017, which was why the two sides have not signed a coal purchasing contract this year.

Earlier, EVN proposed to reduce two million tonnes of coal buying from Vinacomin to choose from two new units.

The reduction according to EVNs proposal would make Vinacomins coal production costs increase and reduce effectiveness, he added.

The group asked the ministry to tell PetroVietnam and EVN not to buy anthracite coal from other units this year to avoid losses for Vinacomin.

In addition, the ministry should have policies to encourage use of locally produced anthracite coal and limit imported coal as Vinacomin has claimed unfairness in taxes and fees.

Phuong Kim Minh, deputy general director of the Dong Bac Corporation, also proposed that the ministry stop new suppliers from being added for thermo-power plants to ensure national energy security.

Minh also asked the Ministry of Finance to provide guidance o EVN, Vinacomin and the corporation to agree on coal prices sold for power production.

The corporation also asked to export inventory coal for which there is no demand in the local market.
Grab and Uber dominating Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi

Traditional taxi companies, especially Vinasun and Mai Linh Group, are losing the fierce competition with Grab and Uber due to the dizzying rise in the number of Grab and Uber cabs.

According to newswire Vneconomy, in recent years, the number of Uber and Grab taxis has exceeded the figure of Ho Chi Minh Citys taxi planning. Notably, Uber and Grabs fleet has reached a total of 21,000, while Ho Chi Minh Citys taxi demand is 11,000-12,000 only.

The oversupply of cabs has not only contributed to traffic jams and losses in tax revenue, but also created difficulties for traditional taxi companies.

Now Uber and Grab are battling for dominance, while competing with traditional taxi brands at the same time.

In general, UberX fares range about VND7,000-8,000 per kilometre, while GrabTaxi charges VND9,000-11,000 per kilometre. In spite of this difference in fares, both Uber and GrabTaxi have their own tactics to seize passengers.

Mai Linh Group and Vinasun lament competition

Vietnamese taxi company Vinasun has reported an decrease in revenue and employees in the first half of this year.

According to newswire Vnexpress, in the second quarter of this year, Vinasuns net revenue reached VND810 billion ($35.75 million) only, a record low since 2014. Besides, the after-tax profit in the second quarter fell 50 per cent on-year to VND16 billion ($706,299). The cumulative figure of the first six months was VND1.9 trillion ($706.29 million), signifying a decrease of 15 per cent on-year.

Within the first six months of this year, the number of Vinasun's employees decreased by approximately 8,000 people, to 9,179.

According to a Vinasun representative, the companys business results may remain gloomy until the end of this year.

Regarding Mai Linh Group, according to its 2016 financial report, the companys revenue was VND3.73 trillion ($164.65 million), equalling an increase of 32.3 per cent on-year. However, its pre-tax profit was VND61.12 billion ($2.74 million), a sharp 62 per cent fall due to increasing financial and management expenditures.

Besides, Mai Linh claimed that the dizzying growth of the fleets of Grab and Uber makes it increasingly difficult for the company to perform.

Traditional taxi companies persist

In early June, Ta Long Hy, deputy general director of Vinasun, said the company would keep pressing litigation against Grab and Uber for unfair competition, a campaign that has recruited many other Vietnamese taxi companies from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Hy said that the company is gathering evidence. Besides, Vinasun would also propose that the government review its price management policies.

Vinasun is not alone in its claim of unfair competition against Uber.

In December 2016, as reported by indiatimes.com, the Indian equivalents of Uber, Ola and Meru, have separately urged government agencies to formulate policies which would undercut the ability of US-based Uber to offer steep discounts to passengers and generous incentives to drivers.

On April 7, as reported by the Guardian, in a ruling that is subject to appeal, a court in Rome upheld a complaint filed by taxi unions and banned Uber because it contributes to unfair competition.

The court gave Uber ten days to terminate the use of its various phone applications on Italian territory, along with promotion and advertising activities. However, the ban was suspended about a week after it was implemented as the company appealed. On May 26, the ban was officially lifted.
On the heels of Loc Troi's impending listing, Mekong Capital considers swift divestment

Loc Troi to be listed

Loc Troi plans to be listed on UPCoM by issuing 67.2 million stocks on July 24 with a total registered value of VND672 billion ($29.6 million). The reference price for each share in the first trading session is expected to be VND55,000 ($2.42).

Loc Troi has the chartered capital of VND672 billion ($29.6 million) and mainly specialises in three fields, plant protection, seedling supply, and food processing. Loc Troi holds the leading position in the field of plant protection with 20 per cent of the market share and it has a wide network of 26 branches and more than 5,000 agencies all over Vietnam.

Regarding the shareholder structure, the An Giang Peoples Committee holds 24.15 per cent of Loc Trois stakes, five foreign shareholders hold a total of 44.04 per cent, Loc Trois staff hold 15.31 per cent, while the remainder belongs to other organisations and individuals in Vietnam.

In 2016, Loc Troi generated more than VND7.8 trillion ($343.2 million) and earned VND349 billion ($15.4 million) in after-tax profit, which was equivalent to the earning per share (EPS) of VND4,382 ($0.19).

In 2017, the company set a net revenue target of nearly VND8.3 trillion ($365,2 million) and after-tax profit of VND460 billion ($20.24 million), a growth of 28.7 per cent compared to 2016. It targets to gain an EPS of VND5,822 ($0.26) and pay shareholders 30 per cent dividend in cash.

Also, Loc Troi targets to reach the capitalisation of $1 billion in 2021, hold 30 per cent of the market share in plant protection products, and become the number one rice brand in Vietnam.

Huynh Van Thon, chairman of Loc Troi, said that the company is gradually completing its agricultural value chain, from research to production and sales of main agricultural products, such as rice and coffee.

Mekong Capital withdraws

Recently, Loc Troi is not only in the centre of attention for its listing on UPCoM, but for the scheduled divestment of Mekong Capital, a big foreign shareholder since 2008.

In particular, Vietnam Azalea Fund managed by Mekong Capital, will withdraw its capital from Loc Troi after it is listed on UPCoM. This was confirmed by Mekong Capitals representative, saying, Detailed information will be officially published in the coming period.

Many people may wonder about this divestment, as it comes on the heels of Loc Trois listing.

Mekong Capitals divestment is normal. For example, Mobile World Investment Corporation (Ticker MWG on HoSE) was listed in 2014, but Mekong Enterprise Fund II Ltd., managed by Mekong Capital, partly divested from this enterprise in 2013. However, Mekong Capital still holds a certain number of MWG shares after it was listed.

Until September 2016, Mekong Capital continued to gradually withdraw from Mobile World. By April 2017, the fund's stake has declined to 5 per cent and it quit being a big shareholder of Mobile World.

In other enterprises, Mekong Capital also held stakes for quite a long time after they were listed. For example, FPT Corporation was listed in 2006, but Vietnam Azalea Fund only finished withdrawing completely in May 2017.

Similarly, Nam Long Investment Corporation was listed in 2013 and was divested in 2016. Traphaco Joint Stock Company was listed in 2008, but Vietnam Azalea Fund still holds a 25 per cent stake and is currently the second biggest shareholder of this pharma firm.

There are some speculations about why Vietnam Azalea Fund will quickly divest from many enterprises, including Loc Troi, after they are listed. The fund was established in 2007 and its operating period is expected to be ten years, meaning closing time is coming.

Loc Troi taps into demand for organic food As investment in agricultural production increases in popularity in tandem with the countrys deeper economic integration, local firm Loc Troi Group has committed to developing a comprehensive rice value chain on par with the growing demand.
Cartography: Orient-Le Jour

The Jurd of Ersal is a mountainous zone, about 150 km2, situated between Lebanon and Syria. Its highest point exceeds 3000 m. In the winter, it is covered by several metres of snow and this is why it is uninhabited.

Since 2011, about 3,000 jihadists and their families have taken refugee there. But today there would be no more than 1,000, spread between two groups: al-Qaeda and Daesh.

For several months, negotiations have been underway between the jihadists and the Syrian Arab Republic. The latter had asked the jihadists to liberate the territory and to make their way, with their war booty, to Idleb (in the North-West of Syria which is under the de facto administration of Nato). The jihadists for their part were demanding to withdraw to Lebanon.

At the end, on 20 July 2017, the Syrian Arab Army and the Hezbollah have launched an assault while the Lebanese Army has blocked all possible retreat. Following President Trumps speech at Riyadh, for the first time, these three formations are officially coordinated.

This battle which promises to be long, does not bear the same print of the others. In fact, in contrast to other Syrian regions, here there are no inhabitants, not even transient nomads. It is therefore impossible for the jihadists to infiltrate them with kamikazes. However the jihadists have been heavily armed by Germany, the United States and France. It is of particular note that they have Milan launch missiles and TOW.

The Lebanese President, General Michel Aoun (patriot), personally supervises the action of his army. The Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad Hariri (pro-Saudi), although criticizing the Hezbollahs participation (pro Iranian) in the operation, has authorized his troops to be prepared for anything. The Syrian refugees that camp at the foot of the mountain in Ersal, and who until now were reputed to actively support the jihadists, have been authorized to move to the city to be placed under the protection of the Lebanese Army.

Saad Hariri and his minister of Foreign Affairs, Gibran Bassil (son-in-law of President Aoun) have made a trip to the United States and should be received at the White House.

The UN and some NGOs which now are the only entities to openly support the jihadists, are getting ready to receive the injured and have now opened two hospitals in the country. However no movement between the Jurd and Ersal has yet been detected.

During the first two days of fighting, the forces of the Republic and the Resistance have made a spectacular advance in territory controlled by the jihadists of Al Qaeda. But the battle cry is that this will be a long one.
Photo: Colin Hutton/BBC/Colin Hutton

Last week, British actress Jodie Whittaker made history when it was announced that she would be the first female portraying the iconic leading role in the BBCs Doctor Who  a decision which is exactly what the franchise needed after dozens of years of white, male leads running throughout space and time. Unsurprisingly, the news of Whittakers casting was met with a divisive response, with people either cheering or lamenting the break in Time Lord tradition. But perhaps more surprising, a former Doctor Who star is opening up about how he isnt yet convinced that the role should go to a woman. Peter Davison, who played the fifth Doctor in the early 1980s, expressed these sentiments while at Comic-Con this weekend. If I feel any doubts, its the loss of a role model for boys, who I think Doctor Who is vitally important for. So I feel a bit sad about that, but I understand the argument that you need to open it up, he said, per The Guardian. As a viewer, I kind of like the idea of the Doctor as a boy but then maybe Im an old-fashioned dinosaur  who knows?

Though Davison continued on to say that Whittaker is a terrific actress who will likely do a wonderful job, his comments ended up angering another former Doctor: his successor, Colin Baker. (Who needs The Day of the Doctor reruns when you got this?!) Theyve had 50 years of having a role model. So, sorry Peter, youre talking rubbish there  absolute rubbish, he said to The Guardian. You dont have to be of a gender of someone to be a role model. Cant you be a role model as people?

Davison notwithstanding, many timey-wimey Who stars have expressed their delight over Whittakers casting. Tenth Doctor David Tennant said the show lucked out by casting an actress of her caliber, while many others have taken to social media to let their excitement be known.

YES  xx  Billie Piper (@billiepiper) July 16, 2017

B O O M  Change isn't a dirty word!!!!  #Doctor13 https://t.co/TNmw2qnD1W  Freema Agyeman (@FreemaOfficial) July 16, 2017
CLIFTON  Crossing the North Bosque River bridge at Clifton City Park can be a white-knuckle experience for the uninitiated.

The wood-and-asphalt decking creaks, the rusted truss above begins to rattle and hum, and its hard not to think about tumbling 50 feet into the shining river below.

But as local history buff Leon Smith sees it, thats the charm of the Whipple truss bridge that has spanned the river since 1884.

Generation after generation of Clifton and Bosque County people have passed over this bridge and enjoyed it, he said, leaning on the rusted bridge rail. In some ways, its a scary bridge to cross because its so narrow. Its like a ride at Six Flags.

Anyone who would consider that a thrill had better hurry to Clifton now, before its too late.

Work began this month on a modern steel-and-concrete bridge about 10 feet away that will soon replace the last functioning Whipple truss bridge in Texas.

The $1.45 million project is being funded mostly through a federal transportation grant administered by the Texas Department of Transportation.

The project wont raze the historic bridge, which is owned by Bosque County. But once the new bridge is in place, the old one will be stabilized and stripped of its decking and approaches, leaving it as an inaccessible monument.

That doesnt sit well with Smith and other local preservationists, who had envisioned the bridge as a centerpiece of heritage tourism for this town of about 3,500 people. Even if the town can eventually raise enough money to restore the bridge, he said, the new bridge would detract from it.

This is a bridge built by our founders, said Smith, a former mayor and Clifton Record editor who is now on the Bosque County Historical Commission. I can picture them coming over, looking over the sides, and its kind of inspirational. To have a new bridge 10 feet from the old one is going to spoil the view.

Clifton Mayor Jim Heid, who was elected in May, said that decision cant be reversed, but hed like to see a campaign to reclaim the old truss bridge as a bike-pedestrian bridge.

Its a historical treasure, and future generations will be kicking themselves if nobody made a concerted effort to save it, he said. Theres too much of our history thats going by the wayside.

TxDOT officials bid the bridge in April, just shy of the deadline for spending federal funds for the bridge. The Federal Highway Administration first pledged money for the new bridge in 2000, but the project has been beset with delays, including issues of how to properly handle the historic bridge.

Michael Bolin, transportation and planning director for TxDOTs Waco district, said the old bridge could not be retrofitted to modern standards without compromising its historic integrity, and the federal grant required the new one to be built next to the old one.

He said the solution may not please everyone, but it balances public safety, historic preservation and cost concerns.

It preserves this unique historical structure but also protects the access to the route there, he said. No doubt, its a mix of the old and the new, but were going to retain the part of the structure that makes it historic.

He said the new bridge wouldnt block the view from the truss bridge, if its ever restored, and the distinctive trusses of the old bridge will still be visible from the park and river.

Bolin said the old Whipple bridge isnt in eminent danger of failing, but its structural integrity declines by the year. Its bridge piers and foundations have eroded, its iron joints have rusted away and its metal components have become deformed.

Bolin said the monumenting of the bridge will replace some bolts and rivets and protect the piers, slowing its decay. But a more thorough renovation project costing an additional $1.2 million would be required to make it safe for pedestrian use in the long term, he said.

It will continue to degrade as time goes on, he said. Its only going to be worse tomorrow.

Clifton residents generally seem to be in favor of restoring the bridge, but he doesnt expect such a project soon.

He noted that the truss bridge is just outside the city limits and belongs to Bosque County, which is not interested in spending more money on it.

Even if the city were to acquire it from the county, raising the funds wouldnt be easy, he said.

Under the terms of the federal grant, if the money normally used for demolition is used to monument the bridge, as TxDOT is doing, the structure will no longer be eligible for future federal transportation funds, such as hike-and-bike grants.

Currently, there are no hike-and-bike trails near the bridge or along either side of the North Bosque River.

Deb Tulman, a local businesswoman and county historical commission member, said shed like to lead a campaign to restore the bridge, but she said fundraising could be a hard sell.

She said the adjacent 80-acre Clifton City Park is underused and underdeveloped, and she thinks the new bridge will detract from the aesthetics of the old one.

Bosque County Judge Don Pool said the county would be willing to work with anyone to refurbish the bridge for pedestrian use, including the city of Clifton.

Theres a lot of historical elements to that bridge, he said. We didnt just wake up and say, We want to tear that bridge down. 

But he said leaving the old bridge in service for vehicular travel was not an option.

Its rated at 8,000 pounds, he said. Thats little more than an F-250 truck with a bale of hay in the back.

The bridge is one of five Whipple truss bridges left in the state, and the only one still open to vehicular traffic, according to the Texas Historical Commission. The design was patented in 1841 by Squire Whipple, the first engineer to calculate load dynamics on truss bridges.

The Wrought Iron Bridge Co. of Canton, Ohio, built the 150-foot bridge for Bosque County in 1884 for $6,456, according to the state historical marker for the bridge.

The mothership

The bridge helped farmers bring their grain to Cliftons grain mill on the North Bosque, located at the low-water dam just north of City Park.

In Clifton, the old mill was basically the mothership of our town that everything revolved around, said Smith, who self-published a book about the Old Mill.

It allowed this to become a prosperous area and it provided jobs.

The bridge also helped open up new north-south routes in Texas. Before Highway 6 was constructed to the west of the Bosque River in 1941, the bridge carried traffic on State Highway 67 from Waco to Clifton to Meridian.

The cross-state route also passed through the 80-acre City Park, which is notable today for the somewhat neglected stone masonry structures that the federal Civilian Conservation Corps built during the Great Depression.

Ashley Abel, Clifton Main Street Manager, said theres definitely a need for the new bridge to serve farmers and others coming in and out of Clifton.

But she said the old bridge is still an asset, and its future depends on the communitys priorities.

As long as the bridge is there, the friends of the park and historical commission are always looking for an opportunity, she said. But thats the question  is there an interest in this?
Robinson residents Alton and Eugene Gene Leuschner, ages 76 and 74, respectively, have a lot more in common than just blood. Growing up together in the country near West, both men joined the U.S. Navy at the same time, served on the same ship together and even got married in the same year.

The Leuschner brothers also had never been out of Texas. I think Houston might have been the furthest wed ever been, joked Alton.

Joining and serving in the U.S. Naval Air Reserve together in February 1960, the brothers were called to active duty one year later and assigned to the USS Saratoga. The Sara, as she was known, was home-ported in Mayport, Florida. As part of the 6th Fleet, she traveled with plenty of protection, including destroyers, cruisers, supply ships and more. When the Leuschners boarded the ship, it was at dry dock in Norfolk, Virginia. Their first trip was to Cuba for training and to test out the ships repairs.

Typically, the Sara would sail from its home port to international waters, where novice pilots practiced their skills landing on a moving target. Gene kept busy refueling the planes before they took off again. The pilots would take off and often dump their fuel to get better performance from the planes.

Meanwhile, Alton worked in an office off the flight deck, just as he preferred. The brothers saw each other frequently and sometimes went to shore together.

He was always around. I couldnt even get rid of him, joked Gene.

Although they could choose to see the sights, most of the young  and single  men preferred to go to bars with their friends.

Excitement aboard the Sara

Life aboard the Sara was routine, but it occasionally had more than its fair share of excitement.

Once, one of the ships helicopters used for rescuing downed pilots inexplicably went down in the ocean after taking off.

As soon as it hit the water, it disappeared, Alton said.

Two heads suddenly popped up, added Gene, who said another helicopter was sent to pick up the pilots.

Another time, one of the pilots crash-landed on the ship, coming in across the edge of the boat and the fantail. Unfortunately, the pilot didnt make it; he died on the way to sick bay.

Theyre pretty brave people, Gene said of the pilots, cause when youre coming in on that ship  its not steady. Its going up and down. Alton and Gene both recalled the planes debris was pushed into the ocean.

There was more excitement during a subsequent trip to Cuba. The Sara, unbeknownst to the crew, became part of the Cuban Missile Crisis blockade in late October 1962. During the crisis, Marines guarded the bombs in the hangar bay; several planes were armed and ready to go. The crew of the Saratoga went to general quarters and stayed that way for some time.

We didnt hardly know we were in the Cuban Missile Crisis, said Alton. In fact, we didnt. We were just there training, we thought.

I found out later that everybody here (in the U.S.) was scared, Gene said. "We didn't think anything of it.

They thought it was going to be a real war, added Alton.

Of course, there was no war and when the ship returned home, Eugene went back to reserve status in Dallas, while Alton re-enlisted in Waco for active duty, with his first assignment at the Navy and Marine Corps center here. He spent about five years there.

Alton continued on active duty at a Naval Reserve facility in Kingsville, and later the Naval 8th District Headquarters in New Orleans, followed by the Naval Reserve Center in Orange, Texas. He was a recruiter for 10 years in Orange before he returned to Waco and attended MCC. He went to work for the Department of Human Services for the remainder of his career. All told, Alton served 25 years in the Navy.

Gene ended up staying in the reserves for 20 years; he later worked for the United States Postal Service, retiring as a postmaster after 33 years there, but continued to work another part-time job for many years.

Both brothers were married in 1964  Alton in January to Nina Vaden and Gene in December to Phyllis May. Both brothers are still married. Alton has two children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, while Gene has one child, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

A bond between siblings

The brothers remain close to this day. They live within minutes of each other, and both are active in the local VFW Post 2148, where Alton serves as commander and Eugene as quartermaster.

While Gene wasnt as enthused with a military career as his brother, I would go again, if I needed to, he said. I think its a good deal. I have a granddaughter in the service. Shes been in the Army for nine years.
President Donald Trump cant get a health-care law passed. So should we still be worried that hes going to assume absolute power?

The presidents detractors often accuse him of having authoritarian aspirations. And he has given them many good reasons to worry. He displays contempt for the rule of law and the separation of powers. He denounces the press as the enemy of the American people. He shows flagrant disregard for the truth and deftly marshals populist appeals to the grubbier emotions. And last but not least, he openly admires authoritarian leaders and heaps scorn on our democratic allies.

Yet theres another narrative of Trumps first six months in office that doesnt sync with the scenario of a march toward personal rule. Quite simply, the president has shown himself to be incompetent at governing. His party controls both houses of Congress, yet he has no major legislative achievements to show for it. He knows how to gin up his base, but hes often his own worst enemy, making public statements that alienate his allies and undercut his own political (and legal) positions. He doesnt seem to understand what government is or how its supposed to work  perhaps not much of a surprise, given he had zero experience in public affairs before he came to the job.

Many of his voters, of course, chose him for precisely that reason. He was the political outsider who would blow the whole thing up. The fact he has few coherent positions and can change them on a dime doesnt bother his base at all. He blusters and bumbles, and the business of government limps along despite him rather than following his lead.

But is this how a future dictator prepares the way for a seizure of power? It looks a lot more like the thrashings of a man who got his training for leadership on the set of The Apprentice. Trump is a dilettante, and it shows.

Consider some of our real modern-day strongmen. Vladimir Putin served in government for his entire adult life, in a wide variety of positions, before he finally ascended to the Russian presidency in 2000. He had intimate knowledge of the levers of power  and once he secured the top job, he proceeded patiently and methodically to undermine his opponents and hollow out what was left of the countrys democratic institutions.

The rise of Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan offers a similar lesson in the art of building personal rule. Through clever manipulation of law enforcement and the courts, he pulled off the extraordinary feat of neutralizing his countrys long-feared military  a bureaucratic tour de force. Later on, once it was no longer needed, he turned on the group that had served as his main ally in that campaign  and shattered it, too.

Needless to say, democratic institutions in Turkey and Russia are weak. Trump faces far more constraints on his power than either Putin or Erdogan face  from independent courts to an active citizenry to a free press. For a U.S. president to overcome the barriers to personal rule, he would need a highly sophisticated and well-executed strategy.

Trump, all too obviously, has no plan. He is a man of the moment, reacting to each stimulus as it arrives. Rather than using the machinery of government to serve his own ends, he has systematically alienated the intelligence agencies, the FBI, the State Department and other large swaths of the federal bureaucracy. His disapproval rating stands at 58 percent. The Republican Party continues to pay him verbal tribute but is increasingly showing through its actions that it neither respects nor fears him. Though Fox News still stands by him, even here cracks are beginning to appear. That leaves his hard-core base, about one-third of the total population. Not exactly a good foundation for personal rule.

This is not an argument for complacency. Even if Trump isnt really a dictator-in-the-making, his attacks on our institutions are profoundly destructive. He doesnt have to be a would-be Hitler or Stalin to inflict immense damage on our democracy. But by dwelling too excessively on the ghosts of dictators past, we run the risk of creating a climate of hysteria that will play into the hands of the presidents supporters. Lets focus instead on the real harm that Trump is doing right now. Even a political amateur can be dangerous.
Not many of the people who toasted the American Revolution on Independence Day gathered Wednesday to celebrate the 150th anniversary of a key moment in the Second American Revolution: the long-forgotten Third Military Reconstruction Act passed on July 19, 1867.

Its not hard to see why people celebrate Independence Day and forget the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, even though that period was, in many respects, a Second Founding that recreated the republic and the Constitution. Independence Day kindles thoughts of successful military struggle against a now-foreign enemy in service of famously high-minded ideas of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that make Americans proud.

The Second American Revolution, by contrast, pitted Americans against other Americans, Confederate slave owners, and came on the heels of a bloody conflict that ripped the nation asunder and still sparks conflict today. The Second Founders reliance on the military to police society and polling places, rather than to defeat enemies, also makes us queasy. And their foundational documents, such as the Third Military Reconstruction Act, read like enumerations of authority, not eloquent evocations of liberty.

Nevertheless, the events surrounding the Third Military Reconstruction Act may actually tell us as much, or even more, about this country, its potential and its predicaments, than the words penned in Philadelphia. For the act arose from a genuine constitutional crisis  a confrontation between a belligerent president and a cautious Congress over whether generals should follow the law or their increasingly unhinged commander in chief.

Their conflict turned upon still-enduring questions about whether the federal government could protect voting rights and create equality for former slaves and their descendants. Just as critically, the mundane mechanics of government embedded in the Third Military Reconstruction Act helped produce an extraordinary constitutional revolution in the 14th and then the 15th Amendments  transformations so powerful that the U.S. Senate pronounced them (along with the 13th Amendment) a Second Founding in a 2015 resolution.

In many ways, we live in a country shaped more by the Second Founders than by their better-known but ultimately unsuccessful predecessors in 1776. In Philadelphia, the first Founders created a nation that dissolved 85 years later. One hundred-fifty years ago, however, Americas Second Founders formed a Second American Republic that still survives.

As in any revolution (including the American Revolution), some parts of the past endured, but the violent, permanent remaking of the country introduced a new, persistent set of arguments over voting rights, citizenship, federal power and the unrealized potential for a multiracial republic.

The Third Military Reconstruction Act reminds us that revolutions advance through implementation, not just declarations. On its surface the bill is annoyingly mundane. Rather than sonorous phrases, it is full of stern reiterations of the true intent and meaning of prior legislation and formal approval of the Armys ongoing interventions in the ex-Confederate states. No one quotes it. Few, even among historians, remember it. To see why it was so important, we have to look less at its language than at its context.

During the Civil War, ex-slaves, U.S. commanders and anti-slavery politicians destroyed slavery through blunt force and brave service. Yet Americans disagreed bitterly over exactly what would replace it and who would make those decisions.

After Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, the presidency passed to Vice President Andrew Johnson, a tempestuous and earthy Tennessee Unionist who had owned slaves. Johnson gave the former Confederate states leeway to construct a caste system in the South through Black Codes that excluded African Americans from testifying in court, voting, holding office or owning property in some locations.

Aghast, African-American women and men across the country organized in Union Leagues and Republican clubs to articulate the key principles of their Second Founding, principles worked out in northern free black communities long before the war, especially the creation of legal and political equality. Without the right of suffrage, we are without protection and liable to combinations of outrage, Washington, D.C., Colored Citizens wrote in December 1865.

That winter, Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens tried to block President Johnsons plan. Stevens, a brilliant parliamentarian, sharp-tongued polemicist and longtime advocate for African-American rights, allied with the more-staid Maine Sen. William Fessenden to refer all the ex-Confederate states to a special Joint Committee the two men headed. Together they kept the ex-Confederacy in a state of war and claimed congressional authority over their future.

Johnson responded wildly, suggesting to a crowd that Stevens should be hung as a traitor and comparing himself to Jesus Christ. After meeting famed ex-slave abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Johnson dismissed him as just like any n--. When Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act and a bill extending the Freedmens Bureau to aid ex-slaves, Congress brusquely overrode him and ignored his wild claims that they discriminated against white people by guaranteeing rights to African Americans.

The standoff over the future of Reconstruction then went to the voters. In the 1866 midterm elections, Northerners backed the congressional Republicans and they returned to Washington ready to take command. In March 1867, Stevens and Fessenden helped pass the first two Military Reconstruction Acts over Johnsons vetoes. These bills continued the state of war in the ex-Confederate states (except for Tennessee), placed them under military rule and ordered generals to register black men to vote in new constitutional conventions to remake state governments and ratify the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Congress also banned Confederate officeholders from the polls.

But Johnson would not be cowed by legislation (or the will of the voters). His attorney general, Henry Stanbery, wantonly ignored Congress intent, declaring that generals lacked legal authority over state officials and that registration boards could not exclude Confederate officeholders. Johnson hoped to restrain the military and grind Reconstruction to a halt till court cases or the electorate could end it.

On the ground, soldiers faced a dilemma. Should they obey Congress law or the presidents orders? In Louisiana, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan followed Congress, dismissing the state governor and sweeping away discriminatory laws with the support of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and commanding Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. But Grant feared that Johnson would undo this work.

To save Reconstruction, exasperated members of Congress returned to Washington for a special session. Their vehicle, the Third Military Reconstruction Act, looked prosaic precisely because of their concrete goals. They affirmed generals power over so-called state governments and empowered registration boards to do their duty to exclude Confederate officials. In a bitter veto message, Johnson denounced the law as tyranny, the process as revolution. It is impossible to conceive any state of society more intolerable than this, he groused. Immediately the House and Senate overrode his veto.

Laws struck down

For the moment, the revolution ground forward. Generals struck down discriminatory laws and removed foot-dragging state officials; registration boards enrolled freedmen. Ten former Confederate states called constitutional conventions that, for the first time, represented both black and white Southerners.

More than a quarter of the delegates to those conventions were black men, including former slaves such as war hero and future congressman Robert Smalls of Beaufort, South Carolina. These biracial conventions remade the South, creating the first public school systems in some states and outlawing whipping, imprisonment for debt and property qualifications for voting.

Then they remade the Constitution, ratifying the 14th Amendment that created birthright citizenship and guaranteed equal protection and due process  cornerstone protections Americans enjoy today against state and local governments gone awry. Two years later, these ex-Confederate states provided crucial votes to ratify the 15th Amendment, protecting voting rights for the first time. The history of the world affords no example of an equal success, said Sen. Willard Warner of Alabama. You cannot find an instance where so great a revolution has been wrought.

Yet the Third Military Reconstruction Act was always a slender reed for such lofty hopes. When Johnson undermined the act by removing Sheridan and Stanton, Congress rushed to save what remained of Reconstruction. Wary of its ability to govern through the military in the face of Johnsons intransigence, congressional Republicans recognized the new, biracial state governments as they ratified the 14th Amendment. It was not the complete overhaul that many had hoped for but seemed the best that could be obtained.

Then Stevens led the House effort to impeach the president. In the Senate, however, Fessenden and a few other moderates refused to go along, for fear of overturning the constitutional order and risking the republics survival. Johnson survived by a single vote, though in his last months in office Congress routinely and without discussion overrode his vetoes.

But the counterrevolution would be harder to stop on the ground in the South. Soon, a murderous insurgency claimed control of the region through assassination and coups. In 1888, a congressman estimated that 50,000 Southern African Americans had been killed over the past quarter-century.

Between the 1880s and early 1900s, Southern states hollowed out the constitutional guarantees of the Second American Revolution, passing laws that disenfranchised and segregated African Americans. Only in the 1950s and 1960s did the U.S. government finally make that Second Constitution meaningful.

If Reconstruction did not settle the question of citizenship, rights and equality, it introduced key issues Americans still argue about today: How can we protect voting rights when state governments try to restrict them? How can we shield military independence and provide congressional oversight against a lawless president? These are not new questions in U.S. history, and they are not insoluble ones.

Biracial democracy

Backed by the bland but crucial enforcement provisions of the Third Military Reconstruction Act, generals such as Grant and Sheridan defended congressionally enacted statute over presidential whim; politicians such as Thaddeus Stevens and even the cantankerous Fessenden remade themselves into revolutionaries by using military force to expand the Constitution; and Smalls and other black and white Republican community organizers created bold, new experiments in biracial democracy on the ground. Without the enforcement provisions of legislation such as the Third Military Reconstruction Act, the high ideals might have vanished into air. And the challenge of enforcing rights remains a crucial one in American life to this day.

Robert Smalls, the former slave turned congressman, lived long enough to see the limits of this revolution. Three decades after serving at the constitutional convention that the Military Reconstruction Acts called into being, he was one of a handful of African-American delegates to the 1895 state convention that disenfranchised them. There, South Carolinians under Pitchfork Ben Tillman, a viciously racist governor and U.S. senator who praised lynching on the Senate floor, worked to undo the Second American Revolution. Futilely, Smalls urged them to make a constitution for all people, one we will be proud of and our children will receive with delight.

Given the untidiness and disappointments of Reconstruction, and the historical amnesia around the role of slavery in the nations founding, its no wonder that Americans celebrate the inadequate Constitution the First Founders wrote, and all too often overlook the Second Constitution that Smalls and so many others willed into being, and left in our hands to sustain and extend. Both the lofty dreams of Smalls speech and the concrete mechanisms of the Third Military Reconstruction Act provide clues that may yet allow us to complete the revolution they commenced and create the country they hoped to will into being  a country capable not just of articulating rights but of defending them.
For nearly an hour Tuesday night, students, parents and educators pressed the Waco City Council to nix a proposal ending funding for Project Promise, a transformative summer program that not only bolsters academic resolve in low-income gifted and talented students but expands their potential in college, careers, cultural appreciation and business. All who spoke were eloquent in their pleas to continue the funding, students past and present especially. They were concise, articulate, smart and, rare for this day, civil. No surprise there. One of the Project Promise classes offered to its 60 students this summer: citizenship.

Only problem? Their aim was a bit off.

As Mayor Kyle Deaver explained, the funding cut is to the city, not by the city. Funding for Project Promise comes from Community Development Block Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development  and President Trump has proposed gutting the grant program. While this is unlikely given bipartisan favor shown these grants, the trend has been to shrink funding. This year grants of $3 billion went to state and local governments to provide affordable housing; upgrade infrastructure such as sewers and streets; encourage commercial redevelopment in economically struggling neighborhoods; and, finally, provide life-enriching services such as recreational services for youth, job-training for adults and center- and home-based assistance for seniors. While our city determines where much of local CDBG money goes, needs are great and resources from the federal government are fast dwindling. Also, they are to a degree regulated in purpose.

As federal funding through the block grant program has continued to decline over the past several years, the city of Waco has faced increasingly difficult decisions as to which local organizations will receive funding, Councilman John Kinnaird told us. Choosing between domestic abuse victims, impoverished children, homeless individuals or recovering drug addicts is an unenviable and unwinnable situation. Tragically, if the current [presidential] administration has its way, funding through this grant program would disappear completely, as would support for the arts, scientific endeavors and a number of other initiatives that benefit all of us. Our communities would suffer and those most in need would find vital resources taken away from them.

Factor in state legislators now pushing more restrictive revenue caps on cities throughout Texas, undermining efforts to locally fund such worthy programs, and one sees the dilemma, even as Project Promise officials contest city scoring that leaves the program uncertain. (CDBG funds for it have dwindled from $62,500 at program inception in 1999 to $36,934 this summer.) And officials acknowledge the challenge of securing funding from major foundations, given the programs modest size. National foundations seek big bang for their bucks. Local funding sources might yet save the program by summer 2018, but if its to be viable long-term, students, parents and educators would be wise to plead their case before Congressman Bill Flores during his town-hall meeting Monday. Unfortunately, theyll have to make their case by phone.
Republican stooge

When I saw the headline about Congressman Bill Flores saying Trumps children should leave the White House, I thought perhaps he finally was putting his country above Republican Party politics. It turns out this is not true. Mr. Flores seems to be unfazed that the Russians interfered in last years presidential election to tip the scales toward President-for-Now Trump. It doesnt seem to bother him there is clear evidence the Russians did interfere in our election. It doesnt seem to bother Flores there is now clear evidence Donald Trump Jr. colluded with the Russians to get dirt on Mrs. Clinton to help Trumps campaign. No, all that concerns Flores is that the Republican agenda isnt moving forward. And this agenda is as toxic as it gets and will harm a lot of us if Republicans get their way.

Flores likes to bandy about the words freedom and liberty and the U.S. Constitution. The fact the Russians have made inroads into undermining our democracy doesnt really seem to bother him much. It turns out he is the same old partisan Republican Party stooge he always has been. If he really was concerned about freedom, liberty, the Constitution and our democracy, he would stand up to Trump and his anti-American coziness with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.

Linda Robinson, Bellmead

* * *

Im not certain what make-believe world Congressman Bill Flores inhabits, but his statement that ...in real world America, they could care less about Russia left me stunned and astonished. Mr. Flores, as one of your constituents (albeit one you ignore) I do care about potential Russian meddling in American elections.

When you refer to acts of sedition as ...the distractions that the liberal media seem to focus on, you reveal a mindset that says its all about political party and to hell with our country! While you no doubt consider yourself a loyal soldier of the Republican Party, your statements reveal an astounding lack of respect for the U.S. Constitution and all of the citizens you supposedly represent.

Perhaps you could hold a real town-hall meeting or two as opposed to pretending that a telephone-only meeting on Facebook is truly an opportunity to meet with people who might not agree with you. Ill volunteer to host for you at a non-virtual site of your choosing. What do you say, sir?

William Howard, McGregor

Pray for Trump

On July 12 CNN host Erin Burnett displayed a photo showing Christian evangelical leaders praying over President Trump in the Oval Office. She described the photo as stunning and very strange. I can see the headlines now: President Trump colludes with God; Dems call for another special counsel.

I have news for the left. There are a whole lot more people praying for President Trump than just those ministers in the Oval Office.

Marty Esposito, Robinson
Saturday, July 22, 2017

A divided United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld an interpretation of the airplane smoking ban prohibiting inflight use of electronic cigarettes.

Underlying petitioners arguments and those of the dissent is the point that e-cigarettes did not exist in 1987 when Congress first made it unlawful to smoke on certain flights under two hours, nor did e-cigarettes exist in 2000 when Congress extended the prohibition. Although this means the legislators did not have e-cigarettes in mind when passing those statutes, that does not resolve the interpretive question. The text itself, rather than the subjective intentions of legislators, governs our review. See Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 79 (1998). We must ask whether the term smoking in a statute enacted before modern e-cigarettes existed covers these devices.

Petitioners maintain that smoking in  41706 requires lighting or burning and does not encompass the heating that occurs with e-cigarettes. The statutory text alone offers no support for that position.

The majority delves into what "smoking" means

So here is where we are. Although the statute does not define smoke, some dictionary definitions, some state laws, and some characterizations of smoking by the e-cigarette industry itself support the Department. But other dictionary definitions and other state laws support petitioners. We therefore cannot say that Congress spoke to the precise question at issue.

The application of the ban was not arbitrary.

Circuit Judge Kavanaugh concurred

I join the majority opinion and add these brief comments. Even without affording Chevron deference to the Departments interpretation of the statute, I would still reach the same result in this case. In my view, although it is a close call, the better interpretation of the term smoking in this statute covers ecigarettes as well as conventional tobacco cigarettes. Judge Ginsburgs fine dissent rests in part on the notion that those who drafted or read the statute in 1987 would not have understood the term smoking to encompass e-cigarettes because e-cigarettes did not exist at that time. I am not convinced by that line of analysis, for reasons that the majority opinion persuasively explains.

Senior Circuit Judge Ginsberg in dissent

Today this Court departs from this principle to redefine smoking from conventional tobacco consumption, as it was commonly understood in 1987, to prohibit the use of electronic cigarettes, a new technology with a substantially different nicotine delivery process and likely different secondhand effects as well. Just as some people will, no doubt, find ambiguity even in a No Smoking sign, Intl Union v. Gen. Dynamics Land Sys. Div., 815 F.2d 1570, 1575 (D.C. Cir. 1987), the Court manufactures ambiguity from the lack of a statutory definition and some abstract dictionary definitions of smoking even though the Congress that adopted the statute and the public it represented would have found the term unambiguous when relating to passenger aviation...



I cannot accept the Courts ahistorical reinterpretation of a purportedly ambiguous statutory term that was well-understood when enacted in 1987.

The challenge was brought by The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association, and Gordon Cummings. (Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/07/a-divided-united-states-court-of-appeals-for-the-district-of-columbia-circuit-upheld-an-interpretation-of-the-airplane-smokin.html
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jul. 23, 2017 | 01:50 PM | MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY

An alleged burglary in progress led to a drug arrest Saturday night.

According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Office, deputies were dispatched to 130 Jan Lyn Drive for a report of an alleged burglary in progress. The resident said an unknown man, wearing gloves and a head lamp, was beating on their front door.

Upon arrival, deputies saw 29-year-old Matthew Eggleston of Paducah standing in front of the resident's vehicle that was parked near the front door. Eggleston was detained, and during the investigation, deputies learned that Eggleston had mistakenly gone to the wrong address to pick up a friend.

Police said Eggleston was found in possession of methamphetamine and other drug paraphernalia, along with a set of brass knuckles. He was taken into custody on charges of possession of methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia and carrying a concealed deadly weapon.
Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required.

Your Full Name: (optional)

Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required.
The National Weather Service in Flagstaff has issued a Flash Flood Watch for all of Apache, Coconino, Navajo, Yavapai, and northern Gila Counties.

From noon MST Sunday through midnight tonight.

Monsoon moisture levels and instability will be at high levels through this evening. Slow moving storms may produce 1 to 2 inches of rainfall. An upper level disturbance may move into northern Arizona late in the day, which would enhance precipitation coverage. Storm motion should be from the east-southeast to north.

Areas of particular concern are the Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Havasu Canyon.

From the National Weather Service website:

Monsoon conditions will return today and continue through Tuesday. Heavy rainfall with flash flooding remains possible from stronger storms. A decrease in storm coverage should develop starting Wednesday, especially across western and central Arizona.

Sunday will be an active day as abundant monsoon moisture is present over central and northern Arizona. Model forecast soundings indicate fairly high levels of instability along and south of the Mogollon Rim this afternoon, with steering flow generally pushing storms slowly toward the west/northwest. This setup would allow for a few strong to marginally severe thunderstorms developing along the Mogollon Rim/White Mtns and pushing slowly into northern Gila and portions of Yavapai County later in the afternoon and evening. Also, with the stronger storms (and/or areas with cell training), there will be a risk of heavy rain and localized flash flooding.

One thing that could limit this possibility is ongoing cloud cover, acting to inhibit instability and storm strength. If these clouds show a decreasing trend later this morning, there could be a need for a Flash Flood Watch for this afternoon/evening from the Mogollon Rim southward

This will turn the steering flow from the southeast tonight and then southerly Monday. Storms could persist into the overnight hours tonight with the help of the feature. On Monday, forecast soundings show a nearly saturated atmosphere through a deep layer. Rain chances are high, but the amount of cloud cover could act to hold down instability and decrease storm intensity, rainfall rates and flash flood potential. Stay tuned as this part of the forecast remains uncertain and could change.

On Tuesday the inverted trough is forecast to move north of the state, with slightly lower precipitable water values over the region. Looking for a more typical monsoon pattern, with scattered afternoon storms moving SW to NE.

Wednesday & Thursday: Models indicating a drier air mass and some warming in the mid levels. Not expecting storms to shut down completely, but coverage should be isolated to scattered at best.

Friday onward: High pressure forecast to shift to our north, allowing for easterly flow and gradual moistening. Storm chances return to typical monsoon levels.
Sunday, July 23, 2017

A stipulated disposition of a two-year suspension with all but 60 days stayed has been approved by the California State Bar Court Hearing Department

The case involves a series of alcohol-related driving incidents. Notably, one took place while she was a prosecutor driving to work.

On July 25, 2011, respondent was employed as an Assistant District Attorney with the El Dorado County District Attorneys Office.

As an Assistant District Attomey, respondent possessed specialized knowledge about the laws and dangers relating to driving under the influence of alcohol.

Between 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm on the afternoon of July 25, 2011, before returning to work at the District Attorneys Office following lunch, respondent consumed multiple vodkas.

At or around 1:30 pm on July 25, 2011, respondent drove her 2002 BMW X5 from her home to the parking lot of the El Dorado County District Attorneys Office.

Soon after arriving at her workplace, respondent was contacted by police officers investigating whether she had driven to work while under the influence of alcohol.

This led to a test and arrest.

Sanction

First, respondent demonstrated a complete disregard for the safety of the public by driving a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol content level over five times the legal limit. As a result, she caused a collision resulting in property damage and harm to other citizens. The nexus between her disregard and her fitness to practice is particularly clear here because of respondents experience and knowledge of criminal law stemming from her career as a criminal prosecutor. As a result, this misconduct is particularly aggravated because of her awareness and familiarity of the laws surrounding driving under the influence. Respondent possessed specialized knowledge of the dangers and impact of driving under the influence on the public...

Consideration of a respondents convictions as evidence of alcohol abuse was the second nexus Kelley used to explain the need for discipline in the absence of moral turpitude or a direct connection between misconduct and the attorneys fitness to practice. In the present case, that nexus is apparent. Respondent was driving a vehicle, causing auto collisions, at 8:30 in the morning, with a blood alcohol content over five times the legal limit. This, after her first conviction where she was drinking during the day, while at work as a criminal prosecutor. Respondents conduct clearly demonstrates a substance abuse issue that the State Bar must acknowledge and address in order to protect the public and the integrity, of the legal profession.

The stipulation provides for five years of probation to include substance abuse treatment. (Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/07/a-stipulated-disposition-of-a-one-year-suspension-with-all-but-60-days-stayed-has-been-approved-by-the-california-state-bar-c.html
New Ross mourns tragic death of Anthony Rochford (47): We will remember him for all the great times
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 23/07/2017 (1938 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The fate and scope of the Winnipeg Art Gallerys $65-million Inuit Art Centre will be decided within the next six weeks.

According to Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) president and CEO Stephen Borys, the current plans for the centre are in jeopardy if the province doesnt renew a $15-million commitment made by the former NDP government.

And the clock is ticking.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Winnipeg Art Gallery president Stephen Borys says funding for a new Inuit art centre is in jeopardy if the province does not follow through on a 2015 commitment.

Borys said if the commitment isnt confirmed by the end of August, the project could be delayed up to six months and upwards of $15 million in federal and private funding already committed to the project could be lost.

If the province cancels the $15 million promised under the former NDP government in November 2015, Borys said the WAG will literally have to go back to the drawing board to significantly redesign what is proposed to be a four-storey, 40,000-square-foot facility.

Its hot where I am right now and Im sweating, but thats nothing compared to what Im waiting on, Borys said, when reached near Portage la Prairie on a sweltering Thursday afternoon. Im nervous but no news right now is good news. I really believe that after this long  and weve had a dialogue with the current government for over a year  if it was clearly no, I would hope theyd just tell us. Then wed be able to make some immediate decisions in terms of the size of the building and the design and what we can do.

But until we know, its a bit of a holding pattern.

The dilemma: the gallery needs to submit tenders by late August for construction to begin October to December. If not, construction cant start until April or May.

This is not just an art project. Its a cultural project, its a reconciliation project, its an economic project.

However, the federal governments commitment of $15 million expires March 31. Whatever hasnt been spent of those funds will be lost, Borys said, noting current preparations  clearing the site for the centre, adjacent to the WAG  would only account for about half of the federal funds.

If we havent spent it, well lose millions and we wont get it back, he said.

Meanwhile, about $5 million of the $21 million in private-sector gifts is contingent on acquiring provincial funding, he said.

So without the provincial funds, the project stands to lose almost $30 million in total funding the WAG considered secure prior to the Progressive Conservative-led Manitoba governments decision to review all project funding initiatives announced under the former NDP government.

We could never proceed as we are planning, Borys said, stressing the WAG continues to communicate with provincial officials.

Culture Minister Rochelle Squires said Friday in a statement to the Free Press the province understands the urgency and tight timelines. We will have a decision well before the deadline of late August.

The government of Manitoba has always been a strong supporter of one of our provinces most important cultural institutions, the statement said.

Plans for the Inuit Art Centre show an innovative programming hub that celebrates Inuit art and Indigenous cultures and offers educational opportunities for all ages. We would like to see this facility continue to thrive as a world-class attraction for visitors, and its expansion plans would help grow tourism in Manitoba and our economy.

We continue to work with the arts and culture community, in partnership with the private sector, to ensure ongoing development and investment.

One concern for Borys is such decisions are being made in a current climate where (hospital) emergency rooms are being closed.

HANDOUT / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES An artist's rendition of a planned Inuit Art Centre in Winnipeg is shown in a handout photo. Winnipeg's art gallery is trying to carve out space to house what's believed to be the world's largest collection of Inuit art - only a fraction of which is ever on display.

This is not just an art project, he said. Its a cultural project, its a reconciliation project, its an economic project. But also weve lined up all the ducks in a row. Were not asking for a cent of more operational money from the province. We have money from other partners flowing for the next five years.

I have no desire to antagonize or make matters worse, Borys added. If I was going to the province to ask for $15 million to add a new wing to exhibit more art, I wouldnt expect a cent. But this project is a whole new dialogue, and its a whole new road to the North.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @randyturner15

JASO HALSTEAD / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The Winnipeg Art Gallery is working towards the creation of an Inuit Art Centre, to which the Winnipeg Foundation is making a grant of $950,000. The centre will be an innovative programming hub that celebrates Inuit art and indigenous cultures through exhibitions, research, education and art making. The WAG holds in trust the worlds largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art. With more than 13,000 pieces, the collection represents half of the WAGs total permanent art collection, including the 1975 stone carving Woman Struggling with Goose, by Aqjangajuk Shaa. Artist rendering Aerial view of Inuit Art Centre and Winnipeg Art Gallery, Michael Maltzan Architecture.
Its summer in Minnesota and the humidity is rising! We have dodged it so far but I am afraid it is probably here to stay through August. What to do when its hot? Go swimming, of course!

We are not short of swimming options in this area. Besides the beautiful Bob Welch Aquatic Center the City of Winona operates, there are a few other swimming holes available for families.

Across the bridge but before entering Wisconsin, you can turn left into the Latsch Island and Aghaming Park and Preserve Area where you will find a sandy beach area along the Mississippi River. I have not been to this beach but know others that have and they think its a decent swimming area. At one point in Winonas history, there was a large structure built near this beach called the John Latsch Winona Public Baths. I had co-workers who were in high school in the 1960s who have mentioned this facility. Ask a lifelong resident about this. It might make for some good conversations.

Two other swimming areas options are a short drive away. One is along Hwy. 76 before you get to Houston, located at the Money Creek Campground. The other is the beach offered at Whitewater State Park in Altura. Many of my friends have young kids so several times this summer we have met up a Money Creek or Whitewater State Park for swimming and lunch. Last week, four families met up at Whitewater State Park beach and we stayed there way past my expectations because we were having so much fun. It was sunny, hot and perfect for a dip in the very cold Whitewater River. My older daughter and I headed to Saint Charles for the Winona County Fair after our family swimming date  our experience at the fair is a story for another time.

Of course while swimming pools, beaches and ponds are great  you can stay in and use a lawn sprinkler to cool off as well! Have a great last week of July 2017!

Activities

July 25

10:3011:30 a.m.: Grace Place Morning Music Program, located downtown Winona, pre-school aged children, donation of $2/family

10:30 a.m.: Picnic & Play at the Park, Sobieski Park

July 26

10:30-11:30 a.m.: Preschool in the Park at Sinclair Park

July 27

10:30 a.m.: Picnic & Play at the Park, Sinclair Park

July 28

10:30-11:30 a.m.: Preschool in the Park at Sobieski Park

July 29

7:30Noon: Winona Farmers Market, Midtown Foods parking lot

9 p.m.: Movie in the Park at East Recreation Center (The Goonies)
Minnesota Democrats defied expectations in an election that had been expected to go well for Republicans, winning the governors race and completing a trifecta by winning both houses of the Legislature to take full control of state government for this first time in eight years. Republican Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller conceded Wednesday morning that his party had lost its majority to Senate Democrats. That followed a concession earlier Wednesday from GOP House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt and the re-election of Democratic Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday night. Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon won reelection, while Attorney General Keith Ellison and State Auditor Julie Blaha hold narrow leads.
LYNDON STATION  Four people were hospitalized Friday after a head-on vehicle collision in the town of Dellona.

The Sauk County Sheriffs Department reports that an initial investigation revealed that 18-year-old Tyson T. Holtz of Reedsburg was driving west on County Highway H in a 2004 Audi when he lost control of the vehicle and crossed the center line.

The car collided with a 2002 Chevrolet truck driven by 19-year-old Destiny R. Shore of Hillsboro. In the front passenger seat of vehicle was an 11-year-old boy and in the rear passenger seat was 17-year-old David D. Prell, both of Sun Prairie.

All vehicle occupants were transported to area hospitals for serious injuries that were not life-threatening, according to a news release from the sheriffs department. Air bags deployed in both vehicles and it is believed that all occupants were wearing seatbelts. Alcohol was not a factor.

The crash remains under investigation.
The Columbus-Fall River Rotary Club is inviting the community to celebrate the grand opening of the new canoe/kayak launch in Rotary Park in Columbus with a Community Paddle and Free Float on Thursday, July 27, from 5 to 7 p.m.

During the celebration, launch demonstrations and a paddlin parade will be held in the mill pond on the Crawfish River, and dinner and free floats will be available from Mullins Short Stop.

The launch, which was installed in the park on Wednesday, is made of floatable plastic pieces that fit together like Lego blocks. The end of it is anchored to the river bank. It can be used by people of all skill levels to enter or exit the river without getting their feet wet.

The launch was purchased by the Rotary Club, with funding from the late Alton Mather, and has been donated to the City of Columbus, for public use.
1967

The Columbus School District Annual Meeting will be held on July 24. A budget with expenditures of $1,911,220 will be considered at the meeting for the 1967-68 school year.

Three new teachers were added to the staff of the Columbus Public Schools. They include Peter Byfield, who will teach high school English, Mrs. Evelyn McAlpine will teach third grade, and Mrs. Marian Teplin will teach junior high English.

1977

Since the Columbus Area Senior Citizens group was organized seven years ago, the membership has constantly been on the increase. The group now numbers approximately 125 members from Columbus, Fall River and Rio. At least once a year the group attends a Milwaukee Brewers game at County Stadium.

Headliners featured at the Wisconsin State Fair included Seals and Crofts, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rodgers, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and Sha Na Na.

1987

Keith Fuchs, of Waukesha has been selected as the new Columbus High School Principal, to replace former principal Michael Dickmann.

A 33-year-old Columbus man, Thomas Weedman, was killed in an industrial accident at the Badger Disposal Co. site while working on a garbage truck.

1997

The Super 8 Motel in Columbus is celebrating its grand opening on Sunday July 20. The new motel will offer meeting rooms in addition to rooms with king, queen and double queen beds. All rooms are computer friendly and the motel includes a pool that is open to the public.

Columbus High School Student Council members Susie Sampolinski, Erin Johnson, Melissa Kurth, Bryan Kurth, Josh Steckel and Aaron McAndrews attended the state Student Council Conference in Green Lake.




China News on Women





Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page
Before (left) after (center) another man dressed as woman

By: Mason White WorldWideWeirdNews.com

A man put a lot of work into looking like a woman in order to flee from Iraqi forces.

Mosul was liberated from ISIS control after a nine month battle and many jihadist tried to flee the country.

Soldiers in Iraq, released photos of ISIS members who were caught while they were disguised as women.

One man seemed to have worked for hours putting on makeup and getting his eyebrows just right. However, his disguise did not work and he was captured because he forgot to shave his beard and mustache.

In a before and after photo, the ISIS fighter was first seen sporting a thick beard and mustache. In the second photo, he was seen dressed in womans clothes with makeup on his face.

However, despite shaving most of his beard, the ISIS member still had some facial hair left and that gave his identity away.

In another photo, an ISIS member was seen wearing makeup, a wig and padded bra, but he too was caught.
Growth Deal for North Wales Remains a Key Focus Says Wrexham MP

This article is old - Published: Sunday, Jul 23rd, 2017

Wrexham MP Ian Lucas has said a Growth Deal for North Wales remains a key focus for an important Parliamentary group.

Mr Lucas, who was last week re-elected Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Mersey Dee North Wales area, said that the group would continue pressing Ministers for action on a growth deal for North Wales and for improvements to cross-border transport.

He said: The All Party group brings together MPs and peers from across North Wales and the North West of England.

There is a growing recognition that we have to work together to secure the best our area  that was the case before this years General Election, and it remains a key focus now that the new Parliament is in place. Indeed, it was one of the key drivers behind the setting up of our group.

The appetite for change is not simply limited to Parliament, however. For instance, I have been heartened to see local authorities across Wales including here in Wrexham  sign up to support some of the key projects for our area, including the Growth Track 360 transport bid and the North Wales Growth deal.

In the Assembly, a sister group to the Parliamentary group has been set up, and I met with its chair Hannah Blythyn earlier this month. The Assembly is also leading the way in supporting North Wales  with announcements such as the recent siting of the Development Bank in Wrexham.

And in our education sector, I know that institutions such as Glyndwr University are also working hard to make the case for our region, for working together with business and working together on cross-border issues, and for investment.

Our region is speaking with one voice, and it is calling for change.

What we want from the UK Government is commitment to our region in concrete terms  work must continue on the North Wales Growth deal and the Growth Track 360 transport proposals.

Ministers must not be distracted from ensuring we get the very best for North Wales.
Lower Voting Age & Electronic Voting Feature in Radical Plans to Shake-up Council Elections

This article is old - Published: Monday, Jul 24th, 2017

Lowering the voting age, electronic votes and new locations for polling stations all feature as part of radical proposals to shake-up council elections in Wales.

The proposals, which form part of a 12 week consultation on electoral reform, were announced by Cabinet Secretary for Local Government, Mark Drakeford last week as part of a bid to make voting more accessible and easier to be entitled to vote in Wales.

Voting in council elections has been notoriously low across Wales, with Wrexham specifically seeing just 34% turnout to vote in 2012.

More recently the May 2017 council election saw a turnout of 40%, however individual wards such as Plas Madoc and Wynnstay both saw their local turnout stay below 30%.

Such proposals outlined by the Welsh Government could help boost turnout not just county borough wide, but also within individual wards.

Under the new proposals outlined in the 12 week consultation 16 and 17 year olds in Wales would be given the right to vote in council elections  under powers transferred to the National Assembly for Wales under the Wales Act

If enacted, they would amount to the biggest change to the Welsh electoral system since 1970  when the voting age was lowered to 18.

The Welsh Government consultation also looks ahead to when the UK is due to leave the EU in 2019 and asks whether all foreign citizens normally resident in Wales should have the right to vote in local elections.

Making it easier for people to vote and modernising the voting system are also laid out in the consultation. Currently, unless you have a postal or proxy vote, registered voters have to visit their local polling station on the day of the election

Polling stations are generally held in community centres, village halls etc and people can cast their votes between 7am and 10pm on the day of the election.

However alternative options are looked at within the consultation, including electronic voting at polling stations and remotely, mobile polling stations and voting at places other than polling stations such as supermarkets, local libraries, leisure centres and railway stations.

The consultation also asks whether voting could take place on other days of the week rather than just Thursdays.

Changes would also be made to the voting system itself, with each council being given the option of using a First-Past-the-Post or Single Transferable Vote system. Councils would have to consult with local residents before deciding which system to use.

For example, this could result in Wrexham Council operating a different voting system to say the neighbouring counties in Flintshire and Denbighshire.

The consultation also asks if prisoners should be allowed to vote.

In making the announcement Mark Drakeford said: Im announcing a Bill and a wholesale package of reforms that will change the way councils work and the way they are elected. We want to make it easier to vote and easier to be entitled to vote.

Theres no reason why 16 and 17 year olds can marry, pay taxes and join the army but cant vote in our elections. Theres no reason why, in the twenty-first century, we can carry out all sorts of daily transactions online but cant, as of yet, vote online.

Thats why were setting out a number of different ideas to modernise the electoral system and putting out a call for the public to share their ideas with us too.

Director of the Electoral Reform Society Cymru, Jess Blair said: The time is right to have this conversation on how we do things differently when it comes to voting and engaging people around politics. This consultation on electoral reform is a welcome step forward and covers a huge amount of things that we believe could genuinely improve the way politics works in Wales.

The inclusion of votes at 16 in this debate is about what kind of democracy we want to be  one which engages our young people in their futures, and secures a fair franchise.

And we know it works. Sixteen and 17 year olds threw themselves wholeheartedly into the Scottish referendum, with 75% voting and 97% saying they would vote in future elections.

Last week we launched our project, Missing Voices, which is looking at the barriers to voting in Wales. Therefore, we are delighted this is happening and believe this is a significant opportunity to have a debate about how we create a healthier democracy.

Following on from a White Paper earlier this year, the Cabinet Secretary has also announced details of a Local Government Bill that would see mandatory regional working between Wales 22 councils on areas such as economic development, strategic land use planning and strategic transport.

These services will all be undertaken in three large regions: North Wales, Central and South West Wales and South East Wales. There will be scope for sub-regional working as part of these larger groupings.

The announcement comes after plans to merge local authorities across Wales  including Wrexham with Flintshire and potentially Denbighshire  were scrapped last year.

Councils would also be required to work regionally on other services like education improvement, social services, additional learning needs and other aspects of land-use planning but have more flexibility on the footprint in which they work together.

Certain specific functions would have to be undertaken regionally, for example, social services being aligned with the local health board boundaries.

Joint Governance Committees, comprising elected members of each constituent local authority, would be set up for each of the 3 regional areas and would oversee the services.

A more transparent relationship between residents and their local authority is also a Welsh Government aim, with mandatory broadcasting of council meetings.

Currently Wrexham Council webcasts planning, executive board and full council meetings, and has done so since 2014. However such requirements could mean the branching out to include scrutiny meetings.

There will also be a review of town and community councils, which will consider what needs to change so that the most local level of government works well and delivers results. The review is expected to start this summer and will take a year.

Mark Drakeford added: I look forward to working with local government on the Bill and I urge everyone to have their say on this bold and pioneering package of electoral reforms were setting out today.

We asked Wrexham Council if they have been involved in the shaping of the plans, and invited thoughts on mandatory regional working with Wrexham being bundled into a large North Wales region. WCBC did not reply.

In May 2017 Wrexham.com conducted the most extensive coverage of the council elections that Wrexham has seen. You can view our coverage here.
Problematic Phone Boxes Seen as Magnet For Anti Social Behaviour Removed

This article is old - Published: Monday, Jul 24th, 2017

Two problematic phone boxes seen as a magnet for anti social behaviour and suspected drug dealing have been removed by BT.

The first phone box, which was located in the Gwenfro area was removed on Thursday, much to the delight of local residents who have been campaigning for years to have it taken from the area.

Over the last two years the phone box has been subject to vandalism, set alight and been used for suspected drug deals.

Welcoming its removal, Plaid Cymru councillor for Queensway, Carrie Harper said: Residents have raised concerns about this phone box over a number of years due to its lack of general use by residents and its increasing use for illegal activity and anti social behaviour.

Im pleased that BT has finally taken on board those concerns and removed it.

Credit must go to local residents and the police who have both worked together to achieve this result. Were all pleased its finally gone.

Local resident Julee Harding who had also raised concerns about the phone box added: I have lived in the Gwenfro area for 14 years and for the last two years the phone box in our area has been vandalised on many occasions, including set on fire, fire works have been lit inside it and everyday it is used for a meeting place to make drug deals day and night.

We are relieved to see the phone box finally has been removed as it means there is one less place for drug deals to take place.

A phone box in Pen-Y-Bryn, which has also been subject to anti social behaviour, was also removed last week.

Simon Hall, owner of the Secondhand Shed on Pen-Y-Bryn, said: Its taken a few years of me and others campaigners to get it removed.

Our PCSO got it to incoming calls only and then got the door removed. That helped a lot but still was getting used 99% of the time for ordering drugs  something Ive witnessed many times.

Once I asked BT to please remove it and was told it was the most profitable phone box in Wrexham.

I do feel for people that have a genuine use for public phones but unfortunately they seem to get used for illegal use more than anything else.
FRANKLIN COUNTY, IL (via WALB) - A teenager from Florida is facing charges in Illinois for allegedly making two bomb threats against the Sesser-Valier Schools.

The first threat happened on February 21, 2016. The second was on January 17, 2017.

Gabriel Isaiah Estrada, 19, faces charges of falsely making a terrorist threat, disorderly conduct, intimidation of a minor, and harassment of a minor by electronic means.

According to Franklin County Sheriff Don Jones, Estrada is suspected in other crimes in Franklin County.

A detective from the Franklin County Sheriff's Department and a detective from the Benton Police Department traveled to Okaloosa County, Florida to assist with Estrada's arrest.

He is being held in Florida pending an extradition hearing.

Jones said charges against Estrada, who lives in Fort Walton Beach, are the result of "a complex forensic computer and other electronic media investigation and has been ongoing for a number of months."

Investigators anticipate filing additional charges against Estrada.

Sesser-Valier District Superintendent Jason Henry issued the following statement:

"I am very grateful, but not surprised, to learn that the suspect in these cases is being brought to justice. The Sheriff's office has kept me apprised of the progress of the investigation over the last few months, and, to be clear, it has been grueling, detailed police work. The investigators who have worked this case are first-class professionals and deserve our highest praise and deepest thanks for their work on these cases. "I met with Sheriff Jones on January 18, 2017, and he gave me his word that he would see this case through, even if it meant that he had to send his officers to Florida to bring this perpetrator to justice. Ultimately, that's exactly what happened. Two lawmen from Franklin County, IL worked the case, followed up on leads, gathered information, and then traveled to Fort Walton Beach, Fla. earlier this week to arrest a dangerous perpetrator. Sheriff Jones delivered on his promise. "A case like this takes one thing to get right - individuals who step-up and do the right thing, in the right way, at the right time. Fortunately for SV196 kids, multiple individuals did just that - they stepped-up and did the right thing. Our country is better off because of individuals like this."

Superintendent Henry cautioned others who think things like this are funny, jokes or clever.

"Threats like this are an intolerable violation of the public trust and the sanctity of the schoolhouse," he said. "Crimes like this are very serious, and cannot be tolerated in a dignified society. As a result, lawmen like these officers from Franklin County, IL, will work diligently to stop disruptive, offensive acts like this from happening to schoolchildren."
You are the owner of this article.
Clashes between Palestinian rioters and Israeli security forces continued on Saturday evening with stone-throwing incidents in several locations in Jerusalem.

In the east Jerusalem neighborhood of At-Tur, several masked rioters threw stones at police, prompting the force to use crowd dispersal measures.

Stones and glass bottles were hurled at Israeli forces near the Mount of Olives, again prompting use of crowd dispersal measures.

In Isawiya, stones were thrown and a burning tire was rolled down toward the road.

In Shuafat, several dozens of rioters threw stones at police forces, prompting use of crowd dispersal measures.
Hundreds of people gathered at the Neve Tzuf junction in protest of the bloody stabbing attack on Friday, in which three people lost their lives. The demonstrators blocked the road, preventing Palestinian cars from passing.
Shin Bet and IDF forces detained 25 Hamas operatives in the West Bank overnight.

Among the detainees are several senior members of the organization.

The arrests were made against the background of the tension surrounding the Temple Mount in recent days.
The Israel Police set up special surveillance cameras at one of the entrances to the Temple Mount complex on Sunday morning, which could replace the recently installed metal detectors that have been at the center of growing tensions between Israel and Muslim worshipers.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The cameras can identify anyone who tries to enter the holy site with knives, weapons, hand grenades or other suspicious items.

But worshipers who arrived at the Gate of the Tribes for morning prayers refused to enter the Temple Mount and threatened to continue their violent struggle, rejecting any form of compromise. As a result, the Al-Aqsa Mosque was empty on Sunday morning, with its doors closed.

Security camara at Temple Mount

One of the sheikhs who arrived at the scene said that "the new measure is worse than the metal detectors," without elaborating.

"We will not agree to any inspection," the sheikh continued. "We will meet today and decide on our next steps."

Muslim worshipers at Lions' Gate, Sunday

Mahmoud, a resident of east Jerusalem who came to pray, said the he feels like the Israeli government and the police are "making fun of" the Muslim faithful.

"We will not agree to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque through an inspection," he said. "We are not criminals who should be humiliated. The government and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan must stop making stupid decisions. They're just making things worse."

Another worshiper who came to pray at the holy site claimed the Israeli government "is not interested showing respect" to the worshipers.

"They insist on that we pass through inspection but it's not going to happen," he asserted. "The protests will continue and we'll sacrifice our lives for the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Whatever the outcome of the struggle will be, we are willing to pay with our lives."

Late Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh discussed the security issue on the Temple Mount, and the Security Cabinet is expected to meet Sunday evening to discuss the matter as well.

US President Donald Trump's envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt, special advisor Jared Kushner and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman are all working behind-the-scenes with the Prime Minister's Office in an effort to reach a compromise that would calm the tensions and end the crisis. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Jordanians are also involved in the talks.
Friday evenings deadly terror attack at the community of Neveh Tzuf-Halamish, which left three members of one family dead, is a strategic event which goes way beyond the borders of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Its now a pan-Muslim event, a security source said Saturday morning on the backdrop of the Temple Mount riots.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Social media is abuzz in a way we havent seen in a long time, and thats a sign of escalation, the source added. Another sign is that theres no active restraining element on the ground at the moment. On the contrary, incitement is growing, especially on the part of Hamas and the Waqf. (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) is joining them because he fears for his government.

Blood in the kitchen of a Jewish family attacked by a terrorist on Friday night in Halamish (Photo: IDF Spokespersons Unit)

His words reflect the negative trend detected by the defense establishment on the Palestinian street, which has led to assessments the escalation will continue in two areas: Street riots in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and copycat attacks "inspired" by the murder of three Salomon family members. The police and IDF are flooding the area with forces to handle any riots that may develop and protect the Jewish communities.

As for the investigation of the attack, the mainand infuriatingquestion is how the hell did the terrorist manage to get through the communitys circumferential fence, like in the attack on the Fogel family in the settlement of Itamar in 2011. How is it possible that no one noticed him? And if someone did, why didnt they dispatch forces to intercept him? Was someone caught off guard?

IDF activity, Friday night (Photo: IDF Spokespersons Unit)

The will the terrorist wrote on Facebook, in which he basically declared his intentions, was written about an hour earlier. The Shin Bet likely failed to detect it on timea matter of manpower and resources. Now, the agency is responsible for the main intelligence effort, which will also lead the investigation in the village of Kobar, where the terrorist came from.

The results of incitement

The attack was inspired by the Temple Mount events and the religious incitement last week, since metal detectors were placed at the entrance to the site. It wasnt the first attack in recent days. It was preceded by attacks in Tekoa and in Hebron over the very same reasons. Like in September 2015 and like in the beginning of the second intifada, the moment the Temple Mount turns into a source of tensions, the situation on the Palestinian and Muslim street around the world becomes explosive.

Photo: IDF Spokespersons Unit

At the moment, theres a lot of explosive energy across the Muslim world and the Palestinian street, and if a compromise isnt found, leading to cooperation between all elements in calming down the situation, well likely see further disturbances and attacks in the coming days. The situation was aggravated on Friday with the death of three young Palestinians in Jerusalem neighborhoods far from the Temple Mount. Experience shows casualties in clashes with the security forces maintain and intensify the escalation, especially when its religiously-motivated.

The mourners tents are a source of incitement too. The father of one of the young men killed in Jerusalem said Friday he hoped many people would follow in his sons footsteps. These words fall on hearing Palestinian ears.

Clashes in east Jerusalem, Friday (Photo: Reuters)

The Palestinian street was in an explosive state already, even before the Temple Mount crisisbecause of the disappointment with US President Donald Trumps efforts to solve the conflict, because of the inheritance battle for Abbas throne, because of the internal Palestinian conflict that has worsened recently, because of provocative measures taken against Gaza and because of the financial and personal desperation felt by many young Palestinians. That was the explosive charge. The detonator was the Temple Mount attack carried out by Israeli Arabs from Umm al-Fahm. The murder of two Druze police officers with weapons smuggled into the mosque blew up the emotional baggage, the frustration and the desperation there.

Insufficient statements

Admittedly, the murderers got what they wanted. They created an explosive chain of events that blew up in our faces, just like they had planned. The Israeli government wasnt wise enough to try to reach a compromise with the Jordanians, the Waqf and the Palestinian Authority, which could have neutralized this explosive charge. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preferred to preach to Europe's leaders, the Israeli public was busy with the submarine affair, and the foretold explosion at the Temple Mount was left to the police, as if it were a local Jerusalem event, while the Shin Bet and IDF warned that placing metal detectors on the Temple Mount under the current circumstances would be interpreted as a violation of the status quo.

Photo: EPA

The prime minister did try to neutralize the explosive charge in a statements he released before boarding the plane to Paris, and later in Hungary. Netanyahu said the status quo at the Temple Mount wouldnt change, but as usual, he failed to take into account the fact the Muslim world and the Palestinian street are flooded with so much hatred and theories about an Israeli conspiracy, that an Israeli leaders statements are not enough. They see and hear what Israeli extremists publish on social media and believe every world the Hilltop Youth and their supporters have to say.

Netanyahus trip to Europe at this tense period reminds me of Yitzhak Rabin at the beginning of the first intifada, in December 1987. The then-defense minister flew to the United States and was in no rush to return, as he believed the riots would calm down.

Photo: EPA

The police deserve all praise for the smart manner in which they prevented riots after Friday prayers at the Temple Mount. They split the Palestinian worshippers into relatively small groups at the Temple Mount gates, where they were faced by large Israeli forces in the Old City area, and blocked the arrival of tens of thousands of incited Israeli Arabs. Its quite possible, however, that the police used excessive force and acted too fast against young Palestinians rioting in the distant neighborhoods of east Jerusalem and in the village of Abu Dis.

The riots broke out in the neighborhoods after the prayer because there were no restrictions on young people there, and they were free to act, a defense source explained.

In any event, now that blood has been shed on both sides, it will take many efforts, both security efforts on the ground and diplomatic effortswith the Waqf, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, and perhaps with American and Saudi aid tooto calm the situation down through a compromise. If the parties fail to do so, we are at the beginning of a new wave of terrorism.
Hundreds of settlers gathered early Sunday at the Neveh Tzuf junction near Halamish to erect an outpost in response to the terror attack at the settlement Friday night that claimed the lives of three Israelis.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The outpost was named Yad Ahi, in memory of the three slain members of the Salomon family : Yosef, 70, and his children Haya, 46, and Elad, 35.

The protesters prepared for a long stay at the outpost with tents, chairs and tables.

Israeli security forces have arrived at the scene.





Settlers set up new outpost (Photo: TPS)

infiltrated Halamish-Neveh Tzuf, entered the home of the Salomon family and murdered three of its members, as well as wounded 68-year-old Tovah, Yosef's wife.

Following the attack, the settler leaders in Halamish met to discuss plans for the future, seeking to expand the settlement with more housing units.

Settlers set up new outpost (Photo: TPS)

They examined maps of the area and discussed different places to settle. They intend to discuss these plans with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government's ministers.

The settlers demanded the defense establishment to restore security to the residents by completing security plans that have already been budgeted but not yet implemented.

In addition, they demanded to close the eastern road to the settlement to Palestinian movement, after it was used by both al-Abed and another Palestinian terrorist who set houses in the settlement on fire several months. The settlers have taken to block that road themselves by placing a shipping container on it.

Settlers set up new outpost (Photo: TPS)

The settlers also demanded the government to create territorial contiguity of Jewish settlement from the Salomon family home to the nearby neighborhood of Tzofit. This, they say, will create a bigger security area and allow building neighborhoods that have already received zoning approvals.

"We call on the Israeli government with a clear voicestrengthen the settlement enterprise," said Avi Roeh, the head of the Binyamin Region Council and the Yesha Council.

"We remain steadfast in our views and positions, despite the serious losses, and call on the government to aid us in expanding the (Jewish) settlement in the Binyamin region specifically and in Judea and Samaria in general," he added.

Halamish settler leaders meet with Minister Uri Ariel

He went on to say, "We're here forever and ever and we have no intention of running away from here. Halamish-Neveh Tzuf is one of the settlements in Binyamin chosen as a home by the next generation. They get married and come here to raise their children."
Michal Salomon spoke about the deadly terrorist attack that cost the lives of her husband, sister-in-law and brother-in-law. After a pleasant family celebration of the birth of her son, Michal sat with her children in the living room when she heard a man speaking in Arabic, and ensuing raised voices. Realizing the danger, she did not think twicetaking her children and running off to the top floor of the house.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



"I started hearing screaming and shouting," Michal recounted. "I held the door with all my strength because it couldn't be locked. I lost my sense of time but did not let go of the door knob.

"I called the police and told them what's happening, while the children were around me."

Elad and Michal with three of their children

They sat together for a festive Shabbat dinner with their aunt Haya. After dinner, Michal retired to the living room with her children, while the rest of the family gathered in the kitchen.

"I saw the profile of a person who went into the kitchen," Michal recounted. "The terrorist apparently saw them through the window and entered the house. He did not see me and went straight to them.

"I heard him asking them in Arabic: 'What is your name?' And I immediately realized that something was wrong. That something bad was happening."

The terrorist in cuffs after the attack

"I immediately took the three children upstairs quickly. It was important for me to keep the children safe first, no matter what," she explained.

While Michal barricaded herself in the room with her children, aged five, nine and eleven, and twins about a year old, she called the police and described what's happening, with the children hearing every word.

Michal continues, saying she heard "horrible screams and gunshots," and after waiting for what "felt like an eternity," she came downstairs and immediately realized her husband was no longer among the living, murdered along with his sister and father.

Elad, a father of five, was 35 at the time of his death. His friend Assaf said: "Elad was a joyful man and a devoted father. He took a break from work to be with the twins who were born about a year ago, while his wife went back to work. He was a great friend and family man.

"He was religious but had secular friends, like me. He was always fun to be around. Elad was also very attached to the Land of Israel, the salt of the earth. He was a moderate, and did not like talking about politics."

Elad's mother, Tovah, 68, who was wounded in the attack, underwent surgery at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center early Saturday morning and her condition stabilized.

At dawn, when she recovered, she was told of the tragedy that had befallen her family.

"She lost her whole world," said a family member at the hospital. "She said the physical pain was far less difficult than the emotional pain and the grief."

The doctors are hopeful that she can recover enough to attend the funerals of her family on Sunday afternoon.

At a different floor in the same hospital, the mother of her new grandson, whose birth they were celebrating at the dinner, is recovering after giving birth. Tovah's son, Shmuel, spent the weekend running between the different wards to be with boththe joy of his son's birth pushed aside by the heavy grief that descended upon his family.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Sunday to demolish the home of the terrorist who murdered three members of the Salomon family in Halamish as soon as possible.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



"The home of the loathsome terrorist will be demolished as soon as possible. We are also taking action against those who incite toward acts of murder and those who praise them," he said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

The prime minister sent his condolences to the Salomon family, saying "the members of the government and I share in the terrible grief of the Solomon family. Yosef, Haya and Elad were murdered by a beast incited by Jew-hatred."





Prime Minister Netanyahu (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, meanwhile, opined the terrorist, 19-year-old Omar al-Abed , should be sentenced to death.

"In such an extreme case, it is indeed appropriate to give the death sentence and the military court in Judea and Samaria has that authority," Lieberman told Ynet.

The defense minister noted that "first and foremost, we want to demolish the terrorist's home, which is without a doubt, after so many years, the most effective tool. We will revoke entry permits to Jerusalem, entry permits to Israel and work permits in Israel from the entire extended family."

When asked how the terrorist was able to infiltrate the settlement despite the existence of a security fence, Lieberman said "the indicative fence worked. When a patrolman was sent, after the security center realized there was an infiltration, he unfortunately must have missed (the terrorist) by a few minutes, or otherwise didn't see any breach in the fence because the terrorist jumped over it. The investigation is still ongoing, and I think this isn't the place for accusations, particularly not at this time."

IDF chief Eisenkot and Defense Minister Lieberman hold situation assessment after visit to scene of terror attack (Photo: Ariel Hermoni, Defense Ministry)

The defense minister called to continue the fight against those who incite to violence. "On the one hand, there is wild incitement on social media," he said. "On the other handand this is even more problematic and dangerousthere is institutionalized incitement coming from inside the State of Israelfrom Sheikh Raed Salah and the Arab MKs."

Lieberman also pointed the finger at the usual suspectsthe Palestinian Authority and Hamasbut said that "undoubtedly, before Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it's the Arab MKs, primarily those from the Balad faction. We need to think about how to outlaw the Balad movement."

As for Sheikh Raed Salah, the defense minister said he was trying to obtain an administrative detention order to arrest the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement. "He really is directing and inciting and spreading lies about the Temple Mount, al-Aqsa and attempts to hurt (the status quo)."

IDF chief Eisenkot and Defense Minister Lieberman visit scene of terror attack (Photo: Ariel Hermoni, Defense Ministry)

He was not concerned by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' decision to freeze ties with Israel , saying "It's not like the security coordination is an Israeli need. It's a Palestinian need first and foremost. If they want it, they'll continue (coordination), if not they won't."

"What is outrageous is Abbas's refusal to condemn the despicable murder," Lieberman added. "You have to understand he's not a partner, he's not looking for peace. He's looking to tire us out, fragment us from the inside, to hurt the State of Israel and its status in the international community."
The heart explodes at the site of the images from the Halamish home . Terror is terror, murder is murder. There are no circumstances that can justify this act or make it seem less serious. A wonderful family; an unforgivable murder.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The murderer is responsible for this murder, and so are all those who incited and helped him, from his relatives to the instigators on social media. The lightness in which young Palestinians are tempted to carry out horrid, unfounded acts in the name of religion casts a heavy shadow on the chance for a real reconciliation.

But we are the sovereign power and we are the neighbor on the other side of the fence, beyond the curve in the road. We have no option of ignoring them. We dont have to fall in love with them; we have to work vis-a-vis these people undauntedly, coherently and sensibly.

The Salomon family home in Halamish after the attack. A wonderful family, an unforgivable murder (Photo: TPS)

Unfortunately, all these components were missing from the Israeli governments moves since last Fridays attack at the Temple Mount gates . There is no determination, no consistency andmost importantlyno wisdom.

After the attack, the police suggested placing metal detectors at the Temple Mount gates. The government ministers were enchanted by the suggestion. They thought a metal detector would be a trump card, that it would boost their prestige among right-wing voters without overly irritating the moderate Arab governments. The queues that will built up in front of the machines would make good pictures.

The exact opposite happened. Anyone who knows something about metal detectors, security and the reality at the Temple Mount, knew that metal detectors cant prevent the smuggling of weapons into the compound, especially when 100,000 or 200,000 worshippers enter at the same time. Placing the detectors doesnt really benefit security.

The police didnt bother coordinating the move with the Waqf leaders. The Waqf is not exactly the landlord at the mountain, but its leaders statements play a very important role in shaping the public opinion outside. We cannot go around them without paying a price.

The writing wasnt just on the wallit was on the table, in every internal discussion. It was in the mouths of professionals, Shin Bet and police veterans. It was also here, in the press

The problem likely begins with Jerusalem District Police Commander Yoram Halevy, who acted this week as if he doesnt know or doesnt understand the sensitivity and explosiveness of the Temple Mount issue. The same applies to Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan. The Shin Bet and the IDF were not in on the initial decision. In discussions held after the metal detectors were placed, they both warned that the decision could spark a wave of serious violence in Israel and in the territories and undermine the moderate Arab regimes. They presented proofa rise of hundreds of percentage points, from several dozen to thousands, in social media posts supporting the attacks. When Border Police officer Hadas Malka was murdered in a terror attack in Jerusalem, the Palestinian public reacted with a protest: You ruined our Ramadan. This time, it reacted in a consensus, in a mass call to act against Israel.

Erdan refused to listen. After climbing up a tree, he didnt know how to climb down. The commotion was joined by Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett, who spotted a golden opportunity to push Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a corner, and Culture Minister Miri Regev, who was lookingas alwaysfor ratings at the Likud Central Committee.

Palestinian protestors near Lions Gate, Saturday. An empty Temple Mount is seen as humiliation (Photo: AFP)

The most puzzling conduct was Netanyahus. He is the only one among the ministers who has experience with a developing incident beginning at the Temple Mount. Seventeen IDF soldiers and nearly 100 Palestinians were killed in the riots that broke out after the Western Wall tunnels were opened in September 1996. Netanyahu knows how explosive that compound is.

This time too, it happened while Netanyahu was abroad. In their telephone discussion, the Shin Bet and IDF heads tried to convince him to have the metal detectors removed. He refused. He didnt want to give Bennett a political gift among right-wing voters. On Thursday night, he convened the cabinet. The discussion ended with a decision not to decide. The police would decide. Netanyahu is that afraid of his own shadow.

The result was a Friday prayer at the Temple Mount without worshippers. Regardless of how Israel saw the empty mountainas far as the Muslims are concerned, it was a humiliation that must not be accepted. Riots broke out, at first in relatively small gatherings, which allowed right-wing speakers to launch a campaign mocking the Shin Bet and IDF warnings. And then came serious riots, which ended with casualties, and the horrible murder in Halamish on Friday night.

The fear of right-wing voters was replaced with a fear of a new intifada. Now, terribly late, wisdom has suddenly kicked in: The metal detectors will be removed, the Temple Mount will be opened, and Bennett is backing the prime minister. All that is left for the government to do is to pray to Allah and hope things will calm down on the ground.

P.S. On the margins of these explosive days, Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi faced the police, trying to tempt them to use violence against her. It was shameful. Zoabi really wants Jews to hate her; thats easy. What she fails to understand is that she is making Arabs hate her too. Good for her, she has become a consensus.
Hours before the last two terror attacksat the Temple Mount and in the settlement of Halamish the terrorists posted their intentions on Facebook, with the latter going as far as writing a "last will and testament." Despite this, the Shin Bet and the IDF were unable to reach these attackers before they carried out their murderous plots.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Omar al-Abed, who murdered Yosef Salomon, 70, and his two children Haya, 46, and Elad, 35, in Halamish, posted his "will" on Facebook about an hour and 40 minutes before the attack.

Israeli security forces are now investigating why the post was not detected on time. It appears the large volume of similar posts at the time and the way in which so much information is being monitored did not allow for the necessary red flags to be raised over the post and for the terrorist to be stopped before he could carry out the attack.

Omar al-Abed arrested at the scene of the attack

A senior IDF official said identifying such threats "is a significant challenge when the terrorist is not a member of any (terror) organization." He added security services have identified unrest from the morning hours, saying the "attack in Halamish is only one of the attacks carried out over the Temple Mount crisis."

Defense officials told Ynet the volume and reach of incitement on social media have increased exponentially over the past week, similar to the incitement that sparked the wave of terror attacks that began in October 2015. In the last 24 hours alone, some 600,000 posts were made on social media in the Arab world inciting to violence in the wake of the events on the Temple Mount

The defense officials explained that alongside the spike in incitement on social media, there has also been an increase in online monitoring activity in search for lone wolf terrorists. However, the number of potential attackers who weren't detected on time rose as well.

Temple Mount terrorists' Facebook post: 'The smile will be more beautiful tomorrow'

The Shin Bet arrested several potential attackers in recent days over posts they've made on social media, and Shin Bet Director Nadav Argaman reported proudly last month that since the beginning of 2016, some 2,000 would-be attackers were identified and stopped by the agency. "Innovative technological advances contributed greatly to reducing the threats of organized terrorism and isolated attacks," Argaman said.

But as it turns out, even cyber capabilities are limited when it comes to lone wolf terrorism.

The IDF has established an operative research team within its Judea and Samaria Division to monitor incitement over social networks and inside Palestinian communities.

According to the head of the team Lt. S., they "construct profiles of participants in demonstrations and monitor them through social networks, keeping track of them and making arrests (when necessary). We record everything that might indicate a desire or an early intention to commit a criminal act and process it into usable intelligence on them."
A fool threw a stone in a pond, and a thousand wise men are now trying to repair the damage. The metal detectors , which have become a symbol of a religious-national Palestinian struggle, will gradually disappear from the Temple Mount. Its only a matter of time. What the State of Israel is doing right now is trying to emerge from this affair with minimum damage to its national dignityand without a third intifada.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



On Friday morning, the cabinet issued a cowardly statement, leaving the metal detectors case in the hands of the police and the public security minister, who made the mistake in the first place, letting them get more and more entangled. The cabinet actually discussed launching a dialogue with the Jordanians in search of a solution. But we are dealing with dignity here, so they issued a distorted statement defending a controversial decision which barely contributed to security yet caused a lot of damage.

On Friday alone, after 10 hours of violence, three Jews and three Arabs were killed for the sake of this dignity, 250 people were injured (mostly Palestinians) and dozens were arrested, including Israeli Arabs from the northern Islamic branch.

Riots in Jerusalem, Friday. Intifadas have a tendency of growing like a tsunami: It takes time for them to reach the shore and flood everything (Photo: Reuters)

More than 13 points of friction were recorded in Jerusalem and the West Bank, with some 12,000 Palestinian rioters. Nevertheless, the defense establishment sources who made the populist-amateurish decision to leave the metal detectors at the Temple Mount keep conveying to the public that the riots are not what they seem. After all, a third intifada hasnt broken out and dozens of people havent been killed, on both sides. But intifadas have a tendency of growing like a tsunami: It takes time for them to reach the shore and flood everything.

In the joint operations room established by the different security organizations, as part of the preparations to curb the third intifada, figures are piling up, including concrete warnings of terror attacks, which indicate that the Palestinian street is much more prepared for violence today than it was before the wave of knife attacks in 2015.

In three evaluations of the situation conducted by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman over the weekends, it was decided that the army would focus its efforts on the routes and on Jewish communities. Six regiments have been deployed for that purpose, in addition to the regular Central Command forces. They will serve as a physical defense to prevent terror attacks like the murder in Halamish and shooting attacks on the routes. Such attacks may not only thwart any possible solution, but also prompt the radical Jewish sector to take revenge.

If and when a solution is found to end the current wave, it will take time for the soaring violent energyboth in the points of friction on the ground and on social mediato die out. The army, the police and the Shin Bet are preparing to leave forces on the ground until it cools off.

The Palestinian Authority has decided to freeze all ties with the State of Israel. Thats a mishap, because as soon as theres a solution in sight for the current wave, well need the presence of Palestinian police at the points of friction until the situation calms down. The Shin Bet is already carrying out arrests within the Palestinian population without coordinating its moves with the local security apparatus. This not only creates a potential for a clash with the Palestinian officers, but it also conveys a dangerous message to the population: You can and should confront the Israelis.

The detainees include regular activists and instigators, who belong to organizations like Shabab al-Aqsa and Mourabitoun in the West Bank, activists of the northern Islamic Movement in Israel and dozens of social media instigators here and there.

The murderer from the village of Kobar, who slaughtered the family in Halamish, was located online as well. The will left by Omar-al-Abed on Facebook was detected by the joint operations room created by the Shin Bet, the police and the IDF Intelligence Directorate, but it was too late: The forces were dispatched after he had already carried out the attack.

This wasnt necessarily a quick response failure. It likely has to do with technological restrictions that will have to be solved. The joint operations room has collected information indicating that the Halamish murderer already has a quite a few imitators, and the defense establishment is in a race against time to stop thembefore they hit the road.

Major-General Yoav Mordechai, the coordinator of the governments activities in the territories, told al-Jazeera on Saturday that Israel was willing to look into alternatives that would prevent terror attacks at the Temple Mount and called on Arab states to propose their own alternative. On Friday morning, an emissary arrived in Jordan on behalf of the prime minister to try to come up with a joint solution. Talks are also being held with Egypt. The goal is to find less visible tools, which will still make it possible to monitor the people and means entering the Temple Mount.

Israel isnt holding any talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as it doesnt want him to be part of a solution that would strengthen him. Furthermore, Israel sees the talks with the Egyptians and the Jordanians, which the Americans are involved in too, as an opportunity to curb the soaring anti-Israel wave in Sunni countries which Israel has formal and informal relations with.

As long as both armsthe political one, which is looking for a way to get off its high horse, and the military one, which is trying to oppress the violence on the groundfail to bring results, the current wave of violence wont disappear. Even in case of an outward appearance of a temporary calm, the violence will most likely erupt again.
Two threatening demonstrations and mounting cases of vandalism against synagogues in Turkeyapparently carried out with the regime's tacit support against the backdrop of the Temple Mount crisisare raising concerns among the country's Jewish community.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



On the night between Thursday and Friday, dozens of demonstrators attacked the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul, threw rocks at the synagogue, kicked its doors and tried to break in.

Attacks in Turkey

X

At the entrance to the synagogue, a local leader of the Great Union Party, Korsat Michan, spoke out and accused Israel of "harassing our Palestinian brothers and damaging their freedom of worship."

"Either the Zionists get a grip, or we will come back here again," he said.

Some protesters shouted, "If you do not let us enter our holy place, we will not let you enter your holy place."

As protesters kicked the doors of the synagogue, two demonstrators climbed up the building and hung signs with pictures of the Dome of the Rock.

The Jewish community was stunned that the police patrol carwhich regularly protected the synagogue as it is a target for terror attackshad left the area shortly before the demonstration started.

On Saturday, the ancient 15th century Ahrida synagogue in Balat, Istanbul was also attacked. As in the first case, the police car also left before the demonstration began, and the demonstrators charged the synagogue, blocking entry and chanting anti-Israel slogans.

Ahrida synagogue, where the cantor's podium was built to resemble Noah's ark

The fact that the police left the area in both cases may indicate that the demonstrations were held with the quiet consent of the authorities, which made it possible to "let out steam" against the Jews.

On Saturday, the Jewish community tweeted about what was going on near the synagogue and even tagged the Turkish prime minister and interior minister in their tweet, calling them to put an end to the phenomenon. The community then issued an official statement demanding that the authorities stop the attacks against it.

Those behind the attacks are religious nationalists linked to the Great Union Party (BBP), an extreme right-wing party which is not officially affiliated with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party but is ideologically linked to it.

BBP leader Mustafa Tsesti said that the persecution, the attacks, the "occupation and the massacre" carried out by the State of Israel and its government should be condemned, but added that the citizens of Turkey must avoid harming our Jewish citizens and their holy places, as they are "the descendants of Muhammad the Conqueror, who promised the freedom of worship to all."

Jewish journalists who write in the community newspaper "Shalom" tweeted that it is permissible to criticize the policies of any country, but the expression of the protest cannot be against prayer houses but against embassies and consulates.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim (Photo: AP)

This is the first time that the authorities have apparently allowed demonstrations against synagogues in Turkey, and the community sees this as a dangerous precedent.

Commentators estimate that the protest is linked to religion this time, and in the eyes of Islamists in Turkey the synagogue is a branch of Israel.

The media reports in Turkey about the events of the Temple Mount are conspicuously hostile against Israel, and the attack in which two Israeli policemen were murdered was presented in conspiratorial termsan event that Israel initiated to suppress the freedom of worship of the Palestinians.

On Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim condemned the attacks against the synagogues and said it was not the behavior of true Muslims.

He called on the citizens of Turkey to show self-control, to show responsibility and not to violate the right of worship of fellow citizens of the Jewish minority with whom they have coexisted for hundreds of years.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: Reuters)

On Saturday, Erdogan condemned Israel's "excessive force" in suppressing the demonstrations in protest against the placement of the metal detectors, calling the Palestinians killed in the riots "martyrs."

The Turkish president refrained from condemning the murder of policemen on the Temple Mount, calling the attack "an incident."
Hundreds of Israeli Arabs held protests on Saturday evening against Israel's decision to add metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The protests, which were peaceful unlike rioting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, were held in Baqa al-Gharbiyye, Qalansawe, Tayibe, Nazareth, and the Na'ama junction in the Galilee, among other place.

Protest in Nazareth (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

Some of the protesters waved Palestinian flags and called out, "We will sacrifice our lives for the al-Aqsa Mosque" and "A people led by Prophet Muhammad will not lose."

Others had signs saying, "Al-Aqsa is ours," "We'll continue the struggle without hesitation" and "Don't hurt the al-Aqsa Mosque."

Nazareth protest (:  )

X

"I think (Prime Minister) Netanyahu has succeeded so far in only one thingputting the intifada in the headlines instead of investigations (against him)," said Abed al-Munam Muassi from Baqa al-Gharbiyye. "We condemn any type of violence, we're peaceable people. The al-Aqsa Mosque holds great importance to every Muslim in the world, and it's not fair that those who come to pray are made to go through a metal detector. It's just insulting and abusing people who are coming to the mosque to pray. The government is treating us like enemies, and that's a shame. Violence begets violence and peace brings security and calm."

Protest in Baqa al-Gharbiyye

Another protester from Umm al-Fahm had similar grievances. "The government treats us like criminals and terrorists and insists on continuing with its failed ways," she said. "I think the metal detectors were not meant to prevent terror attacksit's a result of racism and need to humiliate us. The public security minister failed in curbing violence and crime, and now he wants to be seen as a hero at our expense. We'll foil this move at any cost."

Protest in Kafr Kanna

Ahmad, a resident of Qalansawe, said that while Saturday's protests were peaceful, "if the situation at the al-Aqsa Mosque doesn't return to normal, neither will we. We'll stop working and do whatever it takes to stop what's being done to the mosque and worshipers. It would be better for the government to respect us and not humiliate us."
The Ministry of Defense announced Sunday evening that security cameras are to be installed throughout the settlement of Halamish following Fridays terror attack in which a terrorist stabbed to death Yosef Salomon, 70, and his children Haya Salomon, 46, and Elad Salomon, 35 in their home.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Residents of the settlementadjacent to Ramallahheaped criticism on the security apparatus in the aftermath of the attack for not upgrading security provisions in the area, including the installation of CCTV cameras, despite the fact that a budget for such measures had already been approved.

According to the residents, the budget had already been given a green light after a large fire broke out in the settlement which was caused, they claim, by a Palestinian arsonist.

Halamish fence (Photo: Yariv Katz)

The Defense Ministry pointed out however that the boosted security measures had already begun to be put into effect, with the perimeter fence being upgraded in the last year with touch sensors providing warnings of attempted infiltration. Moreover, it said that the cameras were set to be installed in the coming year.

Since the preliminary investigation got underway into how the terrorist managed to enter Halamish, Ynet learned that a warning was indeed given when the terrorist, Omar al-Abed jumped the fence but that the security forces failed to prevent him from carrying out his murderous intentions.

Indeed, the terrorist managed to stay within its walls for 15 minutes while butchering the family until he was eventually shot by a neighbor who happened to be a soldier serving in the IDF elite canine Oketz unit.

The full responsibility for the security of the residents, inside and outside the communities, is that of the battalion and the regional brigade of the IDF.

But in the vast majority of cases, the first to arrive at the scenes of attacks or attempted attacks by terrorists who have managed to penetrate the settlements walls are the members of the community's internal security forces. These include civilian first responders, armed forces, budgeted by the Defense Ministry and trained by the IDF.

Investigations in the IDF are currently trying to account for the prolonged time lapse between the fence warning and the response of the Kfir Brigade.

Either way, the Defense Ministry insists that it has been undertaking efforts to beef up security in Halamish.

In the past year, the defense establishment has been carrying out extensive work to strengthen the security components of Halamish. Within this framework, the settlement has already been surrounded by an electric fence. The last part of the project was planned, regardless of the murderous attack, to be carried out in the near future.
A German teenager who joined Islamic State is now being held in detention in Iraq and says she regrets joining the jihadist group and just wants to come home to her family, media reported on Sunday.

Der Spiegel magazine reported on Saturday that four German women who joined Islamic State in recent years, including a 16-year-old girl from the small town of Pulsnitz near Dresden, are being held in an Iraqi prison and receiving consular assistance.

Lorenz Haase, senior public prosecutor in Dresden, said he could confirm the teenager, named only as Linda W., had been "located and identified in Iraq" and was receiving consular support but could not say anything on her exact circumstances.

German broadcasters NDR and WDR and newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said they had interviewed Linda W. in the infirmary of a military complex in Baghdad and she told them she wanted to leave.

"I just want to get away from here," she was quoted as saying. "I want to get away from the war, from the many weapons, from the noise."

She added: "I just want to go home to my family."
Turkey's president waded into the diplomatic crisis gripping Qatar and four other Arab nations on Sunday, traveling to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as part of a three-country Gulf tour aimed at helping break the impasse.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the fifth high-level visitor from outside the Gulf to try to resolve the dispute since it erupted on June 5. The top diplomats of Britain, France, Germany and the United States have all been through already, underscoring the depth of concern the crisis is causing well beyond the region.

Erdogan faces a tougher challenge in securing a breakthrough than Turkey's NATO allies because of the increasingly warm ties, including the deployment of military forces, it has built with Qatar in recent years. While members of the anti-Qatar quartet have strong trade links with Turkey, its closeness to Qatar raises suspicions of its motives.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties and transport links with Qatar in early June, accusing it of supporting extremists. Qatar strongly denies the allegation and sees the dispute as politically motivated.
Due to the growing popularity of accommodation services like Airbnb and Stayz the Berejiklian government has proposed a cracking down on the practice, claiming that the surge in guests disrupts traffic, threatens the safety of communities, and puts pressure on shared strata facilities.

Last Friday, the state government released an options paper for short-term rentals. This paper outlines the options for regulating short-term holiday letting across NSW, and intends to standardise what is currently an ad-hoc process from council to council.

Under the proposed changes, short-term letters would have to acquire a license and pay a levy to cover the costs of providing additional security and maintaining the shared amenities used by guests.

The state government may also impose a time limit on letters, similar to a new ruling which was passed in New York City.

Anthony Roberts, the NSW premier for planning, said a framework is needed to address the concerns of building owners and stressed neighbours. This is about getting the balance right to ensure that neighbours have certain rights and protections, as well as providing for those people that choose to rent out their accommodation for a short period of time, he said.

The Berejiklian government proposes handing over more power to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), as well as owners corporations, to resolve disputes.

Over the next three months, the proposed changes will be open to public and industry consultation, while the government develops a framework to manage the short-term rental industry.

The options paper clearly identifies that short-term letting in apartment buildings can cause impacts, and this is why strata communities want the right to be able to grant permission or not, or impose specific conditions, said Alex Greenwich, a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly seat of Sydney.

I encourage my parliamentary colleagues, apartment residents and people affected by short term letting to actively participate in providing feedback to the paper; its clear there will be a concerted corporate campaign from those whose business model benefits from lax regulation, including denying apartment owners the right to set the rules for their building, Greenwich said.

Aside from preventing party houses from overtaking quiet neighbourhoods, reform should strive to ensure that communities are adequately protected, and that housing affordability isnt further eroded as once pleasant neighbourhoods are transformed into hotel precincts dominated by ever changing holiday makers, Greenwich added.

Related Stories:

NSW Government Supports Short-Term Rentals

Short-Term Property Leases Could Become Lightly Regulated
5 TV shows and films on homosexuality and same-sex marriages - IN PICS
PHOENIX -- The current system of having city courts under the control of council members is so flawed that it needs to be overhauled or scrapped entirely, according to a new report.

The study released Tuesday by the Goldwater Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union concludes there is too much opportunity for improper influence, whether overt or covert, when city magistrates are appointed by -- and can be fired by -- the council.

At the very least, the report states, magistrates can be pressured to impose more or higher fines because those go directly into city coffers.

Hand-in-hand with that issue is the council, in turn, sets the budget for the courts. And that, the study says, creates an incentive by magistrates to generate more revenues.

"At a minimum, this undermines the legal system's credibility,'' the study says. "Judicial independence requires that the system not directly benefit from convictions.''

The conclusion are based on an article by Mark Flatten, a former East Valley Tribune reporter who now works for the Goldwater Institute. He said that if people want to see what can go wrong with having magistrates appointed by council members all they need to do is look at what the U.S. Department of Justice found about Ferguson, Mo. in the wake of rioting there.

The DoJ report concluded that law enforcement practices in that city were "shaped by the city's focus on revenue rather than public safety needs.'' And while much of the focus was on the police department, federal investigators found multiple instance of abuse on the court side, such as a Ferguson woman who spent more than $1,000 and six days in jail for parking her car illegally once in 2007.

Ken Strobeck, executive director of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, said the problems found in Missouri have no bearing on Arizona. In fact, he said, even the report released Tuesday concluded that most Arizona cities actually lose money on operating their court systems.

There are exceptions, though, like Tempe and Paradise Valley. But Strobeck said the report quotes several judges and court officials who said they were never pressured to increase revenues.

"This whole article appears to me to be a solution in search of a problem, as far as Arizona is concerned,'' he said.

But both the Goldwater Institute and the ACLU say they see an inherent conflict in the system. At the very least, the new report says that state courts should be financed by the state rather than relying on how much -- or how little -- the city council agrees to provide.

There also are recommendations for more radical changes, like consolidating city courts with the justice of the peace courts which, in turn, are controlled by county superior courts. There's also the fact that JPs are directly elected.

"That brings that level of accountability to the people,'' Flatten said. "And it removes that ability of city councils to say, 'You know what? Revenues are not looking good. You need to get them up.' ''

But the system has its own particular financial quirks, including that pay is based in part of "judicial productivity credits,'' meaning the more business a JP does, the greater that person's pay.

Goldwater Institute attorney Timothy Sandefur said he doesn't see that as a problem. And he said it's better than what exists now in city courts.

"What we want is a system that makes it easier for a judge to say, 'I don't work for you' to a city council when they're pressured to raise revenue,'' he said.

If that idea doesn't fly, the report says the other way to eliminate the financial pressure is to have magistrates elected by voters, the same as all other judges from the Supreme Court right down to the justices of the peace.

What the study envisions is not true direct election but a system similar to what exists in the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and superior courts of Pima, Pinal and Maricopa counties.

Specifically, the council would make the initial appointment -- but only from a list of those who had been recommended by a special screening panel. And the magistrates would have to stand for election regularly on a retain-or-reject basis.

Alessandra Soler, state director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it's not just an academic question of what happens when magistrates report to city councils. She said it harms those who wind up in front of those magistrates.

"When the courts face pressure to generate revenue streams from fines and fees and then institute punitive practices ranging from suspending your driver's licenses all the way to the more egregious practice of locking people up for not paying fines, it distorts the criminal justice system,'' she said.

Flatten said people should be concerned that city courts have jurisdiction over far more than things like traffic tickets. He said he found instances of people being arrested -- and jailed -- for everything from violating Mesa's ordinance against smoking in public to those who ran afoul of a Peoria law about how tall the weeds could be in someone's yard.

He acknowledged, though, that the actual reason for arresting someone may have been a separate factor above and beyond those ordinance violations.

It's not just the ACLU and the Goldwater Institute that are concerned about the "maze'' that Soler said can trap people who can't afford to pay their fines.

A special panel created by Supreme Court Chief Justice Scott Bales last year proposed scrapping the system of imposing fines and replacing it with one linked to a defendant's ability to pay.

"The purpose of a sanction is to get you to obey the law,'' said David Byers who chaired the Tax Force on Fair Justice for All.

In releasing the panel's findings last year, Byers said the average traffic ticket in Arizona costs motorists $270. That is generally based on a schedule set by each court taking into account the specific offense and, when speed is involved, how far over the limit someone was clocked.

"If you break the law, there should be a sanction,'' he said. But Byers said the committee concluded that the penalty hits someone who is poor much harder than a person with more resources.

The idea is that people should not be jailed for failing to pay fines or other court-assessed financial sanctions for reasons beyond their control. Basing the fine on ability to pay, said Byers, would make the deterrent equal across various wage ranges.
Jammu: Nine soldiers among 11 people were killed while 16 others injured in border skirmishes this month between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in in Jammu and Kashmir.

Amid one of the worst fatalities in recent times, the month also saw over 110 livestock falling prey to shellings and firings by Pakistani army in which nearly 35 structures, including over two dozen houses were damaged along the LoC in Rajouri district alone.

The repeated skirmishes saw over 4,000 villagers from near borders to government camps at safer places in the district.

"The month has seen greater ceasefire violations along LoC in the state. The aim was to engineer infiltrations and push in more and more militants in J&K," said a senior Army officer adding that Indian forces too aptly retaliated to the shellings by Pakistani army.

The security agencies attribute the increased shelling and firing by Pakistani army to their support to the Pak-based terror group Jamaat-ud-Dawa's "Year of Kashmir" campaign to make the LoC "more active to highlight the Kashmir issue."

Known as Lashkar-e-Taiba earlier, JuD has now named itself Tehreek Azadi Jammu and Kashmir (TAJK).

On July 21, 28-year-old rifleman Jayadrath Singh was killed when? Pakistan army resorted to firing at Indian Army posts in Sunderbandi sector of Rajouri district.

Singh belonged to village Bhagwanpur of Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Mamta Devi.

A juniour commissioned officer, Subedar Shashi Kumar, who was grievously injured in an unprovoked ceasefire breach by Pakistan in Naushera on July 18, died at Udhampur Command Hospital on July 19.

Subedar Kumar was a native of Galon village of Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh. He is survived by his wife Santosh Sharma and children.

The July 18 ceasefire violations by Pakistan also saw two Army jawans, Sepoy Jaspreet Singh, 24 and Rifleman Bimal Sinjali, 21 killed in Naushera and Nowgam sectors of Rajouri and Kupwara districts respectively.

Eight people including 5 jawans had suffered injuries that day.

"More than 110 livestock were reported dead and two dozen houses damaged.

A total of 35 structures including private houses, government buildings including schools, were damaged in recent mortar shelling in Nowshera," said Rajouri Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Choudhary.

On July 18, Pakistani troops also targeted school children, shelling their schools and trapping 217 of them in in 3 schools in Kadali and Seha areas of Rajouri near the LoC for 6 hours. The Army and state police, however, rescued and evacuated them to safer places in bullet-proof vehicles along with other people totalling 261.

Earlier on July 17, one Army jawan and a girl were killed when the Pakistan army violated ceasefire twice in two sectors and resorted to firing at Indian Army posts and civilian areas in Rajouri and Poonch districts.

The victims were identified as 37-year-old Naik Muddasar Ahmed of militancy-infested Tral belt of South Kashmir and 9- year-old girl Sajada.

On July 15, another jawan, Lance Naik Mohmmad Naseer, 35 was killed and yet another injured in Pak shelling along the LoC in Rajouri district.

Two other jawans, Lance Naik Ranjit Singh and Rifleman Satesh Bhagat, both of Jammu, were killed along LoC on July 12, in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of North Kashmir sector.

Four days earlier on July 8, jawan Mohmmad Showkat, who was on leave, was killed along with his wife, when his house was hit by a Pakistani army's mortar shell in Poonch sector.

Four people were injured.

The officials said there have been 23 incidents of ceasefire violations, one attack by Pakistan's notorious Border Action Team and two infiltration bids by Pakistan- backed militants in June in which 4 people,?including 3 jawans were killed and 12 injured.

On June 29, two Indian Army jawans were injured when Pakistani?troops fired from small arms and shelled mortars on forward posts and?civilian areas along the LoC in Poonch district.

Even on the occasion of Eid-ul Fitr on June 26, the Pakistani?army had fired small arms and automatic weapons and shelled mortars along the LoC in Bhimbher Gali sector of Rajouri.

On June 22, in the third such attack this year, a team of?Pakistani special forces sneaked 600 metres across the LoC into the?Poonch sector and killed two Indian jawans, but lost one Border Action?Team (BAT) member in retaliatory action.

It had carried out the attack at around 2 PM on an Army patrol? party in the Gulpur belt of Poonch on 22 June under heavy cover fire?by Pakistani troops.

In the firefight, two Indian soldiers, Naik Jadhav Sandip, 34, of Aurangabad and Sepoy Mane Savan Balku, 24, of Kolhapur were martyred.
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will hold extensive talks with her Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Monday during which focus is expected to be on the issue of 39 Indians kidnapped by the ISIS three years back from Mosul city.

Al-Jaafari's visit from July 24 to July 28 to India comes two weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced liberation of Mosul, the second biggest city in his country, from the ISIS, which marked a major milestone for the Iraqi security forces.

In their talks, the two sides will to take stock of bilateral relations and explore ways to enhance cooperation in areas of energy and trade.

Iraq has been one of the major suppliers of crude oil to India.

On the visit by al-Jaafari, the external affairs ministry has said the two sides will discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of mutual interest.

"The visit is expected to add further impetus to our mutually beneficial bilateral engagement," the MEA had said on Friday.

As liberation of Mosul brightened chances of information about the kidnapped Indians, Swaraj, in a meeting with their relatives last week, had said that they might be languishing in a jail in Badush in northwest of Mosul where fighting was going on.

However, a media report from Badush yesterday said the jail now is an abandoned structure and has been unoccupied for weeks.

Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh was sent to Iraq days after the Iraqi PM announced victory in the fight to liberate Mosul.

Swaraj had told the family members that an Iraqi official quoting intelligence sources had told Singh that the kidnapped Indians were deployed at a hospital construction site and then shifted to a farm before they were put in a jail in Badush.

She had said al-Jaafari may bring fresh information about the kidnapped Indians, mostly from Punjab.

The volume of bilateral trade in 2016-17 was nearly USD 13 billion.

"Iraq contributes significantly to India's energy security and is the second-largest supplier of crude oil to us (over 37 MMT during 2016-17)," the MEA has said.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is also scheduled to meet the Iraqi foreign minister who will be accompanied by a senior-level official delegation.

Al-Jafaari will travel to Mumbai on July 26 and will be back in Delhi on July 27.
Beijing: A subway station being built at a depth of 94 meters in China's Chongqing municipality will be the country's deepest metro facility when completed.

According to Xinhua news agency, Chongqing's Hongtudi station is being further excavated underground for the new facility. The station is currently 60 meters deep.

A total of 94 escalators, dubbed China's largest such network, would be installed to move the passengers between the platforms.

The station's 32 also elevators willbe increased to 91.

The Chongqing metro will join Moscow and Pyongyang as having some of the deepest stations in the world when it is completed by the end of this year.
Toronto: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the 10th anniversary of the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Toronto on Sunday, and hailed the temple as an architectural masterpiece and a place for communal harmony.

Looking dapper in a traditional blue Indian kurta and pajama, complete with a flower garland around his neck, the Prime Minister immersed himself in the rituals and celebrations.

The BAPS Mandir is more than an architectural masterpiece  Its truly a place for community. Happy 10th anniversary! #bapstoronto10 pic.twitter.com/kh5S1T3oIE  Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) July 23, 2017

The celebrations were also attended by former Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson and current Indian ambassador to Canada, Vikas Swarup.

His Holiness Mahant Swami Maharaj received a key to the City of Toronto from Mayor John Tory Saturday evening.

"I am honoured to recognize his Holiness' global and Toronto-based humanitarian, charitable, and community-building efforts through BAPS Charities Canada. His Holiness' great contributions have enriched Toronto," Mayor Tory said in a statement.

Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) is a socio-spiritual Hindu organization with its roots in the Vedas.

According to its website, its universal work through a worldwide network of over 3,850 centers has received many national and international awards and affiliation with the United Nations.
Cairo: A Cairo criminal court on Saturday confirmed death sentences against 28 people over the killing of Egypt's public prosecutor in 2015 and handed jail term to 15 others of 25 years each.

The defendants were convicted of premeditated murder, association with a terrorist organisation and possessing weapons and explosives.

Pursuant to Article (2/381) of Criminal Procedural Law, it is obligatory for the criminal court to refer death penalty cases to the Grand Mufti before passing the death verdict.

The Grand Mufti reviews the cases referred to him by the criminal court and examines all papers from the beginning of the case.

The court last month referred the sentence of 31 to the Grand Mufti, the country's highest Islamic official who gives the religious judgment of all preliminary death sentences.

Mufti confirmed death sentences against only 28.

Former top public prosecutor Hisham Barakat was killed in a car bombing in Cairo on June 29, 2015. A group called "the Giza Popular Resistance" claimed responsibility of the attack.

Before the attack, the Islamic State affiliate group in Sinai, known then as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis urged followers to attack judges.
San Antonio (Texas): Eight people were found dead on Sunday inside a sweltering tractor trailer parked at a Walmart store in San Antonio, Texas, and authorities said they were the victims of "ruthless" human traffickers.

Another 30 people, many in critical condition and suffering from heat stoke and exhaustion, were with the bodies in the trailer, which lacked air conditioning or a water supply, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said.

The truck`s driver was arrested and will be charged, said Richard Durbin, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas, and prosecutors will work to identify others responsible.

The bodies were discovered after officials were led to the trailer by a man who had approached a Walmart employee and asked for water.

"All were victims of ruthless human smugglers indifferent to the well-being of their fragile cargo," Durbin said.

"These people were helpless in the hands of their transporters. Imagine their suffering, trapped in a stifling trailer in 100-plus degree heat," he said.

San Antonio is about 150 miles (240 km) from the border with Mexico. Temperatures in the area held above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) until 6 p.m. local time on Saturday and were expected to soar into the 100s again on Sunday, with humidity making the heat feel close to 110 degrees, forecasters said.

"If you get crammed inside a truck, it`s life threatening," said National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Oravec.

Raids on suspected illegal immigrants have ramped up across the United States in recent months, after President Donald Trump`s vow to crack down on those entering the country without authorization or overstaying their visas.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus described the deaths as a "horrible tragedy" and said other suspects had fled the scene as police officers arrived.

"Checking the video, there were a number of vehicles that came and picked up other people who were in that trailer," McManus said.

Twenty people were airlifted to seven hospitals and their conditions were "critical to very critical," Hood said. Eight others are hospitalized in less serious condition, he said.

At San Antonio`s University Hospital, six adults were admitted early Sunday with heat-related injuries, all of them in critical condition, spokesman Donald Finley said.

McManus said the people in the truck ranged from school-age juveniles to adults in their 20s and 30s.

He said the Department of Homeland Security had joined the investigation, and that the origin of the truck is unclear.

Experts have warned in recent months that tougher immigration policies could make it more difficult to stop human trafficking. Measures to harden international borders encourage would-be migrants to turn to smugglers and fear of deportation deters whistle-blowing, they said.

While there are no official law enforcement statistics, nearly 32,000 cases of human trafficking in the United States have been reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in the last decade.
Tehran: Iran will continue full support to Iraqi government and nation to establish security and stability, Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehqan said.

"We have cooperated and will cooperate with the Iraqi government and nation and will continue our support," Dehqan said in a meeting with his visiting Iraqi counterpart Erfan al-Hiyali on Saturday.

"We will also use our utmost political, economic and military capabilities along with Iraq's capabilities to establish sustainable security and stability in the country and create a powerful Iraq," he added.

The Iranian minister hailed the Iraq's recent achievements in the fight against terrorism and liberation of the northern city of Mosul, Xinhua news agency reported.

"A regional and international consensus must be achieved against terrorism and its supporters," Dehqan stressed.

National unity and integrity in Iraq would guarantee stability, security and interests of all ethnic groups in the country, he said, adding that Iran would never accept disintegration of Iraq.

For his part, the Iraqi Defence Minister hailed Iran's full support for the Iraqi government, nation and the armed forces and called for the further development of defence and military cooperation with the Islamic republic.

Iran has been providing military advisory assistance to Iraq in its counter-terrorism campaign.
Kabul: The Taliban fighters have executed seven civilians after abducting at least seventy people in the southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan over the alleged cooperation with the government and the security forces.

"The civilians were abducted from three different villages in Shah Wali Kot district last week for having links with the government and for not supporting the Taliban led-insurgency," Khaama Press quoted a spokesman for Kandahar police Zia Durani, as saying.

The civilians were shot dead by the Taliban insurgents on Saturday.The Taliban abducted 70 people on Friday from their houses in a village along the Kandahar-Tarinkot highway in Afghanistan`s southern Kandahar province.

The motive of kidnappings is unclear but Taliban insurgents have been kidnapping civilians across the country, mainly on the highways where the Taliban insurgents stop the vehicles and kidnap the civilians for ransom or to bargain for the release of detained jihadis.

Provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Razaq confirmed the execution of the civilians and said the main motive behind the abduction and the execution has not been ascertained so far.

The anti-government armed militant groups including the Taliban insurgents have not made an official comment.


Baghdad: Iraq's Vice President Nouri al-Maliki said that recapture of Mosul is an achievement of the Iraqi army and not of the United States as America has contributed to the emergence of ISIS in the country.

Maliki said that U.S is trying to highjack the victory and claims it was them who "led that war".

"Yes, they supported us with aviation, but the main credit goes to the Iraqi soldiers, people's militia, Iraqi air force," al-Maliki stated in his interview with the Russian news agency.

He added that he "regrets and denies Americans claiming the victory in Mosul is their achievement."

"In reality, this is the victory of the Iraqi army as it came with a high cost, with some 20,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers having been either killed or wounded.

Acknowledging that U.S. has been providing support to the Iraqi army and allied forces through air strikes in fight against ISIS , Maliki said "but it is America who created ISIS in the first place and now Washington seeks to establish military bases on Iraqi territory in order to maintain influence in the region."

As the battle of Mosul lasted for nine months, Maliki said, "The Iraqi military did everything possible "not to destroy the city more than it was necessary in the circumstances of war to not to make residents suffer."

Maliki specifically pointed out the present challenges before the Iraqi forces as "the victory is yet not final".

He said that there are "still small terrorist hubs in the city," as well as terrorist "sleeper cells" or "lone wolves" across the country which emerge from time to time and carry out bombings.

Others are still hiding or have fled with the refugees, according to the Iraqi vice-president.
YEREVAN, JULY 22, ARMENPRESS. According to the official information of Artsakhs military, Azerbaijani forces made nearly 9,000 ceasefire violations in the line of contact during the first half of 2017. The Artsakh defense ministry told ARMENPRESS the Azerbaijani troops fired more than 121,000 rounds at their positions in the abovementioned period.

In addition to firearms, the Azerbaijani military used SPIKE anti-tank guided missiles ( 3 projectiles), TR-107 multiple rocket launchers ( 5 projectiles), D-30 and D-44 cannons (244 projectiles), 60mm, 82mm and 120mm mortars (1373 projectiles) and various types of grenade launchers (250 projectiles).

The Azerbaijani special forces also attempted several incursion attacks, which have been detected by the Artsakhi military and were forced to retreat by suffering losses.

The February 25 attempt is especially noteworthy, when the Azerbaijani sabotage-infiltration squad suffered total failure and was forced to retreat, leaving five of their killed soldiers behind.
YEREVAN, JULY 22, ARMENPRESS. Mayor of the French city of Valence Mr. Nicolas Daragon welcomed the re-election of Bako Sahakyan as President of Artsakh.

In a statement, the French mayor mentioned that as result of a democratic process, Bako Sahakyan received more than 2/3rd votes of the countrys parliament.

According to Daragon, this process differs fundamentally from the Artsakhs neighboring country Azerbaijans authoritarian regime.

This transparent process, which respects the oppositions rights, brings honor to democracy in this region of the world, and democracy is the guarantee for peace, the French mayor said.

Daragon also reminded that Valence is ties with the cities of Artsakh will numerous links, and is planning to further strengthen cooperation.
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.
Al Gore on what Canadians can do to fight climate change

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore commended Canada for its commitment to the Paris climate accord during a Facebook live Q&A hosted by CBC's Andrew Chang Friday.

"Justin Trudeau and the Canadian government [were] really instrumental in getting the Paris agreement ... It really is beginning to drive fantastic solutions around the world."

Gore called the agreement a "game changer," and expressed his frustration over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the deal.

He said he worried it would influence other world leaders to do the same, "but in the aftermath, the entire rest of the world redoubled their commitments to the Paris agreement, almost as if they were saying, 'We'll show you Mr. Donald Trump.'"

Gore said he has no plans to meet with Trump again, after his efforts late last year failed to convince the president to keep the previous government's commitment.

"I'm done holding my breath for him to change his mind. I don't know how his mind operates," said Gore.

The former politician-turned-environmental activist is touring his upcoming film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, 11 years after the original, An Inconvenient Truth, made its controversial debut.

Gore said two things have changed since then: Climate-related extreme weather events, such as the B.C. wildfires, have become more common, and solutions to the crisis are now more affordable.

Still, the world has a long way to go, he warned. While the Paris agreement sent a powerful signal to the business community that protecting the Earth is a priority, many companies are failing to scale back their carbon footprint.

"What's missing is enough political will. But political will is itself a renewable resource," said Gore.

When asked what Canada can do to reduce pollution and environmental damage around the world, he suggested much of what's already known: shifting to renewable energy, driving electric vehicles, and moving to organic, sustainable agriculture and sustainable forestry.

The advice he emphasized most for combatting climate change? Learn about it.

"When you learn about it, then use that knowledge to win the conversations on climate. If you win the conversation, then the laws and policies change."
An Ottawa family is glad to be safe after a 6.7-magnitude earthquake rocked holiday resorts in Greece and Turkey on Friday.

In addition to the nearly 500 injured in the region, the earthquake claimed the lives of two tourists who were sitting in a bar on the Greek island of Kos when the roof collapsed on them.

Bill Kokkaliaris and his three children were awoken by the shaking while sleeping in their hotel room in Kos, which was hit the hardest by the powerful quake.

"Honestly, it took me 30 seconds to react. I thought I was having a bad dream," said Kokkaliaris, who is director of the St-Laurent Academy school in Ottawa.

Kokkaliaris described the scary situation from the Athens airport, where his family was hoping to catch a flight back to Canada as soon as possible.

"We had cracks in the foundation, the pool had spilled onto our floor. You would see cracks in ceilings," he said.

He said they were fortunate to be staying in one of the newer units at the resort, as other travellers woke up to collapsed ceilings.

According to Kokkaliaris, there were other Canadians on the island when the quake hit.

"I spoke to several Canadian families, and everyone is safe. Everyone is taken care of," he said.

Now, he just wants to get his family home.

"We're exhausted. I'll say honestly that in the last 48 hours, my kids had maybe seven hours of sleep. It's been very, very eventful. Tiring."

Relief that friends, family are safe

Ibrahim Ozer was on Facebook when he started to see messages from friends and family in Turkey saying they were safe.

"I didn't know what they were talking about. Then, I checked the news and saw that there was an earthquake," said Ozer, who is president of the Ottawa-based Turkish Association of Canada.

Ozer has cousins and a close friend who live in the Turkish city of Bodrum, which was hit hard by the quake. After initially being unable to reach him, Ozer spoke to the close friend who described what happened immediately after the quake hit.

Story continues

"When he stood up, the room was still shaking. It looked like the room was actually being moved around," Ozer said.

"Another cousin of mine living nearby, she told me that it was like when you're on a boat, and the boat is swaying side to side."

Ozer said that people in Turkey and Greece are lucky there was not more damage. He referred to previous earthquakes in Turkey, including a 1999 quake in Izmit that killed more than 17,000 people.

"Having all these experiences in the past  it's not an easy stage, but I'm so glad that people in Greece and Turkey, they're mainly safe, except the two. And I feel sorry for their families."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump warned that Iran would face "new and serious consequences" unless all unjustly detained American citizens were released and returned, the White House said in a statement on Friday. Trump urged Iran to return Robert Levinson, an American former law enforcement officer who disappeared more than 10 years ago in Iran, and demanded that Tehran release businessman Siamak Namazi and his father, Baquer. The statement capped a week of rhetoric against Tehran. On Tuesday, Washington slapped new economic sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile program and said Tehran's "malign activities" in the Middle East undercut any "positive contributions" coming from the 2015 nuclear accord. Those measures signaled that the Trump administration was seeking to put more pressure on Iran while keeping in place an agreement between Tehran and six world powers to curb its nuclear program in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions. Friday's statement said Trump and his administration were "redoubling efforts" to bring back all Americans unjustly detained abroad. An Iranian court sentenced 46-year-old Siamak Namazi and his 80-year-old father Baquer Namazi to 10 years in prison each on charges of spying and cooperating with the United States. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps detained Siamak in October 2015 while he was visiting family in Tehran, relatives said. The IRGC arrested the father, a former Iranian provincial governor and former UNICEF official in February last year, family members said. Levinson, a former agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and for the Drug Enforcement Administration, disappeared in Iran in 2007 and the U.S. government has a $5 million reward for information leading to his safe return. An Iranian court sentenced Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen graduate student from Princeton University, to 10 years in jail on spying charges, Iran's judiciary spokesman said on Sunday. "Iran is responsible for the care and wellbeing of every United States citizen in its custody," the White House said in the statement. Separately, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Oman's foreign affairs minister, Yusuf bin Alawi on Friday. Washington has in the past sought Oman's mediation to help in securing the release of detained Americans abroad. Last year American prisoners held captive by Yemen Houthi rebels were released after Omani mediation. Oman also paid bail that ultimately helped in the release of three American hikers in 2010 and 2011. (Reporting by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by James Dalgleish, Toni Reinhold)
Medieval punishments: Watching a public hanging in Iran

Iran Human Rights (JULY 22 2017): A prisoner was reportedly hanged at Zabol Central Prison, and three prisoners were reportedly hanged at Zahedan Central Prison. Two of the prisoners were reportedly Afghan citizens.





According to a report by the human rights news agency, HRANA, the prisoner at Zabol Central Prison was hanged on the morning of Saturday July 22 on drug related charges.





The report identifies the prisoner as Salman Mirshahi, sentenced to death on the charge of one kilogram and 900 grams of crack, father of two children.





According to a report by the Baluch Activists Campaign, two prisoners at Zahedan Central Prison were also hanged on the morning of July 22.





The report identifies the prisoners as Kheir Mohammad Saadat, 46 years of age, and Bashir Rasouli, 37 years of age. Both of these prisoners are Afghan citizens and were held in prison for more than eight years before they were executed.





Another prisoner was hanged at this prison on Wednesday July 19 on murder charges. The prisoner has been identified as Mahmoud Damani.





Two prisoners were reportedly hanged at Bandar Abbas Central Prison on drug related charges, and a prisoner was reportedly hanged at Rajai Shahr Prison on murder charges.





According to close sources, the prisoner at Rajai Shar Prison was executed on the morning of Monday July 17. Close sources have identified the prisoner as Mansour Mohammadi, and he was transferred to solitary confinement on Saturday July 15 in preparation for his execution. It is not usual for prisoners at Rajai Shahr Prison to be executed on a Monday, executions at this prison are typically carried out on Wednesdays.





Close sources say the two prisoners at Bandar Abbas Central Prison were executed on Sunday July 16.





The prisoners have been identified as Nasser Khosravi, 45 years of age, and Hashem Ghanbarloo, 41 years of age. These two prisoners were convicted in the same file on the charge of six kilograms and 800 grams of crystal meth.





"Hashem and Nasser would purchase and sell cigarettes, and they were arrested in their cars in 2011," an informed source tells Iran Human Rights.





The execution of prisoners with drug charges continues in Iran while the Iranian Parliament has approved a general plan to amend the law for combating drugs . The Parliament is scheduled to vote on the bill again following a two-week holiday. In the event of the final approval of the plan, the death sentences for many prisoners will be commuted to a prison sentence.





Iranian official sources, including the Judiciary and state-run media, have not announced these executions.

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 23

By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:

The level of relations between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin testifies to the effectiveness of the bilateral relations between the two countries, Nikita Isayev, political analyst, leader of the New Russia public and political movement, told Trend.

Isayev was commenting on the recent meeting between President Aliyev and President Putin in Sochi.

"The personal communication level allows both presidents to meet in Putins country house in Sochi on Friday evening and effectively discuss the agenda of the bilateral relations and the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," Isayev said.

The Russian expert is sure that this fact mainly determines the level and quality of relations between the two countries, which are currently at the highest level.

Speaking about the role of Russia in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he stressed that Russia has been the main mediator in this negotiation process since the escalation of the conflict in late 1980s.

"But, in my opinion, Russia today is losing this initiative of the main mediator because during more than 25 years it was impossible not only to de-escalate the conflict, but in principle, to relieve tension in the entire region, he said. In my opinion, Azerbaijan wants to understand Russia's current status in this negotiation process."

He said that the leaders of France and the US will move to the active phase of mediation in this conflict very soon, and, most likely, this position will not be pro-Russian.

"I think that it is very important for Russia to act as an effective mediator, otherwise, in this conflict settlement Russia may have less significance in the changed format of negotiations that may be required by the presidents of France and the US, he said. It is extremely dangerous for Russia itself as the conflict is a big problem not only for Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also for Russia, for which this is a principled geopolitical point."

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, July 23

Trend:

In order to participate in the international competition "Sea Cup-2017" to be held in the territorial waters of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea, a small missile ship "Grad Sviyazhsk" and a rescue tugboat "SB-45" of the Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy arrived in Baku on July 23, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said.

Warships of Azerbaijan, Russia, Iran and Kazakhstan will take part in the competitions, which will be held from 1 to 11 August.
Kuwait's oil minister Essam al-Marzouq said on Saturday that compliance with oil production cuts by OPEC and non-OPEC countries is good and that deeper cuts are possible, Reuters reported.

Asked about the possibility of further cuts to support the price of crude, the minister said: "Everything is open."

Ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other non-OPEC producers will meet in the Russian city of St Petersburg on Monday to discuss the pact on cuts, which was reached earlier this year.

Marzouq also told reporters that a technical committee of OPEC and non-OPEC countries had heard and was happy with reports from Libya and Nigeria, and that discussions would continue on Monday.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 23

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Since early 2001 until July 1, 2017, the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) has received $125.215 billion as part of the project of developing the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, a source in SOFAZ told Trend.

"In January-June 2017, SOFAZ received $3.106 billion within the ACG project," said the source.

The contract for developing the ACG field was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserves of the block near 1 billion tons.



The shareholders of the project are BP (operator, 35.78 percent), Chevron (11.28 percent), Inpex (10.96 percent), AzACG (11.65 percent), Statoil (8.55 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itocu (4.3 percent) and ONGC (2.72 percent).

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @AzadHasanli
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, July 22

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistan plans to build several big gas chemical complexes, a source in the countrys fuel and energy industry said.

Here the matter rests in the production of polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, monoethylene glycol, dimethyl ether and other chemical products with help of the modern technologies used for extraction of ethane from natural gas, as well as using the methanol to olefin technology for methane recovery and processing.

Moreover, work continues to construct a plant for the production of liquid petroleum products from natural gas (using GTL technology).

According to the source, Turkmenistan is ready to study other proposals of foreign investors on investment projects aimed at high-technology processing of natural gas and the production of export-oriented products.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 23

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

Iran is preparing to sign contracts with French Total and Royal Dutch Shell on petrochemical projects, Marzieh Shahdaei, head of Irans National Petrochemical Company, told IRNA.

The sides are negotiating the final issues to sign contracts, according to her.

Both Total and Shell have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Iran on Petrochemical sphere in 2016.

Shahdaei said that the worth of the contract with Total will be $2 billion. The worth of Shells MoU with Iran is estimated at $6 billion.

Iran plans to attract $10 billion investment in petrochemical sphere in the current fiscal year. The country projected to double the petrochemical production capacity to 120 million tons per year by 2021.

Total and Iran earlier signed a 20-year contract worth $4.8 billion to develop South Pars gas fields 11th phase.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 23

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

Over 2,300 children live in prison in Iran with their mothers, a member of parliament said July 23.

Mohammad Javad Fathi said that the high statistics of prisoned women in Iran is a sensitive and serious issue.

He called Judiciary System to release accurate and clear statistics about the number of imprisoned mothers compared to the previous years.

There is not any transparent official statistics about the number of women in Irans prisons, but according to the Anti-Narcotics Campaign Headquarters advisor on women and family affairs, Zahra Bonyanian, about 3 percent of Irans imprisoned people are women, standing 7,327 women in 2013.

Fathi said that regarding 2,300 children who live with their parents in prisons, Judiciary System must establish kindergartens in prisons.

According to Iranian laws, children under 3 years old can remain with their parents in prison, but some statistics shows that some of them are even 6 year old children.
Eight people have been found dead inside a truck in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas in what police described as a "human trafficking crime", PressTV reported.

Another 28 people were injured -- 20 of them severely -- and were being treated at seven local hospitals, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus and Fire Chief Charles Hood told reporters Sunday.

The police chief said the group included children, but later told CNN that the eight dead were adult men.

He said the truck driver had been arrested.

"We got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot here," McManus told a news conference.

"He was approached by someone from that truck, who was asking for water."

The employee returned with the water and then called the police who "found eight people dead in the back of that trailer," the police chief said, calling it a "horrific tragedy."

He said store security footage showed that some vehicles came to pick up some travellers who were on the truck and who had made it out alive.

"We're looking at a human trafficking crime this evening," he added.

It was not immediately clear how many people may have survived and fled, McManus said.

Hood said the air conditioner in the trailer was not working.

"We started extricating patients out of the back of a semi-truck ... we had another 20 patients that were either in extremely critical condition or very serious condition and they have been transported to a number of hospitals."

San Antonio lies a few hours drive from the border with Mexico's Nuevo Leon state. Weather in the area has been hot and dry.

Federal immigration officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have also been notified, the police chief said.

The deadly discovery, sadly "is not an isolated incident. This happens quite frequently under cover of night," McManus said.

Illegal migration over the US border with Mexico is an everyday fact. Most of the migrants are from Mexico and Central America seeking better-paying work in the United States.

This time, "fortunately there are people who survived, but this happens all the time," he said.

There have been many cases of migrants -- often scores at a time -- stranded and killed in northern Mexico when the truck they are being moved in was abandoned in heat by drivers.

The smugglers in their haste to evade authorities often leave passengers without air conditioning, and often without air to breathe.
Five terrorists in southeastern Turkey surrendered to security forces, said the Turkish army and governors office on Sunday, Anadolu reported.

According to a Turkish General Staff statement, four terrorists that fled hideouts in northern Iraq surrendered to security forces in Sirnaks Silopi district in southeastern Turkey on Saturday.

More than 1,200 people, including security force personnel and civilians, have lost their lives since the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and EU -- resumed its decades-old armed campaign in July 2015.

Separately, one terrorist on Sunday surrendered to security forces in southeastern Hakkari province.

According to the governors office, the terrorist surrendered in Hakkaris Zap area with no arms or equipment.

An investigation has been launched into the incident.
Mike Pompeo

CIA Director Mike Pompeo dropped hints at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday that the US was looking into regime change in Kim Jong Un's North Korea.

"It would be a great thing to denuclearize the peninsula, to get those weapons off of that, but the thing that is most dangerous about it is the character who holds the control over them today," Pompeo said, according to CNN.

"So from the administration's perspective, the most important thing we can do is separate those two. Right? Separate capacity and someone who might well have intent and break those two apart," Pompeo said, referring to North Korea's nuclear-weapons capacity.

Pompeo's talk echoes statements early in Donald Trump's presidency that the US would take care of North Korea unilaterally if needed. In May, the US had two aircraft carriers off the Korean Peninsula, and senior administration officials have declared the policy of "strategic patience" dead.

Earlier this year, reports of US Navy SEALs training with their South Korean counterparts popped up in South Korean media. South Korea has been preparing a "decapitation" force with the aim of eliminating Kim and the country's nuclear command-and-control system.

But no strike on North Korea ever took place. And despite Trump tweeting that a North Korean missile that could hit the US mainland would "never happen," one was tested on July 4. Furthermore, the US had a clear shot at killing Kim when North Korea tested its intercontinental ballistic missile, but it opted not to strike.

icbm intercontinental ballistic missile north korea hwasong 14 AP_17185312955179

Pompeo said the CIA and Department of Defense had both been directed to draw up plans to accomplish what "ultimately needs to be achieved" in North Korea and that he was confident the US could take on "every piece" of the threat. North Korea has vast and hidden nuclear and conventional weaponry that the US has been reluctant to attempt to strike.

Story continues

[Money Basics: What is a security?]

Because of the intense secrecy around the positions of possibly nuclear-armed missiles, any attack on North Korea would be unlikely to eliminate them all, risking a massive retaliation against populous cities in the region, like Seoul, South Korea.

"As for the regime, I am hopeful we will find a way to separate that regime from this system," Pompeo said, according to CNN. "The North Korean people I'm sure are lovely people and would love to see him go."

NOW WATCH: A Marine explains how intermittent fasting helped him 'see his abs'

Related:

Watch news, TV and more Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android.



More From Business Insider
A fuel nozzle is seen at a gas station in Berlin April 3, 2012. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Banning diesel cars in European cities could hamper automakers' ability to invest in zero-emission vehicles, the European Union's commissioner for industry has warned the bloc's transport ministers.

In a letter seen by Reuters, Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska said there would be no benefit in a collapse of the market for diesel cars and that the short-term focus should be on forcing carmakers to bring dangerous nitrogen oxide emissions into line with EU regulations.

"While I am convinced that we should rapidly head for zero-emission vehicles in Europe, policymakers and industry cannot have an interest in a rapid collapse of the diesel market in Europe as a result of local driving bans," Bienkowska said.

"It would only deprive the industry of necessary funds to invest in zero-emissions vehicles," she said in the letter, dated July 17.

Germany's three major carmakers have invested heavily in diesel technology, which offers more efficient fuel burn and lower carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-powered cars.

But since Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) admitted in 2015 to cheating on U.S. emissions tests, worries about vehicle pollution have left the entire auto industry under scrutiny. A particular concern is emissions by diesel cars of nitrogen oxide, which is blamed for causing respiratory diseases.

In the letter, Bienkowska told ministers she was concerned that the latest emissions violations at Audi (NSUG.DE) and Porsche (PSHG_p.DE) were discovered by prosecutors and not Germany's vehicle and transport authorities.

Bienkowska's letter also called for all cars with excessively high levels of nitrogen oxide emissions to be taken of European roads, but said carmakers should act on a voluntary basis. The commissioner did raise the prospect of an EU testing agency if national regulators failed to spot more emissions-test cheats.

Munich, home to carmaker BMW (BMWG.DE), has become the latest German city to consider banning some diesel vehicles. Environmental groups say diesel bans in cities can cut nitrogen oxide emissions and force automakers to design cleaner vehicles.

Story continues

Experts who have seen the letter to ministers say the commissioner appeared to be bowing to carmakers' demands.

"Her letter contained some important statements that we believe show the industry's lobbyists have scored a big win," Bernstein analyst Max Warburton said in a report.

"They have likely argued that castigating or banning diesel would harm the industry's earnings and employees, harm efforts to reduce carbon dioxide and harm owners of current vehicles."

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by Catherine Evans)




jeb bush

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush criticized his former 2016 presidential primary foe President Donald Trump on Saturday over his first six months in office.

Speaking at OZY Fest in New York, Bush slammed Trump's chaotic style of governance and failure to focus on his policy goals. He singled out reports that Trump recently suggested that he may attempt to pre-pardon himself to preempt a federal investigation by independent counsel Robert Mueller.

"You get disciplined when your team says, 'No, Mr. President, let's stay focused on these policy objectives,'" Bush said. "Don't disparage people,don't go after Mueller, don't say you're going to pardon yourself or whatever. Don't do all that. Govern."

At times, the governor appeared to slip back into campaign mode, saying that Trump didn't always represent the Republican party, noting he was registered as a Democrat in the district where OZY Fest was being held.

He also said the 45th president wasn't serving as a symbol for the country to succeed.

"The president is the prime minister and the king. He or she, eventually, will be the symbol of the country, and also the prime minister responsible for making government work," Bush said. "And right now, our president doesn't view that job as important. Look at history. History is important. When presidents inspire us, we do better. And that's what we need to get back to."

[Money Basics: What are dividends?]

Asked to prognosticate on the 2020 election, Bush said it was too early to make predictions, noting that Trump changes the political conversation each morning with his tweets.

"He unleashed five tweets today about stuff that jeopardizes his legal situation, insults somebody, goes back to the 2016 election, none of which is relevant to getting tax relief done, regulatory reform done," Bush said. "This is going to be a long ride between 2018 in January, much less 2020."

Story continues

But the Florida governor also reserved some ire for members of his own party, knocking Republicans who were scared of crossing interest groups or conservative base voters, and suggesting that there should be term limits for members of Congress to spur politicians to act without fear of political retribution.

"If Barack Obama did somethingas it related to Russia and you say, 'This is outrageous,' then when your guy does the same thing, have the same passion to be critical," Bush said.

Pressed on whether Republicans were afraid of Trump, he continued: "Does everything have to be a political calculus? 'Oh my god if I say something, there will be an opponent, and there will be a third-party interest group come and give money to my opponent. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.' This is not what public services should be about."



Without naming them, Jeb Bush calls out Republicans who were mad at Obama over Russia, but have been silent on Trump and Russia pic.twitter.com/4fuZG8hHDV

 Max Tani (@maxwelltani) July 22, 2017

Bush, who did not vote for Hillary Clinton or Trump during the 2016 election, has been critical of Trump repeatedly since the president took office. In May, he praised the president's appointment of conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, but described the White House as chaotic, and advised Trump to "stop tweeting" because it gives "our enemies all sorts of nuances and insights" into Trump's mind.

Though he ruled out another presidential bid, the former Florida governor appeared alongside a number of other former and potentially future candidates during the summit who were critical of Trump's first six months.

Bush joined businessman Mark Cuban onstage later in the festival where they jousted briefly about education reform, and spoke after Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who delivered a forceful argument for single-payer healthcare.

Former Vice President Joe Biden also make a brief appearance during his wife Dr. Jill Biden's interview with Katie Couric to address 2020 presidential rumors.

"My hope and expectation is some of the younger folks will come up and lead the way, but if they don't, Jill's running," Biden said.

Related:

NOW WATCH: 'Where is Sean?': Things got awkward when April Ryan asked Sarah Sanders why Spicer didnt attend the WH briefing





More From Business Insider
Donald Trump

President Donald Trump pointed out that he has the "complete power" to grant pardons on Saturday.

Trump's assertion came amid reports that he was exploring the possibility of pardoning himself.

The Trump administration has also begun ramping up its efforts to discredit special counsel Mueller's investigation.

President Donald Trump pointed out his "complete power to pardon" individuals convicted of wrongdoing in his capacity as president on Saturday.

"While all agree the U. S. President has the completely power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS," Trump tweeted.

Trump's tweet came on the heels of a Washington Post report that said the president and his legal team were looking into the limits of his pardoning power, and that Trump had reportedly raised the question of whether he could pardon himself as congressional investigations and special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia widen in scope.

There is no constitutional precedent addressing whether a president can pardon himself, but legal experts said that if Trump did use his pardoning power in that way, it would prompt a legal and political firestorm.

"This is a fiercely debated but unresolved legal question," Brian C. Kalt, a constitutional law expert at Michigan State University who has written extensively on the question, told The Post. "There is no predicting what would happen," Kalt said, adding that if Trump did seek to pardon himself, the issue would likely go all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Louis Seidman, a constitutional-law expert and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, told Business Insider on Friday that whether Trump can pardon himself is "very questionable" as "a matter of constitutional morality."

Seidman said the real question was why Trump would even need to pardon himself, given the protection from prosecution his office affords him and the unlikelihood that he would be charged after leaving office.

Story continues

"The more serious threat is that Trump would either pardon everyone else or fire Mueller," Seidman said. "My own sense, for what it's worth, is that this outcome is very likely."

robert mueller

But firing Mueller or issuing pardons "would be certain to ignite the kind of political firestorm that we haven't seen since the Saturday Night Massacre," he said, and Trump's political opponents would undoubtedly paint it as obstruction of justice.

Indeed, it appears that Trump and his allies are ramping up their war on Mueller and planting seeds aimed at discrediting his investigation, possibly setting up a scenario in which Trump could fire the special counsel.

On Friday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told "Fox & Friends" that she thought it was important for the American people to know about Mueller's team's potential conflicts of interest while they investigate Trump and his associates.

Host Ainsley Earhardt pointed out that some members of Mueller's team had donated thousands of dollars to Democrats in the past.

"This is just a witch hunt," Conway said in response, repeating a frequent criticism Trump makes towards the ongoing probe. "It's all a hoax, and now they're going in all types of different directions, but I think that the information you just shared is relevant information for America to have. People should know what folks' past and their motivations and their political motivations are. These weren't minor donations."

Conway's statements echoed repeated criticisms Trump and his allies have made against Mueller's team in an effort to paint them as biased against the president.

Trump's legal team has also warned Mueller to stay within the scope of his inquiry. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer on Trump's team, told the Post on Thursday that they would go directly to Mueller to air their complaints if it became necessary.

"The fact is that the president is concerned about conflicts that exist within the special counsel's office and any changes in the scope of the investigation," Sekulow said. "The scope is going to have to stay within his mandate. If there's drifting, we're going to object."

Jay Sekulow

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Mueller was expanding his investigation to include Trump's past business dealings, and that he was drawing from an investigation opened by former US attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump earlier this year.

Sekulow cited the Bloomberg report, which said Mueller's team was looking into, among other things, a 2008 business deal Trump made with a Russian oligarch.

"They're talking about real estate transactions in Palm Beach several years ago," Sekulow told the Post. "In our view, this is far outside the scope of a legitimate investigation."

Trump also publicly warned Mueller against investigating the Trump family's finances, saying that Mueller would be crossing a "red line" if he did so.

"Look, this is about Russia," Trump said. "So I think if he wants to go, my finances are extremely good, my company is an unbelievably successful company. And actually, when I do my filings, people say, 'Man.' People have no idea how successful this is. It's a great company. But I don't even think about the company anymore. I think about this.

"'Cause one thing, when you do this, companies seem very trivial. OK?" he continued. "I really mean that. They seem very trivial. But I have no income from Russia. I don't do business with Russia. The gentleman that you mentioned, with his son, two nice people [Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov and his pop-star son, Emin]. But basically, they brought the Miss Universe pageant to Russia to open up, you know, one of their jobs. Perhaps the convention center where it was held. It was a nice evening, and I left. I left, you know, I left Moscow. It wasn't Moscow, it was outside of Moscow."

The Agalarovs catapulted to the national spotlight earlier this month, when it emerged they had requested that a meeting be arranged between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer with strong ties to the Kremlin last June during the presidential campaign. Mueller's office asked the White House on Friday to preserve all documents related to the meeting, indicating that the encounter had also become a focus of the investigation.

One West Wing official told Axios on Saturday that the president was in the process of building a "wartime Cabinet" because he may really fire Mueller. In the event that happens, the official said, Trump will need "a group that can fight through what could end up being something quite amazing."

"We're going to see out-and-out political warfare, and not over ... Medicaid," the official told Axios.

That assessment was echoed by Matthew Miller, the former Department of Justice spokesperson under President Barack Obama, who tweeted that "we are headed for certain crisis. Trump just will not, cannot allow this investigation to go forward."

Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

NOW WATCH: 'You're inflaming everybody!': Watch reporters clash with Sanders over press coverage





More From Business Insider






anthony scaramucci

New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci named President Donald Trump as the anonymous source casting doubt on the intelligence community's consensus that Russia interfered in the 2016 election during a CNN interview on Sunday.

"You know, somebody said to me yesterday  I won't tell you who  that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those e-mails, you would have never seen it," Scaramucci told "State of the Union" host Jake Tapper.

"You would have never had any evidence of them, meaning that they're super confident in their deception skills and hacking," Scaramucci continued. "My point is, all of the information isn't on the table yet. But here's what I know about the president "

"Well, wait, wait, wait," Tapper interjected.

"Let me finish. Let me finish," Scaramucci said, before letting Tapper cut in.

"Well, you're making a lot of assertions here," Tapper said. "I don't know who this anonymous person is that said, if the Russians had actually done it, we wouldn't have been able to detect it, but it is the unanimous "

"How about it was  how about it was the president, Jake?" Scaramucci said. "I talked to him yesterday. He called me from Air Force One. And he basically said to me, 'Hey, you know, this is maybe they did it. Maybe they didn't do it'."

Donald Trump Vladimir Putin

Scaramucci's use and subsequent revelation of Trump as an anonymous source came as the administration continues to slam media outlets for using anonymous sourcing in stories unfavorable to the White House.

After returning from his first foreign trip abroad in May, Trump said in a pair of tweets, "Whenever you see the words 'sources say' in the fake news media, and they don't mention names ... it is very possible that those sources don't exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!"

Story continues

[Money Basics: What is the Federal Reserve?]

Trump cast doubt on anonymous sourcing as recently as July 12, when he tweeted, "Remember, when you hear the words 'sources say' from the Fake Media, often times those sources are made up and do not exist."

In an interview with Tapper directly after Scaramucci's admission, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota expressed his disbelief that Scaramucci unmasked the president as his anonymous source.

"I thought  when he brought it up, I thought it was a disinterested intelligence expert who brought that [anonymous leak]," Franken said.

Tapper then brought up how Scaramucci said Trump still didn't accept his own intelligence agencies' conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

"That's  what can you say? It's just bizarre," Franken said.

Related:

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

NOW WATCH: 'What you feel isn't relevant': Sen. Angus King grills intel leaders on whether Trump tried to influence them





More From Business Insider
donald trump

President Donald Trump unleashed a series of tweets Saturday morning.

Trump took aim at intelligence leaks, the media, ongoing investigations into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, and the GOP's floundering healthcare effort.

Trump's tweets come on the heels of multiple reports indicating that special counsel Mueller's investigation has widened in scope.

President Donald Trump kicked off Saturday morning with a series of tweets attacking leaks, the media, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer last June, and the GOP's stalled healthcare effort.

"A new INTELLIGENCE LEAK from the Amazon Washington Post,this time against A.G. Jeff Sessions," Trump tweeted. "These illegal leaks, like Comey's, must stop!"

He was likely referencing a Friday Washington Post report which said Attorney General Jeff Sessions had spoken to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about matters related to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. The report cited communications between Kislyak and Moscow that had been intercepted by US spy agencies and relayed to The Post.

Trump later tweeted, "The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist, Al-Baghdadi. Their sick agenda over National Security." It's unclear what Trump was referring to, but CBS News noted that he sent the tweet shortly after Fox & Friends, a show Trump frequently praises, aired a chyron that said, "NYT FOILS U.S. ATTEMPT TO TAKE OUT AL-BAGHDADI."

Trump also touched on his power to pardon as president, but wondered why that would need to be addressed "when only crime so far is LEAKS against us." He followed up with, "FAKE NEWS."

The tweet came on the heels of another Washington Post report that said Trump's legal team was exploring the limits of his pardoning power, and that Trump had reportedly raised the question of whether he could pardon himself. There is no constitutional precedent addressing whether a president can pardon himself, but legal experts said that if Trump did use his pardoning power in that way, it would prompt a legal and political firestorm.

Story continues

Donald Trump Hillary Clinton

"This is a fiercely debated but unresolved legal question," Brian C. Kalt, a constitutional law expert at Michigan State University who has written extensively on the question, told The Post. "There is no predicting what would happen," Kalt said, adding that if Trump did seek to pardon himself, the issue would likely go all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Trump also took aim at the attorney general and special counsel for not investigating former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "So many people are asking why isn't the A.G. or Special Council [sic] looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes," he tweeted. "33,000 e-mails deleted?"

He followed up: "What about all of the Clinton ties to Russia, including Podesta Company, Uranium deal, Russian Reset, big dollar speeches etc."

"My son Donald openly gave his e-mails to the media & authorities whereas Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted (& acid washed) her 33,000 e-mails!" Trump tweeted.

Trump said in November, just after he won the election, that he did not "feel very strongly" about pursuing criminal charges against Clinton.

Sessions recused himself from any current and future investigations into the Trump campaign in March, when it first emerged that he'd had undisclosed contacts with Kislyak. Trump told The New York Times that if he'd known Sessions would recuse himself, he would have nominated someone else for the position.

Trump's tweet attacking the special counsel's investigation also came after reports indicated that Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia had expanded to include the president's past business dealings, and potentially his tax returns as well. The Post reported that Trump was especially incensed after finding out that Mueller could access his tax returns, which he has repeatedly refused to make public. The report added that Trump's team was looking for ways to discredit Mueller's investigation or narrow the scope of his inquiry.

Trump also urged Republican senators to ramp up their efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, former president Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. "The Republican Senators must step up to the plate and, after 7 years, vote to Repeal and Replace," Trump tweeted. "Next, Tax Reform and Infrastructure. WIN!"

"ObamaCare is dead and the Democrats are obstructionists, no ideas or votes, only obstruction," he added. "It is solely up to the 52 Republican Senators!"

Senate Republicans' efforts to repeal Obamacare floundered earlier this week, and current attempts to repeal the law and replace it later also appear to be in peril.

NOW WATCH: What its like living in North Korea  according to a North Korean defector





More From Business Insider


NEW YORK, July 21 (Reuters) - Anthony Scaramucci, the Trump administration's new communications director, has yet to get approval from U.S. regulators to sell his hedge fund firm to a group led by Chinese conglomerate HNA, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Scaramucci agreed in January to sell SkyBridge Capital LLC to clear the way for a job working with U.S. President Donald Trump. That role finally materialized on Friday when Trump shook up his administration, prompting the resignation of White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

But the sale of SkyBridge has yet to get the green light from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews acquisitions by foreign entities for potential national security risks.

Many of the heads of the government departments and agencies comprising CFIUS are political appointees, and it is chaired by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Scaramucci told Reuters in May that he expected the sale of SkyBridge to get U.S. regulatory approvals in June.

A representative of SkyBridge did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Reuters reported this week that CFIUS has become increasingly reluctant to approve deals. The president has the power to veto recommendations made by CFIUS although this has never happened before.

HNA is among a number of acquisitive Chinese firms currently under a spotlight in China over the potential risks from domestic companies going on overseas buying sprees.

Best known as the owner of Hainan Airlines Co, HNA group plans to acquire a majority stake in SkyBridge through its financial arm HNA Capital as part of an expansion into asset management.

Scaramucci told Reuters in May that he had, separate from the sale of his business, discussed partnerships with HNA. (Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis. Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan. Writing by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
Afghan officials said the Taliban have seized control of two districts in northern and central Afghanistan, though the Defense Ministry maintained that fighting was still ongoing.

Abdul Karim Youresh, spokesman for the police chief of Faryab Province, said the militants seized Kohistan district, including the government headquarters, early on July 23.

Mohammad Mustafa Mohseni, the provincial police chief of Ghor Province, said Taywara district fell late on July 22 following clashes with militants. Officials said Taliban militants killed several doctors and patients in a Taywara hospital.

The Taliban said in a statement that they had captured both the Kohistan and the Taywara districts.

The Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said the districts had not fallen, insisting that government forces were still locked in fighting with the militants.

Youresh said two police officer were killed in the clashes in Faryab, which has been the scene of repeated fighting between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters seeking to expand their reach in the area.

He said security forces and police were battling the militants in eight districts in the province, located on the border with Turkmenistan.

Meanwhile, Moheseni said at least eight police were killed in fighting against the militants in Ghor, an impoverished, remote province in central Afghanistan.

The Taliban are engaged in fighting with security forces in the northern province of Baghlan, temporarily closing a key highway between the capital, Kabul, and northern Afghanistan.

News agencies cited local officials as saying on July 23 that Taliban militants killed several people in a Taywara district hospital, stalking the hallways in search of Afghan security personnel.

The reported death toll at the hospital ranged from four to 12. The Associated Press cited a provincial health official as saying that he received reports that the militants killed patients they believed were police or military personnel.

With reporting by Tolo News, Pajhwok, AP, and dpa
UGAtoUNC wrote:

Cobra - can you elaborate a little more about your undergraduate and graduate school experience? Also, what are you majoring in for your MBA?



For me, I graduated from a top regional university with a degree in banking and finance. Currently, I am in my Master's of Accountancy from a state university.

Sure. I graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering from an undergrad engineering program consistently in the top 20 according to US News. My GPA was a pedestrian 3.09. After about six years, the military sent me to get my masters in Civil Engineering at a Top 50 graduate program according to US News (despite the fact that I was admitted to a top 10 program, but that's another can of worms). My hope was that getting a 3.7 in my masters (finishing it in 1-year no less) would score me some points with the adcom, but I doubt it did. I'm interested in marketing, and grad school incurred a 3-year military obligation which delayed my application to last fall (I decided during my masters that I wanted to leave the military to get an MBA). This probably looks strange to the adcom that I would get a masters in civil engineering and then apply for an MBA. In hindsight, I wish I used the optional essay (even though I mentioned it in the interview) that I went to Grad school on orders and incurred a 3-year obligation._________________
Sat, 11/12 (10am ET): 55 Percentile to 90 Percentile in GMAT Verbal in 2 Months - Watch Riddhis GMAT Journey
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
Colflesh is among about 30,000 students, faculty, professional staff and alumni to be initiated into Phi Kappa Phi each year. Membership is by invitation only and requires nomination and approval by a chapter. Only the top 10 percent of seniors and 7.5 percent of juniors are eligible for membership. Graduate students in the top 10 percent of the number of candidates for graduate degrees may also qualify, as do faculty, professional staff and alumni who have achieved scholarly distinction.


The militant group Boko Haram has prevented many children in parts of North Africa from attending school. But The United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) says tens of thousands of children in the Lake Chad area are learning from educational radio broadcasts.

The radio broadcasts provide lessons on reading, mathematics, and how to stay safe during the violence. UNICEF said the broadcasts reach about 200,000 displaced and out-of-school children in the Far North area of Cameroon and southern Niger.

Patrick Rose is a UNICEF spokesman. He told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the level of boredom among children in camps for the displaced is tremendous."

He added that "with this radio education program, children will receive lessons in a structured way that keeps them in a rhythm... so that when they go back to school they won't be so far behind."

The project is supported by the European Union and the governments of Cameroon and Niger.

About 150 lessons are being broadcast in both French and local languages, UNICEF said.

UNICEF also have trained local school teachers to identify and deal with security threats to protect children from Boko Haram. The organization wants to provide affected children with psychological support.

UNICEF says Boko Haram has killed more than 600 teachers and forced over 1,200 schools to close in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

The militants have killed more than 20,000 people since 2009 and forced about 2.7 million others to flee.

Opposing forces have pushed Boko Haram out of most of the territory it held in early 2015. But the group continues to attack in northeast Nigeria, as well as in Cameroon and Niger.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Kieran Guilbert reported this story for Thompson Reuters Foundation. Jonathan Evans adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in this Story

boredom  n. the state of being bored

psychological  adj. of or relating to the mind; mental

rhythm  n. a regular, repeated pattern of events, changes, activities, etc.

tremendous  adj. very large or great
Q: What about slow moving vehicles on Idaho roads and on the Idaho Interstate? I read that all Idaho highways, county roads and city streets are 25 mph and on the interstate there is no rule on the slow speed only not to exceed the posted speed. What is the actual law?Dan

A: Well, if you want the actual law here it is: 49-619. SLOW MOVING VEHICLES  RESTRICTIONS AND EXCEPTIONS, EQUIPMENT  EMBLEMS ON CERTAIN MACHINERY  LIMITED EXEMPTION. (1) It shall be unlawful to operate a slow moving vehicle on the highways at the following times and under the following circumstances:

(a) From one-half hour after sunset to one-half hour before sunrise, unless the vehicle or equipment is equipped with lights as required by section 49-916, Idaho Code; (b) At a speed in excess of 25 miles per hour, unless the vehicle or equipment, including towed units of farm equipment, is designed to safely travel at speeds in excess of 25 miles per hour, but no such vehicle or equipment shall exceed the posted maximum speed limit and shall be operated by a licensed driver;  In such a manner as to obstruct the free movement of traffic on the highways. (2) A slow moving vehicle shall be equipped with a braking system and with a mechanical signaling device as required for other similarly constructed vehicles. (3) All slow moving vehicles, farm tractors, road rollers and implements of husbandry shall have affixed at the rear of the vehicle an emblem identifying them as slow moving equipment. The Idaho traffic safety commission shall recommend to the board the minimum standards for the emblem. (4) Emergency and snow removal vehicles owned and operated by the state or its political subdivisions when en route to, from, or in the performance of activities essential to the public safety, shall be exempt from the provisions of paragraphs (a) and  of subsection (1) of this section.

There you have the actual law. It appears that the slow moving law is good for any type of road that a person would drive on.

In case somebody out there does not know what a slow moving sign is, its that orange triangular one usually seen on the back of slow moving vehicles and even carriages at times.

Officer down

Please put these officers, killed in the line of duty, and their families in your prayers. They fought the good fight, now may they rest in peace. God bless these heroes.

Trooper Joel Davis, New York State Police

Trooper Michael Paul Stewart, III, Pennsylvania State Police

Have a question for Policemandan? Email your question(s) to policemandan@cableone.net or look for Ask Policemandan on Facebook and click the like button. Mail to: Box 147, Heyburn, Idaho 83336
Some countries are choosing to increase diplomatic ties with China as they limit contacts with the government in Taiwan.

But Taiwan is doing better than China at a level of diplomacy that common people can feel: the number of countries that let the islands citizens enter without requiring a visa.

Taiwan has persuaded 166 countries to let its 23 million citizens enter without a visa or with simple visa requirements. Taiwans foreign ministry says some of these countries have done so, knowing that China might take action against them.

Only 21 countries offer visa-free entry to people from China.

The rise of visa-free countries from 10 years ago shows that Taiwan can expand diplomatically, even when facing Chinese opposition. It is something for Taiwans government to show citizens who want more foreign policy successes.

Joanna Lei leads the Chunghua 21st Century research group in Taiwan.

She said, "For most of the people foreign relations is a very distant thing, but the ability to travel free around the world is a direct and personal experience...If Taiwan continues to enjoy visa-free travel, that means a lot of countries recognize the administration and allow the people from Taiwan to their lands, and that will be a major, major foreign affairs achievement.

China claims control of Taiwan. It says the island must be reunited with the mainland someday. Taiwan has been self-ruled since the 1940s. But Chinese officials try to limit its influence around the world.

Chinas government has stopped Taiwan from joining United Nations agencies since the 1970s. The government also offers aid to countries that cut diplomatic relations with Taiwan and open ties to China. Panama cuts ties with the island and recognized the government in Beijing last month.

Just 20 countries now recognize the government in Taiwan. More than 170 countries recognize China.

The effort to expand visa-free treatment for Taiwanese people began during the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou, who held office from 2008 to 2016. During that time, China and Taiwan decided to set aside political differences so the two countries could build trust through economic deals. This made it more difficult for China to stop Taiwans efforts to increase people-to-people contacts overseas.

Huang Kwei-bo led the foreign ministry research and planning committee from 2009 to 2011.

(Diplomatic) cables regarding that were sent to all the offices and missions abroad, and we kept reminding officials of the importance and urgency of getting visa waivers or visas upon arrival, he said.

We tried to tell those potential targeted countries not to feel worried about punishment from the Beijing authorities, he said, because improved ties under Ma would make the visa waiver issue less sensitive.

The Henley & Partners 2015 Visa Restrictions Index rated Taiwan passports number 28 in the world in terms of visa-free restrictions. China was ranked 93rd.

The Chinese government has shown little willingness to trust Taiwans current president, Tsai Ing-wen. But she has yet to call for legal independence from China.

Liu Yih-jiun teaches at Fo Guang University in Taiwan. Liu says the worsening relations between the two sides could make it more difficult for Taiwan to add countries to its visa-free list.

Last week, Taiwan and Paraguay agreed to let each others citizens enter without visas. The foreign ministry is also preparing to let Filipinos enter without a visa. The Philippines still requires Taiwanese to get a visa before entering the country.

Taiwan foreign ministry official Eleanor Wang says countries let Taiwanese enter without a visa for economic reasons and for better ties with Taiwan.

It is difficult for China to persuade other countries to let its citizens enter without a visa. The reason: some Chinese move to other countries illegally for economic reasons.

Lin Chong-pin is a former strategic studies professor in Taipei. He says Taiwan has achieved a certain level of economic sufficiency, therefore its citizens are not that eager to flee from the country and get settled in other countries.

Most of them want to come back, he adds. They find Taiwan more comfortable. Countries that give Taiwan visa waivers are not threatened.

Im Anna Matteo.

And I'm Pete Musto.

Ralph Jennings reported this story from Taipei for VOANews.com. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story

allow  v. to permit (something); to regard or treat (something) as acceptable

achievement  n. something that has been done or achieved through effort; a result of hard work

cable  n. a message sent by telegraph; a message sent by an embassy to its home country; a message sent by a country to one of its embassies

waiver  n. an official document indicating that someone has given up or waived a right or requirement; the act of choosing not to use or require something that you are allowed to have or that is usually required

rank  n. a position in a society, organization, group, etc.

sufficient  adj. able to live or function without help or support from others

comfortable  adj. allowing you to be relaxed; causing no worries, difficulty or uncertainty


Renu Khator, the president of the University of Houston, is unlike most presidents of colleges and universities in the United States.

For one thing, she was born in India. And she did not speak any English when she arrived in the U.S. at the age of 18.

Khator came to the American state of Indiana in 1974. At that time, her husband was earning a doctoral degree from Purdue University.

But Khator says she was not satisfied simply waiting for her husband to complete his education. She completed her own doctoral degree at Purdue in 1985 and began teaching political science at the University of South Florida.

In 2008, Khator was appointed president of the University of Houston and chancellor of the University of Houston System. The system is made up of four universities.

With the appointment, Khator became the first Indian immigrant to lead a major research university in the U.S. She also became the first female leader of the University of Houston System.

Throughout her career, Khator says she has faced some difficulties making the same progress as others in her field because of her race and gender.

"I had to fight a little bit harder. And I dont mind that because I think that built my character. But as I moved up, I made sure that other people who are coming behind me dont have to fight those similar kinds of situations."

Women and minorities are underrepresented

The American Council on Education (or ACE) studies issues of higher education. The organization says only three out of ten college presidents in the U.S. are women. And only about two out of ten are ethnic or racial minorities. The information came from its study of 1,500 university and college presidents, released in June.

Lorelle Espinosa is a researcher and one of the lead writers of the ACE report. She says this lack of diversity is a major problem considering how diverse the students at U.S. colleges have become.

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education reported that more than half of the 20.5 million college students in the U.S. were female. Also, the number of African American college students increased from 11.7 to 14.1 percent between 2000 and 2015. The number of Hispanic students grew from 9.9 to 17.3 percent in that same time.

Espinosa argues that university leadership can best serve this increasingly diverse population when they represent the kinds of students they are serving.

Women and minority presidents would have a better understanding of the needs of students who are like them. But schools continue to favor older white men for president positions, she says.

The ACE study shows the average age of an American college president is 62. About 25 percent have also been president of another college before accepting their current position.

Espinosa notes that when schools only look for candidates with years of experience in administration, they are going to keep choosing the same types of people. But having years of experience does not necessarily mean a person will have the skills to deal with new issues in higher education, she says.

"What we have to do is take, actually, a larger step back and think about, What does experience mean and are we defining experience in the right way?  As the student body has evolved, and even as technology evolves  were getting into a lot of new spaces that require different types of experience. Its not just, Youve been a president before."

Rod McDavis works with AGB Search, a company that helps colleges and universities identify presidential candidates. He was also the president of Ohio University for 13 years. As an African American man, he says the lack of diversity in college leadership is troubling. But he says it is also not fair to blame schools for wanting someone who is familiar with the responsibilities of running a school.

"Its hard to fault a board for wanting  a sufficient amount of experience. ... You have to look at what a person has done within the time he or she has served in a particular office."

McDavis admits that the way schools identify candidates can be limiting. First a schools governing board must decide the qualities it wants in a president. Then the board creates a search committee, including professors, administrators and both current and former students. The committee then creates a list of possible candidates who possess the desired qualities.

The majority of candidates on these lists are usually deans or provosts, McDavis says. Schools most often choose professors to fill these roles based on their records of research publication and service to the school as a whole.

McDavis argues that many schools do not do enough to support women and minority faculty in moving their careers forward. So, search committees often find fewer women and minority candidates with leadership experience.

Needs to create plans and policies to support diversity

That is why Diana Natalicio says it is important for more colleges and universities to create policies and plans to support diversity. Natalicio became the first female president of the University of Texas at El Paso in 1988 and has served in that role ever since.

Natalicio says young people need to see diverse leaders in order to believe they can reach those positions one day.

These individuals send a signal to all students  [that] they too can [hope] to be in these roles, Natalicio says. If everyone who is an administrator at the highest level at universities around the country is a white male  [thats not] the kind of role model that [women and minorities] need to see in order to  [reach] higher.

Natalicio suggests that schools need to actively choose to diversify their lists of presidential candidates. Also, schools must work with younger, inexperienced faculty. They must guide them in making choices in areas like research and service work that will advance their careers.

Otherwise college leadership will stay as the same, Natalicio adds, even while the students continue to change.

Im Kelly Jean Kelly.

And Im Pete Musto.

Pete Musto reported this story for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. We want to hear from you. What does the leadership at colleges and universities in your country look like? How might having a more diverse leadership affect the way colleges and universities in your country operate? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

doctoral degree  n. the highest degree that is given by a university

chancellor  n. the head of some U.S. universities

character  n. the good qualities of a person that usually include moral or emotional strength, honesty, and fairness

diversity  n. the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization

evolve(d)  v. to change or develop slowly often into a better, more complex, or more advanced state

fault  v. to blame or criticize someone

board  n. a group of people who manage or direct a company or organization

sufficient  adj. having or providing as much as is needed

particular  adj. used to indicate that one specific person or thing is being referred to and no others

dean  n. a person who is in charge of one of the parts of a university

provost  n. an official of high rank at a university

role(s)  n. the part that someone has in a family, society, or other group

advance  v. to move forward
If they are in Raqqa, theyre gonna die in Raqqa.

Those are the words of Brett McGurk, the United States top representative to the coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) group.

Last month, McGurk spoke about IS forces in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. He declared their foreign fighters would be targeted.

More than 2,000 IS militants are believed to be fighting in the city, which is the groups self-declared capital. Many of them are thought to be from North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. But even after the militants are defeated in Raqqa in the coming weeks, IS will still have an estimated 13,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq. American officials and independent security experts warn they are a threat to the area.

Bruce Hoffman and other observers expect the Islamic State to return to its earlier form as a terrorist and rebel group. Most IS leaders have not stayed in Raqqa to fight. They did not stay to fight in Mosul either. They fled both cities to smaller towns along the Iraqi border with Syria in the Euphrates River Valley and Anbar province in Iraq.

Experts say IS hopes to act like other Islamist organizations, which were able to survive after being defeated by U.S. military forces in Iraq in 2007 and 2008.

Observers say the group still controls territory both in west and east Iraq. They believe IS will attack government forces from villages and hiding places, as it began to do in April.

Whether it can be successful depends on the effectiveness of anti-IS security forces on both sides of the border and the support of people in the area.

Many Sunni Muslims are unhappy with heavy-handed security operations against militants, revenge killings and religious-based governance. Observers say such actions risk feeding into the Sunni disaffection that fueled the rise of IS in the first place.

Experts worry that neither Iraqi nor U.S. officials have developed clear plans to bring security to areas taken from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

We should be concerned about the lack of stabilization plans for territory from which ISIS is expelled, says Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. We are in grave danger of once again winning the war but losing the peace, he adds.

U.S. officials would appear to be taking more of a hands-off policy in Raqqa once the U.S.-aided Syrian Democratic Forces have gained control of the city.

VOA received an email from a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. The email read When ISIS has been defeated in Raqqa, authority will rest with the Raqqa Civilian Council and security will be maintained by the Raqqa Internal Security Force.

When asked whether U.S. officials have discussed the treatment of suspended militants, CENTCOM said that local officials are responsible for the detainees. But it added, The Coalition supports the laws of armed conflict and works hard in training to ensure partner forces are aware of and understand the requirement for a professional fighting force to abide with these laws.

Violations are already being reported. Locals say some people believe that they must be IS members or supporters since they remained in the city under militant rule.

In Iraq, rights groups have already documented revenge killings by Iranian-influenced Shiite militias. And a video of Iraqis questioning suspected militants in Mosul adds to the concern of rights groups. They accuse the Iraqis of using brutal interrogation methods against the suspects.

Like al-Qaida, IS has established militant groups in other parts of the Middle East and North Africa, notably in Libya and Egypt. Last year, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told followers that his group would defeat efforts to oust it from its major population centers in Syria and Iraq. But he appeared to be preparing for their eventual loss by urging foreigners to fight for IS affiliates.

One of the big questions is whether militants will continue showing interest in Islamic State after its talk of nation-building has been crushed.

Now, al-Qaida will likely seek to show that it is the worlds top jihadist group. Some experts say al-Qaida has already been preparing the 28-year-old son of former leader Osama bin Laden as its new leader. Hamza Bin Laden has appeared in four recent propaganda videos for the group.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Jamie Dettmer wrote this story for VOANews.com. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted the report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

gonna  expression used in writing to represent the sound of the phrase going to when it is spoken quickly

revenge  n. the act of doing something to hurt someone because that person did something that hurt you

stabilize  v. to become stable or to make (something) stable, such as to stop quickly changing, increasing, getting worse, etc.

grave  adj. very serious; requiring or causing serious thought or concern

authority  n. the power to give orders or make decisions; the power or right to direct or control someone or something

maintain  v. to cause (something) to exist or continue without changing; to provide support for (someone or something)

abide  v. to accept or bear

brutal  adj. extremely cruel or harsh
Over the past two months we have seen two major conferences where manufacturing, job losses and the shortage of skills in all sectors of the economy have been debated. But if we break it down, the one thing impacting most on South Africas economy is deindustrialisation.

In the 1980s, manufacturings contribution to GDP was 27%. By 2015 this had fallen to below 13%. The Manufacturing Circle estimates that given South Africas developmental stage, the contribution to GDP should today be between 28 and 32%.

This, theoretically speaking, would have created between 800 000 and 1,1-million jobs. Instead, the economy is struggling with an unemployment figure of 27,7%.

There does not seem to be any light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. In the first quarter of this year, the manufactoring sector shrunk a further 3,4%, shedding more jobs.

According to the World Bank, manufacturing is the highest job multiplier of any sector, so job losses have an outsized negative impact. Manufacturing makes 3,4 times more social returns for the same private returns, compared with mining.

The manufacturing industry creates many opportunities for smaller businesses to feed in products and components.

Government quite rightly recognises this by encouraging the creation of small businesses and entrepreneurships, but are they not missing the bigger picture?

For these smaller businesses and entrepreneurs to succeed, larger manufacturing plants are needed to take up their output. The manufacturing sector needs a major boost before small and medium size businesses can flourish and create more jobs.

Many reasons are given for our deindustrialisation but the two most obvious ones are the lack of policy and regulatory uncertainty; and asymmetrical compliance with the World Trade Organisation rules.

These are not too difficult to overcome, but it is in governments hands to agree on economic policies that create certainty for investment in the manufacturing industry, and labour policies that will provide incentives for both employers and employees.

Compared to many industrialised nations, our productivity level is not commensurate with the continual demand for higher wages.

If government would become responsible and stop endless talk of radical transformation of this and of that, and start walking the talk, there would be no need for mass action, marches and strikes. It seems that action is taken when things get destroyed.

Government should listen and heed the call from the manufacturing industry and focus on supporting industry by creating an environment for investment.

This could be done by, for example, introducing tax holidays during start up periods, accelerated depreciation allowances similar to the mining industry, and recapitalisation allowances.

There are several other tax instruments at governments disposal which could be used to kick-start a new manufacturing industry ethos in South Africa.

Automation has also been on the conference agendas over the past few months. It is often questioned whether automation is not counterproductive in a country with a high unemployment rate. Should we not be creating jobs instead of automating processes?

In theory that would be so, but South Africa has to keep up with world trends if we want to export our products to the rest of the continent and indeed the world. Automation in itself creates new jobs and this is where the problem lies.

These new jobs require better skills which in turn require a better education system and closer ties between industry and the education structures.

We blame government for many of our ills, and government deserves to be called to order; but are we, the people of South Africa, playing our part? Industry blames inadequate skills development on tertiary education institutions, but in turn they complain that industry is not playing its part sufficiently.

In my humble opinion, it is time that we stop talking past each other and focus on getting the economy on track. We must walk the talk and stop waiting for the next person to make a positive move.

Source: We are captured by deindustrialisation

Now read: Three graphs which show how Zuma wrecked South Africas economy
Biden has no plans to meet with Saudi crown prince at G20 summit

EU offers natural gas price cap assurances amid disagreements with member countries

Scholz is against establishment of ceasefire in Ukraine on Kremlin's terms

Turkologist: Turkey does not support agenda of achieving peace with Armenians

Sweden to not permit deployment of nuclear weapons on its territory after joining NATO

Erdogan signs decree on appointing Turkey ambassador to Israel

Information security expert: Some Armenia officials received letter that they were victims of national hackers attack

Armenia FM meets with France minister of foreign trade

Foreign Policy: US to resume nuclear arms control talks with Russia

Armenia opposition MP: Artsakh army reduction is impermissible

Biden to warn Chinas Xi that North Korea path could lead to increase in US military presence

US Treasury chief: India can buy as much Russian oil as it wants

Newspaper: Armenia authorities trying to find legal grounds for signing peace treaty

Newspaper: People of Karabakh not going to tolerate final destruction of their army

Texas woman sentenced to death for killing pregnant woman, removing fetus from victim

Van Gogh's painting sold for a record $117 million

Gentiloni: EU countries have accumulated enough gas to get through the coming winter

Several dozen activists detained at protest rally in Baku: They chant slogans 'Freedom!', 'Resign!'

Princess Haya seeks asylum in Wales

Pashinyan: Iran is concerned about the presence of other actors in our region, which are not in the territory of Armenia

Pashinyan: Presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan listened to presented proposals

Volvo reveals its flagship EX90 electric crossover

Pashinyan: Yerevan supports Russia's proposals for Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement

Pashinyan: Russia cannot withdraw from Karabakh unless it creates additional guarantees for peacekeeping mission

Pashinyan: We will do everything to Armenia-Azerbaijan sign peace treaty by end of year

Russia bans entry of Biden's family and White House press secretary

Pashinyan: We believe there should be a dialogue between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh

Pashinyan says positions voiced by some member countries of CSTO are unacceptable

19 countries that use euro currency will slide into recession over winter

Pashinyan to Baku: If 1991 border is mutually recognized, what are your troops doing near Jermuk?

Pashinyan: If the Karabakh issue is solved, why is Azerbaijani Armed Forces shooting at Karabakh residents?

Pashinyan: Russia should say whether their version of peace settlement is still circulating?

Pashinyan: Maybe Azerbaijan doesn't want Armenia to receive revenues?

Pashinyan: Azerbaijan must withdraw its troops from Armenia

Pashinyan: My yesterday's speech served its purpose, Azerbaijani MFA no longer uses 'corridor' term

Microsoft founder Paul Allen's collection of world masterpieces sold for $1.6 billion

Public TV of Armenia hosts Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan

China shows drone killer

Armenian FM meets his French counterpart

Rishi Sunak decides to close hole in British budget through austerity

Delegation of Russian MPs visits Jermuk resort town

Lavrov and Mirzoyan discuss regional agenda

Harut Sasunyan: The best way to achieve peace is to be prepared for war

Turkish prosecutor demands court to ban Istanbul mayor from political activities

German business leaders warn against leaving China

Sasunyan: Russia and US pursue their own interests in South Caucasus

British economy shrinks in three months, foretelling prolonged recession

Iranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan summoned to Foreign Ministry

Euro rises above dollar for first time in long time

Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister calls Council of Turkic States 'forum of peace' and praises Turkey

EU embargo on Russian oil will be a boon for OPEC

Armenia defense minister receives China ambassador, military attache

Lemkin Institute condemns Azerbaijan president's genocidal rhetoric

Dollar goes up, euro rises sharply in Armenia

U.S. warns Europe that conflict over Taiwan will cause massive global economic shock

EU calls on Armenia, Azerbaijan to moderate their rhetoric

Erdogan says Turkey has been waiting at door of EU for 52 years and will give answer when time comes

U.S. fears that European support for Ukrainian strategy will begin to weaken

Armenia, Iran emphasize need to quickly implement agreements reached (PHOTOS)

Armenia soldier wounded by Azerbaijan shooting undergoes surgery

Gas over morality: Hungary guards Azerbaijan's interests

U.S. quietly seeks concessions from Saudi Arabia after Mohammed bin Salman humiliated Biden

Italy's Ambassador to Armenia visits Gyumri

Russian Armed Forces complete redeployment of grouping from right bank of Dnieper

IRGC: Adversaries are frightened and on alert

Armenia appoints ambassador to Sri Lanka

Kremlin doesn't consider leaving Kherson 'humiliating'

Israeli president thinks the world is concerned about Netanyahu's far-right coalition partner

Chinese MFA: China is not distancing itself from Russia, as Biden believes

Ukraine will seek help from its foreign partners in financing Starlink satellite internet systems

Erdogan: Situation in South Caucasus remains fragile

Marukyan: Azerbaijans Aliyev admitted that his country started 2nd Karabakh war, despite previously insisting opposite

Azerbaijan blackmailing Armenia through Lachin corridor

Turkish-occupied northern part of Cyprus becomes observer in Organization of Turkic States

Armenia PM: In his latest speech Aliyev flagrantly violated agreement on refraining from threat or use of force

World Bank official: Armenia is one of best countries in terms of credit portfolio performance

Azerbaijan president makes repeated accusations, threats against Armenia

Iran citizens injured in Armenia road accident

China reveals new giant drone that could point to the future of air warfare

US embassy in Armenia closed today

Karabakh MOD: Defense Army did not fire at Azerbaijan positions located in occupied territories

Israel and U.S. counter threat of hypersonic missiles together

U.S. and EU plan to publish new roadmap on artificial intelligence

Armenia ombudsperson meets with Belgium colleagues

Newspaper: Armenia parliament opposition seats to no longer be empty

Newspaper: Armenia parliament committee of inquiry into 2020 war circumstances is inactive

U.S. will no longer consider Russia a country with a market economy

US intends to protect Azerbaijan from threats of Iran

Aliyev, Erdogan discuss results of tripartite meeting in Russias Sochi

Azerbaijan army fires at Armenia positions, uses mortars as well

UAE is going to launch flying cabs from airports

Volvo Cars expects to introduce electric SUV by 2024

Amazon becomes world's first public company to lose $1 trillion in market value

EU's odd couple: Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel can't stand each other

US, China set first benchmarks ahead of presidents' meeting

Iranian MFA summons Azerbaijani ambassador to carpet in connection with anti-Iranian propaganda

Washington to resist any attempt by new Israeli government to annex West Bank

Biden thinks Elon Musk's relations with other countries are worthy of being looked at

Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister tells Polish senator about consequences of Azerbaijani aggression

Armenian deputy in Vilnius talks about goals of Azerbaijan's aggressive policy
TWIN FALLS COUNTY

FELONY SENTENCINGS

Brent Leon Fairchild, 30, Buhl; possession of a controlled substance, $285.50 costs, $100 DNA, seven years penitentiary, four years determinate, three indeterminate, three days credited, sentence suspended, sentence to run concurrently with 2016 an 2017 cases, four years supervised probation. Possess or use with intent to use drug paraphernalia charge dismissed.

Brent Leon Fairchild, 30, Buhl; burglary, $245.50 costs, 10 years penitentiary, four years determinate, six indeterminate, four days credited, sentence suspended, sentence to run concurrent to 2016 and 2017 cases.

Brent Leon Fairchild, 30, Buhl; burglary, $245.50 costs, 10 years penitentiary, four years determinate, six indeterminate, 25 days credited, sentence suspended, sentence to run concurrent to two 2016 cases.

Hector Daniel Soria Salinas, 23, Buhl; $245.50 costs, 10 years penitentiary, five determinate, five indeterminate, four days credited, sentence suspended, 10 years supervised probation. Three lewd conduct with a child under the age of 16 years old charges dismissed.

Michael Lynn Gibson, 63, Twin Falls; deliver, possess or manufacture drug paraphernalia, $285.50 costs, $500 public defender, nine years penitentiary, five determinate, four indeterminate, 186 days credited, sentence suspended, nine days supervised probation.

Dayna Rhea Canales, 26, Gooding; 26, receiving or transferring stolen vehicles, $245.50 costs, $100 DNA, five years penitentiary, three determinate, two indeterminate, 122 days credited, 365 days retained jurisdiction, sentence to run concurrent to other charges. Possession of a controlled substance, $285.50 costs, $100 DNA, five years penitentiary, three determinate, two indeterminate, 122 days credited, 365 days retained jurisdiction, sentence to run concurrent to other charges. Grand theft by receiving, possessing or disposing of stolen property, $245.50 costs, 10 years penitentiary, three determinate, seven indeterminate, 365 days retained jurisdiction. Four charges of grand theft dismissed. Destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence charge dismissed. Introduction of major contraband into a correctional facility charge dismissed.

Macyver Elimo, 24, Twin Falls; aggravated assault, $285.50 costs, seven years penitentiary, three determinate, four indeterminate, 74 days credited, sentence to run concurrent to second charge. Aggravated assault, $285.50 costs, seven years penitentiary, three determinate, four indeterminate, 74 days credited, sentence to run concurrent to other charge.

David Johnathon Friesen, 33, Boise, possession of a controlled substance, $285.50 costs, pay restitution, seven years penitentiary, three determinate, four indeterminate aggravated assault, $285.50 costs, seven years penitentiary, three determinate, four indeterminate, 74 days credited, sentence to run concurrent to two 2010 cases, 2011 case and 2014 case. Second possession of a controlled substance charge dismissed. Two use of drug paraphernalia charges dismissed.

Charles Nathan Reilly, 27, Twin Falls; possession of a controlled substance, $285.50 costs, $500 public defender, four years penitentiary, two determinate, two indeterminate, 46 days credited, 365 days retained jurisdiction, sentence to run consecutive to other charge and to 2016 case. Possession of a forged check, $245.50 costs, four years penitentiary, two determinate, two indeterminate, 365 days retained jurisdiction, sentence to run concurrent to other charge in this case and with 2016 case.

John Michael Essma, 23, Twin Falls; possession of a controlled substance, $285.50 costs, $1,000 fine, $500 public defender, five years penitentiary, three determinate, two indeterminate, 365 days retained jurisdiction, sentence to run concurrent to 2015 case.

DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE SENTENCINGS

Kevin Allen Anderson, 22, Gooding; DUI, $500 fine, $300 suspended, $202.50 costs, $65 public defender, 180 days jail, 177 suspended, ten days discretionary time, three days credited, 180 days restricted drivers license, 12 months supervised probation, attend victim impact panel and court alcohol school.

Alexander T. Mora, 22, Twin Falls; DUI, $500 fine, $300 suspended, $202.50 costs, $75 reimburse public defender, 180 days jail, 177 suspended, 10 discretionary, one day credited, 180 days restricted drivers license, 12 months supervised probation, attend victim impact panel and court alcohol school.

DIVORCE CIVIL PROCEEDINGS

Autumn Barnes v. Steven Barnes

Felicia Guerra v. Ian Stephens

Dani Davis v. Joseph Da Silveria

Chatti Musick v. Kelly Musick

Newell Andrus v. Julienne Andrus

Darrell Evans v. Xiaojie Anna WU Evans

Waynette Holton v. Charles Hollon

Nancy Newland v. Jody Newland

Christopher Pierpont v. Cassandra Pierpont

Jami Bower v. Vernon Bower
LyondellBasell to Build $2.4 Billion Texas Plant

Once in operation, the plant is expected to produce 1 billion pounds of propylene oxide -- a chemical used in the manufacture of bedding, furniture, carpeting, coatings, building materials, and adhesives -- and 2.2 billion pounds of tertiary butyl alcohol annually.

LyondellBasell announced July 21 that it will build the world's largest plant manufacturing propylene oxide and tertiary butyl alcohol (TBA) in Channelview, Texas, an industrialized suburb of Houston. The project is estimated to cost approximately $2.4 billion, representing the single-largest capital investment in the company's history, and will be built at the LyondellBasell Channelview Complex. A related ethers unit, which will convert TBA to oxyfuels, is proposed for the company's Bayport Complex near Pasadena, Texas.

The company's announcement said at the peak of construction, the project is expected to create a maximum of 2,500 jobs -- approximately 160 permanent positions when the plant is operational.

"This world-scale project is a key part of our organic growth strategy which is designed to meet rising global demand for both urethanes and cleaner-burning oxyfuels while creating real, long-term value for our shareholders," said Bob Patel, CEO of LyondellBasell. "Our investment in this plant combines the best of both worlds: our leading PO/TBA process technology with proximity to low-cost feedstocks, which gives LyondellBasell a competitive advantage in the global marketplace for these products."

"We are pleased that LyondellBasell continues to view the Houston area as important to their global operations, creating jobs and opportunities for Houstonians," said Bob Harvey, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership. "This new project further advances Houston's position as a global hub of petrochemical manufacturing, leveraging Houston's strategic access to the Americas and top markets around the world."

Once in operation, the plant is expected to produce 1 billion pounds of propylene oxide -- a chemical used in the manufacture of bedding, furniture, carpeting, coatings, building materials, and adhesives -- and 2.2 billion pounds of TBA annually. The TBA will be converted to two ether-based oxyfuels, methyl tertiary butyl ether and ethyl tertiary butyl ether, which are high-octane gasoline components that help gasoline burn cleaner and reduce emissions from automobiles. The announcement said LyondellBasell plans to sell the PO and derivative products to domestic and global customers, while the oxyfuels will be primarily sold in Latin America and Asia. Some of the TBA will be sold domestically in the form of high-purity isobutylene, which is used in tires and lubricants.

The project is part of the company's $5 billion organic growth program taking place on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
TWIN FALLS  A state program that provides money for teenagers to take college classes is getting more popular  and expensive.

State legislators appropriated $6 million for Advanced Opportunities for the past year. But the total bill came to $12.1 million  about double the cost, Idaho Education News reported.

In June, the Idaho State Board of Education came up with a series of ideas they may want to propose to the 2018 legislature. One of them: to consider limiting which types of dual credit classes state money would pay for.

That could mean just those that meet college general education requirements, are needed for a technical certification or are needed for a specific college degree a student is pursuing.

It would help align with the overall purpose of the program: helping lower the cost burden for high schoolers and help them earn a college degree faster. And state officials want to boost the college-going rate, which hovers around 50 percent, to help meet workforce needs.

The program has exploded around the state, said Debbie Critchfield of Oakley, vice president of the state board. And the state has limited resources for the offering, she added.

For Advanced Opportunities, is it working the most efficiency as it can? she said. Is it accomplishing what we want?

The board idea from June is a very basic outline at this point, board spokesman Blake Youde said Friday. We are still very early in this.

He expects board staff will have ideas fleshed out a little more within the next week or so.

Each Idaho public schooler has a total of $4,125 available to use from seventh through 12th grades.

Money can be used to pay for dual credit classes, overload classes and exams such as Advanced Placement or professional-technical certifications.

Dual credit classes allow teenagers to earn high school and college credits simultaneously.

Across Idaho, about 15,000 students took dual credit classes in 2015  up nearly 200 percent from 2008.

Critchfield said she has read news reports of costs growing, but the board hasnt heard a formal presentation on the topic.

I think the real exciting or positive side about this information is the fact that we have more students than ever taking advantage of the program, she said.

Dual credit gives students confidence they can complete college-level coursework, Youde said, and theyre more likely to continue on to college and finish a degree.

The legislatures Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee received information in June about the program costs, Idaho Education News reported.

The approximately $6 million to cover unexpected costs will come out of the Public Education Stabilization Fund, Youde said. Thats essentially the backstop in case theres an overrun.

Whatever the Idaho Board of Education decides about dual credit could affect thousands of students across the state  including right here in south-central Idaho.

In the Twin Falls School District, nearly 30 percent of high school seniors take at least one dual credit class.

And other school districts, such as Jerome, have seen huge growth in dual credit numbers.

Jerome High School counselors work to guide students and parents when choosing dual credit classes, Jerome School District Superintendent Dale Layne said.

The goal is to have students take useful classes that will transfer to meet a general education college requirement, rather than just an elective.

Counselors stress to not take a credit just because its there, Layne said, but that doesnt always happen with students.

To keep up with the growth in Advanced Opportunities, the school district recently hired two new full-time employees with new job descriptions for the counseling department. Theyll work directly with students in areas such as dual credit.

The College of Southern Idaho has seen dual credit enrollment explode. High schoolers now make up about 35 percent of the colleges total headcount.

During the fall 2016 semester, CSI had about 2,444 dual credit students enrolled from more than 65 high schools, plus virtual academies. Thats up from 871 students a decade ago.

Jarred Aslett, advanced opportunities senior coordinator at CSI, wasnt available to comment Friday.

Typically, dual credit classes are taught either by high school teachers or delivered via videoconferencing. And the cost is $65 per credit  about half of what traditional CSI students pay.

Critchfield said she sees both advantages and disadvantages to limiting the types of dual credit classes the state would pay for.

An advantage: Certainly, we want our students to take those classes that help them at the next level, she said, instead of those that will count only for elective credit.

A disadvantage: About 70 percent of Idahos public schools are in rural areas, Critchfield said. A lack of resources and teachers to offer elective classes can be a challenge.

Critchfield said: Dual credit courses provide an opportunity for students to be exposed to classes they wouldnt otherwise.
Naked, covered in white clay mud, and with his penis wrapped in leaves, Abongile Maqegu, 20, sits in a hut in South Africa recovering from his circumcision -- a traditional ritual that can prove fatal. For Maqegu, it has been a gruelling initiation test that marks his arrival as an adult, and the pain is an essential part of the experience. "You must go through that pain to show that you are a man," he told AFP outside the coastal village of Coffee Bay about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Umtata in Eastern Cape province. "We don't even think of (getting) a medical circumcision because it is the easy way out. We laugh at those who go to hospitals." Maqegu is one of thousands of youths from the Xhosa ethnic group attending this year's annual winter initiation schools across Eastern Cape province. After his foreskin is cut off by a tribal elder using a knife, he is kept in the small thatched rondavel hut with two other initiates for up to four weeks, with a "bush doctor" present at all times monitoring their wounds. The initiates are allowed no contact with women, and spend their time playing cards, applying mud and stoking the smoky fire to try to keep warm. "If you go to hospital you are weak, you are not a man. Your wound must not be treated with Betadine (disinfectant)," Maqegu said. "There is special traditional medicine for that and it heals fast." - Secretive ceremony - He revealed tree leaves tied like a bandage around his genitals, which are also covered in a traditional healing ointment and held to one side by string. The ritual is revered and guarded by the Xhosa people, but the unhygienic conditions -- and abuse by some initiation schools -- exacts a heavy toll. At least 11 youths have already died during this southern hemisphere winter in Eastern Cape, according to provincial officials, while the government says several hundred have died nationwide in initiation schools since 1995. Often the cause is infection from a botched circumcision, which can lead to penis amputation surgery. Circumcision has also been demonstrated to be a powerful weapon in the fight against HIV, by helping to protect men from the AIDS virus. But specialists -- meeting in Paris from Sunday for a four-day forum on HIV/AIDS -- remain worried about botched operations and poor hygiene. Other risks include dehydration or maltreatment by initiation leaders, who conduct the secretive circumcision rituals deep in the mountains. - 'Recognised as a man' - In another grass-thatched hut, 200 metres away, sitting on a reed mat, is 20-year-old Fezikhaya Tselane, who has just returned from his circumcision rites in the remote bush. As he nurses the sore wound, his bush doctor sits close by, surrounded by dirty pots, plates and empty beer bottles strewn over the floor. "I have been waiting for this day. All my brothers have gone through this process," Tselane told AFP, entirely covered in white mud, which is meant to ward off evil spirits as well as preserve body warmth. "In our Xhosa culture, if you don't go through traditional circumcision you are not recognised as a man. "Now I can marry, have my own house and kids and not depend on my parents." Mxolisi Dimaza, chairman of the Eastern Cape provincial health committee, said authorities were determined to curb injuries and deaths in the initiation schools. "This year a considerable amount of resources were made available so that we do not experience many more deaths," he told AFP after his recent field visit to several initiation sites. "However, there are still problem areas where we have illegal initiation schools. These are where the school itself is not registered and the initiates are often below 18 years old." The province has hired 35 4x4 vehicles to patrol initiation practices in a region of steep hills, dirt roads and rough tracks. It has also passed a law setting out a minimum age of 18, and establishing a registry of accredited bush doctors and schools. From the age of 16, boys can be circumcised with their parents' permission. - Medical risks - Dimaza appealed for any initiates suffering from infections or ill-health to go immediately to hospital, adding that parents should not feel social pressure for their children to have traditional circumcisions. "It is our culture -- but if the parents want their child to have it medically, we don't object," he said. The tradition has become tainted in recent years by commercialisation, with some bush doctors charging large amounts of money, while some initiates have been found to be as young as 13. Initiation ceremonies have also spread to other provinces such as KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga, boosted in part by UN-backed information that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually-acquired HIV infection by 60 percent. For one bush doctor, proper care should mean that initiates are able to experience the ritual in a safe and deeply spiritual manner. "You have to be careful and take good care, otherwise the wound gets sceptic," said Lukholo Marhenene, 21, who has been nursing initiates for three years. "You must change the leaves often and keep the wound clean and dry. "During the month I will be attending to him, he stays in the hut. Only his father and other boys who have already gone through initiation are allowed to visit. "After two weeks, we slaughter a goat to appease the spirits."
By Patrick Markey CAIRO (Reuters) - The head of Libya's U.N.-backed government will hold talks in Paris this week with a powerful military commander who has so far rejected his authority, a diplomatic source said. The talks between Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj and commander Khalifa Haftar are aimed at stabilising the oil-producing country, which has been mired in chaos and fighting since rebels toppled strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Western governments are pushing the U.N.-backed political agreement that installed Serraj's Government of National Unity, but Haftar, whose forces have gained ground in the east of the country, has refused to accept the government's legitimacy. The two rivals held talks in Abu Dhabi in May, the first in more than a year and a half. "I know Haftar is in Paris already, Serraj is due to arrive soon. They are aiming for Tuesday," the diplomatic source told Reuters. A French government spokesman had no comment, and officials with Serraj's government did not return calls. But Libya's Nabaa TV cited a Libyan government source saying Serraj would arrive in Paris on Tuesday. Years of turmoil in Libya have allowed Islamist State militants and people-traffickers to thrive: the North African country is the main point of embarcation for migrants attempting the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean to Europe. With no national army, brigades of former rebels who once fought together to oust Gaddafi have become powerful competing factions. Each is backed by rival political leaders in fluid alliances locked in a struggle for control. Serraj is loosely supported by a coalition of armed brigades in the west of the country, but even in the capital Tripoli his government has struggled to impose its authority. Diplomats say the Paris talks will focus on agreeing on key principles - that the political accord is the way forward, that no military solution exists, and Libya's military should be under civilian control. French President Emmanuel Macron wants France to play a more active role in tackling the Libyan crisis. He plans to meet Haftar and Serraj, the source said, adding an encounter could help bring around the commander by offering him "some form of legitimacy". The idea would be to bring them into an agreement allowing the U.N. to implement the peace deal and set up elections. Libya's neighbours and regional powers have often disagreed on how to resolve the crisis. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are closer to Haftar and his self-styled campaign against Isamist militants. Worried about security, Algeria and Tunisia push a more inclusive approach. Even in the European Union, splits have emerged over how best to bring Haftar into the fold. French officials fear Islamic State militants - who were driven from Libya's coastal city of Sirte last year - and other jihadists could try to exploit the country's power vacuum to regroup there again after losing substantial ground in Syria and Iraq. (Reporting by Patrick Markey; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
The new US special envoy on Ukraine said Sunday that Russia is responsible for the "hot war" in the country's east, after fresh clashes between government forces and Russian-backed rebels. Kurt Volker, who was appointed this month as the State Department's special representative for negotiations to end more than three years of fighting, was visiting on the eve of telephone talks between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France on how to stem a conflict that has claimed 10,000 lives. "This is not a frozen conflict, this is a hot war and it is an immediate crisis that we all need to address as quickly as possible," Volker said while visiting the government-controlled city of Kramatorsk in the war-torn Donetsk region. "I wanted to come here... and to see firsthand the situation along the line of conflict," Volker, wearing a bulletproof vest, told journalists. "It is truly a high degree of suffering, there was a high human cost to this conflict and that is another reason why it is so urgent that we address it." His visit follows a fresh flare up in fighting in eastern Ukraine which has claimed the lives of 11 Ukrainian troops over the past few days, the most serious surge in bloodshed in recent months. Ukraine and the West say Moscow has funnelled troops and arms across the border to fan the flames of the war in Europe's backyard. Moscow has denied the allegations, despite overwhelming evidence that it has been involved in the fighting and its explicit political support for the rebels. Volker agreed when asked whether he considered the conflict to be the result of Russian aggression rather than a Ukrainian civil war. "We understand the way this conflict has begun, we understand the way it is being managed today and that is why it is important the US become more engaged," the former US ambassador to NATO said. On Monday, Volker will have talks with Ukrainian authorities in Kiev and next week will visit France, Belgium, Austria and Britain before going back to Washington to make "some recommendations about exactly how the US can engage better". The US and EU have imposed sanctions on Russia, but efforts to secure a peace Ukraine deal have ground to a halt as the fighting has dragged on. The conflict, along with Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, has pushed ties between Moscow and the West to their lowest point since the Cold War.
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #29

Posted on 23 July 2017 by John Hartz

Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...

Story of the Week...

2017 is so unexpectedly warm it is freaking out climate scientists

"Extremely remarkable" 2017 heads toward record for hottest year without an El Nino episode.

JanuaryJune 2017 global surface temperatures (compared to the 20th century average) in Degrees Celsius. CREDIT: NOAA

Normally, the hottest years on record occur when the underlying human-caused global warming trend gets a temporary boost from an El Ninos enhanced warming in the tropical Pacific.

So its been a surprise to climate scientists that 2017 has been so remarkably warm??because the last El Nino ended a year ago. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported Tuesday that the first half of 2017 was the second-warmest January-June on record for Earth, topped only by 2016, which was boosted by one of the biggest El Ninos on record.

As if it wasnt shocking enough to see three consecutive record-breaking years, in 2014, 2015, and 2016, for the first time on record, leading climatologist Michael Mann wrote in an email to ThinkProgress, were now seeing near-record temperatures even in the absence of the El Nino assist that the previous record year benefited from.

How January-June temperatures globally rank compared to the 20th century average. CREDIT: NOAA

NOAA climatologist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo told Climate Central, After the decline of the strong El Nino, I was expecting the values to drop a bit. This year has been extremely remarkable.

Usually we see global records in years when the short-term El Nino warming adds to the long-term global warming trend (see chart below). As NOAA noted in its March report, without an El Nino, no month before March 2017 had ever exceeded the normal temperature (the 19812010 average) by a full 1.8F (1.0C).

Global monthly temperature departures (from 19812010 average) color-coded by whether the Pacific was experiencing an El Nino (red), a La Nina (blue) or neutral conditions (gray). CREDIT: NOAA

This matters because when a month??or six-month period??sees record high global temperatures in the absence of an El Nino, that is a sign the underlying global warming trend is stronger than ever. The latest NOAA report is a reminder that climate change has not, despite the insistence of climate contrarians paused or even slowed down, Mann said.

Bottom line: Human-caused global warming continues at a dangerous pace, and only human action to slash carbon pollution can stop it.

2017 is so unexpectedly warm it is freaking out climate scientists by Joe Romm, Think Progress, July 19, 2017

Toon of the Week...

Video of the Week...

Climate change is real, case closed. But there's still a lot we don't understand about it, and the more we know the better chance we have to slow it down. One still-unknown factor: How might clouds play a part? There's a small hope that they could buy us some time to fix things ... or they could make global warming worse. Climate scientist Kate Marvel takes us through the science of clouds and what it might take for Earth to break its own fever.

Filmed at April 2017 at TED2017

Coming Soon on SkS...

Study: our Paris carbon budget may be 40% smaller than thought (Dana)

(Dana) As Trump pulls out of the Paris Agreement, remember: We've seen this before (Benjamin Franta)

(Benjamin Franta) Explainer: How data adjustments affect global temperature records (Zeke Hausfather)

(Zeke Hausfather) SkS Resources - Easy to remember Short URLs (Baerbel)

(Baerbel) Guest Post (John Abraham)

(John Abraham) 2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30 (John Hartz)

(John Hartz) 2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Waming Digest #30 (John Hartz)

Poster of the Week...

Climate Feedback Reviews...

Climate Feedback asked its network of scientists to review the article, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine, July 9, 2017

Seventeen scientists analyzed the article and estimated its overall scientific credibility to be low.

A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Alarmist, Imprecise/Unclear, Misleading.

Review Summary

New York Magazine published an article by David Wallace-Wells detailing the potential impacts of climate change if no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the article explores worst case scenarios of change in the climate system and the resulting impacts on human populations.

Scientists reviewed the article to determine whether the descriptions of those scenarios accurately reflect the state of scientific knowledge. The New York Magazine article has triggered a number of responses debating the merits of the decision to focus on worst case scenarios, but our review simply addresses the scientific accuracy of the article.

The reviewers found that some statements in this complex article do misrepresent research on the topic, and some others lack the necessary context to be clearly understood by the reader. Many other explanations in the article are correct, but readers are likely left with an overall conclusion that is exaggerated compared to our best scientific understanding.

See all the scientists annotations in context.

Update (15 July 2017): New York Magazine has published an annotated version of its article indicating sourcing, which also incorporates several edits based on scientists comments. Read more

Update (13 July 2017): The analysis has been updated to include several comments received just after the time of publication. The main conclusion of the analysis is unchanged.

SkS Week in Review...

97 Hours of Consensus...

Marcia McNutt's bio page and quote source.

High resolution JPEG (1024 pixels wide)
They received commemorative medals awarded on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the reformation.

General Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia Milos Klatik (Source: TASR)

Font size: A - | A +

General Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia (ECAC) Milos Klatik welcomed the visit of his colleagues from the Austrian association, and Austrian Ambassador to Slovakia Helfried Carl in early June 2017.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Among the guests were Superintendent of Burgerland Diocese Manfred Koch and priest of the corps Nickelsdorf and Deutsch Jahrndorf Sonke Frost, the TASR newswire reported.

Klatik gave commemorative medals to the guests, which were awarded on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the reformation to several ECAC representatives in Slovakia, but also representatives of partner Churches for collaboration and support of ECAC in Slovakia, for spreading their good name, and for cooperation when spreading Christian values in society, TASR wrote.

Carl thanked them for the award and stressed the importance of Churches in society and spreading Christian values both in Slovakia and Austria.

Koch, meanwhile, praised the good cooperation of ECAC in Slovakia and Austria, as well as the collaboration between partner grammar schools in Oberschutren and Banska Bystrica, TASR reported.

Frost spoke about the bigger number of Slovaks in his corps, praised their integration and stressed the importance of cooperation between the corps and local municipal governments.
Your Ultimate Investing Toolkit

Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools:

Portfolio Monitoring

Top Stock Lists

Premium Reports

Stock Screeners

Live News Feed

Premium Support

Free for your first month.
GOODING  Steve and Kris Quigleys grandchildren are getting a good dose of volunteerism.

As heads of the Gooding County Historical Society and its museum, the Quigleys put their family members to work doing things they cant do. Many of the museums 12 board members are getting on in years, said Kris, who stepped in to run the museum when the past director became ill.

We really need some younger people to help, she said.

Shell get no argument from board members and volunteers, the youngest of whom are in their 40s, said research director Lorna Bard, a member of the historical society since the 1970s.

Operating a museum demands a mix of old and new blood: old for continuity and new to continue the work into the future, Bard said.

The group has squirreled away $5,000 for a museum expansion, but they fear therell be no one around to continue their work. The historical society only recently finished unpacking boxes moved about a decade ago from its first museum  the old Gooding post office  to a new building at the south edge of town. The old building, donated to the group when it formed in 1971, was condemned and artifacts were stored for several years while the new museum was built.

Board members are proud of the new museum, said Nancy Turley, in charge of growing the historical societys membership.

Its a warm place, Turley said. Its welcoming.

Its a work in progress, Bard said. New artifacts come in every week.

3 cant-miss items

At the museum, be sure to look for these:

A wooden rocking horse handmade in 1905 by hired men on the George Z. Arkoosh ranch.

A wooden embalming table and wicker ambulance basket donated by Demaray Funeral Home.

The one-room 1914 schoolhouse from Thorn Creek, eight miles northeast of town, donated to Gooding County Historical Society and rehabilitated at the museum site.

Museum information

Where: 273 Euskadi Lane (next to the Basque Center) in Gooding.

When: 10 a.m to 4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, April 1 to Oct. 31.

Cost: Free admission. Annual memberships, $15.

Contact: 208-934-5318.
Chevron Corporation, through a network of subsidiaries, engages in integrated energy and chemicals operations worldwide. The company is the 7th largest integrated oil company worldwide, the 2nd largest in the US, and has been in operation since 1879. Chevron was part of the original Standard Oil Company and is one of the 34 successor companies that were formed when it was broken up. Today, the company brings in roughly $160 billion in annual revenues and is the last remaining oil and gas component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Originally called Standard Oil Of California the company grew quickly via mergers and acquisitions. It was hailed as one of the Seven Sisters to dominate the US and global production throughout the mid-20th century and became even bigger in 1985 when it merged with Gulf Oil. The merger with Gulf Oil resulted in the rebranding from Standard Oil Of California to Chevron (a brand used by the company outside its California jurisdiction) and then ChevronTexaco Corporation in 2005 when that merger took place. The company rebranded again in 2005 to what we know today as Chevron Corporation.

Chevron Corporation is now based in San Ramone, California, and has operations in 180 countries. The company employs more than 42,500 people who operate 5 refineries and 8,000+ Texaco, Chevron, and Standard Oil service stations in the US alone. The company's Exploration and Drilling operations produced a record 3.1 million barrels per day and its US refineries process more than 1 million barrels per day. At the end of 2021, the company has more than 11.3 billion barrels of proven oil and liquid-equivalent reserves and boasted a 112% reserve replacement rate.

The company operates in two segments, Upstream and Downstream. The Upstream segment explores new reserves, develops known reserves, produces petroleum and gas products as needed, transports, processes, pipes, stores, and markets petroleum worldwide. The Downstream segment refines and markets the full line of petroleum-based products including but not limited to fuels such as gas, diesel, and aviation fuel, as well as lubricants, petrochemicals, and plastics. The company transports products via pipeline, rail, marine vessels, and truck.

Chevron recognizes the need to lower the worlds carbon output and is working toward that end. The companys strategy is two-pronged and includes reducing its own carbon output while investing in green and lower-carbon technologies. The companys goal is to invest $10 billion or more into lower carbon energy sources and technologies by 2028.

Chevron is a Dividend Aristocrat. The company has been paying a dividend since 1989 and it has raised it every year since its inception.






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.
The following companies are subsidiares of Archer-Daniels-Midland: 3 Grain Elevators, ACT Exportacao Ltda., ADGENE LABORATOIRE, ADM (Dalian) Animal Health & Nutrition Co. Ltd., ADM (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., ADM (Thailand) Ltd., ADM AGRO S.R.L., ADM Ag Holding Limited, ADM Agri Services Greece MEPE, ADM Agri-Industries Company, ADM Agricultural Commodities Trading (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., ADM Agriculture Limited, ADM Agro Iberica S.L.U., ADM Agro Industries India Private Limited, ADM Agro Industries Kota & Akola Private Limited, ADM Agro Industries Latur & Vizag Private Limited, ADM Agroinvestimentos Ltda., ADM Alliance Nutrition of Puerto Rico LLC, ADM Americas S. de R.L., ADM Andina Peru S.R.L., ADM Animal Health & Nutrition (Nanjing) Co. Ltd., ADM Animal Nutrition (Cambodia) Co. Ltd., ADM Animal Nutrition (Xiangtan) Co. Ltd., ADM Animal Nutrition (Zhangzhou) Co. Ltd., ADM Antwerp NV, ADM Arkady Ireland Limited, ADM Armazens Gerais Ltda., ADM Asia-Pacific Trading Pte. Ltd., ADM Australia Holdings I PTY Limited, ADM Australia Pty. Limited, ADM Bazancourt SASU, ADM Besin ve Tarim Anonim Sirketi, ADM Bio-Productos S.A. de C.V., ADM Bio-Science & Technology (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., ADM Bulgaria Trading EOOD, ADM CARIBBEAN INC., ADM Chile Comercial Limitada, ADM Clinton BioProcessing Inc., ADM Czernin S.A., ADM DO BRASIL LTDA., ADM Direct Polska Sp. z o.o., ADM Dominican Holdings Inc., ADM Dominicana S.A., ADM EMEA Corporate Services GmbH, ADM Edible Bean Specialties Inc., ADM Egypt LLC, ADM El Salvador Ltda. de C.V., ADM Europe Holdco S.L., ADM European Management Holding B.V. & Co. KG, ADM Expatriate Services Inc., ADM Export Co., ADM Food Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ADM Food Technology (Pinghu) Co. Ltd., ADM France, ADM Fuels Company, ADM German Holdings B.V., ADM Germany GmbH, ADM Grain Costa Rica S.R.L., ADM Grain River System Inc., ADM Grain de Venezuela C.A., ADM Guatemala Limitada, ADM Hamburg Aktiengesellschaft, ADM Holding (Thailand) Ltd., ADM Holdings LLC, ADM Honduras S.de R.L., ADM INGREDIENTS S.R.L., ADM Inca S.A.C., ADM Industries Centers Ltd, ADM International Holdings Inc., ADM International Sarl, ADM Investments Limited, ADM Investor Services Inc., ADM Investor Services International Limited, ADM Ireland Receivables Company Limited, ADM Israel, ADM Italia S.r.l., ADM Japan Ltd., ADM Latin America Inc., ADM Logistics Inc., ADM MANAGEMENT LTD., ADM MOROCCO S.A., ADM Mainz GMBH, ADM Malbork S.A., ADM Medsofts Sarl, ADM Mexico Inc., ADM Mexico S.A. de C.V., ADM Milling Co., ADM Milling Limited, ADM Myanmar Company Limited, ADM New Zealand Limited, ADM Nicaragua SA, ADM Nutrition Holding d.o.o. Beograd, ADM Olomouc S.R.O., ADM PORTUGAL SA, ADM Panama S. De R.L., ADM Paraguay S.R.L., ADM Participacoes Ltda., ADM Poland Sp. z o.o., ADM Protexin Inc., ADM Protexin Limited, ADM Pura Limited, ADM Razgrad EAD, ADM Receivables LLC, ADM Rice Inc., ADM Ringaskiddy Unlimited Company, ADM SERVICIOS S.A. DE C.V., ADM STF DMCC, ADM STF Pte. Ltd., ADM STF Switzerland Sarl, ADM Services B.V., ADM Slovakia s.r.o., ADM Specialty Ingredients (Europe) B.V., ADM Spyck GMBH, ADM Sweden AB, ADM Szamotuly Sp. z o.o., ADM Trading (UK) Limited, ADM Trading Australia Pty. Ltd., ADM Trading Company, ADM Trading Cote D'Ivoire, ADM Transportation Company, ADM Trucking Inc., ADM Unterstutzungskasse GmbH, ADM Uruguay SCA, ADM Ventures Investment Corp., ADM WILD Europe GmbH & Co. KG, ADM WILD Nauen GmbH, ADM WILD Netherlands B.V., ADM WILD SEE Kft, ADM WILD Valencia SAU, ADM Wild Gida Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, ADM Wild UK Limited, ADM Worldwide Holdings L.P., ADMEcuador CIA. Ltda., ADMIS Holding Company Inc., ADMIS Hong Kong Limited, ADMIS SINGAPORE PTE. LIMITED, AGRANIX, AIC Seguros SRL, AMT West LLC, AOR, AT Holdings II Company, Agri Port Services Brasil Ltda., Agri Port Services Investments Ltd., Agri Port Services LLC, Agricolas Madagascar SARLU, Agrinational Insurance Company, Agriserve, Agrograin Ltd., Agrograin Ltd. Sucursal Uruguay, Alfrebro LLC, Alfred C. Toepfer International Exportacao e Importacao Ltda., Alfred C. Toepfer International Netherlands B.V., Alimenta USA, Alimentos Texo SA de CV, American River Transportation Co. LLC, Ameriseed, Anco Animal Nutrition Competence GmbH, Archer Daniels Midland (UK) Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Asia-Pacific Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Company South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Archer Daniels Midland Erith Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Europe B.V., Archer Daniels Midland Europoort B.V., Archer Daniels Midland Korea LLC, Archer Daniels Midland Nederland B.V., Archer Daniels Midland Singapore Pte. Ltd., Archer Daniels Midland Vietnam Company Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Wild Nigeria Ltd., Archer Financial Services Inc., Archer-Daniels-Midland Philippines Inc., Arinos Unlimited, Aston Foods & Food Ingredients, BIOPOLIS S.L., BQ Railroad Company, BTECH Tecnologias Agropecuarias e Comercio Ltda., Balanceados Nova S.A. Balnova, Balto Holdco LLC, Barbados Mills Limited, Bela Vista Bio Etanol Participacoes Ltda., Belize Mills Limited, Belwood Company S.A., Benson-Quinn Commodities Inc., Bern Aqua, Bifodan Inc., Biopolis, CONTROLADORA ADM S.A. DE C.V., Campa Sued GmbH & Co KG, Caribbean Agro-Industries Limited, Casablancas sweetener plant, Cattleman's Choice Loomix LLC, Chamtor, Ci ADM Colombia Ltda., Columbia & Willamette Maritime Services Inc., Comhan, Compania ADM S.A. de C.V., Crosswind Petfoods Inc., DE Holdings LLC, DP Holdings LLC, Daavision B.V., Deerland Europe ApS, Deerland Holdings Inc., Deerland Ireland R&D Limited, Deerland Probiotics & Enzymes, Deerland Probiotics & Enzymes A/S, Deerland Probiotics & Enzymes Inc., Eaststarch, Eatem Corporation, Eatem Foods, Elstar Oils, Empresa de Transporte La Estrella S.R.L., English River Pellets Inc., Epicore BioNetworks Inc., Epicore Ecuador S.A., Epicore Networks (U.S.A.) Inc., Erich Ziegler GmbH, Evialis (Shandong) Co. Ltd., Evialis France, Evialis Galicia S.A., Evialis India Limited, FINANCIERE FRANCO MAGYAR POUR LA NUTRITION ANIMALE - FFMNA, FISA Andina S.A.S., FISA Aromas S.A.S., Fasco Mills Co., Federation Sahanala Vanille, Filozoo SRL, Flavor Infusion, Flavor Infusion International S.A., Florida Chemical, Florida Chemical Company LLC, Flotek Flavor & Fragrance LLC, GLOBAL COCOA HOLDINGS LTD., GP Blanching Inc., GPC Trucking Inc., GROUPE PILARDIERE, GUYOKRMA spol. s.r.o., Golden Farm Production & Commerce Company Limited, Golden Peanut Company, Golden Peanut Company LLC, Golden Peanut and Tree Nut Seed SA (Pty) Ltd., Golden Peanut and Tree Nuts S.A., Green Bison Soy Processing LLC, Group Lysac, Guyomarc'h - VCN Company Limited, Guyomarc'h Vietnam Co. Ltd., Guyovital PT, HFR Shipping Company Ltd., HI-NUTRIENTS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED, HRA Shipping Company Ltd., HTI Shipping Company Ltd., Harvest Innovations, Hilltop Grain and Feed, Holding P & A Asia Company Limited, Hubei Meiweiyuan Biotechnology, Ilitchevskiy Maslo Extractionniy Zavod (IMEZ), Industries Centers EOD Trade 2005 Ltd., Invivo NSA Algerie, Invivo NSA Sanpo (Tianjin) Pet Products Co. Ltd, JDS Sarl, Jamaica Flour Mills Limited, Jamaica Rice Milling Company Limited, LANCENTER S.C.A., Liquid Feed Commodities, Logus Bar Ashdod Port Ltd., Malta Industries S.A. de C.V., Malta Texo De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Maniobras Y Servicios Del Interior S.A. de C.V., Master Mix of Trinidad Unlimited, Medsofts Company LLC, Medsofts for Import Co., Medsofts for Investment LLC, Medsofts for Trade LLC (Medsofts Trading), Mepla Comercio e Navegacao Ltda., Mezclas Biomix S.A.S., Monti Foods (Pty) Ltd., Mundo Logistics S.R.L., NEC Facilities LLC, National Enzyme Company LLC, Naviera Chaco S.R.L., Neovia, Neovia Algerie SPA, Neovia Nutricao e Saude Animal Ltda., Neovia Philippines Inc., North Star Shipping S.R.L., NutraDine, NutraDine LLC, NutriMix Feed Company Inc., Nutrilac, Olenex C.V., Olsen's Mill Inc. Four Grain Storage Elevators, P & A Marketing SA, PANCOSMA FRANCE S.A.S, PJSC ADM Illichivsk, PT ADM Indonesia Trading and Logistics, Pancosma & Associates Marketing (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Pancosma (Jiangsu) Feed Additive Co. Ltd., Pancosma (Shanghai) Feed Additives Co. Ltd., Pancosma Canada Inc., Pancosma Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pancosma North America Inc., Pancosma SA, Pedigree Ovens, Pedigree Ovens LLC, PetDine, PetDine LLC, Prairie Pride - Biodiesel Production Plant, Premiere Agri Technologies Asia Inc., Premiere Agri Technologies of Mexico Inc., Proservicios Potencial Humano S.A. de C.V., Provit Sp. z o.o., Pura Foods Limited, Rodelle Inc., SANICOOPA, SDJ Sarl, SORA Laboratories LLC, Sartco Ltda., Schokinag-Schokolade-Industrie Herrmann, Sermix, Servad S.R.L, Setna Nutricion S.A., Silo P. Kruse Betriebs-GmbH & Co. KG, Silo-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH, Societe Industrielle des Oleagineux-SIO, SojaProtein d.o.o. Becej, Sojaprotein, Southern Cellulose Products Inc., Soy Investors LLC, Specialty Commodities, Specialty Commodities LLC, Sul Mineira Alimentos Ltda., Syngenta - Dry Bean Business, Szabadegyhazai Szolgaltato es Vagyonkezeklo KFT, Terminal Stevedores Inc., Terminales De Cargas Especializadas S.A. De C.V., The Pound Bakery, The Pound Bakery LLC, Toepfer International, Toepfer International Trading (Shanghai) Co. LTD., UPSCIENCE ITALIA S.R.L., Upscience, VIA CHEM GROUP a.s. Oilseed Processing Plant, Vantage Corn Processors LLC, WILD Flavors, Wild Amazon Flavors Concentrados e Corantes para Bebidas Ltda., Wild Flavors (Canada) Inc., Wild Flavors Austria GmbH, Wild Flavors Inc., Wild Flavors International GmbH, Wild Flavors Kenya Limited, Wild Flavors Middle East FZE, Wild Flavors Polska Sp. z o.o., Wild Flavors S.A. de C.V., Wild Intermare GmbH, Wild Polska Sp. z o.o., Wild Russia LLC, Wild Tunesia Sarl, Wisium SA (Pty) Ltd., World's Finest Chocolate - New Cocoa Powder Line, and Yerbalatina Ltda..

Read More
Valero Energy Corporation manufactures, markets, and sells transportation fuels and petrochemical products in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and internationally. The company operates through three segments: Refining, Renewable Diesel, and Ethanol. It produces conventional, premium, and reformulated gasolines; gasoline meeting the specifications of the California Air Resources Board (CARB); diesel fuels, and low-sulfur and ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuels; CARB diesel; other distillates; jet fuels; blendstocks; and asphalts, petrochemicals, lubricants, and other refined petroleum products, as well as sells lube oils and natural gas liquids. As of December 31, 2021, the company owned 15 petroleum refineries with a combined throughput capacity of approximately 3.2 million barrels per day; and 12 ethanol plants with a combined ethanol production capacity of approximately 1.6 billion gallons per year. It sells its refined products through wholesale rack and bulk markets; and through approximately 7,000 outlets under the Valero, Beacon, Diamond Shamrock, Shamrock, Ultramar, and Texaco brands. The company also produces and sells ethanol, dry distiller grains, syrup, and inedible corn oil primarily to animal feed customers. In addition, it owns and operates crude oil and refined petroleum products pipelines, terminals, tanks, marine docks, truck rack bays, and other logistics assets; and owns and operates a plant that processes animal fats, used cooking oils, and inedible distillers corn oils into renewable diesel. The company was formerly known as Valero Refining and Marketing Company and changed its name to Valero Energy Corporation in August 1997. Valero Energy Corporation was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.
It is curious to me that national media are taking an off-the-mark slant on the failure of the GOP to pass their own version of a healthcare bill or to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Instead of making it clear that the Republicans do now and have historically opposed any government support for health care for all citizens, the focus is on Trumps campaign promise to end Obamacare and how hes failed. Thats a failure to take advantage of a teachable moment that I lament.

The historically important fact is that the Conservative movement, embracing Grover Norquist and the Koch boys, philosophically opposes government spending on health care for anyone. They are true believers in the free market and, if people really want health care, they will buy it. Economic feasibility of purchasing something that costs thousands of dollars escapes their notice. A spokesman for the Conservative movement said in an interview today on PBS that they will punish GOPers who wouldnt vote for the Trumpcare bill. The promise was to offer support in seven figures to true conservative candidates to defeat those who put their constituents first.

This is the important lesson. The Conservative movement is an ideological position spun by a handful of economists in the 1930s (new book out on James Buchanan) who opposed all and any control of the economy by any government. That is their definition of a free market. Significantly, they state plainly that they oppose electorally imposed regulation and taxation. This means they actually are opposed to a democratic process to produce policy in the name of ideological purity. Some GOP legislators could not betray their voters. But most followed the stick held over their heads held by rigid ideologues. To me, that is the important part of this story: rigid ideologues vs. the will of the people, not a loss for Trump.

HARRIET H. YOUNG

Flagstaff
HAGERMAN  The Hagerman Valley Historical Society is the unlikely owner of a valuable art collection, which has the group scrambling to raise money for a new building to display the paintings.

For now, 600 oil paintings by landscape impressionist Archie Teton Teater donated to the society are housed in a Twin Falls bank vault.

Other artifacts owned by the society have been housed since 1984 in a 1909 bank building at Hagermans State and Main streets. Prior to becoming what the historical society calls the biggest little museum in Idaho, the building was a post office for nearly a half-century. The historical society leases it from the city for a small fee.

To launch the fundraising campaign for the new museum building, the society will host a dinner from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Aug. 5 in City Park along with tours of Teaters studio, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, overlooking the Snake River near Hagerman.

3 cant-miss items

At the museum, be sure to look for these:

A full replica of the 3 million-year-old Hagerman Horse fossil on loan from the Smithsonian Institution.

An original lithograph map of Capt. John C. Fremonts 1843 expedition from St. Louis to Oregon, one of five copies known to exist.

Teaters oil painting of Custers Last Stand.

Museum information

Where: 100 State St. S., Hagerman.

When: 1-4 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, year-round.

Cost: Free admission. Memberships are $15, or $25 per couple.

Contact: 208-837-6288.
JEROME  Jerome County was home to the Minidoka Relocation Center  known to locals as Hunt Camp  the largest of 11 relocation centers throughout the West used by the federal government during World War II to house thousands of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.

Barracks from the Hunt Camp can be found reused as homes, office buildings and barns on both sides of the river. A barrack recreating life at the camp is featured in every tour of Jerome County Historical Societys IFARM (Idaho Farm and Ranch Museum) at the crossroads of U.S. 93 and Interstate 84.

But thats not the societys traditional historical museum; its in downtown Jerome in a former train depot.

The society, founded in 1981, started its first downtown museum in a log cabin before moving into The Depot Museum about a decade ago. Jeromes historical society had an unusually robust group of volunteers, but many are aging out now.

3 cant-miss items

At The Depot Museum, be sure to look for these:

Photos and memorabilia from the iconic North Side Inn which sat until 1967 at the northwest corner of Main Street and Lincoln Avenue. The building was deemed a fire hazard and demolished. A near replica sits near the west end of Crossroads Point Boulevard off U.S. 93.

The 1910 museum building itself  one of Jeromes two railroad depots  sat on the west side of town across the street from todays livestock commission yard. The city of Jerome purchased the building in the 1970s from Union Pacific Corp. for $1 and moved it into town for the senior citizens.

A childs sled made by internees at the Minidoka Relocation Center from metal scraps and wooden shipping crates.

Museum information

Where: The Depot Museum is at 220 First Ave. E.; IFARM is at U.S. 93 and Interstate 84.

When: Depot Museum hours are 1-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, April 1 to Dec. 31; winter hours are 1-4 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, Jan. 1 to March 31. IFARM is by appointment.

Cost: Free admission at both locations. Memberships: $15 individual, $25 family, $75 supporting member and $100 business member.

Contact: Rob Ellis, tour guide, 208-308-9156.
EDEN  Folks in the east end of Jerome County are riled up about the possibility of a new dairy coming to the area.

We dont want a stinking dairy near the freeway, said Judy Holland, who lives a mile south of the Interstate 84 south of Eden.

Holland is not alone in her sentiments. We are all furious, she said.

But such hostility is premature, Jerome County commissioners say.

The dairy residents are worried about is not an ordinary dairy operation: Its the University of Idahos Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment  CAFE  a $45 million world-class agricultural research facility to be funded by the state legislature, the university and private industry.

Theres a lot of objecting going on about nothing, Commissioner Roger Morley said Thursday. The university has not purchased land for the facility nor has it chosen a location.

Several dozen county residents showed up at Edens July City Council meeting, said Larry Hall, executive director of Jerome 20/20 Inc., after hearing rumors that the university had purchased a thousand acres of Art Henrys farmland near the interstate, east of Skeleton Butte, for a 2,000-cow dairy.

Folks in the area are worried about odors from the dairy, groundwater depletion and damage to roads, Holland said.

Hall tried to put peoples concerns  and the rumors  to rest, he said Friday.

The university used Henrys farm ground and White Clover Dairy north of Idaho Highway 25 on U.S. 93 to complete feasibility studies for the CAFE. Retrofitting the existing dairy proved to be too costly, Hall said. Starting from scratch on bare ground is the most logical plan.

But that is as far as plans have gone. If the university chooses a site in Jerome County, the proposal would have to go through the normal county zoning requirements needed for a special use permit including several public hearings, said Planning and Zoning Administrator Art Brown. No paperwork has come across his desk yet, he said.

This wont go through without the publics involvement, Morley said. I promise.

The Idaho legislature set aside $10 million for the project this year and is expected to throw in another $5 million. But the university wont see any of that money until it liquidates $15 million worth of land it already owns, plus finds another $15 million from private sources.

The proposed dairy plans include a rotary milking parlor and high-tech equipment that records and monitors each cows milk production. Some beef cattle research will be included.

The CAFE will also include large-scale research facilities for crop, nutrient and water-management studies, and a dormitory for students. The facility would be the largest in the nation and the best in the world, said Michael Parrella, dean of the universitys College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The project began as part of the universitys agriculture department, but Parrella wants to involve other departments, such as the colleges of Natural Resources and of Business and Economics.

I think theres an opportunity for the whole campus to be engaged from an educational perspective, he recently told the Times-News. Other universities are showing interest in the project, which could begin construction in 2019.

Ideally the CAFE will be placed within 20 to 25 miles of the College of Southern Idahos campus in Twin Falls, putting it in the heart of Idahos dairy country, Commissioner Charlie Howell said. Much of Jerome County would fit the bill.

Commissioners support any new business that comes in if its appropriate for the county, Howell said.

This wont go through without the publics involvement. I promise. Jerome County Commissioner Roger Morley
(Reuters) - U.S. law enforcement authorities on Friday were seeking six teenagers from Burundi who went missing after a robotics competition in Washington, two of whom had been spotted crossing the border into Canada. The teens, aged 16 to 18, were last seen Tuesday after the FIRST Global Robotics Challenge, Washington, D.C., police said. "We have been in touch with the Metropolitan Police Department; they told us that they are doing what they can to find those teens," Benjamin Manirakiza, first counsellor in the Burundi Embassy in Washington, said in a phone interview on Friday. "We have confidence in the capacity of the police." A Washington police spokeswoman said the teenagers' disappearance was still under investigation on Friday, and declined to say what U.S. state they were spotted crossing from. The teens left their hotel room key cards in a chaperone's bag, but took their clothes with them when they left, according to FIRST Global, the U.S. non-profit that organised the competition. Police have said they do not believe foul play was involved. Two of the teens - Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, and 16-year-old Don Ingabire - were spotted crossing the United States border into Canada. The other missing Burundians were named as Nice Munezero, 17; Kevin Sabumukiza, 17; Richard Irakoze, 18; and Aristide Irambona, 18. Officials at Canada's Border Services Agency, the immigration and refugee ministry and the Burundian embassy in Ottawa, said they had no information on the teens' whereabouts. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police declined to comment on the teens' whereabouts and said that anyone who crossed the border illegally would be returned to border services. "Crossing the Canadian border without reporting at a port of entry is illegal," said spokeswoman Annie Deslile, in an e-mail. "If the individual who has illegally entered between ports of entry claims to be a refugee, he/she is then transported to a port of entry." A spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the agency had no information about the missing teens. High school students from more than 150 countries took part in the competition. An all-girl squad from Afghanistan drew worldwide attention when President Donald Trump intervened after they were denied U.S. visas. Burundi has long been plagued by civil war and other violence. Fighting has killed at least 700 people and forced 400,000 from their homes since April 2015. (Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston and Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Bernadette Baum and David Gregorio)
BAMAKO (Reuters) - Malian and French troops have arrested a close associate of a preacher whose jihadist group has claimed dozens of attacks against Western and Malian targets, Mali's security minister said on Sunday. Macina Liberation Front, based in central Mali's Mopti region, is led by cleric Amadou Koufa who has called upon followers to take up arms and rebuild the historic Fulani empire of Massina. "I confirm that the terrorist Alhousseyni Ag Assaleh, in charge of logistics for...the group run by Amadou Koufa was arrested on 8 July during a joint operation with Barkhane in the Timbuktu region," General Salif Traore told Reuters. He said the arrest was kept secret until now because of ongoing efforts to capture others in his network. A spokesman for France's 4,000 strong Barkhane counter-terrorism force in the Sahel said he did not communicate on people placed "hors de combat", or "out of combat". This term may refer to a fatality or an arrest or anything else that affects the subject's capacity to fight, he said. Barkhane is collaborating with regional troops in five West African countries to form a new force to fight desert militants who have regrouped since the French army drove them out of their urban strongholds in northern Mali in 2013. Losses have been high among Malian forces in recent months. The United Nations, which has a peacekeeping force in the country, reported 131 soldiers killed over the past year versus 49 in the previous year. (Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Toby Chopra and Elaine Hardcastle)
By Natalia Zinets and Matthias Williams KIEV (Reuters) - Russian aggression is to blame for violence in eastern Ukraine, where people are dying in what should be seen as a "hot war" rather than a "frozen conflict", the U.S. special envoy to the Ukraine peace talks said on a visit to Ukraine on Sunday. Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, was appointed to his current role on July 7 to help resolve the conflict between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists, which has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014. Washington cites the conflict as a key obstacle to better relations with Russia. On a visit to the Ukrainian-held town of Kramatorsk, 690 km (430 miles) southeast of Kiev, Volker said he would prepare a set of recommendations on how Washington can better engage with the peace process. "This is not a frozen conflict, this is a hot war, and it's an immediate crisis that we all need to address as quickly as possible," he said. Relations between Ukraine and Russia went into freefall after Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent outbreak of a pro-Russian insurgency in the eastern Donbass region. Ukraine accuses Russian of sending in its own soldiers and military equipment, which Moscow denies. Volker replied in the affirmative when asked whether he saw the conflict as being as the result of Russian aggression rather than internal Ukrainian factors. "We've seen what's happened, we understand the way this conflict has begun, we understand the way it is being managed today, and that's why it's important that the United States become more engaged." Fighting in the Donbass region has killed 12 people in a particularly bloody week, prompting Germany and France to urge immediate progress in implementing ceasefire agreements signed in Belarus in 2015 that are regularly flouted. Leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia will speak by phone on Monday to discuss the conflict. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in early July that Russia must make the first move to bring peace to Ukraine, which President Petro Poroshenko called a powerful signal of Washington's backing. A career diplomat, Volker is a former aide to Republican Senator John McCain, a Russia hawk who wants the United States to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, a move the previous administration under Barack Obama shied away from. (Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
France 24 Videos

In 2014, Nadia Murad was captured, alongside many other Yazidi women, by the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in the Iraqi town of Sinjar. She was held hostage, enslaved, tortured and raped, before escaping to Mosul and making her way to Germany. After sharing the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize with Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, she is now a leading global advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence. Nadia Murad spoke to FRANCE 24 from the Paris Peace Forum. Murad said that more needs to be done to prevent sexual violence in conflict."Progress has been made on recognising survivors' right to reparations (...) but I think it's time to put political weight and resources behind the words," Murad told FRANCE 24's Catherine Norris Trent."Not much has been done to prevent what happened to the Yazidi women and girls," Murad said. More than eight years later, "we still have 2,800 women and children who are missing in ISIS [another name for the IS group] captivity in Syria, Turkey and some parts of Iraq. No effort has been made by the international community or our own government or any international organisations to look for the missing Yazidi women and children and bring them back"."Sexual violence does not go away when war is over (...) Ukraine is sadly another example of a failure to follow through on commitments to preventing sexual violence in war," Murad continued."Women's rights were never a priority for the international community to prevent the use of sexual violence," Murad said.Read more on FRANCE 24 EnglishRead also:Amnesty International demands urgent help for survivors of sexual violence in TigrayAllegations of mass rape by Russian troops in UkraineIraqs Yazidi community: Nadia Murads ongoing fight for justice
By Simon Lewis YANGON (Reuters) - Activists and journalists in newly democratic Myanmar continue to be followed and questioned by state surveillance agents, a U.N. envoy said on Friday, at the conclusion of a visit she said was beset by official snooping and access restrictions. Aung San Suu Kyi came to power last year after a landslide in the landmark 2015 elections. She does not oversee the police or the military, which ruled the country for decades and retains its powerful position under a constitution drafted by the former junta. Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee told a news conference at the conclusion of her 12-day visit that she faced "increasing restrictions" on her access. Lee said the government, citing security concerns, had prevented her from visiting parts of the northeast where the military is accused of abuses against civilians in its conflict with ethnic rebels. She was also not allowed to visit three journalists detained last month by the army and charged with contacting a rebel group, despite the site of their detention being a popular tourist spot, the human rights envoy said. Myanmar regularly blocks monitors and journalists from travelling to areas near the conflicts citing concerns over safety. Security officials say monitoring prominent people is a normal part of their work. Lee said it was "unacceptable" that people meeting her were watched and even followed by agents she suspected to be from the police Special Branch that once stalked political opponents during almost half a century of dictatorship. BIRTH CERTIFICATES "I have to say I am disappointed to see the tactics applied by the previous government still being used," she said. "In the previous times, human rights defenders, journalists and civilians were followed, monitored and surveyed and questioned. That's still going on," Lee added. Suu Kyi's office did not directly address the issues of access or surveillance, but said it was "disappointed" with Lee's end of mission statement, which "contains many sweeping allegations and a number of factual errors". "We had hoped that the Special Rapporteur's statement would reflect the difficulties of resolving the problems that are a legacy of decades of internal conflict, isolation and underdevelopment," it said in a statement released early on Saturday. Myanmar is also refusing entry to a separate U.N. fact-finding mission appointed by the Human Rights Council in Geneva to look into allegations of abuses by the security forces. The panel has a special focus on the western state of Rakhine, where the army led an operation late last year in response to attacks by militants caused an estimated 75,000 people Rohingya Muslims flee across the border to Bangladesh. About 1.1 million Rohingya - who many in Myanmar view as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh - live are denied citizenship and face restrictions on their movements in Rakhine. Lee visited the state and credited Myanmar for attempts to implement some recommendations made in March by a advisory panel led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, including the issuing of birth certificates to 20,000 children not previously registered. Buddhist officials in Muslim-majority areas have in the past refused to draw up such documents for Rohingya newborns. However, Lee said: "The general situation for the Rohingya has hardly improved since my last visit in January and has become further complicated in the north of Rakhine." Continued alleged abuses by security forces and killings by suspected Rohingya militants of those perceived to be working with the government left many Rohingya "terrified and often caught between violence on both sides", she said. (Reporting by Simon Lewis; Editing by Alison Williams and Michael Perry)
United Parcel Service, Inc. provides letter and package delivery, transportation, logistics, and related services. It operates through two segments, U.S. Domestic Package and International Package. The U.S. Domestic Package segment offers time-definite delivery of letters, documents, small packages, and palletized freight through air and ground services in the United States. The International Package segment provides guaranteed day and time-definite international shipping services in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Canada and Latin America, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East, and Africa. This segment offers guaranteed time-definite express options. The company also provides international air and ocean freight forwarding, customs brokerage, distribution and post-sales, and mail and consulting services in approximately 200 countries and territories. In addition, it offers truckload brokerage services; supply chain solutions to the healthcare and life sciences industry; shipping, visibility, and billing technologies; and financial and insurance services. The company operates a fleet of approximately 121,000 package cars, vans, tractors, and motorcycles; and owns 59,000 containers that are used to transport cargo in its aircraft. United Parcel Service, Inc. was founded in 1907 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Heres some unsolicited advice for President Donald Trump: Dont listen to any lawyers who might tell you that you can pardon yourself, or even that its a close legal question. You cant  and no court is going to rule otherwise.

Theres a decent historical argument about why, but its beside the point. The bottom line is that if the president could pardon himself, we would no longer have a republic  nor a government of laws rather than men. We would be a dictatorship, not a democracy.

You know that. Americans know it. The Supreme Court knows it. Now lets move on.

The very idea of self-pardon is the kind of silly technicality that non-lawyers think lawyers engage in all the time. Im not going to offer a full-throated defense of the legal profession, but were not really that dumb or bad  at least not usually.

The idea of the pardon power itself is old, going back at least to medieval England  and the king. It is based, roughly speaking, on the idea that the king is in charge of administering the common law, and therefore has the authority to go around that law and issue a pardon or reprieve when its desirable to do so.

This made some sense in a system that wasnt democratic and imposed the death penalty as punishment for all felonies, including relatively minor ones.

In theory, the justification could be mercy, that most Christian of virtues. In practice, kings sometimes issued pardons to political allies, or in exchange for compensation, or to get military conscripts.

As a result, as early as 1311 (you read that right), Parliament forced the king to promise that he would only pardon by process of law and the custom of the realm. The idea was to rein in the pardon power, making it into an instrument of law, not of arbitrary royal prerogative.

Given that worry about the anti-legal nature of the pardon power was already more than 450 years old when the Founding Fathers drafted the U.S. Constitution during the hot summer of 1787, its a bit surprising that the pardon power even made it in.

In Philadelphia, the more rights-oriented republicans, like George Mason of Virginia, questioned the whole idea of the pardon power. The more pro-executive participants, like Alexander Hamilton and James Wilson, managed to get it in, albeit without much debate. The idea was that pardons served mercy and could be expedient.

No one so much as hinted that the president could pardon himself. The king, after all, was above the law  he would never have to pardon himself because he could never be brought before one of his own courts. The president wasnt above the law.

At the North Carolina ratifying convention, the future Supreme Court justice James Iredell gave a lengthy defense of the need to have a merciful pardon power somewhere.

In the speech, Iredell pointed out that the president wouldnt be able to pardon an impeachment. The clear implication was that if the president was himself impeached, he could then be criminally tried. Iredell also commented that it was highly unlikely that the president would treasonously pardon a traitor  further reason to believe no one contemplated self-pardon.

But frankly, the history isnt the point. The basic problem with self-pardon is that it would make a mockery of the very idea that the U.S. operates under the rule of law. A president who could self-pardon could violate literally any federal law with impunity, knowing that the only risk was removal from office by impeachment.

We have a name for an elected leader who is outside the law: dictator. And dictatorship is fundamentally inconsistent with the republic established by the Constitution. In fact, its a little difficult to think of any single idea that would more grossly violate the rule of law than a president free to break any and every law and then wave a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Of course, its true that no court has ever held that the president cant pardon himself  because no president has so outrageously tried to flout our basic constitutional principles.

We can thank God for that. But more immediately, we can thank a constitutional structure that is designed to limit the institutional power of any single branch of government.

And thats why I can predict with complete confidence that no court would uphold a presidential self-pardon. To do so would be to render the courts essentially useless as checks on the executive, to say nothing of Congress, which passes the laws in the first place.

This isnt a normal legal problem for courts to resolve by weighing plausible, competing arguments. Its the whole ball of wax: the survival of constitutional government. The courts will treat it as such.

If the president uses the pardon power to end investigations against his cronies and protect himself, thats a political problem that would call for a political solution, namely impeachment.

But if the president were to try to pardon himself, the courts would simply rule that the pardon was ineffectual. Once out of office, by impeachment or by the end of his term, the president would be subject to criminal charges.

It wont come to that, I believe. The Republic isnt about to turn into a dictatorship. To make sure things stay that way, no one should talk as though self-pardon is a realistic possibility. It isnt  not in a functioning democracy with the rule of law.
Our portfolio of high quality UK commercial property is focused on London Offices and Retail around the UK. We own or manage a portfolio valued at 13.7bn (British Land share: 10.3bn) as at 30 September 2020 making us one of Europe's largest listed real estate investment companies. Our strategy is to provide places which meet the needs of our customers and respond to changing lifestyles - Places People Prefer. We do this by creating great environments both inside and outside our buildings and use our scale and placemaking skills to enhance and enliven them. This expands their appeal to a broader range of occupiers, creating enduring demand and driving sustainable, long term performance. Our Offices portfolio comprises three office-led campuses in central London as well as high quality standalone buildings and accounts for 65% of our portfolio. Our Retail portfolio is focused on retail parks and shopping centres, and accounts for 31% of our portfolio. Increasingly our focus is on providing a mix of uses and this is most evident at Canada Water, our 53 acre redevelopment opportunity where we have plans to create a new neighbourhood for London. Sustainability is embedded throughout our business. Our places, which are designed to meet high sustainability standards, become part of local communities, provide opportunities for skills development and employment and promote wellbeing. In April 2016 British Land received the Queen's Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development, the UK's highest accolade for business success for economic, social and environmental achievements over a period of five years.
The following companies are subsidiares of Thermo Fisher Scientific: 236 Perinton Parkway LLC, 27 Forge Parkway LLC, ABR--Affinity BioReagents, ACI Holdings Inc., ARG Services LLC, ASPEX Corporation, Abgene Inc., Abgene Limited, Acoustic Cytometry Systems Inc., AcroMetrix LLC, Acros Organics B.V.B.A., Advanced Biotechnologies Limited, Advanced Scientifics (ASI), Advanced Scientifics Inc., Advanced Scientifics International Inc., Affymetrix Biotech Participacoes Ltda., Affymetrix Biotech Shanghai Ltd, Affymetrix Inc, Affymetrix Japan K.K., Affymetrix Pte Ltd, Affymetrix UK Ltd, Afora S.A.U., Ahura Scientific, Alchematrix Inc., Alchematrix LLC, Alfa Aesar, Alfa Aesar (China) Chemical Co. Ltd., Alfa Aesar (Hong Kong) Limited, Allergon AB, Alphine Mountain Limited, Ambion Inc., Apogent Denmark ApS, Apogent Finance Company, Apogent Holding Company, Apogent Technologies Inc., Apogent Transition Corp., Apogent U.K. Limited, App-Tek International Pty Ltd, Applied Biosystems B.V., Applied Biosystems Finance B.V., Applied Biosystems International Inc., Applied Biosystems LLC, Applied Biosystems Taiwan LLC, Applied Biosystems Trading (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Applied Biosystems de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Applied Scientific Corporation, Avances Cientificos de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Avocado Research Chemicals Limited, B.R.A.H.M.S. Biotech GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. UK Ltd, BAC BV, BAC IP BV, Barnstead Thermolyne LLC, Beijing Phadia Diagnostics Co Ltd, Bender MedSystems GmbH, BioTrove Corporation, BioTrove International Inc., Bioanalysis Labsystems S.A., Biochemical Sciences LLC, Biolab, BmT GmbH Laborprodukte, Bonsai Tecnologies - Sistemas para Biotecnologia e Industria Unipessoal Lda, Brammer Bio, Bumi-Sans Sendirian Berhad, CAC Limited, CB Diagnostics AB, CB Diagnostics Holding AB, CEPH International Corporation, CHK Holdings Inc., CRS Robotics, CTPS LLC, Capitol Scientific Products Inc., Capitol Vial Inc., Cellomics Inc., CellzDirect Inc., Cenduit GmbH, Cenduit LLC, Cezanne S.A.S., Chase Scientific Glass Inc., Chromacol Limited, Clintrak, Clintrak Clinical Labeling Services LLC, Clintrak Pharmaceutical Services LLC, Cohesive Technologies (UK) Limited, Cohesive Technologies Inc., Columbia Diagnostics Inc., Compendia Bioscience Inc., Comtest Limited, Consolidated Technologies Inc., Consultores Fisher Scientific Chile Ltd, Core Informatics, Core Informatics LLC, Core Informatics UK Ltd., D-finitive Technologies Inc., DCG Systems B.V., DCG Systems C.V., DCG Systems G.K., DCG Systems GmbH, DCG Systems Korea Ltd., DCG Systems LLC, DPI Newco LLC, DSM Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Dharmacon, Diagnostix Ltd., Dionex (China) Analytical Ltd, Dionex (Switzerland) AG, Dionex (UK) Limited, Dionex Austria GmbH, Dionex Benelux B.V., Dionex Brasil Instrumentos Cientificos Ltda, Dionex Canada Ltd., Dionex China Limited, Dionex Corporation, Dionex Denmark A/S, Dionex Holding GmbH, Dionex I LLC, Dionex Pty Ltd., Dionex S.A., Dionex S.p.A., Dionex Singapore Pte Ltd., Dionex Softron GmbH, Dionex Sweden AB, Distribution Solutions International Inc., Doe & Ingalls Investors Inc., Doe & Ingalls Limited, Doe & Ingalls Management LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties II LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties LLC, Doe & Ingalls of California Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Florida Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Maryland Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Massachusetts Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Operating LLC, Doublecape Holding Limited, Doublecape Limited, Drakeside Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Duke Scientific Corporation, Dynal Biotech Beijing Limited, EGS Gauging Ltd., EGS Gauging Technical Services Company, EP Scientific Products LLC, Ecochem N.V., EnviroEquip Pty Ltd, Epsom Glass Industries Limited, Equibio Limited, Erie Electroverre S.A., Erie Finance Limited, Erie LP Holding LLC, Erie Scientific Company of Puerto Rico, Erie Scientific Hungary Kft, Erie Scientific LLC, Erie U.K. Limited, Erie UK 1 Limited, Erie UK 2 Limited, Erie UK Holding Company, Erie UK Senior Holding Limited, European Laboratory Holdings Limited, Eutech Instruments Europe B.V., Eutech Instruments Pte Ltd., Eutech Instruments Sdn Bhd, Ever Ready Thermometer Co. Inc., FEI Asia Pacific Co. Ltd., FEI Australia Pty Ltd, FEI CPD B.V., FEI Company, FEI Company Japan Ltd., FEI Company of USA (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd., FEI Czech Republic s.r.o., FEI Deutschland GmbH, FEI EFA Inc., FEI EFA International Pte. Ltd., FEI Electron Optics B.V., FEI Electron Optics International B.V., FEI Europe B.V., FEI France SAS, FEI Global Holdings C.V., FEI Hong Kong Company Limited, FEI Houston Inc., FEI Italia Srl, FEI Korea Ltd., FEI Melbourne Pty Ltd., FEI Microscopy Solutions Ltd, FEI Munich GmbH, FEI Norway Holding AS, FEI SAS, FEI Saudi Arabia LLC, FEI Servicos de Nanotecnologia Ltda., FEI Technologies Inc., FEI Technology de Mexico S.A. de C.V., FEI Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., FEI Trondheim AS, FEI UK Ltd., FHP LLC, FRC Holding Inc. V, FS (Barbados) Capital Holdings Ltd., FS Casa Rocas Holdings LLC, FS Mexicana Holdings LLC, FSI Receivables Company LLC, FSII Sweden Holdings AB, FSII Sweden Holdings I AB, FSIR Holdings (UK) Limited, FSIR Holdings (US) Inc., FSUK Holdings Limited, FSWH Company LLC, FSWH II C.V., FSWH International Holdings LLC, Fermentas China Co. Ltd, Fermentas Inc., Fermentas International, Fermentas Sweden AB, Fermentas UK Limited, Fiberlite Centrifuge LLC, Finesse Scientific Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Finesse Solutions AG, Finesse Solutions Inc., Finnzymes Oy, Fisher Alder S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Asia Manufacturing Ventures Inc., Fisher Bermuda Holdings Limited, Fisher BioImage ApS, Fisher BioPharma Services (India) Private Limited, Fisher BioSciences Japan G.K., Fisher BioServices Inc., Fisher Bioblock Holding II SNC, Fisher CLP Holding Limited Partnership, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 1, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 2, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 3, Fisher Canada Limited Partnership, Fisher Chimica BVBA, Fisher Clinical Logistics LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services (Bristol) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Colombia) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Korea) Co. Ltd, Fisher Clinical Services (Mexico) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Peru) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services Colombia S.A.S., Fisher Clinical Services GmbH, Fisher Clinical Services Inc., Fisher Clinical Services Japan K.K., Fisher Clinical Services Latin America S.R.L., Fisher Clinical Services Limited Liability Company, Fisher Clinical Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Clinical Services Peru S.R.L, Fisher Clinical Services Pte Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services U.K. Limited, Fisher Emergo B.V., Fisher Germany Holdings GmbH, Fisher Hamilton China Inc., Fisher Hamilton Mexico LLC, Fisher Holdings ApS, Fisher Internet Minority Holdings L.L.C., Fisher Laboratory Products Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Fisher Luxembourg Danish Holdings SARL, Fisher Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Maybridge Holdings Limited, Fisher Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific (Austria) GmbH, Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Fisher Scientific (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific (SEA) Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific A/S, Fisher Scientific AG, Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Limited, Fisher Scientific Biotech Line ApS, Fisher Scientific Brazil Inc., Fisher Scientific Central America Inc., Fisher Scientific Chile Inc., Fisher Scientific Colombia Inc., Fisher Scientific Company, Fisher Scientific Company L.L.C., Fisher Scientific Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Fisher Scientific Europe Holdings B.V., Fisher Scientific GTF AB, Fisher Scientific Germany Beteiligungs GmbH, Fisher Scientific GmbH, Fisher Scientific Holding Company LLC, Fisher Scientific Holding HK Limited, Fisher Scientific Holding U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific Holdings (S) Pte Ltd, Fisher Scientific International LLC, Fisher Scientific Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Fisher Scientific Ireland Investments Unlimited, Fisher Scientific Ireland Limited, Fisher Scientific Japan Ltd., Fisher Scientific Jersey Island Limited, Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd, Fisher Scientific Latin America Inc., Fisher Scientific Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Fisher Scientific Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific Mexico Inc., Fisher Scientific Middle East and Africa Inc., Fisher Scientific Norway AS, Fisher Scientific Operating Company, Fisher Scientific Oxoid Holdings Ltd., Fisher Scientific Oy, Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific S.A.S., Fisher Scientific S.L., Fisher Scientific SPRL, Fisher Scientific The Hague I B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague II B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague III B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague IV B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague V B.V., Fisher Scientific U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company 2, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company Limited, Fisher Scientific Unipessoal Lda., Fisher Scientific Venezuela Inc., Fisher Scientific Worldwide (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Holdings I C.V., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Inc., Fisher Scientific de Mexico S.A., Fisher Scientific of the Netherlands B.V., Fisher Scientific spol. S.r.o, Fisher Servicios Clinicos (Chile) LLC, Fisher Servicios Clinicos Chile Ltda, Fisher WWD Holding L.L.C., Fisher Worldwide Distribution SPV, Fisher Worldwide Gene Distribution SPV, Flux Instruments, Fuji Partnership, G & M Procter Limited, G V Instruments Limited, GV Instruments Canada Ltd., GV Instruments Inc, Gatan Inc, General Scientific Company Sdn Bhd (M), Genomed molekularbiologische und diagnostische Produkte GmbH, Gerhard Menzel B.V. & Co. KG, Gold Cattle Standard Testing Labs Inc., Golden West Indemnity Company Limited, Goring Kerr Detection Limited, Greenville Service Company Inc., HENO GmbH i.L., Hangar 215 Inc., Helmet Securities Limited, Henogen, HighChem, HyClone International Trade (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Hybaid Limited, I.Q. (BIO) Limited, IDnostics AG, ILS Laboratories Scandinavia AB, Inel Inc., Inel SAS, InnaPhase Inc., InnaPhase Limited, IntegenX, Intrinsic BioProbes Inc., Intrinsic Bioprobes Inc., Invitrogen (Shanghai) Investment Co. Ltd., Invitrogen Argentina SA, Invitrogen BioServices India Private Limited, Invitrogen Europe Limited, Invitrogen Finance Corp., Invitrogen Holdings LLC, Invitrogen Holdings Ltd., Invitrogen Hong Kong Limited, Invitrogen IP Holdings Inc., Invitrogen Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ion Torrent Systems Inc., Ionalytics Corporation, JSC Thermo Fisher Scientific, Jouan LLC, Jouan Limited, Jouan SA, Kendro Containment & Services Limited, Kendro Laboratory Products Ltd, Kettlebrook Insurance Co. ltd., Keystone Scientific, KonTEM GmbH, Kyle Jordan Investments LLC, LIFE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, LTC Tech South Africa PTY Ltd., La-Pha-Pack GmbH, Lab Vision (UK) Limited, Lab Vision Corporation, Lab-Chrom-Pack LLC, Lab-Line Instruments Inc., Labomex MBP S. de R. L. De C.V., Laboratoire Service International - L.S.I, Laboratory Management Systems Inc., Laboratory Specialties Proprietary Ltd., LambTrack Limited, Laser Analytical Systems Inc., Liberty Lane Investment LLC, Liberty Lane Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Life Sciences International (Poland) SP z O.O, Life Sciences International Holdings BV, Life Sciences International LLC, Life Sciences International Limited, Life Technologies AS, Life Technologies Australia PTY Ltd., Life Technologies BPD AB, Life Technologies BPD UK Limited, Life Technologies Brasil Comercio e Industria de Produtos para Biotecnologia Ltda, Life Technologies Chile SpA, Life Technologies Clinical Services Lab Inc., Life Technologies Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Czech Republic s.r.o., Life Technologies DaAn Diagnostic (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Europe B.V., Life Technologies Finance Ltd., Life Technologies Finland Oy, Life Technologies GmbH, Life Technologies Holdings PTE Ltd., Life Technologies Inc., Life Technologies International B.V., Life Technologies Japan Ltd., Life Technologies Korea LLC, Life Technologies Limited, Life Technologies Magyarorszag Kft, Life Technologies New Zealand Ltd., Life Technologies Norway Investments US LLC, Life Technologies Polska Sp z.o.o., Life Technologies SA, Life Technologies SAS, Life Technologies s.r.o, Linkage Biosciences Inc., Linkage Biosciences S.a.r.l., Loftus Furnace Company, Lomb Scientific, Lomb Scientific (Aust) Pty Limited, MTI-GlobalStem, Marketbase International Limited, Matrix MicroScience Inc., Matrix MicroScience Ltd., Matrix Technologies Corporation Limited, Matrix Technologies LLC, Maybridge Chemical Company Limited, Maybridge Chemical Holdings Limited, Maybridge Limited, Medical Analysis Systems Inc., Medical Analysis Systems International Inc., Medical Diagnostics Systems Inc., Metavac LLC, Microgenics Corporation, Microgenics Diagnostics Pty Limited, Microgenics GmbH, Microm International GmbH, Microm Laborgerate S.L.U, Molecular BioProducts Inc., Molecular Probes Inc., Molecular Transfer Inc., NAPCO Inc., NERL Diagnostics LLC, NOVODIRECT GmbH Labor- und Industrie- Megerate, Nalge (Europe) Limited, Nalge Nunc International (Monterrey) LLC, Nalge Nunc International Corporation, Nanjing WeiKangLe Trading Industrial Co Ltd, NanoDrop Technologies LLC, National Scientific Company, Navaho Acquisition Corp., Neomarkers Inc., New FS Holdings Inc., NewcoGen PE LLC, Nihon Dynal K.K., Niton Asia Limited, NovaWave Technologies Inc., Nunc A/S, ONIX Systems Inc., OXOID CZ s.r.o., Odyssey Holdings Corporation, Odyssey Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 1 S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 2 S.a r.l., Odyssey Venture Corporation, Omega Data Systems, One Lambda Inc, Onix Holdings Limited, Orme Scientific Limited, Owl Separation Systems LLC, Oxoid (ELY) Limited, Oxoid 2000 Limited, Oxoid AS, Oxoid Australia Pty. Limited, Oxoid Company, Oxoid Deutschland GmbH, Oxoid Holding SAS, Oxoid Holdings Limited, Oxoid Inc., Oxoid International Limited, Oxoid Investments GmbH, Oxoid Limited, Oxoid N.V., Oxoid New Zealand Limited, Oxoid Pension Trustees Limited, Oxoid Senior Holdings Limited, Oxoid UKH LLC, PAX - DSI Acquisition LLC, PE AG, Pacific Rim Far East Industries LLC, Pacific Rim Investment LLC, Panomics L.L.C., Panomics S.R.L., Patheon, Patheon API Inc., Patheon API Manufacturing Inc., Patheon API Services Inc., Patheon Austria GmbH & Co KG, Patheon B.V., Patheon Banner U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon Biologics (NJ) LLC, Patheon Biologics Australia Pty Ltd, Patheon Biologics B.V., Patheon Biologics LLC, Patheon Calculus Merger LLC, Patheon Cooperatief U.A., Patheon Development Services Inc., Patheon Finance LLC, Patheon France SAS, Patheon Holdings B.V., Patheon Holdings I B.V., Patheon Holdings II B.V., Patheon Holdings SAS, Patheon I B.V., Patheon I Holding GmbH, Patheon Inc., Patheon International AG, Patheon Italia S.p.A., Patheon KK, Patheon Life Science Products International GmbH, Patheon Manufacturing Services LLC, Patheon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Patheon Pharmaceuticals Services Inc., Patheon Puerto Rico Acquisitions Corporation, Patheon Puerto Rico Inc., Patheon Regensburg GmbH, Patheon Softgels B.V., Patheon Softgels Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings LLC, Patheon UK Limited, Patheon UK Pension Trustees Limited, Pelican Acquisition Corporation, Perbio Science (Canada) Company, Perbio Science AB, Perbio Science BVBA, Perbio Science France SAS, Perbio Science Inc., Perbio Science International Netherlands B.V., Perbio Science Invest AB, Perbio Science Nederland B.V., Perbio Science Projekt AB, Perbio Science Sweden Holdings AB, Perbio Science Switzerland SA, Perbio Science UK Limited, Phadia AB, Phadia Diagnosticos Ltda, Phadia GmbH, Phadia Holding AB, Phadia International Holdings C.V., Phadia Korea Co. Ltd, Phadia Luxembourg Holdings S.a.r.l., Phadia Malta Holdings Limited, Phadia Oy, Phadia Real Property AB, Phadia Sweden AB, Phadia Taiwan Inc., Phadia US Inc., Phadia s.r.o., Pharmacaps Mexicana SA de CV, Phenom-World B.V., Phenom-World Holding B.V, Phenom-World Innovations B.V., Phinotex, Pierce Biotechnology Inc., Pierce Milwaukee Holding Corp., Pierce Milwaukee Inc., Polychromix, Power Sweden Holdings I AB, Power Sweden Holdings II AB, Power Sweden Holdings III Aktiebolag, Princeton Gamma-Tech Instruments LLC, Princeton Security Technologies, Prionics AG, Prionics Asia Ltd., Prionics Deutschland GmbH, Prionics France SAS, Prionics Italia S.r.l., Prionics Lelystad B.V., Prionics USA Inc., Priority Air Express LLC, Priority Air Express Pte. Ltd., Priority Air Express UK Limited, Priority Air Holdings Corp, Priority Solutions International, Promedica Pty Limited, Proxeon, Proxeon Biosystems ApS, Qiagen, REP GBP I-B Blocker Inc., Raymond A Lamb Limited, Remel Europe Limited, Remel Inc., Richard-Allan Scientific Company, Robbins Scientific LLC, Robocon Labor- und Industrieroboter Gesellschaft m.b.H, Rupprecht and Patashnick, Rupprecht and Patashnick (R&P), Russell pH Limited, S.C.I. du 10 rue Dugay Trouin, SCI Inno 92, STC Bio Manufacturing Inc., Samco Scientific (Monterrey) LLC, Samco Scientific LLC, Saroph Sweden AB, Schantz Road LLC, Seradyn Inc., Shanghai Life Technologies Biotechnology Co. Limited, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (C-I) Trading Co. Ltd, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (S) Trading Co. Ltd, Southern Trials (Pty) Ltd., Specialty (SMI) Inc., Spectra-Physics AB, Spectra-Physics Holdings Limited, Spectra-Physics Holdings USA LLC, Spectronex, Staten Island Cogeneration Corporation, Sterilin Limited, Stokes Bio Ltd., Sweden DIA (Sweden) AB, SwissAnalytic Group GmbH, Systems Manufacturing Corporation, TFLP LLC, TFS Breda B.V., TFS LLC, TFS Singapore HK Limited, TFSL Financing GP LLC, TFSL Senior GP Holdings 2 LLC, TK Partnership, TKA Wasseraufbereitungssysteme, TMOI Inc., TPI Real Estate Holdings LLC, TSP Holdings I LLC, TWX LLC, Technology Design Solutions Pty Ltd, Thermedics Detection de Argentina S.R.L, Thermo Allen Coding Limited, Thermo Asset Management Services Inc., Thermo BioAnalysis LLC, Thermo BioAnalysis Limited, Thermo BioSciences Holdings LLC, Thermo CIDTEC, Thermo CRS Holdings Ltd., Thermo CRS Ltd., Thermo Cambridge Limited, Thermo Cayman Holdings Ltd., Thermo Corporation, Thermo DMA Inc., Thermo Detection de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Dutch Holdings Limited Partnership, Thermo EGS Gauging LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings I LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings II LLC, Thermo Eberline LLC, Thermo Electron (Calgary) Limited, Thermo Electron (Chile) S.p.A., Thermo Electron (Karlsruhe) GmbH, Thermo Electron (Management Services) Limited, Thermo Electron (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Electron A/S, Thermo Electron Australia Pty Limited, Thermo Electron Export Inc., Thermo Electron Holdings SAS, Thermo Electron Industries, Thermo Electron LED GmbH, Thermo Electron LED S.A.S., Thermo Electron Limited, Thermo Electron Manufacturing Limited, Thermo Electron Metallurgical Services Inc., Thermo Electron North America LLC, Thermo Electron Pension Trust GmbH, Thermo Electron Puerto Rico Inc., Thermo Electron SAS, Thermo Electron Scientific Instruments LLC, Thermo Electron Sweden AB, Thermo Electron Sweden Forvaltning AB, Thermo Electron Weighing & Inspection Limited, Thermo Elemental Limited, Thermo Environmental Instruments LLC, Thermo Fast U.K. Limited, Thermo Finland Holdings LLC, Thermo Finland Holdings MT1 B.V., Thermo Finland Holdings MT2 B.V., Thermo Finnigan LLC, Thermo Finnigan Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Malta Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN-I) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (CN-II) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings I Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings II Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings 2) LLC, Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) II Limited, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Heysham) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Kandel) GmbH, Thermo Fisher CHK Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust II, Thermo Fisher Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Thermo Fisher Cyprus Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Detection Mexico LLC, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics (Ireland) Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AB, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AG, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Aps, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Austria GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics B.V., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics K.K., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics NV, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.L.U., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.p.A. , Thermo Fisher Diagnostics SAS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Thermo Fisher Eurobonds Ltd., Thermo Fisher Financial Services Inc., Thermo Fisher GP LLC, Thermo Fisher German Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Germany B.V., Thermo Fisher India Divestco Private Limited, Thermo Fisher India Holding B.V., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Thermo Fisher Israel Ltd., Thermo Fisher Production et Services SAS, Thermo Fisher Project Cyprus LLC, Thermo Fisher Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Asheville) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Australia) C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Barbados) Holdings Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Breda) Holding BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen) GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (CN) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China-HK) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (DE) Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Ecublens) SARL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance II) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Fuji) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Holding II) B.V. & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Johannesburg) (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mexico City) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Milwaukee) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mississauga) Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Monterrey) S. De R.L. De C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (NK) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) Austria Holding GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-I) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-II) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN1) UK Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) Dutch LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Praha) s.r.o., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) GmbH & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Schweiz) AG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Instruments Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Suzhou) Instruments Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific AL-1 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific AU II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Aquasensors LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V.B.A., Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (I) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (II) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics UAB, Thermo Fisher Scientific Beteiligungsverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Biosciences Corp., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brahms LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Instrumentos de Processo Ltda., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Servicos de Logistica Ltda, Thermo Fisher Scientific C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cayman Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chemicals Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific China (C-I) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China (S) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings IV B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings Aps, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus IV C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus V C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Denmark Senior Holdings ApS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie 1 Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Europe GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC Finance C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSUKHCO Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Falcon Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Finance Company BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific GENEART GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Germany BV & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific HR Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) I, Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) II , Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings Europe Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific IT Services GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Pvt Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Malta) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments Malta (Sweden Financing) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Invitrogen Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific K.K., Thermo Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific LSI Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments III S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments IV S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life NL Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Netherlands Holding C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Switzerland Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Tech Korea Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Enterprise Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investments Holding LP, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Luxembourg Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Enterprise Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg German Holdings S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Life Technologies UK Holding S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings I S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings II S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malta Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Messtechnik GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Mexico City S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Middle East Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Milano Srl, Thermo Fisher Scientific NHK Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Holdings, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway Holdings AS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway US Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Operating Company LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Oy, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 C.V, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Panama I Cayman Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Peru S.R.L., Thermo Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific SL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Financing LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Holdings Australia LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific South Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific SpA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg I S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Investments Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Switzerland Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific TR Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Taiwan Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific West Palm Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Wissenschaftliche Gerate GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Worldwide Investments (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific eCommerce Solutions LLC , Thermo Fisher Senior Canada Holdings LLC, Thermo Foundation Inc., Thermo Gamma-Metrics Holdings Pty Ltd., Thermo Gamma-Metrics LLC, Thermo Gamma-Metrics Pty Ltd, Thermo Holding European Operations LLC, Thermo Hypersil Ltd, Thermo Hypersil-Keystone LLC, Thermo Informatics Asia Pacific Pty Ltd., Thermo Instrument Controls de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Thermo Kevex X-Ray LLC, Thermo Keytek LLC, Thermo LabSystems Inc., Thermo LabSystems S.A., Thermo Life Science International Trading (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Thermo Life Sciences AB, Thermo Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo MF Physics LLC, Thermo Measurement Ltd, Thermo Measuretech Canada Inc., Thermo Neslab LLC, Thermo Nicolet Limited, Thermo Onix Limited, Thermo Optek (Australia) Pty Ltd., Thermo Optek Limited, Thermo Optek S.A., Thermo Orion Inc., Thermo Portable Holdings LLC, Thermo Power Corporation, Thermo Process Instruments GP LLC, Thermo Process Instruments L.P., Thermo Projects Limited, Thermo Quest S.A., Thermo Radiometrie Limited, Thermo Ramsey Italia S.r.l., Thermo Ramsey LLC, Thermo Ramsey S.A., Thermo Re Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Pte Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Sdn Bhd, Thermo Scientific Portable Analytical Instruments Inc., Thermo Scientific Services Inc., Thermo Securities Corporation, Thermo Sentron Canada Inc., Thermo Sentron Limited, Thermo Shandon Inc., Thermo Shandon Limited, Thermo Suomi Holding B.V., Thermo TLH (UK) Limited, Thermo TLH L.P., Thermo Trace Pty Ltd., Thermo-Fisher Biochemical Product (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ThermoLase LLC, ThermoSpectra Limited, Trek Diagnostic Systems LLC, Trek Diagnostic Systems Ltd., Trek Holding Company II Ltd., Trek Holding Company Ltd., Trex Medical Corporation, USB Corporation, Union Lab Supplies Limited, United Diagnostics Inc., VG Systems Limited, Westover Scientific Inc., ZAO PE Biosystems, eBioscience GmbH, eBioscience Ltd, eBioscience SAS, and picoSpin LLC.

Read More
Scooped from the earth, clay is one of the most versatile substances. Its history in New Mexico goes back centuries, millenniums even.

Paying homage to clay and to those to carve it, craft, throw it and build with it is at the heart of the Silver City Clay Festival (clayfestival.com), which continues today through July 30, said Jen Pack, festival coordinator.

There are things for adults, for youths, stimulating academic inquiries, hands-on workshops, Pack said. Its a really broad festival. Theres something for everybody. We tried to incorporate lots of free events.

The festival is the brainchild of Lee Gruber, co-owner of Syzygy Tile (syzygytile.com), a Silver City-based manufacturer of handmade clay tile.

In connection with one of the first arts and cultural districts established in the state under the umbrella of the MainStreet program, the city was asked to create a signature event, Gruber said.

My husband and I, weve made our living with clay for the last 20-odd years, she said. So we thought we could have something called a clay festival. Its a means not only to show the artistry of our state, but also to use it as sort of a connective tissue between the different regions of our state. Historically, the indigenous cultures used it to build their house and make the potteries that cook their food. It seemed like a really good metaphor for the state of New Mexico to really highlight clay.

Although events will be going on all week, one of the exciting highlights will be a workshop taught by renowned Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo artist Clarence Cruz, Pack said.

This workshop will focus on hand-building by the coil method using traditional micaceous clay to create functional ware, she said. Each student will receive 25 pounds of mica clay dug from the earth by the artist at his pueblo.

The clay has flecks of sparkling, gold-like material, Pack said, adding that there will be a pit firing on Thursday, the final day of the workshop.

The festival, which started small six years ago, has been growing steadily, Gruber said.

We had several thousand people here last year, she said. We dont have a large place where we can the count the numbers who are coming through. But we try to count through the galleries and the lectures and the workshops and the children who take the different classes. We had about 2,500-2,600 last year, and I remember the first year we had about 800 or 900, so it has grown little by little.

Whats even more encouraging is to see more artists from across the state and even the country participate, Gruber said.

We see artists from all over the country to enter the exhibitions and the market, she said. I look at it as an economic driver for a small community, but its wonderful to see the interest from Santa Fe and Taos and those coming up from Las Cruces. Its great just to see the artists in this state starting to connect. Its very encouraging.

In connection with the festival, local participants of the Clay Trail (claytrail.org)  a four-county enterprise to promote clay artisans  will have an exhibit at the visitor center and will be selling in the market, said trail coordinator Kitty Stolzenbach.

And if someone prefers to see some of the areas original clay users, the Gila Cliff Dwellings (nps.gov/gicl/index. htm) are well-worth the effort of traveling the winding, mountainous, 44-mile, two-hour drive from Silver City.

Of course, the main attraction is the 800-year-old dwellings themselves, one of the best, well-preserved examples of Mogollon peoples dwellings, Hawthorne said.

Because the dwellings are inside caves, they are much better-preserved than other Native American dwellings of the American Southwest, said Hugh Hawthorne, park superintendent. One of the big things that people really like is they can actually walk through the dwellings and get a close-up view.

Guided and self-guided hikes are available, he said.

The dwellings are in a really spectacular natural setting, he said. Its like an oasis in the high desert. What people really like is the walk up, a mile round trip. You walk through a beautiful canyon with shade trees and running water, which surprises people.
Theres a lot going on in Sean Ganderts newly published futuristic novel, Lost in Arcadia.

Society suffers an addiction to a social media platform and a virtual reality interface. The platform and the interface carry the name of Arcadia.

The book also paints a picture of a dystopian America in the year 2037.

A fundamentalist ex-preacher named Haight is in the White House, and society is falling apart. Millions of people are giving up the warmth of human relations for the coldness of technology.

Arcadia is the creation of a genius, Juan Diego Reyes, an Albuquerque resident. Reyes is so obsessed with his work that he abandoned his family five years earlier.

His wife, Autumn, wants a divorce. She tracks him down to an office at Mesa del Sol. Autumn finds him living in a messy, smelly state of electronic equipment and dirty laundry.

Their children  Holly, Gideon and Devon  are trying to fix their own emotional compass.

New Mexico is a presence in the novel.

Early in the book, Holly and a friend visit the west-central New Mexico village of Quemado and from there go to see Walter De Marias The Lightning Field, a piece of art created in 1977 made up of 400 steel poles placed in a grid.

As Gandert says of Holly, There was something magical about this precise configuration, and she walked through the work knowing that there were a power here, even if she didnt understand it or know how to respond appropriately.

Her brother, Gideon, is trying to relearn his roles in the music business as he contemplates leaving the hustle of New York City. Their younger brother, Devon, attends Albuquerque High, but for him school is an easy segue between (video) games.

Gandert, the author, is from Albuquerque and graduated from Albuquerque High in 2004. He went to Yale, where he majored in English and film studies. Gandert currently teaches English at Florida Southern College in Lakeland.

He said his first step as writer was participating in a program in which high school students wrote articles for the Albuquerque Journal.

Gandert, whose uncle is famous Albuquerque photographer Miguel Gandert, said Rudolfo Anaya and Jimmy Santiago Baca encouraged him to write.

Among Ganderts favorite authors are those who incorporate satire, namely David Foster Wallace, Franz Kafka and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I use satire as a political weapon to criticize society, to exaggerate certain elements and put them in different contexts, Gandert said.

Hes also influenced by Albuquerque. To him, the city has seemed larger than life. Its not a huge city, but the things that happen in it always felt big, felt epic to me. And I felt it was the best place to put something satirical, he said.
Most of the howls heard at a public information meeting on the Mexican gray wolf hosted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Saturday afternoon were from environmental groups saying a recently released updated recovery plan for the subspecies doesnt go far enough to protect it.

Why is it that the needs of the Mexican gray wolf, in the program thats for their purpose, are largely not met? a Tularosa man asked a panel of three FWS officials.

What were trying to do with the recovery of the New Mexican gray wolf is to find a balance, responded Sherry Barrett, the FWS Mexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator. Its difficult when youre re-establishing a top carnivore on a working landscape.

Around 75 people, many wearing lime green T-shirts emblazoned with, Wolves Without Boundaries, attended the meeting at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Albuquerque to listen to information about the plan and ask questions of those who wrote it.

Although most of the opinions represented were from supporters of wolf reintroduction, their concerns sometimes reflected those on both sides of the debate.

Mexicos involvement in the recovery process was mentioned several times throughout the two-hour question and answer session.

The draft of the recovery plan stipulates that the population of wolves in Mexico, currently at 28, must increase to 170 before delisting can occur.

Why does our plan rely so heavily on Mexico? asked Donna Corcoran, adding that the country recently shifted much of its funds allocated to species recovery to the critically endangered vaquita porpoise, of which there are fewer than 30 left in the wild.

Barrett acknowledged that Mexico is having some financial issues right now, but he said they are looking for other sources of funding and remain committed to the wolfs recovery.

She cited the ocelot and Sonoran pronghorn as examples of successful cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico to protect endangered species.

Many participants also voiced concerns over New Mexicos Department of Game and Fishs veto power over the release program.

Game and Fish left the Mexican gray wolfs Interagency Field Team in 2011, leaving FWS to largely administer the recovery program in the state.

Last year, the state sued FWS to block them from releasing wolves in the state.

Ive been to many New Mexico Game and Fish meetings, said Albuquerque resident Brenda McKenna. I simply dont have any confidence at all that they can be a steward of the Mexican wolf.

Barrett said the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish has worked with FWS for the majority of the time Mexican wolf recovery efforts have been underway and the agency prefers to collaborate with states in cases like this one.

We think this program has a high chance of success, Barrett said.

Public comment on the plan will close Aug. 29, and the plan will be finalized by Nov. 30.
I read the article in the June 25 Albuquerque Journal on the possibility of another Base Realignment and Closure review and strongly support the need for one.

There have been five BRAC rounds between 1988 and 2005. Despite efforts by the Department of Defense to initiate another round, Congress has consistently resisted one for the last 12 years.

As stated in the article, the Army currently has over 20 percent excess base infrastructure capacity, and the Air Force has over 25 percent. We are wasting billions of tax dollars annually maintaining unneeded DoD infrastructure while the backlog of infrastructure maintenance and repair requirements continues to increase. Because of congressional intransigence, the DoD is forced to waste more and more money that could otherwise be spent to improve and modernize the nations war-fighting capability. In the last century, Congress established limits on the number of positions that can be eliminated at a DoD installation or consolidated at another facility without a BRAC. This makes significant changes impossible without a BRAC, and now Congress had made a timely BRAC impossible. This latest political delaying tactic, which has been used for more than a decade, is to repeatedly vote against authorizing another BRAC round. It is inconceivable that any viable private-sector enterprise would operate in this manner.

Our New Mexico legislators are among the obstructionists. According to the article, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., has voted four times to block a BRAC. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., stated he will not support a BRAC because, it is a hyper-politicized process. I have been involved in past BRACs, as well as chairing the 1991 Federal Advisory Commission on consolidation of DoD research and development laboratories. In my opinion the BRAC process, while not without faults, is apolitical as executed within the military services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Fortunately, the process was designed to minimize political influence and has been improved with every BRAC round. The Cost of Base Realignment (COBRA) model has been the accepted model for measuring costs and savings, as well as the impacts on military capabilities. The model was improved between BRAC rounds by using lessons learned from previous BRACs.

There was a time in the latter part of the last century when DoD could make timely technical management decisions about consolidating facilities without excessive meddling by politicians. One example is outdoor facilities for radar cross section signature characterization of stealthy aircraft models. In the 1980s there were numerous ground facilities to test models of low observable RCS designs, some of which were located in California. The DoD studied the issue, and in the absence of political interference opted to close most of the facilities and expand the capability of what became the National RCS Test Facility at Holloman AFB. A similar decision was made more than a decade earlier when there was a proliferation of rocket sled facilities at test ranges. Again, the decision was made to close other facilities and expand the one at Holloman AFB. These two examples disprove the assertion by Pearce that the size of political delegations has a significant influence on the DoD facility consolidation process.

In summary, Congress needs to get serious about eliminating the waste of taxpayer dollars, put military needs first and get on with another BRAC round without further delay.
Republicans and Democrats agree  too many children in New Mexico are growing up in unacceptable circumstances.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently released its annual Kids Count report on the status of child well-being in each state. The news for New Mexico was disheartening.

While our state showed improvement on most measures, we are not keeping up with other states. Once again, we came in at 49th overall, placing ahead of just one state, Mississippi.

Reports like this one motivated me to start AppleTree Educational Center in Truth or Consequences back in 1999. I believed New Mexico could do better, and I felt that focusing on early childhood education was the key to helping our states children overcome any circumstances.

AppleTree serves hundreds of families with children, prenatal through age 24, in Sierra County each year. Our evidence-based programs have positively impacted many key health and well-being indicators for our county. More kids are entering school ready, avoiding risky behavior, graduating on time and going to college. Yet in 2015 Sierra County become the poorest county in the state.

My organization and others like it do everything we can to give kids a good start in life, and I am proud of our work. But I also recognize that we will not see the results of our efforts for another generation and there are urgent challenges facing New Mexico that we must fix now.

After working in the field of early childhood and family support services for the past 24 years, I am convinced that until we address the root causes of poverty in New Mexico, we will not be able to address the effects of poverty. Our state will continue to struggle until we strengthen our economy and improve the quality of life for all New Mexicans.

Too many families in our state are living on the edge. Around 141,000 children in New Mexico  29 percent  live in poverty. There are 22,659 families in our state that do not have a parent in the workforce. In 2014, 111,000 kids experienced one instance of food insecurity, meaning that for at least one day that year, their families were not sure they would be able to put food on their tables.

Meeting the full needs of children obliges us to create healthy families, safe environments and thriving communities. We cannot build a better future for our children unless we create more economic opportunities for New Mexicans.

Much of this work will require common-sense policies to take the shackles off the states economy. For example, our tax code is a mess. Its industry carve-outs benefit the big guys while our mom-and-pop businesses are stuck paying the bill. We also have too many redundant regulations and overlapping governing authorities that unnecessarily increase the cost of doing business in New Mexico.

Changing New Mexicos economic climate requires us to make every operation of state government efficient and effective. To increase business activity in our state, we need to make it easier to do business. If we want to change the long-term fortunes of our state, we must shift our focus on policies that will increase hope and opportunity.

Too often we center on treating the outcomes of poverty rather than curing poverty itself. Now is the time to take strong actions and improve New Mexicos economy before we fall further behind. We cannot wait another 20 years for things to get better.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has just one month left before hes due to report on the likely fate of New Mexicos two newest national monuments, as well as nearly two dozen others around the nation.

New Mexicans on both sides of the debate are getting antsy.

Ultimately, the decision to downsize the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and/or the Rio Grande del Norte national monuments in New Mexico  or not  lies with President Donald Trump. But Trump is waiting on Zinkes recommendation, due no later than Aug. 24. Zinke told Congress on June 22 he would visit New Mexico to discuss the monuments with concerned parties in two weeks. Late Thursday, an Interior Department spokeswoman said the agency, responsible for millions of acres of federal lands, still wasnt ready to announce Zinkes visit.

So far in this process, the Interior secretary has not been entirely predictable. In mid-June, he recommended scaling back the size of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. But in the same week he also removed Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho and Hanford Reach National Monument in Washington from his list of monuments under review.

On Friday, the former Republican congressman from Montana announced he also would recommend no changes for the Canyons of the Ancients monument, which covers 178,000 acres in southwestern Colorado. In doing so, Zinke revealed part of what is driving his decisions.

Canyons of the Ancients is gorgeous land, but its monument status as the most high-density Native American archaeological sites in the nation is clear, he said in a statement. The history at this site spans thousands of years, and the federal protection of these objects and history will help us preserve this site for a thousand more years.

The key words are very likely high-density. Zinke and Trump have likened many of the monuments designated during President Barack Obamas tenure as sprawling land grabs they hope to right-size. A relatively small, high-density collection of Native American artifacts and objects might seem less conspicuous to Zinke than a monument like, say, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, which isnt contiguous and drapes across more than a half-million acres. Thats not to say Zinke will suggest reducing the southern New Mexico monument, but size does matter in this ongoing review.

Politics also matters. A likely driver of Zinkes decision to suggest shrinking Bears Ears National Monument in Utah was the fact the states entire congressional delegation and governor  all Republicans  strongly support the move. The political picture in New Mexico is more complicated. We have four Democrats and one Republican in the state delegation, and the Republican  Rep. Steve Pearce  represents the district where Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks is located.

Pearce has suggested shrinking the monument by as much as 88 percent. Meanwhile, all four of the Democrats in the state delegation oppose shrinking either of the Obama-designated national monuments in question in New Mexico. Sen. Tom Udall, who hosted a public rally in support of preserving the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument near Taos on Friday, told me earlier this month hes worried Pearce has the ear of the White House on the southern N.M. monument.

That concern is justified. Pearces longtime chief-of-staff, Todd Willens, just took over as the deputy assistant secretary at Interior this month, and you can bet Zinke is seeking his input on the New Mexico monuments. Pearce himself was one of Trumps biggest backers in the 2016 campaign, and Trump remembers stuff like that.

No matter what Zinke decides, I do hope he listens to a broad cross-section of New Mexicans when he convenes meetings on the fate of the states monuments. During a conference call Thursday with public officials and business and community members  a state senator, state representative, two county commissioners, four mayors, a chamber of commerce president and a representative of a sportsmens group  who support keeping the two monuments as-is, I learned none had been notified or invited to any meetings with Zinke. Yet two supporters of shrinking the monuments recently told me they have been told to be ready to meet with him.

If Zinke hopes to reflect the wishes of New Mexicans when it comes to their monuments, he needs to listen to those on all sides of the debate.

E-mail: mcoleman@abqjournal.com.
Recently, BYU-Idaho adjunct professor Ruthie Robinson was dismissed from her position in eastern Idaho. She alleges that the termination was due to a private Facebook post in which she expressed support for the LGBTQ community.

BYU Idaho, as a private entity, is completely within its right as a private club to establish whatever policies it wants, just like Spanky in the film Little Rascals is free to preach gender intolerance at his private He Man Womun Haters Club.

However, this freedom to craft and act upon policies of intolerance precisely exposes why the so called Blaine Amendment continues to be a necessary and powerful protection for Idahos citizens and their tax dollars. The Blaine Amendment of Idahos constitution prohibits tax dollars to be distributed to sectarian entities including schools with religious purposes.

Idahos public schools welcome students and staff of all races, religions, languages, disabilities and personal beliefs into the public space as equals. The Blaine Amendment protects employees and students from the possibility that tax dollars would be used to fuel and promote a religious ideology that discriminates against a citizen for their beliefs or identity including sexual orientation and gender identity.

Wayne Hoffman, executive director for the Idaho Freedom Foundation, penned a recent op-ed in which he advocated for Idahoans to support the removal of the Blaine Amendment in an effort to increase school choice. Such a repeal would allow public tax dollars to be distributed directly to private religious schools.

However, such a repeal would also open the very real possibility that private religious institutions would, in turn, utilize the public tax dollars to promote religious ideology; some of which many citizens of Idaho would find discriminatory such as not allowing staff or students that identify as LGBTQ to work or attend such institutions.

Its not just LGBTQ populations that could be targeted. Under such a repeal, publicly funded but privately managed schools could implement policies they see fit just as they have done all along. If a private school does not want students with disabilities to attend, then they dont have to. In contrast, public schools accept all students regardless of disability.

Private schools are a good fit for many students and their families that want their child to receive some form of a specialized education including religious studies. The separation between between themselves and the publics bank account allows for the very autonomy that many parents desire when they send their children to these schools.

Regardless of how one feels about private schools in the Gem State, the Blaine Amendment was designed to protect citizens hard-earned tax dollars from subsidizing the churches and religious schools in Idaho. This has the added benefit of prohibiting the use of the publics coins to schools which are used promote intolerance to staff or students in the name of religious ideology; it ensures that all students in Idaho are treated with respect and compassion regardless of religion, race, language, soexual orientation, and gender identity.

BYU-Idaho is free, as a private entity, to continue promoting whatever values its leadership feels is appropriate because the Blaine Amendment provides the freedom for such an institution to be free from the reigns of government control. However, dont expect the public to subsidize the school to promote their version of religious ideology.

And for what its worth regarding BYUs dismissal of Ruthie Robinson, I think we can all agree that the Little Rascals were much better off when the club became gender inclusive. Just a thought.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

For nearly three years, Leonie Rosenstiel was barred from seeing her own mother by the professional guardian/conservator who was appointed after Rosenstiel realized her 92-year-old mothers dementia was worsening and went to court for help.

Before she initiated the legal action in 2003 that ended up with Decades LLC being put in charge of Annette Rosenstiels care and finances, Leonie says she had seen her mother at least several times a week.

But months into the guardianship, Leonie  who had initially asked to be her mothers guardian and conservator  alleges she was suddenly told her presence would be harmful to her mother and that her mother didnt want to see her. She was banned.

When Leonie was allowed to see her mother again in mid-2007, Annette Rosenstiel, by that time 96, told her she thought Leonie had moved away, because she had been absent for so long.

Those are some of the claims, along with allegations that her mothers financial empire crumbled due to mismanagement, in a lawsuit filed by Leonie Rosenstiel in 2013 against Decades LLC describing the nine years Annette Rosenfield was a protected person under the guardianship/conservator system in New Mexico.

Annette Rosenstiel died in 2012 at the age of 100. Leoine is her only child.

Allegations in the lawsuit  isolation of family members, mismanagement of assets, runaway guardianship costs  echo the kind of complaints from families  in New Mexico and elsewhere  who have called for reform of court systems designed to protect adults deemed mentally incapacitated.

The lawsuit lays out what it describes as astonishing expenses, ranging from legal fees to landscaping. Even now, the law firms representing Decades seek to have their bills paid from whats left of the estate  of which Leonie Rosenstiel is personal representative and sole heir.

Privacy rights

The allegations in the case have, until now, been hidden from public view at the urging of lawyers for Decades, who have argued that sealing was essential to protect Annette Rosenstiels privacy rights.

While statute makes court records in guardian/conservator cases confidential, civil lawsuits like Leonie Rosenstiels, which alleges Decades overspent and improperly failed to diversify her mothers assets until it was too late to prevent huge losses, are typically public.

After the Journal intervened in the case, state District Judge Alan Malott of Albuquerque on July 10 rescinded his earlier sealing order.

Malott, who had rejected a previous attempt by Leonie Rosenstiel to unseal her own case, ruled that as the personal representative who is authorized to act on behalf of her mothers estate, Leonie Rosenstiel had the right to waive confidentiality in the case.

Such confidentiality provisions primarily, if not solely, are designed to protect the dignity and privacy of a protected person, and to protect them from exploitation by others, Malott wrote.

Even though New Mexico law doesnt specifically provide for such waiver, Malott wrote, it is axiomatic the rights we cherish as citizens of the United States and State of New Mexico may be waived if done so knowingly and without duress or coercion 

Malott described the lawsuit as essentially a professional malpractice case, but said he believed sealing would still be justified absent Leonie Rosenstiels waiver.

Big dollars

Rosenstiels case is also unusual because of the huge sums of money involved.

Decades is alleged to have racked up astonishing expenses in caring for Rosenstiel at her home and mismanaging her assets, watching passively as Annettes net worth fell by millions of dollars, Rosenstiels lawsuit claims.

Decades denies the allegations, saying its flexibility to adjust investments was limited by an earlier court order and that the losses were due to unforeseeable vagaries of the market.

A financial expert hired by Leonie Rosenstiels attorney in one court filing said the estate was at one time worth more than $12 million.

But Annettes care and asset management cost more than $3.7 million over the nine-year period, the lawsuit states, while losses to her estate were estimated by one of Rosenstiels CPA experts to be in the millions of dollars.

In a single year, Decades reported disbursements of about $666,476, including legal billing of $249,832, and landscaping costs of $45,179  expenses deducted from Annette Rosenstiels assets.

Two years later, the lawsuit alleges, Decades spent $480,454 in home health-care expenditures, more landscaping at $17,775 and $2,252 for fish care.

Annual disbursements varied from a low of $156,588 to more than $660,000 for 2008 and 2009. In 2008, Annette broke her hip and used a wheelchair until her death.

Decades, with two teams of attorneys, has fought back. The company contends the lawsuit is without merit and that Rosenstiels financial losses were beyond its control.

Gregory MacKenzie, an attorney for Decades, asked Malott to keep the court filings secret at a hearing in early July, but said his client wasnt concerned about public scrutiny.

He told Malott that evidence in the case, set for a jury trial in late October, would vindicate Decades as acting prudently and within the standard of care.

The company in its response to the lawsuit said its responsibility was to administer the conservatorship for Annette Rosenstiels benefit, which entailed honoring her express wishes that she be allowed to live in her home for as long as medically and financially possible and paying expensive home health care costs to ensure this objective could be reached.

As for allegations of asset mismanagement, the company said things were fine and income strong up until 2007 and that diversification before then would have had negative tax consequences. When the situation changed in November 2007, Decades said it promptly sought Court intervention and the power to diversify.

It was Leonie Rosenstiel who, at that point, Decades alleges, sought to postpone that court hearing.

Decades in its response to the lawsuit also asked that Rosenstiels estate pay for its defense of the case. MacKenzie didnt return a call seeking comment. Lewis returned a call but declined comment, citing Malotts admonition that he didnt want the case tried in the news media.

Didnt want a guardian

Annette Rosenfield, published author and lecturer who held a Ph.D. in anthropology, was present during the November 2003 closed guardianship hearing in which her fate was determined.

According to a partial transcript of that hearing, filed as part of the malpractice case against Decades, attorney Charles Reynolds was representing Annette Rosenstiel.

She does not want to leave her home, he told the court. She wants to preserve her right to autonomy, her right to express herself.

He told the court that Annette had written three books, one of them 700 pages, and that she had a close relationship with pueblo Indians.

Annette Rosenstiel also addressed the court and talked about the pueblo Indians.

We visited them yesterday and they were thrilled, she told District Judge Theresa Baca. They walked with us. They invited us to dinner 

At one point in the hearing, the transcript shows that Annette Rosenstiels court-appointed guardian ad litem, Albuquerque attorney Michael Cadigan, told the judge, What she wants me to tell you is that she loves her daughter, but theres been friction in the management of assets. Annette recognizes she needs a conservator  someone to help her with her finances. Someone other than her daughter, just an independent fiduciary 

As for a guardian, Reynolds relayed to the court, she doesnt want a guardian at all, but that if the court appoints one she prefers it be a professional guardian and someone other than her daughter.

Family fortune

Leonie Rosenstiels lawsuit said her father, Raymond Rosenstiel, a graduate of the American Institute of Banking, had a number of business interests and held a seat on the New York Mercantile Exchange. He died in 1994.

Leonie and her now-deceased husband, Arthur Orrmont, moved with her mother to New Mexico from New York state in 1997.

I was able to build it on my own with my husband, Annette Rosenstiel testified at her own guardianship hearing. Because I wouldnt want for anything in the world to disturb the structure of the financial empire, if you want to put it this way, that we were able to maintain in the many years of our marriage.

Leonie Rosenstiel originally asked to be appointed her mothers guardian and conservator, even though her own husband was ill and needed care.

Leonies lawsuit contends that her mother had been increasingly influenced by a full-time health care aide, who was inappropriately inquiring about her mothers financial affairs and mentioning an inheritance.

Decades principal Nancy Oriola, whose company was eventually appointed guardian and conservator, was first appointed by Judge Baca to be the court visitor  the person who gives a judge a recommendation on whether a guardianship/conservatorship is needed.

Leonie Rosenstiel says she paid Oriola $30,000.

The November 2003 hearing resulted in Decades being appointed conservator, on the recommendation of Reynolds, and limited guardian in charge of day-to-day medical decisions. Leonie was limited guardian for end-of-life and emergency medical treatment.

Friction developed early on between Leonie and Decades, the lawsuit states, and within four months Leonie contends she was barred from seeing her mother.

Even when allowed to resume visits three years later, the visits had to be cleared in advance and were monitored by a caregiver so that certain topics  like suing Decades  were not brought up.

Leonie Rosenstiels lawsuit alleges that isolating wards from their families removes one source of oversight of the guardians activities and makes the incapacitated person even more dependent upon the guardian and conservator.

Decades duties

The primary focus of the negligence claims is on Decades duties managing Annettes assets  primarily associated with the NYMEX trading seat that was valued by Decades in its first annual report in 2005 at $1.3 million, nearly half of the value of all her assets at the time, of $2.9 million.

The rental value of the seat fell from $143,750 in 2003 to $8,800 per annum in 2012.

In March 2006, Annette Rosenstiels single share of NYMEX holding stock was replaced with 90,000 shares when NYMEX went from a private company to a publicly traded one. That created, for a time, a huge financial boost to the estate. But the good fortune didnt last long.

As Annette had a dangerously concentrated position in that stock, her net worth plunged as a result in the decline of the NMX stock and trading right values, the lawsuit states. Had her holding been properly hedged, her losses would have been limited. Likewise, had Annettes investments been diversified, she would not have been exposed to the heavy losses she suffered after March 2006.

Leonie Rosenstiel in her lawsuit contends she expressed her concerns to Decades about the small amount of income being generated by these assets, relative to the huge amounts being spent for her mothers care. She contends Decades ignored her concerns and watched passively as her mothers net worth fell by millions of dollars.

Decades in court documents contends it was bound by a judges earlier appointing it as conservator  an order the company says required court approval before Decades could restructure the basic configuration of Annettes finances.

Leonie Rosenstiel contends in her lawsuit that Decades negligently delayed requesting such approval for an extended period of time and addressed it only after Leonie Rosenstiel brought the matter to the attention of the district court.

The court ultimately allowed the changes in the investments, but the diversification took many months, although during approximately this same period Decades found time to spend some $43,000 on landscaping, the lawsuit states.

Decades countered in its response, The complaint seems to suggest that Decades owned a crystal ball. Decades could not possibly be expected to know when the NYMEX stock would achieve its market high as implied by the Complaint. Decades could not possibly be expected to predict the general market crash of 2008. Decades is not responsible for the decrease in the value of the stock which occurred as a result.

Decades contends its approach was deliberate and well-considered. As a matter of law, there was no duty to seek modification of the 2003 order before it did, stated a motion for partial summary judgment.

In its answer, Decades denied most of the allegations, and stated that other claims were groundless.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

Waning resources. An increasingly disparate student population. Global competition.

Theres a sea change underway in higher education, and colleges and universities in New Mexico  and elsewhere  are attempting to adjust.

According to New Mexico State University Chancellor Garrey Carruthers, Its really a whole new world.

Speaking at a higher education town hall in Albuquerque last week, Carruthers said the shifting landscape has prompted NMSU to rethink everything from its administrative structure to the layout of its dormitories.

His peers echoed his nothing-is-the-same sentiment.

Western New Mexico University, for example, had just 8 percent of its courses online in 2008. Now the school, located in Silver City, offers 45 percent on the Internet.

At the University of New Mexico, leaders are accommodating straight-from-high-school freshmen, the adults pursuing a career-change education, and several other nontraditional segments. Interim President Chaouki Abdallah, also an engineering professor, illustrated the changes by describing one of his students: a military member who took one of Abdallahs online courses while stationed in Afghanistan  then later enrolled in another of Abdallahs online classes, despite having returned home to Albuquerque.

Defining a student is no longer easy, but defining a universitys mission is perhaps even more difficult. Students, parents, academics and the community at large might each expect something different, according to Abdallah.

Its not obvious, or its not agreed upon, that a university should be doing one thing, he said.

While the states public colleges and universities are attempting to meet the needs of a more diverse population, Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, warned them not to expect any increase in state funding.

The bottom line is weve cut that pie into so many pieces that its very difficult for us to do justice financially to all the institutions in the state of New Mexico, he said.

Becoming more entrepreneurial and efficient were major themes of the discussion, hosted by the Journal, KANW-FM and the New Mexico Council of University Presidents, and that featured Abdallah, Carruthers, New Mexico Higher Education Secretary Barbara Damron, WNMU President Joseph Shepard, Central New Mexico Community College President Kathie Winograd and NMSU faculty senate president Chris Brown.

Sen. Smith and Rep. Larry Larranaga, R-Albuquerque, joined by phone, while Northern New Mexico College President Richard Bailey Jr. and New Mexico Tech President Stephen Wells also spoke.

Unique challenges

Many issues dogging New Mexicos public colleges and universities are playing out on campuses across the country. Enrollment, for example, has fallen nationwide since the recession.

But New Mexicos institutions are wrestling with more than just national shifts. New Mexico itself has its own set of problems. A stagnant population and one of the countrys lowest high school graduation rate are choking the colleges student pipeline. And a state budget shortfall has wiped out about 8 percent of higher eds state funding in just the past two years.

The system doesnt exist by itself, Abdallah said of higher education. It exists within the bigger system of society.

Critics have argued that New Mexicos decentralized higher education network makes things harder. New Mexico has 31 public post-secondary institutions. They offer a combined 77 educational access points.

Some consider that availability a good thing.

Access to quality, affordable higher education should not just be reserved for students who live near big cities, Bailey said.

Sen. Smith, however, said the state has over-extended itself. New Mexico puts about 13 percent of all its general fund money into higher education every year, more on a percentage basis than nearly every other state. The schools will get about $750 million this fiscal year.

Smith said he thinks that money is spread too thin, and that the state can no longer properly fund all of the schools it has.

Weighing change

But is consolidation the answer?

Damron said it is not clear  though her department is working to find out. As part of a strategic planning process, HED has convened people from across the state  both from the schools and other interested communities, like business  to examine systems across the country and determine whether some form of consolidation would make sense for New Mexico. It should have recommendations by years end.

We may have too many (schools); we may not have too many, Damron said, noting that neighboring Arizona has more access points per capita. That needs to be studied thoroughly.

Despite what she called the decentralized nature of New Mexicos college and university system, Damron said the schools have successfully collaborated on reforms spearheaded by her office, including a new common course numbering system.

She said New Mexicos strengths also include affordability; despite tuition hikes at most state institutions, some say even New Mexicos out-of-state rates beat other states resident rates.

Damron said she sees opportunity amid the current challenges  a chance for New Mexico to rethink and retool higher education in a way that makes sense for New Mexico.

Its an exciting time to be in higher education, she said. The world is ours.

Novel approaches

The evolution is already afoot at individual campuses.

There are no quick fixes, Shepard said. This is kind of like your retirement  you start years and years in advance.

Winograd and Carruthers highlighted the ways their schools have cut in some places and expanded in others. Winograd said a reorganization that began in 2008 has reduced overhead by eliminating some administrative positions but also through sustainability measures that trimmed electric bills and other expenses.

At the same time, the community college  which serves an estimated 40,000 people annually  has carefully considered the states workforce needs and developed new programming, like non-credit coding boot camps, that fulfilled community demand and generated new revenue.

NMSU also started a major restructuring effort that has already yielded $11 million in savings just on the administrative side, Carruthers said. The school is now investigating possible efficiencies in its academic enterprise.

Faculty senate president Chris Brown credited NMSU administration with including the faculty in the discussion, stressing the importance of having them at the table. Shared governance is sometimes messy, he said but I feel very strongly that this is a necessary principal in how universities are run.

While NMSU has cut in some places, it has increased its expenditures in some areas, such as marketing, as it tries to woo students.

I learned a long time ago in economics  the way to success is early to bed, early to rise, work very hard and advertise, Carruthers said.  All the for-profits are advertising and theyre charging a whole lot more than our universities are charging for programs not being provided by the type of faculty we have.

Westerns online expansion has allowed it to save money by closing satellite locations in Gallup and Lordsburg, while also greatly expanding its reach. Only about 2,000 of Westerns 3,500 students are in Silver City. And about half of its students are now at least 24 years old.

The school is competing globally  competing in terms of our quality of education, competing in terms of our pricing, competing in every sense of the word, Shepard said.

Retention efforts

UNM is also saving money through reorganizing and bolstering its online programming. But Abdallah said institutional efficiency matters little if it isnt also effective, so UNM has devoted energy and money into student retention and success efforts. It has doubled its four-year graduation rate, doing so faster than any other school in the country, Abdallah said.

In 2010, we had our largest incoming class ever, and it was our worst performing class, because we didnt have the support system for them. We lost a lot of those kids after a year, he said. Thats the worst thing we can do is get them in and after a year they leave with some debt or they leave with no credential. Thats worse than not letting them in the door.

Wells said New Mexico Tech has sought new revenue streams, trying to commercialize its student and faculty innovations and turning to successful alumni for help. One graduate provided the funds for an online calculus course, he said.

Larranaga commended the universities for cutting costs and otherwise adjusting to the new reality.

Im not going to call this a crisis, he said, but I think its a challenge to get us together and thinking about what do we need to do as the next step.
Long after age made it difficult for her to work the floor of Garson & Sons, the Catholic religious supply store she founded with her husband John, Rose Garson was a presence there, perhaps working on inventory in the back but holding high court wherever she was.

And woe be to you  priests, deacons, nuns, brothers or other friends  if you came in the store and did not go back to say hello to Momma Rose, said Louise Davis, former liturgist for Albuquerques Queen of Heaven Catholic Parish and a longtime friend of Rose Garson.

You were always welcome to sit and chat with Rose. She wanted to know about you. How are you? What have you been doing? What do you need? She would tell you what she was about, too. She was not afraid to give you her opinion.

Rose Garson died June 15 at age 95.

Davis, now a member of and a Eucharistic minister at Albuquerques Risen Savior Parish, said she was privileged to give the Eucharist to Garson at Garsons Northeast Albuquerque home during her final days.

You could always find Roses house, she said. It was the only house with a life-sized statue of St. Jude (patron saint of hope and impossible causes) in the front yard.

Garson was born in Sicily in 1921 and emigrated to Philadelphia when she was 11. She married Philadelphia native John T. Garson, and the couple moved to Albuquerque in the mid-1940s, following Johns service with the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific during World War II.

Dad sold insurance and did all sorts of different jobs before he decided he didnt want to work for anyone else, said Paul Garson, one of John and Roses children.

In 1958, John and Rose opened their first religious goods store at 1403 San Mateo NE.

Dad thought it would be a good way to serve the church and also raise a family, Paul said.

Rose and John  John died in 1993  raised a large family. Rose is survived by sons Mark, David, Robert, Thomas, Peter and Paul, nine grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren. In addition to her husband, she was preceded in death by daughters Mimi and Elizabeth and sons John and Christopher.

In 1962, the Garsons moved their store to 2139 San Mateo NE. Later, locations in Downtown Albuquerque and in Santa Fe were added to the San Mateo store. Today, Garson & Sons is back to a single location, managed by Paul, at 2415 San Pedro NE.

If you wanted it, you could find it at Garsons, Louise Davis said. Roman (Catholic) missals, candles, sacramental wine, palms (for Palm Sunday) and also specialty fabrics for altar cloths, vestments for priests and deacons. Rose would make sure you got what you needed. And if it came in and it wasnt right, shed send it back and make it right.

Davis said Rose Garson was a skilled crafter, a knitter and crocheter, who used her talents for the benefit of her family and for disadvantaged or disabled children.

She made beautiful bedspreads and tablecloths, hand-crocheted in the old Italian style, as wedding gifts for all her granddaughters, Davis said. And she went out of her way to help organizations, such as Casa Angelica, that worked with children. There were a lot of little children walking around in winter with warm caps made by Rose. She was a member of a guild of women who made caps, booties and shawls for children and young adults in Mexico and Africa.

Paul Garson said his mother made blankets for Project Linus, which provides hand-made blankets for critically ill children, and a variety of knit and crocheted items for the mission work of Catholic orders of religious sisters.

She made hundreds and hundreds of scarves and knit caps, he said. That was my moms gig  knitting and crocheting. If you had a friend who was having a baby, she would make a blanket. She would make baptism blankets, booties, the actual baptism outfit to sell here in the store.

The Garson kids grew up in the stores. Paul and his twin brother, Peter, the youngest in the family, spent their first year in a playpen in back of the store. Mark, the oldest, remembers that back in the 1960s, after he had finished a day at Cortez Elementary School, his father would recruit him to sort out candles and bottles of wine in the store.

Mom was always at the San Mateo store, Mark said. She would sit there and price things out, or she would be talking to the customers. She liked talking to the priests and the nuns and those special customers, people we had grown up with and who were like part of the family, and those people who worked in the store and became part of our life. There were one or two salesmen who were close to the family, and she would invite them over to the house for spaghetti dinner.

Mark, a cook at Albuquerques Dismas House, a halfway house that helps people move back into society following incarceration, has especially fond memories of his mothers cooking  her spaghetti, pasta fazool and especially her Irish tacos, which included a filling made up of corned-beef hash, cheese, lettuce and taco sauce.

We used to have contests to see who could eat the most Irish tacos, Mark said. I hold the record  nine.

A funeral Mass was celebrated for Rose Garson on June 20 at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, her longtime parish church.

She was very sweet, kind and gentle, Davis said. I will miss her something fierce, but I am happy she is at peace.
Twenty in-kind donors, 80 individuals and five foundations have come together to raise the equivalent of almost $1 million for the construction and endowment of Erins Place, a home-like environment for pediatric cancer patients.

Erins Place, a project of the Childrens Cancer Fund of New Mexico, has been on Diana and George Trujeques minds for the past three decades.

Its been a dream since we lost our child 32 years ago, said Diana Trujeque, the executive director of the Childrens Cancer Fund.

The Trujeques son, Erin, for whom Erins Place is named, died of cancer in a hospital at the age of 12 but would much rather have been at home.

Since Erins passing, the Trujeques have devoted their lives to helping children with cancer. In honor of their sons memory, one specific goal has been to help children live in a home-like setting for hospice care or while receiving treatment if possible.

While living at home during treatment is possible for some, it is impossible for many New Mexican pediatric cancer patients who live outside of Albuquerque and cant receive a proper level of care in their hometowns, she said. The resulting hospital stays can be draining on both the children and their families.

Ground was finally broken in October 2016 and the ceremonial grand opening was July 15.

With the creation of Erins Place, the Childrens Cancer Funds board members hope to help ease those struggles for such families, who will be referred to the facility based on medical necessity. Because they have access to their own homes during treatment, Albuquerque residents will not be eligible to live in the facility.

We wanted to create a really peaceful atmosphere, said Brent Franken, a board member.

Erins Place, located near University and Lomas, is about 6,000 square feet and includes three identical one-story apartments. The apartments were designed to look as much like an actual home as possible.

While some of their features are reminiscent of a hospital, they look much less clinical. For example, the childrens beds recline and are remote-controlled, as a hospital bed would be, but look like normal beds and are outfitted with a brightly colored comforter and decorative pillows.

Erins Place also includes other features, such as a common room area and a playground that all residents can enjoy. For Trujeque, a particularly important part of the home is the water feature, which sits outside in the middle of the facility.

The water feature was made with the help of artist Angus Macpherson, who runs the Childrens Cancer Funds Artist in Residence Program. He assisted child cancer patients in painting individual clay tiles, which were placed together to become the features background.

Trujeque said the excitement of the children when they saw the finished fountain at Erins Places grand opening was palpable.

Some of the kids were here (for the grand opening) and were saying, I painted that! I painted that with Angus!' Trujeque said.

Part of Erins Places construction was made possible by in-kind donors. Franken Construction, for which Franken is project manager, donated general contracting services. Several other organization board members also donated to the project.

Among them were Melissa Deaver-Rivera, president of Franks Supply Co. Inc., and Dee Dennis, the CEO of DKD Electric LLC.

Dennis said his family has been involved with the Childrens Cancer Fund since he was a child and a friend was diagnosed with cancer. Even though his friend lost his fight, Dennis said the services that the Childrens Cancer Fund provided were invaluable.

We saw how important it was for his family, he said.

Other businesses contributed to Erins Place, including AUI Inc. and Heads Up Landscape Contractors, two Albuquerque-based companies.

But it wasnt just companies responsible for making Erins Place a reality. Donations from foundations and independent individuals have amounted to more than $500,000. And, according to board leaders, people were very eager to give.

I have five dollars that a guy gave me at Costco the day I was getting all the playground furniture, Deaver-Rivera said. It was a guy in the parking lot who just asked me what we were doing.

According to Trujeque, the Childrens Cancer Fund wont have to borrow any money to cover the construction of Erins Place. But it is still in need of donations to contribute to an endowment, which will be used to maintain Erins Place. Donations can be given online at the ccfnm.org/erins-place.

It was a lot of hard work, but it all came together because people gave, Trujeque said. It was so many (people).

We welcome suggestions for the daily Bright Spot. Send to newsroom@abqjournal.com.
Jude Sparks was out on a family hike in the desert near Las Cruces testing walkie-talkies, when the then-9-year-old boy tripped over a rocky protrusion.

When Jude got up again, he examined what appeared to two large, fossilized teeth jutting out from the terrain. Farther up, he spotted what looked like a tusk, he added.

Jude was intrigued.

But Judes brother Hunter, who had been running behind him, didnt seem too impressed with whatever Jude had found.

Hunter said it was just a big, fat rotten cow, Jude told KVIA News, which first reported the story. I didnt know what it was. I just knew it wasnt usual.

The boys parents photographed the curious mass, then helped Jude look up experts online that night, he added. They emailed Peter Houde, a biology professor at New Mexico State University who maintains a lab devoted to paleontological studies.

I immediately recognized the importance of what it was, Houde told the news station. We went out there the very next day to have a look at it.

It turned out Judes instincts were correct. He had discovered the fossilized skull of a Stegomastodon, estimated to be more than 1 million years old. The now-extinct ancient relative of the elephant had two enormous tusks that curved upward and stood nearly 9 feet tall.

The discovery was rare because both the animals mandible and a tusk were exposed to the surface, Houde said in a paper published on his website about Judes discovery.

Fossil bones from the same animal are rarely found together in our area, Houde wrote. Whats more, Stegomastodon fossils are extremely fragile, despite the animals behemoth size.

Were really, really grateful that (the Sparks family) contacted us, because if they had not done that, if they had tried to do it themselves, it could have just destroyed the specimen, Houde told the New York Times. It really has to be done with great care and know-how.

After several months, Houde and his team finally got permission from the landowner to dig on the property  under the condition the site remain a secret, according to a university news release. In May, Houde and a team began the week-long, painstaking work of digging up the fossil. The collagen in the bones had long since decomposed, so the fossils can easily disintegrate under their own weight before your very eyes as soon as the sediments that cradle and support them are cleaned away, Houde wrote. Because of that, the excavation required exposing parts of the fossil, little by little, and allowing it to fully dry before applying a hardener.

Little by little, they unearthed a nearly complete skull, only missing a tusk.

Its just been very exciting, his mother, Michelle Sparks, told the news station. Especially for the boys because every child dreams of finding bones and them being actually old.

Jude, now 10, told KVIA News that most of his friends still dont believe that he found a fossil more than a million years old. However, though Houde is continuing to study and preserve the fossil, eventually he anticipates it will be available for public viewing at New Mexico State Universitys Vertebrate Museum.

I have every hope and expectation that this specimen will ultimately end up on exhibit and this little boy will be able to show his friends and even his own children, look what I found right here in Las Cruces, Houde said in a university statement.

It wasnt the first time someone had made such a fortuitous fossil discovery. In 2014, a bachelor party camping at Elephant Butte State Park in southern New Mexico discovered a nearly complete fossilized skull of a Stegomastodon. That fossil is now at the New Mexico Natural History Museum.

In 2015, a then-4-year-old boy named Wylie Brys happened upon the fossilized bones of a nodosaur while exploring land behind a Dallas-area shopping center.

Hes a little kid, his father, Tim Brys, told The Washington Post then. He likes playing in dirt as much as finding the fossils, I think.
A union lawsuit alleging that the states teacher evaluation system is unfair and inaccurate will not go to trial in October as scheduled.

First Judicial District Court Judge David Thomson granted the New Mexico Public Education Departments request for a delay this week. The nonjury trial will be rescheduled.

The American Federation of Teachers New Mexico, a plaintiff in the case, blamed PED for slowing down the process and failing to turn over critical information and data.

PED, in turn, accused the union attorneys of failing to adequately disclose their expert witnesses, abruptly canceling a deputy cabinet secretarys deposition and asking for a two-month extension to provide the PED with their written discovery.

By spreading false information, theyre attempting to misdirect the public from the issues they have themselves created  even when theres an opportunity to build bridges they find a way to burn them, said PED spokeswoman Lida Alikhani in an emailed statement. The fact is that both parties agreed and signed a stipulated motion to continue the trial date to a later time because all attorneys involved are still engaged in ongoing trial preparations.

Changes within PED could also impact the case.

Education Secretary Hanna Skandera stepped down on June 20, and the evaluation system was revamped in the spring.

PED announced that standardized test results would be reduced from half of the evaluation to 35 percent. Classroom observations were increased to 40 percent  the single largest factor.

PED Deputy Cabinet Secretary Matt Montano also recently testified that he would recommend a policy that explicitly gives districts the power to decide if low-performing teachers are placed on performance improvement plans.

On Friday, the teachers union claimed that PED made arbitrary changes to the evaluations and changed its leadership, notably Former Secretary Skandera, to delay the lawsuit and salvage the irreparably flawed evaluation system.

We will continue to hold the PED accountable for the numerous educators they have forced out of our profession and the generation of students they have harmed through their irresponsible and cruel policies, American Federation of Teachers President New Mexico President Stephanie Ly and Albuquerque Teachers Federation President Ellen Bernstein said in a joint statement.

The evaluation system remains under an injunction Thomson granted in December 2015, which prevents consequential actions based on the evaluations. Under the terms of the injunction, PED cannot use the evaluations to make employment, advancement and licensure decisions.

The evaluation system has been controversial since it was imposed in 2012 by administrative rule.

A recent Brown University study found that New Mexico rated nearly 29 percent of teachers below effective in the 2015-2016 school year, while most states placed fewer than 4 percent of teachers in that category.
Tax season has been over for months, but the warnings about related scams continue.

Recent Internal Revenue Service advisories show that your personal information is vulnerable if you have had a professional individual or company prepare your taxes.

The agency this month urged tax preparers to beware of spear phishing emails that can result in stolen taxpayer information and fraudulent returns filed in the names of individual and business clients.

Spear phishing emails appear to come from a known or trusted sender with the goal of getting victims to disclose personal information such as passwords. Some versions encourage people to open a link or attachment that downloads malware onto the computer.

We are seeing repeated instances of cybercriminals targeting tax professionals and obtaining sensitive client information that can be used to file fraudulent tax returns, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in a news release. Spear phishing emails are a common way to target tax professionals.

The agency has kicked off an awareness campaign for tax preparers called Dont Take the Bait.

In some cases, the emails come from a bogus prospective client who wants information about the cost of having his or her tax return prepared. It contains the sentence Click here to view my details, with a link. Thats the tipoff. Clicking unleashes a virus and gives the sender access to computer files.

Other versions ask the preparer to open an attachment.

However, the attachment in reality downloads malware that tracks each keystroke made by the tax professional so that the criminal can steal passwords and sensitive data, the IRS says.

And, of course, there are many other examples because cybercriminals are endlessly creative, the IRS said.

In some cases, indentity thieves have hacked into individuals email accounts. When the scammers see that a victim was in email contact with a tax preparer, they send an email to the preparer asking that the direct deposit refund account number be changed. Bingo for the scammer.



Fake debt collectors are back in the news, but its good news this time.

The Federal Trade Commission announced last week that a federal court, at the FTCs request, temporarily froze the assets of an operation that was bilking people out of money for debts they didnt owe.

The defendants posed as lawyers and threatened lawsuits and jail time if their targets didnt pay up. They gave a case number and a phone number to call.

Those who responded, the FTC said, were told a lawsuit or criminal action had either already been filed or soon would be. They also said police would be coming to their house to arrest them.

The agency, in its complaint, also said the scammers dragged some legitimate small business into their scheme. They did that by claiming a connection to the real business. That prompted angry consumers to call the businesses to complain about the supposed debt, the FTC said.

Reminder about fake debt scams:

 If a debt collector says you owe money, ask for a validation notice that says how much money you owe. This must be sent in writing, within five days of the collector contacting you.

 If you are threatened with jail time, hang up.

 If you own a small business, research online occasionally to see if anyone else is using your business name. If you start receiving complaints about practices in which your business is not engaged, report to the FTC.

Ellen Marks is assistant business editor at the Albuquerque Journal. Contact her at emarks@abqjournal.com or 505-823-3842 if you are aware of what sounds like a scam. To report a scam to law enforcement, contact the New Mexico Consumer Protection Division toll-free at 1-844-255-9210.
There are times when it is not worth fighting to correct being misquoted or straighten out a misperception. There are certain times, however, when for the benefit of others, the battle for transparency must be fought. In light of recent media coverage surrounding a letter from The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, I feel strongly that right now is one of those times.

A July 19 article penned by the Associated Press led with the headline stating Idaho wont comply with Trump voter panel request. While technically accurate, it is far from the complete story. The article goes further to say that Idaho now joins 17 other states and the District of Columbia also refusing to comply with the commissions request. The reality is that Idaho has not refused to comply, but rather, with the suspension of the request by the Designated Federal Officer for the commission, no refusal was necessary.

When I was asked recently by a reporter to confirm if we were sending anything in response to the Commissions request, my answer was no. The better answer would have been, No  not to this request, at this time, in the manner in which it has been presented, and since the request is suspended.

Regarding the lawsuit, the AP article quoted Democratic Party Chair Bert Marleys statement, We are very pleased to tell Idahoans that we have protected their privacy by negotiating for an agreement that Secretary Denney will not send the voter information sought by the Trump Commission. Chairman Marley, you negotiated for no such thing, and you did nothing to protect the privacy of Idahoans. That privacy was already well protected, and I take significant offense to the fact that you would insinuate otherwise. What you did do, however, was file an absolutely unfounded and frivolous lawsuit, (that you eventually dismissed) playing and preying upon public fear, and compounding the problem through misinformation. I will not allow that to continue.

The AP article led with the line Secretary of State Lawerence Denney announced Tuesday he will not hand over detailed voter information to President Donald Trumps commission on election fraud as part of a settlement with the Idaho Democratic Party. I made no such announcement, and the decision to not send any information was made outside the context of the Democratic Partys dismissal of the suit, not because of it.

As such, I will be providing a comprehensive timeline of the events and details surrounding this issue on the Secretary of State website to bring further clarity.

Citizens of Idaho, when it comes to your private information and your election decisions, know that both I and my staff are working diligently and daily to preserve and protect your rights. Know also that we are subject to the laws of Idaho as they are written, and those laws include the Idaho Public Records Act. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you, and to present the truth on this matter.
An Australian lawyer is leading Lawyers on Demands (LOD) expansion in the Middle East.The firm is just waiting for regulatory approval before it opens its doors in Dubai, as it already has a new managing director for the Middle East on the ground in Brett Menadue, who joined the firm in May. Menadue, who was most recently the chief legal officer of Mara Global Technology, started his legal career in Australia.Prior to LOD and Mara, Menadue held senior legal roles at Nokia Siemens Networks in Singapore and Dubai, as well as in Telstra. He is a former senior associate at Freehills.LOD, which was spun off by Berwin Leighton Paisner in 2012, is expected to open its Dubai office in early autumn. The rollout in the Middle East follows LODs aggressive expansion in the Asia Pacific, which last year saw the firm merge with Australias AdventBalance , then the regions fastest-growing alternative firm.The global NewLaw firm appointed Jamie Prell, its Australian legal director, as its inaugural global general counsel The firm has more than 600 lawyers and offices in Brisbane, Hong Kong, London, Melbourne, New York, Perth, Singapore, and Sydney. Its Hong Kong entity is not a law firm but a consultancy.LOD lets its experts work under three models. They have a secondment-style scheme for office-based freelancers. The firm also lets freelancers take on call assignments depending on client needs. Freelancers are also assigned as teams on larger projects.
Free newsletter

Subscribe to our FREE newsletter service and well keep you up-to-date with the latest breaking news, cutting edge opinion, and expert analysis affecting both your business and the industry as whole.

Please enter your email address below and click on Sign Up for daily newsletters from Australasian Lawyer.
23 July 2017 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Twenty four years have passed since the Armenian occupation of Aghdam  one of the most distinguished and ancient Azerbaijani regions.

On July 23, 1993, after the occupation of Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh region and adjacent Lachin and Kalbajar regions, Armenian armed forces invaded the Aghdam city and burnt and razed it to the ground. The Armenian aggressors occupied most of the territory of Aghdam region. They seized 882 of the 1,094 square kilometers of the territory of Aghdam, including one city and 80 villages. As a result, some 128,000 people became internally displaced persons, and over 6,000 people died during the fighting in Aghdam.

After the occupation, the Armenians destroyed historical monuments, schools, libraries, hospitals, cemeteries, offices and facilities in the occupied territory. As many as 122 villages, some 24,000 residential buildings, 48 industrial and construction enterprises, 160 schools, 65 health centers, 373 cultural centers, a theater, two museums and three mosques were burnt down and demolished in the region.

Following the seizure of Aghdam, Armenian vandals ruined most of the historical monuments of the region. These include the ancient settlement Uzarliktepe, stone monuments in the Kangarli village (14th century), Khanoglu tomb (17th century), the mansion of Panahali Khan of Karabakh (18th century) and his tomb (19th century), and the twin-minaret Juma mosque of Aghdam (1870), the Shahbulag fortress and many other admirable monuments of Azerbaijan.

As a result of the occupation of Aghdam, Azerbaijan faced material damage worth $6.179 billion. The damage inflicted to the regions agriculture alone is estimated at 992.8 million manats.

An American diplomat Matthew Bryza, who managed to visit Aghdam after the tragedy, was shocked by the state of the city. What I saw in Aghdam put me in fear. The entire city turned into ruins. The occupation of Aghdam reminded me the state of Warsaw after World War II, he noted.

The Armenian aggressors also depleted the natural resources of the region. Thus, the eastern sycamore trees aged up to 400 years and other tree species were destroyed in the occupied territories and currently are about to vanish from the world flora treasure.

Moreover, arsons committed by Armenian soldiers in the occupied villages of Aghdam resulted in the deaths of various pheasants, vipers, partridges and other animals which are included in the Red Book and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Red List of Threatened Species.

Today, the internally displaced persons from Aghdam have to live in other regions of Azerbaijan, far from their native Aghdam. For almost three decades these people have been waiting for the day when the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will eventually be resolved. However, the clear refusal of the Armenian side to negotiate with Azerbaijan and resolve the conflict show that the aggressor country is not going to withdraw from the occupied lands.

Nevertheless, the Azerbaijani IDPs believe that sooner or later the justice will be served, the occupied Azerbaijani lands will be returned either by political negotiations or the use of force, and Azerbaijanis will celebrate that long-awaited day in Aghdam and other occupied regions.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
During the past legislative session, I had the opportunity to speak on the senate floor in support of SJR 103, a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would provide equal rights for crime victims. I shared an experience from my youth on the floor of the Idaho Senate to help illustrate my strong support for SJR 103, commonly known as Marsys Law for Idaho. I would like to share that story with you to explain why I will continue to support Marsys Law for Idaho when it comes back next session.

Many years ago, I went to the courthouse to take care of some business. As I walked by a courtroom, I decided to pop in to see firsthand how the justice system works. As I sat in court observing the process, it became clear to me that defendants have more rights and are given more consideration than victims.

Defendants entered pleas and the judge handed out penalties. He was very matter of fact, even stern, as he issued fines for various minor infractions, but as the severity of the crime increased his demeanor changed. I noticed this especially when a young man in a prison jumpsuit, cuffs and leg irons approached the bench. I realized he had done more than run a stop sign, so I listened intently. I expected the judge to go after this young man aggressively, but to my surprise his cadence changed. He spoke more softly and with more consideration than he had done with any of the other visitors that day.

The judge explained in great detail the defendants rights, the court procedures, his right to receive appointed counsel, and the meticulous depiction of the timelines of due process. He did all of that for a young man accused of rape. I understand the judge was bending over backwards to make sure he was procedurally correct from the bench to lessen appeals that might be open to the accused. He was also respectful of the notion that this young man may not have been guilty. I understand that. But, even though that experience was nearly 40 years ago, I left that court room with burning, still unanswered questions.

Ive often wondered if the victim was afforded the same consideration, the same equal access to process or court procedures, and a clear understanding of the range of sanctions the accused might be facing. Did they understand what a plea bargain might mean? Did they receive some assurance that their voice would be heard and their safety assured? And maybe most importantly, did they receive the same level of respect as the accused?

I think its extremely important and past time that we bend over backwards to respect those that are the victims of crime. A victims rights resolution moves us in the direction of achieving that equilibrium. I urge your support for Marsys Law for Idaho to provide victims a voice in the process and the respect they deserve.
23 July 2017 10:38 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Syrian government forces have not used chemical weapons since April, when the United States carried out a missile attack on a Syrian military airbase near the city of Homs, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said on Sunday, Sputnik reported.

"I like to think that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad has received the message loud and clear that the use of chemical weapons in unacceptable and that there will be consequences for the use of chemical weapons against his own people. Time will tell. He hasnt used them since that day," Dunford said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

On April 7, the United States launched a total of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Ash Shairat airfield, with US President Donald Trump stating that the attack was a response to the reported chemical weapon use in Idlib, for which Washington put the blame on the government of Assad. The official Damascus has refuted all accusations, reminding that all chemical weapons in Syria were destroyed under oversight of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) after the east Ghouta sarin gas incident in 2013.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
23 July 2017 16:39 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Iran and Iraqs defence ministers signed a memorandum of understanding in defence and military sphere, the ministrys official website reported July 23.

According to the report, the deal includes combating terrorism, extremism, security of borders, etc.

Iraqs Defence Minister Erfan al-Hiyali arrived in Tehran on Saturday.

His counterpart Hossein Dehqan said that Iran will continue full support to Iraqi government and nation to establish security and stability.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
23 July 2017 17:20 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Head of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi underlined that Iran will never yield to any re-negotiation on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), IRNA reported.

Boroujerdi said the US should fully abide by the JCPOA.

He said none of the negotiation parties to Iran in the JCPOA case are ready to accept the US offer for re-holding talks.

Boroujerdia then called Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarifs comment that the JCPOA is not a mutual agreement to be abandoned or on which to hold talks again.

The lawmaker was referring to the US President Donald Trumps claim on talking on the JCPOA again and such it is sort of cunning  an illogical move.

When a document is signed by all the negotiating sides after months and when the UN Security Council confirms it by re-issuing resolutions, it would be meaningless to hold talks on it again. The Islamic Republic of Iran will not accept such illogical proposal.

Also referring to recent talks between Irans Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araqchi and the Group 5+1 at the 8th JCPOA Joint Committee session in Vienna, Boroujerdi said, 'In those talks, the US was virtually isolated and left with no option, but fully abiding by the JCPOA.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
While net neutrality has been in the public mind for years, the fight for grid neutrality has just begun. Across America, and potentially in Idaho, home and business owners who invest in clean energy face the prospect of discriminatory fees to access the power grid. The principals of grid neutrality protect fair prices for all electric customers and prevent people with solar or wind from being penalized.

A recent New York Times piece shows that equal public access to the grid is under threat from fossil-fuel industry lobbyists working to eliminate solar net metering programs across the country. This would force consumers to keep buying something we dont want any more  electricity generated by polluting-spewing coal and natural gas plants.

Idahos net energy metering program is vulnerable to this misguided effort.

Over 1,200 Idaho Power customers have rooftop solar or small wind generators. These net meter customers gladly pay $5 per month for access to the electric grid. Just like other Idaho Power customers, this minimum applies even if no power is used in a given month.

Idaho Power has raised concerns that this might not be enough to fully recover the costs of operating the grid in the future and wants to cap the net metering program now. The company wants customers who install solar panels today to agree in advance to pay undisclosed higher rates and fees in the future.

Its clearly not fair to charge people with rooftop solar more than other customers for access to the electric grid. If the utility truly isnt charging enough to cover the costs of the grid then rates should be adjusted for all customers  not just solar power users.

As important as net neutrality is to the future of the internet, grid neutrality is to our energy system beyond fossil fuels. Without grid neutrality green energy users will soon balk at unfair extra fees and charges. If they to go off of the grid, not only will the utilities will lose customers but society will lose a chance to build a truly integrated smart grid.

Despite these uncertainties, there has never been a better time to invest in solar power. The cost of panels is at an all-time low. The 30 percent federal tax credit and state deductions make it even more affordable. We need policies to support these investments and local solar jobs. We cant let fear tactics from the fossil fuel industry hold us back.

The Snake River Alliance is talking with Idaho Power and the Idaho Public Utilities Commission about grid neutrality and the costs and benefits of solar and distributed energy in Idaho. But right now, Idahos net metering program isnt broken. Today all customers pay the same base rates. Policies that discriminate or penalize customers for installing wind power or solar panels should be turned back.
B&G Foods, Inc. manufactures, sells, and distributes a portfolio of shelf-stable and frozen foods, and household products in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The company's products include frozen and canned vegetables, vegetables, canola and other cooking oils, vegetable shortening, cooking sprays, oatmeal and other hot cereals, fruit spreads, canned meats and beans, bagel chips, spices, seasonings, hot sauces, wine vinegar, maple syrups, molasses, salad dressings, pizza crusts, Mexican-style sauces, dry soups, taco shells and kits, salsas, pickles, peppers, tomato-based products, baking powder and soda, corn starch, cookies and crackers, nut clusters, and other specialty products. It markets its products under various brands, including Ac'cent, B&G, B&M, Back to Nature, Baker's Joy, Bear Creek Country Kitchens, Brer Rabbit, Canoleo, Cary's, Clabber Girl, Cream of Rice, Cream of Wheat, Crisco, Dash, Davis, Devonsheer, Don Pepino, Durkee, Emeril's, Grandma's Molasses, Green Giant, Joan of Arc, Las Palmas, Le Sueur, MacDonald's, Mama Mary's, Maple Grove Farms of Vermont, McCann's, Molly McButter, New York Flatbreads, New York Style, Old London, Ortega, Polaner, Red Devil, Regina, Rumford, Sa-son, Sclafani, Spice Islands, Spring Tree, Sugar Twin, Tone's, Trappey's, TrueNorth, Underwood, Vermont Maid, Victoria, and Weber and Wright's. The company also sells, markets, and distributes household products under the Static Guard brand. It sells and distributes its products directly, as well as through a network of independent brokers and distributors to supermarket chains, foodservice outlets, mass merchants, warehouse clubs, non-food outlets, and specialty distributors. The company was formerly known as B&G Foods Holdings Corp. and changed its name to B&G Foods, Inc. in October 2004. B&G Foods, Inc. was founded in 1822 and is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey.
Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut.
Steelcase Inc. provides a portfolio of furniture and architectural products in the United States and internationally. It operates through Americas, EMEA, and Other segments. The company's furniture portfolio includes furniture systems, seating, storage, fixed and height-adjustable desks, benches, and tables, as well as complementary products, such as work accessories, lighting, and mobile power and screens. Its seating products comprise task chairs; seating for collaborative environments and casual settings; and specialty seating for specific vertical markets, including education and healthcare. The company's interior architectural products comprise full and partial height walls and architectural pods. It also provides textiles, wall coverings, and surface imaging solutions for architects and designers; and workplace strategy consulting, lease origination, and furniture and asset management services. The company markets and sells its products to corporate, government, healthcare, education, and retail customers under the Steelcase, Designtex, Coalesse, AMQ, Smith System, Orangebox, and Viccarbe brands. It distributes its products and services through a network of independent and company-owned dealers, as well as directly to end-use customers. The company was founded in 1912 and is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The following companies are subsidiares of AON: 6824625 Canada Ltd., 7193599 Canada Inc., A.B. Insurances Limited, ADIS A/S, AIB Services Limited, AIS Affinity Insurance Agency Inc., AIS Insurance Agency Inc., AMXH LLC, ARM International Corp., ARM International Insurance Agency Corp., ARMRISK CORP., AS Holdings Inc., ASPN Insurance Agency LLC, Access Plans USA Inc., Acumen Credit Insurance Brokers Limited, Adm Administradora de Beneficios Ltda., Administradora Aon C.A., Admiseg SA, Admix, Admix - Administracao Consultoria Participacoes e Corretora de Seguros de Vida Ltda., Aeropeople Limited, Affinity Group Insurance Services Limited, Affinity Insurance Services Inc., Affinity Risk Partners (Brokers) Pty Ltd, Agenion N.V./SA, Agility Credit Insurance Brokers Limited, Alexander & Alexander Holding B.V., Alexander Clay, Alexander Insurance Managers (Netherlands Antilles) N.V., Alexander Reinsurance Intermediaries Inc., Allen Insurance Associates Inc., Alliance HealthCard Inc., Alliance HealthCard of Florida Inc., American Insurance Services Corp., American Special Risk Insurance Company, Anviti Insurance Brokers Private Limited, Aon (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon (CR) Insurance Agencies Company Limited, Aon (DIFC) Gulf Limited, Aon (Fiji) Ltd., Aon (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon (Thailand) Limited, Aon 180412 Limited (in liquidation), Aon ANZ Holdings Limited, Aon APAC Holdings B.V., Aon Acore Sarl, Aon Adjudication Services Limited, Aon Affinity Administradora de Beneficios Ltda., Aon Affinity Argentina S.A., Aon Affinity Chile Ltda., Aon Affinity Colombia Ltda. Agencia de Seguros, Aon Affinity Mexico Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas S.A. de C.V., Aon Affinity Mexico S.A. de C.V., Aon Affinity Servicos e Participacoes Ltda., Aon Affinity do Brasil Servicos e Corretora de Seguros Ltda., Aon Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Americas Holdings BV, Aon Angola Corretores de Seguros Limitada, Aon Antillen N.V., Aon Aruba N.V., Aon Assurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Australia Group Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 1 Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 2 Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 3 Pty Ltd, Aon Austria GmbH, Aon Bahrain W.L.L., Aon Belgium B.V.B.A., Aon Benefit Solutions Inc., Aon Benfield (Chile) Corredores de Reaseguros Ltda., Aon Benfield Argentina S.A., Aon Benfield Australia Limited, Aon Benfield Brasil Corretora de Resseguros Ltda., Aon Benfield Canada ULC, Aon Benfield China Limited, Aon Benfield Colombia Limitada Corredores de Reaseguros, Aon Benfield Fac Inc., Aon Benfield Global Inc., Aon Benfield Group Limited, Aon Benfield Inc., Aon Benfield Israel Limited, Aon Benfield Italia S.p.A., Aon Benfield Japan Ltd, Aon Benfield Latin America SA, Aon Benfield Limited, Aon Benfield Malaysia Limited, Aon Benfield Mexico Intermediario de Reaseguro SA de CV, Aon Benfield Middle East Limited, Aon Benfield New Zealand Limited, Aon Benfield Panama S.A., Aon Benfield Peru Corredores de Reaseguros SA, Aon Benfield Puerto Rico Inc., Aon Bermuda Holding Company Limited, Aon Bermuda QI Holdings Ltd., Aon Beteiligungsmanagement Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG, Aon Bolivia S.A. Corredores de Seguros, Aon Botswana (Pty) Ltd., Aon Brazil Holdings LLC, Aon Broking Services SA, Aon Broking Technology Limited, Aon CANZ Holdings B.V., Aon CANZ Holdings N.S. ULC, Aon Canada Holdings N.S. ULC, Aon Canada Inc., Aon Canada Intermediaries GP, Aon Captive Services Antilles N.V., Aon Captive Services Aruba N.V., Aon Cash Management B.V., Aon Central and Eastern Europe a.s., Aon Centre for Innovation and Analytics Ltd, Aon Charitable Foundation Pty Ltd, Aon Chile Holdings LLC, Aon Commercial Insurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Commercial Services Ireland Limited, Aon Commercial Services and Operations Ireland Limited, Aon Consolidation Group Pty Ltd, Aon Consulting & Insurance Services, Aon Consulting (Chile) Limitada, Aon Consulting (Thailand) Limited, Aon Consulting Bolivia S.R.L., Aon Consulting Ecuador S.A., Aon Consulting Financial Services Limited, Aon Consulting Inc., Aon Consulting Kazakhstan LLP, Aon Consulting Limited, Aon Consulting Private Limited, Aon Consulting Romania SRL, Aon Corporate Services (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon Corporate Services Limited, Aon Corporation, Aon Corporation Australia Limited, Aon Corporation EMEA B.V., Aon Credit International Insurance Broker GmbH, Aon Cyprus Insurance Broker Company Limited, Aon DC Trustee Limited, Aon Danismanlik Hizmetleri AS, Aon Delta Bermuda Ltd., Aon Delta UK Limited, Aon Denmark A/S, Aon Deutschland Beteiligungs GmbH, Aon Direct Group Inc., Aon Edge Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Energy Caribbean Limited, Aon Enterprise Insurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Finance Bermuda 1 Ltd., Aon Finance Bermuda 2 Ltd., Aon Finance Canada 1 Corp., Aon Finance Canada 2 Corp., Aon Finance International N.S. ULC, Aon Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Finance N.S. 1 ULC, Aon Finance N.S. 5 ULC, Aon Finance N.S. 8 ULC, Aon Finance US 1 LLC, Aon Finance US 2 LLC, Aon Financial & Insurance Solutions Inc., Aon Finland Oy, Aon France, Aon Global Holdings 1 Limited, Aon Global Holdings 2 Limited, Aon Global Holdings 3 Limited [In strike-off], Aon Global Holdings Limited, Aon Global Operations plc, Aon Global Risk Consulting B.V., Aon Global Risk Consulting Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Global Risk Research Limited, Aon Grana Peru Corredores de Seguros SA, Aon Greece S.A., Aon Groep Nederland B.V., Aon Group (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon Group (Thailand) Limited, Aon Group Holdings International 1 B.V., Aon Group Holdings International 2 B.V., Aon Group Inc., Aon Group International N.V., Aon Group Pty Ltd, Aon Group Venezuela Corretaje de Reaseguros C.A., Aon Hewitt (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon Hewitt (Ireland) Limited, Aon Hewitt (PNG) Ltd., Aon Hewitt (Thailand) Ltd., Aon Hewitt Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Aon Hewitt Consulting Korea Inc., Aon Hewitt Financial Advice Limited, Aon Hewitt GmbH, Aon Hewitt Health Market Insurance Solutions Inc., Aon Hewitt Hong Kong Limited, Aon Hewitt Inc., Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting Inc., Aon Hewitt Investment Management Inc., Aon Hewitt Japan Ltd., Aon Hewitt Limited, Aon Hewitt Ltd., Aon Hewitt Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Aon Hewitt Management Company Limited, Aon Hewitt Middle East Limited, Aon Hewitt Risk & Consulting S.r.l., Aon Hewitt Risk & Financial Management B.V., Aon Hewitt Trust Solutions GmbH, Aon Hewitt US Holdings Limited, Aon Holding Deutschland GmbH, Aon Holdings (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon Holdings Antillen N.V., Aon Holdings Australia Pty Limited, Aon Holdings Austria GmbH, Aon Holdings B.V., Aon Holdings Botswana (Pty) Ltd, Aon Holdings Corretores de Seguros Ltda., Aon Holdings France SNC, Aon Holdings Hong Kong Limited, Aon Holdings International B.V., Aon Holdings Israel Ltd., Aon Holdings Japan Ltd, Aon Holdings Limited, Aon Holdings Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Holdings Mid Europe B.V., Aon Holdings New Zealand, Aon Hong Kong Limited, Aon Hungary Insurance Brokers Risk and Human Consulting LLC, Aon Insurance Agencies (HK) Limited, Aon Insurance Agencies (Macau) Limited, Aon Insurance Brokers (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Aon Insurance Brokers (Pvt) Ltd., Aon Insurance Management Agencies (HK) Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (Antilles) N.V., Aon Insurance Managers (Barbados) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Bermuda) Ltd, Aon Insurance Managers (Cayman) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Dublin) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Guernsey) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Holdings) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Isle of Man) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Liechtenstein) AG, Aon Insurance Managers (Luxembourg) S.A., Aon Insurance Managers (Malta) PCC Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (Puerto Rico) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers (Shannon) Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (USA) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers (USVI) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers Gibraltar Ltd., Aon Insurance Micronesia (Guam) Inc, Aon Insurance Underwriting Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers Philippines Inc., Aon International Cooperatief U.A., Aon International Energy Inc., Aon International Holdings Inc., Aon Investment Holdings Ireland Limited, Aon Israel Insurance Brokerage Ltd., Aon Italia S.r.l., Aon Japan Ltd, Aon Jauch & Hubener Gesellschaft m.b.H., Aon Korea Inc., Aon Latam Holdings N.V., Aon Lead QI B.V., Aon Life Agency of Texas Inc., Aon Life Agente de Seguros S.A. de C.V., Aon Life Insurance Company, Aon MacDonagh Boland Group Ltd, Aon Majan LLC, Aon Management Consulting Taiwan Ltd., Aon Mauritius Holdings, Aon Meeus Assurantien B.V., Aon Mexico Business Support SA de CV, Aon Mexico Holdings LLC, Aon Mexico Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., Aon Middle East Co LLC, Aon Nederland C.V., Aon Netherlands Operations B.V., Aon Neudorf Finance S.a.r.l., Aon New Zealand, Aon New Zealand Group ULC, Aon Norway AS, Aon Overseas Holdings Limited, Aon PHI Acquisition Corporation of California, Aon PMI International Limited, Aon Parizeau Inc., Aon Pension Trustees Limited, Aon Pensions Insurance Brokers GmbH, Aon Polska Services Sp. z o.o., Aon Polska Sp. z o.o., Aon Portugal - Consultores Unipessoal Lda., Aon Portugal - Corretores de Seguros S.A., Aon Premium Finance LLC, Aon Private Risk Management Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Private Risk Management of California Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Product Design & Development Australia Pty Limited, Aon Product Design and Development New Zealand Limited, Aon Product Risk Services Hong Kong Limited, Aon Property Risk Consulting Inc., Aon Qatar LLC, Aon Re (Thailand) Limited, Aon Re Bertoldi - Corretagem de Resseguros S.A., Aon Re Bolivia S.A. Corredores de Reaseguros, Aon Re Canada Holdings SARL, Aon Real Estate B.V., Aon Realty Services Inc., Aon Reed Stenhouse Inc., Aon Retirement Plan Advisors LLC, Aon Retirement Solutions Limited, Aon Risiko & Unternehmensberatungs GmbH, Aon Risk & Asset Management Pty Ltd, Aon Risk Consultants Inc., Aon Risk Insurance Services West Inc., Aon Risk Management (Pty) Ltd, Aon Risk Services (Chile) Corredores de Seguros Limitada, Aon Risk Services (Holdings) of Latin America Inc., Aon Risk Services (Holdings) of the Americas Inc., Aon Risk Services (NI) Limited, Aon Risk Services (PNG) Ltd., Aon Risk Services (Thailand) Limited, Aon Risk Services Argentina S.A., Aon Risk Services Australia Limited, Aon Risk Services Canada Inc., Aon Risk Services Central Inc., Aon Risk Services Colombia SA Corredores de Seguros, Aon Risk Services Companies Inc., Aon Risk Services EMEA B.V., Aon Risk Services Ecuador S.A. Agencia Asesora Productora de Seguros, Aon Risk Services Holdings (Chile ) Ltda., Aon Risk Services Inc. of Florida, Aon Risk Services Inc. of Hawaii, Aon Risk Services Inc. of Maryland, Aon Risk Services Inc. of Washington D.C., Aon Risk Services Northeast Inc., Aon Risk Services South Inc., Aon Risk Services Southwest Inc., Aon Risk Services Venezuela Corretaje de Seguros C.A., Aon Risk Solutions (Cayman) Ltd., Aon Risk Solutions Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas SA de CV, Aon Risk Solutions of Puerto Rico Inc., Aon Riskminder A/S, Aon Romania Broker de Asigurare - Reasigurare SRL, Aon Rus Insurance Brokers LLC, Aon Rus LLC, Aon S.p.A. Insurance & Reinsurance Brokers, Aon Saver Limited, Aon Securities (Hong Kong) Limited, Aon Securities Investment Management Inc., Aon Securities LLC, Aon Securities Limited, Aon Service Corporation, Aon Services (Guernsey) Ltd, Aon Services (Malta) Ltd, Aon Services Group Inc., Aon Services Hong Kong Limited, Aon Services Pty Ltd., Aon Sigorta ve Reasurans Brokerligi ve A.S., Aon Soluciones S.A., Aon Soluciones S.A.C., Aon Southern Europe UK Limited, Aon Sp. z o.o., Aon Special Risk Resources Inc., Aon Superannuation (PNG) Limited, Aon Superannuation Pty Limited, Aon TC Holdings Inc., Aon Taiwan Ltd., Aon Treasury Ireland Limited, Aon Trust Company LLC, Aon Trust Corporation Limited, Aon Trust Services B.V., Aon UK Group Limited, Aon UK Holdings Intermediaries Limited, Aon UK Limited, Aon UK Trustees Limited, Aon US & International Holdings Limited, Aon US Holdings 2 Inc., Aon US Holdings Inc., Aon Ukraine LLC, Aon Underwriting Agencies (HK) Limited, Aon Underwriting Managers (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon Underwriting Managers Inc., Aon Versicherungsberatungs GmbH, Aon Versicherungsmakler Deutschland GmbH, Aon Vietnam Limited, Aon Ward Financial Corporation, Aon-COFCO Insurance Brokers Co. Ltd., Aon/Albert G. Ruben Insurance Services Inc., Asevasa Argentina S.A., Asevasa Caricam S.A., Asevasa Chile Peritaciones e Ingenieria de Riesgos S.A., Asevasa Mexico S.A. de C.V., Asevasa Panama S.A., Asian Reinsurance Underwriters Limited, Asscom Insurance Brokers S.r.l., Association of Rural and Small Town Americans, Associacao Instituto Aon, Assurance Licensing Services Inc., B E P International Corp., B.V. Assurantiekantoor Langeveldt-Schroder, BMS Insurance Agency L.L.C., Bacon & Woodrow Partnerships (Ireland) Limited, Bacon & Woodrow Partnerships Limited, Bain Hogg Group Limited (in liquidation), Baltolink UADBB, Bankassure Insurance Services Limited, Bayfair Insurance Centre Limited, Beaubien Finance Ireland Limited, Beaubien Finance Limited, Beaubien UK Finance Limited, Becketts (Trustees) Limited, Becketts Limited, Beech Hill Pension Trustees Ltd, Bekouw Mendes C.V., Benefit Marketing Solutions L.L.C., Benfield Advisory Inc., Benfield Corredores de Reaseguro Ltda., Benfield Finance (London) LLC, Benfield Group, Benfield Investment Holdings Limited, Benfield Juniperus Holdings Limited, Benfield do Brasil Participacoes Ltda. (dormant), Benton Finance Ireland Limited, Benton Finance Limited, Blanch Americas Inc., Bowes & Company Inc. of New York, CEREP III Secondary Manager LLC, CFSSG Real Estate Partners I LLC, CFSSG Real Estate Partners II LLC, CIF-H GP LLC, Cammack Health LLC, Cananwill Corporation, Cananwill Inc., Cardea Health Solutions Limited, Casablanca Intermediation Company Sarl, Celinvest Amsterdam B.V., Chapka Assurances SAS, Citadel Insurance Managers Inc., CoCubes, CoSec 2000 Limited, Coalition for Benefits Equality and Choice, Cocubes Technologies Private Limited, Coles Hewitt Partnership, Contingency Insurance Brokers Limited, Contractsure Limited, CoverWallet, Coverall S.r.l. Insurance and Reinsurance Underwriting Agency, Credit Insurance Brokers (Reynolds) Limited, Crion N.V., Custom Benefit Programs Inc., Cut-e, Cut-e (UK) Limited, Cut-e Assessment (Hong Kong) Limited, Cut-e Assessment Solutions Europe Limited, Cut-e Australia Pty Limited, Cut-e Consult DMCC, Cut-e Danmark A/S, Cut-e Finland Oy, Cut-e GmbH, Cut-e Ireland Limited, Cut-e Nordic AS, Cut-e Norge AS, Cytelligence, Delany Bacon & Woodrow Partnership, Dempsey Partners, Denney O'Hara (Life & Pensions) Limited, Doveland Services Limited, E. W. Blanch Holdings Limited, E. W. Blanch Investments Limited, E.W. Blanch Capital Risk Solutions Inc., E.W. Blanch International Inc., EW Blanch Limited, Elysium Digital IP Products LLC, Elysium Digital L.L.C., Ennis Knupp Secondary Market Services LLC, Essar Insurance Services Limited, Exploitatiemaatschappij Beukenlaan 68-72 B.V., Farmaseg - Solucoes Assistencia e Servicos Empresariais Ltda., Farmsure Limited [In strike-off], Finaccord Limited, Financial & Professional Risk Solutions Inc., Futurity Group Inc., GTCR/AAM Blocker Corp., Ge.f.it. S.r.l., Gefass S.r.l., Glenrand M I B (Mocambique) Corretores de Seguros Limitada, Global Safe Insurance Brokers S.r.l., Globe Events Management, Gotham Digital Science LLC, Gotham Digital Science Ltd., Grant Liddell Financial Advisor Services Pty Ltd, Grant Park Capital LLC, Groupe-Conseil Aon Inc., Grupo Innovac Sociedad de Correduria de Seguros SA, HIA Insurance Services Pty Ltd., Hall Rhodes Holdings Limited, Hall Rhodes Limited, Hamburger Gesellschaft zur Forderung des Versicherungswesens mbH, Harbourview West Lake Co-Invest (GP) LP, Health Index Advisors LLC, Healthy Paws Pet Insurance, Henderson Corporate Insurance Brokers Limited, Henderson Insurance Brokers Limited, Henderson Insurance Partnership Limited [In strike-off], Henderson Risk Management Limited, Hewitt Amalco 3 ULC, Hewitt Amalco 4 ULC, Hewitt Amalco 5 ULC, Hewitt Associates (a partnership), Hewitt Associates Administradora e Corretora de Seguros Ltda., Hewitt Associates Corp., Hewitt Associates Outsourcing Limited, Hewitt Associates Pty Ltd, Hewitt Associates S.C., Hewitt Associates SAS, Hewitt Associates Servicos de Recursos Humanos Ltda., Hewitt Beneficios Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas S.A. de C.V., Hewitt Holdings Canada Company, Hewitt Insurance Brokerage LLC, Hewitt Insurance Inc., Hewitt International Holdings LLC, Hewitt Management Ltd., Hewitt Risk Management Services Limited, Hewitt Western Management Amalco Inc., Hogg Group Limited, Hogg Robinson North America Inc., Huntington T. Block Insurance Agency Inc., I. Beck Insurance Agency (1994) Ltd., IAO Actuarial Consulting Services Canada Inc., INPOINT INC., IRM/GRC Holding Inc., Impact Forecasting L.L.C., Inspiring Benefits, Inspiring Benefits Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Insuractive Limited [In strike-off], Insurance Broker Aon Kazakhstan LLP, International Risk Management (Americas) Inc., International Risk Management Group Ltd, International Space Brokers Europe Limited, International Space Brokers France, International Space Brokers Inc., International Space Brokers Limited, Inversiones Benfield Chile Ltda., J H Minet Puerto Rico Inc., J. Allan Brown Consultants Inc., JDPT Manager LLC, Jenner Fenton Slade Limited, John Reynolds & Company (Credit Insurance) Limited, John Reynolds & Company (Insurances) Limited, John Reynolds & Company (Life & Pensions) Limited, Johnson Rooney Welch Inc., K & K Insurance Brokers Inc. Canada, K & K Insurance Group Inc., K & K Insurance Group of Florida Inc., K2 Technologies Inc., KVT GP LLC, Kloud S.a.r.l., Krumlin Hall Limited, Lake Erie Real Estate General Partner Limited, Lake Tahoe GP LLC, Lake Tahoe II GP LLC, Lake Tahoe III GP LLC, Lake Tahoe IV GP LLC, Lenzi Paolo Broker di Assicurazioni S.r.l., Lincolnshire Insurance Company PCC Limited, Linx Underwriting Solutions Inc., Lombard Trustee Company Limited, M.A. Shakeel Management Ltd. Amalco, MacDonagh Boland Crotty MacRedmond Ltd, Marinaro Dundas S.A., Marinaro Dundas SA, Mark Kelly Insurance and Financial Services PTY LTD, McLagan (Aon) Limited, McLagan Partners Asia Inc., McLagan Partners Inc., Membership Leasing Trust, Minet Consultancy Services Ltd, Minet Group, Minet Holdings Inc., Minet Inc., Minet Re North America Inc., Modern Survey Inc., Muirfield Underwriters Ltd., NBS Nominees Limited, National Insurance Office Ltd., Nauman Insurance Brokers Limited, Nexus Insurance Brokers Limited, One Underwriting Agency GmbH, One Underwriting B.V., One Underwriting Health B.V., One Underwriting Pty Ltd, Optica Agency A/S, Optimum Risk Solutions Limited, Ovatio Courtage SAS, P.G. Bradley & Co Limited, PGOF Manager 1 LLC, PRORUCK Ruckversicherungs Aktiengesellschaft, PT Aon Benfield Indonesia, PT Aon Hewitt Indonesia, PT Aon Indonesia, PWZ AG, Paragon Strategic Solutions Inc., PathWise Solutions LLC, Penn Square Manager 1 LLC, Penn Square Manager II LLC, Portus Consulting, Portus Consulting, Portus Consulting (Leamington) Limited, Portus Online LLP, Praesidium S.p.A. - Soluzioni Assicurative per il Management, Premier Auto Finance Inc., Private Client Trustees Ltd., Private Equity Partnership Structures I LLC, Probabilitas N.V./SA, Protective Marketing Enterprises Inc., Randolph Finance Unlimited Company, Rasini Vigano Limited, Redwoods Dental Underwriters Inc., Richard Kiddle (Insurance Brokers) Limited, Risk Laboratories LLC, Riskikonsultatsioonide OU, Ronnie Elementary Insurance Agency Ltd, SA Special Situations General Partner LLC, SG IFFOXX Assekuranzmaklergesellschaft mbH, SLE Worldwide Limited, SN Re S.A., Salud Riesgos y Recursos Humanos Consultores Ltda. (former Aon Corporte Advisors Ltda.), SchneiderGolling IFFOXX Assekuranzmakler AG, SchneiderGolling Industrie Assekuranzmaklergesellschaft mbH, Scritch Inc., Shanghai Kayi Information Technology Co. Ltd, Sheppard Netherlands B.V., Specialty Benefits Inc., Sports Insure Limited [In strike-off], Strategic Manager-III LLC, Stroz Friedberg (Asia) Limited, Stroz Friedberg Inc., Stroz Friedberg LLC, Stroz Friedberg Limited, Stroz Friedberg Risk Management Limited, Superannuation Management Nominees Limited, Suresport Limited [In strike-off], Swire Blanch MSTC II SA, Swire Blanch MSTC SA, TTG BRPTP GP LLC, TTG Cayuga Bavaria Intermediate 2 S.a.r.l, TTG Core Plus Investments LLC, TTG German Investments I LLC, TTG Investments II LLC, TTG Irish Investments I LLC, TTG Manager LLC, Tecsefin S.A. en liquidacion, The Aon Ireland Mastertrustee Limited, The Aon MasterTrustee Limited, The John Reynolds Company Limited, The Key West Saxon Group LLC, The Townsend Group Inc, The Townsend Group LLC, Townsend Alpha Manager I LLC, Townsend Alpha Manager II LLC, Townsend Alpha Manager III LLC, Townsend Group Asia Limited, Townsend Group Europe Ltd., Townsend HWL GP Ltd., Townsend Holdings LLC, Townsend Lake Constance GP Limited, Townsend REF GP LLC, Townsend Re Global GP Limited, Townsend SO Manager I LLC, Tyche, UAB One Underwriting, UADBB Aon Baltic, UK Credit Insurance Specialists Limited, UNIT Versicherungsmakler GmbH, US Underwriting Solutions S.r.l., USLP Underwriting Solutions LP, Underwriters Marine Services Inc., Unidelta AG, Unirobe Meeus Groep, UnitedPensions Deutschland AG, Univers Workplace Solutions, VERO Management AG, Ventiv Technology, WT Government Services LLC, WT Technologies LLC, Wannet Speciale Verzekeringen B.V., Wannet Sports Insurance GmbH, Ward Financial Group Inc., Welfare S.r.l, West Lake General Partner LLC, West Lake II GP LLC, Wexford Underwriting Managers Inc., White Rock Insurance (Americas) Ltd., White Rock Insurance (Europe) PCC Limited, White Rock Insurance (Gibraltar) PCC Ltd., White Rock Insurance (Guernsey) ICC Limited, White Rock Insurance (Netherlands) PCC Limited, White Rock Insurance (SAC) Ltd., White Rock Insurance Company PCC Ltd., White Rock Insurance PCC (Isle of Man) Limited, White Rock Services (Bermuda) Ltd., White Rock USA Ltd., Willis Towers Watson, Worldwide Integrated Services Company, Wrapid Specialty Inc., Zalba-Caldu Correduria de Seguros SA, and cut-e USA Inc..

Read More
Digital Realty is a real estate investment trust focused entirely on data centers. The company owns, acquires, develops, and operates a network of global data centers and the cloud-based solutions cloud service providers need to access and maximize them. The company has set itself apart from the traditional data center REIT by unifying its holdings across one digital platform called PlatformDIGITALR which provides seamless control of data flow.

The company was formed in 2004 when GI Partners contributed 24 newly acquired data centers to help form the business. Later that same year, the company went public through an IPO that provided the capital to begin a campaign of acquisition. The company has been steadily adding square footage and new locations to its network ever since and it is still not done. The expansion has helped to deliver a 10% FFO CAGR and fuel a steadily rising dividend distribution. The company made its 16th consecutive annual dividend increase in 2022 and additional increases are expected each year.

Digital Realty's global footprint provides access to connected businesses in more than 284 facilities in 23 countries. As of mid-2022, it had more than $53 billion in assets and was listed as the US 8th largest publicly traded REIT.

Digital Realty supports the world's IT infrastructure by providing a full range of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. Businesses can choose to rely solely on Digital Realty for their data center needs or use Digital Realtys propriety cloud-based solutions to interconnect multiple data centers, and clouds, or connect to a private network.

PlatformDIGITALR is the company's global data center platform. It provides customers with a proven solution for operating on the cloud, scaling a digital business, and managing its data flow. The platform allows for seamless connection to providers and services that are in demand by todays rapidly changing digital businesses.

Digital Realty Trust is a key member of the Green Grid, a consortium of industry insiders and policy makers focused on making data centers more efficient and sustainable. Digital Realty Trust offers industry-leading efficiency alongside its world-class quality data centers. Digital Realty Trust data centers require fewer building materials and provide industry-leading power usage levels or PUEs.
The Idaho Supreme Court issued a surprisingly nuanced ruling last week that has major implications for your pocketbook as well as how laws are passed in Boise. And it finally cleared up longstanding speculation over the governors power when it comes to vetoing laws.

For starters, the ruling means youll still have to pay taxes on groceries in the Gem State, at least for the time being.

For the Legislature, the ruling means lawmakers will have to stay in session until they deliver all their bills to the governor and not let them trickle to his desk sometimes days after the session, which has been the tradition in Idaho for almost 30 years.

For the governor, it means he has 10 days from the time the Legislature is dismissed to veto a bill  not 10 days from the time it hits his desk.

It was this timing issue that led to the court case. In a rush to pass some kind of tax relief this session, lawmakers made a mad scramble at the very last minute to repeal the states 6 percent tax on groceries. Gov. C.L. Butch Otter had warned lawmakers not to give him a grocery tax bill  Otter presumably favored an income tax cut instead  so the governor vetoed the grocery bill on April 11, nine days after lawmakers gave him the bill on March 31.

Thirty lawmakers sued, saying Otter had missed the deadline to veto.

The case essentially hinged on when the veto clock starts: 10 days from the time the Legislature dismisses, as it says in the state Constitution, or 10 days from the time the bill hits his desk, as the courts ruled in a 1978 decision?

In its latest ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the lawmakers who sued but gave Otter the benefit of the doubt and let the veto stand. Some pundits described the ruling as splitting the baby.

(It is worth pointing out that wed never have been in this mess had Otter simply vetoed the grocery tax repeal earlier. He had, after all, made his position clear to lawmakers before the bill was even crafted. If he knew he wasnt going to sign it, why wait so long for the veto?)

No matter now. The court has spoken.

So whats that mean going forward?

Most important for the masses will be the future of the grocery tax. Its clear the GOP-led Legislature is desperate to pass a tax cut. Will they try groceries again or pursue an income tax cut, as the House had originally planned last year? Both?

Otter had opposed the grocery bill because it would have left the state with an approximately $80 million shortfall. An income tax is likely to create a shortfall, too.

Our advice is to pursue the grocery tax repeal. Because its a flat tax, it places a larger burden on low-income residents. And it could be stifling job growth here, because businesses (and shoppers) on border communities will cross state lines to avoid the tax.

Start with groceries and work out the kinks. Find the money to erase the shortfall. Craft a better bill.

The ruling especially means lawmakers should avoid at all costs the kinds of last-minute rushes on major legislation that puts their bills in veto jeopardy. Make grocery tax repeal the first bill of the next session and use that time to perfect the bill. As we saw in the spring, waiting until the last minute leads to imperfect legislation.

And for Otter, our advice is to be more decisive. This isnt his first veto to run into trouble because of timing.

The Supreme Court has given the marching orders. Now, the question is: Will Otter and the Legislature be able to follow them?
Service Corporation International provides deathcare products and services in the United States and Canada. The company operates through Funeral and Cemetery segments. Its funeral service and cemetery operations comprise funeral service locations, cemeteries, funeral service/cemetery combination locations, crematoria, and other businesses. The company also provides professional services related to funerals and cremations, including the use of funeral facilities and motor vehicles; arranging and directing services; and removal, preparation, embalming, cremation, memorialization, and travel protection, as well as catering services. In addition, it offers funeral merchandise, including burial caskets and related accessories, urns and other cremation receptacles, outer burial containers, flowers, online and video tributes, stationery products, casket and cremation memorialization products, and other ancillary merchandise. Further, the company's cemeteries provide cemetery property interment rights, such as developed lots, lawn crypts, mausoleum spaces, niches, and other cremation memorialization and interment options; and sells cemetery merchandise and services, including memorial markers and bases, outer burial containers, flowers and floral placements, graveside services, merchandise installations, and interments, as well as offers preneed cemetery merchandise and services. Service Corporation International offers its products and services under the Dignity Memorial, Dignity Planning, National Cremation Society, Advantage Funeral and Cremation Services, Funeraria del Angel, Making Everlasting Memories, Neptune Society, and Trident Society brands. As of December 31, 2021, it owned and operated 1,471 funeral service locations; and 488 cemeteries, including 299 funeral service/cemetery combination locations covering 44 states, eight Canadian provinces, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The company was incorporated in 1962 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
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.
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.
Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc. distributes industrial motion, power, control, and automation technology solutions in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. It operates through two segments, Service Center Based Distribution, and Fluid Power & Flow Control. The company distributes bearings, power transmission products, engineered fluid power components and systems, specialty flow control solutions, advanced automation products, industrial rubber products, linear motion components, automation solutions, tools, safety products, oilfield supplies, and other industrial and maintenance supplies; and motors, belting, drives, couplings, pumps, hydraulic and pneumatic components, filtration supplies, valves, fittings, process instrumentation, actuators, and hoses, filtration supplies, as well as other related supplies for general operational needs of customers' machinery and equipment. It also operates fabricated rubber shops and service field crews that install, modify, and repair conveyor belts and rubber linings, as well as offer hose assemblies. In addition, the company provides equipment repair and technical support services. It distributes industrial products through a network of service centers. The company serves various industries, including agriculture and food processing, cement, chemicals and petrochemicals, fabricated metals, forest products, industrial machinery and equipment, life sciences, mining, oil and gas, primary metals, technology, transportation, and utilities, as well as government entities. The company was formerly known as Bearings, Inc. and changed its to name to Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc. in 1997. The company was founded in 1923 and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.
Joel Osteen denies he's a prosperity preacher, says his focus is on 'helping other people'

Joel Osteen may be one of America's wealthiest pastors but he continues to brush off the claim of critics that he preaches the 'prosperity gospel.'

The pastor preaches to around 40,000 people each week at Lakewood Church, Houston, and has sold millions of books over the years. He's not just a household name in the U.S. but around the world, with televised broadcasts of his preaching going out to nearly 100 countries each week.

A consistent theme across his sermons and writings is how to be happier and successful. But it's what some see as an over-emphasis on financial success as a blessing of God - and what they can do to receive that blessing - that makes him a controversial figure.

Add to this his own personal wealth which allegedly includes a $10m mansion in a wealthy suburb of Houston and millions earned in book royalties.

But he has consistently denied that he a prosperity preacher, mostly recently in an interview with the Denver Post this month, in which he claimed his message was different.

When the interviewer asks him how he would respond to people who think he's 'all about money,' the 'Every Day A Friday' author answered that he was all about being a blessing to others.

'First off, I don't take a salary from my church or ministry. I've been blessed outside of that. But no doubt what you're saying is true. But I think you have to overcome it by being who you are, by living a life of integrity and helping other people,' he said. 'Our message is that we're blessed to be a blessing to others. All of us here in America are blessed compared to parts of the world. I try to just focus on helping other people,' he claimed.

He gave a similar answer when the interviewer asked how he would interpret Jesus's famous teaching that it is 'easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God?'

'I think you have to take it all in perspective. In the Scripture, Christianity was started with Abraham. Abraham was one of the wealthiest men of his day. It's not about wealth. I think he was talking about how if your focus is on riches  just, how can I be wealthy and focus on myself all the time  that's not what Micah and others in the Bible were talking about. If your dream is to rise higher, to do great things, to have money to help mankind, to be a blessing to others, I don't think God has any problem with that.'

He went on to argue that money made it possible to do the work of God.

'We wouldn't have the Compaq Center today if God hadn't blessed people the way they could give. It cost $100 million to renovate that facility. (Those are) people that believe that God can do something with a life  that I can rise higher and accomplish things and excel. Not to focus on me, but to be a blessing to others,' he said.
More Christians handed harsh prison sentences in Iran; is Tehran afraid that Christianity is growing in the country?

The prison gates are opening wider for persecuted Christians in Iran with 12 more receiving prison sentences last month.

The latest round of punishment was meted on Yasser Mossayebzadeh, Saheb Fadaie, Mohammad Reza Omidi and Youcef Nadarkhani . They were each sentenced to 10 years in prison on June 24 in the northern Iranian city of Rasht.

Just the day before, four other Iranian Christians in Tehran received similarly harsh prison terms. And just a few weeks before that, one Iranian and three Azerbaijani Christians also suffered the same fate, World Watch Monitor reported.

Nadarkhani is a pastor who had previously been arrested and jailed for nearly three years for apostasy, a charge for which he faced the death sentence before his release in 2012.

The four accused were each found guilty of "actions against national security," according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide. The judge accused their church of receiving 500,000 a year from the British government.

The four were convicted of "propagating house-churches" and "promoting Zionist Christianity," according to Middle East Concern.

They were initially arrested in May 2016 in the northern city of Rasht, near the Caspian Sea. Three of the fourMossayebzadeh, Fadaie and Omidiwere also sentenced to 80 lashes each for drinking wine during Holy Communion.

It was the second time that Omidi was convicted of drinking alcohol. A third conviction could reportedly lead to his execution.

Mansour Borji, from human-rights group Article 18, believes the arrest and imprisonment of more Christians reflect the Iranian authorities' "fear" of the growing Christianity in the country.

"It could be interpreted as a sign that they want to send a message to the Iranian Christians inside the country, and perhaps also to the wider world," Borji told World Watch Monitor.

"The charges are out of fear, the sentences are harsh and out of fear, and the whole way the court hearings have been conducted  and how people are threatened and intimidated not to go public with their stories  tells us about how the Iranian government is fearful of the growth of Christianity inside Iran," he explained.

Mervyn Thomas of Christian Solidarity Worldwide said the latest convictions "on spurious charges" are "clearly part of an intensified campaign of judicial harassment aimed at intimidating members of minority faiths."

"The national security charges leveled in all of these cases amount to the criminalization of the Christian community for exercising the right to freedom of religion or belief, and that this is occurring despite the fact that the Iranian constitution recognizes Christianity," he said.

He called on the world community to extend the sanctions against Iranian individuals to include members of the judiciary who are involved in the ongoing harassment and persecution of Christians.
Muslim woman seeking court action after airline had her detained for reading Syrian book

A Muslim woman who was detained at a British airport for reading a book on Syrian art onboard a plane is taking her holiday company to court, saying she was singled out for her ethnicity.

Faizah Shaheen was on a flight from her honeymoon in Turkey on August 3 2016 when Thomson Airways cabin crew reported her to authorities. She was detained and questioned, alongside her husband for about 30 minutes, under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, according to BBC News.

Shaheen, who is an NHS mental health worker who works in preventing radicalisation, believes she was discriminated against because of her race. She said officials questioned her about her book Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, her work and how many languages she spoke.

She told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme: 'I felt upset and distressed, followed by anger. I struggled to accept that I was being singled out for reading a book on art and culture.'

'One year on, Thomson Airways has failed to provide an explanation or apology despite legal involvement.

'This attitude has left me with no option but to seek a declaration from the court under the Equality Act.'

According to the Evening Standard, Thomson Airways responded with the following statement: 'We're really sorry if Ms Shaheen remains unhappy with how she feels she was treated.

'We wrote to her to explain that our crew undergo general safety and security awareness training on a regular basis.

'As part of this they are encouraged to be vigilant and share any information or questions with the relevant authorities, who would then act as appropriate.

'We appreciate that in this instance Ms Shaheen may have felt that over caution had been exercised, however like all airlines, our crew are trained to report any concerns they may have as a precaution.'
Muslims worshipping in Jerusalem streets after call for boycott of Temple Mount over metal detectors

Islamic leaders have called on Muslims to boycott the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in protest after Israel installed metal detectors at the site's entrance gates following a deadly attack there by Arabs last week.

For the first time in decades, Israel closed the site on Friday, after three Arab Muslim Israeli citizens opened fire from the holy compound with automatic weapons, killing two police officers before they were shot and killed.

Israel then reopened the compound to Muslim worshippers on Sunday after imposing new security measures, including metal detectors and additional security cameras.

The Waqf, Jordan's Islamic authority that manages religious affairs at the site, was outraged over the metal detectors, according to AP.

Dozens of worshippers have been praying on the streets near the gate after refusing to enter via the metal detectors.

Israeli police said last night that some 200 Palestinians tried to block a road nearby and threw stones at officers who dispersed them.

On Sunday, Israeli media reported that minor scuffles broke out as some Muslim worshippers tried to stop others from using the gates. But police said that despite the tensions, hundreds of worshippers had entered the compound.

The Waqf, together with other Islamic groups, yesterday issued a statement calling on Muslim worshippers 'to reject and boycott all the Israeli aggression measures, including changing the historical status quo including imposing the metal detectors'.

They called on the worshippers not to enter the mosque through the metal detectors and added that 'if the metal detectors continue to be imposed, we call upon the people to pray in front of the gates of the mosque and in the streets of Jerusalem'.

There were protests in Jordan against Israel over the closure and the installation of metal detectors, despite a peace treaty between Amman and Israel. Jordan was reportedly not consulted about the changes by Israel.

The site in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem is revered by Jews and Muslims alike, and is the scene of tensions between the two faiths. It is the holiest site in Judaism and the nearby Western Wall, a remnant of one of the temples, is the holiest place where Jews can pray, while Muslims regard the same hilltop compound as the Noble Sanctuary, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock and Islam's third-holiest site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

The Jerusalem police commissioner Yoram Halevy said the metal detectors were necessary for the site to reopen. 'I assume that with time they will understand that this is not terrible,' he told Army Radio.

He added: 'When I go shopping on Friday I pass through a detector at the mall. We see them everywhere they have become a part of our lives.'

Since 2015, Palestinians have killed 45 Israelis, two visiting Americans and a British tourist in stabbings, shootings and attacks using cars.

During the same two year period, Israeli forces have killed more than 254 Palestinians, most of them said by Israel to be attackers while others were killed in clashes with Israeli forces.
Pope Francis condemns 'Church of the pure': 'Good and evil are totally entwined'

'Good and evil are totally entwined', said Pope Francis at the Vatican this morning, declaring that 'we are all sinners'. He implored Christians not to label any one group or place as bad, warning against a judgmental 'Church of the pure'.

'The Lord, who is wisdom incarnate, today helps us to understand that good and evil cannot identify with definite territories or determined groups of people,' the Pope said at his weekly Angelus address in St Peter's Square at the Vatican, according to Catholic News Agency.

He added: 'the line between good and evil passes through the heart of every person.' Francis invited anyone who was sinless to raise their hand, to which no one did. 'We are all sinners,' he declared.

The pontiff reflected on the reading of the day, from Matthew's Gospel, the parable in which an enemy plants weeds alongside good wheat in his master's field.

The story, Francis said, illustrates God's good work alongside the work of the devil intended to corrupt the good  the patient master (God) allows both to grow so the harvest is not lost.

'With this image, Jesus tells us that in this world good and evil are totally entwined, that it's impossible to separate them and weed out all the evil,' the Pope said.

'Only God can do this, and he will do it in the final judgment.'

He warned against 'a Church of the "pure" which pretends to judge before it's time who is in the Kingdom of God and who is not'.

The sacrament of confession is necessary, Francis said, because 'we always need to be forgiven for our sins...to always look at the evil that is outside of us means not wanting to recognize the sin that is also within us.'

The Pope pointed to the 'freedom of Christians' to choose between good and evil, and the need to trust God in the endeavour.

He said that Jesus' parable shows how 'Thanks to the beneficial influence of an anxious waiting, what were weeds or seemed like weeds, can become a product of good.'

This, Francis said, is 'the prospect of hope!'
The Travelers Companies, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides a range of commercial and personal property, and casualty insurance products and services to businesses, government units, associations, and individuals in the United states and internationally. The company operates through three segments: Business Insurance, Bond & Specialty Insurance, and Personal Insurance. The Business Insurance segment offers workers' compensation, commercial automobile and property, general liability, commercial multi-peril, employers' liability, public and product liability, professional indemnity, marine, aviation, onshore and offshore energy, construction, terrorism, personal accident, and kidnap and ransom insurance products. This segment operates through select accounts, which serve small businesses; commercial accounts that serve mid-sized businesses; national accounts, which serve large companies; and national property and other that serve large and mid-sized customers, commercial trucking industry, and agricultural businesses, as well as markets and distributes its products through brokers, wholesale agents, and program managers. The Bond & Specialty Insurance segment provides surety, fidelity, management and professional liability, and other property and casualty coverages and related risk management services through independent agencies and brokers. The Personal Insurance segment offers property and casualty insurance covering personal risks, primarily automobile and homeowners insurance to individuals through independent agencies and brokers. The Travelers Companies, Inc. was founded in 1853 and is based in New York, New York.
Nabors Industries Ltd. provides drilling and drilling-related services for land-based and offshore oil and natural gas wells. The company operates through five segments: U.S. Drilling, Canada Drilling, International Drilling, Drilling Solutions, and Rig Technologies. It provides tubular running, wellbore placement, directional drilling, measurement-while-drilling (MWD), equipment manufacturing, and rig instrumentation services; and logging-while-drilling systems and services, as well as drilling optimization software. The company also offers REVit, an automated real time stick-slip mitigation system; ROCKit, a directional steering control system; SmartNAV, a collaborative guidance and advisory platform; SmartSLIDE, an advanced directional steering control system; and RigCLOUD, which provides the tools and infrastructure to integrate applications to deliver real-time insight into operations across the rig fleet. In addition, it manufactures and sells top drives, catwalks, wrenches, drawworks, and other drilling related equipment, such as robotic systems and downhole tools; and provides aftermarket sales and services for the installed base of its equipment. As of December 31, 2021, the company marketed approximately 301 rigs for land-based drilling operations in the United States, Canada, and in 20 other countries worldwide; and 29 rigs for offshore platform drilling operations in the United States and internationally. Nabors Industries Ltd. was founded in 1952 and is based in Hamilton, Bermuda.
Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain.

Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred.

For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here.
The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III Scots L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Aoba Life Insurance Company Ltd., Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI Ireland L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI US L.P., Dale/P Minerals Limited Partnership, Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Horizon GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sprint GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Harvest Asset Management LLC, Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. Ltd. Kabushiki Kaisha Kyouei Nenkin Home, LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., Lotus Reinsurance Company Ltd., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Montana Capital Partners, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund A LP, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund II - A LP, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Desert Falcon Farms Manager LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI River Bend Ranches LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PG Friendly Partners Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM AC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory Shanghai Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Australia Pty Ltd, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Feeder VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM Custom Harvest LLC, PGIM DC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC JV GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC Solutions LLC, PGIM European Financing Limited, PGIM European Services Limited, PGIM Financial Limited, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund II L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives GP LLC, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives II GP LLC, PGIM Foreign Investments Inc., PGIM Holding Company LLC, PGIM Holdings Limited, PGIM Hong Kong Ltd., PGIM INDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM INDIA TRUSTEES PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM IRELAND LIMITED, PGIM Inc., PGIM International Financing Inc., PGIM Investments Ireland Limited, PGIM Investments LLC, PGIM Japan Co. Ltd., PGIM Korea Inc., PGIM LTIF Berlin GP S.a r.l., PGIM LTIF Berlin MLP S.ar.l., PGIM LTIF GP S.a.r.l., PGIM Limited, PGIM Loan Originator Manager Limited, PGIM M Campus GP S.a r.l., PGIM Management Partner Limited, PGIM MetaProp Investor LP LLC, PGIM Netherlands B.V., PGIM Overseas Investment Fund Management Shanghai Company Ltd, PGIM Private Capital Ireland Limited, PGIM Private Capital Limited, PGIM Private Placement Investors Inc., PGIM Private Placement Investors L.P., PGIM QUANTITATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC, PGIM REF EUROPE SCSp, PGIM REF Europe GP S.a r.l., PGIM REF Europe Member LLC, PGIM REF Intermediary Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate CD S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Capital VII GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest L.P., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest SCSp, PGIM Real Estate Co-Invest Holdings LLC, PGIM Real Estate Debt GmbH, PGIM Real Estate Finance Holding Company, PGIM Real Estate Finance LLC, PGIM Real Estate France SAS, PGIM Real Estate Germany AG, PGIM Real Estate Global Debt GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Global Master Fund GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles II S de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles S. de R.L. de C.V, PGIM Real Estate Italy S.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Japan Ltd., PGIM Real Estate Loan Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate Luxembourg S.A., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Mexico S.C., PGIM Real Estate S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate U.S. CORE Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate U.S. Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate UK Limited, PGIM Scots Limited, PGIM Securities Investment Trust Enterprise, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management (Feeder) I LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management Fund I L.P., PGIM Shanghai Company Ltd., PGIM Singapore Pte. Ltd., PGIM Strategic Financing LLC, PGIM Strategic Investments Inc., PGIM Taronga Investor GP LLC, PGIM U.S. Agriculture Fund LP, PGIM USPF VI Manager LLC, PGIM Wadhwani LLP, PGIM Warehouse Inc., PGLH of Delaware Inc., PIFM Holdco LLC, PIIC Limited, PIISC Holdings UK Limited, PIM KF Blocker V Holdings LLC, PIM USPF V Manager LLC, PLA Administradora Industrial SRL, PLA Administradora LLC, PLA Administradora S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional II S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional S.de R.L. de C.V., PLA Co-Investor LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager I LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager II LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Blue LP, PLA Retail Fund I Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LP, PLA Retail Fund II Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II U.S. Carry/Co-Invest LP, PLA Services Manager Mexico LLC, PLAI Limited, PMCF Holdings LLC, PMCF Properties LLC, PPPF General Partner LLP, PR GA SCP Apartments LLC, PRAMERICA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP LLP, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP SCOTS FEEDER LLP, PRECO Account IV LLC, PRECO Account Partnership IV LP, PRECO III GP LLP, PREFG Hanwha Manager LLC, PREI Acquisition I Inc., PREI Acquisition II Inc., PREI Acquisition LLC, PREI HYDG LLC, PREI International Inc., PRIAC Property Acquisitions LLC, PRICOA Management Partner Limited, PRISA Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Pooled Manager LLC, PRISA III Fund GP LLC, PRISA III Fund PIM LLC, PRREF Debt Fund Manager LLC, PRREF II Fund Manager LLC, PRU 3XSquare LLC, PRUCO LLC, PRUDENTIAL CAPITAL ENERGY PARTNERS MANAGEMENT (FEEDER) LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP MEMBER LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP REIT LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE 2 LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE LLC, PT PFI Mega Life Insurance, Passaic Fund LLC, Pine Tree GP, Pine Tree L.P., Platinum GP Limited, Platinum II L.P., Platinum L.P., Pramerica Business Consulting Shanghai Company Limited, Pramerica EVP CP LP, Pramerica Financial Asia Headquarters Pte. Ltd., Pramerica Financial Asia Limited, Pramerica Fixed Income Funds Management Limited, Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Pramerica Holdings Ltd, Pramerica Hong Kong Holdings Limited, Pramerica Insurance Agency China Company Ltd., Pramerica Luxembourg CP GP S.a.r.l., Pramerica PRECAP I GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP II GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP III GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP IV GP LLP, Pramerica Pan European Real Estate Scots LP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I GP Scots Feeder LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I Scotland Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital II Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital III Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Limited, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Scots Feeder LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V Netherlands GP LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Scots CP GP LLP, Preco III Scotland Limited Partnership, Pru 101 Wood LLC, Pru Alpha Partners I LLC, Pru Fixed Income Emerging Markets Partners I LLC, PruVen Capital Partners Fund I L.P., Pruco Assignment Corporation, Pruco Life Insurance Company, Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, Pruco Securities LLC, Prudential 900 Aviation Boulevard LLC, Prudential Affordable Mortgage Company LLC, Prudential Agricultural Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Annuities Distributors Inc., Prudential Annuities Holding Company Inc., Prudential Annuities Inc., Prudential Annuities Information Services & Technology Corporation, Prudential Annuities Life Assurance Corporation, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Captive Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Universal Company, Prudential Bank & Trust FSB, Prudential Capital Energy Opportunity Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners Management Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Partners Management Fund IV L.P., Prudential Capital and Investment Services LLC, Prudential Chile II SpA, Prudential Chile SpA, Prudential Commercial Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Equity Group LLC, Prudential Financial Inc., Prudential Fixed Income Global Liquidity Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Fixed Income U.S. Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Funding LLC, Prudential General Services of Japan Y.K., Prudential Gibraltar Agency Co. Ltd. Prudential Gibraltar Agency Kabushiki Kaisha, Prudential Global Funding LLC, Prudential Holdings of Japan Inc., Prudential Huntoon Paige Associates LLC, Prudential IBH Holdco Inc., Prudential Impact Investments Mortgage Loans LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Debt LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Equity LLC, Prudential Insurance Agency LLC, Prudential International Insurance Holdings Ltd., Prudential International Insurance Service Company L.L.C., Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC, Prudential International Investments Company LLC, Prudential International Investments LLC, Prudential Investment Management Services LLC, Prudential Japan Holdings LLC, Prudential Legacy Insurance Company of New Jersey, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 1 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 2 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Capital Asset Holding Company LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Funding LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Holdings LLC, Prudential Multifamily Mortgage LLC, Prudential Mutual Fund Services LLC, Prudential Newark Realty LLC, Prudential QOZ Investment Fund 1 LLC, Prudential Realty Securities Inc., Prudential Retirement Financial Services Holding LLC, Prudential Retirement Holdings LLC, Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, Prudential Securities Secured Financing Corporation, Prudential Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., Prudential Seguros S.A., Prudential Select Strategies LLC, Prudential Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Prudential Structured Settlement Company, Prudential Systems Japan Limited, Prudential Tax Services LLC, Prudential Term Reinsurance Company, Prudential Trust Co. Ltd., Prudential Trust Company, Prudential Universal Reinsurance Company, Prudential Workplace Solutions Group Services LLC, Prudential do Brasil Seguros de Vida S.A., Prudential do Brasil Vida em Grupo S.A., Prudential/TMW Real Estate Group LLC, Pruservicos Participacoes Ltda., QMA JP EM All Cap Equity Partners LLC, Quartzsite LLC, Residential Services Corporation of America LLC, Rio CP LP, Rock European Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock Global Real Estate LLC, Rock Kensington Limited, Rock Marty GP S.a r.l., Rock Oxford S.a r.l., Rock UK Real Estate II S.a.r.l., Rockstone Co. Ltd., Rosado Grande LLC, Ross Avenue Energy Fund Holdings LLC, Ross Avenue Minerals 2012 LLC, SCP Apartments LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERS VI GP LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERSHIP FUND VI GP LLC, SHP IV Carried Interest LP, SHP V Carried Interest L.P., SMP Holdings Inc., SVIIT Holdings Inc., Sanei Collection Service Co. Ltd. Kabushiki Kaisha Sanei Shuuno Service, Senior Housing Partners V LLC, Senior Housing Partnership Fund V LLC, Sterling Private Placement Management LLP, Stetson Street Partners L.P., Strand Investments Limited, TBG Insurance Services Corporation, TENSATOR HOLDINGS LTD, TF Proveedora S.C., TMW ASPF I Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, TMW ASPF Management GmbH, TMW Management LLC, TMW Real Estate Group LLC, TMW Realty Advisors LLC, TMW USPF Verwaltungs GmbH, TRGOAG Company Inc., The Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Keynes Dynamic Beta Strategy US Fund GP LLC, The Prudential Assigned Settlement Services Corp., The Prudential Brazilian Capital Fund LP, The Prudential Gibraltar Financial Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Prudential Home Mortgage Company Inc., The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., The Prudential Real Estate Financial Services of America Inc., The WMF Group, Thurloe Commercial Guernsey Limited, USPF V - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, USPF V Carry LLC, USPF V Co-Invest LLC, USPF V Investment LP, United States Property Fund VI GP S.a r.l., VIP Australia Holding Company LLC, VIP Australia Trustee Pty Ltd, Vailsburg Fund LLC, Vantage Casualty Insurance Company, Wabash Avenue Holdings V LLC, Wabash Avenue Partners V L.P., Wadhwani Capital Limited, Waveland Avenue Holdings I LLC, Waveland Avenue Partners I Ireland L.P., Waveland Avenue Partners I US L.P., Wellness Services Ecossistema De Bem Estar Ltda., Wellness Services SRL, Yamato Life, and Yavapai LLC.

Read More
GE is a multi-national conglomerate that was originally incorporated in 1892. The company was founded by Thomas Edison as the Edison General Electric Company and shortened its name to General Electric following a merger with two other early electric pioneers. The name was later shortened again to GE. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts but has operations on a global scale. One of the original 12 Dow stocks, the company was a component of the index for 122 years until its ousting in 2018.

Originally intended to make and market Edisons incandescent lamp and following products, the company grew over the years through mergers, acquisitions, and natural expansion into newly created fields. Among the many early accomplishments is the creation of RCA and NBC which will both become forces of their own. Other major innovations include the worlds first turbine superchargers, industrial gas turbine engines, and the first jet engine. In the field of computing, General Electric Company is credited as being one of the 8 major computer companies of the 1960s and shares responsibility for todays digital world. In regard to its employees, two were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work with the company.

Today GE operates as a high-tech industrial company in Europe, China, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa. The company operates through four segments including Power, Renewables, Aerospace, and Healthcare although there are plans in the works to split the company into three separate entities. The three new companies would be GE Vernova (power and renewables), GE Health, and GE Aerospace. The spin-offs are expected to be completed by 2025.

The Power segment offers a variety of turbine engines for power production as well as the full range of services from plant construction to retrofit and refit. The Renewables segment is focused on solutions for renewable energy including wind and hydro and the technology to operate them. The Aviation segment manufactures aircraft engines of all varieties and the Healthcare segment offers technology for imaging, monitoring, diagnostics, and drug discovery to health and medical facilities.

General Electric is committed to helping the world transition to a greener way of life and is exiting the new-build coal-fired power industry. Instead, its advancements in wind, grid efficiency, and natural gas are being deployed around the world helping to reduce emissions and generate cleaner energy for businesses, industry, and communities. The company is targeting 2030 for its own carbon neutrality and 2050 for net zero emissions.
Vulcan Materials Company, together with its subsidiaries, produces and supplies construction aggregates primarily in the United States. It operates through four segments: Aggregates, Asphalt, Concrete, and Calcium. The Aggregates segment provides crushed stones, sand and gravel, sand, and other aggregates; and related products and services that are applied in construction and maintenance of highways, streets, and other public works, as well as in the construction of housing and commercial, industrial, and other nonresidential facilities. The Asphalt Mix segment offers asphalt mix in Alabama, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Texas, as well as engages in the asphalt construction paving activity in Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas. The Concrete segment provides ready-mixed concrete in California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, and Washington D.C. The Calcium segment mines, produces, and sells calcium products for the animal feed, plastics, and water treatment industries. The company was formerly known as Virginia Holdco, Inc. and changed its name to Vulcan Materials Company. Vulcan Materials Company was founded in 1909 and is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama.
Cardinal Health, Inc. operates as an integrated healthcare services and products company in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and internationally. It provides customized solutions for hospitals, healthcare systems, pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories, physician offices, and patients in the home. The company operates in two segments, Pharmaceutical and Medical. The Pharmaceutical segment distributes branded and generic pharmaceutical, specialty pharmaceutical, and over-the-counter healthcare and consumer products. The segment also provides services to pharmaceutical manufacturers and healthcare providers for specialty pharmaceutical products; operates nuclear pharmacies and radiopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities; repackages generic pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter healthcare products; and offers medication therapy management and patient outcomes services to hospitals, other healthcare providers, and payers, as well as provides pharmacy management services to hospitals. The Medical segment manufactures, sources, and distributes Cardinal Health branded medical, surgical, and laboratory products and devices that include exam and surgical gloves; needles, syringe, and sharps disposals; compressions; incontinences; nutritional delivery products; wound care products; single-use surgical drapes, gowns, and apparels; fluid suction and collection systems; urology products; operating room supply products; and electrode product lines. The segment also distributes a range of national brand products, including medical, surgical, and laboratory products; provides supply chain services and solutions to hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories, and other healthcare providers; and assembles and sells sterile, and non-sterile procedure kits. The company was incorporated in 1979 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ohio.
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.
A report has been released showing the barriers young entrants into farming face in today's often uncertain times.

The NatWest report, Harvesting the Future for Young Farmers, makes a number of key findings.

It has looked at the attitudes of 500 young and potential new entrant farmers in Britain, combined with insights and an economic analysis of the future for the industry.

The bank is proposing an action plan to 'save the future of farming', and the livelihoods of young farmers.

The report said that only 13% of farmers were under the age of 45 in 2015, but while fewer young people are entering the sector, their ideas are still needed to harness the technologies that can make farming an up-to-date industry.

Because most farmers are over the age of 45, issues of succession are making it harder for the younger generation to take over.

Research carried out by leading rural insurer NFU Mutual found that less than 40% of farming families have an effective succession plan in place.

This raises concerns that more than half of family farms could face an uncertain future.

'Easier and efficient'

The study states that over 57% of farms in England have diversified, by letting farm buildings or creating ways to appeal to tourists.

Indeed, the upcoming Rural Business Awards celebrates the success of rural and farming businesses that have diversified.

A thriving wedding venue born from a derelict sheep farm and a rural healthcare service are just some of the businesses shortlisted for the annual event.

The report goes on to say that young farmers are keen to explore how technology can make farming easier and more efficient, and are experimenting with drones to monitor crops and the electronic identification of livestock (EID).

Agriculture is one of the worlds least digitised major industries, but this will change as data acquisition, agricultural robotics and analytic companies grow.

Share farming

Of those wanting to enter the sector, not having a farm to inherit put off 55% of survey respondents, and 36% were unable to find a farm to let.

Ideas such as share farming are gaining traction in an industry that is traditionally family-owned. However, with a trend for larger farms, this is not always an option.

Finance is seen as the biggest obstacle to growth; 28% are trying peer-to-peer lending and one fifth have tried crowd-funding to help with projects.

Ian Burrow, Head of Agriculture at NatWest said: "Young farmers are a high-tech, highly skilled, highly motivated group of young people who hold a realistic picture of farming in their heads while wanting a career on the land.

"They are however, seriously constrained in a number of ways and despite more applications to colleges, their numbers are falling.

"If we are to unlock this potential, then there are a number of actions to be taken and issues to be overcome."
Everything is bigger in Texas. That was the message sent by the U.S. Geological Survey late last year when it announced that the Wolfcamp Shale Formation in West Texas' Permian Basin holds an estimated 20 billion barrels of oil. It's the largest continuous oil formation the agency has ever assessed in the United States.

The agency admitted that it likely holds even more than that, actually, since the estimate only included the portion of the Wolfcamp shale that extends into the Midland Basin. It also spans into the Delaware Basin. In a bit of Russian doll categorization, both the Midland Basin and Delaware Basin are subsets of the Permian Basin, which part of the vocabulary of most energy investors by now.

In the last 12 months, the Midland Basin and Delaware Basin may have been added to your vocabulary, too. Many oil stocks have purchased acreage in the unconventional plays and are counting on them to drive future production gains. A few have sold off all other assets to focus exclusively on the basin. Whoah.

Considering that 20 billion barrels of oil is at stake (plus 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.6 billion barrels of other liquids), can these oil stocks lean on the Wolfcamp shale to realize their growth potential?

These oil stocks have an eye for the unconventional

No company has benefited more from the potential of the Wolfcamp shale quite like Resolute Energy (NYSE: REN). The stock is up over 352% in the last year alone, although it returned over 1,000% from November 2015 to November 2016. The company blew up when energy prices crashed thanks to its massive debt load, but has strategically fought its way back with promises of impressive growth -- mostly built from assets in the Delaware Basin.

Resolute Energy is in the process of selling its only other assets to become a pure-play Delaware Basin producer. The move could pay off handsomely. Consider that the company averaged production of 15,100 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) in 2016, but that will rise to 26,000 boe/d in 2017 and 30,000 boe/d in 2018. All from the Delaware Basin.

It's far the only oil stock looking to the Wolfcamp shale and broader Delaware Basin for growth:

Company Net Acres Gross Operating Locations Estimated Reserves (boe) Resolute Energy 16,300 621 N/A Halcon Resources (HK) 41,600 1,740 N/A ConocoPhillips (COP 3.48%) 75,000 1,400 (net) 1.8 billion Anadarko Petroleum Corp (APC) 235,000 >10,000 >3 billion

On July 11, 2017 Halcon Resources announced the sale of its Williston Basin assets for $1.4 billion, which means it will become a one-basin company. That also means it will join Resolute Energy as pure play Delaware Basin producers. Investors are certainly on board with that, judging by the stock performance of each company. In fact, Halcon Resources stock is up 53% since the announcement.

Both Resolute Energy and Halcon Resources have something else in common: relying on growth expectations from the Delaware Basin to pay off massive debt piles. While both management teams could be proven correct, there isn't much room for error. The balance sheets of both companies are, unfortunately, major red flags.

The goods news for energy investors is that established companies aren't overlooking the Wolfcamp shale. And since they have considerably more financial flexibility, from both their size and healthier balance sheets, they're positioned to gain considerably more from the 20 billion barrel bounty at stake.

ConocoPhillips has worked tirelessly to downsize its operations to focus on assets with the highest potential and then invest to increase the operating efficiency of those even further. It hasn't held onto too many big, untapped projects save for its 75,000 acres in the Delaware Basin. It even refers to its Permian Basin assets as a "shiny object", perhaps poking fun at the hype in the region created by smaller peers. Then again, it's not all hype.

The company owns a dominant position in the Delaware Basin to be sure, but Anadarko Petroleum has taken it to another level with an astounding 235,000 net acres. It's investing nearly $2.2 billion in the assets this year alone. But it isn't done. The company wants to add another 300 miles of gas pipelines and 600 million cubic feet per day of processing capacity, another 250 miles of oil pipelines and 180,000 barrels of oil treating capacity per day, and another 230 miles of water pipelines.

That brings up an important point for investors to consider. The advantage of making massive land grabs in the Delaware Basin is not just gaining more future production, but that you can build many super long laterals in the mostly continuous oil play. Longer laterals mean more production per well and fewer wells overall. That lowers production costs substantially.

ConocoPhillips states that 10,000-foot laterals have played a big role in cutting well completion costs in half since 2014 and increase value by more than 30%. While all four companies mentioned own mostly contiguous acreage capable of supporting laterals of this size, the larger holdings of ConocoPhillips and Anadarko Petroleum may provide the biggest advantage.

What does it mean for investors?

Over the past several years, many oil producers have raced to acquire assets in the Wolfcamp shale and Delaware Basin, which the USGS estimates could hold more than 20 billion barrels of oil. The potential for years of growth is amazing, but not all opportunities are equal.

Resolute Energy and Halcon Resources will have little room for error thanks to high levels of debt. Meanwhile, while ConocoPhillips and Anadarko Petroleum own large acreage in the region, the assets will only be one piece of each producer's expansive portfolio. But no matter how investors look at it, the conclusion is clear: the Delaware Basin is going to generate a lot of oil (and cash) in the next several decades. It's definitely an oil play to keep an eye on, at the very least.
After receiving a direct challenge to its management team from an activist investor, Procter & Gamble (PG -0.15%) fired back this week in a combative press release.

In the return volley, the consumer products giant defended its portfolio strategy, its cost-cutting efforts, and its progress at transforming the huge business into a stronger, more flexible organization -- all without addressing a core complaint about its worsening market share position.

What weak returns?

One of the core charges from Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund was that P&G's management has overseen weak shareholder returns over the past decade. The activist investor spelled out how the company's stock has trailed both the market and its peers on a total return basis.

P&G couldn't argue with the narrower point of an underperforming stock, but it mounted a fierce challenge to the idea that the company was failing to reward its owners. In the press release, it outlined how management has returned $100 billion to shareholders over the past decade, including $62 billion in a dividend whose annual growth streak stretches all the way back to 1956.

Direct cash returns have sped up lately and should pass a whopping $22 billion this fiscal year alone. That all adds up to what P&G described as an "outstanding track record of returning value to shareholders," the company argues.

Cost cuts are working

P&G also took issue with Trian Fund's charge that its cost-cutting strategies have been ineffective. Specifically, the initiatives have had "no discernible impact on profits or sales growth," the fund claimed.

The activist investor is stretching on this point. After all, P&G has removed $10 billion out of its expense burden since 2012 and is targeting a further $13 billion in additional improvements. As a result, it is one of the most profitable companies in its peer group today. "These productivity programs have led to an increase of more than two [percentage] points in operating margin over the past four years," management notes.

The market share problem

Nowhere in its response does P&G directly deal with Peltz's complaint of worsening market position, though. That's likely because there's no denying that, as Trian Fund charges, "the company has lost market share across most of its categories" over the past five years.

One of the most dramatic declines has been in the grooming segment, where the core Gillette shaving franchise dove to a 65% global share from 70% in the space of just four years.

Still, P&G's management appears to already be acting with "the greatest possible urgency" that Trian Fund demands in its proxy challenge. It has dramatically reshaped its portfolio, tossing out 100 underperforming brands to focus on the 65 that boast the best growth and profitability outlooks. P&G completely revamped its manufacturing approach and has redesigned its supply chain from the ground up, too.

Its plans for the quarters ahead involve directing funds from the cost-cutting program toward improving production and packaging, supporting core brands through increased marketing, and more quickly meeting pricing challenges from value-based competition. Sure, these initiatives might not succeed in producing a significant market share rebound. But it's hard to argue that they aren't aggressive enough.

Ultimately, P&G believes the Trian Fund wouldn't bring anything more valuable to the table should it win the seat on the board of directors that it is seeking. Management's conclusion on the challenge is that "Trian has not provided any new or actionable ideas to drive additional value for P&G shareholders beyond the continued successful execution of the strategic plan that is in place."
Mobikwik partners with Samsung Pay News oi -Priyanka As a part of the tie-up, MobiKwik wallet is now integrated with Samsung Pay Mini to enable one-tap payments at more than 1.4 million MobiKwik powered merchants pan-India.

Mobile wallet company Mobikwik has partnered with Samsung Pay, under which consumers will be able to make payments with a single tap using select Samsung handsets.

As a part of the tie-up, MobiKwik wallet is now integrated with Samsung Pay Mini to enable one-tap payments at more than 1.4 million MobiKwik powered merchants pan-India. MobiKwik will also be available soon to Samsung Pay users.

Sanjay Razdan, Director, Samsung Pay Business, Samsung India said, "We are enthused by the tremendous response Samsung Pay has received since its launch, both from our consumers as well as partners."

He said, "Moving into the next phase of new and innovative services for Samsung Pay, we are delighted to have MobiKwik on board as a partner. As India's biggest, most-trusted brand of mobile phones, Samsung remains committed to a digitally-empowered economy and will continue to create meaningful innovations that will transform lives."

Samsung Pay was launched in India in March this year and Samsung Pay Mini is now available on Samsung eligible devices, including J7 Max, J7'16, J7 Prime, On Max and On Nxt.

Announcing the association, Daman Soni, Head of Growth at MobiKwik said, "The future of digital payments in India will thrive only by collaborating with various ecosystem partners to drive acceptance. It is wonderful to walk hand in hand with Samsung in achieving the Digital India mission."

Soni said, "We look forward to receiving a warm welcome from Samsung users and aim to provide them with the ease of payment. More than 55 million users and 1.4 million merchants will benefit from this association."

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications
Some local miscreants have attacked and injured a minority family in Maguras Shalikha upazila to illegally occupy their two decimals of land.

Ramen Rajak, one of the victims living in Pulum Village under the upazilas Gangarampur Union Parishad (UP), said some youths led by Kamruzzaman Karfu and Khairul Islam of the same village attacked them on Wednesday morning.

As we were trying to build a tin-shed house on the land, the miscreants attacked and hit my parents and other family members with wooded sticks, Ramen told reporters on Thursday.

They attackers also threatened his family members that they would forcibly send them to India and do more physical harm, he further said.

The local UP chairman, Sheikh Firoz, when contacted, attested to the incident.

We had mediated the land dispute between Ramen and his rivals recently, but the latter attacked him, he said.

Shalikha police stations Officer-in-Charge Rabiul Hossain they received a complaint over the incident.

We summoned both parties to our station tomorrow (Friday) to settle the issue, he said.

Meanwhile, another minority community accused some officers and employees of Shahjahanpur land office of helping local miscreants occupy their ancestral land in Bogra.

Due to the situation, the family living Ganda Village in Ashekpur Union Parishad under the upazila is left extremely panicked, said its member they said.

They made the allegations in a press briefing in Bogra Press Club on Thursday.

A vested and influential quarter of different Union Parishads under the upazila are taking control over the pieces of land belonging to the minority community through forged documents and even muscle power in many cases, they alleged.

Pratap Mitra, a member of the minority family, said some unscrupulous officers and employees of the upazila land office, through bribe, are assisting the criminals in this regard.

He said a number of minority families of the upazila lost their land owing to illegal and forced occupation.

Pratap said one Nurun Nabi Pramanik of the same village had mutated one acre and 18 decimals of arable land to his name, which he had inherited from his father Jadu Nath Mitra.

I learnt the matter while paying land taxes on April 22, 2015. Nurun Nabi had mutated the land out of our one acre and 41 decimals of ancestral land on May 24, 2014 he said.

Pratap sued Nurun Nabi on May 11, 2015, who along with his hired goons attacked Pratap in his house on January 7, 2016. Pratap yet again filed a case against Nurun Nabi on January 31 the same year as he and his family were feeling insecure greatly.

Despite an injunction being issued on the land on July 13 this year, Nurun Nabi had planted trees on 40 acres of land on July 15.

Meanwhile, Nurun Nabi defended himself, saying he just claimed his own land and terming the allegation baseless.

Shahjahan police stations Sub-Inspector Masud Rana said they, in their investigation so far, has found evidence of Prataps inheritance over the land.

Nurun Nabi illegally made plantation on the land, he added.

Source : Dhaka Tribune
No bully, especially one as big and brash as China, likes to be defied. And that too very openly. But this is exactly what India, which Beijing perceives is a weakling, has been doing by not agreeing to withdraw Indian troops from the Dokhlam Plateau.

All the threats issued by China  the hints of an imminent attack on India, planting reports of a massive buildup of Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) troops and military hardware across the border, talk of interfering in Kashmir on behalf of Pakistan, trying to pass off a routine military exercise as a preparation for war and reminding New Delhi of Indias ignominious defeat in 1962  have failed to move India. This defiance has hurt Beijings massive ego terribly.

For expansionist China, whose policies are driven by the interests of its majoritarian and dominant Han people, being defied by a country it considers inferior economically, militarily and even racially is totally unacceptable. More so since India is proving to be a major thorn in Beijings bid to overwhelm and eventually smother the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan with its financial and military muscle. China, it may be mentioned here, refers to the boundaries of its medieaval imperial empires to lay claims to territories belonging to other countries; and hence its boundary disputes with South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, India and Bhutan.

Bhutan is the only neighbour of China with which it does not share a full fledged diplomatic relationship. The two countries conduct their diplomatic exchanges through the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. Bhutan and India signed a Treaty of Perpetual Peace & Friendship in 1949 through which Bhutan would be guided by advice of the Government of India in regard to its external relations. The 1949 treaty was replaced by the 2007 Indo-Bhutan Friendship Treaty which enjoins both countries to cooperate closely on issues relating to national interests.

China has been, for a long time now, been pressurising Thimpu to establish direct diplomatic relations with Beijing. But without much success. Bhutan continues to have very close ties with India and the armies of the two countries have fraternal ties with the Indian Army having a very strong presence in Bhutan in the form of the Indian Military Training Team (IMTRAT).

This is another major irritant for China, which cannot quite accept being relegated to the sidelines in a country which, no matter how small it is, it believes should be within its sphere of influence. The fact that Bhutan pursues its foreign policy in close cooperation with India is an anathema to Beijing. Major Chinese publications, think-tanks, academics and intellectuals  all government-controlled, obviously  have been vociferously protesting Indias influence on Bhutan, an influence they hold should belong to China.

The Border Dispute

The border dispute between Bhutan and China is primarily due to the fact that Bhutan did not even have an official map of the country till 1971! Bhutan mapped its territory with help from India only in 1971. The kingdom also conducted its own surveys and checked tax records to bring out the final map of the country in 1989. New Delhi and Thimpu formally demarcated the 699-kilometre border between the two countries in 2006, but the 470-kilometre border with China has not been demarcated.

The claims and counterclaims between China and Bhutan involve 764 square kilometres of land. Beijing claims 495 square kilometres of territory in the Jakurlung and Pasamlung Valleys in north-central Bhutan and another 269 square kilometres (including the Dokhlam Plateau) in western Bhutan. The two countries held their first round of boundary talks in Beijing in April 1984. Since then, they have held 24 rounds of border talks.

Bhutan had been complaining about Chinese incursions and construction of roads in the disputed territories and the two countries signed an Agreement on Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity in Bhutan-China Border Areas in 1998 committing to maintain status quo along the border. Bhutan has communicated to China that it would be willing to forego its claims to much of its territories in the north-central areas in exchange for China giving up its claims to the 269 square kilometres of territory in western Bhutan.

But Beijing is simply not interested in this trade off. And this is evidence of its evil intent against India. China is keen on building roads in the Dokhlam Plateau  an exercise that Royal Bhutanese Army (RBA) troops backed by Indian soldiers stopped them from doing last month  in a bid to establish facts on the ground that its interlocutors will then put forward as claims of the territory belonging to China during subsequent border talks.

The Dokhlam Plateau is of tremendous strategic importance for China. As has been pointed out in two earlier articles (this and this), if China gains control of Dokhlam, it will effectively push the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction further south and pose a grave risk to the fragile chickens neck corridor that connects North East to the rest of India. Chinas actual intent is to gain strategic control over this vital tract of land and then use it to make India bend to its wishes.

But China Is Making Inroads Into Bhutan

China, however, has not been sitting idle. It has stepped up its charm offensive in Bhutan. China is offering attractive scholarships to Bhutans best and brightest to study in Chinese Universities. It is strengthening ties with Bhutan in the fields of culture, education and sports. It has been hosting a number of eminent personas from Bhutan and has promised to not only undertake massive infrastructure projects in that country, but also extend soft loans to Bhutan.

One of the latest symbols of Chinas increasing footprint in Bhutan is the massive, 51.5 metre-high Buddha Dordenma statue that looms over Thimpu. Though it is said that the massive gilded statue of Bhagwan Buddha costing over $4.7 lakh (Rs 305 crore) is sponsored by a Chinese-origin Singaporean billionaire, it is widely believed that the businessman was simply fronting for the Chinese government. China is also footing a major part of the $100 millions (Rs 650 crore) Buddha park and other facilities amidst which the gigantic statue is set.

This project would have been a wonderful opportunity for India to strengthen its cultural and religious ties with Bhutan, say Indian diplomats. Bhutan offered the contract to build the statue to India, but India declined! India has also, of late, been sluggish in responding to Bhutans requests for aid and technical support in various fields. China, through its charm offensive, is creating a constituency of supporters among the Bhutanese. Many Bhutanese look upon China very favourably now and openly talk of how establishing strong ties with China can help their countrys infrastructure and economy.

New Delhi, thus, cannot afford to let ties with Bhutan drift. Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonstrated his intent in furthering ties with Bhutan when he made Thimpu his first overseas stop after assuming office in 2014. But that momentum has been allowed to drift by South Block. It is time the mandarins in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) pull up their socks and pay attention to Bhutan. The consequences for not doing so would be grave for India.

Source : Swarajya Magazine
By Satish Kumar

Chinas repeated calls for the withdrawal of Indian troops from the vantage point of India-Bhutan-China tri-junction expose its restlessness. Surprisingly, Beijing reminded New Delhi to respect the Panchsheel Agreement. Nothing could be more whimsical than hearing the words of Panchsheel from the country which gave a damn about it in the past.

The face-off between the two countries started on the issue of road construction on a 269-sqkm plateau in Bhutan along the tri-junction. China claims the construction of border road is its legitimate right as it is being built on Chinese territory. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, India violated the Chinese boundary from the Sikkim side. This is a blatant lie. Indian troops have always been there at Bhutan border for several reasons: obviously one of the reasons is to keep an eye on Chinese incursion attempts in the eastern sectors. In fact, Bhutan has made it clear to China that Beijing is violating the 1998 Agreement  which stipulates that peace and status quo at the China-Bhutan border must be maintained  by trying to build the road on the tri-junction.

The strategic location of the region has aggravated the India- China tension. Doka La is at the tri-junction of Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet and is strategically important for India as the crucial Siliguri corridor, known as Chickens Neck that is merely 50 km from Siliguri. This neck is the lifeline between the rest of India and North-Eastern States of the country.

If China gains access to the Doklam plateau, it would have the ability to essentially cut off Indias land access to 40 million citizens in its N-E region. An strategic expert said, Chinese occupation of Doklam would jeopardise Indian defence completely. This piece of dominating ground not only has a commanding view of the Chumbi Valley but also overlooks the Siliguri Corridor further to the east.

It is not surprising why China has accused India of breaching border. Reasons are plenty. First, Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to America and resultant bonhomie triggered unexpected depression in China. The same was earlier seen after Indias nuclear tests and then US President Clintons visit to India. Beijing fears this friendship might change worlds stand on Tibet, which has remained an unresolved issue between China and the US. The complete mapping and designing of China has emerged from the Tibet issue. It was America which dropped Tibetan (Khampas) rebels in 50s and 60s in the Chinese mainland. However, the rebels could not maintain their tempo for long. The vast geographical distance between America and Tibet killed the spirit of the movement. China is now wary of Indias proximity to Tibet and Tibetans. Therefore, India-US joint venture could trigger a major strategic loss to China. Having anticipated this notion, China is very sceptical and apprehensive of India-America friendship.

Second, Modi has changed the trajectory of Indian foreign policy. India under Nehru and subsequent leadership lost its hold on the Himalayan belt. One after another country succumbed to Chinese pressure. However, Bhutan and Nepal are the only two buffer nations which are considered lopsided towards India. And this is why they are the next goals for China. Modi is aware of the Beijings ambitious grand strategy of Greater China. That is why he started his diplomatic itinerary from Bhutan and Nepal after becoming Prime Minister. It sent a lucid message to China. India of 2017 is not confused nor ideologically blind with preconceived notions. Unlike the previous Government, the Defence and Foreign Ministries are speaking with one voice. It seems the Chinese President has grasped the foreign policy of Modi and is wary of Indias unpredictable moves.

Third, China has been trying to lure Bhutan into accepting a package deal to sort out the boundary dispute. Beijing has resolved its boundary issues with all the neighbouring countries, including Russia, but not with India and Bhutan. China in 1996 and 2012 tried to woo Bhutan into acquiescing a swapping deal. There are three territorial areas of dispute between China and Bhutan. The Jakarlung and Pasamlung valleys are located in the Bhutan-Chinese north-central border. It has an area of almost 491 km. Another area of Chinese interest is situated on eastern part, in close proximity of Tibet. It is almost half of the north-central part. It is well known to the world that China has been building chains of highways and railways connecting Beijing to Lasha. It wants to move inside Bhutan, but China does not have diplomatic relations with Bhutan.

China claims Bhutanese, Sikkimese and Ladhakis form a united family in Tibet: they were subject to Tibet and to the great motherland of China. However, the fact is Tibetan nomads entered the pastures of the Doklam plateau and tried to occupy the territory in 1966. But China retreated from the region under tremendous US intervention. China made another bid in 1988 when the PLA crossed into Bhutan and took control of the Chumi Valley, below the Doklam plateau. Bhutans border issues with China are directly related with India-China border. Bhutans western border is close to Nathu La, the frontier port between China and India; the eastern border is connected to the disputed area of China and India; and the narrow passage which connects south-west and North-East areas is not far from Bangladesh.

Therefore, the border issue is inter-connected and it has spilling effects on the third country. Almost 470-kilometre-long border between Tibet and Bhutan could be properly understood in the context of the India-China border issue. The history of Bhutan proves that it has been attached to India like an umbilical cord. Moreover, Bhutans economy and defence rest on Indias help.

Chinas economic trade with Bhutan is very marginal because high Himalayan mountains block any effort to think of transportation facility. Thus, large-scale trade activities cannot be supported and Bhutan can hardly become a strategic path for China. The Zhagmu Port on border of Nepal remains the main station for China to connect to the South Asian region through Tibet. And therefore, there is considerable recent evidence of Chinas effort to inch closer to South Asia. Seen in this context, China signed a series of bilateral treaties with Nepal. China is trying to extract the same favour from Bhutan. China tried to establish full-fledged diplomatic relations with Bhutan in 2012, but India caught a whiff of it and convinced Bhutan not to fall in the dragons trap.

It has to be understood that Tibet is the linchpin of all this debate. Indias woes spill over from the acceptance of Tibet as an integral part of China under the One China policy. However, the same approval has boomeranged on India: Chinese claims on eastern and western sectors spring from the same thesis. According to Chinas documented history, Tibetan Lamas, who were powerful in 12th to 16th centuries, ruled certain parts of mainland China and adjoining areas of Himalayan territories. Since Tibet is part of China, the documented history claims parts of North-Eastern States of India, Bhutan and Ladakh are integral regions of China.

Under the present Chinese hegemonic bids, the next pragmatic approach for India is to reject the often repeated theory of Tibet being an integral part of China. If China can violate the accepted terms and conditions signed with India, why India should respect the Chinese stand that is not binding by an agreement. Although, it is not an easy task, well begun is half done. And Prime Minister Modi is taking steps in that direction: Make in India and boosting ties with the US are paragon examples. India-US friendship has potential to spoil Chinese imperial designs.

(The writer is Head of the Department of Political Science, Central University of Haryana)

Source : Daily Pioneer
HR Policies for Shipping Companies

Posted by Jewell Sith on Sunday, 07-23-2017 4:56 am

Currently 0.0/5 Stars.

1

2

3

4

5 0.0 from 0 votes

The shipping industry is one of the oldest, most critical and important industries for humankind. Consequently, the success of this industry is determined by efficient management which entails among other practices, the best HR policies. Indeed, if the best personnel factors get channeled towards impacting the HR sector in the shipping industry, HR managers can promote employee dynamism, personal improvement of workers, training, technological advancements and positive performance appraisal within the sector. Hiring and Compensation It is the obligation of the HR to define the best recruitment policies in the shipping company for it to get service minded employees. These get selected from the best derived from the most skilled applicants for position in the company. Good HR policy thus guides the company to employ from top maritime labor supply countries like India, China, Russia, Philippines and Indonesia. Globally, they rank top in this service. Even more important, with more shi...

Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web.

If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator.

Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue

Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue

Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile
New Delhi, July 23 (IBNS): In a strong worded statement, M Venkaiah Naidu, the NDA's vice-presidential candidate, on Sunday warned Pakistani against harbouring terrorism and has asked the neighbouring country to recall "what happened in 1971."

"Our neighbour is restless... (it) doesn't allow other nations to rest but they should understand that we are united. People from Kashmir to Kanyakumari are united. We are united to fight back," Naidu was quoted as saying by NDTV.

This comes after Pakistan has been listed among those regions providing "safe havens to terrorists" by the US this week.

Naidu on Sunday made reference to the 1971 war in which India gave a befitting reply to Pakistan.
New Delhi, July 21 (IBNS): President Pranab Mukherjee attended the farewell function at Central Hall of the Parliament on Sunday and said the recent passage of Goods and Services Tax and its launch in the Parliament on July 1 was a shining example of co-operative federalism.

Speaking on the occasion, the President said that for 37 years he served as a Member of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Listening to the stalwarts for hours and days in Parliament sitting in the Treasury or Opposition Benches, he felt one with the soul of this living institution.

He understood the real value of debate, discussion and dissent.

Mukherjee realized how disruption hurts the opposition more than the government as it denies them the opportunity to raise the concerns of the people.

It was unfortunate that the parliamentary time devoted to legislation has been declining. With the heightened complexity of administration, legislation must be preceded by scrutiny and adequate discussion. Scrutiny in committees is no substitute to open discussion on the floor of the House, he said.

When the Parliament fails to discharge its law-making role or enacts laws without discussion, it breaches the trust reposed in it by the people of this great country, Mukherjee said.

He stated that the recent passage of Goods and Services Tax and its launch on 1st July is a shining example of co-operative federalism and speaks volumes for the maturity of Indian Parliament.

The President said that it was in July 2012 that his membership in Lok Sabha came to an end when he was declared as the 13th President of the Republic.

Even though thirty-seven years of his life in Parliament came to an end on that day but he still continued to have a tenacious link with this institution, in fact he became an integral part of it, as President of Republic, as per the Constitution.

In these five years, his principal responsibility was to function as the guardian of the Constitution.

As he had said on oath, he strived to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution, not just in word but also in spirit. In this task, he greatly benefitted from the advice and co-operation extended by Prime Minister Modi at every step.

With passion and energy, he is driving transformational changes in the country,Mukhrjee said.

He would carry with him fond memories of their association and his warm and courteous behaviour.

The President said that as he retired from the Office of the President of the Republic, his association with the Parliament also comes to an end.

He will no longer be a part of the Parliament of India.

He stated he was leaving with a sense of fulfilment and happiness of having served the people of this great country through this institution- as their humble servant.
New Delhi, July 23 (IBNS): Following is the full text of President Pranab Mukherjee's farewell speech in the Parliament:

"Honourable Members, I would like to acknowledge my deep gratitude and appreciation to Honourable Speaker and the Honourable Chairman, Rajya Sabha and Honourable Members of Parliament for organizing this farewell ceremony on the eve of my demitting office as the 13th President of the Republic of India.

Honourable Members, if I say I am a creation of this Parliament. It shaped by political outlook and persona. Bear with me if I feel nostalgic and indulge myself by going back to the past. On 26th January 1950, the Constitution of India came into effect. In a remarkable display of idealism and courage, we the people of India gave to ourselves a sovereign democratic republic to secure to all its citizens justice, liberty and equality. We undertook to promote amongst all citizens fraternity, the dignity of the individual and the unity of the nation. These ideals became the lodestars of the modern Indian state. The Indian Constitution consisting of 395 Articles and 12 Schedules is not merely a legal document for administration but the Magna Carta of socio-economic transformation of the country. It represents the hopes and aspirations of the billion plus Indians.

Sixty eight years ago, after the first general election, the Indian Parliament began its journey representing the sovereign will of its people. Both the Houses were constituted, the first President of the Republic was elected who addressed the first Joint Session of the Parliament and the Indian Parliamentary system rolled out.

Honble Members:

When I first entered the portals of this hallowed institution 48 years ago, I was only 34 years old. In July 1969, I came to this Parliament as a member of Rajya Sabha representing one of the six seats from the State of West Bengal. My election to Rajya Sabha took place on 4th July and the first session I attended began on July 22nd, 1969.

Honble Members, since then, for 37 years I served as a Member of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Of these, I served five terms as a Member of the Rajya Sabha, elected for four terms from West Bengal and one term from Gujarat, and two terms in the Lok Sabha. My long career has been instructive and educative. I entered Parliament at a time when the Rajya Sabha was full of experienced Parliamentarians and leaders of the freedom movement, many of whom were brilliant speakers: M.C. Chagla, Ajit Prasad Jain, Jairamdas Daulatram, Bhupesh Gupta, Joachim Alva, Mahavir Tyagi, Raj Narain, Bhai Mahavir, Loknath Misra, Chitta Basu and many more. In fact, Bhupesh Gupta was truly a legend in the Rajya Sabha. Dahyabhai Patel and Maniben Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patels son and daughter, represented Swatantra Party in the Parliament. My years in Parliament were further enriched by the wisdom of P.V. Narasimha Rao, oration of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, cryptic one-liners of Madhu Limaye and Dr. Nath Pai, wit and humour of Piloo Modi, poetic discourses of Hiren Mukherjee, razor sharp repartee of Indrajit Gupta, calming presence of Dr. Manmohan Singh, mature advice of L.K. Advani and passionate support of Sonia Gandhi on social legislations.



My career as a Parliamentarian was no doubt mentored by Shrimati Indira Gandhi. Her steely determination, clarity of thought and decisive actions made her a towering personality. She never hesitated to call a spade a spade. I remember after the defeat of Congress in the post-Emergency election, we had gone to London in November, 1978. A large number of media persons in a fairly aggressive mood were waiting to ask Shrimati Gandhi questions. The first question that was flung at her was, What have been your gains from the Emergency? Looking at the journalist squarely in the eye, in a level voice, Indira Gandhi replied, In those 21 months, we comprehensively managed to alienate all sections of Indian people. Big silence followed by loud laughter! Not one question was asked after that and the media persons just melted away. And I also learnt an early lesson of acknowledging my mistakes and rectifying them. Self-correction in such situations is always a better option than self-justification.



Honble Members, in those days, both the Houses of the Parliament used to reverberate with animated discussions and illuminative and exhaustive debates on social and financial legislations. Listening to the stalwarts for hours and days in Parliament sitting in the Treasury or Opposition Benches, I felt one with the soul of this living institution. I understood the real value of debate, discussion and dissent. I realized how disruption hurts the opposition more than the government as it denies them the opportunity to raise the concerns of the people. I internalized the essence of what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had said (and I quote): There has always to be balancing of change and continuity. The system of parliamentary democracy embodies these principles of change and continuity. And it is up to those who function in this system, members of the House and the numerous others who are part of this system, to increase the pace of change, to make it as fast as they like, subject to the principle of continuity. If continuity is broken, we become rootless and the system of parliamentary democracy breaks down (unquote). I experienced the joy of the enactment of pro-poor and pro-farmer legislations. The recent passage of Goods and Services Tax and its launch on 1st July is a shining example of co-operative federalism and speaks volumes for the maturity of Indian Parliament. To be a part of this system is a unique experience and I am grateful to the people of this great country for giving me that opportunity.



I had the privilege of being a witness and a participant in the unfolding scenario of emergence of a great India. An India where 130 crore people belonging to three major ethnic groups  Aryans, Dravidians and Mongoloids  practicing 7 major religions and speaking 122 languages in daily lives live under one Constitution, one flag and one administrative system.



Honble Members, not a single part of this vast territory of 3.3 million square kilometers of landmass and islands is unrepresented in the Parliament. 543 persons from the 543 territorial constituencies of this country representing the people in Lok Sabha and 245 persons elected by 29 States and 7 Union Territories make laws, scrutinize orders of the executive and enforce accountability to protect the interests of the people. Each of these 788 voices is important. It is unfortunate that the parliamentary time devoted to legislation has been declining. With the heightened complexity of administration, legislation must be preceded by scrutiny and adequate discussion. Scrutiny in committees is no substitute to open discussion on the floor of the House. When the Parliament fails to discharge its law-making role or enacts laws without discussion, I feel it breaches the trust reposed in it by the people of this great country.



Through the instrument of Ordinances, the Executive has been vested with extraordinary powers to make laws to meet exigencies during a time when Parliament is not in session. However, such Ordinances have to be approved by Parliament within six weeks of the next session of the Parliament.



I am firm in the opinion that the Ordinance route should be used only in compelling circumstances and there should be no recourse to Ordinances on monetary matters. Ordinance route should not be taken on matters which are being considered or have been introduced in the House or a committee of the House. If a matter is deemed urgent, the concerned committee should be made aware of the situation and should be mandated to present its report within the stipulated time.



Honble Members:



It was in July 2012 that my membership in Lok Sabha came to an end when I was declare elected as the 13th President of the Republic on 22nd of that month. Even though thirty-seven years of my life in Parliament came to an end on that day but I still continued to have a tenacious link with this institution, in fact I became an integral part of it, as the President of Republic, as per the Constitution. Article 79 of the Indian Constitution says: There shall be a Parliament for the Union which shall consist of the President and two Houses to be known respectively as the Council of States and the House of the People. In these five years, my principal responsibility was to function as the guardian of the Constitution. As I had said on oath, I strived to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution, not just in word but also in spirit. In this task, I greatly benefitted from the advice and co-operation extended by Prime Minister Modi at every step. With passion and energy, he is driving transformational changes in the country. I will carry with me fond memories of our association and his warm and courteous behaviour.



As I retire from the Office of the President of the Republic, my association with the Parliament also comes to an end. I will no longer be a part of the Parliament of India. It will be with a tinge of sadness and a rainbow of memories that I will be leaving this magnificent building today.



Dear friends, with a sense of gratitude and a prayer in my heart, I take leave of you. I leave with a sense of fulfilment and happiness of having served the people of this great country through this institution- as their humble servant."
Patna, July 23 (TheBiharPost): A study conducted by a Harvard University scholar has indicated JD-U leader Nitish Kumar may not return to Bihar next time owing to multiple reasons.

The study has been conducted by Jonathan Phillips, a scholar of Harvard University, for the International Growth Centre (Inda-Bihar Programme).



In his study, Phillips revealed how weakening trust of the electorate in bureaucracy and decline in peoples participation in political process may prove costlier for Kumar who became the chief minister for three consecutive terms with a little break.



Bihar has experienced a decade of extensive governance reforms but sustainability of it remains uncertain, the Harvard scholar was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times on Sunday.

The scholar made these observations at a workshop held in Patna on Saturday.

The paper adds, People of Bihar have strong expectations of good governance and accountability by way of wishing action against corrupt leaders but when it comes to voting, they prefer others to making honest choices.

Bihar currently appears getting caught in a political mess with two key partners, the RJD led by Lalu Prasad and the JD-U headed by Kumar, locked in a bitter fight over the issue of deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav who has been made an accused in a corruption case by the CBI.

The JD-U wants Tejashwi to resign for the charges against him but the RJD has declared he will not resign, describing the charges as politically-motivated.



(thebiharpost.com)


Guwahati, July 23 (IBNS): The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) is all set to construct a two-line tunnels bypassing Sela to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh to faster access in road connectivity.

To construct the two-lane tunnels at the mountain hill areas, the BRO had recently handed over a request of land acquisition for tunnels to the West Kameng District Commissioner.

A top official of BRO said the Commander of the 42 Border Road Task Force under BRO's Project Vartak had handed over a request of land acquisition for tunnels to West Kameng DC Sonal Swaroop on July 20 last.

"It will help to reduce the road connectivity distance in the hilly terrain and to save travel time to an hour. Vehicles can move faster when the road to be widened," the BRO official said.

The new alignment of the road from Sela to Tawang involves 12.37 km and two tunnels will be constructed.

"One tunnel is 1.79 km long and the rest 475 meter long," an official of Arunachal Pradesh government said.

The government official said the survey of land acquisition will start after the monsoon this year.

Tusker was the first project of the BRO, which was later renamed as Vartak and 2776 km of new roads, 150 permanent bridges are constructed under the project in the Himalayan bordering state with China.



(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Kolkata/Siliguri, Jul 23 (IBNS): Police on Saturday midnight shut down the operations of a Nepali satellite TV channel in north Bengal's Siliguri city for its alleged biased coverage of Darjeeling unrest, reports said.

According to reports, police of Siliguri Police Commissionerate raided the office of ABN News Network, which is claimed to be India's first and only Nepali-language satellite TV channel, at Sevok Road 2nd Mile area under Bhaktinagar Police Station limits in Siliguri city in West Bengal's Darjeeling district and sealed the office.

Authorities of ABN News Network claimed that their CEO Swapnanil Chatterjee and HR Manager Tulshi Raman had been summoned by the police on Saturday, during the raid, and they were interrogated on Sunday for hours.

Describing the police action, an employee of the news channel told IBNS, "As many as three policemen in civil dresses entered our office at midnight and directed as to shut down channel operations immediately."

"Minutes later, at least 40 more cops from local Bhaktinagar Police Station joined the operation and sealed our station," the staffer added.

Following the operation, few police personnel have been posted in front of the channel office in Siliguri.

A local police official said that the regional news channel faced the shut down for reporting Gorkhaland movement in a biased way.

"Disobeying local administration's direction, the channel had been giving biased coverage of Gorkhaland movement for last few weeks and according to our senior officials, their content could trigger violence anytime," the officer told IBNS.

Commissioner of Siliguri Police Commissionerate, Neeraj Singh, told IBNS: "Based on a complaint, filed by Department of Information and Cultural Affairs, Darjeeling district, police carried out the midnight operation at ABN News Network's office in Siliguri."

"We have sealed the channel's office and started probe into the matter," Neeraj Singh added.

Leaders of the opposition parties, however, condemned the police action against the media organization.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
THE wild rhubarb was simply delicious. High in the Alborz Mountains overlooking the Caspian Sea in Iran, our hiking guide Ali gathers armfuls of the knobbly stalks and peels them for us. This was for the starter which we would later consume.

This veteran of the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s, in which up to 5m people were killed, has a keen eye for flora and a foragers eye for our evening meal. A bit later when we have crossed the last of the days glaciers we descend into a lush valley to the hamlet of Avatar.

A couple of small children playing cowboys and Indians rush out to greet us.

Their parents give us a huge welcome and straight away we are welcomed into their house and offered the sweetest tea imaginable. Squatting on his elaborate rug against a whitewashed interior, the grandfather of the family gives us a toothy grin as if to say you crossed the mountains, welcome to my home.

Meanwhile, Ali has taken from his rucksack, like a conjuror, a mouthwatering array of wild mushrooms.

He cleans, slices and skewers them and adds peppers and succulent tomatoes in seconds and roasts them over an open fire. Our party of five Irish trekkers agree that not only are they the best mushrooms we have ever tasted but among the best meals we have ever had.

This is not a food article masquerading as a travel article. A pity, because we had several other heavenly food adventures. Later, we settle down for the night, three to a room, on a heavily carpeted floor on mattresses. Many Iranians dont used beds at all. It is considered healthier to rest on a thin mattress.

This is day two of a four-day trek in the Alborz organised by Farzin Malaki who is the owner of the mountain lodge Khoone Geli  our destination on the Caspian Sea.

To get to the mountains we had taken a two-hour train trip to the city of Qazvin from Tehran where a soldier examined our visas. Straightaway, our tour guide for a tour of Assassins Valley arrives.

Hosein Farhady is a trendy exemplar of modern Iran. Fluent in English and other languages, he talks easily about life in the country. We start driving into the mountains on excellent roads and immediately cleave through mountain passes and onto a towering canyon where eagles dare. We visit a meadow nestled under the mountains where a contented lizard surveys his kingdom of rose, poppy and vetch.

Hosein is a superb host and is effusive about the recently re-elected president Rouhani who is very popular with younger voters. The highlight of this tour is Alamut Castle in Assassins Valley which has a commanding view of the valley below and from where the eponymous assassins sallied forth to send Persian empire soldiers to meet their maker.

History sweeps on and the poor assassins themselves were later engulfed by the Mongol hordes. Then Hosein and his co-driver Sojrab, a national weightlifing champion, kindly drop us to the start of our trek: Garmaroud.

Having been deposited to the town of Garmaroud with its striking gold-looking mosque (its actually brass), we are welcomed straight away by a young girl who wants to know where were from. Once informed, she tells us I love Ireland.

OK, OK, everyone gets to hear that about their country, but it was still nice. We then meet our war veteran Ali, dressed immaculately in khaki, who leads us through winding streets to our home for the night. A delicious dinner of rice and stew follows, washed down with water and tea  no alcohol of course.

Next morning we set off on out trek which will take us to around 2,800m.

Last month the mountains still had a covering of snow on high ground and with several glaciers filling gullies it has the appearance of the Alps.

We cross a wooden footbridge over a small river and soon are climbing through lush foliage. Left and right are huge bushes of dill, while poplars tower overhead. Ali indicates a mush of green on the path  bear excrement. We move swiftly along.

Soon we arrive at a col where we break for lunch and the magnificence of the Alborz Mountains is spread before us in all its grandeur. Peter from Sligo is suitably impressed and delivers a Wordsworth verse: Earth has not anything to show more fair/Dull would he be of soul who could pass by/ A sight so touching in its majesty.

We move on silently. A snake is coiled in the arms of a juniper.

We cross a mighty river and onwards to the village of Dineh Roud where mainly elderly people live. We receive an enormous welcome with huge smiles and vigorous handshakes.

Next morning we press on to Avatar. The next day we descend into a beautiful valley and climb an old trading trail where we encounter several goatherders and people walking between the villages.

As we arrive in our next village of Pichebon a Kurdish family rush out to meet us and invite us to their picnic  tea and cake all round. We stay in the mayors house and have a very interesting evening learning about Iranian customs.

The next and last day of the trek is more beautiful than beautiful. The ancient caravanserai of Salaj Anbar at 3,300m was once the trading nexus between the Caspian Sea and the hinterland south of the Alborz. Now, its windows look out emptily on the past.

We descend to the village through a staggeringly pretty wildflower vista with multicoloured butterflies flitting about.

That evening we meet Farzin at his lodge at Khoone Geli, Tonekabon.

His home is festooned with artwork and rugs and the man himself greets us warmly.

A superb meal is served to us on his verandah in an orange grove.

Having flown south to explore some cities we embark on our final tour to the desert.

Having overnighted in the city of Yazd with its baking heat and delightful citizenry, we meet our guide Massoud Jaladat who loads us into his 4x4 and drives us into the desert.

Suddenly we are sliding and plunging on the sand dunes as Massoud wrenches the wheel to get us back on course.

We step on to the hot sand and trek for a few hours with not a puff of wind  just tiny indentations in the sand to indicate an earlier ripple of air. Soon the sun sets behind the Shir Kuh Mountains bathing the desert in a vermilion hue.

Massoud later makes a delicious stew before camp with the sky as a ceiling and we fall into a profound sleep.

Trekking in Iran:

Tourism in Iran is climbing fast. In the 1970s it was on the hippy trail to India and beyond.

Svelte skiiers slalomed down the slopes in the mountains north of Tehran. Nowadays, tourists throng the historic cities of Isfahan and Shiraz and trekking companies are more numerous than Donald Trump gaffes.

Sample of trips:

Tour of Assassins Valley: gateofalamut.com; day trip 30 Alborz Mountains trekking: www.alamuttrek.com Four-day trek: 330 Yazd desert trip: farvardinn.com Desert overnight: 80 Also: Tour guide: Morteza Mehrparvar; www.mori-tours.com Other: loveiran.com on Facebook
A Star Wars-themed spoof paper has been accepted for publication by a number of scientific journals, according to Discover magazine's Neuroskeptic blog.

The writer of the blog said he had been inspired by previous publishing stings and wrote the spoof article because he wanted to test whether "predatory" journals would publish what he described as an "obviously absurd paper".

The spoof article was about midi-chlorians, the fictional entities that live inside cells and give Jedi their powers in Star Wars.

The writer says he stuffed it with references to the galaxy far, far away and submitted it to nine journals, using the names of Dr Lucas McGeorge and Dr Annette Kim.

It was accepted by four of the journals. One of them, the American Journal of Medical and Biological Research, asked for a US$360 fee.

Three others accepted the paper and published it as well: the International Journal of Molecular Biology: Open Access (MedCrave), Austin Journal of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (Austin) and American Research Journal of Biosciences (ARJ).

The writer of Neuroskeptic said he was amazed because these journals normally charge publication fees.

He said what he had created was a "travesty which they should have rejected within about five minutes  or two minutes if the reviewer was familiar with Star Wars".

Some of the highlights from the spoof:

Beyond supplying cellular energy, midichloria perform functions such as Force sensitivity;

Involved in ATP production is the citric acid cycle, also referred to as the Kyloren cycle after its discoverer;

Midi-chlorians are microscopic life-forms that reside in all living cells  without the midi-chlorians, life couldnt exist, and wed have no knowledge of the force. Midichlorial disorders often erupt as brain diseases, such as autism.; and

midichloria DNA (mtDNRey) and ReyTP.

The writer copied the Wikipedia page on mitochondrion  the energy centre of an actual cell  for the main text of the paper, rewording it badly.

He admitted within the paper itself what he had, with the methods section of paper stating, "'The majority of the text of this paper was Rogeted [7]'. Reference 7 cited an article on Rogeting followed by The majority of the text in the current paper was Rogeted from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion Apologies to the original authors of that page.

The writer said it was just a reminder that at some so-called "peer review" journals there was no meaningful peer review at all.

"All of the nine publishers I stung are known to send spam to academics, urging them to submit papers to their journals. Ive personally been spammed by almost all of them. All I did, as Lucas McGeorge, was test the quality of the products being advertised," he wrote.
Huawei has been awarded the Internet of Things (IoT) Innovator at the Australian communications industry awards for excellence, the ACOMMS Awards.

Huawei notes it was recognised for its groundbreaking work with Victorian state water utility, South East Water, using Narrowband-IoT technology to transmit real-time data on network performance, asset condition and fault management across its pressure sewer monitoring platform and metering devices".

The trial was the first of its kind in the world, which iTWire covered here, and which South East Water itself wrote about here.

We are told that South East Water is aiming to build the worlds first fully digital IoT water network to control waste water flows from each property and identify problems across the network.

So, what did Huawei Technologies do to drive the water utilitys digital transformation, which helped it to win the 2017 ACOMM Award for IoT Innovation?

Huawei explains that its end-to-end communications solutions includes NB-IoT chipsets from Huaweis wholly owned subsidiary, Neul".

Through software upgrades, Huawei and its carrier partners say they have NB-IoT enabled 20 mobile base stations providing carrier grade ubiquitous connectivity spanning 1000sq kilometres across Melbournes south eastern suburbs".

Following this, South East Water is now connecting devices in a range of environments from Melbournes Southbank, to the Mornington Peninsula and Dandenong Ranges".

Huawei says its support for the newly constructed IoT laboratory and undergraduate course at James Cook University in Cairns is a further demonstration of the companys commitment to advance IoT technology in Australia".

Huawei Australia chief executive Zhao Xichu (James) said the award was an acknowledgement of Huaweis world leading work in Australia to develop Internet of Things solutions".

Huawei is driving the NB-IoT standards and the work here in Australia with South East Water and James Cook University is informing and guiding that global effort.

Huawei is working with partners as an incubator of this emerging technology. We want Australia to become a global leader in NB-IoT development.

South East Water must be congratulated for having the foresight and persistence to create a truly digital water network.

Huawei noted that it shared the ACOMMS IoT Innovators Award with Vodafone, who was acknowledged for its overall IoT achievements".

The list of all other ACOMMS Award 2017 winners is here.
Internet Australia executive director Laurie Patton has repeated his call for the government and Opposition to come together and commit to using fibre-to-the-distribution-point for as much of the possible of the remainder of the NBN rollout.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Patton said the non-profit believed that NBN Co, the company rolling out the broadband network, must abandon its "flawed policy" of using the copper-based fibre-to-the-node and move to FttDP (what NBN Co calls FttC or fibre-to-the-curb). Patton said the move "is essential for Australia's economic and social development".

Patton has been a constant critic of the multi-technology mix option - which includes a small number of FttP connections, FttN, FttDP, HFC, wireless and satellite - adopted by the Coalition Government for the rollout, after it came to power in 2013. The Labor Party, which began the rollout in 2009, had a policy of fibre-to-the-premises for 93% of residences, with the remainder to be served by wireless and satellite.

"It's a shame NBN Co won't admit their use of aging copper (FttN) is a mistake that will cost billions to replace," Patton commented, "Meanwhile, Australians are suffering with inferior broadband, customer complaints are rising and the worst is yet to come".

He reiterated the fact that the rollout was only half completed, and NBN Co still had to deal with many of the more rundown sections of Telstra's copper network.

"The issues already plaguing the rollout will be exacerbated as they rush to complete the project. The sooner we abandon FttN the better. So we call on the Government to switch to FttDP immediately, in the national interest," Patton said.

Internet Australia has called for a bipartisan policy rethink, with Patton pointing out that it had now become plain that many residents were reluctant to switch to the NBN even though their premises had been pronounced NBN-ready.

"Halfway through construction, less than 50% of premises passed by the NBN have actually been connected up. This is no coincidence. They keep hearing complaints about the difficulties getting connected and then people's disappointment at the slow speeds being experienced," Patton said.

He pointed out that when the project was completed in 2020, NBN Co would face the need to "upgrade" all premises which were connected through FttN "as it becomes increasingly obvious customers are not being delivered what they want or need".

"It's not really an upgrade anyway because they'll have to rip out all the copper wiring and the so-called 'nodes' will be redundant. Nobody knows exactly how much this will cost us all, but we're talking billions of dollars," he claimed.

Patton said the same problem would be faced, no matter whether the Coalition or Labor was in power in 2020. "FttDP wasn't an option when Labor launched the NBN in 2009, nor when the Abbott Government rejigged the plan by introducing FttN," he said.

"So, it makes sense for both sides to put their guns away and jointly figure a way out of the current mess. Abandoning FttN would be a good start."
Reddit Email 83 Shares

By Juan Cole |. (Informed Comment) |  

Trump has been tweeting again, this time about his unlimited ability to pardon people according to the Constitution. That part is correct. He seems to be talking about pardoning himself, though, which the Constitution does not allow him to do. Also, what is he guilty about that hes mentioning this issue?

Presidential pardons have often been controversial or even sleazy. Here are my favorite five in the rogues gallery.

1. The pirates Pierre and Jean Laffite. They had a blacksmith shop in New Orleans that they used as a front for smuggling and slaving. They also had a colony at Barataria south of the city. They preyed on Spanish vessels. The British tried to recruit them during the War of 1812, but they were loyal to the United States and took the information to the governor of Louisiana. He refused to ally with them, and actually sent troops to try to wipe out the Barataria colony, but he just roughed it up a bit. Then the Laffite brothers approached Andrew Jackson, as two rogues to another. I once had dinner with another historian at a restaurant in the French Quarter that claims it is the site of a meeting of Jackson and Pierre Laffite. Who knows? Jackson welcomed the pirates to his war effort, and they and their men distinguished themselves. President James Madison pardoned them on February 6, 1815. They went back to a life of piracy and crime. I think were back to being in a Jacksonian moment.



Pirate Laffite

2. John C. Fremont, freebooter, who helped steal California from Mexico, got it into his head that he was its military governor. The actual military governor sent out by Washington DC minded, and had Fremont clapped in chains. President James K. Polk pardoned him, and Fremont unsuccessfully ran for president in 1856.



Fremont

3. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy and the biggest traitor America has ever known, responsible for the deaths of 620,000 dead soldiers on both sides, and for the continued enslavement of millions of human beings after President Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation. He was captured in 1865 and kept in chains. Andrew Johnson pardoned him in late 1868.

4. Tricky Dick Nixon. Nixon had the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate building broken into by the covert team, the plumbers, and burgled *twice*; plus he had the offices wiretapped.. He was trying to hack the 1972 election. Archibald Cox was appointed as special counsel to investigate Watergate. Nixon told his Attorney-General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox, but Richardson declined and Nixon fired him. Then the deputy attorney general also refused to fire Cox. Ultimately Robert Bork agreed to fire Cox, which probably cost him a seat on the Supreme Court at a much later time. The firing was ultimately ruled illegal. Gee I guess the president cant fire a special prosecutor at will and for no cause. Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon after the latter resigned and Ford, his appointed vice president, succeeded him. The pardon was not well received and may have contributed to Fords loss in 1976 to Jimmy Carter.

5. Marc Rich was a very wealthy businessman. In 1979 Iran made its Islamic revolution against the corrupt megalomaniac Mohammad Reza Shah. Later in that year, fanatics took US embassy personnel hostage. The 1979 revolution put Israel in a difficult position because Iran had been an important supplier of petroleum to that country. The Arab League had a boycott on Israel. Marc Rich swung into action and from 1979 through the mid-1990s, he was involved in oil deals with Iran that ended up supplying Israel. The ayatollahs in Iran care more about the money than where the oil went. Trading Iranian petroleum was extremely illegal for a US citizen in those decades. Rich avoided prison by fleeing to Switzerland, but the FBI put him in its 10 most wanted list. Richs US-based wife Denise Rich, a popular song writer, donated over $1 million to the Bill Clinton campaign and was close to the Clintons. Then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak interceded with Clinton for Rich from his side as well. Clinton had Eric Holder write the paperwork fro a pardon and issued it late in 2000 as he was going out of office. That pardon left a bad taste in many Americans mouths, since they have been trained to really hate the Iranians and Rich did business with them even during the hostage crisis.

Don Trump Jr. and several others in Trumps circle may join this rogues gallery. They wont be the first to be convicted and then pardoned for breaking the law on behalf of a candidate favored by a powerful foreign country.

And no the president cant pardon himself or Nixon would have been first in line.



Related video:

CNN: Trump: President has complete power to pardon
Reddit Email 93 Shares

By Rabiya Jaffery | (Inter Press Service) |  

ABU DHABI (IPS)  Much of the world is moving away from oil for its electricity generation, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which says that globally the fossil fuel has dropped from a 25 percent share to 3.6 percent over the last four decades.

The total global production capacity of power converted from solar energy has also increased by 33 percent in 2016 and is expected to increase to 983GW by 2030 and, by doing so, comprise of over 10 percent of the worlds expected capacity, according to the latest Renewables Global Status Report.

And, as the Gulf States take steps to expand their use of clean energy, an ambitious plan by the United Arab Emirates to boost its use of renewable electricity from less than 1 percent to 50 percent by 2050 could be a game-changer for the region, experts say.

Dropping oil prices and growing concerns about climate change have exposed the downsides of relying on oil. As the Gulfs demand for power continues to rise, the UAE is leading the way in shifting to greener energy resources including multiple major investments in solar projects in order to reduce energy consumption and preserve natural resources.

In Abu Dhabi, for example, construction began earlier this year for an 11.1.1GW plant, its largest solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant yet, which is to produce enough electricity to power about 200,000 houses.

According to a press release, the plant, being constructed by Japans Marubeni and Chinas JinkoSolar, is to be connected to the grid between the last quarter of next year and March 2019.

This project must be associated with the creation of advanced research centre to drive the economic and technological journey, placing the UAE on the world map of knowledge-based economies, tweeted Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed, the vice chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, about the launch of the construction.

This project falls in line with the UAE Energy Plan 2050, which aims to increase clean energy use by 50 per cent and improve energy efficiency by 40 per cent, resulting in savings worth Dh700 bn.

Dubais Electricity and Water Authority, DEWA, has also launched a number of major projects on renewable energy, to drive the sustainable development of the Emirate.

This includes the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the largest single-site solar park in the world and the first of its kind to be implemented according to the Independent Power Produce (IPP) model, with a total investment of AED 50 billion, and a planned capacity of 1,000 MW by 2020 and 5,000 MW by 2030.

According to Energy Digital, the park will eventually save approximately 6.5 million tons per annum in emissions.

Hazza bin Zayed also wrote that UAEs interest in producing renewable energy is leading to a decline in the global cost of energy tenders in solar power and wind energy, , especially in Europe and other parts of the Middle East.

DEWA has already broken two world records with the project  first, by obtaining the lowest price globally for the parks second phase, at USD 5.6 cents per kilowatt hour (kW/h) last year and another, earlier this year, with the lowest recorded bid being USD 2.99 cents per kW/h for the 800MW third phase of the park.

DEWAs has also launched the Shams Dubai initiative, the largest distributed solar rooftop project in the Middle East, which has commissioned DP world into installing 88,000 rooftop solar panels in some of its houses and building complexes. Any surplus energy will be exported back into DEWAs grid.

This supports our efforts to achieve the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, launched, to transform Dubai into a global hub for clean energy and green economy, writes Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD and CEO of DEWA about the initiative, in a column for a local publication.

He added that DEWAs strategy is in line with Dubais target of generating 5,000MW of solar power by 2030, comprising 25 percent of its total power output.

Dubai has also taken up a number of other initiatives and projects including a 1.5MW system deployed at the Jebel Ali Power Station and the Dubai solar schools program, which targets around 50MW over three years of systems installed in schools across the emirate. The Dubai based Al Nabooda Automobiles has also signed a solar lease for the development of 6.7MW of solar power to their new DIC facility and Aramex has a new 3MW system on their logistics facility.

Al Tayer added that due to UAEs positioning on the solar belt makes solar energy the most common source of clean energy in the UAE and the country now realizes the importance of harnessing it.

Licensed from Inter Press Service



Related video added by Juan Cole:

. Dewa Official: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park
Reddit Email 84 Shares

TeleSur |  

The U.S. Presidents legal team is also undergoing a shake-up.

Sean Spicer, the controversial White House press secretary, has resigned and will be replaced by his former deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Spicer is said to have quit after denouncing chaos in the West Wing and telling the U.S. President Donald Trump that he disagreed with the appointment of the New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director.

Trump had reportedly asked Spicer to stay on as press secretary.

But Spicer said Scaramuccis appointment was a major mistake and quit, according to The New York Times.

In one of his first official acts, Scaramucci, who founded the global investment firm SkyBridge Capital and is a Fox News contributor, joined Sanders, at a news conference in the White House to announce her appointment.

Spicer had been heavily criticized for his gaffes over the last six months.

After Trumps inauguration in January, Spicer inspired the hashtag #SpicerFacts after reiterating his claim that the ceremony had the biggest audience in history, despite evidence from photos, crowd experts, TV ratings and the Washington Metro network.

In the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, Spicer declared: Sometimes we can disagree with the facts.

Spicer also said Trumps executive order blocking entry of refugees and travellers from seven predominantly Muslim countries was not a travel ban, even though the president had used the word ban.

Called out on this, Spicer said: Hes using the words that the media is using.

In April, Spicer was forced to apologize twice for his comparison of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with Adolf Hitler.

Spicer had told reporters that Hitler didnt even sink  to using chemical weapons, a comment which ignored the mass killing of Jews in Nazi gas chambers in the Holocaust.

The veteran Washington staffer, was also parodied by the U.S: actress Melissa McCarthy on the Saturday Night Live TV comedy show for his combative encounters with reporters.

I am grateful for Seans work on behalf of my administration and the American people, Trump said in a statement. I wish him continued success as he moves on to pursue new opportunities. Just look at his great television ratings.

Spicer will stay on the job until the end of August.

The U.S. Presidents legal team is also undergoing a shake-up.

The Financial Times reports that his longtime personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, is being sidelined and replaced with John Dowd, a veteran Washington lawyer with experience in political scandals, moved into the leading role.

Ty Cobb, another veteran Washington defence lawyer, has also recently joined the legal team.

The changes come as Trump faces the developing investigation into allegations of Russian interference in Novembers presidential election led by Robert Mueller.

His son Donald Trump Jr and son-in-law Jared Kushner, now a White House adviser, are due to testify before a parallel congressional investigation next week.

And theres said to be growing unease within the Republican party over the adminstrations inability to pass legislation or deal with pressing matters of state.

Via TeleSur



Related video added by Juan Cole:

The Young Turks: Sean Spicer Resigns As Press Secretary
An exterior view of Ansan Media Library / Courtesy of Ansan Media Library

By Baek Byung-yeul

ANSAN -- A woman in her 30s surnamed Kim visits a nearby library three times a week with her two daughters, ages five and six. At the library, located in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, she spends time reading English books with her children.

"In this hot weather, I feel lucky to have this library near my home. Outside it's hot, but we can stay cool here and I can narrate stories from English books to my children," Kim said.

The new Ansan Media Library, first opened in June 2016, is becoming a primary gathering place for people in this city.

What makes this public library special to nearby residents is 90 percent of its collection is books written in English.

"Since we have the city's biggest library, Ansan Joongang (central) Library, near here, we decided to build an English-focused library," an assistant guide at the library said, Tuesday. "As we want to emphasize that this library is specialized in English, we came up with the name Ansan Media Library through a public contest," she said, adding it doesn't have any different title in Korean.

Ansan Media Library is also specialized in media-related facilities. Visitors can enjoy movies in small theaters in the library and also use video and audio recording studios to produce multimedia content. "Since this library is only a year old, we have about 200 visitors every day," the library official said.





Computers are installed at the English reading level testing room at Ansan Media Library. / Courtesy of Ansan Media Library



The three-story building is comprised of a communal place selling drinks and snacks and an auditorium on the first floor; reading rooms providing content written in English on the second floor; and audio and video recording studios on the third floor.

In the first reading room on the second floor the shelves are stocked with books for toddlers and children, mainly fairy tales. There are also books in English for children and books translated into Korean.

Inside the first reading room, there is a separate Kids Zone space so children can read books comfortably lying on mats. The shelves in the room are filled with pop-up books and sound books helping children find joy and pleasure in reading and learning. There are nursing rooms and restrooms for visitors inside the Kids Zone as well.

In the second reading room on the second floor, visitors can self-evaluate their reading skill levels using Lexile measures. Developed by U.S.-based company MetaMetrics, the Lexile scale measures a person's reading ability.

There are six computers for the reading test which can be conducted free of charge for residents of Ansan and other cities in Gyeonggi Province.

Not only students but also adults come here to take the test, which requires a reservation. "Though the test has no official use, we have five tests takers a day on average," said Bang Eun-hee, a librarian at the reading room. "Even if they receive a lower Lexile level, they can take the test again for better results."

The books in the reading rooms are classified into five levels based on the Lexile scale and visitors can choose English-written books depending on their reading levels. The second reading room has books in levels three to five while the first reading room has first- and second-level books.

"We have 15,000 books and more than 90 percent of them are in the English language while less than 10 percent are translations. For students who don't know what to read first, we have a collection of books that won the Newbery Medal. And for people who want to improve their English listening skills, we provide audio books as well," Bang said.







Visitors can produce their own recordings at the recording studio of Ansan Media Library. / Courtesy of Ansan Media Library



On the third floor, visitors can make their own video or audio productions in the recording studios. "Once you make a reservation through the library's website, you can use the studio for free," a worker at the studio said. "It is not well known that this library has recording studios. But we have some visitors using the facilities to record their podcasts or make their own records."

The Ansan Media Library is located in Danwon-gu, Ansan. For more information, visit lib.iansan.net or call 031-481-2702.






Ad hoc committee to be launched today; decision due in Oct.



By Ko Dong-hwan





The fate of two reactors at the Shin Kori Nuclear Power Plant in the southeastern city of Ulsan is critical for the country because it will set the tone of the administration's energy policy.

President Moon Jae-in is pushing to deliver on his campaign promise to phase out nuclear power plants. The state-run Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) has suspended work on the two reactors for three months  following a presidential order  fueling debate over the propriety and legitimacy of the decision.

The government will launch a nine-member review committee today, which will hear public opinions over the next three months.

The committee will select jurors from among ordinary citizens who will make a final call on whether the construction is permanently halted. It will make the decision by the end of October.

At a roundtable discussion that The Korea Times hosted last week, experts showed a stark difference in views about the safety of the No. 5 and 6 reactors.

Pro-nuclear experts said the three-month deliberation period was "absolutely not enough," while anti-nuclear experts said the time was sufficient.

Regardless, they agreed that the decision would be a watershed for Korea's energy industry.

"The reactors, if completed, will be the most up-to-date version of the third-generation type, equipped with intensive safety features," said Kyung Hee University engineering professor Whang Joo-ho in Yongin.

"I cannot understand why they shut them down despite such technological breakthroughs."

Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute senior research adviser Chang Moon-hee said the reactors' safety had been thoroughly vetted.

"The risks of accidents in 10 reactors concentrated in Ulsan and Busan, including Shin Kori No. 5 and 6, have been assessed by Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission," Chang said.

"No. 5 and 6 are APR1400, the same as the United Arab Emirates' Barakah reactors that Korea built after beating France and Japan in stringent safety tests overseen by America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

But their opponents said that no matter how good the reactors may be, their concentration in southeastern port cities was dangerously high.

Seoul National University professor of environmental and energy policy Yun Sun-jin said having 10 reactors next to more than 4 million people was "unprecedented in international cases."












Representatives from both the Yankees and Marlins told Jim Bowden of Sirius XM that New York has not inquired about Miami slugger Giancarlo Stanton, which conflicts with a previous report. Bowden received a text message from a Marlins executive who declared that all the buzz is false on a potential Stanton-Yankees union (Twitter links). Regardless of whether the Yankees have checked in on Stanton, its an extreme long shot that hed end up with them.

More from these two cities and another East Coast spot:
Oral sex is producing dangerous gonorrhoea and a decline in condom use is helping it to spread, the World Health Organization has said.

It warns that if someone contracts gonorrhoea, it is now much harder to treat, and in some cases impossible.

The sexually transmitted infection is rapidly developing resistance to antibiotics.

Experts said the situation was fairly grim with few new drugs on the horizon.

Around 78 million people pick up the STI each year and it can cause infertility.

The World Health Organization analysed data from 77 countries which showed gonorrhoeas resistance to antibiotics was widespread.

Dr Teodora Wi, from the WHO, said there had even been three cases  in Japan, France and Spain  where the infection was completely untreatable.

She said: Gonorrhoea is a very smart bug, every time you introduce a new class of antibiotics to treat gonorrhoea, the bug becomes resistant.

Worryingly, the vast majority of gonorrhoea infections are in poor countries where resistance is harder to detect.

These cases may just be the tip of the iceberg, she added.

Oral sex

Gonorrhoea can infect the genitals, rectum and throat, but it is the last that is most concerning health officials.

Dr Wi said antibiotics could lead to bacteria in the back of the throat, including relatives of gonorrhoea, developing resistance.

She said: When you use antibiotics to treat infections like a normal sore throat, this mixes with the Neisseria species in your throat and this results in resistance.

Thrusting gonorrhoea bacteria into this environment through oral sex can lead to super-gonorrhoea.

In the US, resistance [to an antibiotic] came from men having sex with men because of pharyngeal infection, she added.

A decline in condom use, which had soared because of fears of HIV/Aids, is thought to help the infection spread.

What is gonorrhoea?

The disease is caused by the bacterium called Neisseria gonorrhoea.

The infection is spread by unprotected vaginal, oral and anal sex.

Of those infected, about one in 10 heterosexual men and more than three-quarters of women, and gay men, have no easily recognisable symptoms.

But symptoms can include a thick green or yellow discharge from sexual organs, pain when urinating and bleeding between periods.

Untreated infection can lead to infertility, pelvic inflammatory disease and can be passed on to a child during pregnancy.

The World Health Organization is calling on countries to monitor the spread of resistant gonorrhoea and to invest in new drugs.

Dr Manica Balasegaram, from the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, said: The situation is fairly grim.

There are only three drug candidates in the entire drug [development] pipeline and no guarantee any will make it out.

But ultimately, the WHO said vaccines would be needed to stop gonorrhoea.

Prof Richard Stabler, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: Ever since the introduction of penicillin, hailed as a reliable and quick cure, gonorrhoea has developed resistance to all therapeutic antibiotics.

In the past 15 years therapy has had to change three times following increasing rates of resistance worldwide.

We are now at a point where we are using the drugs of last resort, but there are worrying signs as treatment failure due to resistant strains has been documented.


The Hague (AFP) - War crimes judges will rule Wednesday whether former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo can be released from prison for the rest of his trial on charges arising from deadly election violence that rocked his nation in 2010.

Gbagbo, the first ex-head of state to be tried by the International Criminal Court, has appealed a March decision that he must stay behind bars in a UN detention centre until the end of the legal process.

Both Gbagbo, now 72, and his former militia leader Charles Ble Goude, 45, have pleaded not guilty to four charges of crimes against humanity including murder, rape, and persecution in five months of bloodshed that wracked the Ivory Coast.

About 3,000 people died in the turmoil that swept Abidjan -- once one of Africa's most cosmopolitan cities -- in the aftermath of the November 2010 presidential polls that Gbagbo lost to bitter rival Alassane Ouattara.

His highly divisive trial at the tribunal in The Hague opened in January 2016, and is set to last three to four years.

ICC prosecutors accuse Gbagbo of trying to cling to power "by all means," while his defence team has charged that Ouattara seized power by force with the help of former colonial master France.

Abidjan was turned into a warzone between late 2010 to 2011 as clashes flared between the rival forces. After a months-long standoff, Gbagbo was arrested by Ouattara's troops aided by UN and French forces, and turned over to the ICC in 2011.

In March, his defence team made a new bid to win Gbagbo's release, arguing he "has already been detained for almost six years and has pathologies that affect his physical and psychological wellbeing".

The prosecution said the former Ivorian strongman still enjoyed a strong network of support and if he were freed "could abscond to a territory out of the reach of the court".

'Flight risk'

In a majority two-to-one decision, the judges ruled he had to stay in jail.

But in a dissenting opinion -- which Gbagbo's defence has seized on -- judge Cuno Tarfusser said his detention "has exceeded the threshold of a reasonable duration and that, in light of his age and health, the risk that he might abscond from justice becomes increasingly unlikely".

A five-judge appeals court will "deliver its judgement" on the appeal at 1430 GMT on Wednesday, the court said in a statement.

His lawyer, Emmanuel Altit, told AFP they are urging the appeals chamber to "apply the law", saying there are strict criteria about keeping people in detention and the initial judges had failed to prove he was a flight risk.

Gbagbo "wants to shed light on the truth, he wants to show what really happened. He wants to show the reality of the networks, which were implicated, including those of the French authorities," Altit said.

Rights activists thought it was unlikely he would be freed. Carrie Comer of the Federation International for Human Rights (FIDH) said her organisation shared concerns that Gbagbo "was a flight risk" and highlighted "the sheer gravity of the crimes that he is accused of."
New associates

Jeff Borchers has joined Keller Williams Western Montana as a real estate agent. Borchers has been involved in the financial part of home ownership having been a mortgage banker/self employed at his business The Real Deal for the past 25 years providing financing for clients. Borchers attended the University of Montana. Borchers can be reached at 406-880-4333.

Ashley Shaw has been named the new office manager/executive assistant for Headwaters Health Foundation of Western Montana. For the past five years Shaw has worked for the Montana University System in roles that support higher education. She spent three years working for the University of Montana; both for their Alumni Association and Human Resource Service offices. The past two years were spent in Bozeman working as the payroll supervisor for Montana State University where she managed a team that processed payroll for over 6,000 employees. Prior to her time working in higher education, she worked at the Missoulian Newspaper for four years in marketing, community outreach, advertising and executive support roles. Shaw graduated from Montana State University with a bachelors degree in business administration.

Gordon Bean has joined the team at Territorial-Landworks, Inc. (TLI), a Montana-based engineering and surveying firm, as a project manager for the Land Use Development division. Bean brings 31 years of experience in residential and commercial land development, transportation design and construction management to TLI. Bean is a graduate of Purdue University with a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering.

Dustin Farren has joined Territorial-Landworks, Inc. (TLI), a Montana-based engineering and surveying firm, as an Engineer in Training for the Land Development division. He will provide progressive assistance with engineering related calculations, reports, research, and field work at the direction of the TLI team. Farren is a graduate of Montana Tech with a bachelor of science in civil engineering.

Appointed

Dr. Andrew Althauser has been named the president elect for the Montana Dental Association.

Katie Ward, HDR Engineering has been elected to the board of the Missoula Job Service Employers Council JSEC. Ward is originally from Anaconda and graduated from the University of Montana in 1999 with a degree in business. She has been with HDR Engineering since January 2003. Her primary duty is the department accountant. She ensures procedures and practices are being followed in accordance with company policy and accounting principles. She also works directly with project managers and engineers to manage, monitor and forecast project budgets in addition to processing accounts receivables, collections and assisting with financial planning.

Julianna Crowley of Missoula was elected to a two-year term on the MEA-MFT Board of Directors. She represents MEA-MFT District 13 (Dept. of Public Health & Human Services employees) on the board. Crowley works as DPHHS Community Services Program Officer. She works with the federal Community Services Block Grant, Emergency Solutions Grant, and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS grant, covering grant writing to training to policy. She serves as local vice president of her local MEA-MFT affiliate, the Federation of Public Health and Human Services.

Gypsy Ray was recently named president of the Rotary Club of Polson.

Recognition

The Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History was recently recognized by the American Association for State and Local History for completing Bronze Level Certification in the category of mission, values and governance in AASLH's STEPS Program. Participating were RMMMH Trustees Mike Dwyer and Becky O'Donnell.

Julie Osborn, co-founder and advancement director for Ecology Project International (EPI), was awarded the University of California Education Abroad Programs highest honor: The Linda Duttenhaver Distinguished Alumni Award. This award salutes the achievements of alumni who have demonstrated a record of distinguished service and extraordinary achievement in a particular discipline or organization. Osnorn was chosen for her 17 years of innovative service and commitment to international education at EPI. Under Osborn's leadership, EPI has raised more than $6 million to support conservation education, and more than 30,000 students have participated in EPIs programs.

Boone Karlberg P.C. has been recognized with five attorneys in three practice areas in the Chambers USA: Americas Leading Lawyers for Business and has been listed as one of the top bands of law firms in Montana. The attorneys are Randy Cox (#1 Attorney in his field of Litigation-General Commercial), Matthew Hayhurst (top 11 in Litigation-General Commercial), Natasha Prinzing Jones (top 20 in Litigation-General Commercial), Dean Stensland (top 10 in Real Estate and top 15 in Corporate/M&A) and Robert Sullivan (top 15 in Real Estate). Boone Karlberg P.C. is described as a high class practice that is highly reputed for a spectrum of contentious expertise and is known for impressive work on behalf of a range of entities, including, banks, businesses and individuals. The Super Lawyers publication has also recognized Boone Karlberg P.C. attorneys Cox and Hayhurst as two of the top 100 Rocky Mountain States attorneys. Super Lawyers honors no more than 5 percent of attorneys in any state, and the vetted rigorous selection process honors attorneys who have retained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement.
23.07.2017 LISTEN

It is about the joint-deportation order to an Indian-born businessman by the name of Ashok Kumar Sivaram by officials of both the Ghana Immigration Services Department and the Comptroller-Generals Department. But the order well appears to have come down directly from above, to wit, from Mr. Ambrose Dery, the Minister of the Interior.

The story is captioned Ambrose Dery Deports Indian Businessman (Modernghana.com 7/17/17). The deportee, who was physically removed from the country on June 1 of this year, had been accused of the forgery of some financial documents. The Indian government has a High Commission in Accra, the nations capital, so I hope somebody from Mr. Sivarams side is closely monitoring events and will shortly let those of us who are interested in the outcome of this case know what they think and believe about the same.

What inspired me to write this column primarily has to do with the fact that the Starrfms reporter who covered the event put in very little effort to ensure that non-legal specialists who read the news story would not have to make a double-take of the same. In other words, all that the reporter did was quote barely readable chunks of pure legalese, rather than meticulously explain or summarize the same to a largely non-specialist general Ghanaian audience, the implications of the deportation of Mr. Sivaram, who is alleged by his lawyers to be the owner of an unidentified business enterprise with a staff of 130 Ghanaian citizens, and an additional 30 expatriates of unspecified nationalities.

What his lawyers want the Ghanaian public and the rest of the world to appreciate is the fact that the deportee had contributed remarkably towards the countrys economy and labor development. But the question of whether his allegedly remarkable contribution to the nations economy and labor market authorized the deportee to engage in the crime for which he was summarily deported remains to be seen. Actually, Mr. Ashok Kumar Sivaram stands accused of two major crimes, namely, the forgery of some financial documents and the fabrication of a nonexistent marriage to a Ghanaian citizen as a means of securing his own citizenship in the country.

In the news story on which this column is based, we are told that the deportee was a legally documented permanent resident in the country. As to why he wanted to acquire a Ghanaian citizenship, in addition to his official citizenship as an Indian by birth is an aspect of this story that may be systematically and meticulously researched or explored by any curious investigative reporter or interested Ghanaian citizen.

But what is even more significant to highlight here is the fact that Mr. Sivarams case is alleged to have been pending a hearing before an Accra High Court, when the Akufo-Addo government decided to remove the accused from the country. This clearly appears to be what the lawyers for the deportee are fighting against. In law, this is called the flagrant denial of due process to Mr. Sivaram.

If the preceding interpretation of the Sivaram case has validity, as contended by Mr. Gary Nimako, the lead attorney in the case, then it is quite conceivable to believe that the aggrieved deportee would be allowed to have his proverbial day in court, even in absentia. But, of course, such an opportunity cannot be expected to be automatically assured, because the government may have its own compelling reasons for wanting to summarily have Mr. Sivaram remain outside the country.

Indeed, the government may be privy to information on the deportee bordering on national security matters that the rest of us may not be in the know about. But, of course, this does not in any way negate or nullify the inalienable democratic right of the Ghanaian people to know precisely why due process was evidently denied Mr. Sivaram, whose lawyers and assigns claim had comported himself as a responsible legally resident alien in the country.

We hope Mr. Dery has some morally and legally acceptable answers for those of us curious to know precisely why the Interior Minister had to ride roughshod over the authority of the Accra High Court before which Mr. Sivarams case was allegedly pending.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
23.07.2017 LISTEN

I am convinced that Femi Adesina has now finally lost his mind. In his latest essay he compared Buhari to David.

What on earth is Davidic about Buhari? David was a Spirit-filled believer and a heroic and courageous child of God whilst Buhari is a son of perdition and a tyrannical servant of satan.

Femi also said Buhari could have "cut off the heads" of his opponrnts, meaning he could have had them assasinated. Gosh. Poor Femi.

He has just made a cardinal spiritual blunder the consequences of which I have no doubt that he will deeply regret. I knew that he was frustrated but I never knew he was a man of blood.

I never knew that he and his leader believed in murder as a tool of governance. God will see to it that they pay a terrible price for even thinking of taking the life of their detractors and political enemies both in this life and in the next.

The truth is that God alone gives and takes life and whether they like it or not He guards His own jealously. No-one is intimidated by Femi's implicit threat.

He ought to be mindful of the fact that whilst he and his associated are planning to take someone elses precious life they may end up losing your own. Examples of that are replete in the Holy Bible.

Abishai and David's other strong men were courageous and righteous men who undertook a noble cause, shed the blood of evil men and fought against tyranny.

That is not the case with Buhari's cabal. They are the opposite. They are the darkness that seeks the darkness. They prey on the weak, they destroy the young and they slay the old, the vulnerable and the weary.

Buhari has no Abishai's around him. He has no Joab's and no Prophet Samuel's either. He only has Absalom's, Haman's, Judas', Dalila's and Ahitophel's.

That is the tragedy and the weakness of his Presidency. That plus the fact that he does not fear God and he does not respect the rights of the Nigerian people.

Finally Femi wrote "when Buhari returns home some people will bury their heads in shame". He is wrong.

The truth is that when Buhari returns home some people will prop him up and pretend that he is well enough to be President until he falls sick and goes back abroad again.

It is called "corspsocracy" and it is defined as the rulership of the living by the dead.

Instead of telling us that his principal can kill us all Femi should consider his many failings and fluctuating health and advise him to resign honorably.

That is what a real believer and a true man of honor would counsel his erring and ailing boss to do and not try to intimidate those of us that are in opposrion with blatent, vulgar and bullish threats of assasination.

The path of blood is a dark and unpredictable one. I advise Femi not to take.
23.07.2017 LISTEN

President Nana Akufo Addo is being accused of gradually turning Ghana into Republic of NPP since he assumed office in January 7, 2017.

According to Bilal Muazu Sulemana, B/A NDC Youth Activist and also a member of national communications team of the NDC has said the actions and inactions of Nana Addo's administration being meted against Ghanaians, the mass dismissal of public officers by replacing them with the members of NPP, the appointment of the chief Justice, about 95 percent of his Government appointees being his family and friends, the lawless nature of some NPP members being the Invisible forces, Delta forces,kandaha forces, crocodile forces, has almost taken over the security matters in this country, the recent attempt by the NPP Govt to impeach the EC boss Maddam challote Osei and gross dismissal of heads of state institutions etc. These are clear indications that the President Nana Addo is turning this country into the republic of NPP.

Mr Bilal observed that Nana Addo has totally deviated from his campaign promises. Adding that corruptible nature of his appointees can never be over ruled and the lies everywhere,these has made the security of the nation to be under threat.

The oversize govt in his administration and not achieving any meaningful result but rather to enrich themselves, classical example is the BOST scandal which president himself has endorsed. All these barbaric act has shown that the president is not thinking of protecting the tax payers money for the development of our mother Ghana.

The NDC Youth Activist therefore calls on all Ghanaians to join the Great NDC to resist any attempt by the NPP Government to turn this country into NPP republic. We all agree that former President Mahama handed over one Ghana and a peaceful country to NPP Government which cannot be undermined.
Kinshasa (AFP) - The Congolese opposition on Saturday unveiled a rolling programme of strikes and civil disobedience aimed at forcing President Joseph Kabila from power.

The announcement was made after two days of opposition talks in Kinshasa amid concerns that Kabila, in power since 2001, is seeking to remain in place in defiance of constitutional limits.

Elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo are due this year under a transitional deal aimed at avoiding fresh political violence in the sprawling country of 71 million people after Kabila failed to step down when his second mandate ended in December 2016.

Under the deal, Kabila is allowed to remain in office pending the elections, in late 2017, ruling in tandem with a transitional watchdog and a new premier, chosen from within opposition ranks.

Under its newly unveiled plan of action, a two-day general strike will be held throughout the country from August 8 "as a warning," said Francois Muamba, rapporteur of the opposition conclave.

Then on August 20, the opposition plans simultaneous rallies in the capital Kinshasa and 25 provinces.

If Kabila does not by the end of September set an election date he will "no longer be recognised as president of the republic on October 1," said Muamba, speaking at the headquarters of the main opposition Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) in Kinshasa.

From that date the opposition will invite the people to stop paying taxes to the state or paying their bills to the water and electricity monopolies.

On New Year's Eve, pro-government and opposition groups agreed to a deal brokered by the influential Roman Catholic Church that sought to avert a full-fledged crisis in the country.

But the death of veteran UDPS leader Etienne Tshisekedi, held up the accord.

And meanwhile the opposition coalition has struggled to live up to its name, thanks to a push by Tshisekedi's son, Felix, to take over the party helm.

Felix Tshisekedi has called for "police and the military to no longer respect bad orders, especially those to kill Congolese people".

Previous opposition rallies against Kabila, last September and December, ended in several deaths.
Anyinam (E/R), July 22, GNA - Students have been urged to develop a holistic approach to education by being honest, virtuous and dedicated to their studies.

They should also endeavor to resist corruption in the form of cheating during examinations, which is a canker eating into the fabric of society.

Mr Michael Kwaku Adae, the Proprietor of Adae Yeboa Preparatory School, said this in an address during a students' durbar at Anyinam in the Eastern Region.

The programme was part of the school's strategic plan to encourage the youth to become aware of their civic responsibilities and be assertive.

He said students should endeavour to cultivate the habit of learning to be patriotic citizens so as to uphold and defend the good name of the country.

The proprietor urged them to avoid cheating and take their studies seriously to enable them to achieve good results.

Mr. Adae said proprietors of private schools found it difficult to run their institutions to complement government's efforts to provide quality teaching and learning.

'However, we try our best to sustain our businesses since education brings progress and development,' he said, and appealed to government to assist.

Mr Adae said the school, established in September, 2007 with 12 children from Kindergarten to Primary One, had now expanded to Junior High School Three with 430 pupils.

He said the school lacked books and computers to feed the school library and computer laboratory respectively adding that it also needed a school bus to transport the children to school from the catchment areas including Adasewase, Enyiresi, Akyem Sekyere, Moseaso and Asaman Tanfoe.

He appealed to the VALCO Fund to provide the school with a bus and called on the Ministry of Education to supply text books to private schools.

GNA
22.07.2017 LISTEN

Accra, July 22, GNA - Mr Joseph Osei-Owusu, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament and Member of Parliament for Bekwai, on Friday welcomed school children from the Constituency to the House and advised them to take their studies seriously.

After adjournment of proceedings, the First Deputy Speaker took some time off his busy schedule to interact with the pupils from Sumkyerekrom and Amanhyia M/A Primary School, and Ntinanko M/A Primary and Junior High School, accompanied by some of their teachers.

The school children and teachers, led by Mr Stephen Akomaning of Sumkyerekrom M/A Primary School, sat in the public gallery and observed parts of the proceedings for the day.

Mr Osei-Owusu commended the children and their teachers for the visit.

He urged the teachers to give of their best and the pupils to continue to study hard and build good characters to become learned and responsible adults in future.

He encouraged the pupils to engage all their sensory organs including the hands, ears and eyes when learning as that would help them retain what they had learned.

Mr Osei-Owusu said once a member was elected into the House, both the Majority and Minority worked together in the interest of the nation, though they may sometimes disagree on certain issues.

'What is needed is to reach a consensus through a majority decision in the House so that no side of the House would take unilateral and arbitrary decisions,' he said.

Mr Osei-Owusu asked the children what they observed in the House and commended them and their teachers for the brilliant answers and wished them a safe journey back home.

He assured them that he would visit them in the Constituency when the House is on vacation.

Mr Akomaning, on his part, thanked First Deputy Speaker for his time and wished him the best in his duties in the House.

The school children had earlier visited the Tema Harbour and the Accra International Airport.

GNA

By Benjamin Mensah, GNA
Elmina (C/R), July 22, GNA - Nana Kodwo Kondua VI, the Omanhen of Edina Traditional Area, has called on Africans in the Diaspora who hailed from Elmina to support the development of the town.

"I wish to urge you, our Diaspora friends and indigenes sojourning abroad, to lead the path of the socio-economic transformation of our community to give life to the economically weak and underprivileged," he said.

The Omanhen made the call when a three-member delegation of African descent from the United States of America (USA) paid a curtsy call on him at his palace in Elmina on Friday.

Members of the delegation were Dr Sandi Williams, Dr Vincent Cutis and Mr Luesley Buyant who were accompanied by Mr Philip Landon and Mr Joseph Kyeremateng, members of the New Patriotic Party.

Nana Kondua urged the people to see the development of the town as a collective responsibility and contribute their quota accordingly.

He said the Elmina Township lacked educational, health and sanitation facilities as well as employment avenues.

He urged the people in the Diaspora to contribute to the Community Endowment Fund, which he had established to cater for the needy children in the area.

Nana Kondua reiterated his unflinching commitment to providing the congenial atmosphere for investors to revamp the City of Elmina and make it a preferred choice.

Dr Sandi Williams, Spokesperson for the delegation, thanked the chiefs and the people of Elmina for the warn reception.

She pledged their readiness to help develop the community, especially in the area of education and women empowerment.

Members of the delegation were presented with beads, kente and the traditional "ahenemaa" slippers.

GNA

By Isaac Arkoh, GNA
Takoradi (W/R), July 22, GNA - The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has appealed to all stakeholders in the tax administration bracket to honour their tax obligations for an accelerated economic development.

It says with the introduction of the three per cent VAT Flat Rate Scheme (VFRS) and the 17.5 per cent Value Added Tax, it would continue to broaden the horizon of the taxpayer on tax administration.

Mr Robert Nelson, the Acting Head of the GRA, at the Medium Tax Office of the Western Region, said this at a seminar for a cross-section of importers, retailers and wholesalers in Takoradi.

The seminar sought to educate the participants in the tax regime to be abreast of issues concerning the migration of taxpayers onto the VFRS of three per cent from the Standard Rate Scheme of 17.5 per cent and the number of tax returns they have to file after sales.

Mr Nelson said it was necessary to get closer to the taxpaying public to explain all outstanding issues which remained unclear in the minds of stakeholders in their resolve to widen the tax net.

Mr Ebenezer Nyarko, a Medium Tax Officer, who spoke on the three per cent VFRS, said it was introduced in 2007 for retailers and importers but its implementation date was July 1, 2017 for wholesalers who were not covered initially with a marginal rate of three per cent charge on the value of goods supplied.

He said those who were not allowed to charge the three per cent were manufacturers, service providers, retailers and wholesalers of power, heat and ventilation among others.

Mr Nyarko said government was monitoring prices of goods and services to find out how the system would be and subject the new tax regime to reforms to mitigate cost of goods and services.

Mr A. Nketiah, a Revenue Officer, making a presentation on the Revenue Administration Act of 2016, said it encouraged the participants to endeavour to pay taxes promptly to avoid paying interests.

He said failure to file tax returns attracted a penalty of 500 currency points, and failure to pay would result in prosecution.

Mr Nketiah warned the public to refrain from attacking tax officers in the course of duty as monies collected were for national development.

He reminded taxpayers to visit the GRA client service desk to have their issues discussed rather than to attack revenue officers.

GNA
22.07.2017 LISTEN

Cape Coast, July 22, GNA - The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has appealed to the Government to institute a special educational package for female teachers in deprived communities to enable them to constantly upgrade themselves.

It also called on corporate institutions, Non-Governmental Organisations, Civil Society Organisations and all relevant stakeholders to support teachers, especially females, to address felt needs and challenges impeding girl-child education in deprived communities.

The challenges facing female teachers in deprived communities, the GNAT noted, did not allow them to seek further professional knowledge and skills which were the most important tools for enhancing quality education.

Madam Helena Awurusah, the GNAT National Co-ordinator for Gender, made the appeal at the end of a three-day gender in service training for some selected teachers in the Central Region on Friday.

It was organised by GNAT with support from the Canadian Teachers Federation (CTF), under its special gender project dubbed; 'Gender-Nkabom'.

The training was to equip the teachers with the needed lobbying skills and how to draw action plans to become project focal persons for their respective communities.

The participants were selected from six basic schools designated as 'Nkabom' deprived schools in the Region.

Madam Awurusah alleged that female teachers in deprived communities were constantly being harassed sexually by community members, unable to access further studies, healthcare and faced serious marital problems.

She said one objective of the 'Nkabom Project' was to encourage female teachers to accept postings to rural areas to serve as role models for girls in basic schools.

She said the project started three years ago and aimed at mobilising local resources to create the right environment for effective academic work in schools in deprived communities.

Mr David Ofori Acheampong, the National Secretary of GNAT, said empowering women was one of the priorities of GNAT and called on female teachers to avail themselves for leadership training.

He said providing quality education was not the sole responsibility of teachers but a collaborative effort from all stakeholders including the Government and the communities where the schools were located.

Through the GNAT/CTF collaboration, many teachers had been awarded scholarships to upgrade their professional skills and commended the CTF for its continued support, he said.

Mr Acheampong called on the participants to share their experiences with their colleagues and community leaders to transform the society.

Mr William Abedi Boadu, the Regional Secretary of GNAT, called on the Ghana Education Service to support the GNAT Nkabom Project to help give teachers the needed motivation to teach in rural communities.

Mrs Carla Peterson, a member of the CTF and the facilitator, described the Project as 'very significant' in creating educational opportunities for girl-children in the project communities.

She expressed satisfaction about the readiness of the participants to act as agents of change to enhance girl-child education in their respective localities.

GNA

By Afedzi Abdullah, GNA


Tamale, July 22, GNA - Mrs Yaa Oforiwaa Asare-Peasah, the Director of Editorial, Ghana News Agency (GNA), has called on journalists to use their media platforms to educate citizens on their health rights and ensure that government performed its role effectively.

She said this would help reduce the inequality in health service delivery at both the district and national levels.

Mrs Asare-Peasah made the call at a two-day workshop for GNA regional correspondents and members of the Media Communication and Advocacy Network (MCAN) on the People for Health project (P4H) in Tamale.

The P4H is a five-year project - March 2016 to March 2021- funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The project is being implemented in 20 districts of four regions to ensure improved access to quality health service delivery.

It seeks to strengthen organisational and institutional capacities of government and civil society organisations (CSOs) for mutual accountability in health, HIV, water, sanitation and hygiene, family planning and nutrition policy formulation and implementation.

A consortium of three organisations is implementing the project in the Greater Accra, Eastern, Northern and Volta regions led by SEND-Ghana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) with Penplusbytes, an NGO, and the Ghana News Agency as partners.

Mrs Asare-Peasah said although Ghana had improved in the provision of health services some areas in the country had not attained the expected results leading to high maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS infections and malaria among others which remained a challenge.

She, however, pledged GNA's support in ensuring that the project was successfully implemented and help to increase citizens' voice to demand for improved access to quality health services.

Madam Aisha Mohammed, the Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of SEND-Ghana, said the project sought to leverage opportunities for change, build on consortium members' good relations with local governments and district health management teams and USAID's initiatives in the health sector.

She said: 'The consortium's emphasis on social accountability will increase CSO leadership, mobilise communities and key populations to demand quality delivery of health programmes, promote accountability in the use of health resources and simultaneously maximise the responsiveness of health service providers.'

The project, she noted, would improve inclusiveness and equity and make the country a model for health systems which served the people according to their needs

She expressed worry about late referral, poorly equipped health infrastructure, and pregnancy disorders among other things, which contributed to high mortality and said those must be addressed.

Madam Mohammed noted that poor attitude of health professionals also contributed to some patients being maltreated and their rights abused.

She said discrimination and stigmatisation against vulnerable groups including Key Populations (prostitutes, gays and lesbians), women and youth, the weak capacity of CSOs and Community Based Organisations (CBOs) to demand accountability for quality service delivery, and lack of awareness on Patients' Rights contributed to abuse of rights of patients.

Ms Mohammed explained that weak policies and socio-cultural practices were barriers that prevented vulnerable groups such as the KPs from accessing healthcare.

She called on CSOs and CBOs to demand accountability for quality service delivery, create awareness on Patients' Rights and Code of Ethics to prevent their rights from being abused.

'If civil society is strengthened in a way that increases citizen input into Ghana's health and HIV development process, Ghana's health system will be more participatory and responsive to the needs of the beneficiary population.

'And our interventions will work towards achieving USAID goal of Equitable Improvements in Health Status,' she said.

GNA

By Rashid Mbugri, Frederica Kyeremanteng, Naa Shormei Odonkor, Rose Wayo, GNA
Anti-corruption crusader, Sydney Casley Hayford has described as premature, the criticisms against the Akufo-Addo government.

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) had described as abysmal, the performance of the Akufo-Addo government in its first 6 months.

According to the NDC, the party had failed on many fronts, especially in the fight against corruption since it assumed office on January 7.

Kofi Portuphy [Middle]

Addressing a press conference in response to the President's media encounter, the National Chairman of the NDC, Kofi Portuphy said the government had simply failed to live up to its promises.

 The true verdict of the majority of Ghanaians is that Akufo Addo and Bawumia have failed woefully as managers of all affairs of state..Most definitely, President Akuffo Addo is turning out to become like Kweku Ananse because in our Ghanaian folklore, Kweku Ananse always begins as the most intelligent and shrewdest person but ends up hiding his embarrassment in his web. The embarrassment that is engulfing the Akufo Addo, Bawumia government is becoming too much, Mr. Portuphy said.

Speaking on Citi FM's News Analysis Programme, The Big Issue, Mr. Casley Hayford however said it will be unfair to criticise the NPP government for poor governance since it had been in power for just six months.

He further indicated that it will be too early to expect results, sayingit is too early for us to see the impact of what is being done. When we are looking at government, it is a little more difficult to take off. There is a certain amount of inertia required, he said.

The Minority has on several occasions criticized the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration for what they describe as incompetence and corruption.

These criticisms particularly heightened in the wake of the BOST scandal



By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @EfeAnsah
Some orphans at Akwatia in the Eastern Region have pleaded with government, individuals, NGOs and Philanthropists to come to their aid since they need support from all person(s) to help them grow to become responsible adults in the society.

These orphans made the plea when Rev. Dr Thomas Ofori, Pastor-in-Charge of Immanuel Methodist Church, Manchester Connecticut USA and his colleagues Church Leaders: Nana Okoda Darko I Gyaasehene of Akyem Kusi and Dominic Andoh went to do some donations to the Our faith in God foundation orphanage at Akwatia in the Denkyembuor District.

The items including bags of rice, bags of sugar, toiletries and a cash sum of $1000(GHC4000) were presented to the orphanage by Nana Okoda Darko I for and on behalf of the church.

Presenting the items, Nana Darko pleaded with all well meaning people to go the aid of orphans.

On her part, Mad. Akosua Addae owner of the orphanage expressed her gratitude to the church. She pleaded that she has a 10bedroom building under construction which she will be moving the kids from her current rented apartment to the place soon and pleaded for support to help her complete the building at a faster rate.

When asked her main source of finance, Mad. Addae said she has been taking care of the kids from her own proceeds from her small trading business but pleaded with people to come to their aid.
23.07.2017 LISTEN

I could not believe my ears listening to Richard Nyama on Kasapa FM on how Ex-President Mahama allegedly failed to refer his (Mr Nyamah) petition issued against Mrs Charlotte Osei to the Chief Justice for determination of a prima facie case.

It would be recalled that somewhere in February 2016, the spokesperson of the pressure group, the Progressive Nationalist Forum, Richard Nyamah, submitted a petition to Ex-President Mahama,in accordance with Article 146,for the impeachment of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Charlotte Osei over an alleged constitutional violation.

According to Mr Richard Nyamah, Mrs Charlotte Osei appeared to have breached the Constitution of Ghana,by virtue of holding another public office, together with her assigned role as the EC boss.

Mr Nyamah contested that since Mrs Charlotte Osei refused to resigned from the Ghana Reinsurance Boardfollowing her appointment as the chairperson of the Electoral Commission, she appeared to have violated Article 44(4) of the Constitution of Ghana.

Article 44(4) of the Constitution of Ghana stipulates: The Chairman and the two Deputy Chairmen of the commission shall not, while they hold office on the Commission, hold any other publicoffice.

Apparently, in his (Mr Richard Nyamahs) previous petition issued against the then chairperson of CHRAJ, Mrs Lauretta Vivian Lamptey, Ex-President Mahama duly adhered to Article 146(3).

Consequently, the Chief Justice established a prima facie violation, and, Mrs Lamptey was impeached accordingly.

The all-important question then is: why did former President Mahama somehow turn a blind eye to the petition against the chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Charlotte Osei?

Interestingly, however, Article 146(3) is candid on our presidents unconditional obligation to act upon receipt of any petition, contrary to the schools of thought bone of contention to the effect that the sitting presidents are not obliged to refer all petitions to the Chief Justice.

All the same, the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, to be precise, Article 146, provides interesting steps or measures that need to be taken in order to impeach a Justice of the Superior Court or a Chairman of the Regional Tribunal.

The Article (146) states: (1), A Justice of the Superior Court or a Chairman of the Regional Tribunal shall not be removed from office except for stated misbehaviour or incompetence or on ground of inability to perform the functions of his office arising from infirmity of body or mind.

(2) A Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature or a Chairman of the Regional Tribunal may only be removed in accordance with the procedure specified in this article.

(3) If the President receives a petition for the removal of Justice of a Superior Court other than the Chief Justice or for the removal of the Chairman of a Regional Tribunal, he shall refer the petition to the Chief Justice, who shall determine whether there is a prima facie case.

(4) Where the Chief Justice decides that there is a prima facie case, he shall set up a committee consisting of three Justices of the Superior Courts or Chairmen of the Regional Tribunals or both, appointed by the Judicial council and two other persons who are not members of the Council of State, nor members of Parliament, nor lawyers, and who shall be appointed by the Chief Justice on the advice of the Council of State.

(5) The committee appointed under clause (4) of this article shall investigate the complaint and shall make its recommendations to the Chief Justice who shall forward it to the President (The 1992 Constitution of Ghana).

Apparently, the recurrent word in Article 146(3) is: SHALL. According to law luminaries, the word SHALL,denotes an order, obligation, requirement or a command to carry out a duty.

For argument sake, even if we put Law aside, the word SHALL,is Queens English. Suffice it to stress that its meaning is neither complex nor multifaceted. Indeed, the word Shall, does not denote a condition precedent. In fact, one does not need to possess superior knowledge in a law morpheme in order to grasp the meaning of SHALL.

According to 2012 edition of the Oxford English dictionary, shall and must could be used interchangeably.

The word must, however, denotesa command. Thus we could infer that the word shall, belongs to the meaningful morphological unit of words such as command, obligation ,requirement , imperative, amongst others.

Given all the circumstances, Ex-President Mahama had no excuse not to refer Mr Richard Nyamahs petition brought against Mrs Charlotte Osei to the Chief Justice for determination of a prima facie case.

The crucial question then is: didnt former President Mahama breach the Constitution of Ghana?

K. Badu, UK.
Nigerias Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, will on Monday speak on food security and Nigerias preparedness to diversify its economy using agriculture as a lever.

Prof Osinbajo leads other dignitaries and leaders from scientific research, education, and corporate organizations from African countries and beyond, in celebrating the 50thanniversary of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on Monday, 24 July 2017 in Ibadan. He will be joined by former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (Rtd), and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is also IITA Goodwill Ambassador.

The event provides Nigerias acting president the opportunity to address more than 300 international, regional, and national experts, and to further unveil the countrys thinking towards agriculture especially in the context of economic diversification. He will also speak on the critical role of IITAAfricas biggest international agricultural research institutein the transformation of Africas agriculture.

Dr Nteranya Sanginga, IITA Director General, said the world is waiting for Nigeria to take leadership in the agricultural spaceand the acting presidents message would be critical in helping participants to understand the countrys agricultural development agenda.

Since our inception 50 years ago, IITA has evolved into a strategic partner for research-for-development in sub-Saharan Africa with over 200 scientists working in over 18 countries. This event is therefore an opportunity for us to celebrate our past successes with all our partners, friends, and beneficiaries and reflect on our future role in our efforts to transform agriculture in the next 50 years, says Sanginga, ahead of the celebrations.

The event is slated to showcase the strides made by IITA researchers in collaboration with a range of partners and their impact on agriculture in the region in improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. These include adoption of almost 400 varieties of cassava with increased yields and better resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses; developing nearly 200 improved soybeans, and 78 improved yam varieties. Besides, over 70% of the over 300 maize varieties with IITA germplasm and drought-tolerant maize developed in partnership with CIMMYT has been adopted in 13 countries with projected economic gains of US$907 million.

Impact has also been felt in improving nutrition through promoting legumes such as cowpea and soybean, developing biofortified yellow cassava with enhanced vitamin A and the effective and safe biocontrol solution, Aflasafe, to control aflatoxins in maize and groundnut that is being rolled out in a number of countries.

We are also expecting to hear bold statements on Africas agriculture and the commissioning of the IITA Youth Agripreneur building by the President of the African Development Bank, Dr Akin Adesina, Sanginga added.

Commissioning of a new Training Facility for Capacity Development for Youth Agripreneurs

Funded by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and IITA; Dr Adesina will inaugurate the $700,000 youth training facility comprising two major training rooms that can sit conveniently 50 trainees each, two big offices that can sit 30 interns each, and 20 standard sized offices.

Dr Kwesi Atta-Krah, Chair of the IITA50 Organizing Committee, emphasized the importance of youth engagement in agriculture of the future. He said the celebration of the 50th year of IITA in Africa transcends past achievements. It is also an opportunity for us to begin to look at the future of agriculture and the role IITA will be playing especially as it relates to emerging challenges of climate change, pests and diseases, and rising youth unemployment, he added.

Established in 1967 through a partnership of the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation of the United States, IITA has helped in raising the productivity of Africas key crops  cassava, banana/plantain, maize, cowpea, yam, and soybean using the power of innovative science and technology.

Dr Kenton Dashiell, IITA Deputy Director General, Partnerships for Delivery, said besides crop and livelihood improvement, IITAs biggest contributions and strengths are the capacity development of Africans in the agricultural space, and its network of strong national, regional, and international partners. Some of our alumni such as Akin Adesina today occupy key positions and are driving the development of agriculture in their respective countries, and in Adesinas case, the African continent, he added.

Other confirmed participants for the 50thanniversary include the former President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Dr Kanayo Nwanze; President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote; Chair of United Bank for Africa, Tony Elumelu; Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, Burundi, Dr Deo-Guide Rurema; former Prime Minister, Democratic Republic of Congo, Matata Ponyo Mapon; Minister of Agriculture, Nigeria, Chief Audu Ogbeh; IITA Alumni Representative, Mrs Ayoka Lawani; the Representative of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Abuja, Dr Audu Grema; Vice Chancellor, University of Ibadan, Prof. Abel Olayinka; and Oyo State Governor, Senator Isiaka Abiola Ajimobi.

About IITA

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is a not-for-profit institution that generates agricultural innovations to meet Africas most pressing challenges of hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and natural resource degradation. Working with various partners across sub-Saharan Africa, we improve livelihoods, enhance food and nutrition security, increase employment, and preserve natural resource integrity. IITA is a member of CGIAR, a global agriculture research partnership for a food secure future.
Mr. Anthony Kwaku Amoah, a public relations officer (PRO) of Ghana Education Service (GES), has urged teachers to discourage the view of some individuals that teaching pupils in their mother tongue negatively affects their ability to read and write well in English language.

Speaking at a parade to present a set of supplementary books to Julidem Academy, a private basic school located at Budumburam, near Kasoa in the Central Region, Mr. Amoah said, It is disturbing to hear some people say that pupils would not perform well in English language if they start to learn in their mother tongue from early childhood.

It is not true. A mother tongue is a mother tongue. If it is spoken well and taught well, the child will learn it well and even transfer easily the rich expressions and lessons that are contained in that native language into speaking and writing good-quality English or whichever, he said.

He reminded the teachers to be innovative in their work and be open to the pupils that they teach so that they can easily identify their challenges for urgent intervention to be provided.

Mr. Samuel Duame, the proprietor of the school, thanked the PRO for his gesture and gave the assurance that the materials will be used for the purpose for which they have been given.
23.07.2017 LISTEN

Modern Women of Wisdom International (MWOW), an all female non-governmental organization based in Accra on Saturday 22nd July, 2017 held a free health screening event for residents of Gomoa- Dabanyi in the Central region.

Again, a quantity of clothes, shoes, bags, belts, school bags etc worth thousands of Ghana Cedis were donated by the humanitarian group to the inhabitants of Gomoa- Dabanyi to improve their standards of living and decrease the dependency ratio in the area.

During the one-day exercise, over 300 people were screened and given medication. All those whose conditions were critical were advised to visit nearby Hospitals.

Miss Paulina Annoh, a Senior Nurse who led two other nurses and a doctor in charge of Children all from Accra ,said the diseases diagnosed, included malaria, hypertension, Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Body pains, Eye and Chest problems.

Miss Annoh called for the sustenance of a regular health education programme in the community, regular in-take of medicines given them by Medical Practitioners as directed, exercising the body and to immediately see a doctor when they are not feeling well.

The entourage was led by Nana Ama Asantewaa Kwarkoh Chief Executive Director of the NGO, an evangelist, journalist, writer and researcher.

Miss Kwarkoh urged the people to take good care of their eating habits, and cultivate hygienic practices as means of protecting themselves from contracting diseases.

The member of Parliament of the area Hon. Kojo Asemanyi thanked the NGO, the medical team and all who contributed towards the success of the programme for helping the people, and appealed for the periodic organization of such exercises in the area.

The jubilant inhabitants overwhelmed by the kind gesture of the NGO and the member of parliament promised to take their health issues seriously.

The program organized at the Dabanyi community centre was chaired by the member of Parliament of Gomoa East Hon.Kojo Asemanyi.
23.07.2017 LISTEN

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is a man of his word. At a Career Fair organised by the Ghana Federation of Disabilities Organisations, the Vice President spoke about fulfilling some of the policy agenda by the National Patriotic Party (NPP) as part of the ruling governments responsibility to rebuild Ghanas economy. The theme of that Career Fair wasEmploying Persons with Disabilities to Promote Inclusive and Diversity in the Work Space - the Role of Policy Makers and Employers. It was held at the British Council in Accra on Thursday, June 30, 2017.The focus of the Veeps speech was on creating employment and enabling opportunities for persons with disabilities (PWDs) and women.

This January, I wrote a rejoinder entitled; The 11th point plan Dr. Bawumia missed: A rejoinder to the 10-point plan for solving graduate youth unemployment in Ghana. The article was intended to specifically ensure that persons with disabilities employment opportunities moved from policy to action.

Policies and laws, previously designed by previous governments to promote and protect the needs of persons with disabilities, are commendable. However, the time for accountability has come for crafted policies and enacted lawsto be put into practice. The Economic Management Team of the NPP government has demonstrated its intent to do just that. Some private organizations, including MTN Ghana, have taken the lead to put persons with disabilities to work.It is important to encourage public-and-private sectors to fully commit to apprise changes from policy and law to practice by engaging all communities at all levels.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, Ghanaians view, connect, and perceive persons with disabilities with stigma. The nature of a persons impairment itself is less relevant to them. Indeed, disability is not inability. As a result, persons with disabilities in Ghana should be included as decision makers for all things that affect their impaired lives, as they are best to communicate their needs. The focal points of all employment opportunities decisions should aim at generating the most employment capabilities and not less desirable ones. For a long time, our collective hauteur has prevented us from seeing persons with disabilities as equals. Rather, our collective responsibilities should be spawned by virtues of dignity, respect, and can-do spirit to engage all persons without regard to their impaired abilities. Persons with disabilities should not be taken for granted.

In the January rejoinder, I provided five policy options for Dr. Bawumias Economic Management Team to consider, to which they did. Undeniably, the NPPs 2016manifesto highlighted important guiding principles on equitable employment for persons with disabilities. Dr. Bawumia petitioned for strategies that transform persons with disabilities to reach sustained employment in his speech at the Career Fair. I present below three strategic focus ideas that public-and-private sectors can take into consideration as accountable metrics.

Strategic Focus 1:

The recommendation for private sector employers and government entities to reform their recruitment tactics and practices around disability interests.

This should require increased access and equitable inclusion in the workplace for persons with disabilities. A recruitment strategy should utilize available technology to tap into the projected National Identification System in the effort to restructure existing hiring flexibilities. This can include a pre-screened certification listing of job applicants that happen to be persons with disabilities and targeted disabilities.

The pre-screened certifications can offer increased selection of quality applicants for employers. By tradition, disability employment has been viewed by employers and the government through the lenses of medical, psychological, educational, and vocational inputs that influence the impaired persons functioning and job skills. These attitudes should change if we are to move forward.

Thus, plenty of opportunities lie within our structural systems to tap into perceptions, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and abilities of persons with disabilities. To ensure accountability, public-and-private sector entities should set up inclusive recruiting benchmarks to assess their performance and inform set strategies. The benchmarks should be clear and measurable to achieve comprehensive results.

Strategic Focus 2:

The recommendation for public-and-private sector entities to enhance employer practices that impact labor market outcomes.

The value of any hiring initiative rests with the leadership of public-and-private sector entities in their understanding of the business reality of employee retention. A core action will be to train talent acquisition personnel to improve their knowledge of how workplace practices relate to successful hiring, sustained employee retention, and promotion of persons with disabilities. This must be emphasized as necessary. Student hiring, available internships and externships, and mentoring programs should be a new business reality.

Public-and-private sector entities should make special efforts, to the extent permitted by law, to ensure retention of persons with disabilities who are injured on the job and are prepared to return to work. To be accountable, special efforts should include organizational targets with clear standards for improvement, expansion, and increased successful return-to-work outcomes for employees who suffer from work-related injuries and chronic illnesses.

A senior-level official can be designated to be accountable for enhancing employment opportunities for persons with disabilities and persons with targeted disabilities. This official should be accountable for developing and implementing the organizations plan, establishing opportunities to educate parallel senior officials on the value of inclusive labor force, and developing recruitment and training programs with the human service department to facilitate the employment of persons with disabilities and targeted disabilities. In implementing its retention strategies, the official should oversee training and development, mentoring, reasonable accommodation programs, blended learning approach for managers, and equitable performance management processes.

Strategic Focus 3:

The recommendation for public-and-private sector entities to increase employment opportunities for persons with disabilities throughout the country.

Just like the career fair organised by the Ghana Federation of Disabilities Organisations in Accra, more of such fairs should be organized consistently and sponsored in all regions. Overtime, they shall achieve the specific goal of ensuring greater emphasis on employment strategies to recruit and retain persons with disabilities and persons with targeted disabilities. Public-and-private sector entities can set up Temporary Employment Programs (TEP) that offer employment opportunities to persons with disabilities in remote parts of the country. While using TEP, employers and government entities can implement Career Experience Programs (CEP) to complement disability and diversity recruitment efforts. Positive discrimination may be considered in this measure. The allocated funding for District Assembly Common Fund can be increased and used to support this effort.

CONCLUSION

The special issue of disability affects all of us directly or indirectly at some point in our lives. Most of us will face disability as a natural outcome of growing old. Many Ghanaians incur a short or longer-term disability in midlife. Some of us are born with a disability and/or may care for cherished family members who have disability of a sort. Disability is widespread in lived human experiences. It compensates for lifes distortions, inconsiderate of our socioeconomic, religious, ethnic, and geographic contrasts and boundaries. Therefore, living in a country where the experience of disability, no longer without cause, sets us away from each other should be an urgent issue for us to handle. The ability for all Ghanaians to use natural talents to fully play roles in our society is eased by the ability to experience meaningful work. Intending workplaces that make possible the full inclusion of persons with disabilities should continue to be a vital national goal we all can be proud of.

Fair employment engagement and workplace inclusion for persons with disabilities are issues that truly touch each of us, irrespective of where we find ourselves. Our differences may divide us. However, where we work is the center of this fight. The complex demands to meet company and government expectations, directed by financial and political pressures, create unintended and complicated challenges. These challenges affect the hiring of available talent, thus placing the success of affected institutions in the balance. Perhaps, while finding the common goal in the pursuit of equity for persons with disabilities, we owe it to ourselves as Ghanaians to go beyond the differences that limit persons, businesses, and the government from achieving our collective fullest potential.

Dr. Bawumia aspires for Ghanaians to have equitable access to socioeconomic and employment opportunities, without difficulties of discrimination. I share these aspirations of Ghanaians to legally seek meaningful work wherever they can find it. However, these aspirations are not enough, and should not be at the expense of persons within our community with impaired abilities. It is worth pursuing to provide equitable employment for the less impaired among us. We owe it to every Ghanaian, disabled or not, to build a fair and egalitarian society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Adoo is an international education and management professional. His research interests focus on employee work motivation and wellbeing, organizational change, and uncertain employment relations. He is a Professor at Shorter University in the United States.He was nominated for the 2016 Shorter University Vulcan Materials Teaching Excellence & Campus Leadership Award inrecognition for strong campus leadership and pioneering teaching methodology.

He has served as a member of the editorial board of The Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association (jGPHA), a peer reviewed publication addressing public and community health, health education and promotion issues. He is the founder and managing partner of Education & Management Consulting, LLC. (EMCLLC), an innovative organizational development consulting and solutions company, providing services to businesses and governments. Dr. Adoo can be reached on the worldwide web through the following mediums: Website at http://www.emcllc.expert; Twitter at @yaw_adoo, and Subscribed YouTube channel at EMCLLC TV.
Financial analyst, Sydney Casely Hayford believes that deputy Finance Minister, Kwaku Kwarteng was unprepared for Parliaments queries on the Independence Anniversary celebrations, thus providing unsatisfactory answers.

Kwaku Kwarteng had revealed in Parliament that government had allocated over 3 million cedis from its coffers, with an additional allocation of over 2 million cedis from the District Assembly Common Fund to the committee for the celebrations despite the Presidentdent having said previously the celebrations would be privately funded.

However, this was denied by the Chairman of the  Ghana 60 years on  Committee, Ken Amankwah, who said that the 5.26 million was spent on the Independence Day events and not [email protected] events.

According to Mr Casely-Hayford, the question from the North Tongu Member of Parliament, Okudzeto Ablakwa on why state money was used to finance the celebration was valid and that the seemingly ill-prepared Kwaku Kwarteng had not delivered convincing responses.

Speaking on Citi FMs news analysis programme The Big Issue, Casely Hayford said: I think Okudzeto Ablakwa was right in asking the question he did. This is what you said and yet were hearing something different. Unfortunately on the day the deputy Minister, Kwaku Kwarteng wasnt ready and adequately prepared for the question and therefore he came across as rather porous.

I think in so many ways he goofed because he took his eye off the ball and didnt have enough facts to be able to answer back when he was asked. But these are the learning grounds and Ministers have to be a little sharper in order for us to get where we want to go.

He believes that the Ministers need to be better prepared given the increased vigilance of the populace with the growing influence of new media and greater scrutiny from the opposition.

I think they sometimes forget that we are in the age of citizen journalism and those of us outside tend to have a lot more information and a lot more insight. We are able to exchange views and ideas with fellow citizens much easier and much quicker so we get on top of issues very quickly, he added.

Also the babies with sharp teeth have had some time to sharpen their teeth even better so they are coming back at the government with more specific questions than necessary. Its a hard task when you are asked such detailed questions and you havent got a piece of paper in front of you to be able to address all of them. 

Kwaku Kwarteng

Health Minister unprepared

This isnt the first time a government appointee under the current administration has been accused of being unprepared when they appeared before Parliament.

The Member of Parliament for Wa West, Joseph Yieleh Chireh suggested earlier this month that the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu was unprepared when he appeared before Parliament on Thursday to respond to questions on the debt at the National Health Insurance Scheme.

According to Mr. Yieleh-Chireh, the Minister did not make an attempt acquire the data required to answer the question despite the fact that the said request had been made two weeks prior to the encounter.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, the former Health Minister stated that the current Minister's unpreparedness led to a number of evasive answers when he addressed the House.

My question to the Minister was for him to tell Ghanaians about what the government has done about outstanding payments to service providers. If he was prepared to answer the questions which it appeared he wasn't he'd have told us the amount outstanding, the amount paid so far and what's left. He didn't any of this at all. The purpose was to get information, he said.

I don't expect a Minister to have all this information in his head but this question was posed about two weeks ago. He could have asked the agencies responsible, to provide up-to-the-minute data on how much NHIS had paid to service providers.



By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Mr. Yahaya Alhassan, President & Founder Of Africa Eye

23.07.2017 LISTEN

The President of Africa Eye, Mr. Yahaya Alhassan, has described the policies and blockade spearheaded by Saudi Arabia against their neighbour, Qatar, as a crime against international law.

He said the action by Saudi Arabia and its allies is nothing but smear campaign against the growing geo-political impact of Qatar in the Gulf and wider Middle East region.

According to him for a country especially Saudi Arabia to describe Qatar as supporting terrorism is not only morbid but the most outrageous accusation ever to reach the ears.

He observed that religious dogma and financial donations are barring respected Muslim scholars or experts from criticizing Saudi Arabia on one hand, and on the other hand the West are not doing enough against the Saudis because of oil and they have also been blind and silent on the actions of Saudi Arabia on many crucial issues.

Mr. Alhassan mentioned the continuous bombardment of poor Yemen by the oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which has left the head of the Norwegian Humanitarian Council, Mr. Jan Egeland, to do Allah's care work in Yemen as some of the wrongs of Saudi the world is silent on.

What is wrong with Qatar welcoming Hamas or supporting vulnerable palestines he asked, and went on to add that someone somewhere cannot rule my conscience by defining for me who a terrorist is.

I would not retire or be a former president before telling the world that Hamas is not a terrorist group. Members of Hamas are freedom fighters, fighting for their right to self-determination, which is a fundamental human right and like Nelson Mandela who was branded as terrorist but was later hailed".

According to him, the harassment of Qatari pilgrims by Saudi officials, including the barring of pilgrims from Qatar from entering the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Masjid al-Haram, as reported by leading news outlets, especially Al-Sharq newspaper, constitute clear betrayal of the teachings of Holy Prophet Mohammed (s.a.w) and a violating the pillars of Islam by toying it with cheap politics.

Mr. Alhassan said the action of Saudi Arabia in denying camels belonging to Qatari citizens from grazing in Saudi territory terribly reflects the Saudis lack of knowledge with regard to the protocols of conflicts among states. Where does morality and humanity lie in this he asked.

He stressed that, Qatar Charity is currently operating in Ghana to assist the needy in the country, irrespective of religious or political background, and for Saudi Arabia and its partners to brand such an organization as a terrorist group is a desperate catch up attempt to tarnish the growing imagine of Qatar in the international.

He is of the view that the call on Qatar to shut down Al-Jazeera network is at best a joke and at worst a clear indication of the hatred Saudi Arabia and its partners have against the media. Al-Jazeera is Qatars gift to the Arab and Muslim world and to shut it down would be turning back the clock of civilization he said.

Can anyone ever imagine the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, being asked to shut down the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) or the Government of Ghana being asked to shut down the Ghana Television (GTV) he asked.

He said that African Governments and people back the State Qatar during these difficult times. He revealed that Africa Eye, which serves as a listening post to condemn and campaign against the bullying of smaller nations, firmly supports Qatar in the stand-off. Africa Eye also promotes Africa to the rest of the world.

Mr. Alhassan concluded by praising the German Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, and the British opposition leader, Jeremy Cobyn, for their statesmanship stance and calling on Saudi Arabia to play by the international law.
Ideally, a change of government in a coAuntry should not bring about any recriminations and retributions. People in the government become members of the loyal opposition. Their experience is useful to the country, because having just emerged from running things at the practical level, they can point out the loopholes in the proposals  usually conceived from a theoretical background  of the former opposition politicians who are now running the government.

But alas, that's not the situation that this country is facing at the moment. One hears too many stories about the shameless pilfering allegedly carried out by some members of the past government who have become the new opposition.

Apart from blatantly taking huge sums of money out of the coffers of the state, some are alleged to have used their positions to acquire enormous plots of land, some of which used to belong to state institutions. Even individuals are alleged to have been were cowed into accepting the forceful of their legitimate properties, because they feared to go to court to incur the wrath of powerful members of the government.

One hears these stories and one asks: But did the members of that government not know that they could one day be exposed?

And the answer comes out: They never thought they would lose the election!

And one sighs. For that explains a lot! Otherwise, how could sane people be unaware that it is dangerous to be so insensitive to pubic opinion?

Some formerly highly-placed persons are credited with so much alleged land-grabbing and property acquisition as make one ask: did it matter to them that they were embarrassing their entire administration by being so greedy?

And the answer is this: When a human being becomes greedy, there's NO LIMIT to where that greed can drive him/her!

Sad.

For even if one is not fearful of embarrassing oneself, one should take care not to embarrass one's friends, relatives or business colleagues, for after all, one owes them some affection, if not respect.

By the way, it isn't only in Ghana that people do not scruple to embarrass their friends in power by unduly tapping into political influence to enrich themselves. South Africa is currently in the throes of the 'mother of all scandals', arising out of the relationship between President Jacob Zuma, his son Duduzane and two Indian brothers, the Guptas. The inroads the Guptas have made into state businesses have reached such a stage that the phenomenon has been dubbed ignominiously as state capture (no less)!

Now, the South African economy is not child's play, so when state capture is mentioned, it takes one's breath away. We're talking of billions of dollars made from contracts involving EKSOM (the state-owned electricity company); the South African Defence Force (warships and military aircraft that cost the earth); and so on.

From the proceeds of corrupt contracts, the Guptas have allegedly bought a magnificent edifice for Zuma in Dubai. They also bought air tickets and arranged for luxurious accommodation abroad for certain Cabinet Ministers, including the Minister who granted them South African citizenship with extraordinary speed.

Of course, the Guptas never thought they could ever be exposed. Nevertheless, they did take precautions to whitewash their image in South Africa: they hired a notorious British public relations firm called Bell Pottinger, to carry out black operations in the media on their behalf. This entailed (1) Bell Pottinger bribing South African journalists to carry out soft interviews with the Guptas, in which the Guptas would be allowed to deny any rumours about themselves and their relationship with the Zumas and other Ministers, without being seriously challenged and (2) using social media to blacken the names of those who opposed their relationship with members of the Government.

The clever term Bell Pottinger coined to malign those opposed to the cabal was an emotive one, namely, white monopoly capital! They knew that opposition to white monopoly capital was widespread within the ruling ANC and that ANC people would, by knee-jerk reaction, rally to defend the Zumas if they were convinced that white monopoly capital was indeed after their blood!

However, South African society is much more sophisticated than the Guptas bargained for: intimate Gupta emails, detailing their dealings with all manner of people, were leaked!

How devastating the exposure has been is revealed by one journalist, Justice Malala, who wrote that there was no use the Guptas denying the authenticity of the emails because I am in them!

Malala disclosed that Bell Pottinger had approached him to do an interview with the Guptas (!) and that he had insisted on certain conditions with which the Bell Pottinger contact person would not agree. The implication in Malala's disclosure was that other journalists, unlike him, might have taken the Bell Pottinger shilling and co-operated in carrying out their black propaganda project.

In Ghana, we have not as yet had any leakage of emails(so far), but I am sure some are on the way. Certainly, the talk about dirty business deals engaged in by members of the previous government grows by the day. The troubling question is: what can be done about those corrupt deals?

If too much noise is made about the iniquities of the past administration, people have the right to ask, Are they too not Ghanaians? Is what they did not Ghanaian in character? In making all this noise, are you not going to blacken the name of all Ghanaian politicians -- and associates of politicians -- and thereby create the harmful impression that businesses cannot be run successfully in Ghana without political patronage?

Another question is this: Will you not, by prying too much into the affairs of the past administration, be carrying out a witch-hunt? Isn't the fear of witch-hunts one of the main reasons why governments in Africa take every precaution not to give up power? Isn't that why there are so many totalitarian regimes on the continent?

But that last question must be answered with another question: so, because we fear that investigating the crimes of corruption by a past administration can be misconstrued as a witch-hunt, we must allow blatant corruption to go unpunished?

Must the laws we have ourselves enacted, prohibiting and punishing  corruption, be ignored, then? Isn't every investigationof a crime a sort of witch-hunt? If you're going to ignore some laws because applying them can be misinterpreted as a witch-hunt, then where will you draw the line?

Ther police want to check the papers of commercial vehicles to see whether they are insured or have passed a test for road safety?

 Witch-hunt!

Communities catching lazy people who steal other people's plantain and/or goats?

Witch-hunt!

Trying book-keepers and accountants who indulge in false accounting and fraud?

Witch-hunt!

Yes  it's as absurd as all that. Corruption is every bit a crime as those that have been sketched above. But it is worse, in that its effects are more widespread than is immediately apparent.

Corruption in awarding contracts for road construction, for instance, forces some contractors to cut corners and giving us dangerous roads. Dangerous roads, of course, kill people.

Corruption in the sale of public utilities ends up giving us utility companies that do not take the public interest into account when deciding on their charges. After all, the utilities must make profit in order to recoup any bribes they might have paid in obtaining their licences! Ask this: who in Ghana is satisfied with the charges levied for electricity today? Charges for mobile phone usage? The reach of potable water distribution  and its price?

No! We must eschew loose thinking. If no serious attempt is made to eliminate corruption, we shall be voting money for social development and not getting any social development whatsoever because the money does not go to provide development but is spirited into  private pockets!! And that will destabilise our society because the lack of development inevitably creates political discontent.

It is in consideration of the above facts that we must speedily create the office of a Public Prosecutor who will use a team of experts to investigate and publicly prosecute crimes associated with using the governmental machinery corruptly to make money.

The people who fear a witch-hunt must allow thenselves to be assured that the Public Prosecutor will carry out his/her duties in the public arena  i.e. before the open courts  so every evidence he/she unearths against accused persons can be seen and analysed by the general public, as well as by the courts. Witch-hunts, on the other hand, are usually carried out in secret by cults and/or cabals of exorcists!

Ipsofacto, bringing evidence in court  publicly  against corrupt ex-officials (irrespective of the positions they formerly held in government) cannot amount to a witch-hunt.

The description of such a public process as a witch-hunt is therefore merely self-serving and has no merit. It should be dismissed with contempt.

Therefore, the Public Prosecutor Bill should be enacted with all dispatch.

Thereby, we shall make a beginning in trying to cut off the head of the corruption serpent.

We may not succeed completely, of course (because to fail is human.) But at least no-one can accuse us of not attempting to succeed!
ASSE International Student Exchange Programs (ASSE), in cooperation with area high schools, is looking for local families to host boys and girls between the ages of 15 to 18 from a variety of countries: Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy and Japan, to name a few.

ASSE students are enthusiastic and excited to experience American culture while they practice their English. They also love to share their own culture and language with their host families. Host families welcome these students into their family, not as a guest, but as a family member, giving everyone involved a rich cultural experience.

The exchange students have pocket money for personal expenses and full health, accident and liability insurance. ASSE students are selected based on academics and personality, and host families can choose their student from a wide variety of backgrounds, countries and personal interests.

To become an ASSE Host Family or to find out how to become involved with ASSE in your community, please call the ASSE Western Regional Office at 1-800-733-2773 or go to host.asse.com to begin your host family application.

***

First United Methodist Church's 31st annual Back to School Clothing Project will be held Monday, Aug. 14, and the Third Annual Back to School Bash will be held Tuesday, Aug. 15. They are seeking children's socks (ages 4-12 years old), underwear and books. Volunteers also are needed. To donate, there will be a large box placed in the back of the sanctuary on Sundays, July 23, 30 and Aug. 6. For questions call Joe at 406-721-5013 or 406-549-6118, 300 E. Main.

***

North Lake County Public Library in Polson is hosting a Solar Eclipse Block Party on Monday, Aug. 21, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Polson will see about 89 percent of totality. The North Lake County Library Foundation is hosting a $5 hot dog lunch with all proceeds going toward the librarys Family Summer Reading Program. Mission Valley Eye Center/Ronan Eye Clinic has generously sponsored the purchase of more than 200 pairs of solar eclipse glasses that will be available at the party to safely view the eclipse. There will be crafts for kids, educational displays, a photo booth, music and more. Feel free to bring a lawn chair as available seating is limited. The library will also be holding a huge book sale in the Meeting Room from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. the same day.
Is there really a case against Mrs. Charlotte Osei, the chairperson of Ghana's Electoral Commission (EC), warranting her impeachment? One doubts it very much.

However, we will all have to wait for the conclusion of all the investigations needed to ascertain the truth or otherwise of the allegations made by those who have petitioned President Akufo-Addo asking him to get the Chief Justice to trigger the processes needed to impeach Mrs. Osei.

This blog is certain that in the fullness of time, many fair-minded and independent-minded Ghanaians - who are genuinely committed to the democratic system of government - will come to see the futile attempt to impeach Mrs. Osei as a blessing in disguise for the EC, as an independent institution under the 1992 Constitution, and for Mrs. Osei personally, as a lucky professional whose star-quality destiny ended up permitting to catch the eye of President Mahama's administration, which then appointed her to become Ghana's first female chairperson of the EC, when the position became vacant during its period in power.

There are some who insist that it is the fact that she was appointed by the Mahama administration that really is the main reason why there is such determination on the part of a few powerful people in the Ghanaian political world to manipulate the system to enable them destroy her reputation - with the help of a number of dishonest and self-seeking EC insiders with hidden agendas of their own - and thus enable them successfully rid themselves of Mrs Charlotte Osei as Ghans's Electoral Commissioner.

All those sef-important, loud and scheming Machiavellian-types behind the grand scheme to destroy Charlotte Osei will fail in the end they seek in this matter. The irony in all this is that had it been the New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime of President Kufuor that appointed her, instead of President Mahama's administration, none of this nonsense-on-bamboo-stilts would be occuring.

The attempt to impeach Mrs. Osei is a classic example of the lengths to which dishonest individuals at the top echelons of organisations and institutions in Ghana's public sector - who see their positions as opportunities to enrich themselves at society's expense - will go to undermine those of their colleagues who happen to be men and women of integrity. They are the sly and selfish hypocrites destroying or country with their egregious greed and unpardonable dishonesty.

Their hidden agendas are - to quote a pidgin English phrase of infamy once used by Labanese crook bleeding Mother Ghana dry: " to chop Ghana small!" Alas, they have met their match in Charlotte Osei - a brave and courageous woman who values her integrity and will always fight to protect her good name. Bully for her.

This blog wishes her well - and we are praying that she exposes and defeats all those shameless people seeking to ruin her good name unjustly and thereby get her removed from her position. Time will tell. We are pretty sure that the many slanderous allegations made against her are nothing but twisted facts and patent falsehoods. Simply put, there is no case against Mrs. Charlotte Osei, whatsoever. Full stop.
Mr. Kabral Blay Amihere, former Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC) has said the only way school children can derive optimum benefits from social media without falling prey to its hidden dangers, is for parents and teachers to collaborate in the monitoring of internet usage by children.

Ambassador Amihere was unhappy that social media should so suddenly became a consuming passion for school children to an extent that undermines academic performance and exposes children to the myriad of character-damaging pitfalls of the information highway.

He was addressing parents and school children at the seventh graduation, speech and prize-giving day of Delsi Montessori School, held at the weekend under the theme Advancing quality education through teacher-parent involvement. Delsi Montessori School, located at New-Achimota in Accra is one of the capitals most accomplished Montessori institutions.

Speaking on the benefits and dangers of social media to school children, Mr. Amihere warned that uncontrolled use of social media among children affects their personality and character formation, weakens the bonds of inter-personal relations within the family and worst of all, exposes children to countless destructive vices.

But it will be pointless to attempt to prevent or ban our children from accessing and using social media because it is such a valuable source of knowledge and information and can be used to support academic studies at school and at home, Mr. Amihere explained.

Since the use of phones at school is prohibited, our parents must start showing an interest in what their wards do on social media back at home and must make it a point to constantly monitor and control when and what their children access on social media.

Delivering the keynote address earlier, Mrs. Ellen Sam, a renowned pharmacist and pastor, stressed that in the grooming of children, a clear distinction needed to be drawn between education and quality education.

Yes. There is a marked difference between education and quality education. People can finish school and still not have the requisite skills to show for it, she contended, adding that quality education serves to expand the childs knowledge base and provides children with capabilities required to make them economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance individual wellbeing.

Mrs. Sam said the responsibility of imparting quality education to children rests equally with parents and school teachers.

Quality education is so complex and exacting that it cannot be given by schools alone. Parents are stakeholders and must get involved. So, as parents or guardians, let us collaborate in every way possible with the schools to provide quality education for our children, she said.

Twenty-nine pupils graduated from kindergarten to primary - a number described by the proprietress, Rev. Mrs. Lawrencia Dafeamekpor, as the highest since the school was founded in 2004.

Delsi Montessori School begun 12-years ago with just six toddlers. Today, we have reason to rejoice because the school has literally graduated through the years to the Junior High School level and here we are, about to induct 29 wonderful pupils from Kindergarten to primary school, Rev. Mrs. Dafeamekpor said.

The graduation ceremony took place at the Auditorium of the Grace Chapel International and was characterized by colourful theatrical performances and cultural displays by school children and the award of prizes to deserving pupils and members of the teaching staff.
23.07.2017 LISTEN

What passes for the Ghanaian situation is nothing more than a tragic arena, and John Mills became its frontline casualty in July 2012. The political vampires, including those claiming to be his close allies and trusted confidants, turned him into a mere inert resource for their diabolical schemes. They have a reckoning with their conscience; That is, if they really know what that word means. One can only hope that while mouthing sanctimonious platitudes about him, they have now learnt that do-or-die politics does not determine who lives and who dies.

Though the death of ailing President John Evans Atta Mills was anticipated by speculations months before it actually stroke, the shock it sent to those who had waited for it with bated breath and his admirers alike knew no bounds.

This was as a result of reports from his close aides and himself that his condition was getting better by the day after his return from a medical check-up in America in June that year, which, did little in dousing the anxiety throughout the nation. So, he died at a time when very few expected it while many others kept eyes on his possible resumption to full presidential duties.

So much drama took place within the circle of those around the late President until the sad news of his death on July 24, 2012 after he was shortly taken ill and admitted at the 37 military hospital in Accra where he passed on hours later. First, his health status was concealed from Ghanaians despite calls that such attitude was unbecoming of his close aides since having information about his health was never tantamount to peeping into his privacy. He suffered from cancer that badly affected his sight and general health, making it difficult for him to perform his duties effectively but his aides branded it as an allegation to the chagrin of well-meaning Ghanaians.

On that fateful Tuesday, despite all machinations of his handlers, Ghanas President, John Evans Atta Mills, threw in the towel in his long battle for his life at 2.15pm. He had a month earlier returned from America on a medical trip which he chose to describe as routine.

However, many believed that he suffered from a more grievous ailment than what his aides told the whole world. His gaunt look and pallid skin lent credence to the belief that the late president suffered from a far more devastating malaise.

That the late President Mills knew the extent of his illness and yet clung tenaciously to power makes the notion that he was a man of great personal integrity pale into insignificance. The presidency of any nation, especially in a budding democracy like Ghana, demands great physical exertion and any man of integrity would simply have refused to serve when he knew that failing health would make him incapable of performing his duties. Even towards the very end, when it was clear that Ghanas chief executive had been reduced to a sorry vegetative state, Mills still refused to gracefully bow out, and that was the greatest tragedy of the travesty of his presidency.

Declared winner in Ghanas photo-finish 2008 presidential polls held on December 7, 2008 and sworn in as President on January 7, 2009, the late leader did not waste time in revealing how sick he was. Within a few months in office, he had started showing clear signs of failing health but did his best to hide it from Ghanaians. Together with his aides, Mills skillfully dismissed fears over his health despite his many medical trips abroad, but when his condition got worse in early June, he was rushed back to America for what he chose to describe as a routine medical check-up.

The passing away of the leader of a nation should be a time for deep reflection, and in the case of a nation like Ghana with a myriad of problems, this should be a period of deepest soul searching and sober reflections. It is doubtful though, that the cabal of self-serving politicians who continue to hold the nation of 24million people hostage has the capacity for self-examination, much less self- redemption.

The first important lesson is that the illness and death of Atta Mills should teach African countries to start discussing difficult and delicate national issues such as the health of presidents with much more transparency and openness. Throughout the continent, a common attitude towards serving leaders who are unwell is that of denial, intolerance and pretense that all is well, at the expense of such leaders' lives.

Most African leaders who are sick are usually unprepared to step down on account of ill health. The failure by the Ghanaian government to inform the nation about the true condition of President Mills's health should be understood in the broader context. All over Africa, the attitude towards the sickness of Heads of State seems to be that of a taboo subject or a top state secret.

In August 2008, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa died in France, but his illness was earlier denied and even concealed by government officials. In December 2008, Lansana Conte, President of Guinea, died in France after a long illness, which was shrouded in secrecy and kept away from Guineans by government officials for over a month.

In June 2009, Gabonese President Omar Bongo died in Spain following a heart attack and numerous denials from his spokespersons about his ill health. In May 2010, Nigerian President, Umaru Musa Yar'Adua died in Saudi Arabia but his illness was concealed in secrecy with his rent-a-quote apologists branding inquisitive citizens as doomsday elements.

In January 2012, Guinea-Bissau's President, Malam Bacai Sanha died in hospital in France, but no information was released about his health in Guinea-Bissau. Three months later, Malawi's Bingu wa Mutharika died in South Africa of a suspected heart attack after his ill-health was denied for a long time by government officials. Nigerian President, Mohamadu Buhari, has spent a greater part of this year in London, receiving medical care at the hands of western specialists. The country is spending a great deal on this coupled with the cost of frequent shuttles by the Vice President and other close aides between London and Nigeria

There is need to change the way we, as Africans, deal with the question of the illness of our leaders and to let courage and essential truths, not fear and blind sympathy, guide us in moments of uncertainty, anxiety or crises. Late Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, was unwell for some time before his death. But he never hid his sickness from the Venezuelan people, informing them about his regular trips to Cuba for medical review till he took his last breadth in March 2012. Like any human being, Presidents are not immortal and have the right to fall sick and seek medical attention. But there is no need to conceal their ailments to the nation. The health of a Head of State or Prime Minister is a matter of national importance and it is cruel punishment to deny citizens the right to know the exact condition of their leaders.

It is high time African leaders became honest in conveying their health condition to the masses when the need arises. While the illness of an ordinary citizen may have no serious bearing on the country's economic and political facets, the health of a President of any African country puts that countrys stability, economy and progress on a knife-edge.

The presidency is the fulcrum around which national life revolves and very little gets done without its active involvement. Updating the nation honestly on the health of its leader prepares it for any eventualities, as opposed to the anxiety that silence and speculation trigger. Communications specialists and information managers of heads of state should be candid about the health status of their bosses; you dont need to protect your job by fighting a losing battle with death over critical issue of the health of a President.

Another important lesson that African countries can draw from Ghana is that it may be a good idea to start scrutinizing the health status of would-be national leaders as an important sine quanon for accessing public office. Until the continent was hit by series of deaths of sitting Presidents, the health of presidential candidates in several African countries had never weighed heavily on the electoral scale of considerations of many voters, and indeed on the campaign issues of contestants for presidential office.

Despite Mills visible health challenges, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) had elected him to contest another four years and this lends credence to the view that most African countries treat the health of their leaders with kid gloves.

Even before he came to power after two earlier failed attempts  in 2000 and 2004  it was widely known that Mills was not well. Yet, Ghanaians ignored all that and went ahead to elect him as president in 2009. Since he knew of his poor health, one would have also expected Mills himself to candidly convey to Ghanaians the news about what he was suffering from and the nature and seriousness of his illness. Admitting that he was unwell would have won him the sympathy of the Ghanaian public and rallied the nation behind its leader in prayers and goodwill wishes.

Such a thoughtful act  quite novel in Africa  would have also disarmed political opponents who might have sought to make political fortune out of the President's debilitating malaise. It would have further ensured that, upon election, the President worked at a rate he could easily manage and reduced the burden of expectations that Ghanaians thrust on him.

It is time we defined and enshrined sound health as an important qualification for public office in our respective African national constitutions, as many of our constitutions are quite tolerant of sick leaders. A leader can be tolerated when he falls sick in office but those that seek to ascend the highest national offices with ill-health should be discouraged. All presidential candidates should be subjected, by law, to thorough medical examinations prior to nominations for elections, and while serving presidents, they should undergo routine public medical check-ups throughout the course of their terms. Africa cannot afford to be losing its first citizens to ill-health, worsened by the pressures of power, which take toll on their sometimes already frail health. No continent in the recent past has experienced the death of incumbent presidents as Africa has had, and it is time we took this issue seriously.

The Ghanaian example also teaches African countries about the need to invest in progressive clauses such as the running mate to smoothly resolve the problem of succession in the event of a vacancy in the office of president. Article 60 (6) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana states that: "Whenever the President dies, resigns or is removed from office, the Vice-President shall assume office as President for the unexpired term of office of the President with effect from the date of the death, resignation or removal of the President".

Thanks to this article, John Dramani Mahama, who until Mills' death was Ghanas vice-president, was smoothly sworn in as his successor within hours of his predecessor's death, taking the presidential oath at an emergency parliamentary session. With this, Ghana avoided a costly presidential by-election, saving the nation huge resources in the process, and avoiding the divisive consequences of uncertain succession procedures, usually left at the whims of self-seeking political players elsewhere and their ill-advised military chiefs.

The need to improve our own health facilities and face-lift them to global standards cannot be overemphasized. From the statistics of death of sitting African Presidents above, it is obvious leaders across the continent have developed a penchant for western healthcare, this explains why most health facilities across the continent are in poor shape. Such investments in western medical facilities can be channeled into repositioning our own for the ruling class to feel comfortable to patronize them.

More than 50 years of being independent, should becoming self-reliant in providing first-rate medical care for its citizens including its leaders not be a top priority for all African countries? Many Africans and their leaders are quick to remind the west of their sovereignty when the latter attempts to meddle in their affairs, but is it not a logical absurdity  or even a major security lapse  for the same Africans to hand over the lives of their leaders to alien medics to be treated when they fall sick? A word, the sages say, is enough for the wise. A piece of my mind
The former Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), Mr. Kabral Blay Amihere, has said the only way school children can derive optimum benefits from social media without falling prey to its hidden dangers, is for parents and teachers to collaborate in the monitoring of internet usage by children.

Ambassador Amihere expressed his displeasure that social media had suddenly become such a consuming passion for school children to an extent that it undermines academic performance and exposes children to a myriad of character-damaging pitfalls on the information highway.

Rev. Mrs. Lawrencia Dafeamekpor, founder and proprietress of Delsi Montessori School, addresses parents.

He was addressing parents and school children at the seventh graduation, speech and prize-giving day of Delsi Montessori School, held at the weekend under the theme 'Advancing quality education through teacher-parent involvement'. Delsi Montessori School, located at New-Achimota in Accra is one of the capital's most accomplished Montessori institutions.

Speaking on 'the benefits and dangers of social media to school children', Mr. Amihere warned that uncontrolled use of social media among children affects their personality and character formation, weakens the bonds of interpersonal relations within the family and worst of all, exposes children to countless destructive vices.

Rev. Mrs. Ellen Sam presents a certificate to a graduand as the Proprietress, Rev. Mrs. Dafeamekpor looks on.

But it will be pointless to attempt to prevent or ban our children from accessing and using social media because it is such a valuable source of knowledge and information and can be used to support academic studies at school and at home, Mr. Amihere explained.

Since the use of phones at school is prohibited, our parents must start showing an interest in what their wards do on social media back at home and must make it a point to constantly monitor and control when and what their children access on social media.

The Graduands show off their respective project works in the creative arts department.

Delivering the keynote address earlier, Mrs. Ellen Sam, a renowned pharmacist and pastor, stressed that in the grooming of children, a clear distinction needed to be drawn between 'education' and 'quality education'.

Yes. There is a marked difference between education and quality education. People can finish school and still not have the requisite skills to show for it, she contended, adding that quality education serves to expand the child's knowledge base and provides children with capabilities required to make them 'economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance individual wellbeing'.

Mrs. Sam said the responsibility of imparting quality education to children rests equally with parents and school teachers.

'Quality education is so complex and exacting that it cannot be given by schools alone. Parents are stakeholders and must get involved. So, as parents or guardians, let us collaborate in every way possible with the schools to provide quality education for our children,' she said.

Twenty-nine pupils graduated from kindergarten to primary  a number described by the proprietress, Rev. Mrs. Lawrencia Dafeamekpor, as the highest since the school was founded in 2004.

'Delsi Montessori School began 12 years ago with just six toddlers. Today, we have reason to rejoice because the school has literally graduated through the years to the Junior High School level and here we are, about to induct 29 wonderful pupils from Kindergarten to primary school,' Rev. Mrs. Dafeamekpor said.

The young Graduands thrill the audience, including their parents, with impressive theatrical sketches

The graduation ceremony took place at the Auditorium of the Grace Chapel International and was characterized by colourful theatrical performances and cultural displays by school children and the award of prizes to deserving pupils and members of the teaching staff.
General Khalifa Haftar (R), commander of the armed forces loyal to the internationally recognised Libyan government, shakes hands with the head of the UN backed Libyan Presidential Council, Fayez al-Sarraj, in the eastern town of al-Marj in 2016. By (LIBYAN ARMED FORCES MEDIA OFFICE/AFP/File)

23.07.2017 LISTEN

Paris (AFP) - The heads of the opposing sides in Libya's crisis are planning to meet in Paris on Tuesday for talks to find a way out of the impasse, according to reports.

Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east of the oil-rich country, and the head of the UN-backed government Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj are expected to hold discussions under the auspices of French President Emmanuel Macron, according to France's JDD newspaper on Sunday.

The report said Ghassam Salame, the newly appointed UN envoy for Libya, had confirmed the meeting would take place.

Salame declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Macron's office did not confirm or deny that a meeting in the French capital was planned.

It would be the second talks between Sarraj and Haftar in the space of three months after they met in Abu Dhabi in May.

Sarraj this month laid out a new political roadmap for his violence-wracked country, including the scheduling of presidential and parliamentary elections in March 2018.

Political rivalry and fighting between militias have hampered Libya's recovery from the chaos that followed the 2011 uprising that toppled and longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, who was killed in the aftermath.

Sarraj's Government of National Accord has been struggling to assert its authority since it began work in Tripoli in March 2016. Haftar's rival administration based in the remote east has refused to recognise it.

Western intelligence services fear that Islamic State jihadists are capitalising on the chaos to set up bases in Libya as they are chased from their former strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

Libya has also become the main springboard for migrants seeking to reach the EU by sailing to Italy in often flimsy and overloaded boats.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Le Monde newspaper in June that Libya was "a priority" for the new French president and said there were "a security risk because of the trafficking of all kinds, including humans" from Libya.
The People's National Convention (PNC) has said it supports the appointment of the party's Flagbearer, Dr. Edward Mahama as Ambassador-at-large by the NPP government.

This is despite opposition by senior members of the PNC over the appointment.

Dr. Edward Mahama, a five time Flagbearer of the PNC was named Ambassador-at-Large by President Akufo-Addo a few weeks ago.

However, some officials of the party, including National Chairman, Bernard Mornah expressed their reservations about the appointment, suggesting that it would limit his objectivity on national issues.

Bernard Mornah also stated that Dr. Mahama had violated his own principles, having reportedly opposed the appointments of other party members by previous governments, a claim the former flagbearer had categorically denied.

But the party generally seems to be taking a different stance on the development, as it has congratulated Mr. Mahama for the appointment.

A statement signed by Director of Communications and Spokesperson for the PNC, Emmanuel Wison said: NEC congratulates and supports H. E. Dr. Edward N Mahama on his appointment as Ambassador at Large, by the President of the Republic of Ghana.

The statement also confirmed the suspension of Atik Mohammed's suspension, adding that his deputy, Mr. Jacob Amoako should take over.



By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @EfeAnsah
23.07.2017 LISTEN

MATTHEW 24:45-51

Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But if that evil slave says in his heart, My master is not coming for a long time, and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards; the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (NASB).

INTRODUCTION

When Harry Truman was thrust into the presidency, by the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sam Rayburn took him aside.

From here on out, you are going to have lots of people around you. They will try to put up a wall around you and cut you off from any ideas but theirs.

They will tell you what a great man you are, Harry. But you and I both know you aint.

I would like us to explore the subject: The Wise and Watchful Steward.

I. THE FAITHFUL STEWARD VV. 45-47

A master of a number of servants has to leave his household for an undetermined length of time. In the ancient times it was a common practice for masters to put one servant in charge of all the household business. The master makes the necessary plans for his departure and calls in one of his servants, who in the masters opinion, is able to manage the day-to-day duties of the household. It is the servants duty to be in charge of his fellow servants, to give them their food at the proper time, and to prove his faithfulness and prudence in his masters absence. If the master finds everything in order upon his return, he intends to promote the servant to be the manager of his possessions.

The servant demonstrates two indispensable characteristics: faithfulness and prudence. He is dependable because his yes is yes and his no is no. His fellow servants know that he does not break his word. They can trust him. He is also shrewd, for he has a canny way of anticipating problems, of being fully prepared to meet them skillfully and to solve them effectively. With apparent ease he seems to be in full control of every situation. This servant has the skill in dealing with fellow servants that encourages the timid and reproves the lazy ones.

When the master returns from his journey, he makes an inspection tour and finds everything in good order. He is pleased with the glowing reports he hears about the servant. As a reward for his faithfulness, the master promotes the servant to the position of manager over all his possessions. He knows now that the servant has stood the test of efficiently managing his household. He awards him by placing him second in command.

This parable reminds me of Joseph in the house of Portiphar, and later became the second in command in all of Egypt. The Bible says that God blessed the house of Portiphar because of Joseph. The same blessings of God continued to follow Joseph even when he was thrown in jail, because he was faithful to God. If you are faithful to God, wherever you go the blessings of God will follow you. God will also bless the people around you. The servant was faithful to his masters work and His master took notice of it and blessed him.

As Christians, we should also be about the Lords work, honoring Him in every area of life. Some of you are reluctant when it comes to giving of yourself and your money to the Lords work. You do it grudgingly as if you are doing it for the pastor. However, everything that you do either in the church, or at your place of work, you are doing it for Christ. As a Christian, you are ultimately responsible to Jesus Christ for what you do or refuse to do. Dr. Billy Graham says it better, If God has given you more than your neighbors, dedicate it to Christ, and realize that you are only a steward of that which God has given yousome day you will have to give an account for every penny you spent. In the economy of God, leaders must serve more than rule. Such people who serve will be blessed. In other words, the Lord Himself will bless them at His return. When you serve the Lord well with the spiritual gifts, investments, and the sphere of influence the Lord has given you, He will expand your territory. He will enlarge your circle of influence. All that the Lord requires of you is your faithfulness to what He has committed to your care. In the economy of God success is equal to faithfulness. God sees success more different than the way the world does.

A Persian legend tells us that a certain king needed a faithful servant and had to choose between two candidates for the office. He took both at fixed wages and told them to fill a basket with water from a nearby well, saying that he would come in the evening to inspect their work. After dumping one or two buckets of water into the basket, one of the men said, What is the good of doing this useless work? As soon as we pour the water in, it runs out the sides.

The other answered, But we have our wages, havent we? The use is the masters business, not ours. I am not going to do such fools work, replied the complainer. Throwing down his bucket, he went away.

The other man continued until he had drained the well. Looking down into it, he saw something shining at the bottom that proved to be a diamond ring. Now I see the use of pouring water into the basket! he exclaimed. If the bucket had brought up before the well was dry, it would have been found in the basket. Our work was not useless.

When Gods blessing does not fully coincide with your expectations, remember to wait until the well is dry. There may be something precious at the bottom.

THE FALSE STEWARD VV. 48-51

When a master places someone in charge of his household, he appoints a trustworthy servant whom he expects to do well. The master wants to leave his hands in dependable hands. When you are traveling outside the United States, do you not want to leave your house in the hands of someone who would take care of it for you when you are away? However, human nature is not always dependable, and the master may make a serious error in appointing a particular servant in whom he has put his confidence. In other words, the master can never be absolutely certain that the servant will live up to his expectations.

The servant may have put a facade before he received the appointment. Now that his master has left, he reveals his true character. He is sly, cruel, and intemperate. On the basis of other journeys his master has taken, the servant calculates that he will stay a long time. In the masters absence, the servant begins to beat his fellow servants. He feels quite safe in doing so, thinking that the time of his masters return is in the distant future. He spends his time in the company of drunkards with whom he indulges in excess in the form of food and drink.

His master hurries home, and appears suddenly and unexpectedly. What is the master going to do with this servant who has been irresponsible and unfaithful? The master hears the stories about his behavior, his parties, and laziness. Nothing escapes him and everything becomes known to him. The master is now the judge and the law enforcer. He must pronounce the verdict and declare the offender guilty. Then he must administer appropriate punishment.

Jesus said, He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (24:51). This text presents some difficulty in understanding the phrase cut to pieces. If the phrase is taken literally, how can he be given a place among the hypocrites if he is cut to pieces? It is possible that the text contains an idiom that should be understood metaphorically, much the same as the expression skin him alive. The phrase cut him to pieces is a more literal translation of to cut him off from the midst of his people. This wording harmonizes with the teaching of Psalm 37, in which the righteous will inherit the land, but the wicked will be cut off. The servant who failed his master receives the opposite reward of the responsible, trustworthy, and faithful servant. He is separated, cast out, and cut off from his people.

THE ESSENCE OF THE PARABLE

What is Jesus teaching us with this parable? In this parable, Jesus links belief with behavior. In other words, if you call yourself a Christian, a disciple, and, a witness of Jesus Christ, what you believe or profess as your faith in Christ should be consistent with your behavior. For instance, if you believe in the Second Coming of Christ, then, you must behave accordingly. You cannot live, as you like if you truly believe that Jesus Christ may come at any moment. The certainty of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ should regulate your home life and preserve you from giving way to riotous excess of living. God-honoring service, true fellowship, holiness of life, and watchfulness will be yours if you allow the thought of the Christs return to dominate every part of your life.

The point of the parable is to call attention to the responsibility given to every follower of Christ. Some believers receive greater privileges than others, but they also are charged with greater responsibilities. Because every believer has his/her own duty in the service of the Lord, no one is excluded or exempt.

The master of the household represents Jesus Christ, who leaves with the promise of His return. In Jesus absence, His followers, including you and I have privileges and responsibilities. If you are faithful and wise in the discharge of your duties, Jesus will reward you abundantly when He returns. But if you are unfaithful and behave irresponsibly, at Jesus return you will face complete separation from the people of God along with dreadful punishment. Now, those who are unfaithful and behave irresponsibly are showing by their behavior that their belief or profession in Christ is a sham. They are just like Judas Iscariot. Realize that Judas Iscariot was a disciple of Christ but his beliefs did not match his behavior. He ended up betraying Jesus Christ and subsequently committed suicide.

One thing that is sure is that the return of the master will be sudden and without warning, and the evil servant will be caught in the act.

The language of verse 51 speaks clearly of the judgment of God against phonies and hypocrites. Everywhere in the Bible Jesus is presented as the loving Lord of all who come to Him in repentance and faith. But on few pages the Bible points to the holiness side, the side of God completely intolerant of sin, unwilling to compromise with evil.

These fewer pages of the Bible balance the picture. God is love, and God is holy. All who trust in Jesus Christ are participants in holiness. The penalty for your sin was paid on the cross. But everyone who rejects Christ stands in danger of the judgment of a holy God. Do not be there when Gods anger strikes. The Bible says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God. For our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). Heed the warning and appeal to Jesus because He is your only hope.
Ten companies have been awarded for their role in trade facilitation for the year under review.

They were rewarded at the 2nd edition of the National Trade Facilitation Awards held at the Labadi Beach Hotel over the weekend.

The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) was awarded as best Ministry Department and Agency.

Also, Buvensa Company Limited emerged as the best transitor while Tesco West Africa took the prize as the Best Exporter.

Bollore Africa Logistics Ghana limited and Adu Max Limited emerged as the best large and medium freight forwarder in 2016 respectively with Golden Team Ventures Limited picking the freight forwarder for small businesses category.

The Best Terminal Operator at the Tema port went to Safebond Car Terminal Limited as the Best Terminal Operator at the Kotoka International Airport went to Swissport.

Meanwhile Grimaldi Ghana Limited and Antrak Ghana Limited Takoradi received the best shipping line for the Large and Small business categories.

Also, Mr. Gabriel Atobaah was rewarded as Overall Best student in freight forwarding.

Speaking at the event, the Deputy Trade Minister Robert Ahomka Lindsay was optimistic of the government's efforts to move Ghana's competitiveness in the ease of doing business from 108th to 45th position.

The National Trade Facilitation Awards is a competitive barometer that is expected to spur on the trade facilitation actors to achieve excellence in efficient service provision.



By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
23.07.2017 LISTEN

Tarkwa (WR), July 23, GNA - The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has been criticised for supplying electricity to Chinese illegal miners in Tarkwa in the Western Region.

Mr Benito Owusu-Bio, the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, has vowed to report the officials of the ECG involved in the illegal connection to the Energy Ministry for the law to deal with them.

"The ECG is supposed to investigate before supplying electricity to any individual or corporate entity and if the purpose for requesting for the power is illegal it could decide not to provide the power," he explained.

Mr Owusu-Bio was interacting with the media when he led a taskforce to Efua Ata Kumponasi, opposite the Tarkwa Senior High School, to arrest 10 Chinese who were illegally mining in an abandoned mining tunnel.

The Deputy Minister said the Ministry would not give up on the fight against galamsey despite the tough time being given by some recalcitrant elements in the industry.

"We know there are some illegal miners who are recalcitrant...therefore we are not also giving up on the fight and the President has expressed deep commitment to this cause," he said.

The Deputy Minister said the Chinese miners' migration status would be investigated and also send them to court for prosecution.

"We know there are people who are saying the court processes delay but we're not in a Kangaroo court so we have to allow the due processes to take place as the axe of justice grinds slowly," he said.

"We all know the Aisha Huan, the Russian and the Ukrainian cases are still in court and so we're sure justice would be served," he noted.

The Chinese were mining in the tunnel with live wires connected along the walls of the tunnel so that anybody who tried to enter the pit would be electrocuted.

They had also installed secret cameras inside the tunnel, which enabled them to monitor activities outside.

The Deputy Minister led the taskforce to the place upon a tip-off, which is 300 meters away from the University of Mines and Technology, where he was taking part in a National Validation Workshop on the Multilateral Mining Integrated Project.

The Minerals and Mining Law does not permit foreigners to engage in small-scale mining.

However, some Ghanaians have secured licences and recruited foreigners to engage in galamsey, which had resulted in unbridled exploitation of the environment, for instance pollution of water bodies and degradation of vegetation and farmlands.

GNA

By Godwill Arthur-Mensah, GNA
By Alexander Nyarko Yeboah

Tema, July 23, GNA - The Tema Regional Engineer of the Electricity Company of Ghana(ECG), says henceforth major shut down maintenance works on their plants would not affect electricity supply in the Region.

Mr. Mark Asomani-Wiafe made this revelation during a visit to the newly constructed Smelter 2 Bulk Supply Point (BSP) at the GRIDCO village, Tema, by the Tema Press Corp.

"The essence is that this has been put in place so that if there is any major works we could pick about 75 percent supply from the system so that it doesn't affect our customers," he informed.

He said that ECG was always trying to make their work safe and more reliable to their customers "so we deem it fit to put this up to add up to what we have already.'

Mr. Asomani-Wiafe said that the purpose of the new facility was to increase reliability and security to make sure that power was always available.

Mr. Christian Dzikunu, Operations Engineer of the ECG, observed that the demand of the station was about 38 megawatt of electricity adding 'once demand has got to 38, GRIDCO has added a second transformer to it so that we can add more load,' he informed.

He said that the smelter which cost approximately 2.2 million dollars (3.3 million cedis) would have five lines and explained that 'three of the lines would go to the industrial area, and two would take care of Dawenya, Community 25, Moboleh and Ashiaman. Other areas included Ada and Nungua,'

According to him, the Smelter 2 BSP which was an outdoor station, was the third of such facility to be constructed within the Region with two sited at the GRIDCO village and one at Kpong.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency, Mr. Jones Ofori-Addo, the General Manger of ECG, Tema, said the facility would enhance their network and make it more flexible and easy for the benefit of their customers.

He appealed to Ghanaians to desist from stealing power, a situation he explained, caused a lot of financial loses to the ECG as well as its operations.

GNA
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2016 by Emily Ransdell, Bowling in Heaven, from The Cortland Review, (Issue 69, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Emily Ransdell and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
Abuja (AFP) - An apparent photo of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was posted on Twitter Sunday, offering a rare glimpse of the ill leader since his departure for London for medical treatment in May.

Posted from the official Twitter account of the Nigerian presidency, the picture shows the 74-year-old head of state sitting at a table with a group of people and smiling.

According to the presidency, on Sunday afternoon Buhari received a delegation of "governors and leaders" from his All Progressives Congress (APC) party in London.

"The president sends his best wishes to all Nigerians. He will be back to Nigeria as soon as his doctors give the go-ahead," said the presidency in a separate tweet.

Buhari has spent most of this year in London receiving treatment for an unspecified medical condition.

In January and February, he spent almost two months in Britain and on his return in early March said he had never been as ill.

Buhari left for the British capital again on May 7 for a second round of medical treatment. No date was given for his return.

"The President was very cheerful and has not lost any bit of his sense of humour," said Imo state governor Rochas Okorocha in a press statement issued Sunday by presidential spokesman Femi Adesina.

"The party delegation spent more than an hour with President Buhari over lunch, and it was very clear from discussions that he followed developments at home very closely," Okorocha said.

The presidency has repeatedly rejected rumours that Buhari is terminally ill or even dead but has refused to disclose his illness or what treatment he is having.

The silence on Buhari's health has led to a flurry of speculation about his fitness for office and potential successor, prompting cryptic warnings from the president's camp.

Responding to the rumours in a Facebook post, Buhari's wife Aisha warned earlier in July that "the hyenas and the jackals will soon be sent out of the kingdom."

On Friday, Adesina, the presidential spokesman, posted an essay on Facebook titled "PMB (President Muhammadu Buhari) and the Descendents of Shimei" that condemned "filthy dreamers" who "wish the President dead."
Wow, Nollywood actor, John Njamah, has just gotten the best birthday gift ever as the actor has just welcomed a baby girl.

The baby is coming just few days the actor and his pretty Cameroonian wife celebrated their first year wedding anniversary.

Sharing the good news, he wrote, It's a double joy and all glory to the lord almighty... as my wife and I welcome our baby girl Ziorah on the same day of our wedding anniversary. #thankful #bestanniversarygiftever #grateful #family .
It has not been an easy time for popular Yoruba actress, Lola Magret, after she was rumoured to have been arrested for interrogation over money laundering in the hands of the police in Atlanta, Georgia.

The good news trending now shows that the actress has cleared her name and has been released from the prison.

Appreciating God for his goodness upon her life she wrote, What else can say onto the Lord? than thank u, my God is good.
Sacramento, CA  Former Senator Dave Cogdill, who represented the Mother Lode for a decade, has died.

Cogdill, 66, had been battling cancer. The Republican served as District 25 Assemblyman from 2000-2006 and District 14 Senator from 2006-2010.

For a period of time he served as Senate Republican leader.

He was succeeded in both the Assembly and Senate by Tom Berryhill.

Berryhill stated on social media today, Dave Cogdill was a great friend and leader. He served the CV (Central Valley) well. He was the real deal. Im going to miss him dearly.

Current Republican Senate Leader Patricia Bates adds, Senator Cogdill served the California State Legislature with honor and with courage during a time when California was going through an economic downturn. He selflessly dedicated his career in public service for the constituents of the Golden State and made a difference in the lives of those he touched whether it was in the Legislature or in the private sector. My condolences and prayers go out to his family and friends during this difficult and sad time.

After leaving office in 2010, Cogdill served a short period as Stanislaus County Assessor, and later was named the CEO of the California Building Industry Association.
- A retired police chief from Benue state, Abubakar Tsav, says Nnamdi Kanus plan to extend the Biafra agitation beyond the south-east shows that the IPOB leader must have mental disorder

- A traditional ruler in Benue state, King Shuluwa, describes Kanu as a man with little intelligence for trying to extend Biafra Republic to Benue

- The president of Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Eric Omare, asks the IPOB leader to restrict his Biafra agitation to states of the south-east

Some prominent leaders in Benue and Rivers state have strongly rejected the plan by leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, to extend his proposed Biafra Republic to their states.

READ ALSO: Donald Trump became US president by Gods divine will - Obasanjo

The reaction of the leaders followed a claim by the IPOB leader that while he was in detention, an agent of the federal government had offered him to secede with the five Igbo states but that he rejected the offer because it did not constitute the complete territory of Biafra.

But his claim has infuriated some prominent leaders in Benue and Rivers states who questioned the mental state of Nnamdi Kanu, The Punch reports.

Speaking on the issue, a prominent Benue leader who is a retired police chief, Abubakar Tsav, said Kanus speech has shown that the IPOB leader must have some mental disorders.

He said: I think the man has some mental problems. What is the connection between the Tivs, the Idoma and the Igbo? I think the man needs to see a psychiatric doctor because something is wrong with him.

He is not well because nothing connects the Tivs, the Idoma to the Igbo. How can he say he wants Benue State to be part of Biafra? He should stay where he is and carry on with his madness. We are not ready to be part and parcel of his madness

Other prominent indigenes of Tiv, Idoma and Igede, the three major ethnic groups in Benue state who rejected Kanus plan to expand the Biafra territory to their state included, a first-class traditional ruler in Tivland, the Tor Sankera, Abu King Shuluwa; a former Minister of Interior, Abba Moro; a former Minister of State for Education, Professor Jerry Agada and former Economic Adviser to former president Olusegun Obasanjo, Professor Ode Ojowu.

The traditional ruler, King Shuluwa, questioned Kanus intelligence for trying to extend Biafra Republic to Benue state.

He said: His level of intelligence is in question, else, how dare him to annex Benue as part of Biafra territory. In fact, if you are looking for more people to be part of your territory, does common sense not say you should have a talk with them?

On his part, former minister of interior, Abba Moro, said Benue state had no connection with Biafra agitation in any way.

Benue is not part of Biafra, we do not have any relationship with Biafra in genealogy, culture and by colonial creation, Benue is part of the north," Moro stated.

Similarly, the Ogbakor Ikwerre, a body of the Ikwerre ethnic nationality in Rivers state rejected Kanus demand that Rivers state must be part of Biafra.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

According to the president-general of the Ogbakor Ikwerre cultural organisation, worldwide, Professor Simeon Achinewhu, the Biafra failed in the past because there were attempts by the former Biafran leader, late Odumegwu Ojukwu, to force unwilling minority groups into Biafra.

Speaking on behalf of the Ijaw nation, the president, Ijaw Youth Council (IYC)Eric Omare, asked Kanu to restrict his Biafra agitation to states of the south-east.

Omare said: The Ijaw nation has said it times without number that the South-South especially the Ijaw are not part of Biafra territory.

Legit.ng recalls that Nnamdi Kanu recently paid a visit to the Rivers state capital, Port Harcourt where he was received by a large number of pro-Biafra supporters.

Addressing the crowd which was reported to be over 3 million, Nnamdi Kanu said there was nothing like one Nigeria, insisting that Biafra is the reward of the people.

The IPOB leader described Biafra as the destiny of the people.

He urged his supporters to demand for Biafra now for the benefit of their children and their grand children who have been marginalized by those in Abuja.

In the video below Legit.ng TV takes a critical look at Nnamdi Kanu and the struggle for the actualisation of the Republic of Biafra.

Source: Legit.ng
- Major Hamza Al-Mustapha describes calls for the separation of Nigeria as unacceptable

- The retired army officer says some persons are backing the agitations by pro-Biafra groups to promote themselves

- Al-Mustapha advocates for a democratic setting that supports the younger and future generations and equality for all Nigerians

Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, a former chief security officer to the late head of state, General Sani Abacha, has said some persons backing Nnamdi Kanu are creating tension in the country.

READ ALSO: Donald Trump became US president by Gods divine will - Obasanjo

Al-Mustapha who made the statement in an interview with Vanguard, published on Sunday, July 23, described calls for the separation of Nigeria as unacceptable.

He said some persons were backing the agitation by pro-Biafra groups to promote themselves.

The retired army officer said though the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Kanu, may not have intended to create tension in the country, but that those behind him were investing in the tension to divide Nigeria as a nation.

Legit.ng learnt that Al-Mustapha advocated for a democratic setting that supports the younger and future generations and equality for all Nigerians.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

He said: Greed for power, money and affluence does not make us great. However, dedication and service to the people should be our driving force. I am calling for a platform where all Nigerians would be treated equally in a democratic setting that supports the younger and future generations.

The former security chief faulted the Arewa youths for issuing a quit notice to Igbos in the northern region.

If Arewa youths had addressed IPOB as a group or their leader Nnamdi Kanu as an individual, it would have been a fair- deal, but asking millions of Igbo that reside in the North to quit is not acceptable by law and the provisions of our Constitution, he said.

Meanwhile, some prominent leaders in Benue and Rivers state have strongly rejected the plan by leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, to extend his proposed Biafra Republic to their states.

The reaction of the leaders followed a claim by the IPOB leader that while he was in detention, an agent of the federal government had offered him to secede with the five Igbo states but that he rejected the offer because it did not constitute the complete territory of Biafra.

But his claim has infuriated some prominent leaders in Benue and Rivers states who questioned the mental state of Nnamdi Kanu.

In the video below, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu has denied reports that he has flouted any of the bail conditions given to him by a Federal High court in Abuja.

Source: Legit.ng
- The army intensified its attack against Boko Haram terrorists in Borno

- Three female terrorists trying to access a military location were killed

- Some terrorists were also ambushed with their bicycles and food items recovered

Three female Boko Haram terrorists trying to gain access into a military location were neutralised just as the army ambushed some terrorists in a separate operation.

This is coming following a 40-day ultimatum issued by the chief of army staff, Tukur Buratai that Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau should be apprehended dead or alive.

READ ALSO: International Crises Group releases scary predictions about Nigeria

In a statement issued by Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman who is the spokesperson of the army, he said the attack was carried out on Saturday, July 22.

Aftermath of the attack by 3 female terrorists in Borno. Credit: Facebook, SK Usman

Read the statement below:

Troops of 103 Battalion, Operation LAFIYA DOLE, on Saturday 22nd July 2017 neutralized 3 female suicide bombers trying to infiltrate their location in the morning at Kawuri, Konduga Local Government Area of Borno State.

Some of the items recovered from terrorists. Credit: Facebook, SK Usman

The female suicide bombers who were on obvious mission of committing mayhem, where spotted by a vigilant sentry while they were trying to access the military location. They were however challenged severally and continued advancing, declining several warnings to stop. Consequently, the troops neutralized them instantly. The remains of the suicide bombers have since been evacuated from the location.

Bicycles recovered from terrorists by the army Credit: Facebook, SK Usman

The general public is please requested to continue to support troops of Operation Lafiya Dole and report any suspicious movements of persons to the military or security agencies.

Also, some terrorists were also ambushed in a separate attack in Mayanti village with one of them killed while the rest sustained injuries.

The troops of 151 Battalion, 21 Brigade Nigerian Army, on Operation LAFIYA DOLE, today, Saturday 22nd July 2017, ambushed Boko Haram terrorists at Mayanti village while on patrol along Mayanti- Banki Junction road.

PAY ATTENTION: Read best news on Nigeria's #1 news app

The troops neutralized 1 of the terrorists, while others sustained gun shot wounds.

They recovered 10 Bicycles, 9 bags of flour, 9 sachets of yeast, 2 bags of groundnut, packets of Maggi, a carton of detergent, 23 bottles of groundnut oil. Others include palm oil, a wrist watch, 50 sachets of salt, assorted drugs, 16 torchlights, 29 packs of cold patch and cash sum of Two thousand, Two hundred and Sixty-Six Naira.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian military attributed the mistake bombing at an internally displaced persons camp in Rann, Borno state to lack of appropriate markings.

In a statement released by the Defence Headquarters on Saturday, July 23, on the bombing and two major issues in the force, the military said boards of inquiries were constituted.

The DHQ in its statement said it was provided with the reports of all the boards constituted, to investigate the various incidents.

Watch a Legit.ng TV video below of the Air Force's operation against Boko Haram

Source: Legit.ng
- Some Boko Haram terrorists surrendered to the Nigerian Army

- They claimed they were misinformed into joining the terrorists

- The asked for forgiveness from the community

Some Boko Haram terrorists have surrendered to the Nigerian army claiming they were misguided into joining the group and asked for forgiveness from members of the community.

In a statement by Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman who is the spokesperson of the army, he revealed that they were apprehended on Saturday, July 22, in Yobe state.

READ ALSO: International Crises Group releases scary predictions about Nigeria

Among them was a 13-year-old boy and they revealed that there were many more terrorists who were willing to surrender due to the hardship they were facing.

Read the statement below:

"At the early hours today, Saturday 22nd July 2017, 3 acclaimed suspected Boko Haram terrorists, Usman Ali, aged 22, Ibrahim Matukur, aged 13 and Usman Hussaini aged 25, willingly surrendered themselves to troops of 27 Task Force Brigade of Operation LAFIYA DOLE at Buni Yari, Gujba Local Government Area of Yobe State.

"Those that surrendered include Usman Ali, aged 22, Ibrahim Matukur, aged 13 and Usman Hussaini aged 25. Others are, Ali Baba, 25 years, Modu Wakil, 15 years, Usman Mahamadu, 47 years, Goni Bukar, 50 years, Modu Konto, 20 years and Isah Ali, 25 years old.

"During preliminary investigation, the surrendering Boko Haram terrorists revealed that they belong to Mamman Nur faction of the Boko Haram terrorists group. The said that they deliberately surrendered because they had realized their folly and no longer wish to continue with the criminal terrorists and insurgents activities.

Some of the Boko Haram suspects who surrendered to the army Credit: Facebook, SK Usman

"Furthermore, they stated that they escaped from the terrorists hideout at Buk village in Damboa Local Government Area of Borno state, adding that there were many more Boko Haram fighters willing to surrender because of untold hardship they suffer.

PAY ATTENTION: Read best news on Nigeria's #1 news app

"They pleaded for sympathy and forgiveness from members of the community restating that they were misguided and deceived all these years to believing they were fighting a just cause.

"They urged that the military authorities make concerted efforts to reach out to other terrorists in the forest since they were willing to surrender."

Legit.ng earlier three female Boko Haram terrorists trying to gain access into a military location were neutralised just as the army ambushed some terrorists in a separate operation.

This is coming following a 40-day ultimatum issued by the chief of army staff, Tukur Buratai that Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau should be apprehended dead or alive.

Watch a Legit.ng TV video below of the operation of the Air Force against Boko Haram

Source: Legit.ng
Its hard to find nature when youre surrounded by concrete and steel.

The 16 teenagers from Houston gathered in the shade of the Cyclone Lookout on the Flathead National Forest last week would tell you thats a fact.

For many of them, the concrete, steel and busy bustle of Houstons city life has been the only thing theyd ever known until good fortune shined on them when their paths crossed with The Woods Project.

Started in 2006, the program has offered an opportunity for hundreds of teenagers from low-income families a chance to broaden their horizons through year-round outdoor programming that includes a 14-day adventures into the wilds.

On this morning, even with the thin pale of smoke hiding the furthest peaks from view, that horizon seems endless for this group of young people.

Ralph Manning is a school administrator in Houston and serves as a leader for the outdoor treks in Montana, California and Wisconsin.

Hes seen first-hand the impact that wild lands can have on a child.

For a lot of them, it expands on what they thought was possible, Manning said. Many had never even been on an airplane or even been outside of Houston. And now they are doing things that their minds had never even considered before.

Jennifer Cantu understands that.

If someone would have asked me if I wanted to go hiking for 20 or 30 miles with a 40-pound backpack, I would have looked at them like they were crazy, said Cantu. This has changed my life. Its opened me to possibilities that I never would have thought possible before.

This was the second year that Cantu made the two-week journey. After going to Donner Pass last year, she and her younger brother, Chris, eagerly accepted spots that came open late for the Montana trip this summer.

She wasnt ready for the trip to end.

I miss my family, but if they were here with me, I would never want to leave, she said. I love this place.

For many, The Woods Project is the first organization that they had ever joined.

Ive seen what it can do, Manning said. Ive seen shy kids shine. Ive seen them come home with new confidence in themselves and join other clubs and organizations because they know now whats possible for them.

The journey to The Glacier Institutes Big Creek Outdoor Recreation Center and the backwoods of the Flathead National Forest and Glacier National Park starts months before in after-school meetings where teens learn about The Woods Project.

For most, nature was just a word that didnt carry any weight in a world where human-made noise was a constant and skyscrapers were on the horizon from every patch of green inside the city.

Manning volunteered to help teach the kids in his school that there was something more to discover if you were willing to take that first step.

In those after-school meetings, the students learned about the skills they would need to venture into the woods. They discovered the magic of a compass and the challenges of cooking a meal on a tiny camp stove.

When they were ready, Manning and other volunteers took them outside the city for overnight camping trips in nearby state parks.

Their world and its endless possibilities was beginning to blossom. The program serves about 600 inner-city and under-served teenagers in Houston. About 175 take part in the four two-week adventures in wild areas of Montana, California and Wisconsin.

The total cost to send a student on the two-week adventure nears $3,000. Schools and students typically pay about $650 of that, with the program picking up the rest of the cost.

For many, its the first time that they have ventured away from their families for an extended period of time.

In many of their cultures, its not customary for teens to go off on their own for two weeks at a time, Manning said. It takes a lot of talking with families to assure them that their kids are in good hands.

Most of the students who attend the two-week summer trips are on a college track. The confidence they learn while experiencing the challenges of living in the wild and seeing a landscape unlike anything they had ever experienced helps them meet those upcoming challenges theyll need to overcome to be successful in their lives.

The trip includes a week-long backpack trip that puts most of the young people far from the place where they feel comfortable.

For this group, it began with a grizzly bear sighting before they even got out of the bus at the trailhead.

That made it very, very real for all of us, Manning said.

But it didnt stop anyone from shouldering their pack and heading up the trail.

They learned to work together as a team, said The Woods Project volunteer Kelsey Bechelli. In the wilderness, they discovered that everyone had to pull their own weight and help each other.

Thats not something that always happens in the big city, where its easy to walk by someone else in need.

It evens the playing field for all the kids, said Katherine Olger, a teacher from Sharpstown International School in Houston. They all have an opportunity to be way more successful than they could even imagine before coming here.

They learn that everything that they have out here is really all they need, Olger said. Food. Water. Shelter. Everything that they have back home is just an upgrade on that.

Hiking up the trail to Cyclone Lookout with a stuffed wolf perched on his head, Thy Nguyen said this experience has already changed him from the inside out.

It has exceeded all my expectations, Nguyen said. Hiking with a backpack made me feel like I was dying from the inside, but I saw the others carrying their own backpacks and I used that as my own motivation.

The scenery of this place is amazing and almost overwhelming to me, he said later as he sat in the shade of the lookout tower. Ive never seen anything like this in my life. Im so grateful to have the opportunity to be here and see this.

Sitting nearby, his new friends agreed.

You never see anything like this in Houston, said Daniel Flores Jr. We have big parks in Houston, but everywhere you look, you can still see a skyscraper.

As they ate their lunch after braving the long staircase leading to the tiny glass-encased lookout, the young men and women all agreed this experience is one they will never forget.

Weve become friends in a way thats different at home, said Dariana Flores. Were like a family.

Thats right, Adriana Badena said. Were connected in a different way than what was possible before. Were connected through nature. A lot of people here have had to go way out of their comfort zones. Its brought us all closer to each other.

I know that Im going to everyones graduation, Badena said.

Manning has seen the differences in what a walk in the woods can make for kids who may have never had that opportunity.

They get to see things that they never would have seen if this program wasnt available to them, he said. They get to see things that many adults have never seen. From there, they grow.

Ive seen them when they get back to school, Manning said. Theyve changed. Academically, they do better and especially it helps them socially. Ive seen shy kids come back and join other organizations and they just blossom.

Ninety percent of success is dependent on the exposures that we have in our lives, he said. If you dont know whats out there, you will never know whats possible.

Its never too late for anyones life to change.

Manning said The Woods Project has changed his.

It certainly opened my eyes to whats possible, he said. I knew nothing about camping when I first volunteered to help. Ive learned about the outdoors and what it can mean to a kid who has never experienced seeing the stars or playing in the snow.

Its changed me as a person, Manning said. Ive had the opportunity to work with kids that I would have never had the opportunity to work with. Theyve taught me, too.

Theyve taught me the importance of never forgetting to let yourself be a kid sometimes, he said. We can all get caught up in paying the bills and living our lives through the eyes of an adult. We forget what its like to see the world through a childs eyes.

At Polebridge, Steven Ruiz has just finished a delicious huckleberry bearpaw pastry and is enjoying the warmth of some mountain sunshine.

This would feel like winter back home, said the 17-year-old with a beautifully pen-etched rose on his hand.

Houston feels far away on this day.

Ruiz lives on the Southside. Its a place thats not bad, but its mostly a city. Theres no woods. No nothing like that. Its just pure buildings everywhere you look.

Back home, I cant really go outside all that much, Ruiz said. Other than school, the gym and work, I pretty much stay inside. I dont have that many friends.

Thats changed these past two weeks.

Thats my favorite part of all of this, he said. Connecting with all of these other people has made me realize that talking with other people can be a good thing. I believe this trip has helped me build character and become a better person.

Beyond those new friendships, Ruiz said hell never forget his first encounter with snow.

I laid down on it, he said. It was like an ice bath. It was the first time ever that I helped build a snowman. I really enjoyed playing in the snow.

Ruiz said hell never forget Ts advice.

Thats the name the group had given to Manning.

He told us that when we grow up to never forget youre still a child, Ruiz said. He said if you ever stop being a child, you just stop living.
- Police officers from the IGP special task force battle Boko Haram suspects in Kano state

- Some Boko Haram terrorists surrender to the Nigerian

- Three female Boko Haram terrorists trying to gain access into a military location are neutralised by troops

Some officers of the Nigerian Police Force and some Boko Haram members have engaged in a gun battle in Kano state.

Premium Times reports that at the end of battle which ensued on Sunday morning, July 23, three of the suspects were arrested, as well as two women suspected to be wives of the suspects.

READ ALSO: Benue, Rivers leaders reject Biafra Republic

Legit.ng learnt that the police officers who battled the insurgents were members of a special task force set up by the Inspector General of Police (IGP).

Disclosing how the insurgents were tracked, the Kano state commissioner of police, Rabiu Yusuf, said the police had been gathering intelligence on the suspects for a while.

He said the gun fight ensued at about 2am on Sunday, July 22, at Gaya in Ungogo local government area of the state.

Yusuf stated that the insurgents who battled the police were among the Boko Haram members who escaped from Sambisa forest in Borno when the military took over most part of the groups former stronghold.

He said two members of the group who were earlier arrested, led officers to Gaya, where the gun fight occurred.

The commissioner said the leader of the terror cell was a dismissed military officer who was training the others.

He said the suspect threw an improvised explosive device (IED) at the police and started to shoot before the police fought back.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

He however noted that the leader of the group escaped during the heat of battle.

The police came under attack by the terrorists group at their location but were overpowered by the tactical task force. Three police officers sustained injuries and three of the Boko Haram gunned down.

The police boss gave the names of the arrested suspects as Abba Muhammad of Niger Republic, 20; Usman Buhari from Borno, 22; and Illiyasu Abdullahi from Kano, 46.

He said the arrested women are Gezawa Yau and Ladidi Yunusa.

The police said some of the items recovered from the suspects included, AK47 rifle, 49 rounds of ammunition, IEDs, two sets of Air Force uniforms, one military boot, one laptop, one iPad, and some pictures of the suspects wearing military uniform.

Meanwhile, some Boko Haram terrorists have surrendered to the Nigerian army claiming they were misguided into joining the group and asked for forgiveness from members of the community.

Among them was a 13-year-old boy and they revealed that there were many more terrorists who were willing to surrender due to the hardship they were facing.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

In a related development, three female Boko Haram terrorists trying to gain access into a military location were neutralised just as the army ambushed some terrorists in a separate operation.

This is coming following a 40-day ultimatum issued by the chief of army staff, Tukur Buratai that Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau should be apprehended dead or alive.

In a statement issued by Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman who is the spokesperson of the army, he said the attack was carried out on Saturday, July 22.

In the video below, the Nigerian Air Force gives an update on operations against Boko Haram in 2017.

Source: Legit.ng
As a business owner in Nigeria, you are always looking for better ways to empower you employees, how to make them work better, how to give them the best working environment so they can perform efficiently for the benefit of your business.

This is why every serious organization in Nigeria has the human resources department, to do what is necessary for all employees, every employee needs a guiding hand, and the human resources department is that guiding hand.

The human resources department is in charge of hiring, motivating, training and organising employees.

How does the human resource management help innovate employees? In short, by education, training, empowerment and rewards.

Innovation of an employee is often associated with the introduction of new ideas and strategies for business.

The employees are the most important assets to any business, therefore by creating a environment that welcomes new ideas, engagement, skills acquisition and experience, the company will motivate their employees to be more productive, competitive and knowledgeable.

Legit.ng collected some ways human resource management can help innovate employees in a Nigerian company.

READ ALSO: Check out REAL reasons Nigerian employers sack their employees without notice or entitlements

- Hiring and internal communication

1. Hire people with different ideas and opinions

Look for employees who have different ideas but have the same vision with your business, do not hire people with the same mindset. If people with the same mindset work together, there would be no room for improvement and no way to learn from each other. People with different ideas have the ability to lay down different solutions to solve a problem.

2. Opportunities to learn from one another

Create a working environment where employees can swap responsibilities. Bring teams with the different responsibilities together to brainstorm on improvements in other areas of the business. If one employee is down another from a different team should be able to handle the employees job while he/she is absent.

3. Promote employee interaction

Have a team building exercise that would promote innovative ideas. It should be a time when employees can interact and learn from each other to build trust.

- Empowerment

1. Encourage innovation

Have a process in which every employee understands that my ideas would be well received to encourage more innovative ideas, suggestions and recommendations. Always support employee ideas with acknowledgement and feedback.

2. Performance check

Every employee should be checked regularly, it is the human resources management's job to understand why an employee is not performing well and find out what they need to boost performance. It could be a change in responsibilities or encouragement to perform better.

- Training

1. Implementation

Employees will be motivated to work properly if new ideas and strategies are well implemented through training exercises. Employees should be encouraged to work towards the success of new ideas not forced into making it successful. When employees see that ideas implemented are working perfectly they would be encouraged to keep doing it.

2. Offer education

Offer training programmes that would generate new and innovative ideas. This would ensure that employees gain new experience and the business would benefit from it.

- Reward

Nigerians like to be appreciated for the work they do, once in a while reward your employees for efforts made, rewards can be given individually or to teams.

It could be by words of encouragement or other, material, ways that suggest that their efforts are appreciated.

To sum up, let's list some benefits of employee innovation

Efficient use of resources

Staff retention and improvement: Nigerians like to work in challenging and innovative environments.

Business improvement: The corporate world in Nigeria constantly changes and with new ideas your business changes and improves to match new developments

Customer retention and growth

Employee competitiveness: Competition breads efficiency and quality service while reducing cost.

The ideas above work well for private companies. However, it is not that easy for public servants. In an exclusive Legit.ng TV video below you can see how local government employees in Lagos staged a massive protest recently:

Source: Legit.ng
- Annkio Briggs called for a change of Nigeria's current structure

- The activist said the north was benefiting than the rest of the country

- She noted that the northern region was contributing nothing to the country

Annkio Briggs who is an environmental activist from the Niger Delta has lashed out at the current Nigeria structure that sees the north benefit more from allocation sharing.

In an interview with The Punch, Briggs noted that the north was at an advantage over the rest of the country due to having more states and local government.

READ ALSO: Lagos LG polls: Unofficial results released as 1300 candidates from 12 parties await fate

She accused the north of bringing anything to the table while taking the lion share of allocations.

She said: Today, we have a 36-state country with six geopolitical zones. The North has 19 states; the South has 17 states. Looking at that, you have a situation where the North has more senators in the Senate and the South has less.

What that means is that, if there is a bill that will be in the favour of the South, like what happened with the Petroleum Industry Bill  there is no way that PIB would have been passed if the North said it should not be passed. In the North, you have 19 states, 419 local government areas, 58 senatorial seats and 191 House of Representatives seats.

The South has 17 states, 357 local government areas, 51 senatorial seats and 169 House of Representatives seats. So, if the Yoruba, all the ethnic groups in the Niger Delta, and the Igbo who are members of the National Assembly agree on anything that would benefit their people, and the North say no, the Norths position would be upheld.

We have six zones; all the zones must have equal number of states. You cannot have a situation where census was done and a state like Kano insists that it is more in population and therefore it must have 44 local government areas, but Bayelsa has only eight local government areas.

When you have allocation that is shared based on the number of local government councils, you would find how unjust the sharing is. The North, in terms of oil and gas, produces zero.

Yet, when we share based on local government allocation, the North gets 54.9 (per cent) of what we bring to the table. We (South-South) that bring 100 per cent get 45.1 per cent. Of course, it is injustice. When you go by state allocation, the North gets 57 per cent of 100 per cent that they are bringing zero per cent of, but the entire South is getting 43 per cent.

In the allocation of oil and gas, the South-South brings 91.54 per cent, the South-West, that is, the oil in Ondo State is 3.97 per cent. The oil in the South-East is 2.75 per cent. The North-Central, North-East and North-West brings 0.00 per cent, and yet, they take home more.

PAY ATTENTION: Read best news on Nigeria's #1 news app

Somehow, people are able to overlook this and focus on the Niger Delta Development Commission that the government owes, and focus on Amnesty and the Ministry of Niger Delta.

We are saying, Let go of the amnesty. Let go of the NDDC. The Ministry of Niger Delta, let go off it. The North-East Development Fund, let go of it. Let go of every palliative. Let everybody use what it has. That is the only justice that we will entertain now and pay tax to the Federal Government

Legit.ng had reported that Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife questioned why the north is against the issue of restructuring when all other regions in the country are calling for it.

In an interview with The Punch, the former governor of the old Anambra state said things were not right in Nigeria and this was due to the current structure.

Ezeife said history has shown that Nigeria was better off during the period of regionalism where each region was autonomous.

Watch a Legit.ng TV video below of the man behind the progress of the Niger Delta region

Source: Legit.ng
- Nigerian army has arrested a suspected logistics supplier to Boko Haram

- The army also said some terrorists have also willingly surrendered to troops of 27 Task Force Brigade

- Madu Kwari, a 25 year-old terrorists was also arrested by the army

The Nigerian army has arrested some members of the Boko Haram terrorists group even as more of them willingly surrendered to troops of 27 Task Force Brigade, Borno state.

The army in a press statement through Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman, director ,Army Public Relations said the terrorists said it has also arrest a suspected logistics supplier to the terror group.

The army said some terrorists have also willingly surrendered to troops of 27 Task Force Brigade. Photo credit: SK Usman

The army said: "On Saturday 22nd July 2017, 4 other suspected Boko Haram terrorists along members of their families have also surrendered to troops of 27 Task Force Brigade.

"According to them, they were escaping from Boko Haram terrorists hideouts at Kafe, Njubulla and Buk in Damboa local government area of Borno state.

Hassan Yusuf and the recovered items. Photo credit: SK Usman

"Similarly, troops of the same formation in conjunction with vigilantes, at about 6.00pm on the same day, arrested a suspected Boko Haram terrorist at Bungai in Gujba Local Government Area of Yobe State. The suspect, Madu Kwari, aged 25 years was intercepted while fleeing the terrorists hideout adding that he escaped along with 3 others still at large.

Two of the terrorists that willingly surrendered to troops of 27 Task Force Brigade. Photo credit: SK Usman

READ ALSO: APC sweeps Lagos LG polls

"In a related development, troops of 159 Battalion have also arrested one Hassan Yusuf, aged 43, a suspected logistics supplier to Boko Haram terrorists.

Arrested Boko Haram terrorist suspect, Madu Kyari. Photo credit: SK Usman

"The suspect who hailed from Dangana in Chad Republic, was intercepted while attempting to cross over to Chad with smuggled spare parts and other items across the border in a Toyota Hilux vehicle with registration number AE-646-VBY (Benue). He is being interrogated further.

Some recovered items from Yusuf. Photo credit: SK Usman

PAY ATTENTION: Read best news on Nigeria's #1 news app

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that some Boko Haram terrorists have surrendered to the Nigerian army claiming they were misguided into joining the group and asked for forgiveness from members of the community.

In a statement by Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman who is the spokesperson of the army, he revealed that they were apprehended on Saturday, July 22, in Yobe state.

Watch a Legit.ng TV video below of the operation of the Air Force against Boko Haram.

Source: Legit.ng
A new two-story brewery and restaurant planned for downtown Missoula will get a bit of public money to build a pedestrian-friendly bulb-out and plant street trees on Main Street.

The Missoula Redevelopment Agencys board of commissioners approved giving the owners of Conflux Brewing Company up to roughly $45,764.50 in Tax Increment Financing assistance for the project, at 202 E. Main Street. Its slated to open in the spring.

The property has been vacant for several years, and consists of a parking lot and an old bird feed store. The Main Street sidewalk is in the Front Street Urban Renewal District, but the actual brewery will not be inside the district. So, the property tax of between $20,000 and $30,000 that the brewery will generate annually will go to the citys general fund. However, Chris Behan, the assistant director of the MRA, told the board that upgrading the sidewalk is a good use of TIF funds from the district anyway.

The new multi-story building will occupy a highly visible downtown corner that has been vacant or underutilized for decades, he wrote to the board in a memo. Although the building itself is outside the urban renewal district, TIF participation in upgrading adjacent sidewalks provides an opportunity to focus on this intersection prior to development of the other corners which may be being considered for redevelopment in the near future.

"Being able to design and construct recommended improvements to the intersection in keeping with recommendations made by the Front/Main Conversion Study and Downtown Master Plan such as sidewalk bulb-outs, etc,. substantially increases pedestrian safety in the rapidly growing neighborhood.

The city conducted a study for the Montana Department of Transportation that recommended that Main Street be converted to a two-way street, but that project isnt funded yet.

The total cost of the brewery and restaurant, including the land purchase price, is about $4.5 million. The project will create about 30-35 jobs new to Missoula, but a majority will be part-time positions except for the industrial, full-time brewing positions.

Behan said the downtown area near the project has seen considerable construction activity, which started a few years after the Front Street Urban Renewal District was created in 2009.

New housing, office and hotel uses being constructed within a short distance of this vacant parcel have helped create an opportunity for additional business development along the edges of the District, he said. During the 2017 Legislature, urban renewal TIF district representatives were often asked to quantify tangible benefits accruing to surrounding areas during the life of those districts. This project seems to be a good example of such benefits.

Behan said that the TIF assistance also will help to relocate a fire hydrant so there will be more on-street parking spaces.

The brewery is being built by Hugh Yates and his parents, Skip and Martha Yates, all of Lolo. The 10,000-square-foot brewery will have a large outdoor patio area on the first floor and an upstairs patio. They plan on serving house-made food such as burgers with locally sourced ingredients, and probably 10-12 craft beers on tap.
Human rights globally refer to privileges that come with every human being when they are born. These rights are about 30 in number and include freedom of thought, association, right to own things and right to public assembly, among others. Below is a list of agencies responsible for the protection of human rights.

Cardboard placards and spray paint. Photo: pexels.com, @sora-shimazaki

Source: UGC

Across the world, countries, organisations and various institutions are expected to protect these rights by behaving in certain manners previously agreed upon in various laws and treaties. In this article, we will list and explain ten agencies responsible for the protection of human rights in Nigeria.

Agencies responsible for the protection of human rights

To ensure that the agreements are kept, some agencies were created to monitor and report violations and, in some extreme cases, force countries and organisations to abide by the human rights rules.

Human rights are enshrined in numerous countries' constitutions around the world. Legal and institutional systems protect human rights guaranteed by these constitutions.

The list of agencies responsible for the protection of human rights in Nigeria pdf has concentrated on the institutional mechanisms for human rights protection in Nigeria. It addresses the significance of human rights and the various institutions involved in human rights protection in Nigeria.

What are the agencies responsible for the protection of human rights in Nigeria? Here are 10 agencies responsible for the protection of human rights SS1.

1. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

It is the leading UN entity on human rights. They stand for the global commitment to advancing and defending the full range of freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Their goal is to address the most urgent human rights breaches, both chronic and recent, especially those that put life in immediate danger.

2. Amnesty International

Amnesty International is a global movement of over seven million people that take injustice personally and are unaffiliated with any political ideology, religion, or economic interest.

The movement advocates for a world in which all people have equal access to human rights. Amnesty International's main activities are research, advocacy, lobbying, and campaigns and action.

3. International Labour Organization

The organisation was established in 1919 as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I to express the conviction that social justice must be the foundation of any durable, universal peace.

The ILO's core objectives are to advance workers' rights at work, foster possibilities for decent employment, reinforce social protection, and increase communication about issues relating to the workplace.

4. Human Rights Watch

The organisation looks into and documents violations of human rights throughout the world. It employs people, most of whom are national experts, attorneys, journalists, and human rights defenders.

Man in a grey shirt holding a human rights sign. Photo: pexels.com

Source: UGC

In addition, the organisation works with and argues for governments, corporations, and other groups to reform their laws and policies.

5. African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights

The organisation was founded by the African Charter. Protection of human and peoples' rights, promotion of human and peoples' rights, and interpretation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights are some of its main responsibilities.

6. Global Rights

An international non-governmental organisation dedicated to advancing human rights, Global Rights was founded in Washington in 1978.

The organisation relocated to Nigeria in 2014 and now collaborates with local activists in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to create organisations that advance and defend the rights of underrepresented groups.

It focuses its efforts on working on cross-cutting issues, including women's rights, access to justice, the security of human rights, and resource governance

7. International Federation for Human Rights

The organisations that make up the IFHR are active in preserving and promoting respect for the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The organisation is dedicated to supporting victims of human rights abuses and bringing those responsible for committing international crimes to justice.

8. Human Rights Foundation

The Human Rights Foundation is a nonprofit group that emphasises closed societies while promoting and defending human rights worldwide. To defend, equip, and provide a platform for human rights activists who are fearlessly transforming their communities and nations, they have teamed up with activists who are changing the globe.

9. Human Rights House Foundation

The Human Rights House Foundation assists and empowers human rights advocates and their organisations. The HRHF supports the rights to free speech, association, and assembly and the right to advocate for human rights.

10. International Society for Human Rights

The ISHR was established to assist others who share its concept. Worldwide, ISHR has about 30k members spread throughout 38 nations.

Supporting people who face prejudice, persecution, or are imprisoned due to their political ideas or religious affiliations is one of its key areas of activity.

NB: Some of these agencies have branches worldwide, including in Nigeria.

National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)

People silhouette during sunset. Photo: pexels.com, @minan

Source: UGC

In Nigeria, the body nationally recognised as the protector of human rights in the country is the NHRC, located at Aguiyi Ironsi street, Maitama, in the capital city Abuja.

According to the Nigeria Governance Project, the NHRC has a budgetary allocation of about N800m, with which it battles violations of the rights of citizens of the world's largest black population.

The law establishing the NHRC says the agency's main duty is to protect Nigerians' rights in line with the Nigerian Constitution's provisions and the African and United Nations charters on human and peoples' rights.

The work of the NHRC is crucial because Nigeria is a signatory to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and other international human rights treaties.

The NHRC has offices in the six geo-political regions of the country as well as another in Abuja that is different from its headquarters.

Office of the Public Defender (OPD)

Some of the 36 states in Nigeria also have their respective human rights bodies. One such state is Lagos, which has the Office of the Public Defender (OPD). The agency's mission is to "safeguard the fundamental human rights and freedom of the vulnerable and disadvantaged groups".

Among other functions, the OPD provides legal support for those who cannot afford it. It also does the same for anybody who feels that justice has been miscarried in their case.

If you cannot get justice for trampling on your rights at the NHRC or the OPD, several other countries' other human rights organisations can help you out, depending on the nature of the violations. These agencies include:

Human Rights Law Service (HURILAWS)

Access to Justice

Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network

Devatop Centre for Africa Development

Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation

Youths For Human Rights Protection and Transparency Initiative

Safe Child Africa

Roles of agencies responsible for the protection of human rights

Below are the key roles of agencies that protect human rights in Nigeria.

Fighting specific human rights violations directly.

Helping those whose rights have been infringed directly

Advocating for modifications to domestic, regional, or international law

Supporting the development of the laws' actual content.

Encouraging public awareness of and adherence to human rights

They hold those who violate human rights accountable.

They deliver crucial medical care.

How are human rights protected in Nigeria?

Nigeria's efforts to safeguard and advance human rights go beyond merely establishing institutional frameworks and constitutional measures to ensure their enforcement. Nigeria's adoption and ratification of important international human rights instruments demonstrate its commitment to the cause of human rights.

What organization fights for human rights in Nigeria?

The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) is one of Nigeria's largest human rights organizations.

What do human rights organizations do?

The organizations ensure everyone's rights are respected.

There are many agencies responsible for the protection of human rights. Their fundamental objective is to ensure that every person is treated fairly and has access to their rights without being judged. The realisation of civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights, especially the right to progress, is given equal weight.

READ ALSO: Top 25 best schools in Nigeria in 2022: Get the best education

A recent article about the top 25 schools in Nigeria for 2022 was published on Legit.ng. There are many schools in Nigeria where you can opt to take your child. You can choose the ideal school for your child by being aware of which institutions excel in terms of academic achievement, amenities, extracurricular activities, and more.

As the most priceless treasure in the world, education is something you should invest in for your kids. All parents worldwide are encouraged to send their children to one of Nigeria's top 100 schools.

Source: Legit.ng
- Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti state expresses the confidence that he will emerge victorious in the coming Ekit gubernatorial election

- The governor says any candidate fielded by the APC in the poll will be no match for the PDP

- Fayose calls on the opposition to remember that it was the APC-led administration of 2010 to 2014 that plunged the state into financial crisis

Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti state has boasted that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will score a record breaking victory against the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate in the 2018 governorship election in the state to set electoral records.

READ ALSO: Lagos LG polls: Unofficial results released as 1300 candidates from 12 parties await fate

Fayose in a statement by his chief press secretary, Idowu Adelusi, in Ado-Ekiti on Saturday, July 21, expressed the confidence that he will emerge victorious in the coming poll, Vanguard reports.

The governor reacting to comments made by Segyn Oni while declaring his intention to contest the poll that Fayose and the PDP were common enemies, said any candidate fielded by the APC in the poll will be no match for the PDP.

He said: Defeating the APC in governorship elections is not new to me and my party. We defeated them in 2003 and recorded a landslide victory against them in 2014 when their candidate could not even win his local government. The 2014 victory was very remarkable because Oni was part of a gang up of three former governors against me and my party and we won convincingly.

Oni tried unsuccessfully to rubbish my administrations giant strides in the state during my first tenure and the current one. It was during my first term that we dualised all the roads leading to Ado-Ekiti, the state capital. We repositioned education and improved on the states performance in public examinations. We are number one in NECO and among the top in WAEC examinations.

Now, we are not only dualising roads across 11 local government areas, we have extended the Ado-Ikere Road dualisation deep into Ikere town. Because the APC and its leaders in Ekiti lack foresight, they can never ever see anything good in the flyover, new Ojaba Market, new high court complex, new Governors Office and other numerous projects we are executing.

PAY ATTENTION: Read the best news on Nigerias #1 news app

They are simply dumbfounded that in spite of the austere times we are in, our administration has been able to forge ahead with these projects. It is only a leadership that is focused and know its onions that can place the welfare of majority of people over and above the welfare of minority."

Fayose called on the opposition to remember that it was the APC-led administration of 2010 to 2014 that plunged the state into financial crisis when it failed to offset workers entitlements and borrowed to finance projects it never executed.

Meanwhile, Governor Ayo Fayose has called on Nigerians to reject the All Progressives Congress, (APC) committee on restructuring.

Legit.ng gathered that Fayose in a statement Thursday night by his Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi said: It is dead on arrival and a ruse. It is a blatant attempt to draw the wool over the eyes of Nigerians.

Fayose, who also serves as the chairman of the PDP Governors Forum, said the committee was unnecessary since Nigerians have overwhelming voted for immediate restructuring of the polity.

In the video below, a Nigerian man says present administration is fighting corruption to the detriment of the people

Source: Legit.ng
- 43 repentant Boko Haram terrorists are set to have a new lease of life

- The repentant insurgents were air lifted to join their fellow terrorists and commerce a rehabilitation programme

- The terrorists were urged to make use of the opportunity given to them

The Nigerian army has airlifted 43 repentant Boko Haram terrorists to join other insurgents to commence a de-radicalisation and rehabilitation programme.

The army in a press statement through Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman, director ,Army Public Relations said the terrorists through the programme will have a new lease of life.

READ ALSO: UPDATED: Lagos council elections official results

The statement obtained by Legit.ng read: "Forty three Boko Haram insurgents who recently surrendered to troops of Operation Lafiya Dole were on Saturday air lifted to join other surrendered insurgents in Gombe where they are to immediately commence a de-radicalization and rehabilitation programme under the auspices of Operation Safe Corridor.

"Speaking while handing over the surrendered insurgents to Operation Safe Corridor, the Theatre Commander Operation Lafiya Dole, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru gave assurance that the penitent insurgents will be given a new lease of life as they commence their journey back into the civil society through the de-radicalization and rehabilitation processes. He urged them further to embrace and undertake the programme whole heartedly to enable them benefit and positively reorient their views about life and the society in general.

43 repentant Boko Haram terrorists are set to have a new lease of life. Photo credit: SK Usman

"It will be recalled that over 70 Boko Haram insurgents had earlier in this month, surrendered to troops of Operation Lafiya Dole in the North East, thus, taking advantage of the window of grace provided by the Federal Government for insurgents who are willing to give up terrorism and turn a new leaf to surrender to any military location closest to them.

PAY ATTENTION: Read best news on Nigeria's #1 news app

The repentant insurgents were air lifted to join their fello terrorists to comemce a rehabilitation programme. Photo credit: SK Usman

"General Attahiru called on all other insurgents to abandon the futile struggle and reject the hypocrisy of the Boko Haram leadership who live in affluence, while their foot soldiers die in hunger," the statement read.

Legit.ng had earlier reported that the Nigerian army arrested some members of the Boko Haram terrorists group even as more of them willingly surrendered to troops of 27 Task Force Brigade, Borno state.

The army in a press statement through Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman, director ,Army Public Relations said the terrorists said it has also arrest a suspected logistics supplier to the terror group.

Watch a Legit.ng TV video below of the operation of the Air Force against Boko Haram.

Source: Legit.ng
- A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ebenezer Babatope, expressed confidence in Bode George as the party's next chairman

- Babatope described Bode George as a suitable candidate because of his fatherly figure

- The PDP chieftain also said the door of the party is open to all members irrespective of their association

A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chieftain, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, on Sunday gave credence to the Chairmanship ambition of the former Deputy Chairman of the party Chief Bode George.

Babatope, a former Director of Organisation in the defunct Obafemi Awolowos Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that he was fully in supports Georges ambition.

He described the former Chairman of Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) as the best man for the vacant chairmanship slot of the PDP based on his fatherly figure.

READ ALSO: Please release our members in detention - Biafra group begs Fayose

We will struggle hard to produce a strong, effective and result-oriented party chairman, in fact, the Supreme Courts verdict has affirmed Ahmed Markarfi as the real power house of PDP.

We are now expecting another chairman and we are going to get that. I am giving my full support for the chairmanship position to George because he is the most experienced.

George being my choice does not, however, have overriding opinion over other members of the party, everybody is welcome to support the candidates of their choice.

I am picking George because of his experience as a party faithful who will ensure reconciliation of all aggrieved members of the party. Experience is the best teacher, Babatope said.

Babatope, also a former Minister of Transport and Aviation during the late General Sani Abachas administration, advised that whoever emerged as the PDP chairman should ensure full reconciliation of all the members.

Whoever emerges as the chairman of PDP must ensure the full reconciliation of all the members. We need a full house now to fulfil the yearnings of the party.

The chairman should be a rallying point who will be father to all and I know George very well, he is up to the task.

What is important now is to have full reconciliation in PDP, everybody is welcome to the party and we want to make our party great again.

Nobody will be left behind in our reconciliation efforts, even Ali Modu Sheriff is also free to contest for the chairmanship, he said.

Babatope told NAN that the PDPs door was open to all members irrespective of their affiliation, adding that the party would strive to provide a strong opposition to the ruling party, All Progressive Congress (APC).

As far as we are concerned, the door of the party is open to all members irrespective of their alliances; even Sheriff himself is free to contest.

There has been reports that Sheriff wants to contest for the chairmanship position, why not? He should feel free to announce himself as others have.

PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 new app

We need everybody and there is no foe in the party, nobody will be left behind; as I speak, efforts are ongoing to have the mini convention slated for August.

We are poised to give the ruling party APC a formidable opposition because it has done nothing. We are ready to take over the government again, he said.

Can you list any achievement of President Muhammadu Buhari's administration? Watch this video:

Source: Legit.ng
- President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday, July 23, met with some All Progressives Congress (APC) governors and leaders in London

- The delegation included the APC party chairman, John Oyegun; governors of Imo, Kaduna, Kogi, Nasarawa and minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi

- President Buhari described the negative reports about him as lies

President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday, July 23, received a delegation of All Progressive Congress (APC) governors at the Abuja House, in London.

Legit.ng gathered that the Imo state governor, Rochas Okorocha, said the president was very cheerful and has not lost any bit of his sense of humour.

In a telephone conversation with Femi Adesina, the president's media adviser, following the meeting of the APC governors and leaders with President Buhari, he said the president was delighted to receive the delegation and asked each governor about affairs in his state.

READ ALSO: Nigeria to experience more rainfall, cloudy skies tomorrow, July 24

Governor Okorocha said the party delegation spent more than an hour with President Buhari over lunch, and it was very clear from the discussions that he followed developments at home very closely.

President Muhammadu Buhari hosts APC governors and leaders to lunch in London on Sunday July 23 Photo source: Twitter, NGRPresident

President Buhari on Sunday, July 23, met with APC governors and leaders in London Photo source: Facebook, JolibaNews Live

Buhari with APC governors and leaders in London Photo source: Facebook, JolibaNews Live

When asked to react to all the negative things being said about him, the president just laughed, describing such negative reports as lies. Governor Okorocha said President Buhari was completely unperturbed by the cocktail of lies, adding that he sent his best wishes to Nigerians.

According to Okorocha Nigerians dont have to worry at all, adding that President Buhari will be back as soon as the doctors give him the green light.

By our visit to London today, the merchants of lies have been put out of business and Nigerians will not buy the garbage they have been selling. All those who look up to fake news can find better use for their time, Governor Okorocha noted.

Governors Umaru Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa; Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna; Yahaya Bello of Kogi; and APC National Chairman, Chief John Oyegun, were also in the delegation.

President Buhari left Nigeria for London on Sunday, May 7, 2017, to attend to health challenges, having earlier made a similar trip to London and upon arrival in Nigeria, stated that he was going to return to London at a later date.

PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 new app

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that an online newspaper, Sahara Reporters, reported that the cabal in the presidency has concluded plans to bring back President Muhammadu Buhari to Nigeria on July 27.

In the video below, Legit.ng TV asked some Nigerians what they have to say about President Buharis absence away from the country for so long:

Source: Legit.ng
GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us.
Captain America and the Winter Soldier Special #1 takes Marvel's secret history to a whole new level with a real world historical figure

If you know who Gavrilo Princip is, prepare to be shocked
University of Montana student Guthrie McLean was freed Sunday after spending almost a week in a detention center in China.

McLean described himself as sleep deprived and overwhelmed in an interview over Skype Sunday evening with the Missoulian.

Jennifer McLean was reunited with her son at about 2 a.m. Monday local time in China; noon Sunday in Montana, said Sen. Steve Daines, who helped negotiate his release.

Im happy, frustrated and overwhelmed, Guthrie McLean said.

McLean was arrested July 17 because he had intervened weeks earlier in a confrontation between his hearing-impaired mother and a local taxi driver. The driver said his knee was injured after Guthrie McLean shoved him.

Police had questioned both McLeans on July 16 and had demanded money in exchange for Guthrie McLean's release. When Jennifer McLean left the room where they were being questioned at a police station, she was not allowed back in and was told she could go home. Her son was held and arrested the next day.

I was worried and I had a feeling they were keeping her from coming back and they had made her leave, Guthrie McLean said. I was kind of scared and didnt really know what was going to happen.

According to a timeline from Daines' office, negotiations for the UM student's release began on July 18, a day after he was sent to the detention center that his mother had described as "one of the worst in China.''

Guthrie McLean said he had no idea what was being done while he was being detained. He said police at the detention center told him he was going to jail because there was no proof the driver had hurt his mother, but the driver had injuries. He said the experience wasnt typical of his life in China.

This incident was done as part of the actions of a taxi driver and a few old-fashioned thinking police officers, Guthrie McLean said.

He thought he was being lied to by everyone and was always worried he was going to say something that would get him into more trouble.

You can start to get creepy paranoid, Jennifer McLean said.

Aside from interrogations by the police, Guthrie McLean said the detention center had about the same accommodations someone would find while camping. There was a shower and toilet in one room and a deck where the people detained could sleep. He and about 20 others were held in the room together.

There was a tentative release agreement made on July 21, but when Jennifer McLean went to finalize paperwork, the police told her they were unaware of any deal. She contacted Daines' office, who reached the Chinese embassy to discuss the confusion.

About two hours before her son was released Sunday, Jennifer McLean said in an email she had received a letter from him, but believed it would be a few more days before she might get a chance to see him again.

"I am hopeful, but cautious that this will all end Monday or Tuesday," she said in an email sent to the Missoulian Sunday morning. "Wally Hsueh and Jason Thielman at Senator Daines office have been working on a solution almost 24/7 since last Monday. I am very grateful to them."

She had said police were demanding compensation for the driver's injuries before releasing her son, something she termed a "shakedown'' that initially started at $14,800 but dropped over time.

The exact terms of Guthrie McLeans release are still being reviewed and finalized late Sunday.

A Youcaring site to raise money to help pay for Guthrie McLean's release was set up by two other UM students, Caitlin Wind and Zakk Winch.

On Sunday, the site announced his release with this note: "We have yet to get in contact with his mother, we will see if she will accept what you wonderful people have raised in order to cover the costs of his release. If she does not accept, then we will either refund you (by sending us a direct message asking for this) or give it to a charity of their choice. Thank you all!"

The site had raised about $600 at the time of Guthrie McLean's release.

Calling the donations a wonderful gesture, Jennifer McLean has said she wants this money returned, because it was requested in the event there would be legal fees, which there have not been, she said.

Im grateful to have my son, she said.

The 25-year-old UM senior was visiting his mother, who lives and teaches in China, when he was arrested in Zhengzhou in Henan Province.

He grew up in China and is the only child of his single mother. He attended a university in China but had transferred to finish his degree in Montana.

McLean plans to return to Missoula Aug. 29.

Daines, who spent six years in China as an executive with Proctor and Gamble, spent the weekend talking with both the Chinese and U.S. embassies, the Chinese government and local officials, his office said.

Sen. Jon Tester, who also had been working to free McLean, said the resolution "is a testament to what can be accomplished when we turn up the heat and hold government accountable.''
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a $17-million expansion and enhancement to Anacondas cleanup that would include waiving state water quality standards for Willow Creek and about seven tributaries flowing into upper Mill Creek, both south of Anaconda.

The creeks flows eventually wind up in the Clark Fork River.

The additional work, which comes with the $17-million price tag for Atlantic Richfield Co., would involve steep slope reclamation and other engineered features to create stormwater controls. Contaminated sediment is sending heavy metals into the waterways under consideration. While EPA is proposing that state water quality standards be waived, the creeks would still have to meet federal water quality standards.

Federal water quality standards are a little different from the states water quality standards, which are tougher to meet.

The changes are necessary because Willow Creek and the tributaries south of Cabbage Gulch flowing into upper Mill Creek have never met federal water quality standards during heavy rains and spring runoff, EPA project manager Charlie Coleman said Thursday.

The areas where rain and snowmelt create contaminated sediment running into the waterways are well vegetated. Coleman said that to try to meet Montanas more conservative water quality standard, EPA would have to rip up a mountain.

The reason to implement a waiver now is because EPA is inching toward its legal settlement, called a consent decree, with Atlantic Richfield Co. over Anacondas Superfund site. As part of that preparation, the company needs to know what its liabilities will be, Coleman told The Montana Standard.

The soils carry heavy metals due to aerial emissions from around 100 years of smelting activity. The Washoe Smelter shut its doors for good in 1980.

Coleman held a meeting Thursday evening at the Metcalf Senior Center in Anaconda to allow the public the opportunity to comment on the proposed change to EPAs cleanup plan for the Smelter City. The public has until Aug. 4 to voice opinions on EPAs proposal. (See information box.)

About 15 members of the public attended, as did county and state officials. There were many questions from the public about why EPA wasnt doing more to make Atlantic Richfield meet the states tougher water quality standards.

Clark Fork Coalition representative Andrew Gorder called the waiver inappropriate. The nonprofit organization works to restore and sustain the Clark Fork River and its tributaries.

Targeted removals (of contaminated soil) could be practical, and its unclear whether that was considered. Aquatic life in the Clark Fork suffers due to metals, Gorder said.

Coleman said one alternative EPA looked into was building a treatment plant to treat the metals. But officials decided that hundreds of acres would be wiped out in the process of creating water storage areas for a treatment plant site.

Coleman said that during most of the year, the creeks meet federal water quality standards. The new expanded and enhanced cleanup on the hills that send runoff into Willow Creek and upper Mill Creeks tributaries would reduce sediment from coming down the hillsides.

Former Department of Environmental Quality project manager Joe Griffin called this waiver fairly conservatively done. He also called it practical.

But Griffin offered some suggestions.

He encouraged EPA to consider testing fish to keep an eye on how the new cleanup plan would be affecting the aquatic life in the creeks. He also said that some of the tributaries in question are on wild land, and wildlife could come into play.

It may be better to ensure that there are stable beaver populations, Griffin said. They do a better job of capturing sediment than any engineer.
Dutch Gaming Authority Receives Hague Court Backing to Fine iGaming Operators

Published July 23, 2017 by Brett C

Kansspelautoriteit (Netherlands Gaming Authority) was recently given the green light to fine iGaming operators in contravention of the Netherlands online gambling laws.

The Dutch Gaming Authority (Kansspelautoriteit) has received the backing of The Hague District Court to impose 6-figure fines on iGaming operators flouting the online gambling laws of the Netherlands. In 2014, the DGA imposed substantial fines on multiple online casino companies with MGA licensing, including Mansion Online Casino and ONISAC, to the tune of 150,000 combined.

A year later, in 2015, the DGA imposed a stiffer penalty on ComeOn Europe, also licensed and regulated by the MGA. This time, the online casino was required to pay a punitive amount of 180,000 for intentionally targeting Dutch players. According to reports from the Dutch Gaming Authority (DGA) all the iGaming operators have already paid their fines.

The Hague District Court Weighs In

Recently, these online gaming operators have brought their case to the District Court of The Hague to appeal the ruling. The subsequent judgment of The Hague District Court upheld the fines levied against the operators, given that online gambling remains a prohibited activity in the Netherlands. There is a proviso that if the Dutch Gaming Authority registers the operator, it will be allowed to offer online gambling activity in the Netherlands.

Under current law, the DGA does not permit foreign-based operators to offer services in the Netherlands. Earlier in 2017, Kansspelautoriteit issued a fine of 170,000 against the Tiplix iGaming brand. In recent months, the Dutch Gaming Authority has adopted a particularly tough stance against foreign-licensed online gambling operators tapping into the Dutch market. If the new code gets approved, fines in the region of 820,000 may be imposed on online casinos and poker rooms offering their services to the Netherlands.

Senators Awaiting Gambling Bill

Despite the recent appeals, it remains to be seen whether the courts will overturn the ruling of The Hague District Court. The reasoning behind the stiff penalties is related to money flow. The Dutch authorities do not want online gambling revenues going to international operators  they want everything to be taxable under the Netherlands law, and for revenues to flow into government coffers.

There is currently a bill on Senators' desks in the Netherlands waiting to approve the liberalization of the gambling market in the country. It passed the lower house, and is now awaiting passage in the higher house. The authorities in the Netherlands believe that all actions being taken against foreign-based online gambling companies are in accordance with EU law. Current provisions indicate that chance-based games must not be in Dutch, or have a .com address. Further they are not allowed to be advertised in print, television or radio media.
Recent headlines from the mainstream media have cited administration sources in claiming "Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria." And while the administration has not commented, General Raymond Thomas, head of U.S. Special Operations Command has confirmed according to "what he knows of it."

In and of itself this means little to nothing since the arming of the opposition groups in Syria seems from recent reports to have been privatized, using the cover of the Azerbaijan state-run Silk Way Airlines with their diplomatic immunity to avoid inspection, and seemingly largely paid for by the Saudis and Gulf states. This was just recently revealed in Trud, the largest-circulation Bulgarian daily newspaper by reporter Dilyana Gaytandzhieva - although it has been completely ignored in the mainstream media the world over. Much of the arms came from or through Bulgaria. Even if the recent announcement about Trump stopping the CIA from supporting the various Salafist fighters in Syria is actually true, and not just a ruse for one reason or another, that doesn't mean the US is not and will not arm and train the opposition groups anymore in Syria. To quote the Master Yogi:

"It ain't over till it's over."

Right now it looks to many writers and middle-east prognosticators that American forces are settling in to aid in the creation of a Kurdish state encompassing Northern Syria and Northern Iraq. The recent release in the Turkish media of the locations of all American bases in Northern Syria which Erdogan's regime claimed to have no responsibility for, and which the US claims are temporary, supports that view. That has implications for US-Turkey relations since they view the Kurds fighting in Syria (YPG, Yekineyen Parastina Gel, People's Protection Units) as an extension of the Kurdish secular-socialist separatist movement in Turkey (PKK, Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane, Kurdistan Workers' Party) who use bombings in Turkey to make their point none to subtly. If that is the goal of the US, or if that is just the first part of an eventual goal of regime change in Damascus, that remains to be seen.

The Saudis and sheikhs of the Emirates and Qatar have spent billions in buying and supplying massive quantities of every kind of armament you can think of to the various fighting groups - from tanks, artillery, missiles, to you name it. And many sources claim they funded ISIS as well. Americans and Israelis have also spent a lot of money in aiding that effort through arms, logistics, training, field support, and even medical aid.

So I find it hard to believe that at the least the royals in The Kingdom and Gulf states after spending so much are just going to give up on what I have written about previously - they have a plan to conquer Iraq and Syria. First by using America, then afterwards use ISIS to destabilize and destroy the stability of the countries, thereby making it difficult to enable the state to fund a strong military. And then by using the other jihadist groups to continue on. Then when everything is sufficiently destroyed have America with an Arab version of NATO, that was supposedly recently created, come in as saviors. Then installing puppet regimes.

I believe they likely want to covertly or otherwise rule over both Iraq and Syria, not only to end the coalescence of the oft-mentioned "Shi'a Crescent" axis from Iran to the Mediterranean, but also more importantly to control the resources (oil, gas, minerals) to supplement their unknown and dwindling oil reserves (state secret how much). Plus the locations of those countries provide for cheaper transportation of oil and gas to Europe and Asia, who as now are aligned with Iran. Syria may not have a lot of oil right now, but who knows what secrets they may know about unannounced finds? The big reserves in Iraq are not far from their borders. Syria may have a lot of natural gas as well, with recent big finds next to them in the Levantine Basin off of the coast of Israel. That basin extends all through Syrian waters and may be another reason Israel is so invested in regime change - who knows if they have found large reserves but are keeping it secret?

Is Trump really intent on giving up American involvement in regime change for Syria, or is he just pretending to go along with the Russians because his base of voters wants the US to get out of spending so much, and shedding their children's blood in the middle-east? That remains to be seen. With so many different interests and with so much already invested in destroying Iraq and Syria thereby accomplishing the first part of the theoretical plan, I find it hard to believe they will give up because of the Russian obstacle.



The US claims that they will stay in Iraq and Syria after "The Caliphate" is defeated ostensibly to bring support to peace and aid in rebuilding. Which was the exact same thing said about the mission in Afghanistan. After the defeat of the Taliban they would stay for a bit to bring peace and stability and rebuild...they said. So why does that war go on and on? Machiavelli believed that the best way to conquer a state was to keep it in a state of disarray because in that way the people are too busy trying to survive and keep safe to be able to put up much of a resistance. Also industry is then unable to prosper and create wealth. It is well known that Machiavelli is widely read and admired by American leadership, especially by the advocates for American interventionism and war. And if I am right, they are being paid-off by the oil sheikhs and pressured by Israel to stay the course until the job is done. If Trump really is not going along with it, my assumption has been all along that they will successfully get him impeached to further their goal. I see them as the money behind the "Trump is a Russian mole" crusade from the media for the purpose of ensuring his compliance.
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"Rob Kall gives readers an important wake up call to the bottom up power that they have to protect their rights, powers, and freedoms. His advice applies to all aspects of life, including politics, economics, journalism, entertainment, and psychology and wellness. Kall's book explains the differences between the top-down leadership approach of dominating, fear based, disconnected authoritarianism and the bottom-up connection consciousness that emphasizes values, justice, fairness, equity, and kindness. This book helps readers see the whole elephant as opposed to the disconnected parts. Kall gives great advice as to intensifying, expanding, prolonging, and deepening connections. With his professional background, Rob Kall is the perfect person to write this book. This is a very well-researched book that includes dozens of insightful interviews with top-notch experts. Kall shows how bottom-up small acts can produce massive results. He emphasizes that since we cant avoid this emerging bottom-up connection revolution, we need to learn how to navigate and embrace it. This bottom-up leadership will result in power to the people. This is a fascinating and insightful book, especially in this new era of digital hunting and gathering."



Larry Atkins, author of Skewed: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Media Bias
Artist Bobbie Rich will be featured in a solo exhibition on Sunday, July 30th, 2017 at Upper West in Santa Monica. "Ever since I was a little girl I enjoyed art and acting," said artist Bobbie Rich. "I eventually had to make a choice, as there is only so much time." She said she always knew she was supposed to create art...and teaching art affords her a fun outlet to still be on stage, yet do her art at the same time. "I believe God gives us each unique gifts. Life is better when you embrace your gifts, but that doesn't mean everything is easy. Although incredibly rewarding, being an artist isn't exactly the most dependable career path. I am very proud to be a successful artist."

Rich will enjoy her second solo exhibition at Santa Monica restaurant Upper West. "I'm very excited for the July 30th opening bash and to be spending much more time at such a delicious and beautiful restaurant!" The exhibition entitled "Wanderlust" will feature over twenty works. Rich went on to explain that during the summer her teaching schedule lightens up so she has more time to paint and work on her own personal projects. "It's been really wonderful working on my balcony to finish up new works for Upper West. Several have sold, fresh off the easel, so I am really focused on completing new large works to adorn the restaurant."

Rich is a consistent patron of the restaurant---"Upper West has the best Happy Hour around! A few of my favorite options are the Braised Brisket Tacos, the Crispy Glazed Chicken and the Thai Peanut Noodles."

Rich often gives her time helping nonprofits. She recently did some live painting for Harvest Home's Gala at the Fairmont Miramar. Her painting was live auctioned in the ballroom as the grand finale of the evening for $6000, with 100% donated to Harvest Home. Harvest Home transforms the lives of homeless pregnant women and their children by providing housing, support, and programs that equip women to become great mothers.

She was also commissioned by Herman Miller to create a mural. Since she works teaching for Family Art and Art Camp for Community Corp of Santa Monica and the Boys and Girls Club of America at several affordable housing locations, she was able to connect the furniture store with the CCSM and Boys and Girls Club. She personally collaborated with the kids and Herman Miller employees to create a beautiful under the sea mural at 430 Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. "I designed and drew an enormous paint-by-number before the Herman Miller team and Boys and Girls Club kids arrived. All the paints were pre-mixed. Paint swatches were on the walls. Everyone was assigned a color and away we went!"

When asked which artists inspire her these days, she replied, "My students are the emerging artists that most inspire me. I give them enough free reign to test and express their own ideas, while learning all the fundamentals and beyond. Each day is a surprise and I always soak in all the treasures they create."

Meet Bobbie Rich at Upper West restaurant (3321 Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica) on Sunday, July 30th from 4-7pm. www.BobbieRich.com http://www.theupperwest.com/


The Indo-China Conference hall (Indian side, BSF maintained)

(Image by Abhishek_Kumar) Details DMCA



The US is "closely and carefully" the month-long border standoff between China and India, the Trump administration said Friday, urging the two Asian giants to engage in direct dialogue to reduce the tension.

"This is a situation that we are following closely and carefully. I'd have to refer you to the governments of India and China for more information on that," State Department spokesman Heather Nauert told reporters.

Earlier, Gary Ross, a Defense Department spokesman, was quoted by the Press Trust of India (PTI) as saying "We encourage India and China to engage in direct dialogue aimed at reducing tensions and free of any coercive aspects."

Mr. Ross, however, refused to take sides on the issue, the PTI said adding: "We refer you to the governments of India and China for further information... We are not going to speculate on such matters," Mr. Ross said when asked if the Pentagon fears the tension may escalate between India and China.

The U.S. State Department too has made similar statements over the past week, the PTI said.

Don't bank on US and Japan, you'll lose: China warns India

Not surprisingly, the Global Times, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, Friday issued another warning that if India doesn't withdraw its forces from Doklam, China may get prepared for a military confrontation and resolve the conflict through non-diplomatic means.

The Paper reminded India as to how it had underestimated Beijing in 1962 and cautioned not to repeat the 'same mistake'.

Global Times' strongly-worded editorial came a day after Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj told the Parliament that there was no question of pulling Indian forces back from the Doklam territory unless China does the same. Swaraj also stated that all other countries support India's stand on the current stand-off. However, Global Times writes that, "She (Sushma Swaraj) was lying to the parliament."

Global Times said: "First, India's invasion of Chinese territory is a plain fact. New Delhi's impetuous action stuns the international community. No other country will support India's aggression. Second, India's military strength is far behind that of China. If the conflict between China and India escalates to the intensity where their row has to be resolved through military means, India will surely lose."

The editorial said: "India should abandon the fantasy of a long-term standoff at Doklam. China will by no means agree to the withdrawal of troops from both sides in order for talks to be held. Doklam is Chinese territory.

"The withdrawal of Indian troops must be a precondition for talks and China will not compromise on this stance," the Global Times said adding: "If Indian troops continue trespassing into China's territory, what Beijing may do next is to get prepared for a military confrontation and resolve conflict through non-diplomatic means."

Ajit Doval's visit key to ease Sikkim standoff: Chinese analyst

Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval's visit to Beijing for a meeting of NSAs from BRICS countries may be key to ease tensions between India and China over the military standoff in Dokalam, a Chinese analyst was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Quicklink Not Found

Sometimes, authors delete their quicklinks after publishing them.



To see if the quicklink was renamed or re-published, please click here.
Progressive Content Not Found

Sometimes, authors delete their progressive content after publishing.



To see if the progressive content was renamed or re-published, please click here.
Its time for U.S. Sen. Steve Daines to come home to face his constituents  and the music.

While holding face-to-face public meetings will undoubtedly be an uncomfortable experience for Montanas Republican senator at times, it is increasingly necessary.

Its no exaggeration to say that many Montanans have been in a near-panic about health care reform. Notwithstanding the lack of action in the Senate so far, there is good reason to worry about the future of health care in America, and the likelihood that rural states like Montana will be hit hardest by rollbacks. The current climate of uncertainty surrounding Medicaid and other vital programs is already having an effect on the nations health industries, with hospital networks planning drastic cuts and insurers planning rate hikes.

The organization that oversees St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula and other clinics in western Montana, Providence Health & Services, recently announced an aggressive cost-cutting campaign that will include layoffs, according to The Oregonian newspaper.

And Montanas largest provider of health insurance, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, is proposing an average rate increase of more than 23 percent next year for nearly 32,000 individual market enrollees.

Amid these troubling developments, many Montanans have been left feeling that our most powerful member of Congress has all but abandoned us.

Instead of returning to Montana frequently and attending town halls in person, Daines has chosen to stay in Washington, D.C., for the most part and host tele-town halls instead. Tele-town halls certainly have their advantages: they allow many more Montanans, from anywhere in the state, to call in and listen to a public dialogue that is likely to cover at least the most pressing issues.

But they should never replace face-to-face meetings between Montanans and our elected officials. Indeed, such meetings are one of the key benefits of living in a large state with a relatively small population; we enjoy unparalleled access to our federal representatives.

Yet instead of leveraging that access and showing Montanans he cares enough about their concerns to look us in the eye, he called for the Senate to cancel its August recess.

Daines reasoning was that the Senate still had a lot of work to do, and not many days left to do it. Yet there is no guarantee the nations senators would use their extra time wisely. Indeed, there is a raft of evidence to suggest they would squander it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not cancel the recess, but he did agree to delay its start until the third week of August. Senators should certainly make the best possible use of these additional weeks  and then return to their home states ready to spend some real quality time with their constituents.

Of course, the looming recess shouldnt preclude any of them from visiting their home states beforehand  or Daines from arranging in-person town halls immediately.

The stories shared at these town halls are often hard to hear. They offer Montanans a chance to face their representatives and talk about their most personal problems. Often, they will pointedly blame those representatives for causing, or not fixing, their problems. And such stories provide plenty of fodder for opposition parties to use in the next campaign season.

But they also provide elected officials the opportunity to defend their actions and explain how they are working behalf of their constituents. Every face-to-face meeting is a chance to show Montanans they are not just politicians, but people too.

As a senator and a member of the majority party, Daines is in a unique position to influence legislation in a way that ensures Montanas interests are represented. We cant help but recall when former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, was in a similar position less than a decade ago  and used it to become one of the chief architects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Daines made headlines last week for his attendance at an exclusive dinner with President Trump and seven Republican senators. The dinner was billed as an effort by Trump to shore up support for his health reform bill, although Daines told Washington Post reporters that the discussion wandered to other topics, such as the presidents recent trip to Paris.

How frustrating that Daines did not use this moment to press the president and fellow senators on the need to craft effective legislation that allows rural health providers in Montana to continue serving their patients, a sizable number of whom are veterans, Native Americans and people with disabilities.

That same day, other Republican senators announced they would not vote for the latest version of the Senate health bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, effectively shelving it. That same week, other Republican senators announced they would not support efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement.

Last month, Daines expressed frustration with the lack of transparency and the lack of visibility with the Senate health reform process. He has been a staunch proponent of repealing the ACA, but a less decisive advocate of any replacement proposals.

So its no wonder if he is reluctant to come to Montana and meet personally with Kalispells Ben Long, whose 13-year-old son suffers from seizures and whose family would be medically bankrupt if the current Senate health bill becomes law. Or speak with Missoulas Mark Boatman, who has life-threatening muscular dystrophy but is able to receive care at home thanks to Medicaid. Or face the dozens of protesters who regularly gather outside his offices in Missoula and elsewhere.

But he needs to. The lives of untold numbers of Montanans will be directly affected by Daines actions, or lack of action, in the Senate. He ought to meet with them directly too.


Militarized Police

(Image by U.S. Army Europe) Details DMCA



by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

"Lyles was deemed a pathology, to be snuffed out."

Although little is known about the circumstances of her fatal encounter with Minneapolis police, Justine Damond's death is worldwide news, a "tragedy" that sparked protests from Minnesota to her native Australia. The 40 year-old yoga and meditation teacher set the process of her demise in motion by calling the cops, at about 11:30 on a Saturday night, when she heard what she believed was a sexual assault in progress outside the home she shared with her fiance' in a "quiet" neighborhood dotted with shops and cafes. Damond was standing in an alley outside her house, wearing pajamas, when a young Somali-born officer shot her in the abdomen, reportedly after hearing a loud noise.

Damond had come to the United States seeking "a new life," according to friends. She is near-universally presumed to be innocent -- which is almost certainly true, although the assumption is based almost entirely on her race and class. Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges quickly announced she was "heartsick and deeply disturbed" by the shooting.

On June 18, at about ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, 30 year-old Charleena Lyles also made a fatal call to the police. The Black mother of four, who was three-months pregnant, reported a possible burglary at her apartment in northeast Seattle. When the cops arrived, they claimed Lyles began talking about the burglary, but then suddenly lunged at them with a knife, yelling "You ready? Motherf---s." The officers are required to carry nonlethal weapons, but chose to subdue her with bullets rather pepper spray or tasers. According to family members, Ms Lyles had been struggling with mental health issues, but was not violent.

Ms. Lyles was also innocent, especially since the police were aware of her mental health problems. But she did not benefit from a presumption of innocence, nor was she treated as a person in need of help -- because she was Black and poor. She was deemed a pathology, to be snuffed out.

"The cops chose to subdue her with bullets rather pepper spray or tasers."

Both women were killed by cops, but the two deaths are quite different, in political and historical terms. Charleena Lyles is one of the millions of victims of the mass Black incarceration regime -- a U.S. government policy imposed two generations ago that is designed to terrorize and contain Black men, women and children through the full force of the State. Justine Damond's death is the incidental, collateral damage that sometimes flows from that policy. Lyles' death was premeditated, the result of calculated policy; Damond's demise was a mistake, immediately depicted as such by the media and lamented by the mayor.

Charleena Lyles is one of five Black women killed by U.S. police so far this year, according to the body count kept by the Washington Post. At least two of them were pregnant. The African American Policy Forum's "Say Her Name" campaign reports that, although Black women and girls make up only 13 percent of the U.S. female population, they account for 33 percent of all women killed by police. In raw numbers, white women outnumber Black women by five to one, but police kill nearly as many Black females as they do white females.

"Lyles' death was premeditated, the result of calculated policy; Damond's demise was a mistake , immediately depicted as such by the media and lamented by the mayor."

U.S. police kill more Black women every year than the total of all civilians killed annually by their counterparts in western Europe's largest countries: the UK, France, and Germany. These sisters' male relatives and loved ones are slaughtered on an epic scale -- with the connivance and consent of most of the Congressional Black Caucus, 80 percent of whose members voted to continue the militarization of local police when the issue came up for a vote on the full House floor in June of 2014.

Florida Congressman Alan Grayson's bill would have halted the Pentagon's infamous 1033 program, which transfers military weapons, equipment and training to local police departments. However, four out of five Black congresspersons either voted against ending the program (27 votes) or abstained (5 votes), which had the same result. Only eight members of the Black Caucus opted to end the Pentagon transfers, which increased 24-fold during Barack Obama's two terms in the White House.

Karen Bass (CA)

Joyce Beatty (OH)

Sanford Bishop (GA)

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
From Consortium News



Environmental Protection Agency logo

(Image by EPA) Details DMCA



The decision by President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency to rebuff the advice of its own scientists to ban the brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos has prompted protests from California's farm worker communities, now demanding an immediate statewide ban of the dangerous chemical.

A delegation delivered more than 167,000 petition signatures along with a letter signed by 75 organizations representing hundreds of thousands of Californians. The petition was also co-signed by Care2, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, Courage Campaign, CREDO, Friends of the Earth, and Pesticide Action Network.

EPA scientists have documented that chlorpyrifos can cause serious and profound neurological and respiratory damage, as well as developmental delays, autism and IQ loss for children -- even in very small doses, say the activists.

They maintain that the use of chlorpyrifos is particularly problematic in California, "where more than one million pounds of the neurotoxic organophosphate pesticide are used each year, much of it in close proximity to schools and residences. Accounting for roughly 10% of the nationwide total, this chemical is applied on dozens of crops in the state. In the Monterey Bay Area, chlorpyrifos is most heavily used on wine grapes, Brussels sprouts, and apple orchards. In 2016, the air monitor at the Salinas Airport registered average air levels of chlorpyrifos three times higher than the EPA's target risk level."

According to Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR), a statewide coalition of more than 190 organizations, "after years of stalling, EPA was set to implement a ban on chlorpyrifos use on food crops in March. But under intense pressure from Dow Chemical, the largest manufacturer of the neurotoxic pesticide, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed the agency's plan and announced he was allowing continued agricultural use of chlorpyrifos."

The group's statement went on to say "just last November, the EPA announced that it intended to revoke all food tolerances of chlorpyrifos, calling exposure to any amount unsafe. Underscoring the importance of this proposed ban, the agency cited the serious dangers of chlorpyrifos exposure and added that young children risk exposure from food residues alone that are 14,000 percent higher than the level EPA currently believes is safe."

I spoke with Lucia Calderon, an organizer with Safe Ag Safe Schools and Californians for Pesticide Reform, about the battle against chlorpyrifos.

Dennis Bernstein: Tell us exactly what it is -- what's the chemistry we're talking about here? And then we'll talk about how dangerous it is.

Lucia Calderon: Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate insecticide, and its main action is to harm the brains of the insects that the agricultural industry is trying to kill. And, incidentally, it has been shown to really, really harm brains, especially children's developing brains.

DB: Children's developing brains -- say a little bit more about that. Are there cases? Are there studies being conducted now? Are there examples of kids being hurt? What can you say about that?

LC: Yeah, well this is a really historical issue. Chlorpyrifos was actually banned for residential use. It started being phased out in 2000, because of its proven association with developmental harm. And UC Berkeley and Columbia University both had big parts in these studies. In 2000 the science was known that chlorpyrifos was extremely harmful to developing brains and bodies, and it was banned for residential use.

But nowadays it is not banned for agricultural use, and it's still being used in our fields, especially in California fields. We account for a fifth of the entire nation's use of this chemical pesticide. And so, what we're looking at is science that has been established, and is continuing to come out, showing these really detrimental effects of this chemical. And there is complete inaction on the federal level.



Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt

(Image by Gage Skidmore) Details DMCA



DB: So the EPA was set to pass a ban on this, right? Until the new folks came in?

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
From Paul Craig Roberts Website

Despite unrealistic plots and weak characterization (except for Francis Urquhart), Michael Dobbs' books, House of Cards, Play the King, and The Final Cut were best sellers that provided the basis for a long-running TV series.

I haven't seen the films, but I have read the books. I conclude that plot and characters are mere props for the didactic lesson of the novels: Democratic politics is concerned only with power and sex. Nothing else is in the picture.

There is no such thing as a politician concerned with the people's well being or capable of marital fidelity. The media are as bad as the politicians. Female journalists use their bodies for access to power and become accomplices in political intrigues. Idealism is merely another vehicle used in the competition for power.

I suspect the novels and TV series were popular because they expose politics for what it is. Politics serves only personal ambition. This is a lesson that liberals and progressives, who present government as a public-spirited alternative to private greed, need to learn.

In showing politics in service to personal ambition, Dobbs is a master of truth despite his shortcoming as a novelist.
What's up with NATO these days?

In 2009, NATO celebrated its 60th anniversary. With its recent deluge of new member states, it needed more space and announced it would build a new HD across the street from the bunker-like 1950s original one.



It was supposed to open in 2015, but in a fitting metaphor for the troubled organization, it was discovered that the half billion euro project would cost twice that, and would not be finished till 2017. Just in time, as the new US president was toying with the idea of dispensing with what he has called an expensive, obsolete organization, even as it continues to expand, long after what many considered to be its expiry date.





Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
From Gush Shalom



George Soros

(Image by boellstiftung) Details DMCA



GEORGE SOROS, the American multi-billionaire, is causing Binyamin Netanyahu a lot of trouble.

At this particular moment, Netanyahu does not need any more trouble. A huge corruption affair, concerning German-built submarines, is rolling slowly and inexorably towards him.

Soros is a Hungarian Jew, a Holocaust survivor. The Hungarian governing party plastered his face all over Budapest with a text that barely hid its anti-Semitic intent. Soros' sin is his support for human rights associations in his former homeland. He does the same in Israel, though on a much smaller scale. So Netanyahu does not like him either.

This has created an awkward situation. Netanyahu was about to visit Budapest to meet his Hungarian opposite number Victor Orban, who is suspected of being a mild anti-Semite. Netanyahu considers him a right-wing soul-mate.

The Hungarian Jewish community was upset. They demanded that Netanyahu postpone his visit until the Soros posters were removed. Eventually most -- but not all -- of the posters were indeed taken down, and Netanyahu met with Orban. But the entire episode showed that the interests of the State of Israel and the interests of Jewish communities around the world are not automatically identical, as Zionists would have us believe.

THERE WAS another incident prior to the Hungarian meeting. A few days earlier, at a public event, Orban had lauded Admiral Miklos Horthy, the head of the Hungarian state during World War II, when Hungary cooperated with Nazi Germany like all of Eastern Europe (except Poland, which was occupied).

So how could Orban laud Horthy on the eve of Netanyahu's visit?

As a matter of fact, Horthy's role is still hotly debated. A self-declared anti-Semite and enigmatic person, he succeeded where no other European leader did: he saved many hundreds of thousands of Jews by disobeying and cheating Hitler.

One of them was an aunt of mine, who married a Hungarian Jew in Berlin and was deported by the Nazis to Hungary, where she survived, eventually reaching Palestine. Another was "Tommy" Lapid, a child in Budapest who became a famous personality in Israel. His son, Yair, is now a politician who seeks to supplant Netanyahu. He probably would not exist but for Horthy's devious actions.

I CANNOT resist interrupting here in order to tell a historical joke.

After Pearl Harbor, Hitler and his entire gang of foreign collaborators declared war on the US. The Hungarian ambassador in Washington was also instructed to submit a declaration of war to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who decided to mock him.

"Hungary, Hungary -- are you a republic?" he asked.

"No, sir, we are a kingdom."

"Really? So who is your king?"

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
From Common Dreams

Only stupid people say torture works -- and one of them is sitting in the White House.



Gitmo Torture Camp

(Image by adilbookz) Details DMCA



It should come as no surprise to anyone that Donald Trump is pro-torture. He said on the campaign trail he'd approve waterboarding "in a heartbeat," plus "a hell of a lot worse."

He added: "Only a stupid person would say it doesn't work."

There are certainly a lot of stupid people then, because everyone from interrogators to researchers have repeatedly concluded that torture doesn't work. People will say whatever you want them to say to make the pain stop, making torture not only inhumane but also bad for intelligence.

A 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee review concluded that torture "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority." That's why the Senate voted in 2015 to turn the presidential ban on torture into official law.

To his credit, Trump did water down his original support for torture, allowing Defense Secretary James Mattis -- who opposes torture -- to override him.

But if the Trump administration is now opposed to torture, why are they nominating the architects of America's torture fiasco to key posts?

Take Steven Bradbury, nominated to be general counsel for the Transportation Department. Bradbury is infamous for writing the legal memos authorizing CIA torture at the Bush Justice Department.

Bradbury's confirmation was placed on hold by Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq veteran who lost her legs in the war. "The actions you helped justify put our troops in harm's way, put our diplomats deployed overseas in harm's way, and you compromised our nation's very values," she said angrily at his confirmation hearing.

Or what about Donald Trump's nominee to head the FBI, Christopher Wray?

Wray was at the Justice Department when attorney John Yoo and others were drafting their torture memos. Wray knew about detainee abuse and did not, as head of the criminal division, bring charges against any of the Bush administration torturers -- except for one low-level CIA contractor who beat a prisoner to death.

A third person connected to torture is Gina Haspel, who was appointed deputy director of the CIA. Haspel ran a "black site" prison in Thailand where suspects were waterboarded -- and then helped destroy video of the interrogations.

The Senate Intelligence Committee meticulously documented the sordid U.S. record of torture under the Bush administration in a 6,770-page report. But the public hasn't been able to read it -- only the executive summary has been released.

Yet this isn't just an exercise in history. In June, Human Rights Watch and the Associated Press published explosive reports revealing a secret network of prisons in southern Yemen run by U.S.-allied United Arab Emirates and Yemeni forces.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
During his presidential campaign Donald Trump refused to release his tax returns, claiming that his current return was under audit.

Although an audit is no official barrier for release of a tax return, The National Memo lists 24 times from April 19, 2011, to July 28, 2016, when Trump repeated his pledge to release his tax returns after the audit. And on May 20, 2014 he announced on an Irish television station: "If I decide to run for office, I'll produce my tax returns, absolutely," and added "I would love to do that."

Now his generous offers are off the table and off limits in the face of the possibility that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is very likely to include those tax returns in his investigation.

In Trump's panic over this prospect, and his desperation to conceal his returns, he is now threatening to fire Robert Mueller if he dares to cross the forbidden line and investigates his family's finances, which would include tax returns.

In the face of an obvious cover-up, Trump is purging his team of sycophants in an effort to keep only those willing to pledge total loyalty by bowing and kissing the Don's ring.

Some, like Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are staying on for the moment, despite Trump throwing them under the bus. They will surely land on Trump's watch list. Other loyalists, though, continue a barrage of subterfuge.

For example, Trump's "alternative facts" expert, Kellyanne Conway, said on July 16, 2017, that Trump will not release his tax returns because people don't care, when in the world of real facts the rising cacophony of demands for release of his tax returns is deafening.

To identify the real culprits who are not demanding that Trump reveal his tax returns, you don't have to look any further than Republicans in Congress who voted to block legislation that would demand Trump's tax returns.

With more and more revelations about Trump and his family's financial connections to Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin, Robert Mueller should not be the only one aggressively seeking the President's tax returns.

When the truth finally comes out we may have confirmation of all the deplorables who failed to take action in demanding Trump's tax returns right from the get-go--those who placed party and lust for power over country.

If Donald Trump is so worried about what Robert Mueller's investigation will uncover that he is looking into his powers of pardon, shouldn't Congress also worry and take action now to obtain Trump's tax returns and reveal them to the American public?
Mr Mohammed Amin Adam, a Deputy Minister of Energy, says Ghana will by the end of 2017, have an open register of contracts in the extractive sector as well as an online data repository.



Speaking on a panel at a session on Open Contracting in the Extractive industries at the 2nd Africa Open Data Conference, held in Accra from July 17 to 21, Mr Adam said the Government was serious about the commitments it made when President Akufo Addo attended the Anti-Corruption Summit.



Key among the commitments, which could impact the extractive sector, are the legislation for the disclosure of beneficial ownership information and ensuring contract and fiscal transparency.



He stated that while Ghana was not able to get clauses on disclosure of beneficial ownership into the Petroleum Exploration and Production Bill before it was passed in August 2016, the Government would include provisions for beneficial ownership disclosure in the regulations for the implementation of the Law.



He said the amendment to the Companies Code, however, had taken serious note of the need for beneficial ownership to be legislated, although though the last draft required the establishment of a beneficial ownership register, did not allow the register to be made open to the public.



I will like to assure you that I have been part of meetings chaired by the Vice President of the country, in which he is demanding a review of those amendments to allow for the register to be made public, he stated.

Mr Adam also reiterated the Governments commitment to open and competitive tendering and contracting as well as ensuring value for money.



He said a petroleum register will be established where all contracts will be published.

This, he said, would consolidate the publication of the contracts and ensure citizens had access to the full text and other data in the contract.



Dr Steve Manteaw, a Senior Researcher at ISODEC, said civil society organisations and the public still did not have full disclosure benefits and urged the Government to commit to opening up their work and information to the public.

CSOs are doing the best they can but we need the Government to open up its processes, he stated.



The second AODC opened in Accra on Monday on the theme: Open Data for Sustainable Development in Africa with more than 600 participants.



The five-day conference kicked off on Monday with sector-specific site visits, aimed at setting the tone for the weeks discussions.



The site visits were hosted by civic and tech hubs including, Penplusbytes, Mobile Web Ghana, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, iSpace, Impact Hub Accra and the Kofi Annan ICT Centre.

Hosted by the Ministry of Communications and the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), the conference sessions explored open data related topics in Extractives, Agriculture, media, governance, gender and education, among others.



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo- Addo and Mrs Ursula Owusu Ekuful, Minister of Communications, gave the keynote address and official welcoming remarks respectively, on Thursday.

The Agriculture Ministry addressed the issues related to implementing open data policies in the sector.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A warrant officer with the Ghana Armed Forces base in Takoradi in the Western Region, WO Asiedu is in the grips of the Takoradi Central Police for threatening to release nude photos of an SHS student.



WO Asiedu issued the threat after the student failed to give in to his demands for a sexual intercourse.



According to a journalist, WO Asiedu cunningly pestered the girl for her nude photos for months.



After she had given the photos, Officer Asiedu threatened to post her nude photos on social media if she fails to give in to his demands for a sexual intercourse.



The girl, who refused to give in to his demands reported the persistent harassment to his brother who subsequently reported it to journalists.



After informing a national security operative about the incident, they asked the girl to arrange and meet the man at a nearby hotel.



The excited officer met the girl shortly after the Police moved in to arrest him.



A search conducted in his house revealed the said nude images on his computer which has since been seized together with other gadgets by the Police.



WO Asiedu is currently in the grips of the Takoradi Central Police Station assisting with further investigations.

Source: Citifmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A retired nurse, priest, businessman, former drug-addiction counselor, and reformed convict are the driving force behind a proposal to establish a residential facility for formal criminal offenders in an industrial area near MSE.

Representatives of Criminal Solutions Group, a nonprofit, will appear before Buttes zoning board Tuesday night, at which time theyll ask for a special-use permit. The permit is needed because the area in question is in a light industrial zone where residences arent normally permitted.

The group wants to establish the facility in an existing building at 105 N. Parkmont St., the former site of Jims Custom Gun Works.

The property consists of a warehouse and 1,600-square-foot residential unit. The unit was built at a time when zoning rules allowed business owners to have a home attached to their place of work. Zoning rules have since changed, thus requiring the applicants to ask for a special-use permit. The applicants are not proposing any physical changes to the property, which is already equipped with a parking lot and landscaping.

According to a Zoning Board staff analysis, the nonprofit has already started using the property.

The analysis states that members of the nonprofit did not know about zoning restrictions in the area because the building was already equipped with a home. This lead to a meeting with Butte Chief Executive Dave Palmer and a subsequent notice from the zoning board about the permit application process, the staff analysis said.

Criminal Solutions, meanwhile, has a goal of preventing recidivism and helping former criminal offenders transition back into society.

Jeannette Rose, a retired nurse and entrepreneur who has worked 50-plus years in the hospitality and service industry, is on the board of the nonprofit and will be an on-site house manager of the facility.

Rose said the facility is for people who have recently exited the criminal justice system and is able to accommodate up to five residents at a time.

Most of the residents are on probation or parole, Rose explained, and are legally entitled to come and go as they please. However, the facility has a curfew, which residents agree to as a condition of them living in the facility. Similarly, the residents are screened and go through an application and interview process.

Another condition of living in the facility is employment.

Residents are required to find jobs and pay rent at the facility. Rose said one of Criminal Solutionss long-term goals is to give residents access to life-skills training and establish businesses where residents can work.

We want to manufacture jobs and businesses, the house manager said, adding that its really difficult for an ex-con to get established in a job or career.

Heading Criminal Solutions is Butte resident Phil Keating, the nonprofits chief executive officer. Rose described Criminal Solutions as a dream of Keatings and said that the Butte resident has been wanting to build such a facility for about 10 years.

Keating, who was convicted of threats in official matters in the 1990s, spoke with The Montana Standard by phone and said his experience in the criminal justice system is part of what inspired him to create the Criminal Solutions group.

Keating said he drew much of his inspiration from a similar project in San Francisco called Delancey Street, a 46-year-old nonprofit that provides housing and vocational training to former criminal offenders. The organization operates several businesses, which are run and managed by its residents.

Keating said that people exiting the criminal justice system face a host of challenges as they transition back into society and that one of the goals of the nonprofit is to address these challenges in an effort to prevent recidivism

On a national basis, recidivism is one of the biggest problems (in the criminal justice system), said Keating. (Criminal Solutions) is an effort to help curb that.

Zoning board staff, meanwhile, is recommending approval of the nonprofit's application.
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.




French-language HD lifestyle network TV5MONDE and SONIFI Solutions have extended their national hotel channel agreement in the US for an additional two years.

The companies work will expand the offer of TV5MONDE Voyage and TV5MONDE Cinema on Demand.Geared to travellers and subtitled in English, TV5MONDE Voyage is currently available across the US in the majority of four- and five-star hotels representing approximately 225,000 rooms, offering a variety of lifestyle programming that can be viewed at all the prominent hospitality brands. To date, Voyage is viewed by 8% of all travellers staying at US hotels where it is on the line-up. TV5MONDE Cinema meanwhile is a branded video-on-demand channel which provides travellers with recently released French films.We have greatly enjoyed our partnership with SONIFI Solutions and look forward to continuing our relationship by providing travellers across America staying at these leading-edge hotels with the best in French language programming, said TV5MONDE GM Yves Bigot.A renewed partnership between TV5MONDE and SONIFI is the direct result of increased guest satisfaction at hotels where Voyage is available, added Shivan Sihota, director of programming, SONIFI. We strive to provide programming for a diverse guest audience, so this partnership with TV5MONDE is very important to us.
The H Collective, a US-based film finance, production, marketing and distribution company, will release its first film, the highly-anticipated Wolf Warrior 2, on 28 July.

The sequel to 2015s hit film Wolf Warrior , which grossed $80 million in China, will open nationwide in the US and is day-and-date with its release in China. This is the first film in the companys exclusive acquisition deal to bring films from Beijing culture to North America.Wolf Warrior 2 is directed by Wu Jing (Shaolin, Wolf Warrior) who stars along with Frank Grillo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War) and Celina Jade (The Man with the Iron Fists, TVs Arrow).
Afghan authorities have launched a search for some 30 villagers still missing two days after a mass kidnapping in the southern province of Kandahar.

Abdul Raziq, head of the Kandahar provincial police, said about 70 villagers were kidnapped from their homes by gunmen along the main highway in the province on July 21. He said at least seven of them were later killed.

Kandahar police spokesman Zia Durrani said about 30 people were released on July 23 but around 30 others were still missing.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, although the Taliban has a heavy presence in the region, which is known as a poppy-growing area.

The extremist group has often targeted government officials and security forces for attacks, but the Taliban has been also known to kidnap civilians for use as hostages.

In a statement on July 23, the Taliban denied any involvement in the kidnappings.

Based on reporting by AFP and AP
A situation in the Crazy Mountains, near Big Timber, has existed for some time and now has become serious. Landowners are attempting to close access to both ends of thousands of acres of Forest Service land that has had legal established public access across private land for many years.

Coincidentally, this Forest Service land, which is public property, has abundant wildlife which is also public property. Some area landowners and area outfitters want to lock this area up for themselves while keeping the public out.

Incredibly, a Forest Service district ranger, Alex Sienkiewicz has been reassigned to another position because he was protecting the public interests according to the law. This smells of politics and there are politicians involved in this dispute. Why would politicians want to become involved in a dispute between landowners, outfitters and the Forest Service?

First, they were invited by some of the combatants in the dispute in order to strengthen their cause.

Second, let us not be stupid. What is driving this situation is not private property rights. It is pure greed. By locking up that public land they are trying to steal public property. It is very cheap if stolen. No money to borrow, no taxes to pay, no maintenance costs.

Politicians are involved because the wealthy have been trying to steal property from the public (that is you and me) for years. According to Merriam-Webster, a thief is one that steals. So, by definition, are those trying to block the public out of their own land, thieves?

According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Current administrative officials have made it clear that they favor extractive industries and the privileged few rather than the public in general.

So where did these administrative officials and congressmen come from? Regrettably, we elected some of them. Others are a result of Washingtons draining of the swamp so to speak. The problem is that the swamp has been refilled. It does not smell good. In fact it is now a cesspool and what has floated to the top? Administrative officials and congressmen who want to steal public land.

If Montanans do not become involved, we may lose our wildlife, public lands and rivers to the privileged few. Contact your congressmen. Tell them that Public Property Rights are equal to Private Property Rights. Tell them we want Montana to always be The Last Best Place for Montanans.

-- Harold Johns, Butte
The top U.S. military officer has told a security conference that Russia is the most-capable state actor that the United States faces, but it is just one of many security challenges in todays environment.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on July 22 at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado that Russia...is one of the threats that we face right now, and is the one that is the most militarily capable.

But he added that we dont actually have the luxury today of singling out one challenge.

Obviously, North Korea today from a sense-of-urgency perspective would be our no. 1 challenge, he said.

Were certainly dealing with a malign influence from Iran on a daily basis. Clearly, the fight against violent extremism is one were completely engaged with. And we have some security challenges in the Pacific," including "the rise of China.

When asked how the United States can push back against Russia for continuously challenging the West in Ukraine, its actions in Syria, and its buzzing of U.S. warplanes, Dunford said that in dealing with Russia, first and foremost, we have to be able to deter nuclear war, so we have a nuclear deterrent.

He also cited maintaining capabilities for conventional military defenses and the need for allies and partners, emphasizing relationships with other NATO members.

But he said the United States must also be prepared to deal with threats from Russia in nonmilitary matters as well.

Russias adversarial competition also involves cybercapabilities and information and unconventional operations, he said.

Dunford said he had no reason to question the U.S. intelligence communitys conclusion that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election.

President Donald Trump has often expressed doubts about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

In regard to Syria, he said Russia and Iran have divergent long-term political objectives in the country and the longer the conflict drags on, the more those divergent objectives will be exposed.

Its fair to say Russia and Iran are competing for influence in Syria, he said in reference to their dealings with Syrian President Bashar al-Assads government.

That marriage of the Syrian regime, the Russian Federation, and Iran is not one that will endure.

What Iran wants in the region is different from what Russia wants.... Its hard to reconcile those perspectives, he said.

He played down reports that it was a foregone conclusion there would be undue Iranian influence in Iraq, with one report calling it a proxy state of Iran.

Ive been in Iraq for a couple of years. It has not been my experience that its a foregone conclusion, he said.

I think theres a pretty solid strain of Iraqi nationalism in Iraq, he said, while acknowledging they share a border and many similar cultural, religious, and economic interests.

Our continued support for Iraq to have a solid political arrangement...allows it to be independent, and having independent security forces is a key, he said.
The White House on November 12 hailed Russias withdrawal from the Ukrainian city of Kherson as an "extraordinary victory" for Ukraine.

"It does look as though the Ukrainians have just won an extraordinary victory where the one regional capital that Russia had seized in this war is now back under a Ukrainian flag -- and that is quite a remarkable thing," national-security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters as he accompanied President Joe Biden to the ASEAN summit in Cambodia.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

Sullivan spoke hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy declared that Kherson is "ours after his special forces entered the strategic southern city following the retreat of Russian troops, marking another dramatic battlefield victory in Kyivs drive to recapture territory occupied by Russia since the start of its unprovoked invasion.

Separately, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said on November 12 that Moscow's "strategic failure" in Kherson will sow doubt among the Russian public about the point of the war in Ukraine.

"Russia's announced withdrawal from Kherson marks another strategic failure for them. In February, Russia failed to take any of its major objectives except Kherson," Wallace said in a statement. "Now with that also being surrendered, ordinary people of Russia must surely ask themselves: 'What was it all for?'"

Video posted online showed people on the streets, flying Ukraine's national flag and chanting as Ukrainian troops arrived in the city. Photos circulating on social media on November 12 showed Ukrainian activists removing memorial plaques put up by the occupation authorities the Kremlin installed to run the Kherson region.

"We are winning battles on the ground. But the war continues," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said after Ukraine's recovery of Kherson.

Speaking at the summit in Cambodia on November 12, Kuleba said that reclaiming the city was "quite an exercise.

I understand that everyone wants this war to end as soon as possible. We are definitely the ones who want that more than anyone else," Kuleba said during a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of the summit.

Sullivan said that the Russian retreat would have "broader strategic implications," including relieving the longer-term threat by Russia to other southern Ukrainian cities, such as Odesa.

"It's a big moment, and it's due to the incredible tenacity and skill of the Ukrainians, backed by the relentless and united support of the United States and our allies," Sullivan said.

Asked about reports that the Biden administration has started to press Zelenskiy to explore negotiations with Moscow, Sullivan said that Russia, not Ukraine, was the side that has to decide whether or not to go to the table.

"This whole notion, I think, in the Western press of, 'When's Ukraine going to negotiate?' misses the underlying fundamentals," Sullivan said.

WATCH: Local residents welcomed Ukrainian soldiers into Snihurivka on November 10, as advance forces of the Ukrainian military recaptured the town in the southern Mykolayiv region. Other footage from the village of Blahodatne in the Kherson region shows a massive cache of abandoned weapons left by the Russian troops after their retreat.

Russia, he added, continues to make "outlandish claims" about its self-declared annexations of Ukrainian lands, even as it retreats from Ukrainian counterattacks.

"Ultimately, at a 30,000-foot level, Ukraine is the party of peace in this conflict and Russia is the party of war. Russia invaded Ukraine. If Russia chose to stop fighting in Ukraine and left, it would be the end of the war. If Ukraine chose to stop fighting and give up, it would be the end of Ukraine," he said.

"In that context, our position remains the same as it has been and fundamentally is in close consultation and support of President Zelenskiy, he said.

The Ukrainian military said on November 12 that it had carried out stabilization measures near Kherson following the end of the eight-month Russian occupation.

In a regular social media update, the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said the Russians were fortifying their battle lines on the river's eastern bank after abandoning the capital. About 70 percent of the Kherson region remains under Russian control.

With reporting by AFP
Toomaj Salehi's lyrical support for protesters in Iran has landed him behind bars before, but this time the popular rapper's fortune-telling has fans and family members fearing for his life.

Just days before his September 30 arrest, the 32-year-old Salehi released his latest music video, in which he makes foreboding predictions about the future of Iran's clerical regime if it continues its violent crackdown against ongoing anti-government demonstrations.

"I am the predictor, the fortune teller," he raps in the video for Omen, which shows him reading the patterns left in his coffee cup and warning that brute force will not prevail.

"I saw a cage in the coffee grounds -- a lion was hunting a jackal," he explains, alluding to a fairy tale about wisdom defeating physical strength. "We will rise from the bottom and target the top of the pyramid."

Salehi goes on to warn that the regime's protectors -- including the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Basij paramilitary forces, the Intelligence Ministry, and the state media -- will all get their day in court.

Salehi followed up on the new video by posting on social media images of him standing alongside protesters and chanting against security forces in his native city in Isfahan Province. The rapper, an ethnic Lur who was arrested last year after releasing other songs critical of the government, offered to turn himself in if protesters detained in his hometown of Shahinshahr were released.

In subsequent posts, he called the provincial authorities "cowardly vermin" and "scum who suppress and arrest [innocent] people."

Shortly afterward, Salehi went missing and has not been heard from since.

State media reported on September 30 that Salehi had been arrested, and a news agency close to the IRGC published a photo of the blindfolded rapper inside a car.

A short video later released by a press club associated with Iran's state broadcaster purports to show the rapper admitting he made a mistake.

But the reports' claims he had been caught while "illegally exiting the western borders of the country" have been fiercely disputed, and the video confession has been labeled a fake by some and a coerced confession by others.

Family members as well as Salehi's official Twitter account have said the rapper was, in fact, arrested in the southwestern Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province, hundreds of kilometers from Iran's western border.

In a statement, Salehi's uncle Eghbal Eghbali said his nephew was in the province's city of Borujen on the morning of September 30 when he wrote saying "suspicious things" were happening outside his home. Soon after, Salehi stopped communicating. Eghbali said he learned from Salehi's neighbors and friends that security personnel had arrived to take the rapper away.

Later on September 30, a prosecutor in nearby Isfahan Province was quoted by the Meezan news agency, which is close to Iran's judiciary, as saying Salehi was arrested "in one of the provinces of the country." The prosecutor alleged the rapper had played a key role in "creating disturbances and inviting and encouraging the recent disturbances in Isfahan Province and in Shahinshahr."

The official IRNA news agency, meanwhile, quoted a judiciary official from Isfahan Province as saying Salehi stood accused of "propagandistic activity against the government, cooperation with hostile governments, and the formation of illegal groups with the intention of creating insecurity in the country."

Thousands of Iranians, many of them from the younger generation, have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest the September 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died shortly after being arrested for allegedly violating Iran's hijab law requiring that women cover their hair.

As the protests have continued, the authorities have intensified their crackdown, resulting in the deaths of at least 305 people, including 41 children, according to the latest figures released by the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) on November 6.

Salehi is among the hundreds of prominent young voices, including activists, artists, and athletes, who have been arrested for speaking out against the states bloody crackdown on the protests. Overall, activists estimate thousands of people have been arrested by the authorities since the rallies erupted.

Faced with a potential existential threat to Iran's clerical rule, 227 of 290 Iranian lawmakers this week called for even greater force by urging the judiciary to "deal decisively" with those behind the protests.

In recent years, Salehi has gained notoriety for his open opposition to the country's leadership, using his music and social media presence to take on issues that resonate with Iranian youths.

In the song Normal, he highlights the effects of poverty, saying "Our children sleep hungry at night" and asking Iran's leaders how their conscience can let them sleep.

The song Rathole, released in 2021, accuses members of the media and art community both inside and outside Iran of being an "ally of the tyrant," a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In another song, he blasts Tehran's close relationships with Moscow and Beijing, asking: "Haven't you robbed us enough? Now, you want to give away half [of our resources] to China and the rest to Russia."

Salehi was detained in September 2021 after security agents raided his home in Isfahan, with Human Rights Watch decrying the detention of the artist for "exercising his right to freedom of expression."

Salehi was charged with "spreading propaganda against the state," but after more than a week was released on bail. In January, he was sentenced to six months in prison but was released on a suspended sentence in February.

While out, he continued his work and released Omen amid the states increasingly violent crackdown on anti-government protesters.

"Someone's crime was dancing with her hair in the wind," he raps. "Someone's crime was that she was brave and criticized."

Listing a litany of violent acts carried out by the authorities against protesters, Salehi asks, "How many young people did you kill building a tower for yourself?" and predicts that next year, the 44th year of the clerical regime's rule, will be its "year of failure."

Salehi's arrest has led to widespread condemnation inside and outside Iran, and his advocates have spread the #FreeToomaj hashtag on Twitter to shed light on his situation.

His family has said they do not know Salehi's whereabouts or health, leaving them wondering if he is even alive.

But the authorities have shed some light on the fate of another Iranian rapper arrested shortly before Salehi. The judiciary announced on November 7 that Saman Yasin, a rapper from Kermanshah Province -- a northwestern region with a significant Kurdish population and that has been a focus of the government crackdown -- has been accused of waging "warfare" against Iran and acting against the country's security.

Based on reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Farda, with contributions by RFE/RL senior correspondent Michael Scollon
Iranian lawmakers have proposed changes to the countrys tough antidrugs laws, a move that could abolish the death penalty for some drug-related crimes.

If approved by parliament, a proposed amendment could curb the number of executions in the Islamic republic, which has one of the highest rates of capital punishment in the world.

Iran has been under mounting international pressure to curb its number of executions. Human rights groups say Iran executed at least 567 people in 2016 and nearly 1,000 in 2015, including men from Afghanistan, where the majority of illicit drugs come into Iran. Iranian officials say 70 percent of all executions in the country were for drug-related offenses.

In Iran itself, calls have been made to ease the use of capital punishment for drug-related offenses. Critics say the extensive use of the death penalty has done little to stop drug use and trafficking in the country that is on a major transit route for drugs smuggled from Afghanistan.

Iran has some of the toughest drug laws in the world. The death penalty can currently be invoked for the trafficking or possession of as little as 30 grams of heroin or cocaine.



On July 16, parliament approved a proposal to amend the law to disallow the death penalty for petty, nonviolent drug-related crimes. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani, however, sent the draft bill back to the parliamentary judiciary committee for further deliberation.

"I have consulted the head of judiciary regarding this bill, Larijani was quoted as saying by the semiofficial ISNA news agency on July 17. They said they agree with the principle of the bill, but there are still some drawbacks that need to be resolved.

Before becoming law, the legislation needs to be approved by parliament and ratified by the Guardians Council, the powerful clerical body that must approve all proposed legislation.

Height Of Cruelty



The New York-based Human Rights Watch has called for the government to halt all executions for drug-related crimes while parliament debated the reforms.



It makes no sense for Irans judiciary to execute people now under a drug law that will likely bar such executions as early as next month, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. It would be the height of cruelty to execute someone today for a crime that would at worst get them a 30-year sentence when this law is amended.

In November, Hassan Nowruzi, the parliamentary judicial committee spokesman, called for parliament to change the law, revealing that 5,000 people were on death row for drug-related offenses, the majority of them aged between 20 and 30. He said the majority are first-time offenders.

In October, more than 150 lawmakers in the 290-member chamber called for the executions of petty drug traffickers to be halted. Lawmakers also suggested that capital punishment should be abolished for those who become involved in drug trafficking out of desperation or poverty.



In August, Mohammad Baqer Olfat, the deputy head of the judiciary's department for social affairs, said the death penalty had not deterred drug trafficking; in fact, he said, it was on the rise. Rather than the death penalty, he suggested, traffickers should be given long prison terms with hard labor.



Tough Stance



But hard-liners in the judiciary appear to be resistant to the idea of tweaking the country's harsh drug laws.

In comments published in September, Judiciary head Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani defended the bodys tough stance against amendments to the law.



In some cases, including drug trafficking, were forced to act quickly, openly, and decisively, said Larijani, while adding that the judges should not delay the implementation of sentences.



He said in some cases alternative punishments can replace the death penalty while respecting some conditions, but added that the death penalty cannot be ruled out.



Afghan Inmates



Thousands of Afghans involved in the illicit narcotics trade have ended up in Iranian prisons and have been executed. Afghanistan is the worlds largest producer of opium, which is used to make heroin, and Iran is a major transit route for the drug to western Asia and Europe.

The precise number of Afghans executed in Iran over the past several years is unknown. Tehran rarely informs or provides explanations to Kabul about the execution of its citizens.



Afghan media estimates that some 2,000 Afghans have been jailed in Iran on drug-smuggling charges and other criminal acts, while hundreds more face the death penalty.



Afghan lawmakers and human rights groups have raised concerns, saying many Afghans imprisoned in Iran do not receive fair trials because they lack access to defense lawyers and are not given the opportunity to get assistance from Kabul.
Iraqi officials say a German teen girl who was found in Mosul after running away from home after converting to Islam a year ago is in good health.

Iraqi security and intelligence officials said the 16-year-old girl, being identified only as Linda W., was "too stunned" to speak immediately after she was apprehended but is now in better condition.

The officials said she was discovered in the basement of a home in Mosul's Old City earlier this month, one of 26 foreigners arrested in the city as Iraqi forces drove Islamic State (IS) extremists from the group's self-declared capital.

German officials in her home state of Saxony on July 22 confirmed that the girl was from the eastern state and that she was being assisted by the German Embassy in Iraq.

Iraqi officials said Linda W. had been working with the police forces of the extremist group in Mosul.

She could theoretically face the death sentence, according to Iraqi law, for those actions, but she could not be executive before age 22, officials said.

Iraqi officials report she is being held at a prison near the Baghdad airport with other foreign girls and women found in Mosul, including citizens from Belgium, France, Syria, and Iran.

The girl has so far not made a statement, but she will be interrogated by Iraqi security personnel in the presence of German interpreters because she lacks proficient Arabic-language skills, officials said.

The officials said the girl had married a Muslim Arab she met online after arriving in territory controlled at the time by IS. The fate of her husband was not known.

German newspapers have reported the teen ran away from home a year ago in the city of Pulsnitz after communicating with IS extremists online.

Her mother later found a copy of the girl's plane ticket to Turkey under a bed, the newspapers said.

In a separate case, Iraqi officials said a French woman captured on July 9 in Mosul with her four children was facing possible prosecution for allegedly collaborating with IS.

The woman was arrested with her children in a basement in Mosul's Old City. The French government has asked that the Iraqis allow the children to be returned to France.

IS captured Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, in 2014 but were driven from the city after an eight-month battle by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, with the Old City being the final sector to be cleared of extremists.

With reporting by AP and dpa
MOSCOW -- Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Moscow on July 23 to protest Internet censorship and demand the resignation of the head of Russia's state media regulator.

The protest came amid a broad crackdown on online speech in recent years that rights activists say is targeting legitimate dissent under the pretext of battling extremism.

Organizers of the rally, which received official permission from Moscow authorities, called for the rehabilitation of Internet users convicted for reposting material on social networks.

Protesters also called for the sacking of Aleksandr Zharov, the head of Roskomnadzor, the state agency that plays a central role in regulating online speech.

Demonstrators chanted slogans that included "No to censorship, no to dictatorship!" and "Down with the police state!" They also adapted a slogan against Russian President Vladimir Putin frequently chanted at opposition rallies: "Russia without Putin and censorship!"

The protest came two days after Russia's lower house of parliament passed a bill that would prohibit the use of Internet proxy services, including virtual private networks, or VPNs.

The bill, approved in its third and final reading on July 21, would also ban the anonymous use of mobile messaging services.

It will face a single vote in the upper house before going to Putin, who rarely rejects bills adopted by the Kremlin-controlled legislature.

Sarkis Darbinyan, head of the Center for the Defense of Digital Rights, a Moscow-based advocacy group, said he believes the solid turnout for the rally was driven by "typical Internet users" who are "tired of the volume of crazy laws."

He specifically cited the bill that would ban the use of proxy services and the anonymous use of mobile messaging services.

"This really does create problems for the connectivity of the Russian segment of the Internet and for access to services," Darbinyan told RFE/RL. "I think this is why many citizens truly want to come out and openly state their opposition to such ham-fisted regulation of the Internet."

Police estimated the turnout for the demonstration at around 800 people. Opposition activists frequently accuse authorities of playing down the size of public protests.

OVD Info, a website that monitors detentions of political activists, reported that three people had been detained at the rally -- one for distributing leaflets promoting Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.

Two of the detainees were released later in the day, OVD Info reported, including the minor reportedly hauled in for the Navalny leaflets.

The Washington-based rights group Freedom House says Internet freedoms continued to slide in Russia last year, and other international watchdogs have criticized the country's treatment of online speech as well.

Russian officials have repeatedly rejected such criticism. Vyacheslav Volodin, the current speaker of the lower house of parliament, said last year that the Internet in Russia is "more free than in the United States."

In one recent high-profile case, a Russian blogger was convicted of inciting hatred and insulting religious believers' feelings with videos he posted on YouTube -- including one showing him playing Pokemon Go in a church.

The blogger, Ruslan Sokolovsky, was handed a 3-1/2 year suspended sentence that was reduced by more than a year earlier this month.

Sokolovsky was also added to an official list of "terrorists and extremists" maintained by Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service.

With reporting by AFP and Meduza
Syria and Russia have announced agreement on a cease-fire in an area that is a stronghold of opposition forces near the capital, Damascus.

The Syrian military command the Russian Defense Ministry said separately on July 22 that a truce would begin in Eastern Ghouta, one of the last bastions for forces in western Syria fighting against troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian army said in a report by the state SANA news agency that after days of heavy air strikes it would "halt fighting in some areas of Eastern Ghouta" from July 22.

But the army said it would "retaliate in a suitable manner to any violation" of the cease-fire.

Activists reported relative calm in Eastern Ghouta on July 22 despite some violations.

Eastern Ghouta is in one of four proposed "de-escalation zones" named in a deal reached in May by allies Iran and Russia, who back Assad's government, and Turkey, which supports the opposition forces.

But the agreement has not been fully implemented due to disagreements on who would monitor the safe zones.

If successfully implemented, Eastern Ghouta would be the second zone in which a cease-fire has come into force.

The first cease-fire for areas in southern Syria was brokered by Russia, the United States, and Jordan.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, a mediator was killed in a second day of fighting between Hizballah forces and extreme Islamic forces on July 22 in the Jurud Arsal area near the border with Syria, officials said.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
Lawmakers of the pro-Moscow breakaway region of Transdniester assailed calls by the Moldovan government that Russia pull its troops out of the territory.

Transdniesters parliament on July 22 released a statement calling the Moldovan lawmakers demands a "reflection of Chisinau's strategy to destabilize the situation, to fuel the conflict, and bring it to the hot phase," Russian state-run TASS news agency reported.

The Moldovan parliament, in a July 21 vote supported by 61 of the 101 members of parliament, approved a symbolic statement that called for the removal of Russian troops, weapons, and other military equipment from Transdniester.

The declaration said presence of Russian forces "violates the constitutional provisions on independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity" of Moldova.

Moscow-backed and mainly Russian-speaking Transdniester, which borders on Ukraine's Odesa region, declared independence from Moldova in 1990.

The two sides fought a brief war in 1992 that ended when the Russian military intervened on the side of Transdniester, which is not recognized as an independent nation by any country, although Moscow has been unofficially backing the separatist regime.

Moldova itself is split between a pro-West government and a president, Igor Dodon, who supports closer ties with Moscow.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and TASS
The Crazy Mountains soar out of the prairie, suggesting peace and tranquility in this oasis of forest and streams. The idyllic landscape belies longstanding friction over public access to National Forest interspersed with private land.

The latest round centers on the removal of District Ranger Alex Sienkiewicz from field work in the Crazies to an office job pending an internal investigation. That action came in response to pressure from U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue. The senator and secretary reacted to complaints about Sienkiewicz from ranchers and outfitters.

Montana hunters and public access advocates have stepped up to defend Sienkiewicz, saying he was following long-established Forest Service policy.

The simmering controversy heated up last fall when Bozeman hunter Rob Gregoire was cited by a Sweet Grass County deputy sheriff for trespassing on a trail that he and Sienkiewicz believe to be open to the public by prescriptive easement, because it has historically been used by the public to access otherwise inaccessible public land.

Landowners Lee and Barbara Langhus disagree and made the trespass complaint. There is no written easement allowing public access across their land, although the trail has long been marked on Forest Service maps and cited in the Gallatin Forest Travel Plan.

The Crazy Mountains contain more than 8,000 acres of National Forest that the public has no way of accessing. That forest land is surrounded by private holdings. The Crazies also contain a hunting district, much of which is inaccessible to the public, with 2,000 elk  twice the districts maximum target as determined by Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks.

Thats the hunting district that Gregoire was trying to reach. The oversupply of elk feast on some neighbors hay supplies, while others profit from exclusive, limited hunts.

Land ownership in the Crazies is a checkerboard pattern of public and private sections that dates to the 1860s when the U.S. government gave Northern Pacific Railroad 17 million acres of the Montana Territory up to 80 miles from the rail line. More frequent confrontations are cropping up on land that has recently changed ownership with new owners who want their private property off-limits to the public. In other cases, long-time owners may have a beef with Forest Service personnel or bad experiences with the public.

Solutions wont be easy, but resolution efforts need to start now. Theres only one remaining public access to the entire 35-mile-long eastern flank of the Crazies.

From facts reported previously in The Gazette, it appears that Sienkiewicz is being penalized for doing his job. Government employees deserve to know that their supervisors  even the secretary of the department  will stand up for them when they are serving the public.

However, the Forest Service and local landowners have some fence mending to do. Custer Gallatin Forest Supervisor Mary Erickson should have authority to devise better ways to build trust between local landowners and Forest Service personnel in the field. The local forest working group should actively engage citizens with differing perspectives.

In the long run, landowners, hunters, hikers and other public land users need clarification on access issues. Possible remedies include:

-- Montana legislative action to provide public access while protecting private property rights.

-- Litigation that would result in a Montana Supreme Court ruling.

-- Land swaps to consolidate key public and private holdings.

Its not realistic to believe that everyone interested in the Crazies will just sit down and start getting along. But we urge the Forest Service to start a conversation with landowners and the general public.

Daines and Perdue must stop micromanaging staff in the Gallatin Forest. Daines should listen to all his constituents, relay their concerns and then let land management professionals do their jobs.

Perdue should see that decision making about forest land is led by department professionals in Montana  not from his Washington, D.C., office.

-- The Billings Gazette
The White House says it is open to new legislation that would slap new sanctions on Russia and limit U.S. President Donald Trump's ability to ease or lift them by himself.

The comments by White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a July 23 television interview came a day after Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Washington said they had reached agreement on the legislation, which Trump administration officials had originally objected to.

"We support where the legislation is now and will continue working with the House and Senate to put those tough sanctions in place on Russia until the situation in Ukraine is fully resolved," Sanders told ABC's "This Week" program.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to improve ties with Moscow, triggering bipartisan concern in Congress that he could lift or ease sanctions punishing Russia for its 2014 seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine.

So far the Trump administration has shown no indication it intends to lift Ukraine-related sanctions targeting Russia, which denies providing weapons and personnel to separatists in eastern Ukraine despite evidence of such support.

The bill, which also includes sanctions against Iran and North Korea, is set to be considered in the House of Representatives as early as July 25.

The Senate will also have to vote on the new bill, which would require Trump to send a report to Congress outlining why the administration wants to suspend or terminate any sanctions. Lawmakers would then have one month to decide whether to allow such a move.

Trump's new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, said the president had not yet decided whether he would sign the bill.

"My guess is...that he's going to make that decision shortly," Scaramucci told CNN in an interview.

A refusal by Trump to sign the bill would likely trigger political backlash in Washington given the ongoing FBI and congressional investigations into Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election and contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials.

But two senior U.S. senators -- John Thune (Republican-South Dakota) and Ben Cardin (Democrat-Maryland) -- said on July 23 that the legislation would like pass in the Senate with enough support to override a possible veto by Trump.

The U.S. president took to Twitter on July 23 to again decry what he called a "phony Russian witch hunt," referencing his defeat of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

U.S. intelligence agencies assess that the Kremlin ordered a hacking and propaganda campaign aimed at hurting Clinton's campaign.

"As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians! Trump wrote on his Twitter feed.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and The New York Times
The new U.S. special envoy for Ukraine peace negotiations said he was stunned by the number of cease-fire violations in the ex-Soviet nations war-torn east after making his first visit to the region.

Kurt Volker, who was recently appointed as Washington's point man for talks on ending the war between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, made the comment in a July 23 interview after spending the day at the front lines of the conflict.

"The level of cease-fire violations on daily basis is astonishing," Volker told RFE/RL by telephone from a train bound for Kyiv, where he was set to hold talks with Ukrainian officials the following day.

Volkers assessment came hours after he told a news conference in Kramatorsk, the headquarters of Kyiv's military operation against the separatists, that Ukraine is locked in a hot war whose origins he blamed on Moscow.



"This is not a frozen conflict, this is a hot war, and it's an immediate crisis that we all need to address as quickly as possible," Volker told reporters in the government-controlled eastern city.



Asked later during the news conference whether the United States understood that Russian "aggression" was to blame for the situation and not a "civil war," Volker answered in the affirmative.



"We've seen what's happened, we understand the way this conflict has begun, we understand the way it is being managed today, and that's why it's important that the United States become more engaged," Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said.



Volkers visit to eastern Ukraine was his first to the region since his appointment in early July as Washington's special representative on negotiations to bring an end to the conflict, which has killed more than 10,000 since April 2014.



Kyiv, the United States, the EU, and NATO accuse Russia of backing the separatists with weapons and personnel. Moscow rejects the accusation despite substantial evidence of such support.



A cease-fire deal signed in February 2015 in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, has failed to end the violence, which has recently flared up. Both Ukraine and the Russia-backed separatists accuse each other of violating the deal.



Volker told RFE/RL that the recent spike in hostilities, in which at least nine Ukrainian soldiers were killed over the previous 72 hours, were of particular concern.



Earlier on July 23, Volker visited the government-controlled town of Avdiyivka near the front line, wearing a tan bulletproof vest and helmet for part of the trip.



He told RFE/RL that it was "shocking" to see the walls of apartment buildings where civilians still live "blown out" by direct artillery strikes.



He said he was most shocked by the human cost of the war, which he discussed with school teachers who have endured years of fighting, and a man who "lost his legs and had his hands blown off" when a shell exploded on the street where he was walking.

Volker said he also talked about the impact the war has had on the local economy, meeting with a man whose business was taken over by Russia-backed forces in the eastern city of Donetsk, forcing him to flee.



In a video released by the Ukrainian military on July 23, Volker was shown arriving by helicopter at its operations in the east and speaking with military officials there.



Asked if he plans to visit the other side of the front line, Volker told locals and the media on July 23 that he plans "to meet a Russian counterpart at some point."



"I think that meeting with the Russians is what we need to do in order to gain the perspective -- the strategic perspective -- over how to resolve this," he said.



The U.S. State Department said on July 21 that during his visit to eastern Ukraine, Volker would "meet with those who have been affected by Russian aggression" and "discuss the importance of security and safety for all Ukrainians."



He was set to meet Ukrainian officials in Kyiv on July 24 "to discuss the path to restoring Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the State Department said.



Following his stopover in Kyiv, Volker is set to travel to Paris to meet with French and German officials on the Minsk accords, which were brokered by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande.

From there he heads to Brussels to meet European Union and NATO officials to discuss resolving the Ukraine conflict.



Volker told RFE/RL that his appointment, his visit to eastern Ukraine, and his upcoming visits to France and Brussels is "a response to the need" for the United States to play a greater role in the Ukraine peace process.



Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's stated desire to improve ties with Moscow, his administration has maintained the punitive measures targeting Russia for its actions in Ukraine that began under Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama.



The Obama administration hit Russia with several waves of sanctions over its seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and subsequent backing of the separatists.



Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Washington, meanwhile, say they have reached agreement on legislation that would allow new sanctions targeting Moscow -- as well as Iran and North Korea -- and would limit any possible effort by Trump to ease sanctions against Russia.



The Republican-led House of Representatives is set to vote on the bill as early as July 25. The legislation would require the White House to obtain permission from Congress before easing or lifting sanctions against Russia.

With reporting by Reuters and AP
Sonequa Martin-Green portrays the lead role of Michael Burnham in "Star Trek: Discovery," which premieres Sept. 24, 2017.

Among the reveals Saturday at the "Star Trek: Discovery" panel at San Diego Comic-Con is that lead character Micheal Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) is the biological daughter of Spock's mother Amanda , and Spock's father Sarek is her surrogate father.

The character was also raised on Vulcan.

As to how the show is going to thread the needle of introducing a heretofore unrevealed major character in Star Trek canon, Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman told the Comic-Con audience, "We're aware. You'll see where it's going, but we are staying consistent with canon."

And here is the new trailer:

See more

"Star Trek: Discovery" premieres Sept. 24 on CBS before moving to the CBS All Access app, which requires a paid subscription, for the remainder of the first season.

Get full San Diego Comic-Con 2017 coverage from Newsarama, Space.com's sister site, this weekend.

Originally published on our sister site Newsarama.
London (U.K.), July 22, 2017 (SPS) - Amnesty International called on the Moroccan judicial authorities to guarantee a fair trial to all Sahrawi political prisoners and to avoid any exceedings (torture or ill-treatment) throughout the trial.

In a reply to the letter addressed by the president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, concerning incarcerated Sahrawi students, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, called on the Moroccan legal authorities to ensure, during trials of Sahrawis, that no one is declared guilty based on proof obtained under torture.

In a joint communique published on 10 July, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called on Morocco to ensure that no incarcerated Sahrawi is declared guilty based on proof obtained under torture.

Following the verdict of Sahrawi political prisoners of Gdeim Izik Group, Amnesty International denounced a trial conducted in the absence of reliable investigations.

The Sahrawi president wrote to the Secretary General of Amnesty International on 10 July, concerning the heavy sentences given by Morocco against a group of Sahrawi students following a long period of incarceration based prevarications and in the absence of the slightest conditions of a fair trial. (SPS)

062/090/APS




The trial of the Gdiem Izik Group of Saharawi political prisoners is a clear example of the failings of the judicial system in the Kingdom of Morocco; a system that is neither just nor independent

Posted on July 22, 2017

The long sentences imposed on each of the political prisoners reflects the practice of the Moroccan authorities to continually ignore national and international legislation.

The judge who confirmed the life sentences which were originally imposed in 2013 by a military court, and the other sentences which range from 20 to 25 to 30 years. The trial remains totally illegitimate given that the reasons behind each of the sentences have still not been made clear.

The Saharawi political prisoners were exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly in defence of their right to self-determination. Yet this was the reason that they were arrested, disappeared and tortured by the Moroccan authorities who eventually extracted confessions under great duress. These confessions extracted under torture were allowed as evidence in the trial.

On 15 November 2015, the UN Committee on Torture arrived at the conclusion that the Kingdom of Morocco had violated the Convention against Torture on a number of occasions in the case of the Saharawi political prisoner Nama Asfari. The Committee also arrived at the conclusion that the authorities had not investigated Namas allegations of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to which he was subjected. Nama was denied his rights, including the right to receive medical attention for his injuries.

Adala UK considers that this type of unjust trial reflects the disregard that the Moroccan authorities have for national and international legislation with regard the protection of prisoners and the protection of human rights. The prisoners and their families should receive justice but a justice that is open, honest and which guarantees legal procedures, not a justice that is sought on the basis of evidence extracted through torture and a response which is sought for political revenge.

We demand that these sentences be annulled and the political prisoners be tried by a court which abides by international standards. Adala UK calls on the Moroccan occupation regime to respect Moroccos commitment to international legality and bring an end to the crimes which are perpetrated against Saharawi civilians which includes the systematic violation of their human rights through arbitrary detention, unfair trials, and torture and rape of Saharawi detainees and prisoners in Moroccan prisons.

Unfair trials by Moroccan courts have imposed many long and unfair sentences on many Saharawi civilians. Peaceful protestors, journalists and human rights defenders are all paying the price of a brutal repression carried out by the government of the Moroccan occupation and its various security forces in revenge against the political position of anyone who supports the people of Western Sahara.

Adala UK urges the UN and the Security Council to expand the mandate of MINURSO to include a human rights monitoring mechanism in Western Sahara. We also urge the international community to act to bring an end to the Moroccan regimes abusive practices which are used against the peaceful Saharawi people. (SPS)

062/090/AdalaUK

https://adalauk.org/2017/07/22/the-trial-of-the-gdiem-izik-group-of-saharawi-political-prisoners-is-a-clear-example-of-the-failings-of-the-judicial-system-in-the-kingdom-of-morocco-a-system-that-is-neither-just-nor-independent/
A British man has been shot on a Philippine island just days before his wedding.

Tarek Naggar, 44, is said to be critically injured and in intensive care after being attacked during a robbery on Cebu.

Mr Naggar - from Milngavie in East Dunbartonshire and recently living in Sweden - was gunned down while sitting outside a bar in the capital, Cebu City, in the early hours of Thursday with his fiancee Angie and best man Chris McLaughlin, according to the Sunday Herald.

Three men on a motor scooter were then said to have pulled up and demanded the Scot hand over his wallet. When he refused, one then pulled out a pistol and shot him in the chest.

They also reportedly made off with the wallet, credit cards and the local money he was carrying, equivalent to less than 10.

Mr McLaughlin told the Sunday Herald that Mr Naggar, who was due to get married yesterday, received surgery and was put on a life-support machine after the bullet lodged in his lung.

The Foreign and Commonweath Office (FCO) has been in touch with his next of kin and various authorities in the area.

An FCO spokeswoman said: "We are assisting a British national who was shot during a robbery in Cebu, Philippines, and are in touch with local authorities."
T he parents of terminally ill baby Charlie Gard said they have faced a backlash after the hospital treating their son revealed doctors had received death threats.

Connie Yates and Chris Gard, both aged in their 30s, said on Sunday that they were extremely upset by hurtful comments they had received from the public.

It came after officials at Londons Great Ormond Street Hospital said medical staff at the hospital had received thousands of abusive messages, including death threats, in recent weeks relating to their sons case.

The couple, from Bedfont, Hounslow, are currently considering their next steps ahead of the Monday's High Court hearing in their five-month legal battle over whether their son should be treated by a specialist in America.

Ms Yates said in a statement: We are extremely upset by the backlash we've received after Great Ormond Street Hospital put out their statement last night.

Charlie Gard's parents want to take him to the US for experimental treatment / PA

Chris and I are just ordinary parents with a very sick baby and we simply have his best interests at heart.

Despite conflicting issues, we have always had the utmost respect for all the staff who work tirelessly at Great Ormond Street Hospital and the very difficult jobs they do every day.

And, like them, we have been shocked by some of the public response to this case and agree with them that it is disgraceful that doctors have received death threats.

She added that the couple had also received hurtful comments from the public and that the hospital was aware of this.

The hospital said it was "grateful" for the parents' remarks, adding that Ms Yates and Mr Gard "should be given every support".

Chris Gard and Connie Yates / PA

A judge had been scheduled to analyse evidence at a two-day hearing starting at 10am on Monday.

Mr Justice Francis had said he aimed to make a decision on Tuesday - and had questioned whether a two-day hearing would be long enough. But the hearing has now been re-listed and is scheduled to start at 2pm on Monday.

Lawyers have given no explanation for the scheduling change.

On Friday a barrister representing Great Ormond Street Hospital doctors caring for the 11-month-old boy told his parents that a report on the latest scan made for "sad reading".

Ms Yates burst into tears when Katie Gollop QC broke the news at a preliminary hearing in the Family Division of the High Court on Friday.

Mr Justice Francis asked Ms Gollop not to reveal full details of the report - the judge indicated that Charlie's parents should be given time to consider it privately.

Explained: the Charlie Gard case

Last week the American specialist, Michio Hirano, a professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York, travelled to London to examine Charlie for the first time and discuss the case with Great Ormond Street doctors

Lawyers had told the judge that they would analyse reports from the gathering over the weekend.

Mr Justice Francis has considered the latest stage of the case at public hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

Mr Gard and Ms Yates have asked judges to rule that Charlie, who suffers from a rare genetic condition and has brain damage, should be allowed to undergo a therapy trial in New York.

Doctors at Great Ormond Street say the therapy is experimental and will not help.

They say life support treatment should stop.

Loading....

Charlie's parents have already lost battles in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court in London.

They have also failed to persuade European Court of Human Rights judges to intervene.

But the couple say there is new evidence and had asked Mr Justice Francis, who in April ruled in favour of Great Ormond Street and said Charlie should be allowed to die with dignity, to change his mind.

Mr Justice Francis said he would not re-run the case but would consider any "new material"
W atching Princess Diana's sons open up so candidly about their iconic mother is undoubtedly compelling television viewing.

Princes William and Harry both give revealing raw testimony, after both being interviewed for around 40 minutes at Kensington Palace.

At times it is clearly challenging for the Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry to deliver on camera. They looked close to tears.

Their courage to do so is commendable and the film they have backed and starred in is undeniably a touching tribute.

Diana, Princess of Wales embraces Prince Harry while on holiday / AFP/Getty Images

Personally, as a Fleet Street reporter who has covered the royal story since 1990, I found it a moving and, yes, emotional to journey down memory lane as I was there reporting on Diana's public work and private life as she travelled the world.

In my view The ITV documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy to be aired on Monday at 9pm to mark the 20th anniversary of her tragic death is a hugely significant watershed moment for the monarchy.

For by backing and starring in this film William, our future King, supported by his passionate younger brother, has established a very different template for our new constitutional monarchy going forward.

Candid: The Princes opened up about their mother's death

It hints at a more "touchy feely" style Monarchy - with a Sovereign (ultimately Prince William) determined to do things his way. Dare I say it - a "Diana style" monarchy.

It hints at a more "touchy feely" style Monarchy - with a Sovereign (ultimately Prince William) determined to do things his way.

Dare I say it - a "Diana style" monarchy.

He seems happy to abandon the stiff upper lip - "never complain, never explain" - style of his cherished and referred grandmother, Elizabeth II, despite her undoubted success in her role.

A bastion of consistency at 91 she still hasnt given an interview and never will.

William and Harry talk about Diana in special 20th anniversary documentary

For when it comes to ones personal life and media her view is clear - keep schtum.

It is has served the older generation well, but it is advice both princes have flagrantly chosen to ignore.

But by making this film William and his brother are effectively telling the older generation of royals, That was then, this is now.

Although it is clear that this doesnt come as naturally to William as it does to Harry  wearing his heart on his sleeve like his mother.

This film will bring back memories to those who knew and loved Diana, and introduce this iconic figure to a new wider audience. It certainly brought a tear to the eye.

ITV Diana, Our Mother - Her Life and Legacy

On the other contributors to the film - billed those who have never spoke before - their testimony is less compelling. Lady-in-waiting Anne Beckwith Smith, who left Diana's side in the mid 1980s, her girlfriend Julia Samuel, the adoring Harry Herbert and William van Straubenzee who both admit to loving Diana, like all men did apparently!

Some, however, in my view are conspicuous by their absence.

I was surprised astonished by some omissions in the cast list, not least, apart from a still photos and television footage there was no mention of the father, Prince Charles, who after all had to raise them after Dianas death.

He was kept abreast of the film. But he was not asked or needed for the film as it was clearly about his sons' mother.

But if he had taken part and paid tribute to his ex and late wife of 15 years It would have, perhaps, been a positive, even cathartic act, for the prince.

One source close to Charles said, I suppose it is about their mother. But even if the prince were not actually in it, it would have been nice if they had acknowledged him contribution to their upbringing. He was and tries to be a jolly good father after all.

Others who were erased from the Diana story all played key roles in her life.

Her long suffering Private Secretary Patrick Jephson, her Scotland Yard Personal Protection Officer Inspector Ken Wharfe (with who I have penned a couple of first person books telling the Diana story from his perspective) and her controversial butler Paul Burrell.

Agreed all three blotted their copybooks by writing their memoirs. But what about Dianas loyal Personal Assistant Victoria Mendham or her personal chef Mervyn Wycherley or chauffeur Simon Solari, none of who have broken the code of silence.

Earl Spencer has a cameo too, but there were not a Dianas sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes. There was no mention of boyfriends, Hasnat Khan, Dodi Fayed or Major James Hewitt who all stole her heart either.

But in many ways, this documentary serves Charles. This may well be their way of putting to rest the ghosts that might haunt his reign when he becomes King.

The Princes have followed her lead. For that, and keeping her legacy and memory alive, they should be commended

There is no doubt Diana was a remarkable woman. Like her sons, she was never afraid of the controversial. She would roll up her sleeves and get involved. They have followed her lead.

For that, and keeping her legacy and memory alive, they should be commended.

Robert Jobson is the Co-Author of New York Times bestseller Diana: Closely Guarded Secret published by John Blake books and available on Amazon Kindle. His new book, with Ken Wharfe Guarding Diana is published on 10 August.
NOTICE:

TO BE CLEAR:

WE HAVE OUTLINED UNDER OUR RECORD MAINTENANCE POLICY WHAT WE BELIEVE TO BE A FAIR PROCESS FOR ALL. SIMPLY PUT: IF THE COURT SAW FIT TO EXPUNGE YOUR RECORD,SO WILL WE, FREE OF CHARGE. ARRESTS DO NOT IMPLY GUILT AND CRIMINAL CHARGES ARE MERELY ACCUSATIONS,EVERYONE IS PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW AND CONVICTED. FCRA DISCLAIMER: MUGSHOTS.COM DOES NOT PROVIDE CONSUMER REPORTS AND IS NOT A CONSUMER REPORTING AGENCY. OUR DATABASE CANNOT BE USED TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT CONSUMER CREDIT, EMPLOYMENT, INSURANCE, TENANT SCREENING, OR ANY OTHER PURPOSES THAT WOULD REQUIRE FCRA COMPLIANCE. MUGSHOTS.COM PARTICIPATES IN AFFILIATE PROGRAMS WITH VARIOUS COMPANIES. WE MAY EARN A COMMISSION WHEN YOU CLICK ON OR MAKE PURCHASES VIA LINKS. MUGSHOTS.COM IS AN AGGREGATOR OF THE TODAYS CRIME NEWS. IN EACH FRONT-PAGE POST, THE HYPERLINK TO THE PRIMARY SOURCE IS SPECIFIED. ALL TRADEMARKS BELONG TO THEIR RIGHTFUL OWNERS, ALL MATERIALS TO THEIR AUTHORS. IF YOU ARE THE OWNER OF THE CONTENT AND DO NOT WANT US TO PUBLISH YOUR MATERIALS, PLEASE CONTACT US BY EMAIL mugshots.com1@gmail.com. THE CONTENT WILL BE DELETED WITHIN 48 HOURS.

MUGSHOTS.COM IS A NEWS ORGANIZATION. WE POST AND WRITE THOUSANDS OF NEWS STORIES A YEAR, MOST WANTED STORIES, EDITORIALS (UNDER CATEGORIES - BLOG) AND STORIES OF EXONERATIONS. OUR CONTENT REVOLVES AROUND CRIME, ARRESTS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT. WE BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION AND OUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO PUBLISH UNPOPULAR SPEECH. OPEN RECORD LAWS WERE WRITTEN TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC; BY INFORMING THE PUBLIC OF ARRESTS AND TO HOLD LAW ENFORCEMENT ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE HUMANE TREATMENT OF ARRESTEES. MOST OF, IF NOT ALL MUGSHOT LAWS WERE CRAFTED TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM FEES FOR REMOVAL OF ONLINE MUGSHOTS AND TO FURTHER PROTECT THE PRESS FROM THOSE VERY SAME "MUGSHOT LAWS".WE DO NOT ACCEPT PAYMENT FOR REMOVAL OF ARREST INFORMATION AND/OR BOOKING PHOTOGRAPHS. MORE...
P hotographs of the Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry as children have been published for the first time to mark a new documentary about Diana, Princess of Wales on the 20th anniversary of her death.

A stunning image showing a tanned Diana hugging Harry while the pair are on holiday, is just one of the poignant pictures that are featured in the programme.

In the ITV documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, William says to Harry about the photo: "This one here, I thought you'd like to see - quite a special picture - the two of you which I thought was quite sweet."

The photo shows Prince Harry apparently wearing trunks and sitting down with his legs up against his chest while his mother's arm is wrapped around his neck.

Diana, Princess of Wales holding Prince William while pregnant with Prince Harry / AFP/Getty Images

Harry joked about the image saying: "I just remember having the skinniest legs, and still do."

The pictures are taken from Diana's personal photo albums which were recently discovered by her sons who are seen flicking through them during the programme.

Family photo: Prince William (top) and Prince Harry sitting on a picnic table / AFP/Getty Images

Harry admits "part of him" did not want to look at them but he was also waiting for the right time to sit down with his brother and go through the pictures.

Another of the featured photographs shows Harry sat on the seat of a picnic bench while William sits directly behind him on the table.

And a third image shows a pregnant Diana holding a toddler William on her hip as the pair pose for the picture.

In the programme William said: "She loved taking pictures, it was so nice. She captures some really good portraits of people, you kind of get a snapshot of the personality quite quickly.

ITV Diana, Our Mother - Her Life and Legacy

"The funny thing is there is not that many of her, as she is always taking pictures of us."

Princess Diana - In pictures 1 /80 Princess Diana - In pictures Diana, Princess of Wales kissing Prince Charles of Wales on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following their wedding in 1981 PA Diana, Princess of Wales with Prince Charles of Wales on holiday at Balmoral in 1981 PA Family album picture of Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) with Souffle, a Shetland pony, at her mother's home in Scotland during the summer of 1974 PA Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) with her brother Charles, Lord Alhorp (Earl Spencer) in 1968 PA Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) in her pram at Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk in 1963 PA Archive/PA Images Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) from the family album, during a summer holiday in 1970 at Itchenor, West Sussex PA Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) leaving her flat in 1980 Neville Marriner/Associated Newspapers Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales), the 19-year-old fiancee to the leaves her flat at Coleherne Court, Earl's Court in 1980 Getty Images Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) announce their engagement at Buckingham Palace in 1981 Sipa Press/Rex Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) arrives at St. Paul's Cathedral in London with her father, Earl Spencer, for her wedding to the Prince of Wales in 1981 PA Archive/PA Images Diana, Princess of Wales with Prince Charles of Wales at their wedding at St Paul Cathedral in 1981 AFP/Getty Images The Prince and Princess of Wales at the High Altar in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, during their wedding at St Paul's Cathedral in 1981 PA Diana, Princess of Wales in her bridal gown at Buckingham Palace after her marriage to Prince Charles at St. Paul's Cathedral PA Diana, Princess of Wales with Prince Charles of Wales on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following their wedding in 1981 PA The Prince and Princess of Wales in a carriage after their wedding at St Paul's Cathedral in 1981 PA Diana, Princess of Wales meeting the crowds during a royal tour of Wales in 1981 Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales smiling as she prepares to embrace a woman in the crowd, on the streets of Carmarthen, Wales in 1981 Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Charles leave the Lindo Wing at St Mary's with Prince William on 21 June 1982 PA Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Charles leave the Lindo Wing at St Mary's with Prince Harry on 17 September 1984 Getty Images Diana, Princess of Waleswith Pope John Paul II during a private audience at the Vatican on 25 April 1985 Reuters Diana, Princess of Wales attends a 1985 private wedding at Foulsham in Norfolk James Gray/Daily Mail Diana, Princess of Wales at a gala dinner at the 40th Cannes film festival on the French riviera in 1987 AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry at 5 years old, joins his brother Prince William at 7 years old on his first day at the Wetherby School, Notting Hill, London in 1989 PA The Princess of Wales wears a blue Catherine Walker gown to a charity ball at Osterley House, Middlesex, May 1989 Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images Britain's Prince Charles and Diana Princess of Wales watch Indonesian tribal dancers in Yogyakarta in 1989 AFP/Getty Images The Prince and Princess of Wales with sons Prince William, right, and Prince Harry prepare for a cycling trip in Tresco during their holiday in the Scilly Isles in 1989 PA Diana, Princess of Wales at the 1989 wedding of Joanna Leshallas and Edward Berry in Cranbrook, Kent Rex Features Former First Lady Barbara Bush and Diana, Princess of Wales at the White House, Washington DC in 1990 AFP/Getty Images Lady Diana, Princess of Wales (1961 - 1997) laughs with American performer Liza Minnelli at a party following the charity film premiere of "Stepping Out", at the Langham Hilton Hotel, London on 20 September 1991 Dave Benett Diana, Princess of Wales leaving the first anti-AIDS bookshop in Paris in 1992 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales, arrives at the Lille Congress Hall on 15 November 1992 for the opening of Paul McCartney's oratorio "Liverpool" AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wale visits the great pyramid of Giza near Cairo in 1992 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales meets Manuel Leseneo in 1992, a homeless Spanish youth at the London Connection Centre for the Homeless, near Trafalgar Square Reuters Diana, Princess of Wales with her mother Frances Shand Kydd attending hte Wimbledon Men;s Singles Final in 1993 PA Diana, Princess of Wales delivers a powerful speech calling for a public partnership ro solve homelessness in 1993 Evening Standard Diana, Princess of Wales with Princes William and Harry on the Loggers Leap ride at Thorpe Park in 1993 Daily Mail Diana, Princess of Wales at Alton Towers Theme Park in 1994 Rex Diana, Princess of Wales enjoying the waters of Indian Castle Beach while on vacation at Nevis with her sons William and Harry in 1993 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales atends a charity dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in 1994 Rex Features Diana, Princess of Wales in 1994 Dave Benett Diana, Princess of Wales, Prince Harry, Prince William and Prince Charles gather for the commemorations of VJ Day on 19 August 1995 in London AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales departs her London health club in 1995 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales is interviewed by the BBC's Martin Bashir in the current affairs program, Panorama on 20 November 1995 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales laughs during a speech by Henry Kissinger at the 41st annual United Cerebral Palsy Awards Gala In 1995 Prince William signs the traditional Entrance Book watched by his parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and younger brother, Prince Harry, at Eton College. St James's Palace in 1995 PA Diana, Princess of Wales and Jemima Khan sttend a variety show on 22 February 1996 in Lahore. AFP/Getty Images A windswept Diana, Princess of Wales leaves her London health club after her morning workout in 1996 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales arriving at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute Dinner Dance, Sydney in 1996 Getty Images Diana Princess of Wales arrive's at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York for the Costume Institute Ball in 1996 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales, posing for a photograph in 1997 with some French SFOR soldiers at Sarajevo airport before her flight to London. AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales during the meeting with Ana Paula dos Santos, wife of Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, 13 January 1997 in Luanda AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 with Malic Bradoric from Bosnia and Zarko Beric a Serb from Bosnia, who both lost legs to landmines Reuters Diana, Princess of Wales, touring a minefield wearing body armour during her visit to Angola in 1997 PA UN Special Envoy to Angola Alioune Beye and Diana, Princess of Wales during a 1997 campaign against land mines in Angola AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales, a key volunteer of the British Red Cross Landmine Campaign listens to speaker Ken Rutherford in 1997, who was injured by a land mine in Somalia at ceremonies at Red Cross headquarters in Washington DC AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales attends English National Ballet's Swan Lake in 1997 Dave Benett Diana, Princess of Wales waits for a jet-ski ride on the property of her friend Mohammad Al-Fayed in Saint Tropez, French Riviera in 1997 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales attends the London premiere of 'In Love and War' at the Odeon Leicester Square on 12 February 1997 Dave Benett Diana, Princess of Wales, listening as she attends an engagement at a British Red Cross mission to highlight the evil of land mines in Luanda, 1997 AFP/Getty Images Diana, the Princess of Wales after arriving on 17 June 1997 at the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington to attend a gala dinner for landmine victims AFP/Getty Images
On July 3rd North Korea launched what it described as a new ballistic missile, the Hwasong-14. North Korea described the test as successful and proof that North Korea had a working ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) design. None of that was true. What North Korea did do was launch a two-stage ballistic missile that went higher (over 2,500 kilometers) than an ICBM normally goes (about 1,200 kilometers) but did not have enough momentum to go very far and the second stage (or what was left of it) came down in the ocean 930 kilometers from where it was launched. To be a working ICBM Hwasong-14 would need rocket motors in the first and second stages that could fire longer (carry enough fuel or be efficient and reliable enough) to keep it going at that orbital (where low orbit satellites regularly operate) altitude long enough for a third stage to separate and use a reliable guidance system and re-entry vehicle able to handle the heat of high-speed descent to the surface. North Korea is, as usual with its many recent long-range ballistic missiles, missing a lot of key components but managing to keep the media spotlight on the few features that did work and imply that the missing capabilities will appear in due course. Like many North Korean assurances (about their economy, their ability to feed their population and much else) due course actually means; eventually but not yet and maybe never. North Korea knows that this is not a popular subject for the mass media and has been able to get away with this sort of thing for decades.

Currently the North Korean media scam is concentrating on ballistic missiles because it consistently works. It is scary and you dont have to show much progress to get the foreign editors interested. For example on May 14 they conducted a ballistic missile test involving what they described as a Hwasong-12 (KN-17) IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile) in its first successful test. This missile apparently used a rocket engine similar to the one used in Hwasong-14. The last test of the Hwasong-12, at the end of April, failed. Hwasong-12 is a single stage SCUD type (liquid fuel) ballistic missile that has long been in development. It is used on a tracked mobile launcher and is rumored to have a warhead with a guidance system capable of hitting a large, moving ship (like an aircraft carrier) at sea. There is no proof of that at all, but makes for great headlines. In theory the Hwasong-12 could have a max range of over 4,000 kilometers but this test only took the missile out to about 780 kilometers. If another test takes a missile out to 900 kilometers its worth another lucrative headline.

Even with a reliable Hwasong-14 ICBM North Korea would need more than a dozen of them, launched simultaneously, to have any chance of getting past the existing GBI anti-missile missiles based in Alaska and the further south on the west coast of North America. These anti-missile systems have proved more reliable than anything North Korea has. In addition American intel analysts know that to do a successful attack North Korea would have to make a massive effort to prepare (load fuel and the like) that many missiles for simultaneous launch. That effort would be difficult to hide and if discovered would risk triggering a preemptive attack. The fact that North Korean artillery and rockets could do a lot of damage to the South Korean capital (within range of thousands of North Korean big guns and rockets) may scare the South Koreans into a state of perpetual hesitation but if they make a serious threat of nuclear attack against the United States, Seoul is no longer much of a deterrent. The North Koreans know all this and they also know they dont have to create a credible ICBM threat against the United States to get what they want. The North Koreans are basically running an extortion effort. In effect the North Koreans are demanding cash and commodities to keep their fragile economy (and rather more robust police state) operating. In short, the offer is, pay up and we will tone it down.

Meanwhile North Korea has been working the scary ballistic missile threat angle for a long time. It works, so they keep at it. Sometime secret details of how they manage to pull it off emerge. At the end of 2015 the U.S. revealed that it believed North Korea was continuing to work on the KN-08 (Hwasong-13) ICBM in an effort to make it work. Getting this missile redesigned, reliable and ready for successful testing is expensive. That was a sign the North Korea was quite serious about this project. The KN-08 was meant to threaten the United States while the North Korean nukes threaten all the neighbors. But the Hwasong-13 turned out to be more of a media stunt that one component of a serious missile development project.

Hwasong-13 first appeared in public during a 2013 military parade. It had long been known that North Korea was trying to develop a ballistic missile that could reach the United States. Until the appearance of the very large Hwasong-13 the longest range North Korean seen in actual use (during tests) were the Nodong (especially Hwasong-7) series. These are based on the old Russia SCUD and had been scaled up to the point that they had a max range of over a thousand kilometers. Out of this came the even larger Taepodong missiles which were officially satellite launchers. Taepodong 1 was tested in 1998. North Korea had been working on Taepodong since the early 1990s. While the Taepodong 1 had a range of about 1,500 kilometers the larger Taepodong 2 went twice as far in 2009. A 2006 Taepodong 2 test barely got off the ground before crashing. The Hwasong-13 was a different shape missile, obviously for military use and using different technology.

In 2005 there were indications that North Korea had obtained more advanced ballistic missile technology from Russia and the Hwasong-13 may be the result of that. The Russian tech was the SS-N-6, a 1960s vintage ballistic missile known in Russia as the R-27. NATO called it SS-N-6. This was Russia's first true submarine launched ballistic missile, and sixteen of them were carried in Yankee class SSBNs (missile carrying nuclear submarines.) The R-27 had a range of 2,800 kilometers. After the R-27 was replaced by more modern missiles in the 1970s, the missile continued to be used for scientific research until 1990. By that time, 492 R-27s had been launched, 87 percent of them successfully. It would be very embarrassing for the Russians if someone had illegally exported SS-N-6/R-27 missiles to North Korea. It is more likely, and was reported in 2001, that someone in the Russian organization that designed the R-27 had illegally sold the plans to North Korea. This was supposed to have happened sometime in the 1990s and the main reason for the deal was for the North Koreans to obtain the missile guidance technology. The Russians kept improving the guidance system of the R-27 through the 1980s and the North Koreans have always been desperate for better missile guidance technology. But North Korea may have obtained useful information on longer range ballistic missile design and construction as well. That would explain the appearance of the Hwasong-13.

During that first Hwasong-13 appearance there was ample opportunity for Western visitors to take detailed photos and it was later concluded that these were mockups but very detailed and convincing ones. It was also discovered that North Korea had illegally converted Chinese lumber transports into TELs (Transporter Erector Launchers) for its Hwasong-13 ballistic missiles. These TELs were not designed to be used more than once. When first scrutinized in 2013 is was believed that Hwasong-13 was a large enough missile to have a range of over 4,000 kilometers. That estimate has since been revised upward. The 16 wheel TEL was carrying what appeared to be a three stage ballistic missile similar to older Russian models.

North Korea has never been known to deploy a long-range missile that had not been successfully tested. Some thought Hwasong-13 was a fake, just something to make the cold, hungry, and broke North Koreans feel better about themselves. Markings on the TEL identified it as Hwasong-13 Self-Propelled Launcher. There are two other North Korean Hwasong missiles, both of them short (up to 500 kilometers) range liquid fuel rockets. These two were called Hwasong-5 and Hwasong-6. Defectors from North Korea indicate that the official name for all North Korean ballistic missiles is Hawsong and that indicates that a missile named Hwasong-13 could be the latest one.

Hwasong-13 could have a range of 9,000 kilometers or more depending on the efficiency of the rocket engines. Hwasong-13 appears to be a liquid fuel missile but the design could accommodate the more efficient solid fuel if the North Koreans obtained the technology to build rocket motors that large. Reports from defectors and other sources indicate that North Korea is putting a lot of scarce resources into the Hwasong-13 and new technologies needed to make it work. North Korean leaders have long been obsessed about having a weapon that could threaten the United States directly.






AUTO CENTRAL CHICAGO, July 23, 2017; Every Sunday Larry Nutson, Senior Editor and Chicago Car Guy along with fellow senior editors Steve Purdy and Thom Cannell from The Auto Channel Michigan Bureau, give you TACH's "take" on this past week's automotive news in easy to digest mega-tweet sized nuggets.

If you are a car and driving fan like we all are here at The Auto Channel, you can easily "catch up" or put these stories in context by searching the past 25 year's millions of (Indexed By Google) pages of automotive news, automotive stories, articles, reviews, archived news, video, audio, rants and raves accessible from The Auto Channel's Automotive News Archive.

Hey TV viewers, you can now enjoy The Auto Channel TV Network "Free and Clear" on WHDT Channel 3 in Boston and on many local cable systems. All South Florida auto fans can continue to watch The Auto Channel TV Network on WHDT-TV Channel 9 in West Palm Beach as well as cable channel's 17 and 438, channel 9 Miami. WHDN launched its full schedule (including The Auto Channel)of broadcasting in the Naples-Fort Myers market on digital PSIP channel 9.1 channel, look for us Hulu and on TUNAVISION.

Nutson's Nuggets: July 23, 2017

Nutson's Weekly Automotive News Digest July 17-23 2017: New Audi A8, Buick Regal, Yaris GRMN"; Hall of Fame Inductees; Weedy Ford Fusions; New Yawk F1; Recalls Of Course

* Washington State just implemented the most restrictive anti-distracted driving law in the country making it an offense to even hold a mobile device while driving - and not only while driving, but when stopped in traffic or at a signal as well. The first offense carries a $136 fine and subsequent tickets will cost $234. It is also a secondary offense to smoke, eat, drink, read or groom in your car, and that will be a $99 fine. The Michigan legislature is also considering a ban on holding a mobile device regardless of whether it is being used, but that bill is meeting resistance from the National Motorists Association and is stalled in committee.

* A new report from the University of Michigan (UoM) Transportation Research Institute's Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle says that urban driving is up while rural driving is down. Since 2000 city drivers covered 33 percent more distance and rural drivers drove 12 percent less. The researchers came to no clear conclusion as to why. I might conclude that on-line ordering and delivery has the folks out on the farm just sitting at home and waiting for the delivery truck.

* Navya, a French company that makes self-driving shuttles, will set up its first U.S. plant in Saline, Michigan. Navya plans to build 25 of its autonomous shuttles at the 20,000-square-foot facility before the end of the year. The company's 15-passenger Arma shuttles are all electric and have carried 170,000 passengers to date. Forty-five shuttles are in use at private and public sites in various locations around the world, including Switzerland, Singapore, France and at the Christchurch International Airport in New Zealand. Arma shuttles are expected to be in use as part of a regular shuttle service at the University of Michigan's North Campus in Ann Arbor this fall.

* With the introduction of the new Audi A8 last week, autonomous cars came one step closer to reality. The companys director of R&D, Peter Mertens, contended that Audi is now so far ahead of the competition that no one will be able to beat them. The new A8 has a system called AI Traffic Jam Pilot that has Level 3 autonomous abilities allowing the car to entirely drive itself under certain conditions on divided highways and up to 37 mph. Dr. Mertens did not speculate on when the next level will be achieved or when the system will be in other Audi vehicles.

* With the introduction of the 2018 Buick Regal GS this week GM will go against the grain powering it with a normally aspirated, 3.6-liter V6 dropping the outgoing cars turbo four-cylinder. With horsepower up considerably to 310 and torque down slightly to 282 pound-feet the new engine is mated to a new 9-speed automatic transmission. On the more conventional side, Honda just announced it will not offer a V6 at all anymore in the Accord offering instead two turbo fours and a non-tubo hybrid four.

* Daimler has announced a "service action" to update 3 million diesel powered vehicles in Europe. The update will reduce NOx emissions. This is an extension of a service action that began in March on certain vehicles to now cover many more and is said to cost Euro 220 million. Daimler also confirmed that they have a new generation of diesel engines that will continue to be offered into the future. Mercedes has no diesel models in the U.S. for 2017 due to delayed EPA approval but we expect they will for 2018.

* Similarly, Audi is offering its customers in Europe and other markets a retrofit program for cars with EU5 and EU6 diesel engines. A total of up to 850,000 cars worldwide with six-cylinder and eight-cylinder diesel engines (V6/V8 TDI, EU5/EU6) will get new software. This will further improve their emissions in real driving conditions beyond the current legal requirements. The service also applies to the Porsche and Volkswagen models that are fitted with the same types of engines.

* Fifteen Ford Fusions, made in Mexico, arrived in northeast Ohio earlier this month with 14 kilos of marijuana stashed where the spare tire was supposed to be, said police. In all, there was 400 pounds of marijuana, with a street value of $1 million, said the Portage County (Ohio) Sheriffs Office. Police believe the drugs were stashed into the trunks while the cars were being transported by rail from Sonora, Mexico, to a CSX rail yard in Lordstown, Ohio. They believe the drugs were supposed to be removed along the route but someone failed to do so. Ford Motor Co. said it determined the drugs werent placed in the cars at the auto plant or shipping yard in Mexico. The company said its working with the FBI and Customs on the investigation.

* The Automotive Hall of Fame held its 2017 Induction and Awards Gala Ceremony at Cobo Center in Detroit to recognize four global automotive leaders for their contributions to the automotive industry. The award is the industrys highest honor. This years inductees are Albert Bombassei of Brembo, trucking's August Fruehauf , motorsports legend Jack Roush and GM Designer Edward Welburn.

* FCA is recalling 565,647 vehicles so the alternators can be replaced. The recall affects certain 2011-2014 Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger sedans, Dodge Challenger coupes, Dodge Durango SUVs and 2012-2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee SUVs equipped with electro-hydraulic power steering. Another recall affects 770,853 vehicles around the world, including certain 2011-2015 Dodge Journeys sold in the U.S., Canada and Mexico and certain 2011-2015 Fiat Freemont crossovers sold outside North America. These vehicles have an issue with the drivers-side front air bag.

* Toyota announced that it is conducting a safety recall involving 671 Model Year 2016 Avalon Hybrid and Camry Hybrid vehicles in the U.S. Among these 671 vehicles, up to 42 are potentially equipped with a misassembled front drive shaft.

* New York City held its first ever professional car race. The FIA Formula E Qualcomm NYC ePrix race, using 20 Formula E race cars resembling Formula 1, may soon make the Brooklyn, New York Red Hook neighborhood as well known as Monaco. A noted difference is that the 140 mph formula cars are quiet, at only 80dB compared to 128dB of gas-powered cars. Like other EVs, battery technology is still evolving. Halfway through the race batteries run down so in a midrace pitstop drivers change to a new car with fresh batteries. Sam Bird followed up his win in the inaugural FIA Formula E Qualcomm New York City ePrix with an emphatic victory in the second race of the weekend double-header event held on the Brooklyn Circuit.

* Subaru of America, Inc. announced that the Subaru WRX STI Type RA NBR Special set a new lap record for a four-door sedan at the famous 12.8-mile Nurburgring Nordschleife race track, achieving a time of 6:57.5. This time attack car has also set lap records at the Isle of Man TT and the Goodwood Festival of Speed hill climb, where it was also 3rd fastest overall. Subaru said, "We brought the WRX STI Type RA NBR Special here to set a record and call attention to the WRX STI Type RA that we will launch later this year."

* We reported last week on the exclusivity around Fords decision as to who gets the privilege of buying a new Ford GT super car. This week Ford announced many of these lucky buyers will have to wait longer than expected for their cars due to both supplier issues and homologation testing. The company did not say how long the delay is likely to be but said the ramp-up to projected production levels is nearly completed. The Ford GT, without options, will sell for $450,000. We know that early cars will go to Jack Roush, Jay Leno, Mark Fields and Bill Ford, among others.

* Hendrick Motorsports announced this week that 24-year-old driver Alex Bowman will replace Dale Earnhardt, Jr. for the 2018 NASCAR season in the No. 88 Chevrolet with continued sponsorship from Nationwide and Axalta. Bowman had a part-time ride with Hendrick last year when he shared the No. 88 car with Jeff Gordon, and he had turned down offers from other teams opting to stay with Hendrick. Bowman is a three-year veteran of the Cup series with a solid record including three top 10 starts in his 10 races last year.

* To our surprise we learned this week Toyota will offer a limited edition supercharged Yaris GRMN" to about 400 enthusiasts in Europe joining, at least on a small scale, the hot-hatch market there. To date Yaris has been thought of here and there as a tepid and efficient tiny economy car. This one will get a supercharged 205-hp 1.8-liter four cylinder with 184 pound-feet of torque and a six speed manual transmission. The name comes from the aftermarket company that developed this Yaris variant - Gazoo Racing, tuned by Meister of the Nurburgring.
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 []
Brookfield Asset Management is an alternative asset manager and REIT/Real Estate Investment Manager firm focuses on real estate, renewable power, infrastructure and venture capital and private equity assets. It manages a range of public and private investment products and services for institutional and retail clients. It typically makes investments in sizeable, premier assets across geographies and asset classes. It invests both its own capital as well as capital from other investors. Within private equity and venture capital, it focuses on acquisition, early ventures, control buyouts and financially distressed, buyouts and corporate carve-outs, recapitalizations, convertible, senior and mezzanine financings, operational and capital structure restructuring, strategic re-direction, turnaround, and under-performing midmarket companies. It invests in both public debt and equity markets. It invests in private equity sectors with focus on Business Services include infrastructure, healthcare, road fuel distribution and marketing, construction and real estate; Industrials include manufacturers of automotive batteries, graphite electrodes, returnable plastic packaging, and sanitation management and development; and Residential/ infrastructure services. It targets companies which likely possess underlying real assets, primarily in sectors such as industrial products, building materials, metals, mining, homebuilding, oil and gas, paper and packaging, manufacturing and forest product sectors. It invests globally with focus on North America including Brazil, the United States, Canada; Europe; and Australia; and Asia-Pacific. The firm considers equity investments in the range of $2 million to $500 million. It has a four-year investment period and a 10-year term with two one-year extensions. The firm prefers to take minority stake and majority stake. Brookfield Asset Management Inc. was founded in 1997 and based in Toronto, Canada with additional offices across Northern America; South America; Europe; Middle East and Asia.
Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates regulated exchanges, clearing houses, and listings venues for commodity, financial, fixed income, and equity markets in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Singapore, Israel, and Canada. It operates through three segments: Exchanges, Fixed Income and Data Services, and Mortgage Technology. The company operates marketplaces for listing, trading, and clearing an array of derivatives contracts and financial securities, such as commodities, interest rates, foreign exchange, and equities, as well as corporate and exchange-traded funds; trading venues, including 13 regulated exchanges and 6 clearing houses; and offers futures and options products for energy, agricultural and metals, financial, cash equities and equity, over-the-counter, and other markets, as well as listings and data and connectivity services. It also provides fixed income data and analytic, fixed income execution, CDS clearing, and other multi-asset class data and network services. In addition, the company offers proprietary and comprehensive mortgage origination platform, which serves residential mortgage loans; closing solutions that provides customers connectivity to the mortgage supply chain and facilitates the secure exchange of information; data and analytics services; and Data as a Service for lenders to access data and origination information. Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dril-Quip, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, sells, and services engineered drilling and production equipment for use in deepwater, harsh environment, and severe service applications worldwide. The company's principal products include subsea and surface wellheads, subsea and surface production trees, mudline hanger systems, specialty connectors and associated pipes, drilling and production riser systems, liner hangers, wellhead connectors, diverters, and safety valves, as well as downhole tools. It also provides technical advisory services, and rework and reconditioning services, as well as rental and purchase of running tools for use in the installation and retrieval of its products; and downhole tools comprise of liner hangers, production packers, safety valves, and specialty downhole tools that are used to hang-off and seal casing into a previously installed casing string in the well bore. The company's products are used to explore for oil and gas from offshore drilling rigs, such as floating rigs and jack-up rigs; and for drilling and production of oil and gas wells on offshore platforms, tension leg platforms, and Spars, as well as moored vessels, such as floating production, storage, and offloading monohull moored vessels. It sells its products directly through its sales personnel, independent sales agents, and representatives to integrated, independent, and foreign national oil and gas companies, as well as drilling contractors, and engineering and construction companies. The company was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
A. O. Smith Corporation manufactures and markets residential and commercial gas, heat pump and electric water heaters, boilers, tanks, and water treatment products in North America, China, Europe, and India. It operates through two segments, North America and Rest of World. The company offers water heaters for residences, restaurants, hotels and motels, office buildings, laundries, car washes, and small businesses; commercial boilers for hospitals, schools, hotels, and other large commercial buildings, as well as residential boilers for homes, apartments, and condominiums; and water treatment products comprising point-of-entry water softeners, well water solutions, and whole-home water filtration products, on-the-go filtration bottles, point-of-use carbon, and reverse osmosis products for residences, restaurants, hotels, and offices. It also provides food and beverage filtration products; expansion tanks, commercial solar water heating systems, swimming pool and spa heaters, and related products and parts; and heat pumps, electric wall-hung, gas tankless, combi-boiler, heat pump and solar water heaters. The company offers its products primarily under the A. O. Smith, State, Lochinvar, and water softener brands. It distributes its products through independent wholesale plumbing distributors, as well as through retail channels consisting of hardware and home center chains, and manufacturer representative firms; and offers Aquasana branded products directly to consumers through e-commerce, as well as other online retailers. A. O. Smith Corporation was founded in 1874 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Teradyne, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures, sells, and supports automatic test equipment worldwide. The company operates through Semiconductor Test, System Test, Industrial Automation, and Wireless Test segments. The Semiconductor Test segment offers products and services for wafer level and device package testing in automotive, industrial, communications, consumer, smartphones, cloud computer and electronic game, and other applications. This segment also provides FLEX test platform systems; J750 test system to address the volume semiconductor devices; Magnum platform that tests memory devices, such as flash memory and DRAM; and ETS platform for semiconductor manufacturers, and assembly and test subcontractors in the analog/mixed signal markets. It serves integrated device manufacturers that integrate the fabrication of silicon wafers into their business; fabless companies that outsource the manufacturing of silicon wafers; foundries; and semiconductor assembly and test providers. The System Test segment offers defense/aerospace test instrumentation and systems; storage test systems; and circuit-board test and inspection systems. The Industrial Automation segment provides collaborative robotic arms, autonomous mobile robots, and advanced robotic control software for manufacturing, logistics, and light industrial customers. The Wireless Test segment provides test solutions for use in the development and manufacture of wireless devices and modules, smartphones, tablets, notebooks, laptops, peripherals, and Internet-of-Things devices under the LitePoint brand name. This segment also offers IQxel products for Wi-Fi and other standards; IQxstream solution for testing GSM, EDGE, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, WCDMA, HSPA+, LTE, and 5G technologies; IQcell, a multi-device cellular signaling test solution; IQgig test solution; and turnkey test software for wireless chipsets. Teradyne, Inc. was incorporated in 1960 and is headquartered in North Reading, Massachusetts.
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not have an enviable job. He tolerated the whims of a mercurial boss and constantly had to spin the unspinable. Now, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, after all that, he couldnt even get a mini-fridge for his office. So, a month into the job, Spicer did what he had to do.

[Spicer] dispatched a top aide to a nearby executive office building where junior research employees are crammed into a room, surviving on Lean Cuisine frozen lunches. Mr. Spicer wants your icebox, the aide said, according to people familiar with the incident. They refused to give it up.

So Mr. Spicer waited until sundown  after his young staffers had left  to take matters into his own hands. He was spotted by a fellow White House official lugging the icebox down the White House driveway after 8 p.m.

The Journal suggests the mini-fridge incident was just another example of Spicers Sisyphean White House battles and a window into why he ultimately resigned. But it is also one of his Spicy-est moments yet.
On Saturday, officials in Europe that govern antitrust confirmed they are currently investigating claims that Germanys major carmakers might have operated a cartel dating back as far as the 1990s, colluding on things from engine and vehicle development, to diesel emissions systems and suppliers.

The Bundeskartellamt, the equivalent to the German cartel office, and the European Commission received information related to the matter, which is being assessed currently by the EC, said the commission on Saturday in a prepared statement.

Get alerts:

The automotive industry represents approximately 20% of the overall industry revenue and employs over 800,000 people in Germany.

The commission is the European Unions top antitrust agency and responsible for working with authorities in the different countries as a way to ensure business plays on a level and fair playing field across the European market, which includes 500 million people.

The commission can fine companies and force them to make changes to how they carry out their business. News of this probe came to light after a new magazine in Germany called Der Spiegel reported that hundreds of Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW executives had participated in 60 different working groups in the industry.

The motives for those meetings, reported the magazine was to help suspend competition. The magazine cited a letter it claims Volkswagen sent to antitrust officials in Germany last summer in which it admitted to possible anti-competitive actions.

Volkswagen would not comment late this week on the matter. Its CEO Matthias Mueller has been quoted by a newspaper in the country on Saturday as saying the automaker would not make comments on conjecture and speculation.

Shares in the industry slumped on Friday following the news, but recovered slightly ending the day down 2% to 3%.

The automobile industry contains to struggle in its attempt to repair the damage to its overall reputation that was caused by the admission two years ago by Volkswagen that it had cheated on tests for diesel emissions.

Last week Daimler announced it was recalling voluntarily over 3 million of his Mercedes Benz vehicles across Europe amidst growing questions over the companys diesel engines. It has offered its owners across Europe a service upgrade that will reduce emissions.

Audi on Friday said it was retrofitting 850,000 of its diesel cars to help improve the emissions in conditions it described as real driving.

Government officials have invited top auto executives to meet on August 2 for what it officials called a diesel summit.
Passion Over Reason at the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art begins, appropriately, with an embrace: Tom Thomson, the woodsy icon of a Canadian painter, bundled up in the arms of an earth goddess, the splendour of nature bursting in bright colour and form below them.

Let it not be said that the late Joyce Wieland, the maker of this particular piece, had no sense of humour (Thomsons wearing red-and-black buffalo check, a Canadiana cliche if there ever was one). Her work, which could be cheeky, absurd and full-blooded, was the product of the potent marriage of the head and the heart. Close to the latter was her home and native land, which she explored with a doggedly affectionate dismay.

Which is why, I suppose, we find her here at the McMichael, in this moment of Canada 150, coupled this month with another anniversary, the 100th of Thomsons untimely death. The gallery may be killing two birds with one stone  its dedication to the nationalist mythology of Thomson and his Group of Seven painting cohorts is well-documented  but its no reach.

In a lovely little confluence, Wieland, in her own way, was as enamoured of Thomson as the McMichaels, the gallerys founders. Her expansive wit and passion is exactly the antidote the gallery needs to not only fulfill its duty on this morbid centennial but, critically, bring it into the here and now.

Passion Over Reason is billed as a two-hander between Wieland and Thomson, but even with its generous sprinkling of Thomson works  mostly his uncanny oil sketches, some of the most energizing work ever made in this country  its really a Trojan horse for Wieland, who died in 1998 at age 67, far from when the end should have come for one of the most compelling careers in Canadian contemporary art.

The show is a stroke of sly subversion by chief curator Sarah Stanners, stamping Wielands passport into an institution that once went to the Supreme Court to keep works like hers out, but the alliance is far from forced. As Tom Thomson and the Goddess, the shows opening salvo, makes clear, Wielands interest in her painterly forebear was deep indeed, and it generates much of what Passion Over Reason has to offer.

Right beside Goddess, a few dozen of Thomsons unearthly sketches are sprinkled across an expanse of wall, as though scattered by the wind. The installation, a sort of sacrilege in this temple of wilderness painting, is a nod to Wielands 109 Views, an array of small landscape works stitched into a single tableau that she had made from scraps of fabric, similarly displayed.

Both a lover of history and a disrupter of convention, the artist cheekily insinuated herself into the hoary Canadiana myth of macho wilderness painting by crafting it in the language of traditional womens work, using fabric and quilting techniques. It was a strategy that served her well. Nearby, her 1988 fabric collage Entrance to Nature drips with thickly fecund intent. Its hard not to think of Group member Arthur Lismers Undergrowth, from 1946, and hard to believe Stanners wasnt: A photo of Thomson and Lismer hangs right beside it.

Wieland tucks nicely into the Group of Seven story as an artist who both embraced and rejected it in equal measure. If she wasnt content with the ruling narrative of Canadian art as male and painterly (and she wasnt), as her career began to blossom in the late 1960s, she was able to relate on the common ground of conservation and the ongoing ruination of the land that Thomson and co. had lionized so exhaustively.

In a moment of supreme optimism under Trudeaumania (the shows title is a reversal of his famous reason over passion speech), Wieland felt acutely that something was very wrong: In the video piece Reason Over Passion, Wieland filmed snippets of the Canadian landscape on a cross-country journey as seen from the window of moving vehicles. To underscore the widening chasm between people and nature, she put a flash of subtitles that jumble her title (Raneso vero isapson), putting fractured words to her disconnected view.

It encapsulated her own frustration with the building ecological disaster (there are hamburgers and shoes in the water, she once said, in dismay, about the over-trammeled waters of Algonquin Park) and a disconnect unacknowledged in the countrys dominant art of the day. Thomsons work has had upon it projected an idealized notion of wilderness, making it easy to forget he was painting amid clear-cuts and forestry concerns advancing into the heart of the wild. He shared her complaint, and she his passion.

As an emblematic icon, Wieland embraced both Thomsons complications and his strengths. Her 1976 feature film The Far Shore features a sullen painter named Tom, ill at ease in the city, who chooses the wild over a love of a woman (she had her own choice: Over her husband, a buttoned-up business type, she chose Tom, only to be rejected. Would you paint me if I were a tree? she asks him, a double-entendre if ever there was one. Well, at least Id have a chance, he replies).

Stanners overplays her hand here and there, straying from the promised two-hander with more and more Wieland. You can hardly blame her: The show veers off into pale pink room devoted to the artists more visceral works, which include nudes. It reads mostly as an excuse to display Heart On, her 1961 work of a rumpled bed sheet fitted with cut-out hearts and stained with blots of red (for the record: this is not a complaint; its perhaps the most powerful thing here).

Wieland wasnt ambiguous in describing the stains as menstrual blood, and its a standout moment of many of a woman artist staking her claim in a mans world. With late-abstract female painters like Helen Frankenthaler still making ghostly ambiguous canvases under the rubric of detached formalism, Wieland responded with an affirmation of her feminine self, and an admonishment for those not willing to similarly self-declare.

It wasnt the only thing she declared. In the fertile late-60s moment of identity politics, Wieland, with her conservationist ethic, was clear in her belief that Indigenous people were the best stewards of the land and water that her own kind were quickly destroying. She incorporated Inuit language in her text works decades before most of her peers were aware of their plight, and inserted a poem in Inuktitut in her 1971 bookwork, True Patriot Love, for the National Gallery of Canada (The Great Sea has set me in motion/set me adrift . . . And I am left/Trembling with joy.)

This seems to be leading somewhere, but instead the show kind of peters out, ending on Thomsons almost pornographically beautiful Woodland Waterfall, from 1916. Its a spectacular piece, but given the tease of Wielands prescient politics just moments prior  not to mention the shakeout of the fraught Canada 150 moment  it feels like a box being checked on an old McMichael list.

Wouldnt it have been more fitting, and more energizing, to bring in a voice the likes of which Wieland meant to empower  an Inuit artist like Shuvinai Ashoona, maybe, with her fantastical imaginings of the land as a living thing, or Tim Pitsiulak, who saw it with a plainspoken affection and concern, not unlike Thomson himself?

In an adjacent hallway gallery, Norval Morrisseaus are ganged up by the dozen, the Anishinaabe icon having a thing or two to say about land, passion and Canada himself. But that, it seems, is another story. The McMichael is making great strides, and Passion Over Reason is a big one. But, I suppose, one step at a time.

Passion Over Reason continues at the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art to Nov. 18. For more information see http://mcmichael.com/event/passion-over-reason-tom-thomson-and-joyce-wieland/ .

SHARE:
OTTAWAOntario Health Minister Eric Hoskins is announcing funding for 20 full-time mental health workers for Pikangikum First Nation  a remote community struggling with a suicide crisis and pressing mental health needs from about 380 people seeking counselling.

The mental health workers will be going to the reserve, located near the Ontario and Manitoba border, immediately at a cost of about $1.6 million, Hoskins said.

This cant be an issue of jurisdiction, Hoskins said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

We heard directly from the chief . . . as well as others that the situation on the ground in Pikangikum, just how grave it is and the need for trauma counselling as well as broader mental health supports for children and youth at risk.

Read more:Suicide crisis meeting to address reducing bureaucracy faced by Indigenous leaders, federal health minister says

There are eight mental health workers on the ground at the moment jointly funded by the province and the federal government, he said.

Pikangikum has had a long-standing battle with suicide; at least four young people have taken their lives in the remote community recently.

Ontario is also announcing what it calls a new Indigenous youth and community wellness secretariat designed to co-ordinate and speed up government efforts while it also works with Indigenous partners and Ottawa, Hoskins said.

It will become, essentially, a one-stop shop for . . . our Indigenous partners if a response is required or if there is a circumstance that requires an urgent response, he said.

We expect next week it will start . . . . It will be a full-time secretariat to almost fast-track key files whether it is in health or education.

Hoskins announcements come as he prepares to meet Monday in Ottawa with federal Health Minister Jane Philpott and Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler  the head of an umbrella organization representing 49 communities in northern Ontario.

The group is expected to sign a charter of principles aiming to transform the health care system for First Nations.

Philpott and Hoskins have both agreed profound change will be required to end the suicide crisis  although Indigenous health experts want to see concrete commitments out of Mondays meeting, including more control at the level of First Nations.

Dr. Michael Kirlew, a physician based in Sioux Lookout, believes the Indigenous youth suicide crisis in northern Ontario and elsewhere will not be addressed unless there is a fundamental rethink of the way care is delivered on reserves.

The health-care system . . . First Nations people receive is not equal, he said, noting Canada has grown accustomed to witnessing this injustice.

It is inferior . . . . It is not equitable. The children, whether they are in Pikangikum, Summer Beaver, Wapekeka, they do not have access to mental health services they need, period.

Indigenous health has been focused on measuring the number of dollars spent as opposed to health outcomes, added Dr. Alika Lafontaine, the past president of the Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada.

That needs to change, he said.

When youre talking about health transformation, what youre really looking at is changing the intent of the system to achieve a different outcome, he said.

In Indigenous health, what youre trying to do is create an outcome thats different than our colonial outcome which was extinguishing the rights of Indigenous people through land and resources.

Bob Nault, a Liberal MP who represents an Ontario riding that encompasses reserves including Pikangikum, agrees the health-care system as it stands now is not capable of producing sustainable, long-term results.

He said he has been witnessing the same problem for the past 30 years, including as a former Indigenous affairs minister under former prime minister Jean Chretien.

We cant keep doing the same thing over and over again and put a little Band-Aid on it and say were doing it differently, he said. We are not doing it differently so far, that Ive seen.

Communities have already put forward transformation proposals, Kirlew added.

Communities know what is going to work for them, he said. Why cant we help support those plans?

SHARE:
Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim has been in North Korean detention since January 2015.

That was 900 days ago. And counting.

The leader of Mississaugas Light Presbyterian Church went missing during a humanitarian mission in a northern region where Lim was so well-known for his charity work, hed been granted a frequent access visa.

Weeks later, North Korean authorities confirmed theyd arrested Lim, now 62, ostensibly for plotting to overthrow Kim Jong Uns authoritarian regime. The pastor was sentenced to life in a hard-labour camp where he told an American journalist, given unique access to Lim, that he digs holes eight hours a day, six days a week.

Now, there is renewed  but cautious  hope for Lims release.

Read more:

Community rallies for release of GTA pastor jailed in North Korea

U.S. to ban American citizens from visiting North Korea after Otto Warmbiers death

Last Friday, North Korean officials arranged a meeting in the humanitarian spirit between the imprisoned Canadian and a Swedish Embassy diplomat in Pyongyang, according to state media outlet Korean Central News Agency.

The timing of the July 14 meeting has also commanded attention: It came four weeks after American university student Otto Warmbier was released from a North Korean prison, in a coma, and died just days after arriving home.

Any type of contact is always good, said Toronto lawyer Jack Kim, a special adviser at HanVoice, the largest Canadian organization advocating on behalf of North Korean human rights and refugees.

It means the North Koreans havent forgotten about Rev. Lim and are at least continuing the dialogue, even if its on humanitarian grounds.

Details surrounding Lims disappearance more than two years ago have been scant. The Star has since learned the pastor vanished the same day he entered North Korea after two men approached him and invited him to the capital, Pyongyang.

Kim described the North Korean regime as one of the most opaque countries in the world and noted last weeks meeting did not include an official from Global Affairs Canada, the ministry tasked with securing Lims release.

The fact that it was not someone from Global Affairs, but the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, to a certain degree, tempers my enthusiasm about this, said Kim, who has met Lim.

I think you could look at this (meeting) with guarded, perhaps minimal, optimism.

North Korean officials have permitted two prior Canadian consular visits, the last one in December 2016.

Lim has also met previously with Swedish Ambassador Torkel Stiernlof, who is based in Pyongyang. Its unknown if Stiernlof was in the Friday meeting; the Swedish Embassy did not respond to an email from the Star. Canada does not have a diplomatic presence in North Korea and the Swedish Embassy acts as Canadas protecting power.

Canadian Senator Yonah Martin, deputy leader of the opposition in the Senate, is a friend of Lims. She said the North Korean gesture in arranging the meeting provides an opening for Canada to engage the regime more urgently because there is great and growing concern about Rev. Lims health.

Lim has high blood pressure and requires medication. The North Koreans have allowed medication to be sent to him.

Rev. Lim has lost a considerable amount of weight  between 60 to 80 pounds  and he isnt well, Martin said from her Burnaby, B.C., home.

I hope this is an opportunity for Canada to follow up in whatever way will bring Rev. Lim home. I dont want to say now or never, but I hope something can come out of this, she continued.

The North Korean news story also invited the Canadian government to resolve Lims case.

Lim asked the unnamed Swedish diplomat to convey his request to the Canadian government for making active efforts to settle his issue, according to an English language report citing the original article. In addition, the story stated the meeting was organized on the basis of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and in the humanitarian spirit.

Global Affairs has said little publicly during Lims detainment other than to state frequently that his imprisonment is absolutely a priority.

The ministry did not answer a list of questions about the July 14 meeting from the Star or confirm that it occurred. Instead, ministry spokesperson Jocelyn Sweet emailed this statement: The Government of Canada is very concerned about the health, well-being, and continued detention of Mr. Lim. This case is absolutely a priority for us. We have been actively engaged on this difficult case and consular officials are working actively to secure Mr. Lims release.

As there are privacy considerations and this is an active case, we are unable to disclose further details, Sweet added.

Lims wife, Geum Young Lim, and son, James, have remained silent since the pastor disappeared; friends say mother and son have long trusted the Canadian government to handle the sensitive negotiations and dont want to be distractions by granting interviews.

However, Warmbiers death appears to have deeply affected the Lims. The mother and son released a statement through family spokesperson Lisa Pak two days after the 22-year-old died in Cincinnati.

We are heartbroken at the news of Ottos passing. What has happened is tragic. We strongly urge the Canadian government to place more attention on Reverend Lims case, according to the June 21 statement.

Canadas political leadership must stand up for the rights of a Canadian humanitarian. We are desperate to see our husband and father home, and we are pleading for an active escalation in diplomatic efforts. Our hearts and prayers are with the Warmbiers. This ordeal of all families involved has to end, it concluded.

Martin said with Lim detained for so long  he became a grandfather for the first time while in the labour camp and that grandchild is now 10 months old  the family is now beyond frustrated.

They are exasperated, they are so exhausted from just hoping and waiting for something to happen, Martin said.

Martin also wondered: Its been over 900 days. Why has he been forgotten?

Lim, his wife and son  the Lims only child  are all South Korean natives. The family immigrated to Canada in 1986 when Lim had the opportunity to obtain his Master's degree at the University of Torontos Knox College. Lim is a Canadian citizen.

After graduating, Lim began ministering in Canada with the Light Presbyterian Church, which then had only about five families. He became a strong preacher and, under his spiritual direction as senior pastor, the church grew to 3,000 members. A new, multi-purpose facility for the burgeoning church opened in May 2009 near Goreway Dr. and Derry Rd. in Mississauga.

Lims passion for humanitarian work took him and church associates around the world: Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea. But it was in North Korea where he found his calling, visiting there about 110 times.

The federal government does not want Canadian citizens travelling to North Korea, which is officially called the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.

There is a warning on the Global Affairs Canada website: NORTH KOREA  AVOID ALL TRAVEL.

The ministry explains that the advisory exists due to the uncertain security situation caused by North Koreas nuclear weapons development program and highly repressive regime and that the ability of Canadian officials to provide consular assistance in North Korea is extremely limited.

Lim had been travelling to North Korea since 1997 and, according to friends, felt comfortable bringing basic human necessities, including food and other nourishment, to a needy population. Lims comfort level was evident in that he brought his son James, now 34, with him on about 28 humanitarian missions, friends said. James now lives in the United States.

Lim visited two places on missions: The capital of Pyongyang (via flights from Seoul and Beijing) and in the north, Rajin, which is in a region known as Rason (via flights from Seoul to the Chinese autonomous prefecture of Yanbian, then a two-hour drive to a North Korean border entry point near Rajin).

To piece together Lims final trip, the Star interviewed his friends, reviewed documents related to his humanitarian travels and obtained a missing persons profile filed to Toronto Police Services. Some of Lims friends asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing Lims safety or discussions regarding his release.

Based on new information, this is how the pastors 2015 mission unfolded:

On Jan. 27, 2015, Lim flew from Seoul to Yanbian in China.

On Jan. 30, Lim and a Canadian colleague, who was already in Yanbian, drove two hours in an SUV to the North Korean border point. The men were cleared to enter Rajin as representatives of the Light Presbyterian Church and an associated program, Global Assistance Partners.

Their plan was to check on a seniors nursing home and orphanages sponsored by the church and the assistance program.

The Canadian men had only been in Rajin for a few hours when they met with two men; one a local, the other possibly from Pyongyang, according to the missing persons profile. The missing persons profile (filed to police by Pak on behalf of the family) contained information relayed by Lims Canadian companion, who declined to be interviewed for this story.

Information submitted to Toronto police stated one North Korean man suggested Rev. Lim make a visit to Pyongyang with him in a car; he assured that a necessary visa and exemption from the (Ebola) quarantine will be arranged.

At that time, North Korea apparently had a mandatory 21-day Ebola quarantine period for all foreigners, according to information in Lims missing persons profile.

The two Canadian men became separated, friends say, and Lims companion did not see Lim get into a vehicle. Lim had not visited Pyongyang in some time, the missing persons profile noted.

On Jan. 31, the other Canadian returned to China.

On Feb. 4, Lim was scheduled to depart from North Korea and return home but did not appear in Rajin or Yanbian. His whereabouts were unknown and after repeated attempts, as of Monday Feb. 23, 2015, there has been no news of Lim, according to the missing persons report.

Senator Martin said she hopes Canadians are paying attention to Lims plight as much as his family and congregation  which held a public prayer vigil in June  are.

Hes a man of God, a man of great faith and a man of deep conviction; there is a real presence about him when you meet him, Martin said of Lim.

The fact that he has such a large congregation and he had people across the country and around the world supporting his (humanitarian) work speaks to his character.

Read more about:

SHARE:
A 29-year-old woman has been airlifted to hospital in serious condition after a single-vehicle rollover on Highway 403.

Paramedics received the call just before 1:30 p.m. and found two occupants trapped inside the vehicle.

Civilians assisted paramedics and firefighters in freeing the woman from the wreckage, and she was flown to a hospital in Toronto. Her condition is now stable.

OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt said the vehicle was traveling eastbound on highway 403 when it lost control for unknown reasons.

He said a six-year-old boy who was in the back of the vehicle sustained minor injuries.

No indication at this point whether or not distraction, impairment, or aggressive driving were contributing factors, said Schmidt.

He said the investigation has been completed and all eastbound lanes on Hwy. 403 at Erin Mills Pkwy have reopened.

SHARE:
U.S. President Donald Trump has consulted his legal advisers about the possibility of pre-emptively pardoning his associates  and possibly even himself  to undermine the Justice Departments Russia investigation, the Washington Post reported Thursday night. But Friday, John Dowd, Trumps new personal lawyer, denied to BuzzFeed that any such discussions have taken place.

Read more:

Can Trump pardon himself? His lawyers are studying the question

Either way, the chatter has heightened interest in several key legal issues about the scope and limits of Trumps clemency powers. Here is what you need to know:

What is the pardon power?

The Constitution gives presidents clemency powers to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment. By bestowing a pardon on someone who committed a federal crime, the president nullifies the legal consequences of that crime.

May a president issue prospective pardons?

Yes. In Ex parte Garland, an 1866 case involving a former Confederate senator who had been pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, the Supreme Court made clear that the pardon power extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.

It is unusual for a president to issue a prospective pardon before charges are filed, let alone a conviction proving that someone committed a crime, but there are examples. In 1974, after president Richard M. Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached in the Watergate scandal, president Gerald R. Ford shut down the possibility that his predecessor might be indicted by issuing a full, free and absolute pardon to Nixon for all federal crimes he committed or may have committed during his presidency.

And in 1992, shortly before leaving office, president George H.W. Bush pardoned six Reagan administration officials over their conduct related to the Iran-Contra affair, including the former defence secretary, Caspar W. Weinberger, who was about to go to trial on charges that he had lied to Congress. The independent prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, who had been planning to use that trial in part to explore if Bush had any role in the scandal when he was the vice-president, accused Bush of a coverup.

How would pardons affect the Trump-Russia investigations?

Anyone pardoned by Trump would receive immunity from being charged with a federal crime over his or her past conduct covered by the pardon. That could contract the scope of the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller into possible ties between associates of Trump and Russias meddling in the presidential election.

Still, if Trump did not also pardon any Russian officials for violating U.S. law in carrying out an election-influence operation, then the investigation might continue in ways that could make the past conduct of the pardoned people still subject to Muellers scrutiny; they would be suspected unindicted co-conspirators to any crimes by the Russians.

In addition, because recipients of pardons would no longer face potential legal jeopardy, they would not be able to invoke a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying about the matter before the House and Senate Intelligence committees, which are separately conducting oversight investigations. Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security adviser, has invoked that right.

Could pardons increase Trumps legal risk?

Some legal specialists think so. While pardons are widely understood to be irrevocable even if obtained through questionable means, some experts think that a president who abuses his pardon power might be subject to prosecution. In 2001, then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, who is now Trumps attorney general, voiced support for the idea of a bribery investigation into president Bill Clinton for his pardon of Marc Rich, a fugitive financier whose ex-wife had donated to the Democratic Party and the Clinton library foundation.

In an op-ed published in the New York Times, two University of Chicago law professors, Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner, argued that if Trump pardoned his relatives and aides to cover up possible crimes and impede Muellers investigation, rather than for reasons of mercy or public welfare, it could increase the risk that Trump is later charged with obstruction of justice. Trumps previous actions, including purportedly pressuring James Comey, then the director of the FBI, to back off the investigation into Flynn, have already raised that spectre.

Could Trump pardon himself?

This is not clear. The only limitation explicitly stated in the Constitution is a ban on using a pardon to stop an impeachment proceeding in Congress, and the only obvious implicit limitation is that he cannot pardon offences under state law. But some legal scholars think a president cannot pardon himself, either, because it would be a conflict of interest.

In August 1974, four days before Nixon resigned, Mary C. Lawton, then the acting head of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, issued a terse legal opinion stating that it would seem that Nixon could not pardon himself under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case. But she did not explain what transformed that principle into an unwritten legal limit on the power the Constitution bestows on presidents.

Other legal specialists have come out the other way. In a 1998 House Judiciary Committee hearing about the then-proposed impeachment of Clinton, for example, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who is now chairperson of that panel, stated: The prevailing opinion is that the president can pardon himself.

There is no definitive answer because no president has ever tried to pardon himself and then been prosecuted, which would give courts a chance to weigh in. If Trump did purport to pardon himself, and was later indicted anyway, it could create an opportunity for the Supreme Court to resolve the question.

What about the 25th Amendment?

This part of the Constitution provides a mechanism for temporarily making the vice-president the acting president when a president is disabled from carrying out his duties. In her 1974 memo, Lawton argued that it would be lawful for a president to declare himself temporarily disabled, receive a pardon from the vice president, and then resume his role as president. Under such a scenario, Trump could put his pardon on firmer legal footing by getting Vice-President Mike Pence to do it for him.

SHARE:
LONDONIt was a typical phone call between two boys playing and their mother, who was on vacation in France. It was brief  the boys wanted to get back to playing with their cousins, not spend time on the phone chatting.

The brevity of that 1997 call troubles Prince William and Prince Harry to this day  for their mother, Princess Diana, would die in a car crash that night.

Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say goodbye  you know, See you later  If Id known now obviously what was going to happen, I wouldnt have been so blase about it and everything else, William says in a new documentary. But that phone call sticks in my mind, quite heavily.

Harry tells the filmmakers the final chat is something he will regret until the end of his days.

Looking back on it now, its incredibly hard. Ill have to sort of deal with that for the rest of my life, Harry said. Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum. How differently that conversation would have panned out if Id had even the slightest inkling her life was going to be taken that night.

The ITV documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy will air Monday on British TV. Excerpts from the film, and new family photographs, were to be released Sunday.

Read more:

As 20th anniversary of death looms, TV cant get enough of Princess Diana

The show is one of a series of tributes to Diana expected as the 20th anniversary of her death on Aug. 31, 1997, approaches.

It is only in the last year that William and Harry have spoken openly in public about their feelings about the sudden loss of their mother. William  second in line to the British throne after his father, Prince Charles  was 15 at the time. Harry was only 12.

The documentary chronicles Dianas charitable works, including her historic outreach to AIDS victims and her campaign to ban landmines.

William and Harry also stress their mothers fun-loving side, which they say the public generally didnt see.

Our mother was a total kid through and through. When everybody says to me, So she was fun. Give us an example, all I can hear is her laugh in my head, says Harry.

William tells a story that reveals the privileged life they led as children: one day, Diana surprised him by having three of the worlds top models waiting for him when he got home from school.

She organized when I came home from school to have Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell waiting at the top of the stairs. I was probably a 12- or 13-year-old boy who had posters of them on his wall, William said. I went bright red and didnt know quite what to say. And sort of fumbled and I think pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up.

William says he frequently tells his children  Prince George, 4, and Princess Charlotte, 2  about Diana so she can be a presence in her grandchildrens lives.

Shed be a lovely grandmother, he said. Shed absolutely love it. Shed love the children to bits.

Read more about:

SHARE:
JERUSALEMIsrael installed new security cameras Sunday at the entrance to a sensitive Jerusalem holy site, as officials began indicating it was considering alternatives to the metal detectors at the contested shrine that set off a weekend of violence and raised tensions in the region.

Israel set up the new security measures last week after Arab gunmen opened fire from the shrine, killing two Israeli policemen. It said they were a necessary measure to prevent more attacks and were deployed routinely at holy sites around the world. But Muslims alleged Israel was trying to expand its control at the Muslim-administered site and have launched mass prayer protests.

Three Palestinians were killed in street clashes Friday in some of the worst street violence in years, and later a Palestinian stabbed to death three members of an Israeli family.

Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Israeli defence body for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel was open to alternatives to lower the tensions.

The only thing we want is to ensure no one can enter with weapons again and carry out another attack, he said. Were willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors as long as the solution of alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack.

Read more:

6 dead as protests in Jerusalem, West Bank over metal detectors turn violent

Israeli troops in West Bank put on high alert after stabbing, unrest

Islamic leaders call for boycott of Jerusalem holy site following new security measures

However, the top Muslim cleric of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, told the Voice of Palestine he demands a complete return to procedures that were in place before the initial attack at the shrine, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

In a statement Sunday, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, of which he is a part, said they affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation.

Disputes over the shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, have set off major rounds of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations in the past.

On Friday, several thousand Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in Jerusalem after noon prayers  the centrepiece of the Muslim religious week. Three Palestinians were killed and several dozen wounded after protesters burned tires and threw stones and firecrackers. Israeli troops responded with live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Late Friday night, a 20-year-old Palestinian identified as Omar al-Abed jumped over the fence of the Halamish settlement near Ramallah and entered a home, surprising a family that was celebrating a new grandchild during their traditional Sabbath dinner. He stabbed to death Yosef Salomon, 70, and his adult children, 46-year-old Chaya and 35-year-old Elad, while his daughter-in-law escaped to a separate room to shelter her young children.

A neighbour, an off-duty soldier, heard the screams, rushed to the home and opened fire, wounding the attacker. TV footage showed the floor tiles drenched in blood, and officials called it a massacre.

This has nothing to do with metal detectors. There is no justification for murdering a grandfather at a party to celebrate the birth of his new grandson, said Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha settlers council.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack as an act of terror, carried out by a beast who was incited with unfathomable hatred.

At his weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu vowed the killers home would be demolished swiftly in retribution and those who incited and glorified his act would be dealt with.

Since the beginning of the events Ive conducted a series of meetings and evaluations with the all the security officials, including those on the ground. We receive updates on the ground from them and recommendations on how to act and we decide accordingly, he said.

Israel has repeatedly accused the Palestinian Authority of permitting anti-Israeli incitement in the public Palestinian discourse and vowed to act against it. The Palestinians reject the allegations, saying Israels 50-year-old occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state is at the root of widespread Palestinian anger and helps drive violence.

Israel has yet to comment on the new cameras and whether they offered a chance to restore calm. A top adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he was holding consultations with various countries, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco, about the crisis.

Abbas announced Friday he would freeze ties with Israel on all levels until the new security measures Israel imposed at the Jerusalem site were removed. Halting security co-ordination with Israel would have far-reaching repercussions and could sharply raise tensions.

But Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman says the security ties are more beneficial to the Palestinians anyway, and while Israel can live without them the Palestinians would suffer.

We are not going to chase after them, Lieberman told the YNet news site, before lambasting Abbas for not condemning the stabbing attack. We need to understand that he is not a partner. He is not looking for peace.

The assailant said in a pre-attack Facebook post that he expected to be killed in the attack and his father said he was motivated by the violence at the Jerusalem shrine, which in a rare move was briefly shut down last week after the shooting attack.

The site is administered by Muslim authorities under the auspices of Jordan but Israel maintains security control of the compound.

Anticipating a demolition, local residents in the village of Kobar said the family emptied its home of valuables Saturday. Later, clashes erupted as residents burned tires and hurled rocks at Israeli troops who had searched the home. The military said about 50 people attacked troops who fired back with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Low-level clashes took place elsewhere throughout the day. In one, a Palestinian died under questionable circumstances. Witnesses said the 23-year-old tried to hurl a metal pipe filled with homemade explosives at Israeli soldiers but it exploded in his hand. Ramallah Hospital director Ahmad Betawi said the man died of shrapnel wounds but could not define what kind without an autopsy.

Israel fortified its troops in the West Bank and placed forces on high alert after the attack. The Israeli military said it carried out a wave of overnight arrests of 29 people, including several members of the Islamic Hamas militant group.

Gazas Hamas rulers praised the attack, but stopped short of taking responsibility for it.

Read more about:

SHARE:
The police came in the early hours. Everyone was asleep It was twilight

Thirteen journalists homes were raided in the early hours of Oct. 31. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper lived in one. The CEO in another. Columnists in four, lawyers in three the reporter, the ombudsman, the books section editor, the cartoonist, the accountant

All were senior figures at Cumhuriyet (Republic), Turkeys oldest and most prestigious newspaper. Trying to reassure their terrified, bleary-eyed children, they were forced to watch as their homes and archives were turned inside out and computers were impounded.

They were taken to the main police station, then to the hospital for a medical, and finally to the biggest prison in the country. Placed in solitary cells, with no idea what their crime was. As it turned out, they had to wait for 151 days before they could learn. The indictments were announced on the 151st day: aiding and abetting armed terrorist organizations.

Which organizations, I hear you ask?

The very same PKK that the government had shared a peace table with three years previously, and the Gulenists that the government had jointly been ruling the country with for a decade.

Funnily enough, the risks posed by the Gulen movement had been flagged by these journalists, who were now accused of being Gulenists.

And the evidence, I hear you ask?

The reports, interviews, headlines, tweets and columns critical of the government. In other words, they would be tried on charges of journalism.

I, as the former editor-in-chief, was the No. 1 defendant. And I was charged with altering the newspapers editorial policy. My first reaction was to exclaim, So what? Since when did prosecutors determine editorial policy for newspapers, anyway?

The answer is obvious: Since the presidents seizure of the media in his drive for absolute power.

Last year Recep Tayyip Erdogan embarked upon a sweeping crackdown, accusing his former partner Fetulah Gulen of masterminding the coup attempt of July 15, 2016. This was a God-sent opportunity to get rid of his opponents once and for all even as he purged the civil service of the Gulenists he had personally installed.

Having secured absolute power with a declaration of state of emergency on July 20, he then constitutionalized this de facto regime through a referendum held under civil martial law conditions  an amendment rejected by half the nation, all the restrictions and controversial Electoral Commission practices notwithstanding.

Turkey had fended off the coup attempt but fell victim to a counter-coup by Erdogan. Not military rule, but a police state.

In the wake of the coup attempt, the number of journalists in prison quadrupled from 30. As the Cumhuriyet contingent joined the 120, Turkey became the worlds biggest prison for journalists.

The constitutional amendment elevated Erdogan to the position of one man to rule the Government, the Parliament and the judiciary, in charge of the mechanism that appoints judges and prosecutors. Not unsurprisingly, every journalists appeal for release was rejected.

With a few exceptions, there was hardly any media left to criticize this turn of events: one jailed journalist is a hostage that silences several others outside. This was the method used to silence the Cumhuriyet, one of the last bastions of the free press.

Even the tea boy who runs the cafeteria was arrested; his crime was a gripe, I wouldnt serve Erdogan tea if he came here! overheard by the police constable on duty at the paper, who informed his superiors. Lo and behold, the next morning our tea boy was taken into custody on a charge of insulting the President.

Cumhuriyet is scheduled to appear in court on July 24. The entire editorial team of a newspaper is scheduled to face a judge for the first time after 267 days. They will be defending not only themselves, but also the free press, as well as a democracy that is fighting for its life in the hands of a despot.

If this is a coincidence, it certainly is an ironic one:

July 24 is the anniversary of lifting of censorship in Turkey, commemorated since 1908 as Press Freedom Day. This year, we commemorate Press Freedom Day as Struggle for Press Freedom Day in prisons, courtrooms and exile.

All our colleagues are invited.

Can Dundar is the 2017 laureate of the Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual award of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. Awarded since 1961, the Golden Pen recognizes outstanding action, in writing or deed, of an individual, group or institution in the cause of press freedom.

SHARE:
As Canadians celebrate the 150th birthday of their federation, Quebecers find it difficult to commemorate with the same enthusiasm as their compatriots in the rest of the country.

Indeed, because Quebec has not yet signed the Constitution, one must realize that the Quebec nation is still not officially part of a federation in which even the most federalist Quebecers feel exiled. This is why Premier Philippe Couillard rightly took advantage of this historic opportunity to embark on a wide-ranging dialogue on Quebecs place within Canada.

Surely, one man alone will never be able to impose his views on the future of Quebec and that of the other provinces. In that sense, Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus immediate dismissal of the idea was quite regrettable.

But as we saw during this weeks annual meeting of the premiers, it wont stop this important discussion from taking place. Even Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall admits it is perfectly reasonable for Quebec to want to sign the Constitution after 35 years.

If Quebecers are ready to integrate into the great Canadian family, however, they wish to do so with honour and dignity. And, of course, they remain free to choose their future. Trudeau must therefore understand that if Canada continues to refuse to give Quebec its rightful place in the federation, Quebecers will unfortunately have no alternative but to take their destiny into their own hands.

Fortunately, Trudeau has demonstrated in the past that he knows how to readjust his positions when he realizes he has made a mistake. We should recall, for instance, that he finally endorsed the House of Commons motion recognizing the existence of a Quebecois nation within a united Canada, after being fiercely opposed to such recognition.

This is all to his credit. But if Trudeau does not know how to grasp the hand offered by Couillard, he will miss a crucial rendezvous with history. The history of Canada and Quebec will continue to be written, with or without him.

In fact, the time has come to celebrate the openness that characterizes our country by recognizing the multicultural but also the multinational nature of a Canada that is composed of diverse cultures, clearly, but one that is also composed of diverse nations and multiple First Nations. In these times of reconciliation, Quebecers and their Indigenous compatriots must take their rightful place in our country, both historically and constitutionally.

While sovereignists still dream of an independent republic, Quebec federalists will continue to fight toreaffirm their contribution to our common Canadian history. As such, it is not the 150th birthday of Canada that federalist Quebec nationalists celebrate this year, because their Canada is much older than that.

Indeed, it is not because Parliament informally recognized the Quebecois nation in November 2006, only 37 days after the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada voted a resolution along the same lines, that Quebecers celebrated the 10th anniversary of their nation last year.

The reason is simple: the Quebec nation is much older than Parliaments motion. Similarly, Quebecs informal position in the Canadian federation does not allow us to fully commemorate the 150th birthday of a Canada that originated more than 480 years ago, when Jacques Cartier took his inspiration from the Iroquois word Kanata to inaugurate Canada in 1535.

Until the Quebec nation officially takes its place in the Canadian federation, and sees its recognition enshrined in the Constitution, federalist nationalists in Quebec will not forget that Canada, their Canada, also involves the history of Aboriginal people, French Canadians and Quebecers.

Happy 482nd birthday, Canada!

Fabrice Rivault was director of communications and policy of the Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec) from 2005 to 2007 and for ministers Marc Garneau and Martin Cauchon.

Read more about:

SHARE:
Re: Julie Payette: A strong symbol for Canada, Editorial, July 13

Julie Payette: A strong symbol for Canada, Editorial, July 13

The naming of Julie Payette as Canadas next Governor General raises an important and timely question: Rather than being appointed as the representative of our head of state, shouldnt she take over the top position?

Payettes accomplishments are stellar. She has achieved distinction as an astronaut, an engineer, linguist and musician. And her career reflects the respect Canadians accord science and technology.

So, lets compare Payettes credentials with those of Charles Windsor, the current front-runner set to become our next head of state if we dont do anything about it.

Payettes accomplishments, including her 25 days in orbit, are ones we take pride in as her fellow Canadians and its clear that she could very capably fulfil the duties of our highest office.

Mr. Windsor, on the other hand, doesnt even like Canada enough to live here and is only in line for the post because his mother has it.

A clear-headed assessment, unskewed by habitual deference, makes Payette the winner of this contest, hands down.

Ashok Charles, executive director, Republic Now, Toronto

SHARE:
Two Antioch women were arrested Saturday afternoon on suspicion of identity theft after using a Texas resident's credit card number to rack up charges at a high-end Napa Valley hotel, according to Napa Police.

Elisha Morshawna Deal, 31, and Alicia Takiah Denise Perry, 27, had booked a room at Senza Hotel in Napa online by using the victims credit card number, police said. After checking in, the women used the same card number to purchase massages and other services at the hotel, police said.

When the victim noticed the fraudulent charges, they contacted the hotel. The hotel contacted police and informed them that the women were in the middle of getting massages.

Police said that when they contacted the women, Perry, who was in possession of multiple cards, gave officers a false name. Deal refused to cooperate with officers, police said.

Deal and Perry were arrested and booked at the Napa County jail on suspicion of identity theft and conspiracy. Each is being held on $10,000 bail.
In the spirit of giving back, the family of deceased U.S. Army veteran Thomas Hugh Williams donated his belongings to Napa Valley Colleges Student Veterans Organization. The items are being sold this weekend at Williams former Napa home  proceeds from the sale will benefit the colleges Veterans Resource Center.

The incoming president of the club, Xavier Bianchi, began selling Williams belongings on Saturday.

Its an estate sale  everything needs to go, Bianchi said. The sale continues from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday at the late Williams home, 3572 Willis Drive in Napa.

Even though schools not in, I think its a great cause and this is going to go to helping vets so Im all about it, said Bianchi, who is an Army veteran, Purple Heart recipient, and volunteer counselor at the Pathway Home, which is a residential home for veterans in Yountville. Bianchi said after Williams died, his family took some sentimental things but left many items for the club. It was Williams wish to help veterans, Bianchi said.

Some of the items available for sale include tools, vintage furniture, appliances, dishes and kitchenware, vinyl records and memorabilia from his time working on Mare Island.

Its a pickers kind of delight, Bianchi said.

Andrew Pinelli and his 10-year-old daughter, Naimah Bahena, stopped by the home on Willis Drive on Saturday on their way back from karate because they enjoy going to estate sales.

We like these estate sales because you literally go back in time, Pinelli said. The father-daughter duo said they also like talking to people and seeing interesting things that not only give them some insight into the person who lived in the home, but also brings back some of their own memories.

One of those memories was a mounted singing fish that Naimah was looking at. When it opened its mouth, she put her hands to her face in delight. She had never seen anything like it.

Her dad has, though. He remembers seeing commercials for the Big Mouth Billy Bass plaques some time in the late-1990s.

It brings back memories, he said. Were all connected somehow.

Rose Jischke was able to relive some of her memories, too. The former Napa Valley Bank (NVB) employee was looking for some special NVB wine glasses. At one time she had a large collection, but before Saturday, she had only three wine glasses left. With some encouragement from her daughter, Kristy Clagg, she decided to look for some more glasses at local garage sales, starting with this one.

This was the first place we looked, she said. Jischke located and purchased six of the special edition wine glasses from Williams collection as well as a sewing machine and watering can.

The 3-bedroom, 2-bath home, which still has paneled walls and an old-fashioned door bell, has a lot of retro items inside of it, said Dorothy Salmon, board of directors chairwoman for The Pathway Home, Inc.

This is like a flashback to the 60s, she said.

For example, Williams had a complete set of World Book encyclopedias, which used to be sold door-to-door, Salmon said.

The most important thing, though, is that the money is going to a good cause.

Veterans and their family members can get all sorts of help and information at the colleges Veterans Resource Center, Bianchi said.

It isnt just a club for students, he said. Its a place where individuals can get information about paying for college, securing their benefits, finding out more about joining the military and getting connected to resources.

The Veterans Resource Center will reopen when the fall semester begins Aug. 17.

To support the student veterans club, donors may send checks payable to NVC DAS-Vets to Napa Valley College, Veterans Office, 2277 Napa-Vallejo Highway, Napa, CA 94558.
If Urban Outfitters Inc. (URBN) - Get Free Report misses its upcoming second-quarter earnings estimates, one wonders whether the sometimes-activist investor lurking on its cozy, over-tenured board will strike.

Urban Outfitters is expected to report second-quarter results on Aug. 15, when analysts surveyed at FactSet expect the retailer to post earnings of 39 cents a share on revenue of $867 million. But, the outlook on Urban Outfitters is grim as it has missed profit expectations for the past three consecutive quarters.

In its recent first quarter, the retailer reported earnings of 10 cents a share on revenue of $761 million, badly missing Wall Street's estimates for earnings of 15 cents a share on revenue of $769 million.

Scott Galloway, a professor at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University and the founder and chairman of activist investment firm Firebrand Partners LLC, joined the board of Urban Outfitters as an independent director last May.

As of April 3, Galloway owned a less-than 1% stake in the Philadelphia-based company, but could boost his position in order to launch an activist campaign, if he chooses. Back in 2008, Galloway increased his stake in the New York Times Co. (NYT) - Get Free Report , to 19%, to launch a campaign to shake up its board. He ended victorious, landing a board seat for himself for two years at the company.

Galloway did not return a request for comment.

Although not drawing ire from an activist hedge fund yet, a number of other groups have called upon the apparel retailer, behind the Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Free People brands, to overhaul its over-tenured board. For example, in May, Washington D.C.-based CtW Investment Group, which works with union-sponsored pension funds, urged shareholders to vote against re-electing directors Robert Strouse and Harry Cherken Jr., the longest-sitting board members, at the company's May 23 meeting.

"The company has suffered from years of stagnant revenue growth and a slumping stock price," CtW wrote at the time. "While the retail and apparel sector, more generally, has also suffered from falling stock prices, Urban's stock price has fallen more dramatically than peers."

The California State Teachers Retirement System, which first took issue with Urban Outfitters in 2015, voted to oust the entire board this year, Aeisha Mastagni, CalSTRS corporate governance portfolio manager, told TheStreet on Thursday.

"While CalSTRS does not support limiting director tenure, we do believe the board should review the director's years of board service as part of the annual board review," Mastagni said. "The need for directors that are not embedded in the old retail model is a central factor to ensuing the future financial health of Urban Outfitters."

The company's profit growth has underperformed the retail and apparel industry by 37% for the past three to five years, CtW said in its letter to shareholders prior to the May 23 meeting. Year to date, the company's stock is down 36.34%.

A representative at CtW did not return a request for comment.

Strouse and Cherken ended up keeping their seats but it is unclear how many outside investors compared to insiders voted to reelect them.

According to an ISS report obtained by TheStreet, 57.14% of non-executive directors on Urban Outfitters' board are over-tenured. ISS gave Urban Outfitters' board structure a score of 10, which is the worst on its scale, with one being the best. Co-founders of Urban Outfitters, Scott Belair and Richard Hayne, have sat on the board for 41 years.

CtW also criticized Urban Outfitters for only having two women on its nine-member board, one of whom, Margaret Hayne, is company CEO and Chairman Richard Hayne's wife. CalSTRS has taken issue with Margaret Hayne, too, calling, in 2015, for a woman to be appointed to the board who is not related, blood or otherwise, to a company executive.

"The first woman brought on Urban Outfitters board was the wife of CEO Richard Hayne," CalSTRS chief of governance Anne Sheehan told TheStreet in September. "Really? You couldn't find someone else?"

Mastagni said one of CalSTRS' "goals is to advance diversity in the boardroom."

CalSTRS filed a diversity proposal in 2015, resulting in the appointment of Elizabeth Ann Lampert to the board. After Lampert's appointment, CalSTRS withdrew its diversity proposal.

More of What's Trending on TheStreet:
Where were you on Aug. 27? Look back at Napa County's history through the front pages from the Napa Valley Register on this day in years past.
The following companies are subsidiares of Procter & Gamble: "Petersburg Products International" LLC, "Procter & Gamble Services" LLC, "Procter & Gamble" LLC, 1837 LLC, Agile Pursuits Franchising Inc., Agile Pursuits Inc., Ambi Pur, Arbora & Ausonia, Arbora & Ausonia S.L.U., Avon - Giorgio Beverly Hills, Billie, Braun GmbH, Braun Shanghai Co. Ltd., Celtic Insurance Company Inc., Charlie Banana USA LLC, Corporativo Procter & Gamble S. de R.L. de C.V., DDFSkincare, Detergent Products B.V., Detergent Products SARL, Detergenti S.A., FPG Oleochemicals Sdn. Bhd., Fameccanica Data S.p.A., Fameccanica Industria e Comercio Do Brasil LTDA., Fameccanica Machinery Shanghai Co. Ltd., Fameccanica North America Inc., Farmacy Beauty, Fater Central Europe SRL, Fater Eastern Europe LLC, Fater Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Fater S.p.A., Fater Temizlik Urunleri Ltd STI, First Aid Beauty, First Aid Beauty Limited, Folgers Coffee, Fountain Square Music Publishing Co. Inc., Gillette Australia Pty. Ltd., Gillette China Limited, Gillette Commercial Operations North America, Gillette Diversified Operations Pvt. Ltd., Gillette Egypt S.A.E., Gillette Group UK Ltd, Gillette Holding Company LLC, Gillette Holding GmbH, Gillette India Limited, Gillette Industries Ltd., Gillette International B.V., Gillette Latin America Holding B.V., Gillette Management LLC, Gillette Pakistan Limited, Gillette Poland International Sp. z.o.o., Gillette Shanghai Ltd., Gillette U.K. Limited, Gillette del Uruguay S.A., Hyginett KFT, Industries Marocaines Modernes SA, Inversiones Plaza LLC, LLC "Procter & Gamble - Novomoskovsk", LLC "Procter & Gamble Distributorskaya Compania", LLC Procter & and Gamble Ukraine, Laboratoire Mediflor S.A.S., Laboratorios Vicks S.L.U., Lamberts Healthcare Ltd., Liberty Street Music Publishing Company Inc., Limited Liability Company 'Procter & Gamble Trading Ukraine', MDVIP, MERCK KGAA NPV, Marcvenca Inversiones C.A., Merck Consumer Healthcare, Modern Industries Company - Dammam, Modern Products Company - Jeddah, Native, Nature's Best Health Products Ltd., New Chapter Canada Inc., New Chapter Inc., Nioxin Research Laboratories, Noxell Corporation, OUAI, Olay LLC, Oral-B Laboratories, P&G Consumer Health Germany GmbH, P&G Distribution East Africa Limited, P&G Distribution Morocco SAS, P&G Hair Care Holding Inc., P&G Health Austria GmbH & Co. OG, P&G Health France S.A.S., P&G Health Germany GmbH, P&G Healthcare Zhejiang Limited, P&G Industrial Peru S.R.L., P&G Innovation Godo Kaisha, P&G Investment Management Ltd., P&G Israel M.D.O. Ltd., P&G Japan G.K., P&G K.K., P&G Northeast Asia Pte. Ltd., P&G Prestige Godo Kaisha, P&G South African Trading Pty. Ltd., P&G-Clairol, PG13 Launchpad Alpha Inc., PG13 Launchpad Beta Inc., PG13 Launchpad Gamma Inc., PGT Healthcare LLP, PT Procter & Gamble Home Products Indonesia, PT Procter & Gamble Operations Indonesia, Phase II Holdings Corporation, Pressbox, Procter & Gamble Algeria EURL, Procter & Gamble Amazon Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Amiens S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Argentina SRL, Procter & Gamble Asia Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Australia Proprietary Limited, Procter & Gamble Azerbaijan Services LLC, Procter & Gamble Bangladesh Private Ltd., Procter & Gamble Blois S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Brazil Holdings B.V., Procter & Gamble Bulgaria EOOD, Procter & Gamble Business Services Canada Company, Procter & Gamble Canada Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Chengdu Ltd., Procter & Gamble Chile Limitada, Procter & Gamble China Ltd., Procter & Gamble China Sales Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Commercial LLC, Procter & Gamble Czech Republic s.r.o., Procter & Gamble DS Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Danmark ApS, Procter & Gamble Detergent Beijing Ltd., Procter & Gamble Deutschland GmbH, Procter & Gamble Distributing New Zealand Limited, Procter & Gamble Distributing Philippines Inc., Procter & Gamble Distribution Company Europe BV, Procter & Gamble Distribution S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Eastern Europe LLC, Procter & Gamble Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Procter & Gamble Egypt, Procter & Gamble Egypt Distribution, Procter & Gamble Egypt Holding, Procter & Gamble Egypt Manufacturing Company, Procter & Gamble Egypt Supplies, Procter & Gamble Energy Company LLC, Procter & Gamble Espana S.A.U., Procter & Gamble Far East Inc., Procter & Gamble Finance Holding Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Management S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Finance U.K. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Financial Investments LLP, Procter & Gamble Financial Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Financial Services S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Finland OY, Procter & Gamble France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH, Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH & Co. Operations oHG, Procter & Gamble Ghana Trading Limited, Procter & Gamble GmbH, Procter & Gamble Grundstucks-und Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, Procter & Gamble Guangzhou Consumer Products Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Guangzhou Enterprise Management Service Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Guangzhou Ltd., Procter & Gamble Guangzhou Technology Innovation Co. LTD., Procter & Gamble Gulf FZE, Procter & Gamble Hair Care LLC, Procter & Gamble Health & Beauty Care Limited, Procter & Gamble Health Belgium BV, Procter & Gamble Health Limited, Procter & Gamble Health Ltd., Procter & Gamble Health Poland Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Hellas Single Member Ltd., Procter & Gamble Holding France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Holding GmbH, Procter & Gamble Holding S.r.l., Procter & Gamble Holding Thailand Limited, Procter & Gamble Holdings UK Ltd., Procter & Gamble Home Products Private Limited, Procter & Gamble Honduras S de RL, Procter & Gamble Hong Kong Limited, Procter & Gamble Hungary Wholesale Trading Partnership KKT, Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care Limited, Procter & Gamble Inc., Procter & Gamble India Holdings Inc., Procter & Gamble Indochina Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Industrial - 2012 C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial S.C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Costa Rica Limitada, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de El Salvador Limitada de Capital Variable, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Guatemala Limitada, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Panama S. de R.L., Procter & Gamble International Operations SA, Procter & Gamble International Operations SA-ROHQ, Procter & Gamble International Sarl, Procter & Gamble Investment Company UK Ltd., Procter & Gamble Investment Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Italia S.p.A., Procter & Gamble Jiangsu Ltd., Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan Distribution LLP, Procter & Gamble Korea Inc., Procter & Gamble Korea S&D Co., Procter & Gamble L&CP Limited, Procter & Gamble Leasing LLC, Procter & Gamble Levant S.A.L., Procter & Gamble Limited, Procter & Gamble Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Berlin GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Ireland Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing SA Pty Ltd, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Thailand Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Tianjin Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Marketing Romania SRL, Procter & Gamble Mataro S.L.U., Procter & Gamble Mexico Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Mexico Inc., Procter & Gamble Middle East FZE, Procter & Gamble Nederland B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Services B.V., Procter & Gamble Nigeria Limited, Procter & Gamble Norge AS, Procter & Gamble Operations Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Overseas India B.V., Procter & Gamble Overseas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Pakistan Private Limited, Procter & Gamble Peru S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Philippines Business Services Inc., Procter & Gamble Philippines Inc., Procter & Gamble Polska Sp. z o.o, Procter & Gamble Portugal - Produtos De Consumo Higiene e Saude S.A., Procter & Gamble Product Supply U.K. Limited, Procter & Gamble Productions Inc., Procter & Gamble RHD Inc., Procter & Gamble RSC Regional Service Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Retail Services Sarl, Procter & Gamble S.r.l., Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Procter & Gamble Services Company N.V., Procter & Gamble Services Switzerland SA, Procter & Gamble Singapore Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Spol. s.r.o. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Sverige AB, Procter & Gamble Switzerland SARL, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Limited, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Sales Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Limited, Procter & Gamble Technology Beijing Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Trading Thailand Limited, Procter & Gamble Tuketim Mallari Sanayii A.S., Procter & Gamble UK, Procter & Gamble UK Group Holdings Ltd, Procter & Gamble UK Parent Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Universal Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Vietnam Company Limited, Procter & Gamble d.o.o. za trgovinu, Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.C.A., Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.R.L., Procter & Gamble do Brasil Ltda., Procter & Gamble do Brazil LLC, Procter & Gamble do Nordeste S/A, Procter & Gamble doo Beograd, Procter & Gamble-Rakona s.r.o., Procter and Gamble Lanka Private Limited, Procter and Gamble SA Pty Ltd., Progam Realty & Development Corporation, Recovery Engineering, Redmond Products Inc., Richardson-Vicks, Richardson-Vicks Real Estate Inc., Riverfront Music Publishing Co. Inc., Rosemount LLC, SPD Development Company Limited, SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH, Series Acquisition B.V., Seven Seas Limited, Shulton Inc., Snowberry, Snowberry New Zealand Limited, Sunflower Distributing LLC, TAOS - FL LLC, TAOS Retail LLC, THIS IS L, TULA, Tambrands, Tambrands Inc., Temple Trees Impex & Investment Private Limited, The Art of Shaving, The Art of Shaving - FL LLC, The Dover Wipes Company, The Gillette Company, The Gillette Company LLC, The Gillette co., The Iams Company Inc., The Procter & Gamble Distributing LLC, The Procter & Gamble Global Finance Company LLC, The Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company, The Procter & Gamble Paper Products Company, The Procter & Gamble U.S. Business Services Company, This is L., This is L. Inc., Thomas Hedley Co, US CD LLC, Vidal Sassoon Shanghai Academy, VitaminHaus Pty Ltd, Walker & Co. Brands Inc., Walker & Company Brands, Wella AG, Zenlen Inc., Zirh, and iMFLUX Inc..

Read More
The following companies are subsidiares of Textron: AAI Corporation, AAI Services Corporation, ALSTOM Gears, Able Aerospace, Able Aerospace Services Inc., Able Engineering & Component Services, Aeronautical Accessories LLC, Airborne Tactical Advantage Company LLC, Arctic Cat, Arctic Cat ACE Holding GmbH, Arctic Cat France SARL, Arctic Cat GmbH, Arctic Cat Inc., Arctic Cat Production LLC, Arctic Cat Production Support LLC, Arctic Cat Sales Inc., Arctic Cat Shared Services LLC, Arctic Cat UK Ltd., Arkansas Aerospace Inc., Avco Corporation, Aviation Service servis letal doo Ljubljana, Aylesbury Automation, B/K Navigational Equipment sro, BELL TEXTRON ASIA (PTE.) LTD., Beech Aircraft Corporation, Beech Holdings, Beechcraft Defense Support Holding LLC, Beechcraft Domestic Service Company, Beechcraft Germany GmbH, Beechcraft International Holding LLC, Beechcraft International Service Company, Beechcraft New Zealand, Bell Textron Canada International Inc., Bell Textron Canada Limited/Limitee, Bell Textron Co. Ltd, Bell Textron Inc., Bell Textron Korea Inc., Bell Textron LLC, Bell Textron Miami Inc., Bell Textron Prague a.s., Bell Textron Rhode Island Inc., Bell Textron Services Inc., Bell Textron Supply Center BV, Bell Textron Technical Services Inc., Benzlers, Brazaco Mapri Industrias, Burkland, Cessna Aircraft Company, Cessna Citation European Service Center SAS (99.9%; 1 share  Textron France SAS), Cessna Dusseldorf Citation Service Center GmbH, Cessna Finance Corporation, Cessna Finance Export Corporation, Cessna Mexico S de RL de CV, Cessna Spanish Citation Service Center SLU, Cessna Zurich Citation Service Center GmbH, Citation Parts Distribution International Inc., Cushman Inc., Datacom Technologies, David Brown Group, Doncaster Citation Service Centre Limited, E-Z-GO Canada Limited, Energy Manufacturing, Flexalloy, HBC LLC, Hawker Beech de Mexico S de RL de CV, Hawker Beechcraft Argentina SA , Howe & Howe Inc., Howe and Howe Technologies, Industrial Technology Inc., InteSys Technologies, International Product Support Inc., KSB Annecy SAS, Kautex (Changchun) Plastics Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Chongqing) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Guangzhou) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Pinghu) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Shanghai) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Wuhan) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex Corporation, Kautex Craiova srl, Kautex Germany Holding GmbH, Kautex Inc., Kautex Japan KK, Kautex Shanghai GmbH, Kautex Textron (UK) Limited, Kautex Textron Benelux BVBA, Kautex Textron Bohemia spol sro, Kautex Textron CVS Limited, Kautex Textron GmbH & Co. KG, Kautex Textron Iberica SL, Kautex Textron Management Services Company de Puebla S. de RL de CV, Kautex Textron Portugal  Produtos Plasticos Sociedade Unipessoal Lda., Kautex Textron de Mexico S de RL de CV, Kautex Textron do Brasil Ltda., Kautex of Georgia Inc., Kaywood Products Corp., Klauke, LCI Corporation International, LLC Textron RUS, Maag, McCord Corporation, Mechtronix, Medical Numerics Inc., Midland Industrial Plastics, MillenWorks, MillenWorks Themed Technologies, MotorFist LLC, OPINICUS Simulation and Training Services LLC, OmniQuip International, Opinicus, Optical Boring Co., Opto-Electronics, Opto-Electronics Inc., Overwatch Systems, PEINER Umformtechnik, Pipistrel, Pirelli Tyres - General Rubber Goods (GRG) division, Premiair Aviation Maintenance Pty Ltd, Progressive Electronics, Ransomes, Ransomes Inc., Ransomes Investment LLC, Ransomes Jacobsen France SAS, Ransomes Jacobsen Limited, Ransomes Limited, Ransomes Pensions Trustee Company Limited, Replacement Part Solutions LLC, Response Technologies LLC, Rotor Blades Limited, Sukosim Verbindungselemente, TRU Simulation & Training Spain SL, TRU Simulation + Training Inc., TRU Simulation + Training LLC, TekGPS Engineering Srl, Textron Airland LLC, Textron Atlantic LLC, Textron Aviation Australia Pty. Ltd., Textron Aviation Canada Ltd., Textron Aviation Defense LLC, Textron Aviation Finance Corporation, Textron Aviation Inc., Textron Aviation Prague Service Center sro, Textron Aviation Rhode Island Inc., Textron Aviation Services de Mexico S de RL de CV, Textron Capital BV, Textron Communications Inc., Textron Far East Pte. Ltd., Textron Finance Holding Company, Textron Financial Corporation, Textron Financial Corporation Receivables Trust 2002-CP-2, Textron Fluid and Power Inc., Textron France Holding SAS, Textron France SAS, Textron Global Services Inc., Textron Ground Support Equipment Inc., Textron Ground Support Equipment UK Limited, Textron IPMP Inc., Textron India Private Limited , Textron Innovations Inc., Textron International Inc., Textron International Mexico S de RL de CV, Textron Limited, Textron Management Services Inc., Textron Motors GmbH, Textron Motors North America Inc., Textron Outdoor Power Equipment Inc., Textron Realty Corporation, Textron Shared Service Centre (Canada) Inc., Textron Specialized Vehicles Inc., Textron Sweden AB, Textron Systems Australia Holding Pty Ltd, Textron Systems Australia Pty Ltd, Textron Systems Canada Inc., Textron Systems Corporation, Textron Systems Electronic Systems UK (Holdings) Limited, Textron Systems Electronic Systems UK Limited, Textron Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Textron UK Pension Trustee Limited, Textron Verwaltungs-GmbH, Turbine Engine Components Textron (Newington Operations) Inc., United Industrial Corporation, Westminster Insurance Company, Williams Machine & Tool, and Zhenjiang Bell Textron Aviation Services Limited.

Read More
One of the more interesting detours in my career was the chance to cover the presidential campaign in 2000.

I was assigned initially to cover John McCains insurgent campaign in New Hampshire. I was the most junior reporter on the Washington Times national desk and I think the more senior reporters wanted to be on the campaign trail with Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who our editors had been backing as the Republican nominee for at least two years. They, like most Inside-the-Beltway observers, assumed Bush was a lock for the nomination.

I knew McCain reasonably well. I had been covering Capitol Hill for several years and McCain was a favorite of the press corps for his availability and willingness to drop a memorable quote on request. I also had some slight personal knowledge of him because he and my father were high school classmates and had some mutual friends and acquaintances in the Navy, though they never served together.

I have to admit I wasnt as enamored of McCain as my press corps colleagues. Although I found him entertaining, his reputation as a Maverick seemed a little thin. It rested on a small handful of issues where he was willing to diverge from his party, particularly campaign finance. If you examined his record beyond those two or three issues, which I did for a story at one point, he was as conservative and reliable a Republican vote as anyone in either chamber of Congress.

But when I got to New Hampshire and started comparing his rallies with the events by Bush and the many other lesser Republican candidates that year, McCain really began to stand out from the rest.

He dashed around the state in his Straight Talk Express giving loose, semi-improvised stump speeches. He seemed to relish, even encourage friendly heckling and banter with the audience. It was more like a small-town social event than a campaign rally by a veteran U.S. Senator running for president. He was particularly effective and touching when veterans would attend. He would depart from his remarks, step down from the stage and address them with great tenderness and affection.

And, more than any other candidate I have ever seen, he seemed to be having fun. He would bound around the stage, make up goofy new slogans and display an almost child-like glee at the energy of the crowd.

The night of his smashing, 18-point drubbing of Bush in New Hampshire, McCain stepped into the hotel party looking at once stunned and giddy, as if he could hardly believe his own luck.

It was clear that the campaign was utterly unprepared for victory. There was hardly any campaign organization in any other state. The whole operation had a weirdly improvised feel after New Hampshire. They rented a deplorably rickety old aircraft from TWA, then teetering on its last legs. The pilots approach to landings appeared to be to descend like a dive bomber and hit the tarmac with as much force as the plane could stand. It was terrifying and, for some reason, McCain took to referring to him as The Bavarian Fighter Pilot.

Through all the emotional ups and downs that followed, McCains anarchic sense of fun remained. Unlike other candidates, McCain sat in the main cabin of the airplane with the reporters and staff. We were free to approach him and talk any time we wanted, provided he wasnt napping or speaking with his wife Cindy, who was by his side through most of the campaign (though I always sensed she wasnt having as much fun as he was). His staff would set up bars at each end of the aircraft at the end of the day, and the whole operation took on an air of a flying political fraternity party.

The crowds at rallies grew and McCain continued to display his gleeful astonishment at every rally. Sometimes excitement would overwhelm him and he would attempt to pump his arms in victory, causing him to wince in pain, as if he had temporarily forgotten that the damage wrought by his captivity in North Vietnam had sharply limited his range of motion.

At one rally in Michigan, McCain got so excited that he improvised a line comparing himself to Luke Skywalker trying to escape the Death Star in Star Wars. It was a goofy remark that had even himself laughing, but thereafter he would enter rallies to the sounds of the Star Wars main theme. The crowds got the reference and ate it up.

I never asked McCain about it to confirm, but I got the sense that he ran in that 2000 race as something of a lark, the capstone of a long political and military career, one more thing to add to his stock of stories. It didnt seem like he expected to win, or make much of a difference even in New Hampshire. Throughout the campaign, he and his aides continually acted as if they were flummoxed by the whole McCain phenomenon.

I didnt cover the 2008 campaign, but watching it from afar, it didnt seem like the same John McCain. He was scripted and surrounded by seasoned party consultants, the types who had been working for his rival George W. Bush eight years earlier. The thing that struck me most was that McCain no longer looked like he was having the slightest bit of fun. Even he didnt seem surprised that he lost.

The news this week that McCain had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer made me sad. McCain is a flawed and difficult man in some ways, but he is also engaging, enjoyable and more authentic than most people in his position. He seems to take his responsibility to the country and to the institution of Congress seriously.

I hope in his final years, he can come back to the central message of his 2000 campaign, the line that he included in every speech: That there is nothing more noble than to sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself.

The country could use a few more politicians like John McCain right now.
The following companies are subsidiares of DaVita: Aberdeen Dialysis LLC, Accountable Kidney Care LLC, Adair Dialysis LLC, American Fork Dialysis LLC, American Medical Insurance Inc., Animas Dialysis LLC, Arcadia Gardens Dialysis LLC, Ashdow Dialysis LLC, Atlantic Dialysis LLC, Austin Dialysis Centers L.P., Barnell Dialysis LLC, Barrons Dialysis LLC, Barton Dialysis LLC, Bastrop Dialysis LLC, Beachside Dialysis LLC, Beck Dialysis LLC, Bellevue Dialysis LLC, Bemity Dialysis LLC, Beverly Hills Dialysis Partnership, Birch Dialysis LLC, Bladon Dialysis LLC, Bliss Dialysis LLC, Bohama Dialysis LLC, Bowan Dialysis LLC, Braddock Dialysis LLC, Bridges Dialysis LLC, Brimfield Dialysis LLC, Brook Dialysis LLC, Brownsville Kidney Center Ltd., Brownwood Dialysis LLC, Bruno Dialysis LLC, Buckhorn Dialysis LLC, Buford Dialysis LLC, Bullards Dialysis LLC, Bullock Dialysis LLC, Calante Dialysis LLC, Campton Dialysis LLC, Canyon Springs Dialysis LLC, Capes Dialysis LLC, Capital Dialysis Partnership, Capron Dialysis LLC, Carlton Dialysis LLC, Carroll County Dialysis Facility Inc., Carroll County Dialysis Facility Limited Partnership, Cascades Dialysis LLC, Caverns Dialysis LLC, Cedar Dialysis LLC, Centennial LV LLC, Central Carolina Dialysis Centers LLC, Central Georgia Dialysis LLC, Central Iowa Dialysis Partners LLC, Central Kentucky Dialysis Centers LLC, Channel Dialysis LLC, Cheraw Dialysis LLC, Chicago Heights Dialysis LLC, Chipeta Dialysis LLC, Churchill Dialysis LLC, Cinco Rios Dialysis LLC, Clark Dialysis LLC, Clayton Dialysis LLC, Cleburne Dialysis LLC, Clinica Central do Bonfim S.A., Clinton Township Dialysis LLC, Clyfee Dialysis LLC, Columbus-RNA-DaVita LLC, Conconully Dialysis LLC, Continental Dialysis Center Inc., Couer Dialysis LLC, Court Dialysis LLC, Cowell Dialysis LLC, Cowesett Dialysis LLC, Crossings Dialysis LLC, Crystals Dialysis LLC, Cuivre Dialysis LLC, Culbert Dialysis LLC, DC Healthcare International Inc., DNP Management Company LLC, DPS CKD LLC, DV Care Netherlands B.V., DV Care Netherlands C.V., DVA Healthcare - Southwest Ohio LLC, DVA Healthcare Renal Care Inc., DVA Healthcare of Maryland LLC, DVA Healthcare of Massachusetts Inc., DVA Healthcare of New London LLC, DVA Healthcare of Norwich LLC, DVA Healthcare of Pennsylvania LLC, DVA Healthcare of Tuscaloosa LLC, DVA Holdings Pte. Ltd., DVA Laboratory Services Inc., DVA Renal Healthcare Inc., DVA of New York Inc., DaVita - Riverside II LLC, DaVita - Riverside LLC, DaVita - West LLC, DaVita APAC Holding B.V., DaVita Brasil Participacoes e Servicos de Nefrologia Ltda., DaVita Care (Saudi Arabia), DaVita Dakota Dialysis Center LLC, DaVita Deutschland AG, DaVita Deutschland Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, DaVita El Paso East L.P., DaVita Germany GmbH, DaVita HK Holdings Limited, DaVita HealthCare Brasil Servicos Medicos Ltda., DaVita International Limited, DaVita Nefromed Servicos de Nefrologia Ltda., DaVita Nephron Care Servicos de Nefrologia Ltda., DaVita Rien Servicos de Nefrologia Ltda., DaVita S.A.S., DaVita Servicos de Nefrologia Asa Sul Ltda., DaVita Servicos de Nefrologia Distrito Federal Ltda., DaVita Servicos de Nefrologia Guarulhos Ltda., DaVita Servicos de Nefrologia Jardim das Imbuias Ltda., DaVita Servicos de Nefrologia Taubate Ltda., DaVita Servicos de Nefrologia de Araraquara Ltda., DaVita Sp. z o.o., DaVita Sud-Niedersachsen GmbH, DaVita Transrim Servicos de Nefrologia Ltda., DaVita UTR Servicos de Nefrologia Ltda., DaVita VillageHealth Inc., DaVita of New York Inc., Dallas-Fort Worth Nephrology L.P., Damon Dialysis LLC, Dialysis Holdings Inc., Dialysis of Des Moines LLC, Dialysis of Northern Illinois LLC, Dierks Dialysis LLC, Dolores Dialysis LLC, Dome Dialysis LLC, Doves Dialysis LLC, Downriver Centers Inc., EURODIAL - Centro de Nefrologia e Dialise de Leiria S.A., East End Dialysis Center Inc., East Ft. Lauderdale LLC, Ebrea Dialysis LLC, Edisto Dialysis LLC, Eldrist Dialysis LLC, Elgin Dialysis LLC, Elk Grove Dialysis Center LLC, Empire State DC Inc., Etowah Dialysis LLC, Ettleton Dialysis LLC, Eufaula Dialysis LLC, Falcon LLC, Family Health Care of Central Florida, Fanthorp Dialysis LLC, Federal Way Assurance Inc., Fields Dialysis LLC, Five Star Dialysis LLC, Fjords Dialysis LLC, Flagler Dialysis LLC, Flamingo Park Kidney Center Inc., Forester Dialysis LLC, Freehold Artificial Kidney Center L.L.C., Fremont Dialysis LLC, Frontier Dialysis LLC, Fullerton Dialysis Center LLC, GDC International LLC, Gambro Healthcare, Ganois Dialysis LLC, Garner Dialysis LLC, Garrett Dialysis LLC, Gaviota Dialysis LLC, Gebhard Dialysis LLC, Genesis KC Development LLC, GiveLife Dialysis LLC, Glassland Dialysis LLC, Glosser Dialysis LLC, Goliad Dialysis LLC, Grand Home Dialysis LLC, Greater Las Vegas Dialysis LLC, Greater Los Angeles Dialysis Centers LLC, Green Country Dialysis LLC, Green Desert Dialysis LLC, Griffin Dialysis LLC, Groten Dialysis LLC, Harmony Dialysis LLC, Hart Dialysis LLC, Hawn Dialysis LLC, Healthcare Partners, Helmer Dialysis LLC, Hennepin Dialysis LLC, Hewett Dialysis LLC, Hilgards Dialysis LLC, Hochatown Dialysis LLC, Home Kidney Care LLC, Honeyman Dialysis LLC, Houston Kidney Center/Total Renal Care Integrated Service Network Limited Partnership, Hummer Dialysis LLC, Hunter Dialysis LLC, Huntington Artificial Kidney Center Ltd., Hyde Dialysis LLC, IDC -International Dialysis Centers Lda, ISD Bartlett LLC, ISD Corpus Christi LLC, ISD I Holding Company Inc., ISD II Holding Company Inc., ISD Las Vegas LLC, ISD Lees Summit LLC, ISD Renal Inc., ISD Schaumburg LLC, ISD Spring Valley LLC, ISD Summit Renal Care LLC, Iroquois Dialysis LLC, Jacinto Dialysis LLC, Jenness Dialysis LLC, Kamiah Dialysis LLC, Kanika Dialysis LLC, Kavett Dialysis LLC, Kenai Dialysis LLC, Kershaw Dialysis LLC, Kidney Home Center LLC, Kimball Dialysis LLC, Kingston Dialysis LLC, Kinnick Dialysis LLC, Kinter Dialysis LLC, Kiowa Dialysis LLC, Knickerbocker Dialysis Inc., Lakeshore Dialysis LLC, Landing Dialysis LLC, Landor Dialysis LLC, Lassen Dialysis LLC, Leasburg Dialysis LLC, Leawood Dialysis LLC, Lees Dialysis LLC, Legare Development LLC, Liberty RC Inc., Lifeline Pensacola LLC, Lifeline Vascular Center-Albany LLC, Lincoln Park Dialysis Services Inc., Livingston Dialysis LLC, Llano Dialysis LLC, Lofield Dialysis LLC, Logoley Dialysis LLC, Lone Dialysis LLC, Long Beach Dialysis Center LLC, Lord Baltimore Dialysis LLC, Lory Dialysis LLC, Lourdes Dialysis LLC, Lyndale Dialysis LLC, MVZ DaVita Alzey GmbH, MVZ DaVita Aurich GmbH, MVZ DaVita Bad Aibling GmbH, MVZ DaVita Bad Duben GmbH, MVZ DaVita Cardio Centrum Dusseldorf GmbH, MVZ DaVita Dillenburg GmbH, MVZ DaVita Dinkelsbuhl GmbH, MVZ DaVita Dormagen GmbH, MVZ DaVita Duisburg GmbH, MVZ DaVita Elsterland GmbH, MVZ DaVita Emden GmbH, MVZ DaVita Falkensee GmbH, MVZ DaVita Geilenkirchen GmbH, MVZ DaVita Gera GmbH, MVZ DaVita Iserlohn GmbH, MVZ DaVita Monchengladbach GmbH, MVZ DaVita Neuss GmbH, MVZ DaVita Niederrhein GmbH, MVZ DaVita Nierenzentrum Aachen Alsdorf GmbH, MVZ DaVita Nierenzentrum Berlin-Britz GmbH, MVZ DaVita Nierenzentrum Hamm-Ahlen GmbH, MVZ DaVita Prenzlau-Pasewalk GmbH, MVZ DaVita Rhein-Ahr GmbH, MVZ DaVita Rhein-Ruhr GmbH, MVZ DaVita Schwalm-Eder GmbH, MVZ DaVita Viersen GmbH, Madigan Dialysis LLC, Magney Dialysis LLC, Magoffin Dialysis LLC, Makonee Dialysis LLC, Marlton Dialysis Center LLC, Marseille Dialysis LLC, Mason-Dixon Dialysis Facilities Inc., Mazonia Dialysis LLC, Mellen Dialysis LLC, Melnea Dialysis LLC, Memorial Dialysis Center L.P., Meridian Dialysis LLC, Mermet Dialysis LLC, Milltown Dialysis LLC, Minam Dialysis LLC, Minneopa Dialysis LLC, Mountain West Dialysis Services LLC, Mulgee Dialysis LLC, Nansen Dialysis LLC, Natomas Dialysis LLC, Nauvue Dialysis LLC, Navarro Dialysis LLC, Nephrology Medical Associates of Georgia LLC, Nephrology Practice Solutions LLC, New Bay Dialysis LLC, Nicona Dialysis LLC, Norbert Dialysis LLC, Norte Dialysis LLC, North Austin Dialysis LLC, Northwest Physicians Network, Oasis Dialysis LLC, Ohio River Dialysis LLC, Okanogan Dialysis LLC, Olive Dialysis LLC, Ordust Dialysis LLC, Owyhee Dialysis LLC, Palo Dialysis LLC, Palomar Dialysis LLC, Panther Dialysis LLC, Parkside Dialysis LLC, Pattison Dialysis LLC, Patuk Dialysis LLC, Pearl Dialysis LLC, Pendster Dialysis LLC, Percha Dialysis LLC, Pershing Dialysis LLC, Pfeiffer Dialysis LLC, Philadelphia-Camden Integrated Kidney Care LLC, Physicians Choice Dialysis LLC, Physicians Choice Dialysis Of Alabama LLC, Physicians Dialysis Acquisitions Inc., Physicians Dialysis Ventures LLC, Physicians Dialysis of Lancaster LLC, Physicians Management LLC, Pible Dialysis LLC, Pinson Dialysis LLC, Pittsburgh Dialysis Partners LLC, Piute Dialysis LLC, Plaine Dialysis LLC, Platte Dialysis LLC, Pluribus Dialise - Benfica S.A., Pluribus Dialise - Cascais S.A., Pluribus Dialise S.A., Prairie Dialysis LLC, Prineville Dialysis LLC, Purity Dialysis, RMS Lifeline Inc., RNA - DaVita Dialysis LLC, RV Academy LLC, Ramsey Dialysis LLC, Rayburn Dialysis LLC, Red Willow Dialysis LLC, Redcliff Dialysis LLC, Refuge Dialysis LLC, Renal Center of Beaumont LLC, Renal Center of Fort Dodge LLC, Renal Center of Lewisville LLC, Renal Center of Morristown LLC, Renal Center of Newton LLC, Renal Center of Port Arthur LLC, Renal Center of Tyler L.P.L.L.L.P., Renal Center of West Beaumont LLC, Renal Center of the Hills LLC, Renal Life Link Inc., Renal Treatment Centers - California Inc., Renal Treatment Centers - Illinois Inc., Renal Treatment Centers - Mid-Atlantic Inc., Renal Treatment Centers - Northeast Inc., Renal Treatment Centers - Southeast LP, Renal Treatment Centers - West Inc., Renal Treatment Centers Inc., Renal Ventures Management LLC, RenalServ LLC, Riddle Dialysis LLC, River Valley Dialysis LLC, Rocky Mountain Dialysis Services LLC, Rollins Dialysis LLC, Roose Dialysis LLC, Rophets Dialysis LLC, Roushe Dialysis LLC, Routt Dialysis LLC, Royale Dialysis LLC, Rusk Dialysis LLC, Rutland Dialysis LLC, SAKDC-DaVita Dialysis Partners L.P., Saddleback Dialysis LLC, Sahara Dialysis LLC, San Marcos Dialysis LLC, Santiam Dialysis LLC, Sapelo Dialysis LLC, Saunders Dialysis LLC, Seabay Dialysis LLC, Secour Dialysis LLC, Sensiba Dialysis LLC, Shadow Dialysis LLC, Shayano Dialysis LLC, Shelling Dialysis LLC, Sherman Dialysis LLC, Shetek Dialysis LLC, Shining Star Dialysis Inc., Siena Dialysis Center LLC, Simeon Dialysis LLC, Skagit Dialysis LLC, Soledad Dialysis Center LLC, Somerville Dialysis Center LLC, South Central Florida Dialysis Partners LLC, South Fork Dialysis LLC, Southern Hills Dialysis Center LLC, Southlake Dialysis LLC, Southwest Atlanta Dialysis Centers LLC, Sprague Dialysis LLC, Springpond Dialysis LLC, Star Dialysis LLC, Stevenson Dialysis LLC, Stewart Dialysis LLC, Stines Dialysis LLC, Storrie Dialysis LLC, Sugarloaf Dialysis LLC, Sun City Dialysis Center L.L.C., Sunapee Dialysis LLC, Sunset Dialysis LLC, TRC - Indiana LLC, TRC El Paso Limited Partnership, TRC West Inc., TRC of New York Inc., TRC-Georgetown Regional Dialysis LLC, Talimena Dialysis LLC, Terre Dialysis LLC, The Woodlands Dialysis Center LP, Tortugas Dialysis LLC, Total Renal Care Inc., Total Renal Care Texas Limited Partnership, Total Renal Care of North Carolina LLC, Total Renal Laboratories Inc., Total Renal Research Inc., Toulouse Dialysis LLC, Transmountain Dialysis L.P., Tross Dialysis LLC, Tugman Dialysis LLC, Tunnel Dialysis LLC, Turlock Dialysis Center LLC, Tustin Dialysis Center LLC, Twain Dialysis LLC, Tyler Dialysis LLC, USC-DaVita Dialysis Center LLC, Unicoi Dialysis LLC, University Dialysis Center LLC, Upper Valley Dialysis L.P., Valley Springs Dialysis LLC, Victory Dialysis LLC, VillageHealth DM LLC, Villanueva Dialysis LLC, Vively Health LLC, Vogel Dialysis LLC, Volo Dialysis LLC, Waddell Dialysis LLC, Wakoni Dialysis LLC, Walker Dialysis LLC, Walton Dialysis LLC, Watkins Dialysis LLC, Weldon Dialysis LLC, West Elk Grove Dialysis LLC, West Sacramento Dialysis LLC, Weston Dialysis Center LLC, Whitney Dialysis LLC, Willowbrook Dialysis Center L.P., Winds Dialysis LLC, Wood Dialysis LLC, Woodford Dialysis LLC, Wyandotte Central Dialysis LLC, Yards Dialysis LLC, Ybor City Dialysis LLC, Yucaipa Dialysis LLC, and Zephyrhills Dialysis Center LLC.

Read More
MH Alshaya, a top retail franchise operator in Kuwait, has signed an agreement with US-based Blaze Fast-Fire'd Pizza, a leading fast-casual artisanal pizza chain, to build and operate multiple Blaze Pizza restaurants across Mena.



The agreement provides for the development of 100 restaurants in 11 countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco, with the first five restaurants scheduled to open in Kuwait and the UAE in 2018. The partnership with Alshaya marks the first expansion of Blaze Pizza outside of North America and represents the largest development deal in the brand's history.



"There is really only one 'best way' to take your brand overseas and that is to partner with Alshaya," said Rick Wetzel, co-founder of Blaze Pizza. "For some time, we've been receiving requests to bring our brand to the Middle East. Now that we've partnered with Alshaya, we're happy to say that we will be there soon."



The build-your-own pizza chain, known for its chef-driven recipes and casually hip restaurants, recently opened its milestone 200th restaurant and has agreements in place to open more than 400 additional locations across the US, Canada and Mena. The agreement with Alshaya includes the development of both traditional and delivery-only formats.



"Blaze Pizza is a very exciting and disruptive brand that fits nicely into our restaurant portfolio alongside Starbucks and Shake Shack," said Mohammed Alshaya, executive chairman of M H Alshaya Co.



"With its simple approach to fast, authentic, customizable pizza, we see a tremendous opportunity to build Blaze into the dominant pizza brand in the Middle East and throughout the region."  TradeArabia News Service
- Outspoken Laikipia North MP Mathew Lempurkel has been arrested

- The controversial legislator was arrested just days after asking members of the public to invade private ranches owned by whites

- Lempurkel is currently held at the Naromoru Police Station where he is being questioned over his inciteful remarks

- He becomes the second DOM MP to be arrested after Suna East MP

Laikipia North Member of Parliament Mathew Lempurkel was on Saturday, July 22 2017 arrested in Nanyuki town, barely days after inciting members of the public.

The controversial Member of Parliament was nabbed by detectives who took to Naromoru Police Station for questioning over inciteful remarks.

As reported by TUKO.co.ke earlier, Lempurkel had claimed that all foreigners living in Laikipia County and Kenya will be chased away once Raila Odinga assumes office.

Mathew Lampurkel. Photo: Capitalfm

READ ALSO: IEBC to suspend campaigns in Eldoret town following the Buzeki Vs Mandagor chaos that left seven in hospital

TUKO.co.ke has learnt thats the MP and some members of his staff were on their way to Laikipia County when he was arrested in Nanyuki by Laikipia central DCIO.

Speaking moments after the arrest, Laikipia County Commander Simon Kipkeu said Lempurkel will be arraigned in court on Monday, July 24, to face incitement charges.

READ ALSO: ODM Party's Inflammatory tweet deals NASA a big blow as supporters vow to vote for Uhuru Kenyatta

Lempurkel. Photo: Nation

READ ALSO: DPP Keriako Tobiko and NTSA crack the whip on St. Augustine after its school bus crushed one of its pupils to death

According to Kipkeu, the MP incited members of the public by asking them to invade and takeover private ranches owned by whites while addressing a public rally in Moguarak on Thursday, July 20.

"No one is above the law and there is no way the lawmaker can urge residents to invade private ranches in the area. The Constitution is very clear that every member of the public has the right to own land anywhere in the county,"Kipkeu said.

"The MP was inciting residents in the area to graze on private ranches even without the acceptance of the owners. This is against the law and we had to take action," Kipkeu added.

Lempurkel's arrest comes just a day after Suna East MP Junet Mohamed was arrested and charged with ethnic contempt for remarks he made at an Orange party rally two weeks ago.

Have something to add to this article? Send to news@tuko.co.ke

Watch why some women cook dirty liver dishes for their husbands below:

Source: TUKO.co.ke
- Uhuru Kenyatta has been accused of implementing the NASA manifesto shortly after declaring the Hindu as Kenya's 44rd tribe

- Economist David Ndii shared a snippet of a NASA manifesto which if impemented would seek to include seven other groups as Kenyan tribes

- According to the Manifesto, the Waswahili, Elwana, Munyonya, Waata, Boni, Dushnak, Sakuye and Segeju are still not recognized as Kenyan tribes

- NASA plans to expunge the category of 'others', by recognising all the tribes in Kenya regardless of their numbers

- By including Hindu as the 44th tribe in Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta was accused of picking a leaf leaf from NASA's playbook

NASA has accused President Uhuru Kenyatta of implementing the NASA manifesto by declaring the Hindu as the 44th Kenyan tribe.

READ ALSO: Letter from London: Raila Odinga must now start behaving like a candidate who's about to win the presidency

Part of the NASA manifesto as seen by TUKO.co.ke decrees that once NASA is elected to office, they will expunge the category of 'others' by declaring all hitherto unrecognized groups as tribes.

President Uhuru Kenyatta. Photo: Facebook/Uhuru Kenyatta

They include the Waswahili, Elwana, Munyonya, Waata, Boni, Dushnak, Sakuye and Segeju which are still not recognized as Kenyan tribes.

President Uhuru declared the Hindu as the 44th Kenyan tribe on Saturday, July 23 citing articles 11 and 44 of the Kenyan constitution.

READ ALSO: Mombasa Man caught cheating on dead wife (Photos)

Article 11 recognises culture as the foundation of the nation and as the cumulative civilization of the Kenyan people and nation

.Speaking shortly after, the president said that the community is an intergral part of the Kenyan society.

READ ALSO: Uhuru to beat Raila in round one if elections are held today -opinion poll

The Kenyan citizen of Indian descent previously petitioned the government to be included as part of Kenyan tribes.

Earlier in the year, the Makonde had been declared as the 43rd Kenyan tribe and issued with Kenyan Identity cards.

Watch Uhuru reveal his preferred politician between Sonko and Peter Kenneth below:

Have something to add to this article? Send to news@tuko.co.ke

Source: TUKO.co.ke
President Donald Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday that he expected Robert Mueller, the Justice Department's special counsel, to keep his investigation of White House shenanigans narrowly focused on possible collusion with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election.

By narrowly focused, Trump meant he didn't want Mueller digging too deeply into the Trump family's finances and business deals. "I think that's a violation," Trump told the Times. "Look, this is about Russia."

Mueller doesn't seem to be listening.

Bloomberg News reporters Greg Farrell and Christian Berthelsen reported Thursday that Mueller's investigators are, in fact, casting a broad net. They are reportedly looking well beyond campaign collusion and exploring, among other things, condo sales to Russians at Trump properties; Trump's sale of a Palm Beach estate to a wealthy Russian; a bank in Cyprus; a beauty pageant Trump hosted in Moscow; a money-laundering investigation launched by former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara; and the Trump Organization's partnership with a mob-tied development firm, the Bayrock Group.

A Trump attorney, John Dowd, told Bloomberg News that he believes an examination of Trump's business dealings exceeds Mueller's mandate. That point is debatable because the Justice Department empowered Mueller to look at "any matters" arising from his investigation -- and investigations often take unexpected turns. That's one of the reasons they're feared.

Dowd also said that he wasn't aware that Mueller's probe had come to include an examination of Trump's business dealings. That may be so, but it stretches the imagination to believe that Trump's legal team, at a minimum, didn't see this coming. Both the Times and The Washington Post last month broke the news that Mueller's investigation involved a probe of possible financial crimes and money laundering.

The president himself has undoubtedly been pondering what a close examination of his finances and deals might unveil. This is why he issued the warning to Mueller, and why there's a strong possibility that Mueller's time at the helm of this investigation will end badly, a la James Comey. Trump fired Comey as FBI director after Comey declined to curtail an investigation of links between Russia and Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Trump is unlikely to care if a collusion probe ensnares some of his campaign minions or even sullies his reputation, as long as it stops short of criminal charges. But he cares deeply that Mueller, by deciding to follow the money, could unravel some of the mythmaking that the author of "The Art of the Deal" and the star of "The Apprentice" has carefully orchestrated for so many years.

As Mueller certainly knows by now, Trump's business history doesn't have merely a closet full of skeletons, it has warehouses full of them. Among the many subjects Mueller is examining, Trump's partnership with the Bayrock Group stands out for being particularly troubling.

Bayrock operated two floors below the Trump Organization in Trump Tower and developed the Trump Soho hotel and other projects with Trump and his two eldest children. One of Trump's partners at Bayrock, Felix Sater, was a Russian immigrant to the U.S. and a career criminal with ties to Russian and American organized crime. Funds flowed into Bayrock from murky sources overseas, and Bayrock compensated Trump handsomely even though most of the deals belly-flopped. Sater, who has also worked as an informant for the U.S. government, has remained in the Trump orbit even though the Bayrock partnership ended several years ago.

Trump was well aware of Sater's mob ties (he testified under oath about it twice) and yet maintained a close working relationship with him and his company for years (despite occasionally telling the media otherwise).

If Mueller's team begins unpacking these kinds of relationships -- and trying to answer questions about whether Russian funding or Russian influence came to bear on Trump through individuals like Sater -- the president is likely to continue lashing out.

He has a history of doing that under pressure.

When Trump nearly went personally bankrupt in the early 1990s, he took to the media to savage bankers who put him on an allowance while they tried to restructure more than $3 billion in business loans he couldn't repay. When former Trump University students sued him for fraud, he targeted one of the judges in the case and lambasted him repeatedly.

The Mueller investigation is unlike anything Trump experienced in his business career, however. And with his son, Donald Jr., and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also under federal scrutiny and about to testify before Congress about their own dealings with Russians during the 2016 campaign and after, the president may feel the vise tightening.

If that's the case, then Trump and Mueller are headed for an epic collision that may occur well before the Justice Department investigation reaches its conclusion.
- Nominated MP Oburu Odinga has made claims that the government is planning to deploy the military in NASA strongholds ahead of the General Election

- The officers, TUKO.co.ke understands, will be deployed to Kisumu, Siaya, Migori and Homabay from Friday, July 28

- Oburu claims that the officers have already received Administration Police (AP) Uniforms and will be deployed in units of 150 persons per county

- The army is not permitted to participate in the General Election

Nominated MP Oburu Odinga has made claims that Jubilee is deploying the military to NASA strongholds ahead of the General Election.

READ ALSO: NASA cries foul after Uhuru implements part of its manifesto

TUKO.co.ke understands that the officers who have since been given AP uniforms will be deployed on Friday, July 28.

KDF recruitment exercise. Photo Nation.co.ke

Around 150 officers per county, according to the claims, will man Kisumu, Siaya, Migori and Homabay.

In Kenya, the military is not permitted to partcipate in the election which would explain why they would wear AP uniforms to conceal their identities.

According to NASA , the officers who are being deployed are being prepared for roles of Polling Clerks, Deputy Presiding officers and Presiding Officers and Jubilee Party agents.

READ ALSO: Is this even legal? Talia Oyando invades Citizen TV dressed in the tiniest dress you ever saw (Photo)

A theory of planned rigging had been advanced by Raila Odinga that Jubilee was involving the military and officers drawn from the NIS to get Uhuru re-elected in August.

Oburu Odinga campaigning in a past photo. Photo: Standardmedia

Raila had stated further that the government had sent military officers to Kakamega who will be recruited as IEBC polling officials to man polling stations.

READ ALSO: Rogue Kenyan cop shoots harmless girl inside her car and the incidence is caught on tape

In reply the allegations, Uhuru downplayed the claims and stated that NASA had sensed defeat and were cooking up stories to justify their loss.

Watch Uhuru reveal his preferred politician between Sonko and Peter Kenneth below:

Have something to add to this article or suggestions? Send to news@tuko.co.ke

Source: TUKO.co.ke
- The Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Keriako Tobiko has ordered for the arrest of St Augustine's headmistress

- She will be charged with murder after one of her students was crushed by the school bus on the morning of Friday, July 21

- Tobiko had ordered investigation into the accident in which a young boy slipped through the corroded floor of the bus and got crushed

The story of a young school boy who died in a nasty school-bus accident has taken another twist.

READ ALSO: Photos of Miguna Miguna in his door-to-door campaign in Nairobi lights up social media

The Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Keriako Tobiko has ordered for the arrest of St Augustine's headmistress who will be charged with murder.

The bursar, the bus driver, the school mechanic and the bus driver's assistant will also be arrested.

The kindergarten pupil from St. Augustine's Preparatory School in Mombasa died on the spot after a school bus he was riding in ran him over.

Preliminary investigations showed a hole on the bus's floor from which the boy slipped and fell to his death.

The tragedy of the school-boy who was killed by school bus. Photo: Nation

READ ALSO: Heartbreaking tragedy after school bus runs over kindergarten boy infront of the sister

He was reportedly reaching for his water bottle when he fell through the rotting floor of the bus.

The incident occurred in Majengo on Friday at 6:30pm and was witnessed by the boy's elder sister who was also in the bus.

READ ALSO: DPP Keriako Tobiko and NTSA crack the whip on St. Augustine after its school bus crushed one of its pupils to death

TUKO.co.ke learnt that the bus driver and the attendant fled from the scene after the accident.

The gaping hole from which the boy fell. Photo: Neer Akber/Facebook

NTSA has impounded the bus which is set to undergo a structural inspection as per the KS372 Standards that took effect from May 22, 2017.

According to NTSA the plate of the bus was corroded and covered with a PVC carpet hence covered the corroded areas.

The school will also be charged for knowing that parts of the vehicle were not maintained hence endangering the lives of persons traveling within it contrary to Section 55 (1) of the Traffic Act

Watch Uhuru reveal his preferred politician between Sonko and Peter Kenneth below:

Have something to add to this article or suggestions? Send to news@tuko.co.ke

Source: TUKO.co.ke
The President General of the NUGFW and NATUC, James Lambert says, too many people in the cou
Militants launched 29 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in ATO area in Donbas over the past day.

This is reported by the ATO press center.

In Donetsk direction, Russian-backed militants used 82mm and 120mm mortars, grenade launchers and small arms to shell Ukrainian positions near Avdiivka (18km north of Donetsk). In addition, militants fired at Ukrainian strongholds in Butovka coal mine (11.4km north-west of Donetsk), using mortars and grenade launchers. ATO troops also came under enemy fire near Vodiane (16km north-west of Donetsk).

In Luhansk direction, the illegal armed formations violated ceasefire regime outside Stanytsia Luhanska (16km north-east of Luhansk).

As the ATO Headquarters reports, five Ukrainian soldiers were killed, and another eight servicemen were wounded.

ol
President Donald Trumps critics view Republican congressmen as his enablers. James Fallows, in the Atlantic, describes their behavior as the most discouraging weakness our governing system has shown since Trump took office. He singles out Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse for scorn because he leads all senators in his thoughtful, scholarly concern about the norms Donald Trump is breaking  and then lines up and votes with Trump 95 percent of the time.

Another journalist, Ron Brownstein, has written similarly. When various Republican senators objected to Trumps attacks on MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinskis appearance, Brownstein asked what they intended to do about it. Other Trump foes echoed this critique: The Republicans stern words were empty.

Most of this criticism is unreasonable.

It fails, for one thing, to account for what the Republicans have done. That includes mere criticism, since words matter in politics. Some of those words  such as we need to look to an independent commission or special prosecutor (Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski) or our intelligence committee needs to interview Donald Trump Jr. (Maine Sen. Susan Collins)  can have a fairly direct effect on what happens in Washington.

But its not just words. The Republican Congress held hearings about President Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey. Most Republicans have supported sanctions on Russia the president opposes.

For the Republicans critics, these steps were the least they could do. But they werent. The Republicans could have, for example, not held hearings.

Its unusual for senators to hold hearings into possible misconduct by 1) a president of their party 2) who is still fairly new in office and 3) supported by the vast majority of their voters. Perhaps the Republicans should have taken even more extraordinary action. But theyre falling pitifully short only if the baseline expectation is that they do whatever liberal journalists think its their duty to do.

And some things liberal journalists think its the Republicans duty to do make no sense. Take that 95 percent figure mentioned by Fallows. Was South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham really supposed to vote to keep regulations he considered unwise on the books because he opposes Vladimir Putin? Was Arizona Sen. John McCain really supposed to vote against confirming Alex Acosta as Labor secretary because the president tweets like a maladjusted 12-year-old?

When you complain about how often the senators vote with the president, thats what youre saying. Perhaps this is why the complaint is usually made by liberals, who would not want senators to be voting with President Marco Rubio or President John Kasich either.

Besides voting left, what would the Republicans critics have them do? Impeach the president? Not even Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, supports that.

As evidence piles up pointing to the possibility that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, Republican lawmakers have largely ignored Democrats calls for urgent action and continued about their day jobs, writes McKay Coppins. The urgent actions he mentions: holding more press conferences about investigations into Trump; voting with Democrats on some anti-Trump resolutions they devised last week; and issuing subpoenas more aggressively.

Maybe Republicans should subpoena some people they have not, although some specificity on who should get these subpoenas would be reassuring. I suspect that if the Republicans did issue more of them, the goalposts would just shift. The subpoenas, like the Comey hearings, would turn out not to count as urgent action.

None of this means that Republicans are doing all they can and should do to address the concerns that Trumps presidency raises. Congressmen should, for example, be looking for ways to compel presidents to disclose their tax records, such disclosure being a useful norm that Trump has flouted.

But making a focused and reasonable demand and then building support for it is different from expecting congressional Republicans to sound like the opposition party.
To determine the efficacy and safety of BTX-A, compared with other interventions for the treatment of BPS to improve quality of life.

This systematic review fulfils all the requirements of the Cochrane manual and PRISMA reporting guidelines. The PROSPERO registration number is: CRD42016039480.Clinical trials without language discrimination were included. BPS patients over 18 y/o that were treated with BTX-A were included. Studies were searched in published databases and no published literature from inception to the present day. Risk of bias analysis was done using the Cochrane risk of bias tool.

88 articles were found with the designed search strategies. After exclusions, four studies were included in the qualitative analyses. Kasyan et al., 2012 compared BTX-A with hydrodistention. Manning et al., 2014 compared the injection of BTX-A with the injection of normal saline in previously hydrodistended bladders. In both cases, primary end point was measured by the O'Leary-Sant questionnaire score. El-Bahnasy et al., 2009 compared BTX-A with BCG administration, through Global Response Assessment. Kuo et al., 2015 compared hydrodistention plus suburothelial injections of BTX-A with hydrodistension plus normal saline injections. Reduction in pain was estimated by VAS bladder pain score. A similar efficacy to their controls had been found in Kasyan and Manning studies. El-Bahnasy had found improvement in BTX-A in all parameters. Kuo el al. 2015, found a significantly reduction in pain in the BTX-A group. Regarding the risk of bias, three studies did not have adequate descriptions of selection, performance and detection bias. The study of Manning had low risk of selection, attrition and reporting bias.

There is not enough evidence to conclude the efficacy of BTX-A for the treatment of interstitial cystitis to improve quality of life.

Actas urologicas espanolas. 2017 Jul 04 [Epub ahead of print]

D C Ochoa Vargas, H A Garcia Perdomo

Servicio de Urologia, Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol, Barcelona, Espana. Electronic address: ., Servicio de Urologia, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia.

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28687365
It's family picnic time! Today's edition brings you 55 minutes of pure, commercial-free pan-African music thats all made by musical families! Fathers and sons, brothers, sisters, identical twins, husbands and wives! Its one big, musical family gathering. So tune in and feast your ears - Music Time in Africa! Cheers!
A new book by a former South African military doctor that documents Nelson Mandela's medical treatments before his 2013 death violates doctor-patient confidentiality, according to some relatives of the anti-apartheid leader and Nobel laureate.



But the retired doctor, Vejay Ramlakan, said in an interview this weekend on the eNCA news channel that the Mandela family had requested that the book be written. While Ramlakan declined to say which family members had given permission for the book, his remarks could indicate continuing rifts in a family whose members have feuded over the years on issues such as inheritance.



The book, "Mandela's Last Years," covers Mandela's health while he was imprisoned during white minority rule, during his tenure as South Africa's first black president and in retirement. It also focuses on the dramatic final months of Mandela's life, when he was suffering a lung infection and other ailments before dying at age 95.



"It documents the complex medical decisions; disputes between family members and staff; military, political, financial and security demands; constant scrutiny from the press; and the wishes of Mandela himself, all of which contributed to what he and those closest to him would experience in his final days," according to Penguin Random House, the publisher.



Mandela's widow, Graca Machel, said she is considering legal action and will consult with the executors of Mandela's will, South African media reported.



"We are deeply disappointed that the doctor appears to have compromised himself and the man whom he had the privilege to serve," Nkosi Mandela, a grandson of the anti-apartheid leader, said in a statement. He said the book might contain ethical violations.



In the eNCA interview, Ramlakan said he had permission to write the book and that "all parties who needed to be consulted were consulted."



Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Mandela's ex-wife and a prominent figure in the anti-apartheid movement, was with her former husband when he died, according to Ramlakan, a former surgeon general of South Africa who headed Mandela's medical team.



"She's the one who was there when he passed on," he said. "I think Mrs. Machel was in the house or busy with other issues. But I have no idea because I was focusing on my patient."
Britain's Prince William and Harry have spoken of their regret over the last conversation they had with their mother Princess Diana before she died, saying the telephone call was "desperately rushed."

In a documentary called "Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy" timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Diana's death in a Paris car crash on Aug. 31, 1997, the two princes said they spoke to their mother shortly before she died.

"Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know 'see you later' ... if I'd known now obviously what was going to happen, I wouldn't have been so blase about it and everything else," Prince William said.

Prince Harry said: "It was her speaking from Paris, I can't really necessarily remember what I said but all I do remember is probably regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was."

Nick Kent, the film's executive producer, told Reuters he believed the document offered a glimpse of "the private Diana". "Nobody has ever told this story from the point of view of the two people who knew her better than anyone else, and loved her the most: her sons."

The princes recall their mother's sense of humor, with Prince Harry describing her as "one of the naughtiest parents".

They also recall the pain of their parents' divorce and how they dealt with the news of her death and its aftermath.

While the film addresses aspects of Diana's life such as her charity work involving HIV and landmines, it shies away from some other issues, such as extra-marital affairs.

According to the makers, however, the British royals were very open and did not put any subject off limits. Rather, they wanted to cover new ground and make a different type of film.

"What we had in mind is that in years to come, Prince William and Prince Harry would be happy to show this film to their own children and say this is who your grandmother was," Kent said.

"Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy" will be broadcast on British and U.S. television on July 24.

A number of commemorative events have been planned to mark Diana's death.

William and Harry attended a private service this month to rededicate her grave and the brothers have commissioned a statue to be erected in her honor outside their official London home.

Rarely-seen possessions of Diana, including her music collection and ballet shoes, went on display on Saturday at Buckingham Palace. An exhibition celebrating Diana's fashion opened in February.
A Chinese government vice-minister has lodged a $10 million defamation lawsuit against controversial billionaire Guo Wengui in New York over claims made by the exiled tycoon that she had engaged in corruption and provided sexual favors.

Huang Yan, vice-minister of housing and urban-rural development, filed the complaint with the New York State Supreme Court on Wednesday, saying Guos false and outrageous claims, made in a video published on YouTube in May, had caused her severe emotional distress and mental anguish.

A copy of the filing was reviewed by Reuters.

Corruption accusations

It is the first legal case brought by an individual Chinese government official since Guo began making accusations of high-level Communist Party corruption, and represents an exceedingly rare instance of a senior serving official pursuing legal action against an individual overseas.

Huangs complaint says Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, had falsely alleged that she helped real estate developers secure project approvals by providing sexual favors to a Beijing government official, and in turn received property assets from the developers who benefited.

Guo has falsely and repeatedly claimed that Plaintiff Huang has engaged in various nefarious actions, including, but not limited to: sex scandals and corruption, the complaint said, adding that Guos statements had damaged Huangs reputation among a large number of people, and caused many to doubt her capabilities as a professional and a government official.

Guos corruption allegations have come in a politically sensitive year, with the Communist Party keen to ensure a key five-yearly congress to be held in the autumn goes off without a hitch.

Guo welcomes lawsuits

As with other defamation cases against him, Guo said he welcomed the lawsuit as an opportunity for both sides to air facts in the open.

This is very normal, he told Reuters, adding that he believed Huang had been instructed to take action by the Chinese government. I welcome it, this is a good thing.

Huangs defamation suit was filed by lawyer Kevin Tung, who is also representing a group of Chinese creditors who are suing Guo for $50 million in funds they say he owes them.

We believe that these lawsuits are meant to put pressure on Mr Kwok to stop speaking out against the Peoples Republic of China, said his lawyer Josh Schiller, of Boies Schiller & Flexner.

It adds to a long list of legal actions taken against Guo in the United States, including by movie star Fan Bingbing, conglomerate HNA Group, real estate developer SOHO China and journalist Hu Shuli.

It also comes amid a Chinese government campaign to discredit Guo, since it requested an Interpol red notice to be issued in April and declared him a criminal suspect.
North Korea already has capability to strike the USA with an EMP weapon, warn analysts

Over the Fourth of July holiday, North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un ordered the test-firing of a newly upgraded missile that Western analysts assessed as capable of intercontinental travel. The ICBM, called the Hwasong-14, or KN-14, flew on a trajectory that U.S. defense experts believe could put Alaska or parts of the West Coast within range.

That means Pyongyang is closer to developing the capability to detonate a nuclear device over the U.S., creating an electromagnetic pulse [EMP] event that could wipe out large portions of the power grid, financial system, and critical infrastructure that controls dams, water treatment facilities and nuclear plants.

Its not as if all of this has occurred in a vacuum. As Dr. Peter V. Pry, chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission who served in the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA, noted in a March column along with former ambassador and CIA Director James Woolsey, such a weapon, if it were detonated over the U.S. directly, would eventually kill 90 percent of us.

The mainstream media, and some officials who should know better, continue to allege North Korea does not yet have capability to deliver on its repeated threats to strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons. False reassurance is given to the American people that North Korea has not demonstrated that it can miniaturize a nuclear warhead small enough for missile delivery, or build a reentry vehicle for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of penetrating the atmosphere to blast a U.S. city.

Yet any nation that has built nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, as North Korea has done, can easily overcome the relatively much simpler technological challenge of warhead miniaturization and reentry vehicle design.

In fact, the pair note, Kim was photographed recently posing next to what may very well have been a miniaturized nuclear weapon ready to mount atop a missile.

Not only that, but the North is also improving its submarine-missile-launch capability as well. In April 2016, CNN reported that Pyongyangs capabilities in this realm have also improved dramatically. North Koreas sub launch capability has gone from a joke to something very serious, one U.S. official told the news service. The U.S. is watching this very closely.

In August, NationalSecurity.news reported that the North launched a ballistic missile via submarine that traveled about 310 miles, flying into Japans air defense identification zone. Officials presumed the missile was a KN-11. The missile was launched from one of North Koreas Sinpo-class subs, which can travel about 620 miles underwater at one time. This threat is real enough that the U.S., South Korea and Japan are stepping up their sub-hunting skills.

Add to this the fact that the U.S. is stepping up its missile defense exercises, as well as the deployment of missile defense assets in South Korea.

But just how likely is such an EMP strike by the North? That depends on what the United States and its allies in the region do. (Related: New report notes even a LIMITED nuclear attack could lead to one billion deaths and the collapse of the global food order.)

President Donald J. Trump, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have all made it clear a nuclear-armed North Korea with the means to deliver a weapon anywhere over U.S. soil represents a clear and present danger to America and will not be tolerated. So  preemptive military strike is an option that no one in the White House or administration has yet to take off the table.

A lot of things would have to happen first  such as getting South Koreas president Moon Jae-in, who much prefers diplomacy over conflict in resolving the North Korean issue  on board with a U.S. first-strike (China and Russia too, but less so than South Korea).

If that were to occur, most experts on North Korea  and some North Korea defectors  believe Kim would launch everything he had remaining, including nuclear and chemical weapons. War would follow.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

NationalSecurity.news

SHTFPlan.com

TheHill.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

style="display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px" style="display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px" data-ad-client="ca-pub-8193958963374960" data-ad-client="ca-pub-8193958963374960" data-ad-slot="5845669306"> data-ad-slot="5845669306">

Submit a correction >>
A bipartisan group of U.S. congressional leaders have reached agreement on new sanctions for Russia, in response to its meddling in the 2016 presidential election, as well as a provision that would prevent President Donald Trump from trying to relax sanctions against Moscow.

The bill, Countering Irans Destabilizing Activities Act, was passed more than a month ago by the Senate and included new sanctions against Iran for its ballistic missile testing.

Once it moved to the House, the bill was stalled by procedural issues. The House also wanted to add stiffer economic sanctions against North Korea and its nuclear program.

On Saturday, bipartisan negotiators said they had reached an agreement that fixed lingering procedural issues, and added the sanctions against North Korea.

Vote set for Tuesday

The House is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a package that includes sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea. The legislation will be considered under an expedited process that requires a two-thirds majority for passage, meaning it will pass with a veto-proof majority.

Passage of the bill will most likely occur before Congress takes its August recess.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy released a statement Saturday that said, The bill the House will vote on next week will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions.

Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, echoed the Republicans statement, saying, the bill will hold Russia and Iran accountable for their destabilizing actions around the world.

Pushback from Trump

With the sanctions legislation, Congress is seeking to punish Russia not only for its meddling last fall in the U.S. election, but also for its 2014 annexation of Crimea, a peninsula belonging to Ukraine.

The sanctions against Russia, however, have drawn pushback from the White House, which objects to a key section of the bill that would mandate a congressional review if Trump attempted to ease or end the sanctions against Moscow.

Wary lawmakers in both parties pushed for inclusion of that review requirement because of the presidents persistent push for warmer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin has denied meddling in the U.S. election last year.

Under the proposed bill, Trump would be required to submit to Congress a report explaining his reasons for easing or ending sanctions, such as returning diplomatic properties in Maryland and New York that former President Barack Obama ordered vacated in December.

Congress would have at least 30 days to hold hearings and then vote to approve or reject Trumps proposed changes.
Steve Valdez was back at work Saturday at a hardware store, days after his home and those of his neighbors were incinerated in a gigantic wildfire that swept through a rural area of California near Yosemite National Park.

This is a hardware store in a small town. There are people out there who depend upon us to get power, to get water, to get their equipment fixed, said Valdez, a clerk at Coast Hardware Do It Best in Mariposa. Theyre getting stuff to get by.

More than 3,000 firefighters are battling the blaze that has forced almost 5,000 people from homes near Yosemite National Park in Central California. The fire has burned more than 100 square miles (259 square kilometers).

The aggressive wildfire sweeping through the Sierra Nevada foothills covered with dense brush and dead trees has destroyed 60 homes and 64 other buildings. It spared Mariposa, a historic Gold Rush-era town but burned homes nearby.

Fires growth slows

The blaze that erupted July 16 scorched nearly 118 square miles (305 square kilometers) of trees and grass and continued to threaten about 1,500 homes, but its spread had slowed drastically.

They are still out in front of an uncontrolled fire but the fire isnt moving at 30 mph, the fire is crawling along, fire spokesman Brandon Vaccaro said.

Nearly 4,500 firefighters, air tankers and fleets of helicopters and bulldozers fought the blaze by chopping firebreaks and dumping rivers of water and fire retardant.

The blaze fed on long grass that sprouted from a wet winter along with brush that had been stricken by five years of drought and trees killed by a beetle infestation.

In some places, the flames were so fierce that every bit of vegetation is gone and youre down to the scorched earth, Vaccaro said.

The fire grew by up to 30,000 acres a day at its peak, but by the weekend the growth rate was down to about 1,000 acres a day despite dry, blistering weather, he said.

The blaze, moving northeast, was 40 percent contained but it could take another two weeks for firefighters to fully surround it, Vaccaro said.

Yosemite in a haze

The smoke blurred the scenic vistas of Yosemite National Park, about 35 miles west of the fire. Tourists expecting the grandeur of falls and granite peaks instead saw hazy gray silhouettes.

Ken Welsh, 60, of New Zealand said he had been prepared to be blown away by a Technicolor dream at Yosemite.

He shrugged his shoulders and headed back to the car.

It leaves a lot to the imagination, doesnt it? he told the Los Angeles Times.

Mariposa coming back

At its peak, the blaze forced about 5,000 people to evacuate. Some roads remained closed, but Mariposa, with a population of about 2,000, was coming back to life.

People were coming into the hardware store for plumbing parts and electrical cords a day after evacuations were lifted.

Valdez said he decided to work even though his 4,400-square-foot home was among those destroyed.

Older people know that everything heals, said Valdez, 60. Everything gets better if you just keep plugging away.

Home gone, owner philosophical

Valdez and his wife had 20 minutes to grab a few photographs, bills and some family Bibles before they fled the encroaching flames. For a couple of days, they lived in their car and truck with the windows rolled up because ash was falling like snow, he said.

Valdez finally managed to return briefly to his neighborhood to find  nothing. His home of 17 years was gone, except for the fireplace. Five other houses also were destroyed.

Valdez was philosophical. The insurance company quickly stepped in and he plans to rebuild. Senior citizens on limited incomes and those without insurance are far worse off, he said.

At his age, Valdez added, he has learned to cope with hardship.

There are young people who are ... mentally destroyed, he said. Those people are the people to feel sorry for.

The fire was one of more than a dozen that have ravaged California in recent weeks.
Two aftershocks hit the Greek island of Kos on Saturday night, just a day after a 6.7 magnitude earthquake killed two people and injured nearly 500 others.

The first aftershock, of 4.4 magnitude, hit the island about 8 p.m. local time and was followed 16 minutes later by a 4.6-magnitude tremor, the Athens Geodynamics Institute reported.

The fresh tremors meant more worrying for residents and tourists on the island, as hundreds chose to spend the night sleeping outside, too scared to return to their homes or hotel rooms.

Officials on the island were assessing damage to cultural monuments and infrastructure, such as the port's 14th-century castle and other older buildings affected by the quake.

The island's port was among the damaged structures, along with a minaret from an old mosque.

The port was closed and ferry services were canceled until further inspection. Passengers were rerouted to nearby islands.

Kos Mayor Giorgos Kyritsis said that most of the residential buildings affected were old, predating earthquake building codes.

One that collapsed dated to the 1930s, Kyritsis said. "There are not many old buildings left on Kos. Nearly all the structures on the island have been built under the new codes to withstand earthquakes,'' he added.

Greek authorities said the two tourists killed were from Turkey and Sweden but did not disclose their names.

At least five people were seriously injured and were flown to a hospital on the Greek island of Crete.

The earthquake was the second in the region this year to exceed a magnitude of 6.0, a level that can cause considerable damage.
Experts say the temperature inside of the tractor-trailer where smuggled immigrants died and many others were left in dire health would have quickly become unbearable in the Texas heat.

Authorities said they found more than three dozen people, including eight who were dead, in the truck's trailer after an employee at the San Antonio Walmart where it was parked overnight called the police. One later died at a hospital. San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said Saturday that the trailer didn't have a working air conditioning system and the victims "were very hot to the touch."

Thomas Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Associated Press that based on initial interviews with survivors, there may have been more than 100 people in the truck at one point, including some who were picked up by other vehicles or who fled.

This and other tragic instances of human smuggling, including a 2003 case in Victoria, Texas, in which 19 immigrants died, highlight the dangers that extreme heat poses to would-be immigrants.

Treacherous trailer

With a high of 101 degrees (38 Celsius) in San Antonio on Saturday, the temperature inside a parked car would have reached 120 degrees (49 Celsius) in 10 minutes, said Jan Null, a meteorology professor at San Jose State University who tracks U.S. child deaths in vehicles on his website, www.NoHeatStroke.org. Within 20 minutes, the temperature would have risen to 130 degrees (54 Celsius).

The lack of windows on the trailer in San Antonio may have reduced the temperature inside by a couple degrees because of the lack of direct sunlight, but the heat and moisture from the bodies of everyone inside would have added heat and humidity.

Enduring those temperatures for any length of time is dangerous, said Dr. Eric Ernest, assistant professor of emergency medicine at University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

"Those are very brutal conditions that the human body wasn't meant for," he said.

Heat hazards

When heatstroke sets in after a person's body heat rises above 104 degrees (40 Celsius), perspiration shuts down, eliminating the body's primary method of cooling itself through the evaporation of sweat.

At this point, a person's skin begins to feel hot and appear red, and a person suffering heatstroke may appear confused, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Around 107 degrees (42 Celsius), cells start to die and organs can begin to fail. Once that happens, a person's health can deteriorate quickly.

"The body loses its ability to deal with heat," Ernest said.

Higher humidity makes things worse because perspiration won't evaporate as quickly.

One of the best ways to avoid heat-related illnesses is by drinking plenty of fluids, which authorities say weren't available to those on the truck.

"In 100 degree temperatures, you almost can't drink water fast enough," Null said.

Dangerous heat

Children, the elderly and people who are ill are most susceptible to heat-related problems because their bodies can't cool themselves as effectively as a healthy adult's can.

The CDC says about 618 people die in the U.S. each year from heat-related illnesses. Roughly 37, on average, are children who die in vehicles, according to Null's count.
The state government in Indias capital told Philip Morris International Inc and other tobacco companies Saturday to remove all advertisements from tobacco shops in the city, warning them of legal action if they do not comply.

The order, sent by Delhi states chief tobacco control officer S. K. Arora, comes days after Reuters reported that Philip Morris was promoting Marlboro cigarettes, the worlds best-selling brand, by advertising them at tobacco shops and distributing free cigarette samples. Government officials say such tactics flout the law.

The strategy was laid out in hundreds of pages of internal Philip Morris documents reviewed by Reuters that cover the period from 2009 to 2016.

Tobacco ads illegal

Indian officials have previously said tobacco advertising using brand names or promotional slogans is illegal under the countrys Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act and its accompanying rules. But Philip Morris and Indias leading cigarette maker ITC Ltd say they comply with regulations and that the law allows advertising inside a kiosk.

Arora said the federal health ministry had told him that all brand advertisements, irrespective of where they were placed, were not allowed in the country.

Philip Morris and ITC did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.

Tobacco companies have continued to advertise at sale points despite repeated warnings from the Delhi state government in recent years. Philip Morris has been paying a monthly fee to some tobacco vendors to display the companys colorful advertisements, the Reuters investigation found.

Arora also told Reuters he will investigate and conduct raids to check on distribution of free cigarettes at social events.

If violations are found, action as per law will be taken, Arora said.

Tobacco law enacted in 2003

India enacted its national tobacco control law in 2003 and has since added rules to strengthen it, but government officials say companies get away with violations because law enforcement is weak.

The federal health ministry Friday said it planned to seek an explanation from Philip Morris and other tobacco companies about their marketing practices following the Reuters investigation that was published earlier this week.

Philip Morris and ITC did not respond to requests for comment.
Iran and Iraq signed an agreement on Sunday to step up military cooperation and the fight against "terrorism and extremism," Iranian media reported, an accord which is likely to raise concerns in Washington.

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan and his Iraqi counterpart Erfan al-Hiyali signed a memorandum of understanding which also covered border security, logistics and training, the official news agency IRNA reported.

"Extending cooperation and exchanging experiences in fighting terrorism and extremism, border security, and educational, logistical, technical and military support are

among the provisions of this memorandum," IRNA reported after the signing of the accord in Tehran.

Iran-Iraq ties have improved since Iran's long-time enemy Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003 and an Iraqi government led by Shi'ite Muslims came to power. Iran is mostly a Shi'ite nation.

U.S. President Donald Trump has voiced concern over what he sees as growing Iranian influence in conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, where it is aligned with Shi'ite fighters.

Tensions between Iran and the United States have heightened since the election of Trump, who has often accused Tehran of backing militant groups and destabilizing the region.

Earlier this month, Trump said that new threats were emerging from "rogue regimes like North Korea, Iran and Syria and the governments that finance and support them."

The U.S. military has accused Iran of stoking violence in Iraq by funding, training and equipping militias. Iran denies this, blaming the presence of U.S. troops for the violence.
Israel's security Cabinet met Sunday to review a decision to install metal detectors at a contested Jerusalem holy site, following a week of escalating tensions with the Muslim world, mass prayer protests and Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The ministers met amid mounting controversy at home, with some critics saying the government had acted without sufficiently considering the repercussions of introducing new security measures at the Holy Land's most sensitive shrine and the epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a possible spillover of the tensions, a Jordanian man was shot to death and an Israeli wounded in a violent incident at the Israeli embassy in Amman on Sunday evening, a Jordanian security official and a news site linked to Jordan's military reported.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

The metal detectors were installed a week ago, in response to an attack by Arab gunmen there who killed two Israeli policemen. Muslim religious leaders alleged Israel was trying to expand its control at the compound under the guise of security, a claim Israel denied.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, an outspoken supporter of the security measures, on Sunday for the first time raised the possibility that the metal detectors might be removed, provided an alternative is found.

He said security measures at the 37-acre esplanade, with eight entry gates for Muslim worshippers, were insufficient before the shooting attack.

"We need different security measures and means for checking (those entering) there," he told Israel TV's Channel 2.

Erdan said it is "certainly possible that the metal detectors will be removed" if police recommend a different security program, but added that he is currently "not aware of such a program."

Muslim leaders signaled earlier Sunday that they would reject any new proposal that leaves additional security measures in place.

The top Muslim cleric of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, told Voice of Palestine radio that he demands a complete return to the security measures before the shooting attack.

In a statement Sunday, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, of which he is a part, said they "affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation."

Disputes over the shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, have set off major rounds of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations in the past.

On Friday, several thousand Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in Jerusalem after noon prayers - the centerpiece of the Muslim religious week.

Three Palestinians were killed and several dozen wounded after protesters burned tires and threw stones and firecrackers. Israeli troops responded with live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Late Friday night, a 20-year-old Palestinian stabbed and killed three members of an Israeli family in their home in a West Bank settlement.

The victims were identified Sunday as Yosef Salomon, 70, and his adult children, 46-year-old Chaya and 35-year-old Elad. The elder Solomon's daughter-in-law escaped to a separate room to shelter her young children.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack as "an act of terror, carried out by an animal who was incited with unfathomable hatred."

At his weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Netanyahu said the killer's home would be demolished swiftly in retribution and those who incited and glorified his act would be dealt with.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed that an earlier decision to freeze ties with Israel on "all levels" also included a halt to security coordination. Abbas has said the freeze would remain in effect until the metal detectors have been removed.

Security coordination, largely aimed at a common foe, the Islamic militant group Hamas, had been a constant in frequently hostile Israeli-Palestinian relations. Ending those ties could quickly escalate tensions.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa quoted Abbas as saying that "when we made these decisions, we took a firm and decisive stance, especially with regard to security coordination."

Abbas has coordinated closely with Jordan, the Muslim custodian of the shrine. Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel and the two countries cooperate in the battle against Islamic militants in the region, but frequently clash over Israeli policies at the Jerusalem shrine.

Jordan's official ties with Israel remain deeply unpopular in the kingdom, which has a large Palestinian population. On Friday, thousands marched in the capital Amman in an anti-Israel protest.

On Sunday evening, a Jordanian man was shot and killed and an Israeli wounded in still unclear circumstances at the Israeli embassy in Amman, according to the news site Hala Akhbar, which is linked to the Jordanian military.

The site said the Israeli was in an "unstable" condition.
The NAACP announced a new interim leader Saturday, along with a nationwide listening tour that will allow it to talk to local members and figure out what the future of the nation's oldest civil rights organization should be.

Derrick Johnson, vice chairman of the NAACP board of directors, will serve as interim president and chief executive officer, officials announced at the 108th national convention in Baltimore.

"There's a lot of work that needs to be done and we won't waste any time getting to it," Johnson said.

Johnson, as the new voice of the NAACP, will be one of the faces of the organization's listening tour around the country. Leon Russell, the NAACP's national board chairman, said the organization needs to figure out how best to support communities' civil rights workers who are focusing on issues like police brutality, the upcoming census, redistricting and voter suppression.

Addressing challenges

Talking with local members will help them figure out how to "address the issues and challenges that face African-Americans and our communities," Russell said.

The first stop on the listening tour will be in Detroit on August 24, followed by San Antonio in September, officials said.

The tour should "expand our reach, touch our people, engage more diverse audiences and reinforce our focus on civil rights in this age of great political and social uncertainty," Johnson said.

The NAACP has in recent years been overshadowed at street-level advocacy by groups like Black Lives Matter as nationwide concern increased over the deaths of black men, women and children at the hands of the police.

Cooperation among groups

Russell said the NAACP has coexisted during the civil rights movement with younger groups like the Congress of Racial Equality, while Johnson pointed out that all of the organizations today are working toward the same goals.

"In fact, many of the young people who are in the ranks of those organizations come out of the ranks of the NAACP. It's not a competition," Johnson said.

The NAACP parted ways with its president and CEO, Cornell William Brooks, in May. Russell said they hoped to have a new president in place by the end of the year but the board is not rushing the process.

"We're going to sit down and really be intentional on how we do this, where we look and how we look," Russell said.

President Donald Trump declined an invitation to speak at the annual convention. Trump also did not speak to the NAACP convention last year, citing scheduling conflicts with the Republican National Convention.

The NAACP convention will wrap up on Wednesday.
The mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is facing calls to step down over the mistaken shooting last week of an Australian woman by a police officer.

The incident has caused dismay inside the United States and outrage in Australia. The victim, Justine Damond, 40, was a cheery blonde meditation instructor who was engaged to be married next month.

She was killed last week in the alley behind her Minneapolis home.

Mayor Betsy Hodges faced the public Friday to announce the resignation of Police Chief Janee Harteau, whose department was responsible for the shooting death of Damond, who had called emergency operators about a suspected sexual assault near her house.

'We don't want you'

But Hodges' announcement was drowned out by shouts. Activists who slipped into the news conference in Minneapolis called out, "We don't want you as our mayor of Minneapolis anymore. We don't want you to appoint anyone anymore."

Shouted down by the protesters, Hodges and her staff left the room, to chants of "Bye-bye, Betsy."

She returned to the room 20 minutes later, after the protesters left, and finished her announcement.

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that a bicyclist pedaling by Damond's house saw officers performing CPR on Damond after the shooting.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said the witness had given an interview to authorities. A source said the witness took video of part of the incident.

The BCA was searching for other witnesses.

On Friday, Harteau, the police chief, posted her resignation statement on the police department's Facebook page, saying, "Last Saturday's tragedy, as well as some other recent incidents, have caused me to engage in deep reflection. ... I've decided I am willing to step aside to let a fresh set of leadership eyes see what more can be done for the MPD to be the very best it can be."

Chief criticized

Harteau has been criticized not only for the circumstances surrounding the shooting, but also for not returning early from a trip out of state after the incident happened. The department has also taken heat because the officers' body cameras were switched off when the shooting occurred, a violation of Minneapolis Police Department rules.

The incident was also not captured by the patrol car's dashboard camera.

Harteau first spoke out about the incident on Thursday, saying it "should not have happened." She also said, "Justine didn't have to die."

The agency investigating the shooting said one of the officers, Matthew Harrity, was startled by a loud noise just moments before his partner, Mohamed Noor, fired the deadly shot from the passenger seat.

This was the second major police shooting in the Minneapolis area in the past year.

In July 2016, Philando Castile, 32, was shot and killed during a traffic stop in the sister city of St. Paul in an incident streamed live on social media by Castile's girlfriend. The officer who shot Castile, Jeronimo Yanez, was recently acquitted on charges of second-degree manslaughter.
The U.S. Coast Guard says a launch from the Kodiak Island rocket complex in Alaska will occur as soon as next week.

The launch is scheduled to occur at the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska between 7 p.m. local time on July 29 and 1:30 a.m. on July 30, according to a U.S. Coast Guard notice released this week. Alternative times for the launch are listed as between 7 p.m. on July 30 and 1:30 a.m. on July 31, or between 7 p.m. on July 31 and 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 1.

Mariners were advised to remain clear of swaths of ocean between Kodiak Island and Hawaii during those time periods.

U.S. Army soldiers are stationed temporarily at the launch complex for U.S. Missile Defense Agency testing of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, the Kodiak Daily Mirror.



The U.S. Missile Defense Agency successfully completed a Flight Test THAAD-18 operation from Kodiak earlier this month. That test "validated THAAD's ability to intercept intermediate-range ballistic missiles,'' said Chris Johnson, U.S. Missile Defense Agency director of public affairs.

The FTT-18 test, which occurred during the night between July 10 and 11, included the launch of "two interceptors from two co-located launchers,'' Johnson wrote in an email to the Daily Mirror. "The first missile engaged the target. The second interceptor was launched to test operational procedures."

A second test from the site, called the FTT-15, will test the system's ability to intercept a medium-range ballistic missile within Earth's atmosphere, said Leah Garton of U.S. Missile Defense Agency public affairs.

THAAD, which currently has a 100 percent success rate in 14 tests, uses a direct hit to intercept a target in its final phase of flight. THAAD systems have been placed in Guam and South Korea to counter missile threats from North Korea.
Hawaii is the first state to prepare the public for the possibility of a ballistic missile strike from North Korea.

The states Emergency Management Agency on Friday announced a public education campaign about what to do. Hawaii lawmakers have been urging emergency management officials to update Cold War-era plans for coping with a nuclear attack as North Korea develops nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that can reach the islands.

Starting in November, Hawaii will begin monthly tests of an attack-warning siren the state hasnt heard since the end of the Cold War in the 1980s. The wailing siren will be tested on the first working day of each month, after a test of an attention-alert steady tone siren with which residents are familiar.

Informational brochures, along with TV, radio and internet announcements will help educate the public about the new siren sound and provide preparedness guidance.

15 minutes of warning

Because it would take a missile 15 minutes  maybe 20 minutes  to arrive, the instructions to the public are simple: Get inside, stay inside and stay tuned, said Vern Miyagi, agency administrator. You will not have time to pick up your family and go to a shelter and all that kind of stuff. ... It has to be automatic.

He stressed that his agency is simply trying to stay ahead of a very unlikely scenario, but its a possibility that Hawaii cant ignore.

Strategic military outpost

Hawaii is an important strategic outpost for the U.S. military. The island of Oahu is home to the U.S. Pacific Command, the militarys headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region. It also hosts dozens of Navy ships at Pearl Harbor and is a key base for the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority supports preparing for disasters, but it is concerned that misinformation about bracing for a North Korea attack could scare travelers from visiting the islands, spokeswoman Charlene Chan said in a statement.

The effect of such a downturn would ultimately be felt by residents who rely on tourisms success for their livelihood, she said.

With that in mind, Miyagi reiterated, Hawaii is still safe.

Disaster preparedness

Hawaii residents, who already face hazards including from tsunami and hurricanes, are familiar with disaster preparedness. Because its currently hurricane season, residents should already have an emergency kit that includes 14-days of food and water.

It also works for this type of scenario, Lt. Col. Charles Anthony, spokesman for the Hawaii State Department of Defense.

Hawaii officials surveyed 28 U.S. states and cities about what theyre doing for the North Korea threat.

They think its too soon, said Emergency Management Agency Executive Director Toby Clairmont.

But counterparts in California have contacted him asking for guidance now that they are starting to look at a similar effort, Clairmont said.
Israel's Foreign Ministry said Monday an Israeli security guard at the country's embassy in Jordan killed two Jordanians in a shooting that happened after one of them attacked him with a screwdriver.

The ministry statement said two Jordanian workers and a Jordanian landlord were at the embassy in Amman on Sunday as part of the process of replacing furniture at a residential building.

It said one of the workers attacked the security guard from behind before being killed, while the landlord was injured and later died. The guard was "slightly wounded."

The ministry also said it was working with the Jordanian government, and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had spoken with the security guard.

Jordan's Public Security Directorate said authorities were investigating the incident. Israel says the security guard has diplomatic immunity from investigation and imprisonment.

Tensions between Israel and Jordan have increased in the past few weeks as the Jewish state installed metal detectors at a Muslim holy site in east Jerusalem of which Jordan is the Muslim custodian.

The new security measures led to protests Friday in Amman.
President Donald Trump's new communications adviser says it's time to hit the "reset button."

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci pledged to begin "an era of a new good feeling" and said he hopes to "create a more positive mojo." He also promised to crack down on information leaks and pledged to better focus the message coming from the White House.

To that end, Scaramucci suggested changes to come, noting: "I have in my pocket a radio studio, a television studio, and a movie studio. The entire world has changed; we need to rethink the way we're delivering our information."

Trump announced Friday that Scaramucci - a polished television commentator and Harvard Law graduate - would take over the administration's top messaging job. The appointment came as the president contends with sinking approval ratings and struggles to advance his legislative agenda. The president has also been frustrated with the attention devoted to investigations of allegations of his election campaign's connections to Russia.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer abruptly resigned in protest over Scaramucci's appointment. He will be replaced by his former deputy Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The challenges for Scaramucci's new role were evident in a series of interviews, where he discussed his plans for press strategy, but was beset by questions about the Russia investigation and the president's Twitter feed.

Asked about the response to the Russia stories, Scaramucci said on Fox that a "two-pronged approach" was needed, saying that "in some ways we want to deescalate things and have there be a level of diplomacy. In other ways, we want it to be very hard-hitting and war-like."

The president believes he is his own best spokesman, frequently opting to directly speak to the public via Twitter. Asked about the president's tweets about the investigation on CBS' "Face the Nation", Scaramucci said he would not get in the way.

"That's the crystal essence of the president. And so some of you guys in the media think it's not helpful. But if he thinks it's helpful to him, let him do it," Scaramucci said.

He also said on CNN's "State of the Union" that "we're going to -- we're going to defend him very, very aggressively when there's nonsensical stuff being said about him. And he will probably dial back some of those tweets."

Scaramucci also said on CNN that an unnamed person told him that "if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those e-mails, you would have never seen it."

He then quickly said he was quoting the president, adding that "he basically said to me, hey, you know, this is -- maybe they did it. Maybe they didn't do it."

U.S. intelligence agencies have accused the Russian government of meddling through hacking in last year's election to benefit Trump and harm Clinton, and authorities are exploring potential coordination between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

On Saturday, the newly minted Trump aide announced he was deleting old tweets. Some of the tweets were at odds with Trump's views, including one that praised Hillary Clinton's competence. Trump defeated Clinton for president last year and continues to criticize her, including in several tweets Saturday.

Scaramucci said on Fox that the old tweets were "a total distraction." He added: "When I made the decision to take this job, my politics and my political ideas do not matter at all. What matters is that I am supporting -- subordinating all of that to the president's agenda."
The probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. election crosses into new territory this week as congressional committees seek information from two of Donald Trumps family members, including the presidents son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is expected to make the first of two appearances on Capitol Hill Monday.

A man often seen but rarely heard, Kushner is one of President Trumps closest advisers, tasked with pursuing a peace deal in the Middle East and heading an effort to modernize the federal government.

In closed-door sessions, Kushner is slated to answer questions before the Senate and House intelligence committees. Both are expected to seek information about Kushners Russia contacts, including a December meeting with Russias ambassador and, last June, with a Russian attorney and other figures connected to Moscow.

That meeting has been the focus of great attention since the Presidents son, Donald Trump Jr, released emails expressing eagerness for what he believed the Russian attorney would provide: harmful material about Hillary Clinton, Trumps 2016 opponent.

Trump Jr. and campaign manager Paul Manafort also attended the meeting, and were initially scheduled to appear this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But that testimony has been postponed based on an understanding that the two men will provide the committee with records and information.

With the Russia probe now scrutinizing those closest to Trump, questions have arisen about any possible presidential pardons. Trump's legal team noted the Constitution grants the president broad pardoning powers, but insisted that nothing is being contemplated.

Were not researching the issue because the issue of pardons is not on the table, the presidents attorney, Jay Sekulow, said on ABCs This Week program. Theres nothing to pardon from.

At the same time, the White House insisted the news medias focus on the Russia probe is misguided.

The top three issues that Americans care about are immigration, health care, and jobs, said White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, also on This Week. The top three issues that the media cares about are Russia, Russia, and Russia.

Lawmakers of both political parties are also having their say. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, took to Twitter to urge full disclosure of a leaked U.S. intelligence intercept of Russias ambassador relaying to Moscow an account of an alleged conversation with then-senator Jeff Sessions, a Trump campaign backer and current attorney general.

Meanwhile, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner has slammed any preemptive presidential pardons of those under investigation in the Russia probe.
The United Nations Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting for Monday to discuss the recent violence between Israelis and Palestinians  the most brutal fighting between the rivals in years.

Israel said Sunday it has arrested at least 25 people, including members of a Hamas militant group, whom it believes participated in the recent skirmishes.

Clashes erupted late Saturday in the Old City of Jerusalem, where hundreds of Muslim men defiantly held evening prayers outside after being denied entrance to the holy site Muslims call Noble Sanctuary and Jews call Temple Mount. The men objected to recently installed metal detectors.

The Israeli military chief who oversees the defense body for Palestinian civilian affairs says Israel is open to discussing alternatives to the new security devices that were installed after two Israeli police officers were killed at the sacred site.

Major General Yoav Modechai said, The only thing we want is to ensure no one can enter with weapons again and carry out another attack.

The Islamic institutions in Jerusalem said in a statement Sunday they affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation.

Israeli officials said Saturday they searched the West Bank home of a Palestinian attacker who entered a Jewish home and stabbed to death three Israelis during their dinner.

Two of the victims died Friday soon after the attack in the area known as Neve Tsuf, north of Ramallah. Another victim died later in the day.

The assailant was shot by Israeli police and is hospitalized in Israel. He has been identified as 20-year-old Omar al-Abed. Officials have arrested his brother, searched his family home in the West Bank, and taken steps to have it demolished.

While Israeli security officers were at al-Abeds family home, Palestinian onlookers gathered to throw stones and burn tires in protest.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denounced the attack on the Israeli family as an act of terror, carried out by an animal who was incited with unfathomable hatred.

On Friday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmood Abbas announced he would freeze ties with Israel until metal detectors at the holy site are removed.
The U.S. Congress is moving toward adoption of new sanctions against Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, but it was unclear Sunday whether President Donald Trump would sign the legislation.

Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, told CNN, "You've got to ask President Trump. My guess is he's going to make that decision soon."

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC News "the White House supports where the legislation is now."

Key Republican and Democratic lawmakers reached accord Saturday on the measure, which does not include changes Trump wanted to make it easier for him to lift penalties against Moscow.

The House of Representatives is set to vote Tuesday, while the Senate has already overwhelmingly approved its version, but would have to concur with the House bill before it could be sent to Trump for his signature.

Investigations



Trump has been largely dismissive of numerous investigations underway in the U.S. about Russian meddling in the election aimed at helping him win. But the legislation would require him to submit a report to Congress explaining his reasons for wanting to ease or terminate sanctions against Moscow, such as returning diplomatic properties in Maryland and New York that former President Barack Obama shut in December in response to the election interference.

Congress would have at least 30 days to hold hearings and then vote to approve or reject Trump's easing of sanctions.

Scaramucci, reflecting Trump's views, said, "The Russia thing is a complete bogus and nonsensical thing."

Scaramucci, named Friday as one of Trump's top advisers, said the president remains uncertain whether Russia hacked into computer files at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington and then released thousands of emails through the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks to damage Trump's challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Numerous congressional panels are interviewing Trump campaign aides about possible links to Russian interests. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is conducting a criminal probe whether the Trump campaign illegally colluded with Moscow and whether Trump obstructed justice by firing James Comey, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director who was heading the Russia probe before Mueller took over.

Procedural issues



On Saturday, Republican and Democratic lawmakers said they had reached an agreement that fixed lingering procedural issues, as well as adding the sanctions against North Korea to the bill approved by the Senate.

The House legislation will be considered under an expedited process that requires a two-thirds majority for passage, meaning it would pass with a veto-proof majority.

Approval of the bill will likely occur before Congress' August recess, a rare bipartisan effort in the politically fractious Washington.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a statement, "The bill the House will vote on next week will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions.

Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, echoed the Republicans' statement, saying the bill "will hold Russia and Iran accountable for their destabilizing actions around the world."

With the sanctions legislation, Congress is seeking to punish Russia not only for its meddling last fall in the U.S. election, but also for its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.

The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed the U.S. election interference, a claim Putin has rejected.
Russia is responsible for the "Hot War" in Eastern Ukraine, the newly appointed U.S. special envoy to Ukraine said Sunday.

Kurt Volker, who was appointed by the State Department earlier this month to negotiate an end to more than three years of fighting that has killed 10,000 people, visited Ukraine on the eve of telephone talks between its leader and Russian, German, and French counterparts.

"This is not a frozen conflict, this is a hot war and it is an immediate crisis that we all need to address as quickly as possible," Volker said in the city of Karamatorsk in the war-torn Donetsk region.

"It is truly a high degree of suffering, there was a high human cost to this conflict and that is another reason why it is so urgent that we address it," he added.

Volker's visit followed a particularly bloody week in eastern Ukraine, with at least 11 people killed over the past few days, the most serious flare up of violence in recent months.

The U.S. Congress is set to vote this week on legislation calling for more sanctions against Russia, not only for its meddling last fall in the U.S. election, but also for its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.
U.S. immigration agents are planning nationwide raids next week to arrest, among others, teenagers who entered the country without guardians and are suspected gang members, in a widening of President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigrants.

The raids are set to begin on Sunday and continue through Wednesday, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. The teenagers targeted will be 16- and 17-years-old.

The raids represent a sharp departure from practices during the presidency of Barack Obama. Under Obama, minors could be targeted for deportation if they had been convicted of crimes, but were not arrested simply for suspected gang activity or membership.

Criteria

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that a person can be identified as a gang member if they meet two or more criteria, including having gang tattoos, frequenting an area notorious for gangs and wearing gang apparel.

The agency said it does not comment on plans for future law enforcement operations, but that it focuses on individuals who pose a threat to national security and public safety.

The memo instructing field offices to prepare for the raids was dated June 30. A Department of Homeland Security official speaking on background confirmed on Friday the raids were still scheduled to take place, though ICE could still change its plans.

Trump, who campaigned on the promise of tough immigration enforcement, has made deporting gang members, especially those belonging to the El Salvador-based Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a top priority.

"You have a gang called MS-13. They don't like to shoot people. They like to cut people. They do things that nobody can believe," Trump said at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa last month. In a May speech, the president promised the gang would be "gone from our streets very soon, believe me."

'This is troubling'

Although children can be deported like adults, U.S. immigration law considers minors arriving at the border without a parent or guardian particularly vulnerable and gives them additional protections.

Minors apprehended entering the country without a guardian are placed in custody arrangements by U.S. Health and Human Services, often with a family member living in the United States.

Law enforcement agencies maintain databases of individuals suspected of having gang affiliations, but the lists have come under fire from civil rights groups.

Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, said the databases often contain inaccurate information.

"This is troubling on several levels," Hincapie said. "For one, the gang databases in places like California are rife with errors. We have seen babies labeled as potential gang members."

Immigration lawyer David Leopold of Ulmer & Berne said innocent children could be swept up in the raids.

"In many cases, children don't freely decide to join a gang. They are threatened by older gang members and forced to get a gang tattoo if they live in a certain neighborhood," he said.

Parents also targeted

The raids planned for next week will also target parents who crossed the border illegally with their children and have been ordered deported by a judge, and immigrants who entered the country as children without guardians and have since turned 18, according to the memo.

The document directs field offices to identify people in their areas that meet the criteria.

The Obama administration targeted those two groups in 2016 raids that sought to deter a surge of illegal border crossings by families and minors that began in 2014.

Obama, however, directed immigration agents to prioritize for deportation only those who had committed serious crimes or had recently entered the country.
Venezuela's opposition announced a two-day national strike this week aimed at pressuring President Nicolas Maduro to cancel a controversial July 30 election for a new congress.

"We are calling out the entire people, all groups in society, for a 48-hour strike" on Wednesday and Thursday, lawmaker Simon Calzadilla said.

Calzadilla said a protest march on Friday, following the strike, will demand that Maduro officially scrap the vote,

The president, however, remains defiant in the face of ever-increasing protests and international pressure.

"The imperial right wing believes it can give orders to Venezuela," Maduro said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to impose economic sanctions on Caracas unless the vote is aborted.

"The only ones who give orders here are the people," Madura said during his weekend television commentary, broadcast late Saturday. "This time next week (on Sunday) Venezuelans will be voting for a Constituent Assembly."

Protesters in Caracas marched toward the embattled nation's supreme court Saturday, chanting slogans denouncing Maduro's plan to rewrite the constitution. National Guard troops used tear gas in at least one location, blocking protesters with clouds of white gas and rows of officers on motorcycles.

A 23-year-old violinist who has become a symbol of anti-government protests in Venezuela, Wuilly Arteaga, was hit in the face and injured during clashes between protesters and security forces.



Speaking from a hospital in Caracas, Arteaga said, "No matter what, we will continue to fight." He gained fame for playing his instrument in the middle of ongoing violent clashes in the Venezuelan capital.

Violence during four months of anti-government unrest has taken more than 100 lives, injured thousands, left hundreds in jail and further damaged an economy in its fourth year of a debilitating decline.


Tensions remain high at a disputed Jerusalem holy place sacred to Muslims and Jews, after Israel imposed new security measures. Robert Berger reports for VOA from Jerusalem.



Israel has placed new security cameras at entrances to the Mosque of Al-Aqsa in Jerusalems Old City, the site Jews call the Temple Mount. Israeli officials say it is a possible alternative to controversial metal detectors installed at the site that sparked Palestinian riots on Friday.

Israel says the new measures are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, like the one by Arab gunmen that killed two policemen at the site 10 days ago. But Palestinians say any security checks at the mosque humiliate Muslims, and they accuse Israel of trying to seize control of the third holiest place in Islam.



Palestinian spokesman Osama Kawasmeh says there will be no compromise on the issue. He said the Palestinian Authority is cutting all ties with Israel until the former status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque is restored.



That could have deadly consequences because security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian government has prevented many terrorist attacks.

On Friday, a 20-year-old Palestinian broke into a home in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and stabbed three Israelis to death as they sat at dinner on the Sabbath. The assailants Facebook page said it was revenge for Israeli actions at the Mosque of Al-Aqsa.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack as an act of terror carried out by a beast who was incited with fierce hatred.



Netanyahu told the Cabinet the terrorists family home will be demolished as soon as possible. He said security forces will take the necessary measures to prevent a further escalation of Palestinian violence and terror.








Rachel Bay Jones in her dressing room at the Music Box Theatre in New York. She won a Tony Award in June for the musical Dear Evan Hansen. (Jesse Dittmar/For The Washington Post)

NEW YORK  Rachel Bay Jones has a theory about the roots of the terrible act upon which everything else hinges in the Tony Award-winning Dear Evan Hansen  the lie that Evan perpetuates and that ultimately causes such enormous heartache. Her hypothesis concerns not so much the grieving family he hurts, but rather the rift in his own family, the drifting apart of Evan and the character Jones plays, Evans mom, Heidi.

As she sees it, the key to the shows devastating turn of events is the fraying of the bond between Evan, a teenager of profound anxieties, and Heidi, an overstressed single mother. At a time when parent and child normally separate, these two dont, not healthily and not in equal measure. Theyre so accustomed to being there for each other, she says, that when the distractions multiply, with Heidi overwhelmed by other responsibilities and Evan growing ever more socially isolated, the son l ooks elsewhere to restore his sense of stability.



When that relationship is torn apart for whatever reason, and the closeness is lost, as naturally happens to teenagers, he goes to another family for that, she says. It explains so much about why Evan could lie so easily to this other family, because he was used to taking care of his single mom.

Jones has had lots of time to ponder the psychological framework of Dear Evan Hansen. Shes been with the show for more than three years now, having played Heidi since the first reading in Manhattan in 2014. She was in the versions of the show that premiered at Arena Stage in Washington in 2015 and then off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre, before it moved to Broadway last fall. She and Ben Platt, who plays Evan, have spent these years forging one of the more nuanced mother-son connections the musical theater has known, a sophisticated collaboration the theater world enshrined last month by voting them both Tony Awards for their performances.



Ben Platt and Rachel Bay Jones in "Dear Evan Hansen." (Matthew Murphy)

Platt has been widely celebrated for his wrenchingly intense, all but superhuman exertions in the musical by songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and book writer Steven Levenson. But the 47-year-old Jones  who grew up in South Florida and has been working in the theater since arriving in New York in 1989 and almost instantaneously being cast in a Broadway version of Meet Me in St. Louis  creates in Heidi something just as remarkable. That fact is affirmed in powerhouse moments such as the evenings penultimate number, the ravishing So Big/So Small, about the breakup of her marriage and its impact on Evan.

In some ways, her challenge is even more formidable, given the time constraints of bringing supporting characters fully into being in a musical. Jones has to meet the demands of animating Heidis vulnerabilities and strengths in highly economical fashion. In an interview recently in the green room backstage at the Music Box Theatre, she talked wistfully about the scenes that had to be trimmed and lines that were cut that more luxuriously explored the boundaries of Heidi and Evans lives together. Fortunately, three years in the skin of another person provide an actor with a useful cushion, especially as that process pertains to a self-described slow, deep learner such as Jones.

I know this woman, she says of Heidi. Shes real. And shes not me. Shes not. Theres a lot of me in her because what else can we bring out, but our own experience and our own observations?

I have a 14-year-old daughter, so a lot of this comes from personal experience, she adds. A lot of this comes from the relationship I have with my own mother, the relationship she has with her mother. And with Heidi in particular, something I can definitely relate to is that shes just trying to survive, you know? Theres an instinct that parents have for survival that teenagers dont sometimes have. We know this about life. We know that when something comes up, its like, Buck up! Get your s--- together! Its a long road!

Rachel Bay Jones in New York. (Jesse Dittmar/FTWP)

The road for Jones began in Boca Raton, Fla., in a household filled to the rafters with drama: Her parents, Dennis Jones and Mona Feit, classical actors who worked extensively at Shakespeare festivals, were, as she describes it, very grand. Her father was this kind of reserved, composed guy, and my mother is the most explosive, the biggest, the most everything  and as a parent shes like that, too. Shakespeare was freely quoted in the house and that was just the way they spoke.

They left the business after Rachel and her brother came along, opening up health food stores (and eventually retiring to Hawaii). Their introverted daughter didnt grow up wanting to emulate them. But at some point in adolescence, she succumbed, and dropped out of Spanish River High School in Boca to appear in a production of William Inges Picnic at Florida Atlantic University, where a cast mate was Marc Kudisch, an actor who would become a lifelong friend.

Along with a group of students from the university, she moved to New York, lacking any formal training in acting or voice  to this day, she says, shes never taken a class. Ive never been a performer performer, like, Look at me! Look what I can do! I cant function on that level. As soon as I start to try doing that, I crumble.

So, she adds, I dont really want to be looked at. But I desperately want to be seen.

Joness stage career is one of those that has accelerated as she has matured. After appearances in the Broadway revival of Hair! in 2009 and a musical adaptation of the movie Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 2010, a bona fide breakthrough occurred for her in the 2013 revival of Pippin, a Tony-winning revival in which she played Catherine, who sings the buoyant Stephen Schwartz song, Ordinary Woman.

And then came Evan. Levenson, among others, has observed that right from that initial reading, Joness portrayal became a part of the project that the creative team wanted to preserve. Thats great for an actors confidence, but it hasnt meant that living inside a musical that deals with such sensitive topics as suicide and mental illness has become any easier. Its hard to want to go to work some days, because its so deep and it requires so much of every cell, she says. You just wake up some mornings, and your chest hurts.

You dont tend to think of being in a musical as something to recover from. Thats why for Jones, the hopeful final scene is a particular blessing.

Theres a gentle uplift, a beautiful sort of flowering that comes out at the end of the show, and that allows all of us to walk away without wanting to end it all, she says, laughing. Heidi needs that, and Evan needs that. And Rachel needs that.

Dear Evan Hansen, music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, book by Steven Levenson. Directed by Michael Greif. Tickets: $119-$499. At the Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th St., New York. Visit telecharge.com or call 212-239-6200.


Prince Harry of Wales and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, discuss their late mother in the HBO documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. (HBO)

They always live with you, people you lose like that, muses Prince William, the 35-year-old Duke of Cambridge and future king of England, whose mother, Diana, was killed in a Paris car crash 20 years ago next month. My mother lives with me every day.

HBOs hour-long documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy (airing Monday night) offers this rare conversation with Dianas sons, William and his brother Harry, 32, who get out their mothers old photo albums and use the opportunity, as they must, to promote some of her favorite charities and causes. The film, which was directed by Ashley Gething and kept under wraps by HBO, is a brisk and polite review of Dianas life, the way some of her closest friends, employees and relatives remember it, including her 1981 marriage to Prince Charles, their separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996.

A month ahead of an onslaught of anniversary coverage that includes at least half a dozen TV specials, Diana, Our Mother is probably all well hear from William and Harry this time around, and, to be entirely honest, it feels like just enough. Just enough of the anguish. Just enough review of her good works (visiting AIDS patients when no one else would, campaigning against land mines). Just enough rumination on her phenomenal wattage.

Princess Diana carries Prince Harry on her shoulders. (Tim Graham/Getty Images)

Its too easy to turn the story of Diana  and her death especially  into a gruesome set of conspiracy theories or a sappy, never-ending wallow. At some point, we really do have to let go and let it become history. Diana, Our Mother is a coordinated attempt to once more try to head the wolves off at the pass. Then and now, its an impossible task.

Time has worked some of its kindnesses, however. Held to the even harsher light of the 21st-century mediasphere, the pictures and footage of Diana in her prime seem like valued artifacts from 100 years ago, safely keeping her in another eras definition of superstardom. There are still trouble spots to be considered: her give-and-take relationship with the media and the paparazzi that hounded her to the moment she died, and the fickle public that could never get enough of her. There is something yet to learn about her influence on the royal family, which is still deeply felt.

And what of her sons, who, at 15 and 12, so stoically walked behind her casket and then put away nearly all public expressions of their grief? How do they think of her now? What do they remember? They remember her as their mum.

William is more circumspect in the film, recalling Dianas principles and approach to her duty more than the private moments they shared (aside from the embarrassing time his mother invited a trio of famous supermodels to visit him on his birthday).

She understood there was a real life outside the palace walls, William says. She wanted us to see it from a very young age. She took the boys with her to homeless shelters, one of which William still regularly visits.

Harry, who says he has only cried once since his mother died and thinks he still has grief issues to work through (Theres a lot of [it] that still needs to be let out), has memories that are more emotional and tied to specific moments: Her laughter. Her driving her car with the top down and Enya songs blaring.



Diana, Harry and William ride a log flume at Thorpe Park. (Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images)

Our mother was a total kid, through and through, Harry says. One of her mottos to me [was] You can be as naughty as you want  just dont get caught. 

Both men remember the last phone call from her, some hours before she died. They were spending the summer with their father and grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, in Scotland; when Diana called, they were eager to get back outside and gave her short shrift. Harry says he will regret that fleeting moment for the rest of my life, how short that phone call was.

Diana, Our Mother also seems to be a chance for William and Harry to subtly transmit to Diana that everything turned out okay. Shed be 56 now, probably doting on her two grandchildren. The brothers dont shy away from imagining it, but they dont elaborate on it either.

Her legacy to her sons  and perhaps to all of us who are so busy sharing intimate details on social networks  is to be careful about how much you give away. A little, not a lot. While managing to elide most of Dianas more unseemly entanglements with the media, the film includes one of the most memorable clips that exists of her; the time she took William and Harry on a ski holiday in Austria. She is seen walking up to a camera scrum and blocking a video lens with her hand, begging the photographers to leave her and her sons alone. Its still heartbreaking to watch, and it has left William, especially, with a lot to say on the subject.

I think it was an industry that lost its way quite heavily, William says. Lost its sense of dignity, lost its perspective on what was appropriate.

The only times he remembers his mother crying, he adds, had something to do with the media. Harry and I lived through that, and one lesson Ive learned is you never let [the media] in too far, because its very difficult to get them back out again. Youve got to maintain a barrier and a boundary, because if both sides cross it, a lot of pain can come from it.

Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy (65 minutes) airs Monday at 10 p.m. on HBO.
An employee walks behind a glass wall with machine coding symbols at the headquarters of Internet security giant Kaspersky in Moscow. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images)

Local and state government agencies from Oregon to Connecticut say they are using a Russian brand of security software despite the federal governments instructions to its own agencies not to buy the software over concerns about cyberespionage, records and interviews show.

The federal agency in charge of purchasing, the General Services Administration, this month removed Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab from its list of approved vendors. In doing so, the agencys statement suggested a vulnerability exists in Kaspersky that could give the Russian government backdoor access to the systems it protects, though it offered no explanation or evidence. Kaspersky has strongly denied coordinating with the Russian government and has offered to cooperate with federal investigators.

The GSAs move on July 11 has left state and local governments to speculate about the risks of sticking with the company or abandoning taxpayer-funded contracts, sometimes at great cost. The lack of information from the GSA underscores a disconnect between local officials and the federal government about cybersecurity.

Interviews suggest that concerns in recent months from Congress and in the intelligence community about Kaspersky are not widely known among state and local officials, who are most likely to consider purchasing the Russian software. Those systems, while not necessarily protecting critical infrastructure, can be targeted by hackers because they provide access to troves of sensitive information.

U.S. intelligence chiefs in May told a Senate panel that they wouldnt use the companys software during a broader hearing investigating Russias alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election. It was not the first time Congress had heard that message: A former U.S. official told The Washington Post that congressional staff was advised by law enforcement in late 2015 to stop meeting with Kaspersky representatives over national security concerns.

Eugene Kaspersky, Russian antivirus programs developer and chief executive of Russia's Kaspersky Lab. (Pavel Golovkin/AP)

People need to know that they can trust software updates, said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a digital advocacy group. About the GSAs decision, he said: We need more public information.

In the weeks since Kasperskys delisting, The Post found that it continues to be used on government computers in jurisdictions ranging from Portland, Ore., to Fayetteville, Ga., where an official said they have a year-to-year contract.

Kaspersky also has been purchased for use by the federal government in recent years, including the Bureau of Prisons and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Both agencies said last week that they needed additional time to determine whether the software is still in use.

To identify the agencies, The Post reviewed state, local and federal government websites to obtain documents that listed Kaspersky or its programs, including city council agendas, annual agency reports and government procurement records. Officials interviewed in nine jurisdictions all said they had purchased or supported software made by Kaspersky within the past two years. Nearly all said they had no immediate plans to replace the software.

We use it, and I think it works well, said John Morrisson, systems manager for the Connecticut Division of Public Defender Services. I don't have any problems, and we don't have any viruses. And it's doing the job I require of it.

Morrisson said the concerns about Kaspersky are speculative, but he said he would consider jettisoning the Russian brand if specific vulnerabilities are identified.

In the District, a spokesman for the citys chief technology officer said that most city agencies use anti-virus software made by McAfee, a Kaspersky competitor. But District employees who connect to the network remotely are allowed for now to use home computers equipped with Kaspersky.

In Picayune, Miss., Kaspersky is scheduled to be installed soon as the firewall on a new wireless system for all public schools. Network administrator Jason Wheat said he hadnt seen the news about the GSAs decision or received any warning from the state about not using Kaspersky. But he said he wasnt worried about the software because employee Social Security numbers are stored on a separate server maintained by the state.

In Oregon, Kaspersky is used with other anti-virus software by Portland city government to scan for malicious emails. Connecticuts public defender said that as of early 2016 its office had hundreds of computers that ran Kaspersky. And San Marcos, Tex., last month approved a $92,744 contract for Kasperskys anti-virus protection; a spokeswoman said the city has held a contract with Kaspersky for many years and renewed the software in June before the delisting notice was issued by the U.S. government.

In announcing its decision, the GSA said that its mission is to ensure the integrity and security of U.S. government systems and networks and that Kaspersky was delisted after review and careful consideration. The action removed the company from the list of products approved for purchase on federal systems and at discounted prices for state governments.

The GSA included a reference to System of Operational-Investigative Measures, or SORM  a national Russian electronic eavesdropping network that the U.S. government publicly warned about in advance of Americans traveling to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

At the time, the State Department advised travelers to assume that cellphones could be turned into listening devices and laptops could be infiltrated if connected to Russian networks. The GSA statement this month said applicability of SORM to Kaspersky supported GSAs decision to exercise the cancellation clause.

A former senior U.S. law enforcement official, who works in cybersecurity and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he thinks that the reference to SORM indicates the GSA is saying there is some kind of vulnerability that gives the [Russian] government access.

Representatives for the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security referred questions about Kaspersky to the GSA, which declined to comment beyond the original statement.

Kaspersky officials declined interview requests, referring reporters to a statement denying wrongdoing that was issued after the GSAs announcement.

Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, or will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts, the company said. Kaspersky Lab, a private company, seems to be caught in the middle of a geopolitical fight where each side is attempting to use the company as a pawn in their political game.

Kaspersky Lab was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, a decade after he had graduated from a KGB-supported cryptography school and had worked in Russian military intelligence agencies.

The company became an international success, sometimes promoting Kasperskys background in Russian intelligence. By 2010, it claimed to be the most widely used anti-virus software in Europe. In the United States, for example, Kaspersky was among the anti-virus software packaged with computers sold at Best Buy. Today, Kaspersky boasts 400 million users and 270,000 corporate clients worldwide.

Kaspersky has tried to advance the company into potentially lucrative government markets. The company created a subsidiary, Kaspersky Government Security Solutions, or KGSS, and began hosting an annual cybersecurity summit in Washington.

In 2015, the keynote address at the annual conference was delivered by Michael Flynn, then the recently departed head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who would go on to briefly become President Trumps national security adviser. Flynn was paid more than $11,000 for the appearance, which he initially failed to disclose this year when he joined the White House.

The company never became a major player in U.S. government markets. Popular American firms, often with executives who had their own ties to U.S. intelligence agencies, routinely beat out Kaspersky for the largest federal contracts and defense work.

Three current and former defense contractors told The Post that they knew of no specific warnings circulated about Kaspersky in recent years, but it has become an unwritten rule at the Pentagon not to include Kaspersky as a potential vendor on new projects.

Another former U.S. official said some congressional staffers were warned by federal law enforcement officials as early as November 2015 not to meet with employees from Kaspersky over concerns of electronic surveillance.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Skepticism of Kaspersky became public in May when a panel of U.S. intelligence community leaders testified before Congress that they wouldnt use the firms software on their own computers. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) noted the widespread use of the software and asked, Would any of you be comfortable with the Kaspersky Lab software on your computers?

A resounding no from me, said Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers also said they would not use Kaspersky.

The governments unease about Kaspersky follows the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian President Vladimir Putin last year ordered a campaign of cyberattacks to undermine the election. The Justice Department has named a special counsel to investigate possible coordination between Trumps associates and Russian officials during the campaign.

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said it's difficult, if not impossible for a company like Kaspersky to be headquartered in Moscow if you don't cooperate with the government and the intelligence services.

Kaspersky has worked to protect its image since the GSA decision. It said this month that it would be willing to turn over its software source code to federal investigators.

The Senate Armed Services Committee this month unanimously adopted an amendment by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) that would force the government to strip Kaspersky from any government systems connected to defense networks. In a statement, Shaheen said the Trump administration and Congress should go further and require all government systems to drop Kaspersky.

The ties between Kaspersky Lab and the Kremlin are very alarming, Shaheen said.

Correction: Due to an error by a transcription service, a quote in a previous version of this article was incorrectly attributed to acting FBI director Andrew McCabe. The quote, A resounding no from me, was made by Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats.
Hamish Brewer, who in April earned a statewide distinction for his achievements as the principal of Occoquan Elementary School, will take over the top job at Fred M. Lynn Middle this fall. (Jonathan Hunley for The Washington Post)

The black, short-sleeved shirt bearing the schools name and mascot seemed typical of a principal. But gliding into the main office on a skateboard to meet a visitor? Much more unexpected.

That entrance last week, though, is a pretty fair representation of Hamish Brewer, who is taking over the top job at Fred M. Lynn Middle School after five years at Occoquan Elementary. The 40-year-old New Zealand native has his own brand of leadership, a style that has yielded academic results, as both Brewer and Occoquan collected national awards last school year.

Now he is excited to take the reins at Fred Lynn, the middle school that faces the greatest challenges of any in Prince William County, according to the associate superintendent in charge of them.

Forty percent of Fred Lynn students are English language learners, Associate Superintendent William G. Bixby said, and more than 80 percent are economically disadvantaged. The school is not accredited, having failed to meet state standards for English and science instruction.

So it would have been understandable if Bixby had recruited Brewer, who in April was named the states 2017 National Distinguished Principal by the Virginia Association of Elementary School Principals. Occoquan was also named a National Title I Distinguished School, recognized for its achievements in educating children from low-income families.

But Brewer said he sought the Fred Lynn job. He wasnt looking to leave Occoquan, but he liked the idea of a new challenge, and it didnt hurt that students from his previous school would be going to the middle school.

The principal said he feels at home in an environment with a diverse student body. His aim is to show that any student can learn, regardless of circumstances.

Poverty is not a learning disability, he said.

[Test scores, meet tribe wars: A successful shake-up at Occoquan Elementary]

Brewer replaces Jorge Neves, who retired after being at Fred Lynn since 2013, Bixby said.

Bixby said the middle school, which has a student population of about 1,100, made strides in Virginia math standards under Neves. He expects state accreditation will come under Brewers watch.

His record is exemplary, so I felt truly blessed that he was interested in the position, Bixby said.

Occoquan should also be in good hands, he said, as Michael Buddy Lint, who was principal of the New Dominion Alternative Center, will take over there. Lint was Prince Williams finalist last year for The Washington Post Principal of the Year Award.

Lint will have to replace a handful of teachers who have moved from Occoquan to Fred Lynn to continue working with Brewer. They include Nicole Sweezy, who will teach sixth-grade science, and Brian Slater, who will teach sixth-grade math.

Sweezy said she had been at Occoquan for five years when Brewer arrived. As soon as he came, she said, the school had a new energy, including a passion for teaching and learning.

I wanted to make sure I kept in a workplace where that passion continued, she said.

Slater was Brewers first hire at Occoquan, and he said the principal inspired him to get on a track to become an administrator.

What he did and was able to accomplish at Occoquan, I feel like hes capable of doing that here, Slater said, sitting in Brewers new office.

Instead of using the traditional principals space, Brewer is turning a meeting room off a main hallway into his office so he can be in the middle of the action and quickly build relationships with students.

He also is concentrating on other ways to put his mark on the learning space. Hes having all the lightbulbs in the building changed to create the visual atmosphere he wants, and hes hired an artist to paint murals on the walls.

He also will replicate Occoquans tribe system, which involved dividing students into four groups that competed in a points race. Everyone at the school, including staff members, belonged to one of the tribes, which were modeled on the student houses from the Harry Potter book series.

Such features endeared Brewer to families at Occoquan, some of whom planned to send their children to other middle schools before they found out he would be at Fred Lynn.

I even had kids that were going to move as far as Stafford, and [the parents] decided not to sell their house, Sweezy said.
John Heard was best known for his role as the father in Home Alone. (Mark Mainz/Getty Images)

John Heard, a veteran actor and Washington native whose many roles included the father in the Home Alone series and a corrupt detective in the HBO TV hit The Sopranos, has died. He was 71.

Mr. Heard was found dead Friday in a hotel in Palo Alto, Calif., the Santa Clara County medical examiners office said Saturday. A representative for Mr. Heard told TMZ that he was staying in the hotel while recovering from back surgery at a nearby hospital.

An investigation is underway to determine the cause of death, but so far there is no evidence of foul play, the medical examiners office said.

Mr. Heard first drew critical attention as an off-Broadway actor in the late 1970s, when he received an Obie Award for his performance as a man who prepares dead soldiers for burial in David Berrys play G.R. Point, and again for his roles in Othello and Split at the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He turned fully toward commercial work after the success of the 1990 film Home Alone, which the New York Times described as possibly the first Christmas black comedy for children. Mr. Heard played Peter McAllister, the kind but absent-minded father who accidentally leaves his son Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) at home while the rest of the family travels to Paris.

Mr. Heard in 2006, rehearsing for a Chicago production of the Don DeLillo play Love-Lies-Bleeding. (Brian Kersey/AP)

Mr. Heard said that he sought a movie with children in it so that his 5-year-old son could visit the set and have someone to play with.

The film became a hit, grossing more than a half-billion dollars worldwide, but Mr. Heard was reluctant to revisit the role. His agent convinced him the money was too good to pass up, and Mr. Heard returned for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), in which Culkin accidentally travels to Manhattan while the rest of the family visits Florida.

A third film, released in 1997, featured a new child star (Alex D. Linz) and a new father figure (Kevin Kilner).

I didnt want to be the Home Alone dad for the rest of my life, Mr. Heard told Yahoo News in 2013.

John Matthew Heard Jr. was born in Washington on March 7, 1946. He graduated from the Jesuit Gonzaga College High School in 1964, and four years later received a bachelors degree from Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Mr. Heard returned to Washington, working as a plumbers assistant while studying for a masters in theater at Catholic University, before dropping out to pursue acting full time, including in productions at Arena Stage. I was lazy, he told the New York Times in 1977. I was just looking for a way to make a living, I guess, and I decided I didnt want to teach drama, I wanted to do it.

Mr. Heard originated the role of Billy, a gay soldier in David Rabes play Streamers, at a 1976 production in New Haven, Conn. The following year he appeared alongside Geraldine Page and Rip Torn in August Strindbergs comedy Creditors.

He broke into film as a newspaper reporter in Behind the Lines (1977); a doe-eyed civil servant looking for love in Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), based on a novel by Ann Beattie; and as a one-eyed, one-legged, one-armed Vietnam War veteran in Cutters Way (1981), also starring Jeff Bridges and based on Newton Thornburgs novel Cutter and Bone.

Mr. Heard remained active in film for the next decade, including roles as Tom Hankss rival in Big (1988) and Pages son in The Trip to Bountiful (1985).

He earned an Emmy nomination in 1999 for playing Vin Makazian in The Sopranos, a role he said he got after running into series star James Gandolfini in a gym. His time on the show ended like it did for many other Sopranos actors  with his characters death.

Mr. Heard said he approached series creator David Chase and said,  Why me? Im a detective! You can use me forever! And he told me, John, theres a rule in television. Somebody has to die that the audience likes. I said, They like me? How do you know they like me? He said, Well, they like you. So were gonna kill you.

My mother said, Why do you have to die in everything? I said, Youre telling me? I couldve made a fortune! 

Other TV roles kept Mr. Heard busy. He acted in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Elementary, Prison Break, Modern Family and Entourage. One of his favorite jobs came in the 2013 TV movie Sharknado, in which a storm swamps Los Angeles with sharks.

I knew it was going to be a cult classic, he told the Baltimore Media Blog last year. Its just ridiculous. I thought it would replace people calling me the Home Alone dad.

Mr. Heard was married to Margot Kidder, an actress who played Lois Lane in the Superman film series, for six days in 1979. Marriages to Sharon Heard and Lana Pritchard also ended in divorce.

Max Heard, a son from his marriage to Sharon Heard, died in December. Survivors include Annika, a daughter from his marriage to Sharon Heard; John Heard III, from a relationship with actress Melissa Leo; and a sister.

Mr. Heard and Leo were engaged in a custody battle for much of the 1990s, resulting in Mr. Heards being convicted of trespassing and telephone misuse in 1997. In an interview with Larry King, he said he repeatedly called Leo to try to remain close with his son, whom he brought to the set of Home Alone.
Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia.

Stephen Dachi, Foreign Service officer

Stephen Dachi, 84, a career Foreign Service officer who spent many years with the U.S. Information Agency in Latin America, Asia and Central Europe, died July 2 at his home in Woodbridge, Va. The cause was cancer, said a daughter, Sally Valdez.

Dr. Dachi was born in Budapest and, after being orphaned, grew up with relatives in Romania and Canada. He trained in oral pathology, helped start the University of Kentucky dental college and served in the Peace Corps in South America before joining USIA in 1972. Among his positions, he served as public affairs officer in Hungary from 1973 to 1977, Latin America and Caribbean director from 1978 to 1984, and public affairs officer in New Delhi from 1991 to 1994.

While in Sao Paulo as consul general in 1986, he used his oral pathology training to play a role in the investigation that identified the remains of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele after the body had been exhumed from a Brazilian cemetery a year earlier. He also helped translate a handwritten diary kept by Mengele that led to the discovery of the dentist who had treated Mengele.

After his Foreign Service retirement in 1996, he spent 14 years as chairman for South Asia area studies as well as special Afghanistan programs at the State Departments Foreign Service Institute. He also was an adjunct professor at George Washington University, among other jobs.

Daniel Robinson, project engineer, manager

Daniel Robinson, 90, an electronics engineer, project engineer and manager with Fairchild Industries in Germantown, Md., from 1966 until his retirement in 1987, died July 1 at his home in Rockville, Md. The cause was Parkinsons disease, said a son-in-law, William Sweet.

Mr. Robinson was born in New York and worked as an electronics engineer with aerospace companies on Long Island, before settling in the Washington area in 1966. At Fairchild, he worked on satellite communications systems for developing nations, including Iran, India, China, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia. He was a past board president of the Grosvenor Park III condominium residents association.

Berdj Kenadjian, IRS chief economist

Berdj Kenadjian, 87, who served as chief economist for compliance estimates at the IRS from 1977 until retiring in 1989, died June 23 at his home in Haymarket, Va. The cause was cardiac arrest, said a son, Glenn Kenadjian.

Dr. Kenadjian was born in Istanbul and settled in the Washington area in 1959. He spent the next 18 years as an economist, operations analyst and analytic statistician for the U.S. government and private economic research organizations. He was a past president of the Rotary Clubs Rosslyn-Fort Myer chapter and a volunteer with the Alexandria, Va., suicide-prevention hotline, an Arlington, Va., mens shelter and Meals on Wheels, among other places. In 1993, he received an award from the Virginia governor for volunteering excellence. His books included Economics of the New Age (1973).

David Hess, journalist

David Hess, 83, who covered Capitol Hill and the White House for the Knight Ridder news service and was a past president of the National Press Club, died July 19 at a hospital in Columbus, Ohio. The cause was complications from strokes, said a nephew, Darren Burnham.

Mr. Hess was born in Moundsville, W.Va., and served as an Army intelligence officer and Korean language specialist during the Korean War. He began his journalism career in West Virginia, then covered politics in Ohio and later joined the Akron Beacon Journal.

He came to Washington in 1970 as a reporter for the Beacon Journal, part of the Knight chain of papers (later Knight Ridder). He worked for Knight Ridder until the late 1980s and was known as a mentor to younger colleagues. He later was a reporter for National Journals Congress Daily.

Mr. Hess was president of the National Press Club in 1985 and presided over the clubs merger with the Washington Press Club. He lived in Springfield, Va., before moving to Columbus in 2010.

Donald Larrabee, journalist

Donald Larrabee, 93, who owned and operated a Washington news service for many years and also served as a president of the National Press Club, died July 18 at an assisted-living facility in Washington. He had a form of dementia, said a daughter, Donna Larrabee Palmer.

Mr. Larrabee was born in Portland, Maine, and began editing a base newspaper while serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II. He moved to Washington after the war and joined the Griffin News Bureau, which supplied Capitol Hill coverage primarily to newspapers in New England. He soon became a partner in the business and continued to operate the Griffin-Larrabee News Bureau until his retirement in 1978. He then ran an office representing the state of Maine until 1989.

Mr. Larrabee served as president of the National Press Club in 1973. He was a founding member of the National Press Foundation, which awards scholarships, and was its executive director from 1979 to 1985.

He was elected to the Hall of Fame of the Washington chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in 1980 and was a member of the Gridiron Club and Chevy Chase Club.

 From staff reports
Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia.

M. Louise Lynch, business executive

M. Louise Lynch, 86, who retired in 2000 as president and chief executive of Courtesy Associates, a prominent Washington-based company that became known for its high-end special-events planning, died June 16 at a hospital in the District. The cause was respiratory failure and aspiration pneumonia, said her lawyer, Michael Curtin.

Mary Louise Lynch, a native of Danbury, Conn., settled in Washington in 1963 and began working as a manager at Courtesy Associates. The company then featured a telephone-answering service, a travel agency and executive-office leasing services. She became president and chief executive in 1976 and also became an owner. The business is now a subsidiary of SmithBucklin, the association management and professional services company.

The Washington Business Hall of Fame honored her in 2000 for lifetime achievement. She also received honors from the Greater Washington Board of Trade for outstanding business and community contributions, and volunteered or held board memberships with groups such as the Federal City Council, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the Boy Scouts of America.

Bobbie Greene McCarthy, grants program chief, activist

Bobbie Greene McCarthy, 74, a former deputy chief of staff to first lady Hillary Clinton who led the Save Americas Treasures federal grants program before retiring in 2011, died June 29 at a hospital in the District. She had complications from a cardiac procedure, said her husband, P.H. McCarthy Jr.

Mrs. Greene McCarthy, a D.C. resident, was born Roberta Weiss in the Bronx. Early in her career, she served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and led the oral history program of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

After the Vietnam War, she was deputy director of the Indochina Refugee Action Center and the Cambodia Crisis Center. She later worked with People for the American Way, the progressive advocacy group.

She joined Clintons office in 1997 and assisted the first lady in establishing Save Americas Treasures, which was credited with helping preserve the bus in which civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat in 1955, as well as President Lincolns Cottage in Northwest Washington.

Mrs. Greene McCarthy was a founding member, vice president of development and engagement, and vice chairman of Vital Voices, a leadership initiative for women founded by Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 1997.

Christopher Hicks,lawyer, White House official

Christopher Hicks, 66, a lawyer who worked in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, died June 29 at his home in Alexandria, Va. The cause was multiple organ failure, said a half brother, George Hicks.

Mr. Hicks was born in Alexandria and worked on Reagans 1980 presidential campaign before being named an associate counsel to the president. He later oversaw the White House Office of Administration and was known by some as the king of perks for his role in arranging everything from office locations to parking spaces for presidential staffers.

Mr. Hicks was general counsel to the U.S. Agriculture Department from 1986 to 1990 before serving as vice president for governmental relations at Ethyl Corp., a chemical manufacturer. He chaired a U.S. International Trade Commission task group during the implementation of NAFTA and in 2011 was named general counsel to the Senate Agriculture Committee.



Robert Day Jr.,Foreign Service officer

Robert Day Jr., 83, a career Foreign Service officer who held posts in Iran, Poland, East Germany and Yugoslavia, died June 24 at a nursing home in Sandy Spring, Md. The cause was kidney failure, said his wife, Diana Day.

Mr. Day, a longtime resident of Silver Spring, Md., was born in Evanston, Ill., and grew up in Arlington, Va. He joined the State Department about 1960 and subsequently focused on economics. Upon his retirement in the early 1990s, Mr. Day  a competitive rower in college  helped organize the youth-focused Organization for Anacostia Rowing and Sculling. The group helped the Anacostia acquire a reputation as a rowable river and worked to establish the Anacostia Community Boathouse.

Clement Welsh, Episcopal priest

The Rev. Clement Welsh, 104, an Episcopal priest who was canon theologian at Washington National Cathedral from 1963 to 1982, died June 10 at a hospice center in Pasadena, Md. The cause was pneumonia, said a son, Timothy Welsh.

Dr. Welsh, an Annapolis resident, was born in Oakmont, Pa. He taught at Bexley Hall Divinity School and Kenyon College, both then located in Gambier, Ohio, and was the editor at Forward Movement, a publisher of daily devotionals, before moving to the District. He served at the cathedral as head of the College of Preachers and was the author of several books.

Charles Phillips, school librarian

Charles Phillips, 79, a librarian in D.C. Public Schools from the mid-1970s until his retirement in 2011, died June 30 at a care center in Annandale, Va. The cause was brain cancer, said a daughter, Christina Phillips.

Mr. Phillips, a resident of Springfield, Va., was born in Baltimore. He served in the Army and the Army Reserve for more than two decades as a linguist and intelligence officer. He was recalled to active duty during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981 because he spoke Farsi, said his daughter.

Mr. Phillips was a librarian at District schools including J.F. Oyster Elementary, Bancroft Elementary, Ketcham Elementary and Dunbar High. He was an Eagle Scout and member of the Masons, and he taught English as another language at Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield.

William Sherman,Foreign Service officer

William C. Sherman, 93, a career Foreign Service officer and expert on Japanese politics who served as a top diplomat to the United Nations during the administration of Ronald Reagan, died July 3 at a retirement community in Washington. The cause was complications of congestive heart failure, said his daughter, Courtney Simon.

Mr. Sherman was born in Edmonton, Ky., and studied Japanese in the Navy at the close of World War II. He joined the Foreign Service in 1951 and was assigned to Yokohama and then Tokyo, where his language skills placed him in close contact with senior Japanese politicians and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

He eventually rose to become the State Departments director of Japanese affairs and, in the late 1970s, its deputy chief of mission in Tokyo, where he was the No. 2 American diplomat behind Ambassador Mike Mansfield, the former Senate majority leader.

Mr. Sherman was named the U.S. deputy representative in the U.N. Security Council in 1981 and retired five years later as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. He taught at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and in 2002, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, a national honor in Japan.



John Sine,college president

John Sine, 85, an English and philosophy professor who helped build a small junior college in Charles County, Md., into a multi-campus institution, died July 6 at his home in Newburg, Md. The cause was pulmonary hypertension, said his daughter Heather Sine.

Dr. Sine, who had a PhD in higher education, was born in Washington. When he began teaching at Charles County Community College in 1961, the college held classes at a high school in La Plata. He was named the dean the following year, and with his friend Julian Jay Carsey, the schools first appointed president, he oversaw the creation of a 173-acre campus in La Plata  later followed by campuses in St. Marys and Calvert counties  and the expansion of nursing and career-training programs.

When Carsey suddenly disappeared in 1982, leaving behind his wife and job and a single cryptic note  a postcard for Dr. Sine, asking him to pls handle things at the college  Dr. Sine became the schools president. He maintained a focus on job-training programs, helping the school grow at a time when many other community colleges were shrinking.

Dr. Sine retired in 1998, leaving what is now known as the College of Southern Maryland with an enrollment of about 6,000 students. He went on to write three novels set in Southern Maryland, beginning with Cuckold Creek, about a beleaguered college dean, under the pen name Enis St. John.

 From staff reports
In a letter to Sibley Memorial staff members that explains the reasons for the buyout plan, hospital President Richard Chip Davis says that we are projecting a significant budget gap for fiscal year 2018. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

Sibley Memorial Hospital plans to cut its staff over the next several months through voluntary buyouts, citing anticipated financial losses due in part to a decline in patients, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The Northwest Washington hospital, which was acquired by Johns Hopkins health system in 2010, will give its employees just weeks to consider the offer.

A letter addressed to staff members from hospital President Richard Chip Davis lays out the bleak circumstances for the buyouts, saying that we are projecting a significant budget gap for fiscal year 2018.

In addition to a drop in inpatient activity, the letter points to rising costs for labor, supplies and technology. It also describes a shift in reimbursements toward paying hospitals on the basis of better outcomes and measures of safety, quality and patient experience instead of paying only for the volume of services provided.

While change is always difficult, we have made a strong effort to minimize its impact on you, our valued staff, while at the same time ensuring we have the financial resources to enable us to continue to provide excellence and compassionate care  every person, every time, the letter reads.

The details of the buyout are expected to be discussed at a town hall meeting on Monday at noon. But the documents show that employees will be asked to turn in their applications by Aug. 11, and managers will decide who will receive the buyouts by Aug. 28.

The last day of employment for those who take the buyout will be Nov. 10.

The documents do not lay out how many people the hospital is looking to lose. They do say that hospital management can reject an employees request based on both the number of employees who accept the offer and the operational impact to Sibley.

Hospital spokesman Gary Stephenson on Saturday said that Sibleys overall financial situation remains strong and that the buyouts were an opportunity for financial improvement identified by hospital leadership and Sibleys Board of Trustees.

The goal of this program is to align the need to reduce labor costs with the desire of employees who may wish to depart Sibley, Stephenson said. The decision to apply for it, he said, is the employees  and the employees alone.

The program, according to the documents, would offer employees one week of pay for every year of service, up to 12 years. It also calls for giving employees a cash bonus of $15,000.

While not explicit about the extent of the expected shortfall, the documents are blunt about the hospitals needs.

A question-and-answer sheet for staff members asks whether the buyout is being offered because of financial concerns? The answer: Yes.

Another question asks, If I leave through the Voluntary Separation Program, how soon can I be rehired? The answer: There is no guarantee that anybody would be rehired.

Before Sibley was acquired by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins, it had been experiencing a drop in patient volume. The integration was initiated by Sibley but also gave Hopkins its first foothold in the Washington-area market.

At the time, the president of Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, Ron Peterson, described the move as strategic.

Sibley is strong financially, very highly regarded in its community and located in the nations capital, Peterson said. Having it as part of the Hopkins family provides us the critical mass to better position ourselves to provide an integrated, regional approach to care, which we anticipate the future will demand.
As the federal government withholds millions of dollars in transportation funding because regional officials missed a deadline to set up a Metro oversight commission, local leaders say they are working on the practical aspects of the new panel and hope to launch it by years end.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao held back 5 percent of a category of funding because D.C., Maryland and Virginia officials missed a Feb. 9 deadline to establish a commission to oversee the long-troubled transit system.

Five months later, legislation approving the commission has passed in the District, both states and both chambers of Congress, though the House version of the legislation still needs final Senate passage and President Trumps signature.

Quite frankly, the passing of legislation doesnt do a whole lot unless you have this set up, said Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne. The real substance is getting this entity up and running.

The Federal Transit Administration took on temporary safety supervision of the transit system in October 2015 and said it would penalize the three regional partners of Metro by holding back funds if the jurisdictions didnt set up a strong commission as a safety watchdog.

Local jurisdictions have been steadily penalized for their perceived sluggishness ever since.

The safety commission would replace the Tri-State Oversight Committee, which was deemed toothless and ineffective after repeated safety failures, most notably the LEnfant Plaza smoke calamity that killed one and sickened dozens more in January 2015.

With legislation passed, regional transportation leaders say the priority has shifted from establishing the broad framework of the commission to finding people to run it, office space and staffers.

[Metro Safety Commission gets House approval, moves one step closer to becoming official]

Each jurisdiction must appoint two full-time commissioners and submit applications laying out the commissions safety and investigative credentials and establishing its independence from Metro before the held-back money can be released, FTA officials say.

There also must be a handoff period when officials from the new oversight authority work alongside FTA officials to demonstrate theyre trained and ready to be the watchdog.

Maryland Del. Marc A. Korman (D-Montgomery), co-chair of a work group of Annapolis legislators focused on Metro issues, said the state Transportation Department is in the process of vetting commissioner applicants.

Jennifer Mitchell, director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, said regional leaders aim to have a search firm to find an eventual executive director in late summer or early fall.

Each jurisdiction will have two full-time members, with one alternate to cover absences, on the commission, according to the legislation.

Korman said commissioners should have a rail engineering or safety background  ideally with experience on bodies such as the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Transit Administration or the Federal Railroad Administration.

[FTA to spend $900K to train contractors for eventual Metro oversight agency]

Six to 12 staffers, who are still to be hired, will manage the offices daily operations. Transportation leaders are looking for space in downtown Washington.

With regional officials saying theyre working as fast as possible to set up the commission, many local members of Congress are pressing to restore the funds now.

A total of $8.9 million had been withheld to date, congressional leaders said in late June. The figure was expected to hit $15 million by the end of the fiscal year.

Elected lawmakers from both parties have persistently argued that the February deadline for federal certification was impossible to meet. They note that an FTA tool kit that gave states guidance on how to achieve certification was not released until four days after the FTA had already penalized the Metro partners.

A June 30 letter to Chao from 11 Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Gerald E. Connolly and Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark R. Warner, all of Virginia, said the decision to withhold the funds . . . was crude, punitive, and arbitrary.

The one-year timeline imposed on the jurisdictions to establish and certify the Metro Safety Commission (MSC) ignored the unique legislative calendars of the citizen legislatures in Maryland and Virginia as well as the time consuming, FTA-managed certification process for State Safety Oversight Program, the letter said.

In a separate letter, six members of Congress, including Kaine, Warner and Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), asked the FTA to restore at least some funds. They, too, argued that the requirement to have the program fully certified by February 2017 was unreasonable, given the need to appoint commissioners, hire staff and lease an office.

We are therefore led to believe that FTA either set their requirements without providing fair consideration to the unique institutional challenges that exist within the jurisdictions, or the FTA set them with a deadline so unrealistic that failure was unavoidable, they wrote.

The FTA said in an email last week that its stance has not changed.

The FTA also confirmed in the email that it has used $900,000 in Metro funding that was held back last year to hire and train three contractors to do federal oversight of Metro, with the goal of having that expertise transfer to the new commission.

The FTA had asked Maryland, Virginia and the District to hire the contractors, but that did not happen.
WASHINGTON,DC - MAR11: Metro riders board trains and ride the escalators at L'Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington, DC, March 11, 2015. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

More than a year after President Barack Obamas transportation secretary appointed a trio of safety experts to Metros governing panel, the Trump administration will replace two of them with its own appointees this week.

The incoming members  whose names could not be learned Sunday  will take the place of Carol Carmody and David L. Strickland, the federal governments voting representatives on Metros board of directors, according to multiple board members with knowledge of the decision.

Carmody, a former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, presided over the panels safety committee. Strickland, the former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, headed the real estate committee, but was frequently absent over the past year because of health issues.

The third person appointed by then-Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, alternate member Robert C. Lauby, is expected to remain in his role.

[Foxx, saying no more excuses for Metro, replaces 3 board members]

The new appointees were expected to be announced as soon as Monday, those with knowledge of the decision said, and to take office as early as Thursday, when the full board will meet and consider key changes to its governing structure, which has come under scrutiny in recent years as the transit system has struggled with major financial and operational problems.

Board Chairman Jack Evans confirmed that he had been informed of the upcoming appointments over the weekend, but he declined to elaborate. The U.S. Transportation Department declined requests for additional information.

The 16-member board consists of eight voting and eight alternate directors, with two votes each from the District, Maryland, Virginia and the federal government.

There is the possibility of a jurisdictional veto, when both voting members from the District, Maryland or Virginia align with no votes.

Board members from the deep-blue Washington region tend to be Democrats, and in some cases they have pressed for increased funding for Metro. The Republican presidents transportation agenda, in contrast, seeks a decrease in federal spending, with a larger reliance on private investment and potential public-private partnerships.

[On Metro board, another dispute, more strong words, and a rare veto]

Board members said they were not surprised that Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao would want to make her own appointments to the Metro board, even so soon into the current directors terms. Carmody was a year into a four-year appointment, while Strickland had two years remaining in his three-year term, Carmody said.

Im sorry to leave, Carmody said in an interview Sunday. But elections have consequences, as the saying goes, and if the new secretary wants to replace these jobs, she certainly has the right to.

Carmody said she had been informed that the replacements had already been selected and would be joining the board very soon. Until then, Lauby and alternate member Anthony E. Costa will vote on behalf of the federal government.

We have turned some corners as a board and made some big decisions and tough choices, Carmody said. Its a very good board, and over the past year, I think weve really come together and worked well together through a lot of soul-searching.

Stricklands tenure was marked by repeated absences, which he attributed in an interview last week to illnesses: his wifes battle with breast cancer and a life-threatening infection he had.

Strickland said he has made an effort to be physically present, adding that his fellow board members, including Evans, had been updated on the reasons behind his absence.

I have a full appreciation for the responsibilities of the board, he said last week. I plan to serve my term as long as the president has made the decision to allow me to stay.

According to public minutes of Metro board meetings, Strickland missed six out of the 12 board meetings since his appointment. Of the six he attended, one was by phone. He did not attend a special meeting of the board last month.

He attended four out of nine meetings of the Capital Program, Planning and Real Estate Committee, which he chairs.

Portions of this report regarding board voting procedures have been amended from an earlier version.
Mei Xiang, the female giant panda at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, eats breakfast. (Susan Walsh/AP)

One of Washingtons best-known teenagers celebrated a birthday on Saturday, at a time of great curiosity about her.

As it is often phrased in the gossip columns, the question is this: Is she or isnt she? Mei Xiang, one of the National Zoos giant pandas, was artificially inseminated on May 25, and now it is a matter of wait and see.

In time, keepers expect behavior changes, altered hormone levels and ultrasound testing. But for now, a keeper said, the animal celebrity was doing her normal routine, interrupted slightly on Saturday for her 19th birthday.

To mark the occasion, the beloved bear received an elaborate frozen treat. Witnesses said it seemed to hit the spot on a sultry summer day.

It was amazing, said Amy Russian, a panda enthusiast who went to the zoo specifically to observe the celebration of Meis birthday.

Mei Xiang plays in her yard at the National Zoo. (Sarah L. Voisin/Post)

She spent an hour and 45 minutes on that cake, Russian said.

It was clear, Russian said, that she was happy about it.

Another witness used Facebook to deliver comments directly to the birthday girl: Mei, I have never seen any animal enjoy a birthday cake as much as you are enjoying your beautiful treat today.

Happy Birthday, and many more!

It was not just any cake that was offered to the panda.

Atop and along the sides of a frozen rectangular block were a variety of custom-made adornments, including a swirling pink rosette and snowflakes.

A partial list of ingredients for cake and decorations included apple juice, beet-tinted water, sliced apples and pears, plus fresh bamboo leaves  stems removed  in ice.

But now, for a few weeks anyway, it is back to panda routine for Mei. Except that she is seeing the zoo and her many admirers through the eyes of a 19-year-old.
CONNECTICUT

90 hospitalized during rap concert

More than 90 people were hospitalized during a concert Friday night featuring Chance the Rapper, authorities said.

Hartford Deputy Chief Brian Foley said Saturday that officers made 50 underage drinking referrals at Hot 93.7s Hot Jam concert at Xfinity Theatre. Most of those charged were issued a summons to appear in court. Several other arrests were made throughout the evening.

The crowd was apparently made up of people in their late teens and early 20s, Foley said. Tailgating, partying and excessive alcohol consumption was extremely prevalent, he said. A large number of people hospitalized were underage attendees experiencing severe intoxication, according to Foley.

 Associated Press

MASSACHUSETTS

Boy who had heart transplant dies

A 5-year-old boy whose reaction to learning hed be receiving a new heart captivated people on social media earlier this year, died Friday evening in Massachusetts, his family said.

Ari Schultz died while listening to his beloved Boston Red Sox, his family said on Facebook. The post did not give the cause of death.

Ari, who was born with a heart syndrome, waited more than 200 days for a heart transplant at a Boston hospital in March. His parents had posted a YouTube video of them telling him he was getting a new heart. It drew more than 450,000 views.

Aris father said in the post that Ari had a seizure Thursday and was taken to the hospital. He was later placed on life support.

 Associated Press

MARYLAND

NAACP announces new interim leader

The NAACP announced a new interim leader Saturday, along with a nationwide listening tour that will allow the group to talk to local members and determine the future of the nations oldest civil rights organization.

Derrick Johnson, vice chair of the NAACP board of directors, will be interim president and chief executive, officials announced at the 108th national convention in Baltimore.

Leon Russell, national board chairman, said the NAACP needs to figure out how best to support communities working on issues like police brutality, redistricting and voter suppression.

 Associated Press

Mother gets life in twins death: An Arizona woman with mental problems has been sentenced to two life terms plus 20 years in the 2015 drowning deaths of her 2-year-old twins and the attempted killing of a 3-year-old son at their home. Judge Bradley Astrowsky of Maricopa County Superior Court sentenced Mireya Alejandra Lopez, 24, on Friday after finding her guilty but insane on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

Same-sex couples suit dismissed: Same-sex couples in Tennessee have the same rights as heterosexual couples who have children born through artificial insemination, a judge ruled Friday. The ruling dismissed a lawsuit brought by four married lesbian couples over a state law requiring the natural and ordinary meaning of words in state law. Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle said the couples didnt prove their rights had been violated.

 From news services
There was a soft hum.

I was writing notes on my computer when I heard it. At first, I thought it was an online ad from my browser or maybe someones cellphone in the room. But I couldnt tell where it was coming from.

I stopped typing and listened. A medical student in the room paused as well. The sound was growing louder. It was a voice, coming from the hallway. A soulful tune filled with emotion.

It was a patient, singing on the psychiatric unit.

The psych ward remains among the most stigmatized places in modern medicine. Despite more-accepting public attitudes toward mental-health care, inpatient psychiatric units continue to evoke frightening images of patients strapped to beds, electroconvulsive therapy and rooms with padded walls.

After a Massachusetts psychiatric hospital closed, Anna Schuleit honored its past residents with an art installation that involved placing thousands of flowers throughout the aging institution. (COURTESY OF ANNA SCHULEIT)

These damaging stereotypes are everywhere. Films exploit psychiatric floors as stages for horror. Travel guides tout tours of haunted asylums. Companies still design Halloween rides around psychiatric care.

In San Francisco, where I live for my work as a resident in psychiatry, its not unusual to see tourists walking around wearing Alcatraz Psycho Ward apparel.

Psychiatric units continue to be the hidden corners of hospitals, the secluded floors that many hope to avoid. Patients openly chat with friends and family about trips to emergency departments, primary-care clinics and even operating rooms, but this isnt so for stays on inpatient psychiatric units. These are the places that no one likes to talk about.

In recent years, inpatient psychiatric units have been in steep decline. According to data collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the number of psychiatric hospital beds in the United States fell from an estimated 153,517 in 1991 to 67,707 in 2014. As a result, distressed patients often languish in emergency departments, find themselves in jails or wander the streets, unable to get the care they need.

There are multiple explanations for this downward trend. The national policy effort known as deinstitutionalization has sought to move treatment of mentally ill people away from hospitals and toward community-based options over the past several decades. Mental-health care has historically garnered poor government funding and low insurance reimbursements, which may discourage construction of new units. When budgets are tight, mental-health services are frequent targets for cost-cutting. And shortages in mental-health providers have led some hospitals to close psychiatric units.

Misunderstanding of who gets treated on psychiatric units, what happens there and how inpatient care helps people compounds the problem. As a mental-health provider, I often struggle to reconcile the public perceptions of psychiatric units with the realities of my day-to-day work. I wonder how others might feel if they could see what Ive seen behind those doors.

These are places where patients put their lives back together, picking up the pieces torn apart by such illnesses as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Caregivers from doctors and nurses, to social workers and psychologists work to heal the sick, to guide patients out of the abyss. Families often reconcile with loved ones. Patients may find hope in one another, opening up in groups, sharing meals, discovering the comfort of shared experiences.

(Frick Libeue, Anna Schuleit Haber)

Despite public beliefs that were locking people away, many  if not most  patients sign into the hospital voluntarily, and inpatient stays usually last just days to a few weeks. There are long conversations about whether to take medications. Some meetings are filled with tears, some with laughter. Patients undergo physical exams and vital-signs checks, lab work and EKGs, just like anywhere else in the hospital.

Ive seen patients dance with nurses, smiling for the first time in weeks. Patients playing musical instruments lift the spirits of those around them. Poetry fills those walls. Some patients create artwork that belongs in museums.

I wont sugarcoat what its like to work on psychiatric units. There are moments of tension and conflict. There are moments when patients rave in the grips of psychosis, scream at the locked doors, throw chairs, harm themselves or threaten staff members. Indeed, there are moments when Im afraid.

But in my experience, these flashes of turmoil are far less common than the moments of inspiration.

I wish people could see the kind of good that can be done for patients on psychiatric units. Will we ever see psychiatric units not as places of shadows and terror but as places of beauty and strength?

Those moments of healing are there every day, right in front of us. But they just dont garner much attention. Patients getting better in psychiatric units dont attract headlines the way that scandals or horror films do.

Overcoming the stigma against psychiatric units wont be easy. But I think its possible.

Familiarizing the public with psychiatric care is a first step. Stereotypes against psychiatric units endure when these places remain unknown and out of sight. By opening up about the realities of mental-health treatment, providers and patients can address the pervading views of the psych ward as a place of torture and imprisonment. This kind of transparency can illuminate psychiatric cares potential for healing rather than horror.

This means we also have to talk about psychiatrys checkered past. We have to acknowledge the sometimes brutal history of mental-health care  shackles, cages, lobotomies of decades ago, as well as abuses that carry into today  to inspire better treatment moving forward. By learning from psychiatrys mistakes, future generations of mental-health providers can give the kind of compassionate care that our patients deserve.

I think back to the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Once named the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Mass Mental, as it became known, faced a crossroads in the early 2000s. Its main building was outdated, slated for closure and demolition. As one columnist wrote, With its black and white checkered tiles worn and exposed radiators rusting, the building had become a relic of mid-20th century psychiatric care.

In November 2003, after the building closed, artist Anna Schuleit created an art installation dedicated to the past residents of the aging psychiatric institution. She placed thousands of blooming flowers throughout the facility. Pink heather lined a waiting room for patients, and blue African violets covered the floor of a long corridor. Orange begonias filled the entrances to doctors offices. White tulips overflowed in the child psychiatry unit.

After several days of public viewing, the installation was taken down and the flowers were donated to nearby hospitals, shelters and other locations. The building was later torn down, but Mass Mental didnt disappear. The institution moved into newer facilities, where patients receive care today.

Its where I first learned to treat psychiatric patients as a medical student. Its where I fell in love with psychiatry, with caring for people with mental illness.

When it comes to mental illness, we all make choices. We can continue to stigmatize people who receive treatment for mental health issues. We can be afraid of psychiatric units, dress up like patients for Halloween and scream at asylums in horror movies. We can shrug at the decline of mental-health services and let funding fall by the wayside, ignoring the plight of millions of Americans.

Or we can decide to learn more. We can ask ourselves what might it be like to feel desperate, tormented and alone. We can work together toward better care for these patients, to ensure days filled with poetry and flowers rather than chains and neglect. We can wonder what lies behind those secluded hospital doors.

The music is there if we listen.

Morris is a resident physician in psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Read More

There are websites that promote suicide. Thats not okay.

Why doctors are leery about seeking mental=health care for themselves

Can exercise cure depression and anxiety?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. walks into the Senate Chamber at the Capitol. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

The Senate returns to Washington on Monday with its GOP leaders determined to vote this week on their years-long quest to demolish the Affordable Care Act, even though the goal remains mired in political and substantive uncertainties.

Central questions include whether enough Senate Republicans will converge on any version of their leaders health-care plan and whether significant aspects of the legislation being considered can fit within arcane parliamentary rules.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) indicated on Sunday that the majority party may not have enough support to prevail on even a first step  a routine vote to begin the floor debate.

Were continuing to work with all of the members. Were getting much closer to that, Barrasso, one of the chambers few physicians, said on CBSs Face the Nation.

Meanwhile, the two Republicans who have been the efforts most outspoken foes in the Senate relaunched complaints that their leaders are leaving them clueless as to what exactly will be put forward.

1 of 58 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  A look at President Trumps first year in office, so far View Photos Scenes from the Republicans first months in the White House. 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.

Late last week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) adopted a strategy uncharacteristic for a tactician who usually spares his caucus needless difficult votes.

Several days earlier, McConnell had lacked enough support to call for a vote on a bill that would rescind parts of the ACA and replace them with a variety of conservative health policies. He quickly switched, saying the chamber would vote anew on a repeal-only measure passed in late 2015 by both the Senate and House  and vetoed by then-President Barack Obama. Less than 24 hours later, that idea faltered, too.

So McConnell has resorted to a plan C: bringing to the floor an anti-ACA bill passed by the House this spring and allowing senators a sort of free-for-all for substituting in either of the Senate measures or new iterations.

We are still on track . . . to have a vote early this week, a McConnell spokesman said on Sunday. The Senate will consider all types of proposals, Republican and Democrat.

But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a centrist who says the Senates Better Care Reconciliation Act would cut Medicaid in ways that would hurt rural and vulnerable Americans, derided that strategy during an appearance on Face the Nation.

Lawmakers dont know whether were going to be voting on the House bill, the first version of the Senate bill, the second version of the Senate bill, a new version of the Senate bill or a 2015 bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act now and then said that somehow well figure out a replacement over the next two years, Collins said.

I dont think thats a good approach to facing legislation that affects millions of people and one-sixth of our economy, she added.

Her sentiment was echoed by conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who contends that the main GOP proposal the Senate has been considering does not go far enough to undermine the ACA. The real question is, what are we moving to? What are we opening debate to? Paul said on CNNs State of the Union. He reiterated that he only would support a bill that would remove large portions of the ACA  and not legislation continuing federal subsidies that help millions of people afford their insurance premiums.

Such ideological crosscurrents within his own party are what McConnell has been trying to surmount. The GOP has a narrow majority of 52 senators, and Democrats are unified against the effort to dismantle Obamacare. Given this partisan terrain, Senate leaders are relying on a legislative process known as reconciliation, which allows a bill to be passed with a simple majority when it has budget implications, rather than the customary 60 votes needed to ward off a potential filibuster by opponents.

But the reconciliation strategy hit a roadblock late Friday as Senate Democrats released a set of guidance from the chambers parliamentarian, who concluded that aspects of a June 26 version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act probably would not fit within the budget rules. The guidance says several parts of the proposal would require a full 60 votes for approval, including limits on funding for Planned Parenthood and health plans that provide coverage for abortion  both restrictions conservatives have favored.

The parliamentarian also cautioned against a significant part of the GOP bill meant to encourage Americans to maintain health coverage: allowing health plans to freeze out for six months applicants who have allowed their coverage to lapse.

McConnells spokesman, Don Stewart, noted that the parliamentarian similarly cautioned against portions of the 2015 ACA repeal bill, but it still passed through the reconciliation process. Neither Stewart nor other Senate staffers said what changes could be contemplated to get around the parliamentary problem.
SYRIA

Airstrikes occur near

U.S.-backed forces

Syrian warplanes carried out airstrikes against Islamic State targets in the countryside east of Raqqa and close to where U.S.-backed forces operate, Syrian state TV reported.

The attacks in the town of Maadan and village of Bir al-Sabkhawi, near the provincial boundary with Deir al-Zour governorate, destroyed several bases and vehicles belonging to the Islamist group, a military source said.

The Syrian army has active front lines with the Islamic State in Raqqas western countryside, where it has recaptured territory from the Islamist militants. But airstrikes in the east take the fight closer to where the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance dominated by Kurdish fighters, are operating.

The SDF launched a final assault to drive the Islamic State out of its stronghold of Raqqa last month, and have spearheaded efforts against the group in Syrias northeast.

 Reuters

IRAN

New production line

for missiles announced

Iran announced the launch of a new missile production line on Saturday, according to state media, against a backdrop of tension between the United States and Tehran.

The Sayyad 3 missile can reach an altitude of 16 miles and travel up to 74 miles, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said at a ceremony. The missile can target fighter planes, unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise missiles and helicopters.

Last week, the United States slapped new economic sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program, and said Tehrans malign activities in the Middle East undercut any positive contributions coming from a 2015 Iran nuclear accord.

Also Saturday, Iran responded to President Trumps calling on the Islamic Republic to release three U.S. citizens by demanding that the United States release detained Iranians, according to the Iranian Students News Agency.

 Reuters

Venezuelan soldiers fire tear gas at protesters: Venezuelan soldiers on motorbikes fired tear gas at hundreds of masked and stone-throwing youths in Caracas on Saturday during the latest protest against President Nicolas Maduro. The Democratic Unity coalition had called a march on the pro-Maduro Supreme Court in support of alternative magistrates appointed by the opposition on Friday. But security forces blocked their way with armored cars and riot shields. Clashes ensued, injuring several people. Since April, more than 100 people have died in the unrest, with thousands injured and hundreds arrested.

Death toll in strike on Afghan police rises to 12: The death toll from an errant U.S. airstrike on Afghan National Police officers was raised to 12. The death toll in Fridays airstrike was determined after a site inspection of the compound in the Gereshk district, said Abdul Ghafar Safi, Helmand provincial police chief. The United States in a statement confirmed that the airstrike on the Security Forces compound occurred during a U.S.-supported operation against Taliban insurgents in the area.

Aftershocks rattle Greek island: Crews of experts began examining the damage to cultural monuments and infrastructure on the eastern Greek island of Kos on Saturday, a day after a powerful earthquake killed two tourists and injured nearly 500 others in the Aegean Sea region that stretches to Turkeys sprawling coast. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the early Friday morning quake at magnitude 6.7. Hundreds of residents and tourists spent Friday night sleeping outdoors on the island, too afraid to return to their homes or hotels. Residents and tourists were still jittery as a series of aftershocks Saturday night continued to rock the island.

Swiss couple buried: A Swiss couple whose bodies were found on an Alpine glacier after they disappeared nearly 75 years ago have been buried. Swiss broadcaster SRF said the funeral of Marcelin Dumoulin and his wife, Francine, took place Saturday in a church in Saviese in southwestern Switzerland. They were 40 and 37 when they disappeared on Aug. 15, 1942. The bodies were found on the Tsanfleuron glacier at 8,580 feet above sea level. The couples daughter, Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, now 79, said her parents set off on foot to feed their animals but never returned. SRF said two daughters took part in the funeral; the other five children have died.

 From news services
ISRAEL

Security cabinet meets amid shrine dispute

Israels security cabinet met Sunday to review a decision to install metal detectors at a contested Jerusalem holy site, after a week of escalating tensions with the Muslim world, mass prayer protests and Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Some in Israel have criticized the government for the move, saying it did not sufficiently consider the repercussions of introducing new security measures at the Holy Lands most sensitive shrine and the epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a possible spillover of the tensions, three people, including an Israeli, were wounded by gunfire Sunday in a building in the heavily fortified Israeli Embassy compound in Jordans capital. A Jordanian man later died of his wounds, a security official said.

The metal detectors were installed at the Jerusalem site a week ago, in response to an attack by gunmen there who killed two Israeli police officers. Muslim religious leaders alleged that Israel was trying to expand its control of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound under the guise of security.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan on Sunday for the first time raised the possibility that the metal detectors might be removed, provided an alternative is found.

 Associated Press

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban fighters seize 2 districts, kill 8 officers

Taliban fighters on Sunday overran a second district headquarters in as many days, this one in Afghanistans western province of Ghowr, the provincial police chief said.

At least eight police officers were killed in separate battles with Taliban militants, said Mohammad Mustafa Moseni.

Moseni said that the Taliban launched four assaults on Ghowrs Taywara district headquarters early Sunday and that we had no choice but to retreat. He said police have taken up positions about five miles away while they await reinforcements to launch a counterattack.

In northern Faryab provinces Lawlash district, Taliban fighters used the cover of darkness to attack the district headquarters Saturday, setting fire to the police headquarters buildings, a spokesman for the provincial police chief said Sunday.

 Associated Press

EGYPT

Sunni institution seeks to fight extremism

Egypts al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim worlds foremost religious institution, is setting up booths in Cairo metro stations to provide religious edicts to commuters in the latest bid to dispel religious misconceptions seen as fostering Islamist militancy in the country.

The move comes after militants killed at least 28 security personnel in attacks this month and more than 100 Coptic Christians since December.

Al-Azhars Islamic Research Academy said last week that it launched the project as part of the institutions efforts to correct misconceptions and misinterpretations of religious texts.

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has blamed what he believes to be outdated religious discourse for rising Islamist militancy and has called for the modernization of religious discourse.

 Associated Press

Indonesian leader calls for shooting drug traffickers who resist arrest: President Joko Widodo said police should shoot drug traffickers who resist arrest, as Indonesia confronts a narcotics crisis. The nation has tough anti-drug laws, and traffickers can receive the death penalty. A presidential spokesman said that Widodos comment is not a shoot-to-kill order and that police actions should be in accordance with the law.

Fire in Croatia triggers war-mine blasts: Emergency officials said a forest fire that has spread to southern Croatia from neighboring Montenegro has triggered 34 explosions, probably from mines left over from the regions war in the 1990s. Both Croatia and Montenegro have been battling wildfires along the Adriatic coast amid high temperatures and dry weather.

 From news services
AT THE end of the 6 p.m. news hour that he reigned over for 45 years, Jim Vance told his devoted viewership on May 4 that he needed to take time away from work to deal with cancer. Earlier, he had delivered a far more wrenching statement to co-workers gathered in the WRC-TV (Channel 4) newsroom that suggested the finality of his diagnosis. I have lived a good life, he said, noting it was full of blessings that not many people have had. He voiced similar comments when his face was made part of the new Bens Chili Bowl mural. Mr. Vance did indeed live a life many would envy, but it is the Washington community that should feel gratitude for this singular personality and his extraordinary career.

Mr. Vance died Saturday at the age of 75. One of local televisions first African American journalists to establish a strong presence, he became the regions longest-serving television news anchor and, along with co-anchor Doreen Gentzler, its most popular. He was, of course, quite good- looking and had an easy charm about him. But his success was rooted in the assured way he delivered the news  with empathy but no sentimentality or ideology. Even when the news was most jarring  as the day in 1982 of the Air Florida plane crash and Metro derailment (for which he earned one of his 19 local Emmy Awards)  viewers could find comfort in Mr. Vances calm professionalism.

His reputation as a straight shooter extended to his own problems. His candor about his addiction and his depression helped to make him a celebrity, but his interest was never to exploit those demons but rather to help others by acknowledging and confronting illness. He gave back to the community in other ways  freely giving his time to speak at high school graduations, church groups and community events  and he helped raise money for causes dear to him, such as the Theatre Lab, which works with youth, the aged and incarcerated, and Concerned Black Men.

He was a part of local Washington in a way that people who just report on the city are not, former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder told Mr. Vances NBC4 colleague Tom Sherwood. Jim always understood that people looked up to him, respected him and he gave that respect back. And I think that came through in real life and on the screen as well.

He will be missed  both on camera and off.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach listens as Vice President Pence speaks at the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on July 19. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

AT THE inaugural meeting of President Trumps already embattled voter integrity commission last week, one member, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, expressed relief that despite bitter controversy over the panels mission, at least no one had questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election. A few hours later, the commissions vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election.

In an appearance on MSNBC, Mr. Kobach, a Republican titan of voter suppression who has been repeatedly sued for his relentless efforts to cull voters from the rolls of his home state, was asked if he believed that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, as the official tally indicates. You know, said Mr. Kobach, we may never know the answer to that question.

In fact, not a speck of evidence exists to cast doubt on the official tally of the popular vote, nor, for that matter, on the electoral vote. Still, the offhand remark was in keeping with Mr. Kobachs years-long effort, along with that of other Republicans, to erode public confidence in American elections to provide a pretext for tough state laws whose real goal is to obstruct voting by minorities and young people, who tend to support Democrats.

Formed by Mr. Trump after he falsely asserted that 3 to 5 million votes were cast illegally in the 2016 election, the commission includes members, in addition to Mr. Kobach, known for their histories of voter obstruction. One, former Ohio secretary of state J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, is notorious for trying to reject registration forms submitted on paper that was too thin, and for trying to impede voter registration drives. Another, Hans Von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official, led a failed attempt to purge voter rolls in Missouri.

At the commissions meeting, some officials talked sense. Alan King, a probate judge who oversees elections in Jefferson County, Ala., which includes Birmingham, stressed the importance of new funding for modern voting equipment. Another, Mr. Dunlap, described an investigation into allegations of double-voting by 300 out-of-state students attending Maine colleges, but also registered at home; it turned out they had only voted once.

No doubt, voter lists nationwide must be kept clean and up-to-date. But glitches, inconsistencies and double registrations  often caused by people who move from one state to another, or whose names remain on the rolls posthumously  are not the sinister indication of fraud that champions of suppression like Mr. Kobach pretend. The relentless suggestions to the contrary, even in the absence of proof of any widespread illegal voting, has had the intended effect: Americans confidence in the honesty of elections has fallen steadily for almost a decade, according to a Gallup poll, and sharply last year as Mr. Trump harped on alleged vote rigging.

An honest election commission would make constructive suggestions for systemic improvements while at the same time debunking the patently phony idea that fraud is common. In this case, however, Mr. Kobach and his allies have an all-too-transparent agenda.
Michael G. Vickers served as assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities and undersecretary of defense for intelligence during the Bush and Obama administrations.

Based on recent statements by several senior administration officials, President Trumps Syria policy now focuses exclusively, in cooperation with Russia, on defeating the Islamic State. President Barack Obamas goal of removing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from power is no longer a U.S. foreign policy objective.

Acquiescing to Assad remaining in power, and ending support for the Syrian moderate opposition, would strengthen our adversaries, further convince allies that the Trump administration places Russian interests above our own, enable Iran to consolidate strategic gains, increase the global jihadist threat to the United States  and make a stable Middle East that much harder to achieve.

Abandoning the goal of removing Assad from power will place the United States on the side of not only the barbaric Syrian regime, which has American blood on its hands dating to the early 1980s, but also Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. This is strategic folly.

In the early 1980s, the regime of Hafez al-Assad  the current Syrian dictators father  facilitated Irans creation of Lebanese Hezbollah, which in short order resulted in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut and the kidnapping, torture and murder of several U.S. citizens, including William Buckley, the CIAs Beirut station chief. Before the 9/11 attacks, Hezbollah had taken more American lives than any terrorist group in the world. Two decades later, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the Assad regime facilitated the flow of Sunni terrorists to Iraq, resulting in many more American deaths.

Iranian power has grown steadily in the Middle East during the past four decades. Shortly after the 1979 revolution, Iran aligned itself with the Assads, and over time Iran enabled Hezbollah to dominate Lebanon militarily, placing Israel under the constant threat of massive rocket attack. More recently, Iran has supported a Houthi takeover in Yemen, deposing a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaeda, and exerted its influence over the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. The civil war in Syria represented our primary opportunity to roll back Iranian power in the Middle East and to sever its primary supply line to Hezbollah. We are squandering that opportunity.

With its 2015 intervention in Syria, Russia has become engaged militarily in the Middle East for the first time in decades. Additionally, in the past three years, Vladimir Putins Russia has waged unconventional and conventional war to dismember Ukraine and attacked American democracy. Russian aggression will not cease until it is hit back hard. Stepping up support for the moderate Syrian opposition, providing Ukraine with defensive weapons and countering Russian actions in cyberspace would be great places to start.

The Trump administrations exclusive focus on the global jihadist threat in Syria is shortsighted, as the civil war and the jihadist threat emanating from Syria are strategically intertwined. One cannot win the latter without winning the former.

The Assad regimes brutality against its majority Sunni population has been a magnet for international terrorist travel to Syria, and it will continue to serve as a rallying cry for global jihadists. If the United States is viewed as being on the side of the Assad regime, Russia and Iran, we will become even more of a target for jihadists. Elements of the moderate Syrian opposition  there are tens of thousands of them  will no doubt become radicalized by this abandonment, strengthening jihadist ranks.

Defeating global jihadist groups in Syria, and not just displacing them, requires a post-Assad Syrian government with which we can partner for sustained counterterrorism operations. Likewise, rolling back Iranian influence is a precondition of achieving a balance of power favorable to U.S. interests in the Middle East.

Some Americans may think the policy goal of seeking Assads removal from power was unachievable without large-scale military intervention, but that is not the case. The Assad regime has been in real peril several times during six years of civil war, and if more U.S. support had been provided to the moderate opposition during the Obama administration, a political transition to a representative Syrian government might have been achieved.

President Ronald Reagan understood the potential of covert proxy wars to alter global power balances. Through stepped-up support for the Afghan mujahideen and other anti-Communist movements, and other, complementary strategic policies, he won the Cold War. It took the Carter and Reagan administrations more than five years to come up with a war-winning strategy (work that I helped to lead as a CIA officer) against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The same could be done in Syria today.

The United States faces growing challenges to the international order from Sunni global jihadists and the Iranian regime in the Middle East, from Russia in Europe and from China in East Asia. Making common cause with Russia and Iran in Syria can only lead to the further erosion of U.S. global power.

So a pressing question arises: Why would the Trump administration embrace a Syria policy that serves Russian and Iranian interests and harms American interests? In time, we will learn the answer.
Completely sapped of power in Washington, top leaders of the Democratic Party now believe that the best way to fight a president who penned The Art of the Deal is with an economic agenda that they plan to call A Better Deal.

The campaign-style motto, panned by some liberal activists as details began to trickle out ahead of the Monday rollout, is designed to revive a party desperate to win back at least some control next year. The push comes months earlier than most campaign-year sales pitches begin  an acknowledgment of the need to shore up public opinion of the Democratic Party in the faster pace of modern politics.

Democratic leaders shared few details to preserve suspense around the plan, which is scheduled to be unveiled Monday at an event in Virginias 10th Congressional District, where the party hopes to defeat incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock (R). But some lawmakers, aides and outside advocates consulted on the new agenda said that it is expected to focus on new proposals to fund job-training programs, renegotiate trade deals and address soaring prescription-drug costs, as well as other issues. It is also expected to endorse long-held Democratic principles, including a living wage of $15 per hour and already unveiled spending plans for infrastructure that would expand broadband Internet access into rural counties.

The rollout comes as Democrats continue to struggle to sell a coherent message to voters. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 37 percent of Americans said that the party currently stands for something, while 52 percent said it just stands against Trump. The same poll found that Trumps overall approval rating has deteriorated to 36 percent  making him the most unpopular president of the modern era at this point in his presidency.

1 of 58 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  A look at President Trumps first year in office, so far View Photos Scenes from the Republicans first six months in the White House. 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.

Those findings resonate with party leaders who are still stunned by Trumps come-from-behind victory last year.

When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you dont blame other things  Comey, Russia  you blame yourself, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in an interview previewing the new plan. So what did we do wrong? People didnt know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) agreed, explaining in a separate interview that the new focus is not a course correction, but its a presentation correction.

But outside of Washington, some progressives worry that a focus on messaging has convinced Democrats that their policies were in no need of a rethink, while voters were crying out for more.

Many Democrats have watched with frustration for years as Republicans in Congress neatly packaged their policy proposals with catchy slogans and sleekly produced online videos fronted by younger, telegenic lawmakers crisply delivering campaign promises.

During the 2010 congressional campaign cycle that swept Republicans backed by the tea party into power, they were led by rising stars, including future House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and future House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). As House Budget Committee chairman, Ryan starred in online videos that broke down complex plans into simple sound bites. More recently as speaker, Ryan and his caucus have embraced the A Better Way agenda that includes conservative proposals to revamp poverty programs, health care and taxes, plus a hawkish national security stance. Last year, the plank was seen as a way to distance congressional Republicans from Trump.

Republicans talk in headlines; Democrats speak in fine print, conceded Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who co-chaired a team of House lawmakers tasked with leading the revamp. That ends this week. Were going to make sure that were able to reach the American people in a clear and compelling fashion.

A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future is the new slogan hatched after months of strategy sessions on Capitol Hill and late-night dinners at Washington restaurants hosted by Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffries and other rank-and-file House and Senate lawmakers.

Stephanie Kelton, a former economics adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said that she was consulted as Democrats crafted A Better Deal. Party leaders, she said, seemed to understand that establishment economics just cant accommodate a bold, progressive economic platform. She said that meant worrying less about the deficit and more about whether voters were seeing their quality of life improve.

Trump is using the budget to serve a handful of billionaires and large corporations, Kelton said in an email. Id like to see the Democrats practice their own version of this by talking always (and only) about how their policies will meaningfully improve life for the rest of us.

Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), who with Jeffries and Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) co-chaired the Houses work on the new agenda, said that there will be little mention of what has become all-consuming in Washington: Trump and the investigations embroiling his administration.

During conversations with voters back home, not one has brought up Russia to me, not one has brought up impeachment, said Bustos, who represents a northwestern Illinois district that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. We have to figure out this heartland messaging if were going to get to 218 members of Congress by 2018.

Jeffries agreed, recounting that during town-hall meetings across his district, which cuts across much of Brooklyn, it was all about pocketbook issues, housing challenges, crime, public safety, failures of the public schools, he said. It was an enlightening moment for me. Because we spend so much time with what I think all of us do view as an existential threat to our democracy  whats going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

To win back the House, Democrats will need to win at least 24 new seats next year  a margin that independent, nonpartisan observers believe is in reach if Trumps approval rating remains low and Republicans fail to enact signature campaign promises, including repealing the Affordable Care Act and enacting a tax overhaul. Democratic gains in the Senate will be harder as the party needs to defend 25 seats and is only expected to mount competitive races against Republican incumbents from Arizona and Nevada.

Whether candidates in swing districts will embrace a campaign battle plan drawn up in Washington is unclear.

Schumer said the new agenda is not about moving the party left or right, and its not about appealing to one coalition or another. A strong, sharp-edged, populist, bold economic message appeals to the Obama coalition and the people who voted for Trump  former Democrats who voted for Trump.

Grumblings about the Better Deal plan began late last week when a reporter for the news website Vox tweeted that Democrats messaging would include some focus-group language  better skills, better jobs, better wages  first used by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). The reporter later deleted the tweet, but the news tweaked left-wing critics who began tearing apart the alleged slogan, suggesting that better skills was an insult to workers  and that the better formulation itself evoked the corporate slogan of Papa Johns Pizza.

Please God someone tell me this is not real, Tommy Vietor, a former spokesman for President Barack Obama, tweeted at the news, adding later: Fire the consultant who created it right now.

But Schumer especially is excited by the new focus, vowing that its an expression that everyone will use  a better deal for workers, a better deal for women, a better deal for prescription-drug buyers.

That construction  similar to the pizza slogan  is what worries some liberal critics. But the Senate leader is convinced that it will work.

Part of this is its usability, its repetition and its relation to both the New Deal and a better deal than Trump, Schumer said. Hes supposed to be a dealmaker; hes not very good at that.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
Six months after seizing complete control of the federal government, the Republican Party stands divided as ever  plunged into a messy war among its factions that has escalated in recent weeks to crisis levels.

Frustrated lawmakers are increasingly sounding off at a White House awash in turmoil and struggling to accomplish its legislative goals. President Trump is scolding Republican senators over health care and even threatening electoral retribution. Congressional leaders are losing the confidence of their rank and file. And some major GOP donors are considering using their wealth to try to force out recalcitrant incumbents.

Its a lot of tribes within one party, with many agendas, trying to do what they want to do, Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) said in an interview.

The intensifying fights threaten to derail efforts to overhaul the nations tax laws and other initiatives that GOP leaders hope will put them back on track. The party remains bogged down by a months-long health-care endeavor that still lacks the support to become law, although Senate GOP leaders plan to vote on it this week.

With his priorities stalled and Trump consumed by staff changes and investigations into Russian interference in last years election, Republicans are adding fuel to a political fire that is showing no signs of burning out. The conflict also heralds a potentially messy 2018 midterm campaign with fierce intra-party clashes that could draw resources away from fending off Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks to reporters after a luncheon with President Trump and other GOP leaders at the White House on Wednesday, July 19. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Its very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President, Trump wrote on Twitter Sunday afternoon, marking the latest sign of the presidents uneasy relationship with his own party.

Winning control of both chambers and the White House has done little to fill in the deep and politically damaging ideological fault lines that plagued the GOP during Barack Obamas presidency and ripped the party apart during the 2016 presidential primary. Now, Republicans have even more to lose.

In the 50 years Ive been involved, Republicans have yet to figure out how to support each other, said R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the founder of the American Spectator, a conservative magazine.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans are increasingly concerned that Trump has shown no signs of being able to calm the party. What Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) called the daily drama at the White House flared again last week when Trump shook up his communications staff and told the New York Times that he regretted picking Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general.

This week was supposed to be Made in America Week and we were talking about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Dent grumbled in a telephone interview Thursday, citing White House messaging campaigns that were overshadowed by the controversies.

[At the White House, an abrupt chain reaction: Spicer out, Scaramucci and Sanders in]

As Trump dealt with continued conflicts among his staff  which culminated Friday in press secretary Sean Spicer resigning in protest after wealthy financier Anthony Scaramucci was named communications director  he set out to try to resolve the Senate Republican impasse over health care.

1 of 58 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  A look at President Trumps first year in office, so far View Photos Scenes from the Republicans first six months in the White House. 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.

The president had a small group of Republican senators over for dinner last Monday night to talk about the issue. But the discussion veered to other subjects, including Trumps trip to Paris and the Senates 60-vote threshold for most legislation, which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will not end. That didnt stop Trump from wondering aloud about its usefulness.

He asked the question, Why should we keep it? recalled Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who attended the dinner.

Two days later, some Republican senators left a White House lunch confused about what Trump was asking them to do on health care. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the next day that while the president made very clear that he wants to see a bill pass, Im unclear, having heard the president and read his tweets, exactly which bill he wants to pass.

The White House says the president prefers to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. McConnell has also raised the prospect of moving to only repeal the law. Neither option has enough votes. Nevertheless, McConnell plans to hold a vote early this week and bring the push to fulfill a seven-year campaign promise to its conclusion, one way or the other.

One of the things that united our party has been the pledge to repeal Obamacare since the 2010 election cycle, said White House legislative affairs director Marc Short. So when we complete that, I think that will help to unite the party.

Trumps allies on Capitol Hill have described the dynamic between the White House and GOP lawmakers as a disconnect between Republicans who are still finding it difficult to accept that he is the leader of the party that they have long controlled.

The disconnect is between a president who was elected from outside the Washington bubble and people in Congress who are of the Washington bubble, said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who works closely with the White House. I dont think some people in the Senate understand the mandate that Donald Trumps election represented.

Trump issued a casual threat at the Wednesday lunch against Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who has not embraced McConnells health-care bill. Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesnt he? Trump said in front of a pack of reporters as Heller, sitting directly to his right, grinned through the uncomfortable moment.

Heller is up for reelection in a state that Trump lost to Hillary Clinton and where Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) was the first Republican to expanded Medicaid under the ACA. Heller later brushed the moment off as President Trump being President Trump.

But some donors say they are weighing whether to financially back primary challengers against Republican lawmakers unwilling to support Trumps aims.

Absolutely we should be thinking about that, said Frank VanderSloot, a billionaire chief executive of an Idaho nutritional-supplement company. He bemoaned the lack of courage some lawmakers have shown and wished representatives would have the guts to vote the way they said they would on the campaign trail.

[Trump threatens electoral consequences for senators who oppose health-care bill]

Its not just the gulf between Trump and Republican senators that has strained relations during the health-care debate. The way McConnell and his top deputies have handled the legislation has drawn sharp criticism from some GOP senators.

No, said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), when asked last week whether he was happy with the way leadership has navigated the talks.

As he stepped into a Senate office building elevator the same day, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) would not respond to reporter questions about how good a job McConnell has done managing the health-care push. He flashed a smile as the door closed.

McConnell has defended his strategy, saying the process has been open to Republican senators, who have discussed it in many lunches and smaller meetings. Still, when it came time to write the bill, it was only McConnell and a small group of aides who did it. There was no outreach at all to Democrats, who have been united in their opposition.

In the House, the prospect of passing a 2018 budget this summer and a spending bill with funding for the Mexican border wall that Trump has called for remain uncertain, even though Republicans have a sizeable majority in the chamber. GOP disagreements have continued to erupt during Speaker Paul D. Ryans (R-Wis.) tenure. There are also obstacles in both chambers to achieving tax reform, which is expected to be among the next significant GOP legislative undertakings.

Trump critics said the ongoing controversies over Russian interference in the 2016 election and probes into potential coordination with the presidents associates would make any improvement in relations all but impossible in the coming months, with many Republicans unsure whether Trumps presidency will survive.

The Russia stories never stop coming, said Rick Wilson, a vocal anti-Trump consultant and GOP operative. For Republicans, the stories never get better, either. There is no moment of clarity or admission.

Wilson said Republicans are also starting to doubt whether the bargain they made  that they can endure Trump in order to pass X or Y  can hold. After a while, nothing really works and it becomes a train wreck.

[Its an insane process: How Trump and Republicans failed on their health-care bill]

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump associate, said Trumps battles with Republicans are unlikely to end and are entirely predictable, based on what Trumps victory signified.

His nomination and election were a hostile takeover of the vehicle of the Republican Party, Stone said. He added, When you talk to some Republicans who oppose Trump, they say they will keep opposing him but cant openly say it.

Some Republican lawmakers have been pained to talk about the president publicly, fearful of aggressively challenging their party leader but also wary of aligning too closely with some of his controversial statements or policy positions. Instead, they often attempt to focus on areas where they agree.

On foreign policy, I think he very much is involved in a direction thats far more in alignment since hes been elected with a bulk of the United States Senate than during the campaign, said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Amid the discord, there are some signs of collaboration. The Republican National Committee has worked to build ties to Trump and his family. In recent weeks, Trumps son Eric, his wife, Lara, and RNC chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, among other committee officials, met at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to discuss upcoming races and strategy.

That meeting followed a similar gathering weeks earlier at the RNC where Trump family members were welcomed to share their suggestions, according two people familiar with the sessions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Yet the friction keeps building. Among Trumps defenders, such as VanderSloot, who said the president is trying to move the ball forward, there are concerns he is picking too many fights with too many people. I think hes trying to swat too many flies, VanderSloot said.

The broader burden, some Republicans say, is to overcome a dynamic of disunity in the party that predates Trump and the current Congress. During the Obama years, it took the form of tea party-vs.-establishment struggles, which in some cases cost Republicans seats or led them to wage risky political feuds.

There was a separation between Republicanism and conservatism long before he won the White House, said former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. The glue has been coming apart since Reagan.

Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
A father and his two sons walk up the stairwell of the shelter for refugees and migrants where they live in Marienfelde district in Berlin. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

It was October 2015. With winter approaching and no end in sight to the flow of migrants seeking refuge from the Syrian civil war, Germany needed a solution  fast.

Processing centers for refugees had exceeded capacity. Asylum claims were backlogged. Temporary tent cities would not survive the punishing winter months.

So Germany did what governments increasingly do when facing apparently unmanageable problems. It called in multinational management consulting firms, including New York-based giant McKinsey & Co., to streamline its asylum procedures.

Germany has paid McKinsey 29.3 million euros, the equivalent of nearly $34 million, for work with the federal migration office that began in October 2015 and continues to this day. The office also brought in two Europe-based firms, Roland Berger and Ernst & Young.

Among McKinseys projects has been the development of fast-track arrival centers with the capacity to process claims within days. The companys work on migration issues also has taken its consultants to Greece and Sweden. This year, McKinsey submitted a bid for a project with the United Nations.

Experts in international law said the German case illustrates risks associated with McKinseys input. Today, asylum decisions handed down by the federal migration office come faster but are leaving an increasing number of migrants with fewer rights, above all the right to family reunification, triggering hundreds of thousands of appeals that have created a new backlog  not in asylum centers, but in German courts.

Were not used to seeing business consultants brought into the process, said Minos Mouzourakis of the Brussels-based European Council on Refugees and Exiles. McKinsey and others developed a system for more efficient management of asylum cases to make sure that the backlog of cases could be cleared. This led to a substantial number of decisions being taken, but with a significant drop in quality.

Legal experts said the shift to limited protection, which accompanied the introduction of fast-track asylum centers and expedited denial for certain classes of migrants, is inseparable from the overall drive toward administrative efficiency and control of the movement of migrants  goals championed by the firm.

This is a very sensitive area of law where you cant just streamline things, and Im not sure that McKinseys approach is one that systematically takes human rights concerns into account, said Nora Markard, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Hamburg and director of its refugee law clinic.

Markard observed that more efficient procedures were introduced at the same time that the federal migration office began granting only subsidiary protection  a status that recognizes an asylum seeker may suffer serious harm in his or her country of origin but doesnt qualify as a refugee  to an increasing number of migrants from Syria, thereby allowing them only a one-year residence permit instead of the three allowed refugees, and denying them the right to family reunification.

Its not coincidental that these changes happened at the same time, Markard said. The government had to deal with a very large number of arrivals very quickly, which meant that part of increasing efficiency was limiting entry in any way they could.

Government officials interviewed were adamant that McKinseys work has not involved specifying what sort of sanctuary should be granted. Absolutely not, said Andrea Brinkmann, a spokeswoman for the German migration office, when asked whether McKinsey weighed in on the use of subsidiary protection.

With 14,000 employees and offices around the world, McKinsey has advised corporations on everything from aerospace to paper products, and public-sector institutions ranging from schools to the CIA.

A 2016 report, People on the move: Global migrations impact and opportunity, outlines how more efficient integration procedures might boost national economies as well as benefit migrants. Produced by the McKinsey Global Institute, the report applies the analytical tools of economics with the insights of business leaders to the international refugee crisis.

One of its authors, Khaled Rifai, a partner in New York, said the company sees the use of temporary status, a common shorthand for subsidiary protection, as effective in quickly integrating new arrivals into jobs and housing, but he did not address the denial of the right to family reunification.

In general, we can say that issuing temporary status that allows people to have access to labor markets, to housing, to health is actually beneficial from an economic perspective in the short term in most cases, and is also beneficial from a social outcome perspective in the long term, he said.

An economist by training, Rifai said he was not a humanitarian law specialist steeped in the Geneva Conventions. He said his interest was personal; he is half-German, half-Syrian.

McKinsey spokesman Kai Peter Rath said he couldnt confirm the specifics of refugee-related projects.

I dont want to call it secret, he said. Our policy is if the client wants to talk about it, its the decision of the client.

Public records and interviews with government officials, however, show that McKinseys influence on refugee policy spans Europe  a role not widely publicized and surprising to some legal experts.

Its the first Ive heard that McKinsey was involved, said James C. Hathaway, a professor of refugee law at the University of Michigan.

Some of McKinseys earliest work on this issue was with the Swedish Migration Agency in 2008 and 2009, to install lean management practices, said Veronika Lindstrand Kant, the agencys deputy director of operations. Slashing processing times worked until 2015, when the new wave of asylum seekers expanded the caseload. Migrants are again waiting about 500 days for a decision, Lindstrand Kant said. McKinsey was paid more than $2 million.

In late 2016 and early 2017, the company worked to reduce the backlog of asylum claims in Greece, first with the European Commission, spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said, and then through a project funded by the European Asylum Support Office. It was paid about $1 million for the final project, said Jean-Pierre Schembri, a spokesman for the Malta-based organization.

The company is seeking to expand its reach. This spring, it submitted a bid to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for a project on refugee resettlement. In an email, a project manager in McKinseys Germany office asked an American legal expert to sign on to its proposal. The McKinsey bid was ultimately not accepted, a UNHCR spokeswoman said.

The expert, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to circulate the request, declined to join the project. She said she was not convinced the company had assembled a team of sufficiently high caliber to tackle resettlement.

Stephanie Kirchner contributed to this report.

Read more:

After the refugee crisis, Europe tightens its borders

8 reasons Europes refugee crisis is happening now

Italy offers swimming lessons for refugees traumatized while crossing the Mediterranean

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
Esty Shushan (left) and Estee Rieder-Indursky (center) lead a panel discussing the role of ultra-Orthodox women in the political sphere. The two women run a nonprofit organization called Nivcharot, which fights for the right of Haredi women to be given a greater voice. (Courtesy of Esty Shushan/Courtesy of Esty Shushan)

They are ultra-Orthodox feminists and liken their group to the suffragist movement.

Esty Shushan and Estee Rieder-Indursky have been fighting for the past five years for womens rights within their strictly conservative ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community.

Now they are trying to draw worldwide attention.

As Haredi women, we face many battles. It took me awhile to realize that fighting those battles starts up there, said Shushan, sporting a stylish sheitel, Yiddish for the wig that married ultra-Orthodox women wear to cover their hair as a sign of modesty.

By up there she does not mean God, Rieder-Indursky explained, but rather the ultra-Orthodox decision-makers and leaders who do not allow women in the political sphere.

The two women lead a nonprofit organization called Nivcharot, or the elected women. Their goal is to pressure the Haredi leadership to give women a voice.

The fight sometimes gets ugly, they say.

During the last election, they lobbied against ultra-Orthodox parties, decrying their refusal to allow women to have a role. They handed out provocative fliers, asking women to refrain from voting until they were represented, and they clandestinely pasted posters on billboards in the most religious neighborhoods.

In one of the posters, they criticized women for asking for political representation, realizing that by attacking their own message they would raise curiosity and the posters probably would not be torn down.

More recently, they petitioned Israels Supreme Court, arguing a party that discriminates against women should not be afforded legitimacy in the political system.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up about 10 percent of Israeli society. Two political parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, represent the population, with 13 Haredi members in Israels 120-seat parliament and three government ministers. None are women.

The parties are run along strict lines set by their spiritual leaders, and their positions on many issues are dictated by the Torah. The Haredi electorate votes for one of the two parties according to instructions from religious leaders, who have made clear that women should not be involved in politics.

Before the creation of Israel, ultra-Orthodox women stayed home and raised children while the men worked.

In recent years, however, as the community has struggled with poverty and many men spend their days studying the Torah, women have been allowed, even encouraged, by spiritual leaders to work outside the home.

Nurit Stadler, a professor of sociology and anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the participation of women in the labor market laid the foundation for the debate about womens rights in the community.

There is a problem when women take on a role like that. They change the way they dress, they go out of the house and face an atmosphere of pollution. Its a provocation, Stadler said. Women are exposed to new ideas and suddenly start seeing the world in a different light.

That is what happened to Shushan and Rieder-Indursky.

Before becoming political activists, they worked for Haredi newspapers. Shushan was a columnist, and Rieder-Indursky was a political reporter.

Both used male pseudonyms.

My editor was happy I wanted to write. He said my writing was good but asked me not to use my name because You know, the men will not accept the opinions of a woman,  Shushan said.

Working from home, she had no problem keeping her identity secret and was grateful to be earning an income while still being able to air her views.

For Rieder-Indursky, it was trickier. As a political reporter, she had to interview people, among them former Israeli prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.

Whenever I would get to an interview, people were always shocked to discover that I was actually a woman, she said. One surprised foreign diplomat even told me: I expected many things but never did I expect to meet the Haredi Claudia Schiffer. 

For Shushan, the novelty of working without credit or recognition for her ideas wore off quickly. In 2012, she quit the newspaper and turned to the only platform where she felt free to express herself: Facebook.

She set up numerous groups that reached thousands in her community and turned a taboo subject of women in politics into a focal point of the 2015 general election.

Rieder-Indursky reached a similar conclusion soon after: It took me longer to see, but now all I see is Haredi womens voices silenced in our community.

The two Haredi parties did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment.

Although Shushan and Rieder-Indursky have succeeded in bringing the issue to the fore, they face immense social pressure to stop. Because they are often labeled troublemakers or crazies, their families also pay a price, they said.

Shushan, a mother of four, was forced to obtain a court order to keep her daughter in an ultra-Orthodox school that viewed her mothers activities as undesirable.

Rieder-Indursky said her son often returns from his yeshiva begging her to stop.

Israel Cohen, a journalist and commentator for the Haredi website Kikar Shabat, said the women are seen as extreme by the Haredi mainstream.

There are already Haredi women who are close to the decision-makers. They operate quietly and within the Haredi mainstream without being elected, he said. These women are coming and demanding change and in that way, there will be pushback and nothing will change.

But the women are determined. In my opinion, this change will happen, the question is just when? Rieder-Indursky said. How do I know it will happen? Because it has happened all over the world. Its just a matter of time.

Read more:

Ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel are losing the Internet war

Israeli cabinet freezes plan to create egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
A classroom at the University of Mosul after the citys liberation in June. Islamic State occupiers tried to use labs to build weapons. (Mohamed El-Shahed/AFP/Getty Images)

On the day the Islamic State overran the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014, it laid claim to one of the greatest weapons bonanzas ever to fall to a terrorist group: a large metropolis dotted with military bases and garrisons stocked with guns, bombs, rockets and even battle tanks.

But the most fearsome weapon in Mosul on that day was never used by the terrorists. Only now is it becoming clear what happened to it.

Locked away in a storage room on a Mosul college campus were two caches of cobalt-60, a metallic substance with lethally high levels of radiation. When contained within the heavy shielding of a radiotherapy machine, cobalt-60 is used to kill cancer cells. In terrorists hands, it is the core ingredient of a dirty bomb, a weapon that could be used to spread radiation and panic.

Western intelligence agencies were aware of the cobalt and watched anxiously for three years for signs that the militants might try to use it. Those concerns intensified in late 2014 when Islamic State officials boasted of obtaining radioactive material, and again early last year when the terrorists took over laboratories at the same Mosul college campus with the apparent aim of building new kinds of weapons.

In Washington, independent nuclear experts drafted papers and ran calculations about the potency of the cobalt and the extent of the damage it could do. The details were kept under wraps on the chance that Mosuls occupiers might not be fully aware of what they had.

Damage is shown at the University of Mosul amid a military operation by Iraqi security forces against Islamic State fighters in January. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images)

Iraqi military commanders were apprised of the potential threat as they battled Islamic State fighters block by block through the sprawling complex where the cobalt was last seen. Finally, earlier this year, government officials entered the bullet-pocked campus building and peered into the storage room where the cobalt machines were kept.

They were still there, exactly as they were when the Islamic State seized the campus in 2014. The cobalt apparently had never been touched.

They are not that smart, a relieved health ministry official said of the citys former occupiers.

Why the Islamic State failed to take advantage of its windfall is not clear. U.S. officials and nuclear experts speculate that the terrorists may have been stymied by a practical concern: how to dismantle the machines thick cladding without exposing themselves to a burst of deadly radiation.

[ISIS use of weaponized drones spurs terrorism fears]

More certain is the fact that the danger has not entirely passed. With dozens of Islamic State stragglers still loose in the city, U.S. officials requested that details about the cobalts current whereabouts not be revealed.

They also acknowledged that their worries extend far beyond Mosul. Similar equipment exists in hundreds of cities around the world, some of them in conflict zones.

(Sarah Parnass,Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)

Nearly every country in the world either has them, or is a transit country through which high-level radiological equipment passes, said Andrew Bieniawski, a vice president for the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative who once led U.S. government efforts to safeguard such materials.

This, he said, is a global problem.

A lethal dose in three minutes

The worries began within hours of the Islamic States stunning blitz into Iraqs second-largest city.

As TV networks showed footage of triumphant terrorists parading through Mosuls main thoroughfares, intelligence agencies took quiet inventory of the vast array of military and material wealth the Islamist militants had suddenly acquired. The list included three Iraqi military bases, each supplied with U.S.-made weapons and vehicles. It also included bank vaults containing hundreds of millions of dollars in hard currency, as well as factories for making munitions and university laboratories for mixing chemicals used in explosives or as precursors for poison gas.

U.S. officials also were aware that the Islamic State had gained control of small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium  the remnants of Iraqs nuclear projects from the time of Saddam Husseins presidency  as well as some relatively harmless radioactive iridium used in industrial equipment.

But a far bigger radiological concern was the cobalt. Intelligence agencies knew of the existence in Mosul of at least one powerful radiotherapy machine used for cancer treatment, one that could potentially provide the Islamic State with a potent terrorist weapon.

Outside experts were becoming aware of the threat as well.

In 2015, the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit organization in Washington that monitors global nuclear threats, began conducting research to answer the basic questions: How many machines were in Mosul? Where were they deployed? And exactly how powerful were they?

The group obtained documents showing that two different medical centers in Mosul had obtained cobalt-60 machines in the 1980s. Other records showed that at least one of the devices was in active use as recently as 2008 and that in the following year Iraqi officials had sought replacement parts, including new cobalt-60 cores, for both.

From the records, the institutes experts could draw broad conclusions about the cobalt inside the machines. In a draft report written in November 2015, research fellow Sarah Burkhard calculated that the radioactive cores, when new, contained about nine grams of pure cobalt-60 with a potency of more than 10,000 curies  a standard measure of radioactivity. A person standing three feet from the unshielded core would receive a fatal dose of radiation in less than three minutes.

[ISIS accused of using chemical weapons]

The institute quietly shared its findings with U.S. intelligence and military officials in late 2015 but declined to publish its report, fearing that Islamic State occupiers would benefit from the information. The Washington Post became aware of the report last year but agreed to a U.S. government request to delay writing about it until after Mosuls liberation.

Because cobalt-60 decays over time, the potency of the Mosul machines 30-year-old cobalt cores would have been far less than when the equipment was new, but still easily enough to deliver a lethal dose at close range, the report said.

David Albright, the president of the institute, noted that groups such as the Islamic State have long discussed the possibility of using such material in a dirty bomb, a simple device that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive debris across densely populated urban terrain. Such a bomb would probably not cause large numbers of casualties, but it can be enormously effective, he said, as a weapon of terror.

The worst case would have been the Islamic State widely dispersing the radioactive cobalt in a city, causing panic and an expensive, disruptive cleanup, said Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and former U.N. weapons inspector. There would likely not have been that many deaths, but the panic could have been profound, leading to the emptying of parts of the city as residents fled, fearful of the effects of radiation.

Hidden away

There was one question that U.S. officials and private researchers could never conclusively answer during the months of Islamic State occupation: Where was the cobalt exactly?

In strife-torn Mosul, there were no publicly available records about the citys two radiotherapy machines since 2008, when one of them was mentioned in a scholarly article. The last known addresses were a teaching hospital and a cancer-treatment clinic, both on the western side of the city, in neighborhoods that were heavily contested by Islamic State fighters and were among the last to fall to Iraqi liberators.

Finally, recently, Iraqi officials offered an explanation, saying that both machines had been in Mosul throughout the Islamic States occupation, but not in the places where the terrorists might have thought to look for them. They had been placed out of commission for several years because of a lack of parts and had been put in storage in a building owned by the University of Mosul, somewhere in the citys eastern side.

They were still there when health officials from Nineveh province went to look for them after that sector of the city was secure, said Laith Hababa, a physician and head of the provincial health ministry.

The machines are now in secure storage and werent used by Daesh, Hababa said, using a common Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

[A battered ISIS becomes ever more reliant on lone wolves]

U.S. officials and nuclear experts expressed relief over what, by all accounts, had been a near-miss. Some speculated that the terrorists never learned of the whereabouts of the machines, although that explanation seemed unlikely, given the terrorists efficiency in looting university buildings across the city.

Albright said the task of removing the cobalt cores may have been viewed as too difficult or too risky. Or maybe the groups commanders were just too busy, especially during the later months of the occupation, as government troops closed in.

Its leaders were preoccupied elsewhere, he said, and [perhaps] did not learn about the sources in Mosul, or have a chance to think through the opportunities.

Leaders of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda are known to have sought materials for a dirty bomb, a threat that has added urgency to efforts by U.S. agencies and private groups to improve security for machines with heavy concentrations of cobalt-60, or other radioactive elements such as cesium-137, which comes in a powdery form that is even easier to disperse.

The machines are a necessary fixture in many cancer clinics around the world, but in Western countries efforts are underway to replace the most dangerous models with new technology that cannot be easily exploited by terrorists, said Bieniawski, the former Energy Department official. His organization, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, has raised money to try to speed up the transition, but for now, he said, older machines such as the ones in Mosul are commonly found in developing countries where the risk of theft or terrorism is greatest.

The ones we see overseas are in the highest category  the highest levels of curies  and they are also portable, he said. They are exactly the ones we are most worried about.

Morris reported from Beirut. Mustafa Salim in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.

Read more:

He says he went to Syria to save his wife from ISIS. Now he sits in prison.

Battle of Mosul: How Iraqi forces defeated the Islamic State

U.S. lacks system for spotting, defusing homegrown terror threats
Williamson, WV (25661)

Today

Steady light rain this morning. Showers continuing this afternoon. Morning high of 55F with temps falling to near 45. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 34F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Welcome to The Independent Herald E-Edition! Check back each week on Tuesday to see our[Read More]
The following companies are subsidiares of Vodafone Group Public: 360 Connect S.A., 3@ Telecom, A-ccelerator B.V., A-ccelerator Holding B.V, AAA (Euro) Limited, AAA (MCR) Limited, AAA (UK) Limited, Acorn Communications Limited, Africonnect (Zambia) Limited, Ag Mercantile Company Private Limited, Al-Amin Investments Limited, Amsterdamse Beheer- en Consultingmaatschappij B.V., Apollo Submarine Cable System Limited, Array Holdings Limited, Asian Telecommunication Investments (Mauritius) Limited, Aspective Limited, Astec Communications Limited, Autoconnex Limited, Aztec Limited, BelCompany BV, Bluefish Apac Communications Pte. Ltd, Bluefish Communications, Bluefish Communications Limited, Business Serve Limited, C&W Worldwide Nigeria Limited, C.S.P. Solutions Limited, CCII (Mauritius) Inc., CGP India Investments Ltd., CGP Investments (Holdings) Limited, COOP Mobil s.r.o, CT Networks Limited, CWGNL S.A., CWW Operations Limited, Cable & Wireless Access Limited, Cable & Wireless Americas Systems Inc., Cable & Wireless Aspac Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless CIS Services Limited, Cable & Wireless CIS Svyaz LLC, Cable & Wireless Capital Limited , Cable & Wireless Communications Data Network Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Communications Starclass Limited, Cable & Wireless Communications Technical Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd (Beijing Branch), Cable & Wireless Europe Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless GN Limited, Cable & Wireless Global (India) Private Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Business Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Holding Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Telecommunication Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Holdco Limited, Cable & Wireless Networks India Private Limited, Cable & Wireless Trade Mark Management Limited, Cable & Wireless UK Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless UK Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Waterside Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Pension Trustee Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Voice Messaging Limited, Cable & Wireless a-Services Inc, Cable & Wireless a-Services Limited, Cable and Wireless (India) Limited, Cable and Wireless (India) Limited Indian Branch Office, Cable and Wireless Nominee Limited, Cable and Wireless Worldwide South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cavalry Holdings Ltd, Celfocus  Solucoes Informaticas Para Telecomunicacoes S.A, Cellops Limited, Cellular Operations Limited, Central Communications Group Limited, Central Telecom (Northern) Limited, Centurion GSM Limited, Chelys Limited, City Cable (Holdings) Limited, Cobra do Brasil Servicos de Telematica ltda., Commnet Cellular Inc., Complete Network Technology, Connect (India) Mobile Technologies Private Limited, Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Limited, Dataroam Limited , Device Insight, Digital Island (UK) Ltd, Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited, East Africa Investment (Mauritius) Limited, Emtel Europe Limited, Energis (Ireland) Limited, Energis Communications Limited, Energis Holdings Limited, Energis Local Access Limited, Energis Management Limited, Energis Squared Limited, Erudite Systems Limited, Esprit Telecom B.V., Eudokia Limited, Euro Pacific Securities Ltd., Eurocall Holdings Limited, Europolitan Holdings AB (now Europolitan Vodafone AB), FB Holdings Limited, FM Associates (UK) Limited, FinCo Partner 1 B.V., FireFly Networks Limited, Flexphone Limited, GS Telecom (Pty) Limited, Gateway Communications Africa (UK) Limited, Gateway Communications Tanzania Limited, General Mobile Corporation, Generation Telecom Limited, Ghana Telecommunications, Ghana Telecommunications Company Limited, Global Cellular Rental Limited, Globe Limited, GrandCentrix GmbH, Grupo Corporativo ONO S.A.U., H3ga Properties (No 3) Pty Limited, HBO Nederland Cooperatief U.A., HBO Netherlands Channels sro, HBO Netherlands Distribution B.V., Hellas Online, How2 Telecom Limited, Hutchison Essar Ltd, Indus Towers Limited, Intercell Communications Limited, Internet Network Services Limited, Invitation Digital Limited, Ipergy Communications NV, Isis Telecommunications Management Limited, Jaguar Communications Limited, Jaykay Finholding (India) Private Limited, Jupicol (Proprietary) Limited, KABELCOM Braunschweig Gesellschaft Fur BreitbandkabelKommunikation Mit Beschrankter Haftung, KABELCOM Wolfsburg Gesellschaft Fur BreitbandkabelKommunikation Mit Beschrankter Haftung, Kabel Deutschland, Kabel Deutschland Holding, Kabel Deutschland Holding Erste Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Holding Zweite Beteilgungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Neunte Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Siebte Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabelfernsehen Munchen Servicenter GmbH & Co. KG, LG Financing Partnership, LGE HoldCo V B.V., LGE HoldCo VI B.V., LGE HoldCo VIII B.V., LGE Holdco VII B.V., LLC Vodafone Enterprise Ukraine, Le Bunt Holdings Limited, Legend Communications Limited, Liberty Global, Liberty Global Content Netherlands B.V., London Hydraulic Power Company, M-PESA Foundation, M-PESA Holding Co. Limited, ML Integration Group Limited, ML Integration Limited, ML Integration Services Limited, MV Healthcare Services Private Limited, Mannesmann AG, MetroHoldings Limited, Mezzanine Ware Proprietary Limited (RF), Mirambo Limited, Misrfone Trading Company LLC, MobiFon S.A., Mobile Commerce Solutions Limited, Mobile Phone Centre Limited, Mobile Wallet VM1, Mobile Wallet VM2, Mobile by Sainsburys Limited, Mobiles 4 Business.com Limited, Mobileworld Communications Pty Limited, Mobileworld Operating Pty Ltd, Mobilvest, Motifpros 1 (Proprietary) Limited, Multi Risk Indemnity Company Limited, Multi Risk Limited, ND Callus Info Services Private Limited, Nadal Trading Company Private Limited, Nat Comm Air Limited, National Communications Backbone Company Limited, Navtrak Ltd, Netforce Group Limited, Netgrid Telecom SRL, Number Portability Company (Proprietary) Limited, ONO, Omega Telecom Holdings Private Limited, Oni Way  Infocomunicacoes S.A, Oskar Mobil S.R.O., Oxygen Solutions Limited, P.C.P. (North West) Limited, PPL Pty Limited, PT Network Services Limited, PTI Telecom Limited, Peoples Phone Limited, Pinnacle Cellular Group Limited, Pinnacle Cellular Limited, Plex Limited, Plustech Mercantile Company Private Limited, Prime Metals Ltd., Project Telecom Holdings Limited, Quickcomm Software Solutions, Radio Opt GmbH, Rian Mobile Limited, SBC SMART CITY 1517 B.V., SMMS Investments Pvt Limited, Safaricom Limited, Safenet N.P A., Sarmady Communications, Scarlet Ibis Investments 23 (Pty) Limited, Scorpios Beverages Pvt. Ltd, Silver Stream Investments Limited, Singlepoint (4U) Limited, Singlepoint (4U) Ltd., Singlepoint Payment Services Limited, Siro Limited, Spar Aerospace (Nigeria) Limited, Sport TV Portugal S.A, Starnet, Stentor Communications Limited, Stentor Limited, Storage Technology Services (Pty) Limited, T.W. Telecom Limited, T3 Telecommunications Limited, TKS Telepost Kabel-Service Kaiserslautern Beteiligungs GmbH, TKS Telepost Kabel-Service Kaiserslautern GmbH & Co. KG, TNAS Limited, TSM NZ Limited, Talkland Airtime Services Limited, Talkland Australia Pty Limited, Talkland Communications Limited, Talkland International Limited, Talkland Midlands Limited, Talkmobile Limited, Tele2 Italia SPA, Tele2 Spain, Telecom Investments India Private Limited, Telecommunications Europe Limited, Ternhill Communications Limited, The Cobra Group, The Eastern Leasing Company Limited, The Old Telecom Sales Co. Limited, Thus Group Holdings Limited, Thus Group Limited, Thus Limited, Thus Profit Sharing Trustees Limited, TnT Expense Management LLC, Tomorrow Street GP S.a r.l., Tomorrow Street SCA, Torenspits II B.V., Townley Communications Limited, Trans Crystal Ltd., UMT Investments Limited, UPC Nederland Holding I B.V., UPC Nederland Holding II B.V., UPC Nederland Holding III B.V., Unified Communications, Uniqueair Limited, Urbana Teleunion Rostock GmbH & Co.KG, Usha Martin Telematics Limited, VAPL No. 2 Pty Limited, VBA (Mauritius) Limited, VBA Holdings Limited, VBA International (SL) Limited, VBA International Limited, VEI S.r.l., VM SA, VND S.p.A, VSSB Vodafone Shared Services Budapest Private Limited Company, Verwaltung Urbana Teleunion Rostock GmbH, Victus Networks S.A., Vizzavi Finance Limited, Vizzavi Limited, Voda Limited, Vodacall Limited, Vodacash s.p.r.l., Vodacom (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Business (Angola) Limitada, Vodacom Business (Ghana) Limited, Vodacom Business (Kenya) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa (Nigeria) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa Group (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa Group Services Limited, Vodacom Business Cameroon SA, Vodacom Business Cote Divoire S.A.R.L., Vodacom Congo (RDC) SA, Vodacom Financial Services (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Group Limited, Vodacom Insurance Administration Company (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Insurance Company (RF) Limited, Vodacom International Holdings (Pty) Limited, Vodacom International Limited, Vodacom Lesotho (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Life Assurance Company (RF) Limited, Vodacom Payment Services (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Properties No 1 (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Properties No.2 (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Tanzania Limited Zanzibar, Vodacom Tanzania Public Limited Company, Vodacom UK Limited, Vodafone (NI) Limited, Vodafone (New Zealand) Hedging Limited, Vodafone (Scotland) Limited, Vodafone 2, Vodafone 4 UK, Vodafone 5 Limited, Vodafone 5 UK, Vodafone 6 UK, Vodafone Albania Sh.A, Vodafone Alternatif Telekom Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Americas 4, Vodafone Americas Virginia Inc., Vodafone And Qatar Foundation L.L.C, Vodafone Asset Management Services S.a r.l., Vodafone Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Automotive Deutschland GmbH, Vodafone Automotive Electronic Systems S.r.L, Vodafone Automotive France S.A.S, Vodafone Automotive Iberia S.L, Vodafone Automotive Italia S.p.A, Vodafone Automotive Japan K.K, Vodafone Automotive Korea Limited, Vodafone Automotive SpA, Vodafone Automotive Technologies (Beijing) Co Ltd, Vodafone Automotive Telematics Development S.A.S, Vodafone Automotive Telematics S.A, Vodafone Automotive UK Limited, Vodafone Belgium SA/NV, Vodafone Benelux Limited, Vodafone Bilgi Ve Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, Vodafone Business Services Limited, Vodafone Business Solutions Limited, Vodafone Canada Inc, Vodafone Cellular Limited, Vodafone Central Services Limited, Vodafone China Limited (China), Vodafone China Limited (Hong Kong), Vodafone Connect 2 Limited, Vodafone Connect Limited, Vodafone Consolidated Holdings Limited, Vodafone Corporate Limited, Vodafone Corporate Secretaries Limited, Vodafone Czech Republic A.S., Vodafone DC Pension Trustee Company Limited, Vodafone Dagitim Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Data, Vodafone Distribution Holdings Limited, Vodafone Egypt Telecommunications S.A.E., Vodafone Elektronik Para Ve Odeme Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Empresa Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda, Vodafone Empresa Mexico S.de R.L. de C.V., Vodafone Enabler Espana S.L., Vodafone Enterprise Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Austria GmbH, Vodafone Enterprise Bahrain W.L.L., Vodafone Enterprise Bulgaria EOOD, Vodafone Enterprise Chile SA, Vodafone Enterprise Communications Technical Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Corporate Secretaries Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Denmark A/S, Vodafone Enterprise Equipment Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited  Czech Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited  DubaiI Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Finland OY, Vodafone Enterprise France SAS, Vodafone Enterprise Germany GmbH, Vodafone Enterprise Global Businesses S.a r.l., Vodafone Enterprise Global Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Global Network HK Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Global Network Pte. Ltd., Vodafone Enterprise Hong Kong Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Italy S.r.L, Vodafone Enterprise Korea Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Luxembourg S.A., Vodafone Enterprise Netherlands BV, Vodafone Enterprise Norway AS, Vodafone Enterprise Regional Business Singapore Pte.Ltd., Vodafone Enterprise Singapore Pte.Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Spain S.L.U.  Portugal Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Spain SLU, Vodafone Enterprise Sweden AB, Vodafone Enterprise Switzerland AG, Vodafone Erste Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Vodafone Espana S.A.U., Vodafone Euro Hedging Limited, Vodafone Euro Hedging Two, Vodafone Europe B.V., Vodafone Europe UK, Vodafone European Investments, Vodafone European Portal Limited, Vodafone Finance Limited, Vodafone Finance Luxembourg Limited, Vodafone Finance Sweden, Vodafone Finance UK Limited, Vodafone Financial Operations, Vodafone Financial Services B.V., Vodafone Fixed Ltd, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone Foundation Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Gestioni S.p.A, Vodafone Ghana Mobile Financial Services Limited, Vodafone Global Content Services Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise (Hong Kong) Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise (Italy) S.R.L., Vodafone Global Enterprise (Japan) K.K., Vodafone Global Enterprise (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Vodafone Global Enterprise Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise Russia LLC, Vodafone Global Enterprise Taiwan Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise Telecommunications (Hellas) A.E., Vodafone Global Network Limited, Vodafone Global Network Limited  Slovakia Branch, Vodafone Global Services Private Limited, Vodafone GmbH, Vodafone Group (Directors) Trustee Limited, Vodafone Group Pension Trustee Limited, Vodafone Group Services GmbH, Vodafone Group Services Ireland Limited, Vodafone Group Services Limited, Vodafone Group Services No.2 Limited, Vodafone Group Share Trustee Limited, Vodafone Hire Limited, Vodafone Holding A.S., Vodafone Holdings (Jersey) Limited, Vodafone Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Vodafone Holdings Europe S.L.U., Vodafone Holdings Luxembourg Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Finance Pty Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Receivables Pty Limited, Vodafone IP Licensing Limited, Vodafone India Digital Limited, Vodafone India Limited, Vodafone India Services Private Limited, Vodafone India Ventures Limited, Vodafone Institut fur Gesellschaft und Kommunikation GmbH, Vodafone Intermediate Enterprises Limited, Vodafone International 1 S.a.r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone International 1 S.a r.l., Vodafone International 2 Limited, Vodafone International Holdings B.V., Vodafone International Holdings Limited, Vodafone International M S.a r.l., Vodafone International Operations Limited, Vodafone International Services LLC, Vodafone Investment UK, Vodafone Investments (SA) Proprietary Limited, Vodafone Investments Australia Limited, Vodafone Investments Limited, Vodafone Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Vodafone Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone Ireland Distribution Limited, Vodafone Ireland Ltd., Vodafone Ireland Marketing Limited, Vodafone Ireland Property Holdings Limited, Vodafone Ireland Retail Limited, Vodafone Italia S.p.A., Vodafone Jersey Dollar Holdings Limited, Vodafone Jersey Finance, Vodafone Jersey Yen Holdings Unlimited, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland Field Services GmbH, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland GmbH, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland Kundenbetreuung GmbH, Vodafone Kenya Limited, Vodafone Leasing Limited, Vodafone Libertel B.V., Vodafone Limited, Vodafone Luxembourg 5 S.a r.l., Vodafone Luxembourg 5 S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone Luxembourg S.a r.l., Vodafone Luxembourg S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone M-PESA SH.P.K., Vodafone M-Pesa S.A, Vodafone M.C. Mobile Services Limited , Vodafone Magyarorszag Mobile Tavkozlesi Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag, Vodafone Malta Limited, Vodafone Marketing UK , Vodafone Maroc SARL, Vodafone Mauritius Ltd., Vodafone Mobile Commerce Limited, Vodafone Mobile Communications Limited, Vodafone Mobile Enterprises Limited, Vodafone Mobile NZ Limited, Vodafone Mobile Network Limited, Vodafone Mobile Operations Limited, Vodafone Mobile Services Limited, Vodafone Multimedia Limited, Vodafone Nederland Holding I B.V., Vodafone Nederland Holding II B.V., Vodafone Nederland Holding III B.V., Vodafone Net Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Network Pty Limited, Vodafone New Zealand Foundation Limited, Vodafone New Zealand Limited, Vodafone Next Generation Services Limited, Vodafone Nominees Limited1, Vodafone ONO S.A.U., Vodafone Oceania Limited, Vodafone Old Show Ground Site Management Limited, Vodafone Overseas Finance Limited, Vodafone Overseas Holdings Limited, Vodafone Panafon International Holdings B.V., Vodafone Panafon UK, Vodafone Partner Services Limited, Vodafone Payment Solutions S.a r.l., Vodafone Portugal  Comunicacoes Pessoais S.A., Vodafone Procurement Company S.a r.l., Vodafone Property Investments Limited, Vodafone Pty Limited, Vodafone Qatar Q.S.C., Vodafone Retail (Holdings) Limited , Vodafone Retail Limited, Vodafone Roaming Services S.a r.l., Vodafone Romania S.A, Vodafone Romania M - Payments SRL, Vodafone Romania Technologies SRL, Vodafone Sales & Services Limited, Vodafone Satellite Services Limited, Vodafone Servicios SL.U, Vodafone Servizi E Tecnologie S.R.L, Vodafone Servicos Empresariais Brasil Ltda., Vodafone Shared Services Romania SRL, Vodafone Specialist Communications Limited, Vodafone Stiftung Deutschland Gemeinnutzige GmbH, Vodafone Technology Solutions Limited, Vodafone Teknoloji Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Tele-Services (India) Holdings Limited, Vodafone Telecel-Comunicates Pessoais S.A., Vodafone Telecommunications (India) Limited, Vodafone Telekomunikasyon A.S, Vodafone Towers Limited, Vodafone UK Content Services Limited, Vodafone UK Investments Limited , Vodafone UK Limited1 , Vodafone US Inc, Vodafone Ventures Limited1 , Vodafone Vierte Verwaltungs AG, Vodafone Worldwide Holdings Limited, Vodafone Yen Finance Limited , Vodafone m-pesa Limited, Vodafone-Central Limited Vodaphone Limited, Vodafone-Panafon Hellenic Telecommunications Company S.A., VodafoneZiggo Group Holding B.V, Vodata Limited , Vouchercloud SA (Pty) Ltd, Wataneya Telecommunications S.A.E, Waterberg Lodge (Proprietary) Limited, Wayfinder, Wheatfields Investments 276 (Proprietary) Limited, Wireless Interactions & NFC Accelerator 2013 B.V., Woodend Cellular Limited, Woodend Communications Limited, Woodend Group Limited, Woodend Holdings Limited, XB Facilities B.V, XLink Communications (Proprietary) Limited, Your Communications Group Limited, ZUM B.V., ZYB, Zelitron S.A., Zesko B.V., Ziggo B.V., Ziggo Bond Company B.V., Ziggo Deelnemingen B.V., Ziggo Finance 2 B.V., Ziggo Financing Partnership, Ziggo Holding B.V., Ziggo Netwerk B.V., Ziggo Netwerk II B.V., Ziggo Services B.V., Ziggo Services Employment B.V., Ziggo Services Netwerk 2 B.V., Ziggo Zakelijk Services B.V., and Zoranet Connectivity Services B.V..

Read More
A 10-year-old Florida boy was arrested Wednesday for allegedly stealing a car for the fourth time in the past six weeks, police said.

He was arrested just a day after he was charged for allegedly stealing another car, police said.

Police said the boy cut off his ankle monitor six hours after it was placed on him and then allegedly met up with other teens, aged 15 and 16, to steal a vehicle.

Police reportedly said it was rather unusual for older teens to want to hang out with a young kid.

He even looks like a 10-year-old, Capt. Jennifer Krosschell told the Daytona Beach News-Journal. When we (seized) the car he had stolen, the drivers seat was pushed up to the steering wheel.

Read: Man Pulled Over in Stolen Car While En Route to Court to Face Auto Theft Charge: Cops

The boy was was first arrested in June after police said he allegedly stole a car for the first time.

Since then, police said they connected the boy to two other car thefts.

Watch: Moment News Helicopter Spotted Missing Girl From the Air

Related Articles:
Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot enter Hall H at Comic-Con (Photo: Marcus Errico/Yahoo Movies)

To the surprise of no one, Wonder Woman is getting sequelized. While no details were announced, Warner Bros. confirmed to rapturous applause at San Diego Comic-Con that Wonder Woman 2 is in the pipeline as part of the studios expansive DC-based moves.

Every mention of the film, star Gal Gadot, or images of the Amazonian princess in action during Warners Saturday presentation in Hall H was an applause line. And when the simple Wonder Woman II graphic appeared at the end of a sizzle reel, the crowd went wild.

Gadot entered the Hall arm in arm with her Justice League co-star Ben Affleck, joining cast mates Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, and Ray Fisher onstage to show off a new trailer for the Nov. 17 release.

News of the sequel wasnt a big surprise. Just two days ago, DCs Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns confirmed to Yahoo Movies he was re-teaming with director Patty Jenkins on the follow-up to Wonder Woman, which has banked more than $770 million worldwide.

Im working right now on the Wonder Woman 2 script, Johns told Yahoo Movies. I just started.

For her part, Jenkins tweeted back on June 30 that she was not officially signed for the sequel but excited and hopeful about her return.

The #justiceleague hits the stage and the crowd goes wild!!! . . . #dcsdcc #sdcc #sdcc2017 A post shared by Yahoo Movies (@yahoomovies) on Jul 22, 2017 at 2:16pm PDT

Despite being in theaters for over a month, Wonder Woman has been among the buzziest films at Comic-Con, with dozens of cosplayers flocking to DCs booth to pose with Gadots costume. Catwoman herself, Halle Berry, told Yahoo Movies that Im Gal Gadots biggest fan right now.

Keep coming back to Yahoo Movies for the latest from San Diego Comic-Con 2017.

Watch: Catwoman Halle Berry Crushes On Wonder Woman:



Read more from Yahoo Movies:
A Brooklyn man is hospitalized, and in trouble, after overdosing in his car while with his 7-year-old daughter. She drove the car after he became unconscious. (Photo: Getty Images)

NYPD officials revealed this week that a Brooklyn mans life was potentially saved by his 7-year-old daughter. After Eric Roman, 37, reportedly overdosed on opioids, his daughter took control of their vehicle by sitting on his lap.

The girl was actually seen driving the family car by emergency medical technicians on Ocean Avenue near the Belt Parkway  both very busy thoroughfares in the New York City borough. Im a mom, so I was freaking out, medic Arlene Garcia told the New York Daily News. I started yelling at her to pull over and stop the car. But apparently the young driver could not, or did not know how to, stop the vehicle. It took the EMTs pulling their ambulance in the pathway of the slow-moving car to bring it to a full stop.

When the EMTs asked the little girl what had happened, she told them, My dad was sleeping so I was going to finish driving him home, seemingly not realizing that she may have saved his life.

Roman will potentially be facing charges of reckless endangerment and driving while impaired by drugs, among others, according to the Daily News. His daughter, quick-thinking and life-saving as she may be, was initially worried shed be grounded for driving the car.

She wasnt scared at all, Garcia told reporters. She was so great. All she was worried about was getting grounded for driving without permission.

Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.




UPDATE: 11:35 p.m. EDT, Sunday  One of the 30 people earlier found alive in a tractor-trailer parked behind a Walmart store, San Antonio, Texas died while he was being transported to hospital, reports said. The death toll in the immigrant-smuggling attempt has increased to nine after eight likely undocumented migrants were found dead inside the truck.

UPDATE: 6:33 a.m. EDT  The San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) said that they will "look for additional people" the first thing in the morning following the discovery of a semi-trailer at a Walmart car park in San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday morning where eight people were found dead and around 30 others in critical state.

Original Story:

Eight people were dead and around 30 others are in critical state after being found locked in a semi-trailer at a Walmart car park in San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday morning, the police said. They are still investigating the case.

The truck was apparently involved in smuggling-related operations with undocumented immigrants, authorities pointed it out.

They also said at least 29 fire units and two AirLife choppers responded to the scene to take care of the victims, according to KENS5.



Kurt Chirbas from NBC News tweeted 17 were in critical condition and 13 others were in non-life threatening situation.

Social media users have been regularly updating about the incident. Joseph Lopez from KENS5, a CBS-affiliated TV station located in San Antonio, tweeted that the incident is likely to be a "human trafficking crime" as told by the chief of San Antonio Police Department (SAPD). It still remains unclear where the truck came from.

Read: More Than Half Of Hate Crimes Are Never Reported, According To DOJ

Among the eight dead were two young children. The injured people have been transported to hospitals with possibly life-threatening injuries, according to KENS5.

The Walmart where the incident took place, is located at I-35 and Highway 16. Firefighters were called to the scene around 12:30 a.m. local time (1:30 a.m. EDT) and found the dead people inside the wheeler.

Story continues

At a press conference, Police Chief William McManus said the driver of the truck, who hasn't been identified yet, is in custody. He added the driver is likely to face both state and federal charges, WCVB5 reported.

"We're looking at a human-trafficking crime here...Homicide will work to determine the origin of this horrific tragedy," he said.

The incident came to light when the police got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot. The employee was approached by someone from that truck, who was asking for water. Came back with a water, called the police and we arrived on scene and found eight people dead in the back of that trailer, the police chief said, adding that it was a horrific tragedy.

Officials said this was not a standalone incident as it happens frequently but they were fortunate to find out about this tragedy.

The Department of Homeland Security is assisting in the investigation.

Read: Forced Labor Comes In Unexpected Forms In Human Trafficking, Study Says

The Statewide Human Trafficking Mapping Project of Texas, launched in 2014 with support from the Criminal Justice Division of the Office of the Texas Governor, found in study published in 2016 that there are more than 300,000 victims of human trafficking in Texas, which includes 79,000 minors and youth victims of sex trafficking. There are about 234,000 adult victims of labor trafficking.

Commercial sex, forced labor, domestic servitude are the purposes for which human trafficking takes place. A human trafficking victim is controlled through violence, deception or coercion in these circumstances.

Related Articles
(SAN ANTONIO)  A U.S. official says the death toll from people found in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in the parking lot of a San Antonio Walmart has risen to 9.

Thomas Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Associated Press that two people died in a hospital. Eight dead bodies were found in the truck.

Based on initial interviews with survivors, Homan says there may have been more than 100 people in the truck. Thirty-eight were found inside. The rest are believed to have fled or been picked up.

Homan says some survivors have identified themselves as Mexican nationals. Four of the passengers are believed to be between 10 and 17 years old, and at least one of them is in serious condition.

Temperatures in San Antonio reached 101 degrees (38 Celsius) on Saturday and didnt dip below 90 degrees (32 C) until after 10 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. The trucks trailer also didnt have a working air conditioner system, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said in a news briefing.

They were very hot to the touch. So these people were in this trailer without any signs of any type of water, he said. It was a mass casualty situation for us.

A person from the truck initially approached a Walmart employee in the parking lot and asked for water late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, police Chief William McManus said. The employee gave the person the water and then called police, who found the dead and desperate inside the truck.

McManus said the driver was arrested, but he didnt release the drivers name. He also said some of those in the truck ran into nearby woods, leading to a search. A helicopter could be seen hovering over the area after daybreak.

Investigators checked store surveillance video, which showed vehicles arriving and picking up people from the truck, authorities said. They didnt say whether the trailer was locked when they arrived, whether they think the truck was used to smuggle the occupants into the country or whether it planned to make other stops.

Story continues

Were looking at a human trafficking crime this evening, McManus said, adding many of those inside the truck appeared to be adults in their 20s and 30s but that there were also what appears to be two school-age children, as well. He called the case a horrific tragedy.

The police department later said the Department of Homeland Securitys investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, was taking the lead in the case and would be issuing all further updates.

Investigators could be seen gathering evidence from the truck on Saturday, hours after those who were inside  living and dead  were taken away. The trailer had an Iowa license plate but no other markings. The truck was parked on the side of the Walmart and the investigation didnt appear to be interfering with commerce, as customers could be seen coming and going from the store.

The have been deadlier immigrant smuggling cases in the U.S., including one in May 2003 in which 19 immigrants who were being transported from South Texas to Houston inside a sweltering tractor-trailer died.

Prosecutors said the driver in the 2003 case heard the immigrants begging and screaming for their lives as they were succumbing to the stifling heat inside his truck but he refused to free them. The driver was resentenced in 2011 to nearly 34 years in prison after a federal appeals court overturned the multiple life sentences he had received.

The Border Patrol has reported at least four truck seizures this month in and around Laredo, a U.S. border city about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio. On July 7, agents found 72 people crammed into a single truck with no means of escape, the agency said. They were from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Authorities in Mexico have also made a number of discoveries of large numbers of people being trafficked in such vehicles in dangerous conditions over the years.

Last December, Mexican immigration officials found 110 migrants trapped and suffocating inside a truck after it crashed while speeding in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, which is a main migration corridor for Central Americans heading to the U.S. Most of the migrants were from Central America, and 48 of them were minors. Some were injured in the crash, but there were no fatalities.

Last October, also in Veracruz state, four migrants suffocated in a truck that was carrying 55 people, most of whom were from Guatemala. Many of the survivors were found to be severely dehydrated and had not had food or water for several days.

The migrants were locked in the back of a truck that was made to look as if it belonged to the Mexican mail service, according to immigration officials, who added that the migrants had paid about $930 apiece to be smuggled from Guatemala to the U.S. border.

Sometimes traffickers use vehicles that are smaller but still dangerously crowded.

In August 2016 a speeding van carrying 26 migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala turned over in the northern Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon, killing five of the occupants.
Anthony Scaramucci, incoming White House communications director - Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

A day after accepting a top White House job, President Donald Trump's new communications adviser announced Saturday that he's deleting old tweets, saying his own views have evolved and that what he said in the past shouldn't be a distraction.

Trump announced Friday that he'd hired Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci to help the White House sharpen its public message.

Social media users quickly did a deep dive and recirculated past tweets by Scaramucci that were at odds with Trump's views, including one that praised Hillary Clinton's competence. Trump defeated Clinton for president last year and continues to criticize her, including in several tweets Saturday.

Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction. I serve @POTUS agenda & that's all that matters  Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 22, 2017

Other repurposed Scaramucci tweets expressed support for stronger gun laws, which he tweeted about in August 2012. In May 2016, he expressed displeasure with individuals who believe climate change is a hoax. Trump has at times referred to global warming as a hoax.

"Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction. I serve @POTUS agenda & that's all that matters," Scaramucci said Saturday in the first of a pair of messages on the subject.

"The politics of "gotcha" are over. I have a thick skin and we're moving on to @POTUS agenda serving the American people," he added.

The politics of "gotcha" are over. I have a thick skin and we're moving on to @POTUS agenda serving the American people  Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 22, 2017

Twitter users also scrolled back deep into Scaramucci's timeline to raise questions about a 2012 tweet in which he seemed to misattribute a quote to author Mark Twain.

Story continues

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like its heaven on earth. Mark Twain," Scaramucci tweeted.

Scaramucci served Trump as a campaign fundraiser and adviser during the transition.

He made his first appearance before reporters in the White House briefing room on Friday and quickly apologized to Trump for referring to him as a "hack politician" during an August 2015 appearance on Fox Business Network.

Asked whether Trump was aware of the comment, Scaramucci joked that the president mentions it every 15 seconds.

He called it one of his "biggest mistakes" before looking into the cameras and saying: "Mr. President, if you're listening, I personally apologize for the 50th time for saying that."
New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci referred to former press secretary Sean Spicer as Melissa McCarthy to people within the White House, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The Journal's report cited several Trump administration officials in its claim. McCarthy gained wide critical acclaim for her portrayal of Spicer on NBC's "Saturday Night Live," during which she frequently spoofed his most noteworthy moments behind the podium during press briefings. See more photos of Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer: Spicer resigned from his position on Friday, and media reports indicated that he did so in protest of President Donald Trump's decision to hire Scaramucci as communications director. But Scaramucci said on Friday that he would "love to have Sean [Spicer] here. Sean decided that he thought it would be better to go." He added: "I'm used to dealing with friction," and said that he did not have any personal negativity towards Spicer or chief of staff Reince Priebus, who was also reportedly opposed to Scaramucci's hiring.
North Korea shocked the world in the early morning hours of July 4 by launching a ballistic missile that could reach the US mainland  but North Korea has long had the ability to make and detonate nuclear devices. But North Korea does not sell, export, or use such nuclear devices on anyone because if they did, the consequences would be phenomenal. "North Korea sells all kinds of weapons" to African countries, Cuba, and its Asian neighbors, according to Omar Lamrani, a senior military analyst at Stratfor, a geopolitical consulting firm. "The most dangerous aspects of that trade has been with Syria and Iran in terms of missiles and nuclear reactors they helped the Syrians build before the Israelis knocked that out with an airstrike," said Lamrani. "The most frightening is the potential sale of nuclear warheads." With some of the harshest sanctions on earth imposed on North Korea, it's easy to imagine the nation attempting to raise money through illegal arms sales to the US's enemies, which could even include non-state actors like al Qaeda or ISIS. Reuters While procuring the materials and manufacturing a nuclear weapon would represent an incredible technical and logistical hardships for a non-state actor, a single compact warhead could be in the range of capabilities for a non-state actor like Hezbollah, said Lamrani. Furthermore, the US's enemies would see a huge strategic benefit from having or demonstrating a nuclear capability, but with that benefit would come a burden. If US intelligence caught wind of any plot to arm a terror group, it would make every possible effort to rip that weapon from the group's hands before they could use it. News of a nuclear-armed terror group would fast-track a global response and steamroll whatever actor took on such a bold stance. And not only would the terror group catch hell, North Korea would too. "North Korea understands if they do give nuclear weapons, it could backfire on them," said Lamrani. "If a warhead explodes, through nuclear forensics and isotope analysts, you can definitely trace it back to North Korea." At that point, North Korea would go from being an adversarial state that developed nuclear weapons as a means of regime security to a state that has enabled and abetted nuclear terrorism or proliferation. This would change the calculus of how the world deals with North Korea, and make a direct attack much more likely. Right now, North Korea has achieved regime security with long-range nuclear arms. If they sold those arms to someone else, they would effectively risk it all.
Norfolk (United States) (AFP) - President Donald Trump on Saturday presided over the commissioning of the US Navy's newest next-generation aircraft carrier -- a trip that offered a brief escape from the swirling political drama in Washington.

Trump appeared to revel in the pomp and pageantry of the ceremony aboard the ship at the sprawling Norfolk naval base in Virginia, which included a 21-gun salute, and the hoisting of the Stars and Stripes on the ship's mast.

"American steel and American hands have constructed a 100,000-ton message to the world: American might is second to none, and we're getting bigger and better and stronger every day of my administration," Trump said.

"Wherever this vessel cuts through the horizon, our allies will rest easy and our enemies will shake with fear, because everyone will know that America is coming and America is coming strong."

The $12.9 billion USS Gerald R. Ford -- named after America's 38th president -- is a hulking nuclear-powered giant that is the first of a new generation of super-ships.

It will become the country's 11th aircraft carrier, a number mandated by the US Congress.

The colossal ship was plagued by cost overruns, and in the past, Trump criticized the budget allocated for the super-ship.

The short 45-minute flight to Norfolk allowed Trump what was sure to be a welcome respite from the political upheaval of recent days -- from a shock shake-up of his communications team to the ongoing Russia scandal.

Before heading south from the US capital, Trump fired a salvo of nearly a dozen tweets, touching on the issues and people that gave him headaches this week -- the special prosecutor looking into his team's ties with Moscow, his attorney general, failed efforts to pass health care reform and the media.

And he had another go at his onetime election rival Hillary Clinton, asking why investigators were looking into his son Don Jr's meeting with a Russian attorney, and not reopening a probe into the Democrat's email woes.

Story continues

- Next-generation supercarrier -

None of that however factored into Trump's visit to Norfolk to celebrate America's military might.

"This ship is the deterrent that keeps us from having to fight in the first place, but this ship also assures that if a fight does come, it will always end the same way -- we will win, win, win," Trump said.

The US commander-in-chief allowed himself a few comments of a political nature, calling on Congress to back his request for a defense budget hike.

"We do not want cost overruns. We want the best equipment, but we want it built ahead of schedule and we want it built under budget," Trump said.

Ford's daughter Susan Ford Bales formally welcomed the ship to the US Navy's fleet with the words: "Man our ship and bring her to life!"

The USS Gerald Ford will lend its name to a new class of ship, designed to replace Nimitz-class carriers as they reach the end of their 50-year service life. Another Ford-class ship, the John F. Kennedy, is under construction.

Naval officials want the fleet to have 12 supercarriers by 2031, and Trump has said he wants to expand the entire naval fleet.

No other nation's aircraft carrier capabilities come close -- Russia has only one.

Sometimes called "flat tops," America's supercarriers are the ultimate symbol of its military power across the world, and are used to support US operations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Ford -- sometimes called a "floating city" -- is 1,092 feet (333 meters) long, has a crew of about 4,460 sailors and is powered by two nuclear reactors that crank four shafts.

"The Ford class represents a true 'leap-ahead' ship that will be the centerpiece of US naval power for the majority of the 21st century," the Navy said.

Because the Gerald Ford is the first in her class, she is still undergoing testing. The Navy expects the ship to be fully operational in 2020, with the first deployment anticipated for 2022.

President Ford was the successor to Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 in the fallout of the Watergate scandal.
Past views evolved & shouldnt be a distraction, Scaramucci explains

Opinion: Just another day in Trumps tragicomic America



Donald Trumps critic turned communications guru admitted on Saturday that he is purging his Twitter account of political views likely to embarrass his boss.

Full transparency: Im deleting old tweets, Anthony Scaramucci posted. Past views evolved & shouldnt be a distraction. I serve @POTUS agenda & thats all that matters.

He added: The politics of gotcha are over. I have a thick skin and were moving on to @POTUS agenda serving the American people.

Scaramuccis appointment was announced on Friday, setting off a domino effect at the White House as press secretary Sean Spicer resigned and Sarah Huckabee Sanders replaced him. Nicknamed the Mooch, the 53-year-old is a Wall Street financier with a pugnacious style and experience as a Fox News pundit but little communications pedigree.

The communications directors debut press briefing earned generally positive reviews for style. Asked a potentially awkward question about a 2015 TV interview in which he called Trump another hack politician, Scaramucci elicited laughter by replying: He brings it up every 15 seconds, OK? So, Mr President, if youre listening, I personally apologise for the 50th time for saying that.

On Saturday morning, Trump entered into the fun, tweeting: In all fairness to Anthony Scaramucci, he wanted to endorse me 1st, before the Republican Primaries started, but didnt think I was running!

Still, the new director of communications, like his boss a garrulous New Yorker, has cause to regret some past statements on Twitter, where he follows 168,000 accounts, an unusually high number. Trump, by contrast, follows just 45, while Sanders follows 2,424. Scaramucci joined the site in March 2009 and has racked up 16,000 tweets. Some do not sit well with the Trump agenda.

He began hitting the delete button on Friday, binning a tweet that praised 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for staying out of the Trump spectacle and another that said former House speaker Newt Gingrich showed no judgment by backing the Trump campaign.

Story continues

Also gone was a 2012 tweet in which Scaramucci praised Hillary Clinton, who remains a Trump obsession, as incredibly competent.

He also posted: I like Hillary. Have to go with the best athlete. We need to turn this around. In October 2015, he predicted that the former Florida governor Jeb Bush will make a great president.

There were more. Trump has described climate change as a hoax and has presided over a succession of directives and Environmental Protection Agency changes that have alarmed green groups. Last year, Scaramucci wrote: You can take steps to combat climate change without crippling the economy. The fact many people still believe CC is a hoax is disheartening.

The millionaire from working class roots on Long Island has also tweeted about immigration and Islam, two Trump national security obsessions.

Walls dont work, he wrote. Never have never will. Scaramucci also opined that the overwhelming majority see Islam as a religion of peace, want to live in multiracial/ethnic/faith democracies.

And in 2012, he tweeted: We (the USA) has 5% of the worlds population but 50% of the worlds guns. Enough is enough. It is just common sense it apply more controls.

On Friday Dana Loesch, national spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, which staunchly supports Trump, tweeted that the president had made a concerning choice in Scaramucci, given his contrary position on gun ownership.

This tweet was removed and the NRA distanced itself from the comment.

Scaramucci is not the first public figure to find his Twitter history under scrutiny. When the South African comedian Trevor Noah was hired as Jon Stewarts successor on The Daily Show, he was criticised for having made tasteless jokes about Jews and women.

One user who seems entirely unrepentant is Trump himself, despite Clinton having once memorably tweeted at him: Delete your account.
US President Donald Trump shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin - Steffen Kugler/EPA

US Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on legislation that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday, in a bill that would limit any potential effort by President Donald Trump to try to lift sanctions against Moscow.

The Countering Iran's Destabilising Activities Act, which was passed by the Senate a month ago, was held up in the House of Representatives after Republicans proposed including North Korea sanctions in the bill.

The House is set to vote on Tuesday on a package of bills on sanctions covering Russia, Iran and North Korea, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's office.

Under the proposed bill, Trump must submit to Congress a report on proposed actions that would "significantly alter" US foreign policy in connection with Russia, including easing sanctions or returning diplomatic properties in Maryland and New York that former President Barack Obama ordered vacated in December.

Donald Trump and Russian espionage

Congress could then vote to uphold or reject Trump's proposed changes.

Many members of Congress hope the bill will send a message to Trump to keep a strong line against Russia.

Mr Trump, who met Mr Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month and said it was an "honour" to meet him, has been criticised for seeking to reset US Russian relations. His administration has been bogged down by ongoing investigations of possible ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia.

With the bill, Republicans and Democrats are seeking to punish Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea, a peninsula belonging to Ukraine, and for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Mr Putin has denied any meddling in the US democratic process last year. Trump has said that his campaign did not collude with Russia.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Russia's "outrageous and unacceptable" behaviour in the 2016 US election and in Europe "demand that we have strong statutory sanctions enacted as soon as possible."

Story continues

Even so, she expressed concerns that by including North Korea the legislation could face procedural delays in the Senate.

Senior Republican members of Congress did not immediately comment on the latest bill.

Nancy Pelosi Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

In Brussels, the European Union sounded an alarm about the US. moves to step up sanctions on Russia, urging Washington to coordinate with its Group of seven partners.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said a strong sanctions bill "is essential."

"I expect the House and Senate will act on this legislation promptly, on a broad bipartisan basis and send the bill to the President's desk," Mr Schumer said in a statement.

Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the agreement was reached after "intense negotiations."

"A nearly united Congress is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message," he said in a statement.
As a woman of color and champion for smart on crime reforms, the California senator and her centrist platform could be the partys solution to its identity crisis

California senator Kamala Harris is still relatively unknown on the national political stage compared with other possible 2020 Democratic contenders, such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

In early July, Kamala Harris, Californias new senator, visited Chowchilla state prison, often called the largest womens prison in the world.

Harris, the second black woman in history to be elected to the US Senate, toured the facility and sat down with incarcerated women to hear their stories. She later called the women extraordinary, and praised their optimism in finding a new life after prison. But the moment that she dwelled on most was a visit to the silkscreening room, where inmates were cutting rectangles of fabric and pushing paint through the material. The imprisoned women were manufacturing American flags.

Later, in front out of an audience of criminal justice reform advocates in Washington DC, Harris would share that story. She gestured out the window to the American flags flying above the nations capital, some of which, she suggested, may have been made in Chowchilla.

Isnt it part of who we are in America that we believe in second chances? she asked.

Six months into the presidency of Donald Trump, Republicans are flailing amid efforts to erase health insurance for tens of millions of Americans. Democrats are already looking eagerly forward to the 2020 presidential race  and a new candidate to lead them.

However, the Democratic party, too, is riven with disagreement. Does its salvation lie in maintaining a centrist position, or taking strong shift left, toward Bernie Sanderss unapologetic embrace of universal healthcare, a higher minimum wage, and tuition-free college? The party faces frustration from voters who feel it is too beholden to corporate interests.

Harris is seeing increasing presidential buzz, making headlines for her tough questioning of the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, during a Senate hearing, and then reportedly wowing big Democratic donors at an event in the Hamptons this month.

Story continues

In an America of emboldened racism, where the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan recently held a rally in a college town and was confronted with more than a thousand furious counter-protesters, the Democratic party is also still negotiating its own racial politics. The party is caught between those who are moving to woo back white working-class voters who defected to Trump, and those who argue that it would be a smarter investment to focus on mobilizing African American voters, whose reported turnout dropped in 2016.



Theres a long list of potential 2020 contenders, many of them, including Harris, making the obligatory claims that they are focused on their current jobs and not thinking ahead to the White House. Sanders, 75, still has enthusiastic backers, and has been touring the country, as has Senator Elizabeth Warren, the progressive firebrand from Massachusetts. Warren has long been enough of a challenge to Trump that he gave her a demeaning nickname during his campaign: Pocahontas, a reference to her reported Native American descent.

The former vice-president Joe Biden, who chose not to run for president in 2016, has a new book out, Promise Me Dad, about the year after his son Beaus death. He has been blunt in his frustration at what he sees as the Democrats failure to channel the economic anxieties of the middle-class: You didnt hear a single solitary sentence in the last campaign about that guy working on the assembly line making $60,000 a year and a wife making $32,000 as a hostess in restaurant.

Harris is a comparative unknown on the national stage  one recent poll found that 53% of voters had never heard of her. But she offers an interesting solution to the problem facing the Democratic party.

Harris is a leader whose success inspires young women of color, who see themselves in her. At the same time, her rhetoric and positions are often scrupulously centrist. She likes to talk about how her civil rights activist family was appalled when she decided to become a prosecutor. Rather than try to challenge Americas continuing love of law and order politics, which fueled mass incarceration and helped Trump win the White House, Harris is trying to reshape that instinct, pivoting from tough on crime to smart on crime, the title of her 2009 book.

At Women Unshackled, a criminal justice reform conference in Washington DC this week, Harris was treated like a star. The conference, which planned for 300 attendees, attracted double that number and she was mobbed in the hallway by enthusiastic young women. Vogue magazines website ran a photo of the senator surrounded by jubilant young faces, with women crowding around her, arms outstretched to get a photograph on their phones.



Outside in the hallway after her criminal justice speech, Harris told a reporter for Yahoo news that Democrats needed to have a message much bigger than resisting Donald Trump.

The issues are not simple, so the message is not going to be simple, she said, rejecting any monosyllabic slogan, but essentially its about telling the American public we see them.

Criminal justice reform, one of Harris key issues, is also one of the Democratic partys failures. Clinton was attacked for her role in boosting the Democratic partys harsh, pro-incarceration policies, part of a push toward mass incarceration that devastated black families and that many Americans now see as a shameful mistake.

Young activists confronted Clinton over comments made in 1996 interpreted as an attack on young African Americans. She described the kinds of kids that are called super-predators, no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.

Harris is pursuing criminal justice legislation focused on practical problems: encouraging states to reform their money bail systems, which trap low-income defendants in jail before their trials simply because of their inability to pay, and treating incarcerated women with more dignity, including providing them with free tampons and calls home to their children.

She and Senator Cory Booker, another potential 2020 contender, gave very different explanations of their approach to the same policies when they spoke at the conference.

Booker, another younger black Democrat and former high-profile New Jersey mayor, gave a high-toned speech studded with literary references to Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou.

How could this nation that professes freedom and liberty be the incarceration capital of the globe? Booker asked, roaming around the small stage with his microphone.

Bookers current response to the Trump slogan Make America Great Again was a loving lament: Im one of those people who tells you right now, If your country hasnt broken your heart, you dont love her enough. We should all be broken by this system, hurting from it, we should not be comfortable.

Harriss speech was more relaxed and anecdotal, drawing on her time as a prosecutor and California attorney general. She also struck repeated notes that might appeal to a more conservative audience, noting: I agree we must be talking about wasteful spending in our country ... We must be talking about tax reform.

Harris repeatedly emphasizing her willingness to lock up violent offenders and mixed moral and financial appeals for criminal justice reform. She highlighted her much-criticized approach to reduce truancy among children in San Francisco by being the bad guy and deciding to start prosecuting parents for truancy.

Im going to tell you, half the city threw tomatoes at me, she said.

Harris made no fierce indictments of Americas racism, no attempts to grapple with the reasons Americas criminal justice system is so broken. Instead, she has directed tough jabs at Jeff Sessions, the attorney general with a southern drawl and a history of fierce opposition to criminal justice reform.

At one point, Harris referred to the attorney general as this guy and his policies as crazy, saying: The war on drugs was an abject failure ... with this guy talking about reviving the war on drugs, its crazy.

Jamira Burley, a criminal justice reform advocate who worked on Clintons campaign efforts to turn out millennial voters, said that the young activists she trains enthusiastically share clips of Harris on social media. They appreciate her asking tough questions in public, and her simple presence in national office allows women of color to dream bigger.

I would like her to talk more about the movement for black lives, Burley said.

For some criminal justice reform advocates, Harris may not go far enough.

Andrea James, the founder of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, praised Harris focus on very important issues, but said that no national candidate had yet embraced the idea of ending the incarceration of women in a fundamentally violent, damaging system.

Harris description of her visit to the womens prison in Chowchilla made no mention of one issue affecting the women there now: a massive uptick in suicides, James said.

We have to end incarceration of women and girls, she said. We have to move beyond making prisons better for women.
President Donald Trump spent his Saturday morning posting a series of tweets ranging from healthcare to the New York Times possibly foiling an attempt to kill a member of ISIS.

The President said the newspaper has a sick agenda and referenced ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been suspected to be dead for months.

The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist, Al-Baghdadi.Their sick agenda over National Security, Trump tweeted.

On Friday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also casted doubt on al-Baghdadis death, saying that he believes the terror leader is still alive, The Hill reported.

The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist,Al-Baghdadi.Their sick agenda over National Security  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

I think Baghdadis alive, Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon, according to The Hill. Until I see his body, I am going to assume he is alive.

It is unclear what story or report Trump was referring to. TIME has reached out to the Times for a comment, but did not receive an immediate response.

Politico reporter Hadas Gold tweeted that the Times has asked the White House to clarify the tweet.
Donald Trumps personal lawyer has taken to the airwaves to defend the Presidents claim that he has the power to pardon himself from a crime.

Clearly the constitution does vest a plenary pardon power within the presidency, attorney Jay Sekulow told ABCs George Stephanopoulos, adding that it was not something the White House is considering currently.

Whether it applies to the president himself I think ultimately would be a matter for the court to decide, if it were ever to come into existence, he continued. But from a constitutional legal perspective you cant dismiss it one way or the other.

The presidents unilateral power to forgive criminals has long been acknowledged under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. The power of the president to pardon himself, however, has not been as extensively tested.

Mr Trump set off the debate over this possible power on Saturday with a controversial tweet.

While all agree the US president has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us, Mr Trump wrote, in what many considered an indication that he may attempt to pardon himself or those close to him.

While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

On Sunday Mr Sekulow denied that the White House had any interest in the subject, saying the presidents power to pardon himself is not an issue were concerned with or dealing with.

Incoming communications director Anthony Scaramucci, however, told CNNs Jake Tapper he had discussed the issue with Mr Sekulow. In a subsequent appearance on Fox News Sunday, Mr Scaramucci said he had also discussed the matter with the President himself.

Im in the Oval Office with the President last week and we were talking about that, Mr Scaramucci said. He says he brought that up, but he doesnt have to be pardoned, theres nobody around him that has to be pardoned.

Story continues

Several members of Mr Trumps inner circle have faced legal scrutiny in recent months over allegations of improper contact with Russian officials. His son Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Vice President Mike Pence have all recently secured lawyers, though none have been formally charged with a crime.

Mr Trump himself has secured legal representation in the investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia. Along with Mr Sekulow, the President has brought on attorneys Ty Cobb and Marc Kasowitz to represent him in the Justice Department probe.

The Washington Post reports that this legal team is now looking into ways to undercut the Justice Departments special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, in his investigation. Close advisers said the President and his team have discussed the extent of his power to pardon aides, family members, and even himself.

The legal team is also reportedly compiling a list of Mr Muellers alleged conflicts of interest, in an effort one Republican described as laying the groundwork to fire the prosecutor.
Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian forces have killed 30 extremists during several days of security operations in the Sinai Peninsula involving the army, air force and police, the military said Saturday.

The Egyptian authorities are battling an insurgency by the Islamic State (IS) group in North Sinai that has killed hundreds of members of the security forces.

The military did not specify to which group the 30 extremists belonged but described them as "extremely dangerous".

Five others were arrested as Egyptian forces imposed a "tight siege" on the North Sinai provincial capital El-Arish and the cities of Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah, a military statement said.

Egypt has struggled to quash attacks led by IS, whose local branch is based in North Sinai, after the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The bombing by IS of a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a South Sinai resort in 2015 killed all 224 people on board and severely damaged the country's tourism sector.
Eight bodies found in overheated truck in a Walmart in Texas James Mathew Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Fla., left, arrives at the federal courthouse for a hearing, Monday, July 24, 2017, in San Antonio. Bradley was taken into custody and is expected to be charged in connection to the people who died after being crammed into a sweltering tractor-trailer found parked outside a Walmart in the midsummer Texas heat Sunday, according to authorities in what they described as an immigrant-smuggling attempt gone wrong. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

A man believed to be the driver of a truck carrying up to 100 suspected illegal immigrants in Texas is expected to be charged in relation to the deaths of ten of the occupants.

Sixty-year-old Florida native James Matthew Bradley Jr was identified by the US Attorneys office as the driver, and was arrested in connection with the incident which occurred in San Antonio. Federal prosecutors say he will be charged on Monday, however according to Reuters, the local US Attorneys Office would not confirm whether Mr Bradley was the truck driver who was arrested.

Thirty people were found, with at least 20 in critical condition in a trailer parked at a Walmart store in San Antonio, where temperatures outside the vehicle reached 100 degrees and temperatures inside were thought to have been as high as 140 degrees.

It is believed that as many as 100 people were pressed together in the trailer, and four of the survivors were thought to be between the ages of 10 and 17, according to The Washington Post. Some of the people allegedly smuggled into the country had fled to the wooded area surrounding Walmart, police say.

Many were suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion, and their skin was very hot to the touch, rescuers said. Their hearts were racing, and some will have suffered irreversible brain damage. The trailer lacked any air conditioning and did not have a water supply. (Reuters)

See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Twitter and Tumblr.
At least eight dead bodies have discovered in the back of a truck outside a Walmart store in Texas, in a tragedy police are treating as a human trafficking crime.

The driver of the lorry found in the car park at the store in San Antonio was arrested and taken into police custody, although his identity has not yet been released.

The gruesome discovery came to light on Saturday when a man from the tractor-trailer approached a Walmart employee asking for water". The store attendant came back with water and then alerted police, who found the bodies in the back of the vehicle.

Around 38 people were inside the truck, fire chief Charles Hood said at a news conference. They included two school-age children and also several others in their 20s and 30s.

The truck was loaded with people, Chief Hood added.

The San Antonio Fire Department released a statement saying: A search of the surrounding area was also conducted to attempt to locate any patients that may have attempted to flee the scene.

"An additional search will be conducted later this morning once the sun has risen.

Around 20 people were taken to hospital suffering from dehydration and were in a critical condition. Eight others were treated for non-life threatening conditions.

The truck did not have a working air conditioning system. The temperature in San Antonio reached 38C just before 5pm on Saturday and did not dip below 32C until after 10pm, according to The National Weather Service's local office.

Investigators checked store surveillance video, which showed that several vehicles had approached and picked up other people from the tractor trailer.

Those who died were thought to be victims of a suspected human-trafficking ring involving undocumented immigrants. Police Chief William called the deaths a horrific tragedy.

The US Department of Homeland Security is assisting in the investigation, with US Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents also called to the scene.

The people in the trailer would be interviewed by ICE personnel to ascertain their immigration status, Mr McManus told kens5 TV.
Kuwait City (AFP) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Sunday began a key trip to the Gulf aimed at defusing the standoff over Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no one had an interest in prolonging the crisis.

Erdogan, whose country has come to Qatar's aid in the dispute, had talks in Jeddah with King Salman who hailed the Turkish leader's "efforts in the fight against terrorism and its financing," Saudi state news agency SPA reported.

He also met Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman before leaving for Kuwait for the second leg of his tour.

Erdogan was received by Kuwait's emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, who has been mediating to resolve the crisis.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran.

Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The Turkish president will visit Qatar on Monday for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began.

"No one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," Erdogan said before leaving Istanbul.

He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region.

Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying Doha had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said.

The crisis has put Turkey in a delicate position, and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see an end to the dispute as soon as possible.

In recent years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating over issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

- Turkish base on Qatar -

Turkey is also setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has expedited the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops there.

Story continues

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan.

But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia.

"As the elder statesman in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia has a big role to play in solving the crisis," said Erdogan, taking care not to explicitly criticise the kingdom.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwait's emir, a possible indication Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to solving the crisis.

The Qatari emir said Friday he was ready for talks to resolve the row as long as the emirate's sovereignty is respected.

His call received a cold reception from the UAE's state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, who said he hoped the emir had pledged to reconsider Qatar's position.

"Dialogue is necessary, but it should be based on a revision" of Qatar's stance, he tweeted.

Erdogan is likely to get a warm welcome in Doha where Turkey has been loudly applauded for sending in food, including fruit, dairy and poultry products by ship and by plane to help Doha beat an embargo.

Turkey has also benefited, with its exports to Qatar doubling in the past month to more than $50 million. According to the economy ministry, Ankara has sent around 200 cargo planes filled with aid since the crisis began.

Erdogan's tour coincides with a visit to Kuwait by the EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, who held talks Sunday with Kuwaiti officials.

A statement said Mogherini paid tribute to Kuwait's "relentless mediation efforts" in the dispute and called for a resolution "through dialogue and without delay".

Rights group AFD International called on Sunday for an end to the "blockade" of Qatar, warning that the regional boycott has led to "forced separation" of families.
By Jonathan Landay ASPEN, Colo. (Reuters) - Former CIA director John Brennan on Friday criticized as "disgraceful" President Donald Trump's efforts to play down U.S. intelligence agencies' assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump's administration has been dogged by investigations into allegations of Russian interference in last year's U.S. presidential election and possible ties with his campaign team. Speaking one day before his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hamburg earlier this month, Trump said he suspected Russian interference in the election but that no one knows for sure. "These types of comments are just disgraceful ... and the person who said them should be ashamed of himself," said Brennan, CIA chief under former President Barack Obama, at the Aspen Security Forum. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and several U.S. congressional committees are investigating whether Russia interfered in the election and colluded with Trump's campaign to try to swing the race in his favor over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those probes are focused almost exclusively on Moscows actions, lawmakers and intelligence officials have said, and no evidence has surfaced publicly implicating other countries. Moscow has denied any interference, and Trump has said that his campaign did not collude with Russia. Brennan said he was disappointed by the president's handling of security issues in his first six months in office. I must say there are disappointments that I see in terms of what Mr. Trump is doing on the international stage that I think pose serious questions about how he is keeping safe our national security, Brennan said. Speaking at the same event in Aspen, James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under Obama, was also critical of Trump's administration. Asked if Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and top adviser, should have his security clearance canceled for initially failing to list on a disclosure form contacts he had with Russians, Clapper said it should be suspended pending a review. I do think the appropriate thing here is take a pause and at least suspend a clearance until you've had the opportunity to investigate and then decide whether the clearance should be restored or not," Clapper told the same panel. Brennan and Clapper also criticized Trump's remarks in a tweet earlier this year about U.S. spy agencies in which he accused them of practices reminiscent of Nazi Germany. That (tweet) was a terrible insulting affront not to me or John. We get paid the big bucks to take that. But Im talking about the rank and file, the people in the trenches, men and women, the patriots in the intelligence community and that was completely inappropriate, said Clapper. (Reporting by Jonathan Landay)
A dozen far-right millennials set out on a 10-day trip with a mission to "defend Europe" from what they're referring to as a migrant invasion from Africa, according to Reuters. The group rented a ship to set sail for the Libyan coast, which is in Africa, to keep surveillance on humanitarian rescuers' illegal collaboration efforts.

The group defending Europe supports the Identitarian Movement, which is an international movement that aims to preserve European's national identity and reinstate traditional western values. The Alt-Right Movement is steadily rising in Europe, with countries like Germany and France at the forefront of this change.

Read: Trump vs. Le Pen: Far-Right, Populist Politicians Differ On Israel, Government's Role, Religion, Voter Support

The Identitarian followers have accused the humanitarian rescuers of colluding with smugglers to place migrants on dangerous boats, meaning they believe they're conspiring to aid the migrants for a harmful end goal.

"We'll take all necessary precautions to deal with the dangerous situation, but of course, we will stick to international laws  we don't have weapons on board," said Martin Sellner, a spokesperson for the Identitarian Movement in Austria, to Reuters. "We will, in a way, help the efforts of the coast guard to keep the shore secure, but we don't want to bring those people to Europe because there's a difference between saving people, saving lives and smuggling them into Europe."

Migrants have emerged primarily in Europe and are now approaching 100,00013 percent higher than last year's numbers. There are also 200,000 asylum workers are living in shelters funded by the state.

Story continues

The Identitarian group isn't a typical extremist alt-right group, using non-racist language to get their message across on the ongoing migrant crisis, which is being referred to on their Twitter page as a defense of "human trafficking in Mediterranean Sea."

They've been identified as a young, intelligent and social-media savvy group, which some might say sets them apart from other alt-right groups. They've earned the title of "hipsters of the far-right," according to German news publication DW. Identitarians possess a simple and clean logo, a black and yellow lambda.

Read: A Female Trump In France? Far-Right Candidate Marine Le Pen Advances In French Presidential Polls

On the group's website, they've posted a video about their latest mission, which is being referred to as "different Europe." The video states that "neither the hate campaign of the media nor... our people have come to stop us." Identitarians on the Libyan coast will intervene when necessary, "[rescuing] the people in distress and [to] make sure" they're escorted back to the coast, properly securing the European borders thereafter.

The Identitarian Search-And-Rescue (SAR) Mission isn't being funded by the government. Therefore, they sought out financial support through like-minded people, raising $128,395 to date to create a safer Europe. Contributors have donated anywhere between $500 and $2,500, with one anonymous donator saying, "this project is so inspiring and important."

"We will reach out to the Libyan Coast Guard and offer them our help as a recon ship," the group's website reads. "Our goal is to step in where our politicians are failing and to do what is necessary to stop the deadly illegal migration into Europe."

Their argument continued about the rising number of migrants. "Every week, every day, every hour  ships packed with illegal immigrants are flooding into European waters. This massive illegal migration is changing the face of our continent."

Identitarian

Photo: Getty Images

Follow me on Twitter @dory_jackson

Related Articles
Jerusalem (AFP) - Two Palestinians died in clashes with Israeli forces Saturday as the army moved in to seal off an attacker's home after violence over security measures at an ultra-sensitive holy site.

The UN Security Council will hold closed-door talks Monday about the spiralling violence after Egypt, France and Sweden sought a meeting to "urgently discuss how calls for de-escalation in Jerusalem can be supported".

The deaths followed bloodshed on Friday, when a 19-year-old Palestinian killed three Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and three Palestinians died in clashes with Israeli forces.

On Saturday, Palestinian youths hurled stones and petrol bombs as the army used a bulldozer to close off the 19-year-old attacker's West Bank village and prepare his house for probable demolition.

Israel frequently punishes the families of attackers by razing or sealing their homes as a deterrent, although rights groups say this amounts to collective punishment.

Clashes also flared in east Jerusalem and other Palestinian villages in the West Bank near Jerusalem, police said, adding that anti-riot measures were used against them.

At the Qalandiya crossing between the West Bank and Jerusalem, at least eight Palestinians were wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said.

A Palestinian died of wounds suffered in clashes east of Jerusalem, the ministry said.

It said 17-year-old Oday Nawajaa was hit by Israeli live fire at Al-Azariya.

Another Palestinian, 18, died nearby when a petrol bomb exploded prematurely.

Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency meanwhile said Sunday it had arrested 25 men active in the militant Hamas group that rules the Gaza Strip.

The arrests included "senior members," a Shin Bet statement read, and was part of the security forces' preventive measures in the wake of "the tensions around the Temple Mount".

Also Sunday, a rocket fired at Israel from Gaza exploded mid-air, the Israeli army said, causing no injuries.

Story continues

No Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the projectile.

The violence was triggered by security measures including metal detectors at the entrance to the Haram al-Sharif compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, ahead of the main weekly Friday prayers.

Israel imposed the measures after a gun and knife attack killed two Israeli policemen on July 14.

The Palestinians reject the measures, viewing them as Israel asserting further control over the holy site.

The site in Jerusalem's Old City that includes the revered Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock has been a focal point for Palestinians.

In 2000, then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the compound helped ignite the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which lasted more than four years.

Israeli authorities say the July 14 attackers smuggled guns into the site and emerged from it to shoot the policemen.

- Abbas freezes contacts -

On Friday, clashes erupted around the Old City.

Three Palestinians aged between 17 and 20 were shot dead. The Red Crescent reported 450 people wounded in Jerusalem and the West Bank, including 170 from live or rubber bullets.

Later Friday, the 19-year-old Palestinian broke into a home in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and stabbed four Israelis, killing three.

He was shot by a neighbour and taken to hospital.

The Israeli army said he had spoken in a Facebook post of the Jerusalem holy site and of dying as a martyr.

The Israelis killed in Neve Tsuf, north of Ramallah and also known as Halamish, were Yosef Salomon, 70, his daughter Haya Salomon, 46, and son Elad Salomon, 36, officials said. The grandmother was wounded.

Israeli soldiers raided the Palestinian's nearby village of Kobar overnight and arrested his brother, the army said.

Amid mounting pressure to respond to the dispute, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas announced late Friday he was freezing contacts with Israel.

There was no immediate public reaction from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced what he called the "excessive use of force" by the Israelis in Friday's clashes.

The United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- the so-called Middle East Quartet -- urged all sides to "demonstrate maximum restraint."

The quartet members "strongly condemn acts of terror, express their regret for all loss of innocent life caused by the violence."

- 'For all Muslims' -

"Violence is likely to worsen absent a major policy shift," said Ofer Zalzberg, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

"Netanyahu's mistake was installing the metal detectors without a Muslim interlocutor. It is the coercive character more than the security measure itself that made this unacceptable for Palestinians."

On Saturday, entrances to Jerusalem's walled Old City were open amid heavy security.

The metal detectors also remained at the entrance to the mosque compound.

"Al-Aqsa -- that's for the Muslims, not for the Jewish," said Mohammad Haroub, a 42-year-old shopkeeper.

Like hundreds of others, he prayed outside on Friday instead of passing through the metal detectors.

The Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is in east Jerusalem, seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

It is considered the third holiest site in Islam and the most sacred for Jews.
President Donald Trump is reportedly contemplating pardoning family members, staffers and even himself for connections to the Russia investigation. The story, which was reported by the Washington Post, led to criticism.

But if Trump follows through with a pardon relating to the investigation, it would not be the first time in history a president has created controversy using the constitutional power.

Heres a run-through of notable, controversial pardons:

1. President Richard Nixon

Which president pardoned him? Gerald Ford

What was he pardoned for? His crimes relating to the Watergate scandal. President Ford issued a preemptive pardon for Nixon because he had not yet been charged with a crime.

Why was it controversial? Ford pardoned Nixon because he wanted the nation to move past Watergate and felt that a president under trial would be cruelly and excessively penalized. But many Americans were upset that Nixon was not tried. Some also speculate that Nixon was pardoned as part of a quid pro quo deal with Ford, though there was never any evidence for this. Ford lost the next election.

2. Marc Rich

Which president pardoned him? Bill Clinton

What was he pardoned for? His 65 criminal charges including tax evasion, racketeering, and illegal oil deals with Iran. Rich fled the United States to escape serving consecutive life prison sentences in 1983. Rich was also placed on the F.B.I.s most wanted list for his crimes.

Why was it controversial? Richs ex-wife, Denise Rich, was a major donor for the Democratic Party. Critics argued that Clintons decision to pardon Rich was influenced by the donations Denise made. In 2005, the F.B.I. concluded that the donations were not a quid pro quo. A week before the 2016 election, the controversy made headlines when a long-dormant F.B.I. Twitter account released the files detailing the investigation. Some argued that the timing of the release was inappropriate given how close it was to the election.

Story continues

3. Former Chief of Staff to the Vice President Scooter Libby

(He was technically not pardoned, but instead had his 30-month prison term commuted. A commutation is different from a pardon in that it wipes the persons sentence, not their record.)

Which president commuted him? George W. Bush

What was he guilty of? He was found guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice and providing false statements to the F.B.I. in the probe of the leaked identity of a CIA operative.

Why was it controversial? Democrats argued Bush abused his power and the judicial system to protect a fellow administration member. Libby was the highest-ranking official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra affair. The move also came at a time when Bushs popularity was extremely low, possibly exacerbating the public outrage to the pardon.

4. Former Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger

Which president pardoned him? George H.W. Bush

What was he pardoned for? Lying under oath to the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair.

Why was it controversial? Bush pardoned six government officials involved in the scandal, including Weinberger. Weinberger was the highest profile of the six that Bush pardoned. The investigation essentially ended the probe being conducted by the independent counsel.

5. Vietnam draft dodgers

Which president pardoned them? Jimmy Carter

What were they pardoned for? Dodging the draft during the Vietnam War.

Why was it controversial? The pardon was a campaign issue in the presidential race between Carter and then-President Ford. Carter promised to deliver an outright pardon to all draft dodgers that had avoided service by leaving the country or not registering. Ford, on the other hand, said he would only give a conditional amnesty. Carter issued the pardon on his first day in office. Many Americans were critical of Carters decision, especially veterans.
Smoke and flames from the Detwiler Fire in Mariposa County were visible from space on July 18.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite  R Series (GOES-R), a collaborative satellite development made by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, collected images of the giant plume of smoke covering the eastern part of California, as well as hot spots from the flames.

The Detwiler Fire, which started on July 16, reached 74,000 acres by July 21 and destroyed 58 homes in the Mariposa County area, according to Cal Fire. Credit: Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series via Storyful
Tehran (AFP) - Iran's government rejected US demands to release detained Americans on Saturday, saying it had no control over the judiciary.

"The judiciary, courts and judges in Iran are completely independent, as in any other country," said foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi in a statement.

"Any interventionist and threatening statement by American officials and institutions has no effect on the will and determination of the country's judicial system to try and punish criminals and violators of the country's laws and national security," Ghasemi added.

He was responding to a White House statement on Friday, which said: "President (Donald) Trump is prepared to impose new and serious consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens are released and returned."

It followed the 10-year sentence for espionage given to a Chinese-American researcher from Princeton, Xiyue Wang, earlier in the week.

The statement mentioned Wang, along with jailed US-Iranians Siamak and Baquer Namazi, and ex-FBI agent and CIA contractor Robert Levinson who went missing in March 2007.

"As announced to American officials several times, the person called Robert Levinson travelled to Iran many years ago and Iran holds no new information on his fate after he left Iranian territory," Ghasemi said.

He also criticised the jailing of several Iranians by the United States in recent years on "baseless and unfounded grounds".

Washington and Tehran severed diplomatic relations in 1980 when US embassy staff were taken hostage for 444 days.

Trump has taken an aggressive approach to Iran, but has so far stopped short of tearing up the nuclear deal that eased sanctions on the country, as he had threatened on the campaign trail.
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran decided on Friday for the second time since January not to upset its nuclear pact with six world powers, two informed sources said, despite public statements by Tehran accusing the United States of violating the deal. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday new U.S. economic sanctions imposed against Iran contravened the nuclear accord reached with world powers in 2015 and he pledged Tehran would "resist" them while respecting the deal itself. The Trump administration slapped new sanctions on Iran on Tuesday over its ballistic missile program and said Tehran's "malign activities" in the Middle East undercut any "positive contributions" coming from the nuclear accord, which was reached during the Obama administration. Iran can use the so-called Joint Commission meetings held every three months in Vienna to trigger a formal dispute resolution mechanism set out for cases where one party feels there is a breach of the deal. Iran's nuclear envoy Abbas Araqchi declined to answer whether he had used the meeting to trigger the mechanism. But he said: "We were not satisfied with America's...broken promises and...announced that we're not convinced that America has properly carried out its duties." He added: "Iran maintains its right to show any reaction toward these bad promises." A source with knowledge of the matter said "the Iranians did complain a lot and the Russians supported them, but they won't play along to Washington's game and be turned into killjoys." This source, and another one with knowledge of Friday's meeting, said Iran did not use the plenary session comprised of envoys from Iran, the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the EU to start a dispute resolution. This mirrored Tehran's actions in January at a previous so-called Joint Commission meeting, which is held in Vienna every three months, when Iranian officials opted not to escalate a stand-off over the extension of other U.S. sanctions. The U.S. measures signal that the administration of President Donald Trump is seeking to increase pressure on Iran while keeping in place the deal designed to curb its nuclear activities in return for a lifting of international sanctions. The Trump administration is reviewing policy on Iran, not only looking at Tehran's compliance with the nuclear deal, which it has certified, but also its behavior in the region that Washington says undermines U.S. interests in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. (Reporting by Shadia Nasralla and Babak Dehghanpisheh; editing by Mark Heinrich)
Rome (AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has warned Rome will not accept either "lessons" or "threats" from neighbours on border security amid tension over Europe's migrant crisis.

"We shall not accept lessons and still less threats such as those we have heard from our neighbours in recent days," said Gentiloni.

"We are doing our duty and expect the whole of Europe to do the same alongside Italy," Gentiloni said late Friday in a clear reference to demands by some neighbours that Italy close its borders.

Italy summoned Austria's ambassador on Tuesday after Vienna threatened to send troops to the border, open as part of Europe's Schengen passport-free zone, to stop migrants entering after the number crossing the Mediterranean topped 100,000 this year.

Some 2,360 drowned in the attempt, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration.

Other EU states, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, have also expressed alarm at the continued arrivals.

Italy has taken in some 85 percent of this year's arrivals -- mostly sub-Saharan Africans crossing from conflict-ravaged Libya -- and has pleaded for help from other European Union nations.

But Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic have flatly refused to take part in a relocation scheme.

Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz on Thursday urged Italy to stop migrants from reaching the mainland by halting ferry services from the islands where they first land, saying "rescue missions in the Mediterranean cannot be seen as a ticket to central Europe."
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush criticized his former 2016 presidential primary foe President Donald Trump on Saturday over his first six months in office. Speaking at OZY Fest in New York, Bush slammed Trump's chaotic style of governance and failure to focus on his policy goals. He singled out reports that Trump recently suggested that he may attempt to pre-pardon himself to preempt a federal investigation by independent counsel Robert Mueller. "You get disciplined when your team says, 'No, Mr. President, let's stay focused on these policy objectives,'" Bush said. "Don't disparage people,don't go after Mueller, don't say you're going to pardon yourself or whatever. Don't do all that. Govern." Click through images from Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meeting: At times, the governor appeared to slip back into campaign mode, saying that Trump didn't always represent the Republican party, noting he was registered as a Democrat in the district where OZY Fest was being held. He also said the 45th president wasn't serving as a symbol for the country to succeed. "The president is the prime minister and the king. He or she, eventually, will be the symbol of the country, and also the prime minister responsible for making government work," Bush said. "And right now, our president doesn't view that job as important. Look at history. History is important. When presidents inspire us, we do better. And that's what we need to get back to." Asked to prognosticate on the 2020 election, Bush said it was too early to make predictions, noting that Trump changes the political conversation each morning with his tweets. "He unleashed five tweets today about stuff that jeopardizes his legal situation, insults somebody, goes back to the 2016 election, none of which is relevant to getting tax relief done, regulatory reform done," Bush said. "This is going to be a long ride between 2018 in January, much less 2020." But the Florida governor also reserved some ire for members of his own party, knocking Republicans who were scared of crossing interest groups or conservative base voters, and suggesting that there should be term limits for members of Congress to spur politicians to act without fear of political retribution. "If Barack Obama did somethingas it related to Russia and you say, 'This is outrageous,' then when your guy does the same thing, have the same passion to be critical," Bush said. He continued: "Does everything have to be a political calculus? 'Oh my god if I say something, there will be an opponent, and there will be a third-party interest group come and give money to my opponent. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.' This is not what public services should be about." Bush, who did not vote for Hillary Clinton or Trump during the 2016 election, has been critical of Trump repeatedly since the president took office. In May, he praised the president's appointment of conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, but described the White House as chaotic, and advised Trump to "stop tweeting" because it gives "our enemies all sorts of nuances and insights" into Trump's mind. Though he ruled out another presidential bid, the former Florida governor appeared alongside a number of other former and potentially future candidates during the summit who were critical of Trump's first six months. Bush joined businessman Mark Cuban onstage later in the festival where they jousted briefly about education reform, and spoke after Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who delivered a forceful argument for single-payer healthcare. Former Vice President Joe Biden also make a brief appearance during his wife Dr. Jill Biden's interview with Katie Couric to address 2020 presidential rumors. "My hope and expectation is some of the younger folks will come up and lead the way, but if they don't, Jill's running," Biden said. See Also:
Three Israelis were stabbed to death in a West Bank settlement on Friday night hours after three Palestinians were killed during violent clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian demonstrators.

A Palestinian attacker broke into a home in the settlement of Neve Tsuf, north of Jerusalem, and killed two men and a woman before he was shot, the Israeli military said. Another woman was wounded in the attack.

The stabbing came after thousands of young Palestinians fought street battles with Israeli security services in protest at new security Israeli measures put in place at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

A 17-year-old Palestinian named Mohammed Mahmoud Sharaf was killed after being shot in the neck by an Israeli settler in east Jerusalems Ras al-Amud neighbourhood, according to the Palestinian news agency Maan.

Another Palestinian man was killed on the Mount of Olives after being shot during a clash with Israeli police, while a third was killed in the West Bank town of Abu Dis, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The deaths on both sides are likely to inflame the already volatile situation in Jerusalem.

The clashes took place in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank Credit: AFP PHOTO / Ahmad GHARABLIAHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images

Israel set up metal detectors at the entrances to the al-Aqsa mosque last week after Palestinian gunmen smuggled weapons inside and used them to kill two Israeli police officers in the streets of the Old City.

But the metal detectors have sparked a major backlash from Palestinians, who see them as part of Israeli effort to assert its control over the holy site, which is also sacred to to Jews and known to Israelis as the Temple Mount.

All week Palestinian crowds have refused to pass through the metal detectors and instead have carried out their prayer services in the street outside the mosque.

Palestinian Muslim worshippers pray outside Damascus Gate, a main entrance to Jerusalem's Old City Credit: / AFP PHOTO / GALI TIBBONGALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images

They are taking al-Aqsa from us. Without al-Aqsa we are nothing, said one Palestinian man who joined hundreds of others to pray in the street in the 89F (31C) heat.

The prayers on Salah Ad-Din Street passed off peacefully but when they finished a group of young men gathered to chant abuse at the Israeli police. "How beautiful it is to kill soldiers, officers and border police, they shouted.

Story continues

The situation escalated as the group marched towards the police lines and soon the city streets were full of smoke from Israeli stun grenades and rubbish set on fire by Palestinians.

The standoff at al-Aqsa has echoed across the Muslim world and on Friday a group of Turkish ultra-nationalists threw stones at a Jewish synagogue in Istanbul. The White House earlier in the week said it was very concerned about the situation.

Israel and Jordan, which plays a role in administering the mosque, have been negotiating to try to find a compromise but so far no deal has been reached.

Israeli security forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes following prayers outside Jerusalem's Old City Credit: AFP PHOTO / AHMAD GHARABLIAHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, reportedly called Jared Kushner, Donald Trumps son-in-law, to urge him to pressure Israel to withdraw the metal detectors.

The Palestinian Authority - the semi-autonomous Palestinian government in the West Bank - said Friday it was suspending all official contact with Israel until the metal detectors were removed.

"I declare the suspension of all contacts with the Israeli side on all levels until it cancels its measures at Al-Aqsa mosque and preserves the status quo," Mr Abbas said. He has been under pressure to show he is standing up to Israel, given the widespread anger among Palestinians over the situation at al-Aqsa.

It was not clear if the suspension included the quiet security relationship between the Authority and Israel, which sees the two sides cooperate in fighting common threats.

The metal detectors are just a small part of a bigger argument over the so-called status quo at the holy site.

When Israel took control of the area during the 1967 war its government had to decide whether to allow Jewish worship at the site and risk inflaming tensions with Palestinians. Israel opted for a compromise: only Muslims would be allowed to pray at the site but Jews could visit at certain times and under certain restrictions.

Palestinian worshipers pass through the new metal detectors at the entrance to the Al-Aqsa compound Credit: EPA/ATEF SAFADI

That status quo has more or less held for fifty years but Palestinians are constantly vigilant of any indication that Israel is trying to take control over al-Aqsa / the Temple Mount. In the metal detectors, they see just such a sign.

This is a humiliation to Muslims, said Mutahhir Abu Ibrahim, a 40-year-old driver, as he stood among the crowds outside the mosque. Its a holy place for Muslims and Israel has no right to control it.

Around him the growing demonstration chanted its defiance. We will redeem al-Aqsa with our blood, went one chant. To Jerusalem we go, to be the martyrs of the millions, went another.

Israeli officials point out that there are metal detectors at the Western Wall, just a few hundred yards away, and so Muslims are being asked to go through the same security screening as Jews heading to prayers. But that argument is met with contempt by protesters.

They put them there to protect themselves. These gates are not about protecting Muslims, said Kholoud al-Khatib, a 38-year-old woman who had travelled with her husband from the coastal city of Jaffa to protest.
Beirut (AFP) - Jihadists on Sunday took Idlib in Syria after rival rebels withdrew, strengthening their grip over the northwestern city and its province, one of the last beyond regime control.

At the same time a car bomb exploded in Idlib killing 11 people, nine of them jihadists, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

The latest developments come after the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is dominated by a former Al-Qaeda affiliate and known as HTS, agreed a ceasefire Friday with Ahrar al-Sham rebels.

The truce ended a week of fierce fighting between HTS and Ahrar al-Sham, which is backed by Turkey and some Gulf countries, that killed at least 92 people including 15 civilians, the Observatory said.

Analysts have said growing tensions over the past two months have been exacerbated by HTS fears of a plan to expel the internationally designated "terror" group from the province.

"Ahrar al-Sham withdrew from the city of Idlib which is now under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"Hundreds of rebels left the city aboard dozens of vehicles heading towards southern Idlib province," he said.

Abdel Rahman said the HTS set up checkpoints across the northwestern city.

The fall of the city and provincial capital is symbolic.

It comes after the jihadists captured in a bloodless takeover "more than 31 towns and villages" across Idlib province over the past two days, the monitor said.

- Once allies -

The HTS is dominated by the Fateh al-Sham faction, which was previously known as Al-Nusra Front before renouncing its ties to Al-Qaeda.

The HTS and Ahrar al-Sham were once allies and fought alongside each other to capture most of Idlib province from Syrian government forces in 2015.

The truce they agreed to on Friday calls for the release by both sides of prisoners and the "withdrawal of armed groups from the Bab al-Hawa" border crossing with Turkey.

Story continues

Bab al-Hawa, which had been controlled by Ahrar al-Sham, would be handed over to civilian administration, it said.

Abdel Rahman said the presence of Ahrar al-Sham rebels has been greatly diminished in Idlib province, which they once dominated. Rebels were left only in Ariha town and part of Jabal al-Zawiya in the southeast.

Syria's conflict erupted in mid-March 2011 with peaceful anti-government protests that were brutally repressed by the government.

It quickly evolved into a war involving local, regional and international players on a multitude of fronts, that has killed more than 330,00 people and displaced millions from their homes.

On Sunday, the regime launched air raids against one of the last rebel strongholds near Damascus a day after it declared a ceasefire in parts of the besieged Eastern Ghouta enclave, the Observatory said.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have surrounded the Eastern Ghouta region for more than four years, and regime forces have regularly targeted the area.

The army announced a halt in fighting in areas of Eastern Ghouta on Saturday from midday local time, but did not say which areas exactly would be included.

The ceasefire announcement came after regime ally Russia said it had reached a deal with "moderate" rebels on the boundaries and policing of the safe zone.

- 'More to do in Raqa' -

Farther east from Idlib, US-backed fighters pressing an offensive to capture the Islamic State group stronghold of Raqa received high marks from a senior officer of the US-led coalition battling IS.

Major General Rupert Jones, a deputy commander of the coalition, said the alliance known as Syrian Democratic Forces "have proved themselves to be a reliable counter-Daesh partner".

But he warned "Daesh is not defeated with the liberation of Raqa", using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Speaking to reporters in the town of Ain Issa 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Raqa, Jones said: "We know as an international coalition there's still a great deal more to do here in Syria."

"We will continue to work with the Syrian Democratic Forces to complete the defeat of Daesh," Jones added.
John McCain - AP

Within days of being diagnosed with cancer, John McCain has enjoyed an 'amazing hike' with his daughter Meghan.

Ms McCain, a host on Fox News, tweeted a picture of her sitting with the Arizona Senator.

"Amazing hike with Dad this morning, Thank you for your best wishes."

Mr Mcain, 80, was diagnosed with a brain tumour after doctors removed a blood clot above his left eye.

Amazing hike with Dad @SenJohnMcCain this morning. Thank you all for your best wishes! pic.twitter.com/P9RR2v91HB  Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) July 22, 2017

He and his family are reviewing options for further treatment, which are expected to include a combination of radiation and chemotherapy.

The diagnosis was greeted with shock across the US political spectrum with Donald Trump wishing Mr McCain, who has been one of his most vociferous Republican critics, well.

Barack Obama hailed Mr McCain, who ran against him in the 2008 presidential election, as a fighter.

Cancer doesnt know what its up against. Give it hell, John, the former president tweeted.

Widely respected in Washington, Mr McCain was captured during the Vietnam War and spent five and a half years in captivity during which he was tortured before being released in 1973.
Ah, weddings. A time to celebrate the joining of a happy couple in matrimony. A time to reconnect with old friends. A time to sing loudly and terribly in celebration of an open bar.

The wedding of Jordan Eberle and Lauren Rodych appeared to have all of these elements, which might be bittersweet to see for Edmonton Oilers fans.

Eberle was traded to the New York Islanders in June after 507 games with the franchise. Among his wedding guests: Current Oilers like Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, as well as former Oiler and current New Jersey Devils star Taylor Hall.

They may not have won a Stanley Cup together. But damn if they cant belt out Wagon Wheel at a wedding:

Name your fav oiler/former oiler slash karaoke party. #becomingmrseberle A post shared by Dean Van De Walle (@dvandewalle) on Jul 22, 2017 at 9:41pm PDT

Well that was  vocal.

Besides tremendous singing, perhaps the highlight of the night for Taylor Hall?

Playing hockey with McDavid again.

If one considers McDavid snapping shots while Hall defended an invisible net with a guitar as playing with Connor McDavid.

Congrats to Jordan and Lauren on the great off-season content.

s/t Sportsnet



Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

MORE FROM YAHOO SPORTS




Kellyanne Conway (CNN)

Six months after launching alternative facts into the cultural and political lexicon, Kellyanne Conway attempted on Sunday to define what she meant when she uttered that infamous phrase.

Alternative facts are partly sunny, partly cloudy,' Conway said in an interview with CNNs Brian Stelter. Alternative facts are when all of you in the media say, We have the highest-rated show, and another show thats a competitor says, No, we have the highest-rated show.'

In January, Conway clashed with NBCs Chuck Todd over the administrations false assertion that President Trumps inauguration crowd was the largest in history.

Youre saying its a falsehood, Conway told Todd on Jan. 22. Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts.

The day before, Spicer used his first official statement to castigate the media for what he called deliberately false reporting on the size of the crowd at Trumps inauguration.

This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe, Spicer told reporters in the White House Briefing Room despite clear visual evidence to the contrary. These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.

Conway insisted on Sunday that members of the media knew what both she and Spicer meant, but just wanted to look at it through the most negative lens possible.

You now, in 2016, 2017, have people looking at the inauguration up close and in person, Conway said. You have people watching on their screens, which they couldnt do 10 years earlier. You have people certainly watching on TV, listening to it on the radio, multimedia way of doing that.

Conway then pivoted to what she claimed were indisputable facts: that Trump has been responsible for rising stocks and falling unemployment figures.

Stock market up 25 record highs, fact, Conway said. Over 800,000 jobs created, fact. Health care reform on its way and tax reform right after that. Fact, fact.

Story continues

But alternative facts, let me just repeat for those at home: partly cloudy, partly sunny, Conway said.

Conways appearance on CNN came two days after Spicer resigned over Trumps hiring of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director. The president has long been frustrated by the medias coverage of his administration and, in particular, his campaigns contacts with Russia  and tapped Scaramucci to help reshape the narrative coming out of the White House.

We have accomplished so much and we are being given credit for so little, Trump said in a statement announcing Scaramuccis hiring.

Earlier in the interview, Conway complained that CNN is obsessed with the Russia scandal that has dogged the first six months of Trumps presidency  and that it should expect more attacks from the White House.

If youre going to cover Russia, Russia, Russia, while were talking about America, America, America, were always going to be like this, she said.

Read more from Yahoo News:
By John Davison BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Shi'ite militia Hezbollah and the Syrian army advanced against Sunni militants on Saturday, the second day of an assault to drive them from their last foothold along the Syria-Lebanon border, pro-Damascus media reported. The operation has targeted Sunni Muslim insurgents from the former Nusra Front, a group that was aligned to al Qaeda and who have controlled the barren, mountainous zone of Juroud Arsal. A military media unit run by Hezbollah said its forces captured a strategic hilltop area called Dhahr al-Huwa, previously a key Nusra Front base, which allowed them to overlook several border crossings in the area. Forces had earlier seized Jwar al Sheikh, Wadi Kriti and other areas in the southern part of Juroud Arsal, it said. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran's Shi'ite government, has played a critical part in previous campaigns against Sunni insurgents along Lebanon's border, part of its wider role backing President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian war. Hezbollah's role has drawn criticism from its Lebanese political opponents, including Sunni Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who is a Sunni. Footage on Hezbollah's Al Manar TV channel showed fighters on a hilltop firing assault rifles and wire-guided missiles at militant positions. The media unit also reported that some Nusra fighters had raised white flags in surrender. The chances of any negotiation with the militants appeared dashed, however, when a mediator and former deputy mayor of Arsal was killed in rocket fire by Nusra fighters, Lebanon's National News Agency reported. The rocket hit Ahmed al-Fliti's his car, killing him and wounding another passenger, it said. Previous negotiations had failed to secure the militants' withdrawal from the Juroud Arsal area to other rebel-held parts of Syria. Syrian warplanes meanwhile struck militant positions on the Syrian side of the border, near the town of Fleita, it said. The offensive began on Friday and killed at least 23 Nusra militants on the first day, the Hezbollah unit said. At least five Hezbollah fighters were also killed. A security source put Hezbollah's death toll at 15 early on Saturday, and said at least 43 militants had been killed. The Lebanese army has taken up defensive positions around Arsal town, ready to fire at Sunni militants trying to break through its lines, and has beefed up security in the area. The Lebanese army is not taking part in the operation, according to a commander in the pro-Damascus military alliance and a Lebanese security source. The army is facilitating the passage of Syrian refugees fleeing the area, with U.N. supervision, the security source said. U.N. refugee agency UNHCR and aid groups are preparing for an influx of Syrian refugees from Juroud Arsal and Arsal town. Only a handful of refugees were reported to have fled on Friday. Several thousand Syrian refugees occupy camps east of Arsal. The Lebanese army and Hezbollah have regularly targeted militants penetrating the border area. In 2014, Arsal was the scene of one of the most serious spillovers of the Syrian war into Lebanon when jihadists briefly overran the town. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Editing by Edmund Blair and Catherine Evans)
A new research article out of California University of Technology suggests that holographic imaging could be the key to finding extraterrestrial life on Saturns moon, Enceladus, and others like it. The moon is covered in ice, but under that crust is a liquid ocean with geysers that release plumes of water vapor through the icy surface and into outer space around the moon.

The research, conducted by Jay Nadeau a research professor at the university, suggests using an adapted version of a digital holographic microscope to study the movement of possible microbes in the plumes. The digital holographic microscopy technique uses lasers to collect 3-D images of tiny little organisms.

Read: NASA New Discoveries: Saturn, Jupiter Moons May Be Able To Support Life

NASA announced in April that Saturns Enceladus and Jupiters Europa both have the potential to support simple life that requires no sunlight. Such organisms could draw energy from the hydrogen leaking into the oceans by combining it with carbon dioxide, a process called methanogenesis. The Cassini spacecraft discovered these plumes while conducting a deep dive around the moon in 2015, according to NASA. While the craft was able to determine some present elements it was unable to determine whether there were other key building blocks to life, or anything actually living. So now researchers are working to figure out what type of microscope would be best to send to one of these icy moons.

This new proposed research method would hopefully help identify whether theres life, but would need to be added to crafts that will fly through the plumes in the future.The fact that the plumes are venting out into space makes studying them easier because crafts would only need to flyby rather than successfully land on the moons. But only part of the research could be done remotely, and the microscopes used for this technique on Earth would need to be adapted to work on a moving spacecraft in outer space conditions.

Story continues

Capturing material with a flyby also presents its own challenges, some of which can be solved by using the holographic microscopy technique. The craft orbiting the moon would be traveling at an extremely high speed, which has the potential to pulverize any bacteria or microbes caught. So the craft would need to have some sort of decelerator, something Nadeau and her team are working on. Additionally the plumes arent thick, so crafts would have to make a minimum of 12 trips around the moons to gather enough material to actually study, Nadeau said in a video explaining the research.

Read: Can Planets Near Red Dwarf Stars Support Life? NASA Says Don't Bet On It

The method involves illuminating an object with a laser and the light that is reflected back is measured can give details on the amplitude and the intensity of the object that then allows a computer to reconstruct a 3-D image of the object, said a release from Cal Tech. Breaking down what the microbes are made of is possible as well but takes more work. The team plans to try and use this technique on remote parts of Earth before perfecting the method for potential space travel on a future NASA mission.

Related Articles
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rock band Linkin Park on Friday canceled its North American tour after the suicide of frontman Chester Bennington "We are incredibly saddened to hear about the passing of Chester Bennington. The Linkin Park One More Light North American Tour has been canceled and refunds are available at point of purchase. Our thoughts go out to all those affected, tour promoter Live Nation said in a statement. Bennington, 41, died by hanging himself at his southern California home, but left no note, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said on Friday. Bennington, 41, was found dead on Thursday at his home in Palos Verdes, near Los Angeles, a week before the California alt-rock band was due to embark on its tour, starting on July 27 in Mansfield, Massachusetts. "He was found hanging in his bedroom. No note was found," coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said. Winter added that there was an open bottle of alcohol in the bedroom but no drugs had been found. Bennington had a history of alcohol and drug abuse and had spoken openly in the past about his struggles to overcome his demons when Linkin Park first found fame in 2000 with their best-selling debut album "Hybrid Theory." Winter said an autopsy was pending, and that toxicology tests were also likely to be carried out. (Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Sandra Maler)
July 21 (Reuters) - Minneapolis police chief Janee Harteau resigned on Friday at the request of the city's mayor, who said that she had lost confidence in Harteau following the fatal police shooting of an unarmed Australian woman. The death of Justine Damond, 40, from a single gunshot wound to the abdomen fired through an open window of a police patrol car, has outraged her relatives and the public in Australia. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called it "shocking" and "inexplicable." Mayor Betsy Hodges said in a statement that she and Harteau agreed during discussions on Friday that Harteau would step aside. "As far as we have come, I've lost confidence in the Chief's ability to lead us further - and from the many conservations I've had with people around our city, especially this week, it is clear that she has lost the confidence of the people of Minneapolis as well," Hodges said in her statement. "For us to continue to transform policing -- and community trust in policing -- we need new leadership at MPD," she added. Damond, who had made Minneapolis her home and was engaged to be married, had called police about a possible sexual assault in her neighborhood just before midnight on Saturday. She was shot as she approached the driver's side of the patrol car. Harteau's resignation come a day after she told reporters during her first news conference following Damond's death that the shooting violated department training and procedures and that the victim "didn't have to die." "Last Saturday's tragedy, as well as some other recent incidents, have caused me to engage in deep reflection," Harteau said in her statement. "Despite the MPD's many accomplishments under my leadership over these years and my love for the city, I have to put the communities we serve first." Harteau rose through the ranks of the Minneapolis Police Department during her three decades with the force, her statement said. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Leslie Adler)
The mother of a Florida teen who vanished at sea in 2015 along with his friend has filed a wrongful death suit against the other teen's family.

The lawsuit, which was filed Friday at the Palm Beach County Courthouse, came just days before the two-year anniversary of the boys disappearance.

Read: Parents of Black Girl, 12, Claim White Students Caused Daughter's Severe Rope Burns: Lawsuit

Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos, both 14, have not been seen since July 24, when they took a fishing trip off the coast of Florida on Austin's boat.

Two days later, the 19-foot vessel was found capsized during a widespread search for the teens. They are now presumed dead.

This lawsuit is about truth, accountability and justice, attorney Guy Rubin said in a statement on behalf of Pamela Cohen, Perrys mother. Perrys family cannot just move on, put this behind them or let it go.

Cohen alleges in the lawsuit that Austins family was negligent and that it resulted in the boys deaths.

In June, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found that Carly Black, Austins mother, showed an egregious lack of judgement and failure to execute due care when she allowed the teens to go alone on a fishing trip in a minimally equipped 1978 boat.

The boat had a single motor, and no GPS or radio.

An investigative report released last month added that Black knew Perrys parents forbade him to go offshore without an adult, and waited more than two hours to notify his parents that the boys were missing while Blu Stephanos, Austins dad, went searching for the teens on his own boat, according to People.com.

The state chose not to file charges, however, due to insufficient proof.

"Once it was clear the boys were not going to be found, there began some tension between the families," Rubin told BuzzFeed News.

This isn't the first battle between the families. In 2016, Cohen also filed a lawsuit over an iPhone 6 that was found on the boat, which was heavily damaged by saltwater.

Story continues

Read: Newly Revealed Audio Sheds Light on Final Moments of Yoga Teacher Shot Dead by Cop

The phone belonged to Austin, but Cohen wanted the phone turned over to investigators to determine possible foul play.

Because the case was not criminal, however, the phone was considered private property.

Watch: Local TV Station Sues 'Fitness Expert' Duo for Pranking Morning News Program

Related Articles:
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel faced mounting pressure Monday over tougher security at a sensitive Jerusalem holy site after a shooting at its embassy in Jordan raised further concerns following a weekend of deadly unrest.

It was not immediately clear whether the incident in Amman on Sunday -- in which two Jordanian men were killed and an Israeli seriously injured -- was linked to the dispute over the Jerusalem compound.

But it came after new security measures were implemented at the Haram al-Sharif mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, prompting violence that left eight people dead, with fears of further unrest.

Israeli officials signalled they may be open to relaxing security measures at the holy site after metal detectors were installed at entrances following an attack that killed two policemen.

The UN Security Council will hold closed-door talks Monday about the spiralling violence.

Israel and Jordan are bound by a 1994 peace treaty, but tensions have been high over the new security measures at the site in annexed east Jerusalem.

Jordan is the official custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

The metal detectors remained in place on Sunday, though cameras had also been mounted near at least one entrance to the compound in Jerusalem's Old City.

Tensions have risen following the July 14 attack that killed two policemen.

Israeli authorities say the attackers smuggled guns into the site and emerged from it to shoot the officers.

- Security assessments -

Palestinians view the tougher security measures as Israel asserting further control over the site. They have refused to enter the compound in protest and have prayed in the streets outside.

"Since the start of the events, I have held a series of assessments with security elements including those in the field," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday's cabinet meeting.

"We are receiving from them an up-to-date picture of the situation, as well as recommendations for action, and we will decide accordingly."

Story continues

Israeli Major General Yoav Mordechai -- head of COGAT, the defence ministry agency responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories -- signalled that changes to the policy were possible.

"We are examining other options and alternatives that will ensure security," Mordecai said in an interview with Al-Jazeera.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who has announced he was freezing contacts with Israel over the dispute, said Sunday this included the security coordination that has been credited with preventing wider unrest in recent years.

"They must know that they will be the main losers because we play an important role in assuring our security and theirs," Abbas said.

Friday's main weekly Muslim prayers -- which typically draw thousands to the holy site -- brought the situation to a boil.

In anticipation of protests, Israel barred men under 50 from entering the Old City for prayers.

Clashes broke out between Israeli security forces and Palestinians around the Old City, in other parts of annexed east Jerusalem and in the occupied West Bank, leaving three Palestinians dead.

- House set for demolition -

On Friday evening, a Palestinian broke into a home in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank during a Sabbath dinner and stabbed four Israelis, killing three.

The Israeli army said the 19-year-old Palestinian had spoken in a Facebook post of the holy site and of dying as a martyr.

On Saturday, Palestinian youths hurled stones and petrol bombs as the army used a bulldozer to close off the attacker's West Bank village and prepare his house for demolition.

Netanyahu said Sunday the demolition would go ahead "as soon as possible".

Israel frequently razes or seals attackers' homes as a deterrent, although rights groups say this amounts to collective punishment.

Clashes also flared in east Jerusalem and other Palestinian villages in the West Bank near Jerusalem on Saturday, police said.

Two Palestinians died, including one when a petrol bomb exploded prematurely.

Israeli security forces said Sunday they had arrested 25 men active in the militant Hamas group that rules the Gaza Strip.

- Rocket fired from Gaza -

Also Sunday, a rocket fired at Israel from Gaza hit an open area, the army said, causing no injuries. No group claimed the attack.

The holy site in Jerusalem has served as a rallying cry for Palestinians.

In 2000, then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the compound helped ignite the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which lasted more than four years.

The Haram la-Sharif/Temple Mount was seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

Considered the third holiest site in Islam, it is the most sacred for Jews.

burs-jms/msh/mrs/hkb/aph/iw
Tatiana Maslany as Rachel in Orphan Black (Photo Credit: Ken Woroner/BBC America)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Gag or Throttle episode of Orphan Black.

Its one of the most famous, and gag-inducing moments, in the history of Orphan Black: back in Season 2, Sarah turned an ordinary No. 2 pencil into a literally eye-popping missile, aimed directly at Rachel. After modeling an oh-so-fashionable eye patch for a bit, Dyads top Leda clone acquired a significant optic upgrade with a cybernetic eye taking the place of her punctured left peeper.

The past is present in the seventh episode of the shows final season, Gag or Throttle. The closing moments cheerfully activate the audiences collective gag reflex when Rachels eye is separated from its socket again, this time at her own hand that happens to be clutching the broken stem of a martini glass. Upping the ick factor substantially is the fact that its an entirely premeditated bit of gouging. Rachel consciously has to raise that sharpened stick of glass to her eye and dig in without dry heaving or retching. We on this side of the screen, however, have no such need to hold back.

To be fair, its not like Rachels popping that eye out for fun. Its a declaration of independence directed at P.T. Westmoreland, who has secretly been watching her every move through the camera hidden in her pupil. That discovery shatters whatever parental bond exists between the father of Neolution and his favorite daughter, the only clone who he legally emancipated as a way to win her trust. As it turns out, that promised freedom was almost as big a lie as Westmoreland and his fountain of youth. Cosima and her fellow sleuth/science geek, Scott, have positively I.D.d Percival as John Patrick Mathieson, a former University of Cambridge student who supposedly perished in a boating accident on August 13, 1967. In actuality, Mathieson merely cloaked himself in the real Westmorelands legend, and worked with Susan and Virginia to set in motion the events that have brought us to the increasingly bloody present day.

Story continues

Skyler Wexler as Kira and Tatiana Maslany as Rachel in Orphan Black (Photo Credit: Ken Woroner/BBC America)

As a true believer in Neolutions mission, and her own exalted status within the movement, Rachel takes Mathiesons double betrayal doubly hard. But her pain proves to be Sarahs gain; Rachel rebels against her false prophet (and patriarch) by spiriting Kira out of Dyad and back to her family, rather than dispatching her directly to Neolution Island or, as the child has christened it, Wonderland. She also forwards the intel on the Mathieson/Westmoreland connection directly to Dyads wealthy investors, proverbially setting fire to Mathiesons business at the same time his island community is literally burning to the ground.

But the wily scientist isnt out of options just yet: with Susan dead, her rival Virginia is in charge, and shes brought in her own ringer, Mark Rollins  ex-Prolethean and last surviving Castor clone now that Ira is buried alongside his patron. And Mark happens to have inside scoop on Helenas whereabouts through his wife, Gracie, the pregnant clones tormentor during their time at the Prolethean farm. Since Rachels not going to hand over Kira, Helenas behbies could provide the all-important gene that Neolutions minders have been chasing across all these years and clones. Of course, if Mathieson thinks he can control Helena in the same way he tried to control Rachel, hes in for a rude awakening. Rachel may be brave enough to gouge out her own eye, but Helenas crazy enough to go after his.

Onto our clone power rankings, with all of the remaining Leda sisters present and accounted for.

Tatiana Maslany as Helena in Orphan Black. (Photo Credit: Ken Woroner/BBC America)

1. Rachel

After a life lived in service of Dyad, shes finally doing something for herself. Even if that something is forcibly removing an eye.

2. Sarah

Brute physical strength has rarely worked against Rachel, so Sarah instead used information as power in her latest clash with her sister/nemesis. And guess what? It brought Kira back to her. Given the fight that still lies ahead, though, Sarah should be prepared to use some of her physical strength again pretty soon.

3. Alison

Returning from a respite at a retreat in California (maybe the same one where Don Draper learned to buy the world a Coke?), Alison walks through her front door sporting a cool new do, a new tattoo, and a whole set of fresh interests beyond crafting  like keyboard therapy. You do you, Mrs. Hendrix.

4. Cosima

Cosima instigated the Neolution Island uprising last week, and continued to provide fresh ammunition for the anti-Westmoreland forces by revealing John Patrick Mathiesons name and face. If there are more secrets buried out there  and there almost certainly are  shell uncover them.

5. Helena

Helenas days in hiding appear to be coming to an abrupt end with Gracies sudden appearance. The two have tangled before, with Helena emerging the ultimate victor. Still, that was before she was on the verge of giving birth to twins; its different when youre fighting for three.

Non-Clone MVP: Donnie

For accepting and embracing the fact that his wife has returned home a changed woman. And yes, you should totally buy that bass guitar, Donnie.

Orphan Black airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. on BBC America.



Read more from Yahoo TV:

Doctor Who Stars Pearl Mackie and Michelle Gomez Recall Their Last Days on Set

Outlander Cast Previews Season 3: That Studly Warrior Goes and Becomes a Printer

Stranger Things Stars Shannon Purser & David Harbour on Their Emmys Windfall
By Luke Baker and Ori Lewis JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Six people were killed on Friday in the bloodiest spate of Israeli-Palestinian violence for years, prompted by new security Israeli measures at Jerusalem's holiest site. Three Israelis were stabbed to death in a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, hours after three Palestinians were killed in violence prompted by Israel's installation of metal detectors at entry points to the Noble Sanctuary-Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem's walled Old City. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered the suspension of all official contact with Israel until it removed the metal detectors. He gave no details, but current contacts are largely limited to security cooperation. "I declare the suspension of all contacts with the Israeli side on all levels until it cancels its measures at al Aqsa mosque and preserves the status quo," Abbas said in a brief televised speech. The three Israelis stabbed to death and a fourth who was wounded were from the fenced-in West Bank settlement of Neve Tsuf. Israeli media said the three dead were all members of the same family, two men aged 60 and 40 and a woman of 40. The wounded woman, 68, was hospitalised with stab wounds to her back, Israeli media said. A still photo carried by Israeli television showed a kitchen floor completely red with blood. The family had sat down to a traditional Friday evening meal when the attack occurred, according to Israel Radio. The Israeli army and media said the assailant slipped into the settlement under cover of darkness to carry out his attack. Israel Radio identified him as a 19-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank village of Khobar near Ramallah. It said he was shot, but his condition was not initially known. PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CLASHES NEAR SHRINE Earlier, Palestinian worshippers clashed with Israeli security forces. Tensions had mounted for days as Palestinians hurled rocks and Israeli police used stun grenades after the detectors were placed outside the sacred venue, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Mohammed Sharaf, 17, and Mohammad Hassan Abu Ghannam, age unknown, died of gunshot wounds in two neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem somewhat away from the epicentre of tension in the walled Old City. It reported a third Palestinian fatality, Mohammed Lafi, 18, later. It was not immediately clear who fired the shots, with unconfirmed media reports that an Israeli settler was responsible in Sharaf's death. Israel decided to install the metal detectors at the entry point to the shrine in Jerusalem's walled Old City on Sunday, after the killing of two Israeli policemen on July 14. The shrine includes the al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and the golden Dome of the Rock. It was also the site of an ancient Jewish temple, the holiest place in Judaism. Despite international pressure to remove the metal detectors, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet decided in Friday's early hours to keep them in place, saying they were needed to prevent arms being smuggled into the shrine. In protest, thousands of worshippers gathered for Friday prayers at various entrances to the sacred compound, which sits on a marble and stone plateau in the Old City. They refused to enter, preferring to pray outside, in some cases filling the narrow alleyways of the Old City's Muslim quarter. "We reject Israeli restrictions at the Aqsa Mosque," said Jerusalem's senior Muslim cleric, Grand Mufti Mohammad Hussein. Muslim leaders and Palestinian political factions had urged the faithful to gather for a "day of rage" on Friday against the new security policies, which they see as changing delicate agreements that have governed the holy site for decades. Israeli police mobilised extra units and erected barriers to carry out checks at entrances to the Old City. Access to the shrine for Muslims was limited to men over 50 but open to women of all ages. Roadblocks were in place on approach roads to Jerusalem to stop buses carrying Muslims to the site. At one location near the Old City, stone throwers did try to break through a police line, and police used stun grenades to drive them back. Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said four officers were injured in the sporadic clashes and the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said at least 377 protesters had been hurt, some suffering from tear gas inhalation. The hilltop compound has long been a source of religious friction. Since Israel captured and annexed the Old City, including the compound, in the 1967 Middle East war, it has also become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. "This is our place of prayer, we have sovereignty here," Salaam said. On Thursday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to press for the removal of the metal detectors. Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East, appealed for calm and the White House called for a resolution. Jordan, the custodian of the holy site, has also been involved in mediation efforts. But Netanyahu's 11-member security cabinet opted in a late-night meeting to retain the metal detectors to ensure no weapons were smuggled in, a week after three Arab-Israeli gunmen shot dead two Israeli policemen in the vicinity of the complex. (Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; writing by Luke Baker and Ori Lewis; editing by Mark Heinrich)
Peruvian authorities have revealed the reconstructed face of the Lord of Sipan, a pre-Columbian ruler whose remains were discovered in 1987 and hailed as one of the country's most stunning archaeological finds.

A full body representation of the ancient ruler, believed to have died around the year 250, was unveiled Thursday at the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipan in the northern city of Chiclayo.

Peruvian Culture Minister Salvador del Solar traveled to Chiclayo for the unveiling, which marks the 30th anniversary of the tomb's discovery.

The Moche culture ruler's face was reconstructed by anthropologists based on the skull and facial bones of the man's mummy, archaeologist Walter Alva told AFP, speaking by phone from Chiclayo.

"The skull was quite damaged by the pressure of the earth and the burial jewels," but the anthropologists "have techniques that made virtual reconstruction possible," said Alva.

The archaeologist discovered the mummy buried with a large cache of gold and silver ornaments in the Huaca Rajada adobe pyramid complex three decades ago.

Experts believe the Lord of Sipan was between the age of 45 and 55 when he was buried.

The Moche, or Mochica, society was active along the Peruvian northern coastal region between 100 and 800 AD.

In early July scientists revealed the reconstructed face of the Lady of Cao, a woman who governed in northern Peru 1,700 years ago.

The female ruler -- unique in pre-Columbian Peru -- also belonged to the Moche culture. Her mummified remains were discovered at the Cao Viejo adobe pyramid in 2006 in the Chicama Valley, just north of the modern city of Trujillo.
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Friday the government will draft a new law for the country's mining industry, which he said pays too little in tax and not enough in compensation for any environmental damage. The fate of more than half of 41 mines in the Philippines, the world's top nickel ore supplier, has been uncertain since February when then Environment Secretary Regina Lopez ordered their closure for causing environmental damage and violating laws. Lopez led a 10-month industry crackdown until her dismissal in May by the Commission on Appointments following her mining orders, which included a ban on open-pit mining. She was replaced by Duterte's friend, former military general Roy Cimatu. "I'd like to tell you frankly, we will come up with new legislation ... we have to rearrange everything," Duterte said in a speech at a business conference in his hometown Davao City. Duterte also said he would invite all industry stakeholders to the presidential palace for a dialogue together with his former environment minister Lopez and other anti-mining advocates. Duterte said he has always been supportive of Lopez's pro-environment stance but could not stop mining because there is a law that allows the miners to continue to operate. He also complained that the taxes miners pay are "too low" and lamented the lack of compensation to mining communities that suffer from environmental damage. Duterte did not say when the meeting would take place but he said he planned to show industry stakeholders footage shown to him by anti-mining advocates, including Lopez, about the environmental destruction as well examples of good practices in mining. "I will tell (them), look at the slides about good practices of mining, and I will ask everybody to focus on that," he said. "Then let's also look at the slides on mining gone awry." He also urged mining companies to "come up with an arrangement that is fair to everybody." (Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz. Editing by Jane Merriman)
21:24

Around 15 Conservative party MPs have agreed to sign a no-confidence motion against British Prime Minister Theresa May as part of a plot to oust her, according to a media report.

Although the letter of no confidence falls short of the 48 names required to trigger a leadership contest, the UK Parliament's summer break could prove critical for May's future as British prime minister, 'The Sunday Times' reported.

"The numbers change from day to day depending on what's happened but there are about 15 who are fairly consistent in their desire for change. If she has a quiet summer and there are no crises and things are not mismanaged then she might be able to cling on beyond conference, but that is still a big if," a former minister was quoted as saying.

The reports come days after a summer party in the House of Commons last week where May pleaded with her MPs to "go away and have a proper break and come back ready for serious business".

"No backbiting, no carping. The choice is me or (Opposition Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn - and no one wants him," Conservative MPs who were present reported her as saying.

Meanwhile, a Conservative party survey indicates that some Tory grassroots MPs want May to quit by Christmas time this year.





The survey, carried out by the Party Members' Project, comes as Parliament stands down for the summer but with bitter party infighting and behind-the-scenes plotting expected to continue over the recess.

It found 21 per cent of members backed Brexit minister David Davis, 17 per cent preferred foreign minister Boris Johnson, while the third choice was backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has something of a cult following, but was backed by just six per cent of those surveyed.
Politician Kelli Ward is urging Senator John McCain to resign from the Senate. This comes in light of Wednesdays disclosure that John McCain has been diagnosed with brain cancer. Ward offered her condolences, but according to the Hill, told an Indiana Radio Station, "I hope that Senator McCain is going to look long and hard at this, that his family and his advisors are going to look at this, and theyre going to advise him to step away as quickly as possible, so that the business of the country and the business of Arizona being represented at the federal level can move forward." She also went on to say, that there was a low chance of McCain returning to the senate. She warned that McCains absence could bring the Republican agenda to a halt, dropping Republican votes to 51. Ward will be running for Senate in 2018, and is pitching herself as a replacement following her loss to McCain in the 2016 GOP Senate primary. Thus far, McCain has shown no indication of resigning. The senator tweeted on Thursday, "Unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, Ill be back soon, so stand by."
A newly-released photograph of Diana and Prince Harry, taken from from the personal photo album of the late Princess of Wales - PA

The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry have spoken of their enduring regret over their last conversation with their mother, disclosing they had been desperate to rush off the telephone and get back to playing instead.

The Duke and Prince, who were 15 and 12 when Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash, said they had been busy at Balmoral when she called them, and had no notion that the short phone call would be their last.

The conversation, the Duke said, still weighs on his mind quite, quite heavily, while Prince Harry admitted he would regret it for the rest of his life.

The brothers spoke as part of a one-off documentary for television, in which they detail their warm memories of their fun-loving mother.

In their most extensive and honest television interview to date, the Duke and Prince speak fondly of their childhood with one of the worlds most-photographed women, in the hopes of introducing the real her to a new generation.

The Duke, who now has two children of his own, discloses how he is keeping his mothers memory alive at home, while the Prince shares the weird and wonderful pranks the naughty princess loved to play on her sons.

Speaking in an interview due to broadcast on ITV on Monday, the Duke described his last conversation with her, while she was in Paris and he was at Balmoral with his father, the Prince of Wales, and the wider Royal family.

All I do remember is probably, you know, regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was

At the time Harry and I were running around minding our own business, you know, playing with our cousins and having a very good time, he said. Prince Harry continued: As a kid I never enjoyed speaking to my parents on the phone.

And we spent far too much time speaking on the phone rather than speaking to each other, because of just the way the situation [the divorce] was.

And the phone rang and off he [William] went to go and speak to her sort of for five minutes. The Duke said: And I think Harry and I were just in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know, see you later and were going to go off.

Story continues

If Id known now obviously what was going to happen I wouldnt have been so blase about it and everything else. But that phone call sticks in my mind quite, quite heavily.

Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry Credit: The Duke of Cambridge & Prince Harry

He told an on-screen interviewer that he did recall what she had said to him, but chose not to disclose it. Prince Harry, who in April told the Telegraph he had sought counselling after years of refusing to talk about Dianas death, said he remembered being called to take his turn at the telephone receiver.

It was her speaking from Paris. I cant really necessarily remember what I said, but all I do remember is probably, you know, regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was.

And if Id known that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother the things I would have said to her. He added: Looking back on it now, its incredibly hard. I have to sort of deal with that for the rest of my life.

Not knowing that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum, and how differently that conversation would have panned out if Id had even the slightest inkling that her life was going to be taken that night.

Princess Diana's most iconic fashion moments

The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry have spoken as never before about Diana, Princess of Wales, in an astonishing interview designed to teach a new generation about their mischievous mother.

The brothers, now aged 35 and 32, have given the most intimate insight yet into life with their mother at Kensington Palace, as they open their family photo album for the nation.

Diana, Princess of Wales with her sons, Harry and William, in 1992 Credit: Martin Keene/PA Wire

In a 90-minute documentary, featuring her closest family and friends, the Duke and Prince will bring Dianas memory to life for those too young to remember her, detailing her efforts to give them a normal childhood, her final letters and phone call, and her love of pranks.

They share her own home photograph album, found earlier this year and containing pictures of the princes as children, as the Duke speaks of how he felt her presence as a source of comfort before his 2011 wedding to Catherine Middleton.

It will reveal how their parents divorce left them constantly travelling between houses, her death was like an earthquake, and how the Queen was at one point so concerned about her that she took friends aside.

Detailing the extraordinary tricks Diana would play on them, including a memorable episode including supermodels at the top of the stairs, the Duke tells how he keeps her memory alive with his own young children, despite predicting she would have been an absolute nightmare grandmother.

Introducing the film at a Kensington Palace screening last week, the Duke said he and his younger brother had never spoken so frankly in public before, explaining that the 20th anniversary of Dianas death in August this year felt like an appropriate time to open up a bit more.

Princess Diana holding Prince William while pregnant with Prince Harry Credit: The Duke of Cambridge & Prince Harry

Saying he hoped the film would encapsulate the woman he would like the public to know, he said: We won't be doing this again.

We wont speak as openly and publicly about her again, because we feel that hopefully this film will provide the other side: from her closest family and friends, that you might not have heard before, from those who knew her best, and those who want to protect her memory and want to remind people of the person she was.

"The warmth, the humour, and what she was like as a mother.

"Harry and I feel very strongly that we want to celebrate her life, and this is a tribute from her sons to her. Sitting down with Prince Harry to look at photographs and talk about memories, he added, had been cathartic, he said:

It's been at first quite daunting opening up so much to camera, but going through this process has been quite healing as well.

As well as her sons, the film also features Dianas brother Earl Spencer, who speaks frankly about how the bitter divorce of their parents affected her, Sir Elton John, who campaigned with her and sang at her funeral, and a host of friends including William Van Straubenzee, Lady Carolyn Warren and Anne Beckwith-Smith.

The Duke and Prince have also taken part in a BBC documentary, due out later this year and focusing specifically on the week following the Parisian car crash.

They last month marked Diana's birthday by rededicating her grave at Althorp, the Spencer family home, and will commemorate the anniversary of her death in August.

"We want her legacy to live on in our work, and we feel this is an appropriate way of doing that, said the Duke.

"To remind not only the people who knew her, but also you have to remember this is 20 years ago now that she died and there are people who don't even know about her.

"We want to share the happiness and the warmth of her and what she was like as a person with a wider audience, and so came the documentary. "I hope you enjoy it."

The Family Album

Princes William and Harry taking part in the documentary Credit: ITV

The documentary opens with the Duke and Prince leafing though Diana's photograph album, only recently rediscovered at home and full of picture of them as children.

Prince Harry, who stars in many of them, told William: "Part of me never really wanted to look at them and part of me was waiting to find the right time where we could sit down and look at them together. One shows him on his first day of school, while another captures a beach holiday, where he is hugged tightly by Diana. She would just engulf you and squeeze you as tight as possible," he recalled, speaking to camera.

"And being as short as I was then, there was no escape, you were there and you were there for as long as she wanted to hold you.

"Even talking about it now I can feel the hugs that she used to give us and I miss that. I miss that feeling, I miss that part of a family, I miss having that mother to be able to give you those hugs and give you that compassion that I think everybody needs."

The Queens Worries

The Queen, the documentary reveals, was so concerned about Diana in her low points that she took a friend aside quietly at Balmoral to check on her welfare.

Harry Herbert, whose father was the 7th Earl of Carnarvon and racing manager to the Queen, said: I had a talk to the Queen about it at Balmoral.

The Queen wanted to talk to me about it because she was so worried about Diana. After a lunch at Balmoral and going [on a walk] up high and looking down onto this beautiful setting of heather and Castle, and an incredibly important chat. A very personal chat.

And the Queen wanted to know how was Diana feeling, and was it as bad as it was?

It was a sad discussion, a sad moment really because that was everything at its worst.

But he said, he had visited Diana at home in Kensington Palace when she was struggling, and even then her face would light up when her sons came thundering into her room.

Divorce

Before the trauma of Dianas death, Prince William and Prince Harry endured the fall-out from her divorce from the Prince of Wales, finalised in 1996 after a long and very public battle between their parents.

There was the point of where our parents split and the two of us were bouncing between the two of them and we probably didnt...we never saw our mother enough or we never saw our father enough, Prince Harry said.

You know there was a lot there was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the back seat with my brother, of which I would win.

So there was all of that to contend with. And I dont pretend that were the only people to have to deal with that. But it was, it was an interesting way of growing up.

Dianas Legacy

Exploring Dianas main causes, from HIV awareness to homelessness, the film also reveals her final, incomplete, challenge: landmines.

Prince Harry tells how he found a whole series of letters, around a month ago; dated August 31 and waiting for her to sign them.

She knew exactly what needed to be done, he youngest son said.

She was writing letters to certain people to say right,, this is what needs to happen in order for this whole sort of tidal wave to change.

And its only recently over the years that Ive actually really understood the effect that she was having in those areas and on an international scale as well.

In the film, he speaks with two young victims of landmines in Bosnia, telling them they had seen his mother more recently than he had.

She had spent time with them after learning they had been injured by mines, going on holiday to Paris just a few weeks later while Prince Harry was at Balmoral.

Their childhood outfits

In a light-hearted moment, Prince Harry speaks with mock-fury about the outfits he was compelled to wear as a child, saying he would love to ask his mother why she chose them.

The two young boys were regularly photographed in an array of elaborate and old-fashioned clothes, often matching.  I genuinely think that she got satisfaction out of dressing myself and William up in the most bizarre outfits, he said.

Normally matching. It was weird shorts and, like, little sort of shiny shoes with the old clip on. Looking back at the photos it just makes me laugh. I just think how could you do that to us.

One by one, he said, the Princess began to rebel, with William first refusing to match his brother and then Harry taking a stand.

So I like to think that she had great fun in dressing us up, he said. Im sure that wasnt it, but I sure as hell am going to dress my kids up the same way.

A Normal Life

Diana, her sons said, tried valiantly to teach them about a normal life, despite the privileges of their upbringing.

She made the decision that no matter what, despite all the difficulties of growing up in that limelight and on that stage, she was going to ensure that both of us had as normal life as possible, said Prince Harry.

And if that means taking us for a burger every now and then, or sneaking us into the cinema, or driving through the country lanes with the roof down of her old-school BMW listening to Enya I think it was...All of that was part of her being a mum.

Diana, the Prankster

If she strove for a normal life, Dianas love of pranks was anything but ordinary.

Described as a total kid through and through by Prince Harry, the late princess, she attempted to embarrass her sons at every opportunity, from sending rude cards to them at school to roping in supermodels to help her.

Prince William told how he once returned home, aged 12 or 13, to find pin-ups Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

I went bright red and didnt quite know what to say and sort of fumbled, and I think I pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up, he said I was completely and utterly sort of awestruck. But that was a very funny memory. Thats lived with me forever.

At other time, he said, she would post him the rudest cards you can imagine to boarding school, leaving him in fear of being spotted by a teacher.

Prince Harry recalled how she would smuggle sweets into their socks when she came to watch them playing football, saying they would walk back to their tuck box with their clothes bulging with treats.

If she worried about her sons following in her footsteps, it appears she did not show it.

Prince Harry said: One of her mottos to me was: you can be as naughty as you want, just dont get caught.

Granny Diana

If she excelled as a mother, Diana would have been an absolute nightmare as a grandmother, Prince William joked, as he discloses how he tries to keep her memory alive.

Saying he is constantly mentioning Granny Diana at home, he has also mounted more photographs so that Prince George and Princess Charlotte learn about her.

Its hard because obviously Catherine didnt know her, so she cannot really provide that level of detail, he said.

So I do regularly put George or Charlotte to bed, talk about her and just try and remind them that there are two grandmothers - there were two grandmothers - in their lives.

Asked how she would be like had she lived to enjoy the next stage of her family life, he added: Shed be a nightmare grandmother, absolute nightmare. Shed love the children to bits, but shed be an absolute nightmare.

Shed come and go and shed come in probably at bath time, cause an amazing amount of scene, bubbles everywhere, bathwater all over the place and then leave.

I want to make as much time and effort with Charlotte and George as I can because I realise that these early years particularly are crucial for children, and having seen, you know, what she did for us.

An earthquake

Dianas death, Prince William said, was like an earthquake, running through their lives with such shockwaves that it took a while to sink in.

Theres not many days that go by that I dont think of her, you know - sometimes sad, sometimes very positively, he said.

You know, I have a smile every now and again when someone says something and I think thats exactly what she would have said, or she would have enjoyed that comment.

So they always live with you people you lose like that. And my mother lives with me every day.

Prince Harry acknowledge it has been hard and it will continue to be hard, added: Theres not a day that William and I dont wish that she was still around, and we wonder what kind of a mother she would be now, and what kind of a public role she would have, and what a difference she would be making. You know, and of course as a son I would say this, she was the best mum in the world.

The programme, 'Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, will be broadcast on on Monday at 9pm on ITV.
Doha (AFP) - Qatar's ruler said Friday that the Gulf emirate is ready for dialogue to resolve a diplomatic crisis with a Saudi-led bloc so long as his country's sovereignty is respected.

"We are open to dialogue to resolve the outstanding problems," so long as Qatar's "sovereignty is respected," Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said in his first public comments since Saudi Arabia and its allies severed ties with gas-rich Qatar.

"Any settlement of the crisis must be based on two principles," he said in a televised speech.

Sheikh Tamim insisted that any deal "must not take effect in the form of diktats but rather through mutual commitments undertaken by all the parties".

"We are open to dialogue to find solutions to lingering problems within the framework of respect for the sovereignty and will of each state as mutual undertakings and joints commitments binding all," he said.

State media said ahead of the speech that the emir would address "the future orientation of Qatar in light of the current Gulf crisis".

On June 5, Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran. Doha denies the claim.

The emir said in his speech that Qatar was "fighting terrorism relentlessly and without compromises, and the international community recognises this".

The crisis between the regional allies is the worst to hit the Gulf in decades.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and its allies also imposed sanctions on Doha, including closing its only land border, refusing Qatar access to their airspace and ordering their citizens back from Qatar.

And on June 22, they went on to present the emirate with a list of 13 demands with which to comply to resolve the crisis.

Kuwait has been trying to mediate the crisis and several top Western diplomats have toured the region to try to defuse the row, including US Secretary of States Rex Tillerson.
Doha (AFP) - Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, is to address the nation Friday night in a televised speech, the first since Saudi Arabia and its allies severed ties with the emirate.

The official QNA news agency, quoting the emir's office, said Sheikh Tamim would deliver his speech at around 1900 GMT to address "the future orientation of Qatar in light of the current Gulf crisis".

On June 5, Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran. Doha denies the claim.

The crisis is the worst to hit the Gulf in decades.

Saudi Arabia and its allies also imposed sanctions on Doha, including closing its only land border, refusing Qatar access to their airspace and ordering their citizens back from Qatar.

And on June 22, they went on to present the emirate with a list of 13 demands with which to comply to resolve the crisis.

Kuwait has been trying to mediate the crisis and several top Western diplomats have toured the region to try to defuse the row, including US Secretary of States Rex Tillerson.
Kiev (AFP) - The new US special envoy on Ukraine said Sunday that Russia is responsible for the "hot war" in the country's east, after fresh clashes between government forces and Russian-backed rebels.

Kurt Volker, who was appointed this month as the State Department's special representative for negotiations to end more than three years of fighting, was visiting on the eve of telephone talks between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France on how to stem a conflict that has claimed 10,000 lives.

"This is not a frozen conflict, this is a hot war and it is an immediate crisis that we all need to address as quickly as possible," Volker said while visiting the government-controlled city of Kramatorsk in the war-torn Donetsk region.

"I wanted to come here... and to see firsthand the situation along the line of conflict," Volker, wearing a bulletproof vest, told journalists.

"It is truly a high degree of suffering, there was a high human cost to this conflict and that is another reason why it is so urgent that we address it."

His visit follows a fresh flare up in fighting in eastern Ukraine which has claimed the lives of 11 Ukrainian troops over the past few days, the most serious surge in bloodshed in recent months.

Ukraine and the West say Moscow has funnelled troops and arms across the border to fan the flames of the war in Europe's backyard.

Moscow has denied the allegations, despite overwhelming evidence that it has been involved in the fighting and its explicit political support for the rebels.

Volker agreed when asked whether he considered the conflict to be the result of Russian aggression rather than a Ukrainian civil war.

"We understand the way this conflict has begun, we understand the way it is being managed today and that is why it is important the US become more engaged," the former US ambassador to NATO said.

On Monday, Volker will have talks with Ukrainian authorities in Kiev and next week will visit France, Belgium, Austria and Britain before going back to Washington to make "some recommendations about exactly how the US can engage better".

The US and EU have imposed sanctions on Russia, but efforts to secure a peace Ukraine deal have ground to a halt as the fighting has dragged on.

The conflict, along with Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, has pushed ties between Moscow and the West to their lowest point since the Cold War.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia's ambassador to Washington was overheard by U.S. spy agencies telling his bosses that he had discussed campaign-related matters, including issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing current and former U.S. officials. A U.S. official confirmed to Reuters that Ambassador Sergei Kislyak's accounts of two conversations with Sessions, then a U.S. senator and key foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump, were intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was nothing automatically inappropriate about Sessions, then a U.S. senator as well as a Trump supporter, discussing policy matters or even Trump's thinking about them with a foreign diplomat. "The question is whether he crossed the line and discussed classified information or talked about deals like lifting sanctions if the Russians were interested in investing in the U.S. or had dirt on Secretary Clinton," said a second official familiar with the intercepts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. "His memory is another matter." Sessions at first failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said the meetings were not about the Trump campaign. As Attorney General, he recused himself in March from matters connected to an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and any connections to the Trump campaign following his admission that he had talked to the Russian envoy. Sessions has denied discussing campaign issues with Russian officials and has said that he only met Kislyak in his role of U.S. senator. The Post cited one U.S. official as saying that Sessions provided misleading statements that are contradicted by other evidence. The newspaper reported that a former official said that the intelligence indicates that Sessions and Kislyak had substantive discussions on matters including Trumps positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration. The Washington Post cited a Justice Department spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, as saying: Obviously I cannot comment on the reliability of what anonymous sources describe in a wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept that the Washington Post has not seen and that has not been provided to me. The Post said that Sessions did not discuss interference in the election. Trump said in a New York Times interview on Wednesday that he was disappointed by Sessions' move to recuse himself, but a White House spokeswoman said on Thursday that the president still had confidence in Sessions "or he would not be the attorney general." (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia's ambassador to Washington was overheard by U.S. spy agencies telling his bosses he had discussed campaign-related matters, including issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing current and former U.S. officials. Ambassador Sergei Kislyak's accounts of two conversations with Sessions, then a U.S. senator and key foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump, were intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies, the officials told the Post. Sessions at first failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said the meetings were not about the Trump campaign. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Sandra Maler)
(MONTCLAIR, N.J.)  A New Jersey home that has been vacant since the FBI arrested a family of undercover Russian spies living there is heading for sale. Vladimir and Lydia Guryev lived in the home in Montclair under the names Richard and Cynthia Murphy before they were arrested in 2010 along with eight other spies accused of leading double lives, complete with false passports, secret code words, fake names, invisible ink and encrypted radio.

The parents of two young daughters had pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country and were deported to Russia in exchange for four people convicted of betraying Moscow to the West being let out of prison there.

Their story partially inspired the FX drama The Americans, about two undercover Russian spies that live in the U.S. with two young children.

Lydia Guryev worked as an accountant in New York and was accused of using her financial contacts to pass information to Moscow.

NJ.com reports that investor Jeremy MacDonald is planning to renovate and then try to sell the home. He says he hopes it will sell for about $700,000 after doing about $200,000 in renovations, including repairing its yellow, chipped paint and dealing with overgrown bushes.

I didnt even know it used to be a Russian spy house, MacDonald said. The realtor Im currently working with showed me all the news articles about its history.

He said that he doesnt expect the Russian spy connection to help or hurt the sale.

Neighbors said that they are happy that the house will be fixed up after sitting empty for so long. One called it an eyesore.

Montclair is excited that this house will be renovated soon and lived in again, bringing a new family to the neighborhood, said Brian Wilde, Montclairs head of code enforcement.
Jake Tapper and Anthony Scaramucci on CNN on Sunday. (CNN)

Anthony Scaramucci, President Trumps freshly minted communications director, spent his first Sunday morning on the job sparring with CNNs Jake Tapper, telling the State of the Union host that his new boss is still not sure Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Scaramucci was asked if Trump was prepared to sign a bipartisan bill slapping new sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow for its meddling in the election. Scaramucci said he wasnt sure whether Trump would sign it.

Theres a lot of disinformation out there, Scaramucci explained. Somebody said to me the other day  I dont want to say who  if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it. You would have never had any evidence of them. Meaning that theyre superconfident in their deception skills and hacking.

Wait, wait, wait, Tapper interjected. Youre making a lot of assertions here. I dont know who this anonymous person is that said if the Russians had actually done it we wouldnt have been able to detect it.

How about its the president, Jake, Scaramucci said. He called me from Air Force One and basically said to me, This is  maybe they did it, maybe they didnt do it.

U.S. intelligence agencies, including the directors of the national intelligence, the FBI and NSA  all Trump appointees  have each concluded that Russia was behind the hacking during the 2016 campaign.

President Trump is contradicting it and youre siding with President Trump, an exasperated Tapper told Scaramucci. Dont you owe a duty to the truth?

Scaramucci said he isnt blindly siding with Trump, but that he didnt know enough about the issue to conclude whether the Kremlin interfered in the election.

Once Ive cleared my security clearances and looked at the stuff, if I think its true, Ill behind closed doors turn very directly to the president and say, Sir, I think this stuff is true,' Scaramucci said.

Story continues

But Scaramucci also made it clear that as Trumps communications director, it is his job to be the presidents advocate on a show like this, regardless of personal views.

Scaramucci  who was once critical of Trump and whose views on issues such as abortion, gun control and climate change differed from the presidents  spent part of his weekend deleting old tweets that could be seen as a distraction.

Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction. I serve @POTUS agenda & that's all that matters  Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 22, 2017

On Saturday morning, Trump went on a Twitter tirade, lashing out at multiple targets, including Obamacare, Hillary Clinton, two newspapers, his own administration and the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Trump also tweeted that everyone agrees the president has the complete power to pardon.

On Sunday, Scaramucci insisted that does not mean Trump is mulling a potential pardon.

While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

The president isnt thinking about pardoning anybody, Scaramucci said. Theres an undercurrent of nonsensical stuff.

The Russian thing is a nonsensical thing, he continued. I was there early on in the campaign. I didnt have any interactivity with the Russians. I didnt see anybody have any interactivity with Russians. It is a complete bogus and nonsensical thing  You guys have to manufacture these scandals to take the president off of his agenda. We are going to put the president right back on his agenda.

The Trump campaigns contacts with Russia are the subject of an FBI investigation and two separate congressional probes.

None of that is being manufactured, Tapper told Scaramucci. None.

On ABCs This Week, Jay Sekulow, Trumps personal attorney, claimed that no one in the White House has discussed whether the president has the power to pardon himself. Yet on CNN, Scaramucci said he discussed that subject with Sekulow.

I have talked to Jay Sekulow about that because hes a scholar, Scaramucci said.

Meanwhile, Scaramucci, who was named communications director Friday, said he plans to meet his staff on Monday to discuss leaks.

Tomorrow, Im going to be having a meeting with the communications staff and say, Hey, I dont like these leaks,' Scaramucci said. And so were going to stop the leaks. And if we dont stop the leaks, Im gonna stop you. Its just really that simple.

Scaramucci was also asked whether he would continue the recent Trump administration policy of often banning cameras from the daily White House briefing.

If youre asking me for my personal opinion  and maybe the president will be upset for giving my personal [opinion]  we should put the cameras on, he said. I dont think we need to have the cameras off. But if the president doesnt want the cameras on, guess what? Were not going to have the cameras on. Its going to really be up to him.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-13 21:22:58|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

ARUSHA, Tanzania, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's Drug Control and Enforcement Authority (DCEA) said Thursday they had seized 428 bags of marijuana on the slopes of Mount Meru.

Fredrick Kibute, a senior official of DCEA, described the consignment as one of the largest marijuana seizures in northern Tanzania this year.

He said that the 428 bags of marijuana was impounded in Engalaoni village in Arumeru District early Thursday.

"Our officials camped in the village for almost one week to unveil the haul of marijuana. But we managed to seize all the bags on Thursday morning when we carried out a house-to- house inspection," the official said.

He, however, said no one was found in those houses.

"The area where the bags were hidden has no roads, making it hard to be accessed by government officials and security forces ... there is no vehicle getting into the area. This is what encourages people to continue growing the illegal crop."

Kabute called upon Tanzanians particularly those living on the slopes of Mount Meru to stop from growing cannabis, which is prohibited in the East African nation.

Tanzania is one of the largest marijuana producers in Africa.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed the research firm responsible for the bombshell Russia dossier that contains unverified memos related to President Donald Trump's activities in Russia. An attorney for Fusion GPS cofounder Glenn Simpson rejected a request to voluntarily appear before a Senate Judiciary hearing next week, citing Simpson's vacation plans. The committee sought to question Simpson amid discussions about the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which comes in light of accusations that the firm played a role in setting up a June 2016 meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr., and former Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort. See more photos of Donald Trump and his son Donald Jr.:  The meeting was held under the pretense that the Trump campaign would receive damaging information on its rival, Hillary Clinton. Simpson has previously denied any untoward connection with Veselnitskaya, but said Fusion GPS did collaborate on a lawsuit with the Russian lawyer for two years, The Washington Post reported. Separately, Trump Jr. and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort have agreed to negotiate to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with documents and be interviewed by the panel before a public hearing. The committee said it will not issue subpoenas to force Trump Jr. and Manafort to appear at the Wednesday meeting, but would reserve the right to do so in the future. Here's a statement from the committee's ranking Democrat, Dianne Feinstein: "Glenn Simpson, through his attorney, has declined to voluntarily attend Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing regarding compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act," Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a statement on Friday. "Therefore, a subpoena has been issued to compel his attendance. Simpson's attorney has asserted that his client will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in response to the subpoena." Fusion GPS' work on the Trump-Russia dossier, which contains memos compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, was unrelated to the June 2016 Veselnitskaya/Trump Jr./Manafort meeting, The Washington Post reported, adding that work on the dossier was conducted on a different timeline. Trump has previously called the dossier "phony," but the FBI appears to be taking cues from it in its investigation of Russia's meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign in the 2016 US election. See Also:
Shark Week kicks off tonight on Discovery, and while yes, great whites are usually the star (whether or not theyre racing Michael Phelps), another species steps into the spotlight.

Great Hammerhead Invasion, premiering at 10 p.m., explores why great hammerheads, which can grow up to 20 feet long and are endangered globally, congregate each year off Bimini, the westernmost island of the Bahamas. Tristan Guttridge and his team at the Bimini Shark Lab have a theory: Many of them appear to be pregnant females. If the team can perform an ultrasound and confirm it, it could mean that Bimini is an important prenatal feeding ground for great hammerheads, who binge on stingrays before heading off to their pupping grounds.

As you see in the clip above, Guttridges initial plan is to perform an underwater ultrasound, which requires working with the sharks for days in advance to acclimate them to touch. Great hammerheads in particular do really poorly on capture. Theyre very sensitive. Theyre kinda like a Ferrari  they just have this incredible explosive power and sensitive chassis. So if they spend very long on a hook, they use up a lot of energy and they cant seem to replenish their oxygen stores and they just crash, and a lot of them will die, Guttridge tells Yahoo TV. So that was playing on my mind when I was trying to think, Well, how are we going to determine if these animals are pregnant or not? We had a unique situation where hammers were coming in, in shallow water, and theyre habituated to humans. Some of these larger migratory sharks are quite spooked around people, but because theyre being provisioned at this site, they spend a little bit more time with humans and theyre easier to access.

The specially designed handheld underwater ultrasound machine worked, however, he couldnt get enough contact with the hammers for a clear reading before it flooded. So the team moved on to Plan B, which was capturing a shark for a very short period of time to perform the ultrasound boatside. It was a first for me and a first for anyone in Bimini to ultrasound a great hammerhead. I dont think anyone has done it anywhere in the world, Guttridge says. As the technologys becoming handheld, its just opening up a whole host of options, which is really cool, especially because female hammerheads that are gravid are a really important animal to protect, more than other individuals within the population. Knowing where and when those particular individuals are going, and where theyre pupping, is crucial data for us.

Story continues

Thats the next step, Guttridge says, determining where the great hammerheads go when they leave Bimini (which is likely to Florida, to fatten up on blacktip sharks, and South Carolina). Although we have an inkling thats where they are pupping, we dont really know. And whether the same females are returning to the same grounds each year, or every couple of years, were not sure as well, and that clearly has important implications for managing their populations, Guttridge says. Theyre one of the most charismatic and enigmatic species out there. You often only come across maybe one great hammerhead, and in Bimini, were seeing between 20 and 30 different animals each year turning up and sticking around the island for a good three to four months. So its crazy not to explore the reasons why theyre in Bimini and also use the hammers in Bimini as a model to learn more about hammerhead biology in general.

Shark Week kicks off July 23 at 7 p.m. on Discovery and continues through July 30.

Read more from Yahoo TV:

Shark Week Sneak Peeks: Phelps vs. Shark, and Shark vs. Croc

Michael Phelps on His Shark Week Race With a Great White

Shark Weeks Return to the Isle of Jaws Has a Major Discovery

Shark Week: Charlize Theron, Tony Hale to Guest on Shark After Dark
Colombo (AFP) - Two young elephants washed out to sea were saved from drowning Sunday by the Sri Lankan navy in the second such incident off the island in as many weeks.

The navy said the pair of wild elephants were brought ashore after a "mammoth effort" involving navy divers, ropes and a flotilla of boats to tow them back to shallow waters.

Photos showed the elephants in distress, barely keeping their trunks above water in the deep seas about one kilometre off the coast of Sri Lanka.

"Having safely guided the two elephants to the shore, they were subsequently released to the Foul Point jungle (in Trincomalee district)," the navy said in a statement.

"They were extremely lucky to have been spotted by a patrol craft which called in several other boats to help with the rescue."

Two weeks ago, the navy mounted a similar operation in the same region to save a lone elephant washed eight kilometres (five miles) off the Sri Lankan coast into the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.

Navy officials say the animals were likely swept out while crossing shallow lagoons in the region.

They are not the only wildlife to encounter trouble in the biodiverse island.

In May, the navy and local residents saved a pod of 20 pilot whales that became stranded in Trincomalee, a natural harbour that is popular for whale watching.

The waters around Trincomalee, which were used by Allied forces as a staging post during World War II, have a high concentration of blue and sperm whales, while the surrounding jungles have herds of wild elephants.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android.
Damascus (AFP) - Syria's army announced Saturday a halt in fighting in parts of Eastern Ghouta after rebels and regime ally Russia agreed on how a safe zone will function for the besieged opposition enclave.

The army "announces a halt in fighting in some areas of Eastern Ghouta in Damascus province from midday on Saturday (0900 GMT)," it said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.

"The army will retaliate in a suitable manner to any violation" of the ceasefire, the statement said, without specifying what areas were included.

Russia said earlier Saturday it had signed a deal with "moderate" Syrian rebels at peace talks in Cairo on how a safe zone would function in Eastern Ghouta.

Eastern Ghouta is in one of four proposed "de-escalation zones" designated in an agreement reached by government allies Iran and Russia and rebel backer Turkey in May.

But the deal has yet to be fully implemented over disagreements on the monitoring mechanism for the safe zones.

The most recent talks in Kazakhstan this month between Russia, Turkey and Iran failed to iron out the details of the four safe zones.

Russia said the sides have now signed agreements under which "the borders of the de-escalation zone are defined as well as the deployment locations and powers of the forces monitoring the de-escalation".

It said the sides had also agreed "routes to supply humanitarian aid to the population and for free movement of residents".

Russia said it plans to send in the first humanitarian convoy and evacuate the wounded "in the next few days."

The Eastern Ghouta region, a major rebel stronghold near the capital, has been the frequent target of government military operations.

More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since its conflict broke out in March 2011 with anti-government protests.
Amman (AFP) - Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the Jordanian capital on Friday to condemn Israel's latest security measures at a highly sensitive holy site in annexed east Jerusalem.

A crowd estimated to number more than 8,000 turned out for a demonstration called by Islamist movements and leftist parties in Jordan, which has a 2004 peace treaty with Israel.

In the capital, the protesters set off on a march from the Al-Husseini Grand Mosque in central Amman.

"With our soul, with our blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Al-Aqsa," the mosque in Jerusalem's Old City at the heart of the dispute, they chanted.

"We will go to Al-Aqsa in our millions as martyrs," vowed the crowd, whose country is the official custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and where more than half of the population is of Palestinian origin, as protesters set ablaze and trampled an Israeli flag.

In Jerusalem, Palestinian protesters on Friday clashed with Israeli forces outside the Old City.

Israeli ministers have decided not to order the removal of metal detectors erected at entrances to the Haram al-Sharif mosques compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, following an attack nearby a week ago that killed two policemen.

In anticipation of fresh protests, Israeli police barred men under 50 from entering Jerusalem's Old City for the weekly Friday prayers.
President Trump walks off Air Force One on Saturday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

President Trump followed up Saturdays Twitter tirade with a pair of tweets on Sunday saying that it is very sad Republicans are doing very little to protect him  and admitted that the investigation into his campaigns possible contacts with Russia, while phony, is taking hold.

As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2017

It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2017

Earlier Sunday, Anthony Scaramucci, Trumps new communications director, said that despite the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies  including his own directors of national intelligence, national security and the FBI  the president is still not sure Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Theres a lot of disinformation out there, Scaramucci told CNNs Jake Tapper when asked whether Trump was prepared to sign a bipartisan bill slapping new sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow over its meddling in the election.

Somebody said to me the other day  I dont want to say who  if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it, he continued. You would have never had any evidence of them. Meaning that theyre superconfident in their deception skills and hacking.

Wait, wait, wait, Tapper interjected. Youre making a lot of assertions here. I dont know who this anonymous person is that said if the Russians had actually done it we wouldnt have been able to detect it.

How about its the president, Jake, Scaramucci said. He called me from Air Force One and basically said to me, This is  maybe they did it, maybe they didnt do it.

Story continues

Related: Kellyanne Conway explains what she meant by alternative facts

On Saturday morning, Trump lashed out on Twitter at multiple targets, including Obamacare, Hillary Clinton, two newspapers, his own administration and the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Trump also announced that all agree that the president has the complete power to pardon.

While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

But Scaramucci insisted on Sunday that the president isnt thinking about pardoning anyone.

The Russian thing is a nonsensical thing, Scaramucci said. I was there early on in the campaign. I didnt have any interactivity with the Russians. I didnt see anybody have any interactivity with Russians. It is a complete bogus and nonsensical thing  You guys have to manufacture these scandals to take the president off of his agenda. We are going to put the president right back on his agenda.

The Trump campaigns contacts with Russia, including Donald Trump Jr.s controversial pre-election meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, are the subject of an FBI investigation and two separate congressional probes.

None of that is being manufactured, Tapper told Scaramucci. None.

Meanwhile, Scaramucci, who was named communications director Friday, said he plans to meet his staff on Monday to discuss leaks  something Trump has often railed against in response to the explosive stories that come from them.

Tomorrow, Im going to be having a meeting with the communications staff and say, Hey, I dont like these leaks,' Scaramucci said. And so were going to stop the leaks. And if we dont stop the leaks, Im gonna to stop you. Its just really that simple.'

Read more from Yahoo News:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anthony Scaramucci, the Trump administration's new communications director, has yet to get approval from U.S. regulators to sell his hedge fund firm to a group led by Chinese conglomerate HNA, according to a person familiar with the matter. Scaramucci agreed in January to sell SkyBridge Capital LLC to clear the way for a job working with U.S. President Donald Trump. That role finally materialized on Friday when Trump shook up his administration, prompting the resignation of White House spokesman Sean Spicer. But the sale of SkyBridge has yet to get the green light from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews acquisitions by foreign entities for potential national security risks. Many of the heads of the government departments and agencies comprising CFIUS are political appointees, and it is chaired by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Scaramucci told Reuters in May that he expected the sale of SkyBridge to get U.S. regulatory approvals in June. A representative of SkyBridge did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Reuters reported this week that CFIUS has become increasingly reluctant to approve deals. The president has the power to veto recommendations made by CFIUS although this has never happened before. HNA is among a number of acquisitive Chinese firms currently under a spotlight in China over the potential risks from domestic companies going on overseas buying sprees. Best known as the owner of Hainan Airlines Co <600221.SS>, HNA group plans to acquire a majority stake in SkyBridge through its financial arm HNA Capital as part of an expansion into asset management. Scaramucci told Reuters in May that he had, separate from the sale of his business, discussed partnerships with HNA. (Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis. Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan. Writing by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
By Julia Edwards Ainsley and John Walcott WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. investigators examining money laundering accusations against President Donald Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort hope to push him to cooperate with their probe into possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia, two sources with direct knowledge of the investigation said. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team is examining Manafort's financial and real estate records in New York as well as his involvement in Ukrainian politics, the officials said. Between 2006 and 2013, Manafort bought three New York properties, including one in Trump Tower in Manhattan. He paid for them in full and later took out mortgages against them. A former senior U.S. law enforcement official said that tactic is often used as a means to hide the origin of funds gained illegally. Reuters has no independent evidence that Manafort did this. The sources also did not say whether Mueller has uncovered any evidence to charge Manafort with money laundering, but they said doing so is seen by investigators as critical in getting his full cooperation in their investigation. "If Mueller's team can threaten criminal charges against Manafort, they could use that as leverage to convince him to cooperate," said one of the sources. Manaforts spokesman, Jason Maloni, said, Paul Manafort is not a cooperating witness. Once again there is no truth to the disinformation put forth by anonymous sources and leakers. Manafort is seen as a key figure in the investigation because of his senior role in the campaign and his participation in a June 2016 meeting that included the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., close adviser Jared Kushner and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The meeting was called after the lawyer offered damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Mueller's team asked the White House on Friday to preserve all of its communications about that meeting. Mueller is examining contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates during and after the Nov. 8 presidential election as part of a broader investigation into whether Russia tried to sway the election in favor of Trump. Manafort became Trump's campaign manager in June 2016 but was forced to resign two months later amid reports of his business relationship with the Kremlin-backed former Ukrainian leader, Viktor Yanukovich. Manafort previously worked as a consultant to a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine and helped support Yanukovich. According to a financial audit reported by the New York Times, he also once owed $17 million to Russian shell companies. Former Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was investigating Manafort's real estate dealings before he was fired by Trump in March, and Mueller has now assumed control of that investigation, one of the sources said. Bharara was not available for comment on his investigation on Friday. (Writing by Julia Ainsley; Editing by Yara Bayoumy, Kieran Murray and Ross Colvin)
Afghan security personnel sit on an armoured vehicles amid an ongoing battle with Taliban militants - AFP

A US airstrike has killed 16 policemen in Afghanistan, officials said Saturday, the latest setback to Washington's efforts to bring peace to the war-torn country.

The incident took place in Helmand province on Friday as Afghan security forces attempted to clear a village of Taliban militants, Salam Afghan, a police spokesman, told AFP.

"In the strike, 16 Afghan policemen were killed including two commanders. Two other policemen were wounded," he said.

The strike hit a compound in Gereshk district in Helmand, large parts of which are under Taliban control.

Afghan security force members are in an ongoing battle against the Taliban Credit: Xinhua / Barcroft Images

"A US-supported (Afghan security) operation... resulted in the deaths of... friendly Afghan forces who were gathered in a compound," Nato's mission in Afghanistan said in a statement.

"We would like to express our deepest condolences to the families affected by this unfortunate incident," the statement said, adding there would be a probe into what happened.

This follows the news that the son of Taliban leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada died on Thursday carrying out a suicide attack in Helmand.

Abdur Rahman, 23, also known as Hafiz Khalid, was driving a vehicle laden with explosives into an Afghan military base in the town of Gereshk, north of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, the Taliban's main spokesman for southern Afghanistan, said.

A US Marine talks with Afghan National Army soldiers during a training in Helmand province Credit: REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

He said Abdur Rahman had been a madrassa student but had wanted to carry out a suicide attack. "He succeeded in his mission last Thursday," he said.

Taliban fighters drove three captured Humvee vehicles into checkpoints during heavy fighting around Gereshk on Thursday.

One senior Taliban member, close to Haibatullah's family, said Abdur Rahman had enrolled as a suicide bomber before his father became leader of the Taliban last year and had insisted on continuing after his father took office.

Mullah Haibatullah took over leadership of the Taliban after his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour died in a US drone strike in Pakistan in May, 2016.

Story continues

"Before this, a number of close relatives and family members of previous supreme leaders had conducted suicide bombings but Sheikh Haibatullah has become the first supreme leader whose son sacrificed his life," the senior Taliban member said.

A government official said security authorities were investigating the incident and could not confirm that Mullah Haibatullah's son had been killed.

People greet the Afghan security officials as they took control of the Nawa district following an operation against Taliban militants in Helmand earlier this month Credit: EPA/WATAN YAR

The incident in Gereshk came as fighting in Helmand, source of most of Afghanistan's opium crop, has intensified in recent days following the end of the harvest season.

The insurgents control much of the province and threaten Lashkar Gah but government forces, backed by US airstrikes, have launched an operation to drive them back from around the provincial capital.

In addition to the fighting in Helmand, there have also been reports of heavy fighting in other areas of the country, from Kunduz and Baghlan province in the north to Farah province in the west.

An interior ministry spokesman, Najeeb Danish, said a ministry delegation had been sent to the area to investigate and help families of the victims.

Helmand for years was the centrepiece of the US and British military intervention in Afghanistan.

But the Taliban now effectively controls or contests 10 of Helmand's 14 districts, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency.
Washington (AFP) - Embattled US Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed campaign-related issues with the Russian ambassador to Washington during the presidential race -- something Sessions has insisted he did not do, The Washington Post reported late Friday.

The paper quoted current and former administration officials who cited US intelligence intercepts of Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's accounts to his bosses in Moscow of two encounters he had with Sessions, then an adviser to Trump, during the campaign.

The report is certain to add more pressure on Sessions, whose job security is seen as being in jeopardy after President Donald Trump criticized him in scathing terms in an interview this week with The New York Times, saying he was sorry he had hired him.

Trump said he regretted the hiring because Sessions in March recused himself from overseeing an FBI-led probe into Russian meddling in the election in Trump's favor and whether the Trump team colluded in that effort.

Sessions recused himself in March after it was disclosed that he had in fact met with the ambassador during the campaign, after saying during his confirmation hearing that he had not met with any Russian officials during that period.

But Sessions insisted when he recused himself that he had not talked about the US election campaign with the ambassador.

"I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign," he said at the time.

However, Kislyak, in briefing his superiors on the meetings, said he and Sessions discussed campaign-related matters including policy issues important to Moscow, the Post said.

It quoted one former official as saying the intercepts suggest Sessions and Kislyak had "substantive" talks on issues including Trump's positions on Russia-related subjects and prospects for bilateral relations in a Trump administration.

Sessions' account -- he has said he recalls meeting only once with the ambassador -- provided "misleading" statements that are "contradicted by other evidence," a separate US official said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-20 21:39:47|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

Video Player Close

ADDIS ABABA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Amity Foundation, an Independent Chinese social development organization, launched a four million yuan (591,000 U.S. dollars) drought relief project on Thursday that's expected to benefit 50,000 people in Ethiopia's Somali regional state.

Speaking at the launching ceremony in Ethiopia's capital city Addis Ababa, He Wen, Deputy General Secretary of Amity Foundation said the project, with funding from the Chinese government, is part of Amity's program to create a healthier and harmonious world.

"The 4 million Renminbi will provide safe drinking water and hygiene kits for the drought hit Somali regional state in Ethiopia benefiting 50,000 people," said Counselor Lin Zhimin of the Chinese embassy in Ethiopia.

Amity in 2016 alone received 200 million yuan, 80 percent of which came from China, to work on community governance, philanthropy, international expansion, innovative development, research and advocacy and institutional capacity.
Jezebel

Its been nearly two decades since actress and former Scientologist, Leah Remini, has been looking for Shelly Miscavige, the missing wife (and First Lady) of the Church of Scientologys de facto leader, David Miscavige. Shes dedicated entire episodes of her A&E series to her investigation, mentioned it innumerable times in the press, and even confronted church officials with questions at Tom Cruises 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes. Now, via viral thread on Twitter, Remini has detailed a new devel
How close did Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford get on the set of Blade Runner 2049? So close that the La La Land star felt totally comfortable photobombing  and then poking  the former Han Solo on the movies San Diego Comic-Con press line. As youll see in the exclusive video above, Ford is in the midst of chatting with Yahoo Movies when Gosling sidles by with a big smile, and tweaks his co-star on the back. Hes impossible, Ford sighs. But its clear he means that in the nicest way possible. I loved working with Denis [Villeneuve, the sequels director] and this guy, he says, referring to his prankish photobomber. Gosling agrees: You couldnt get a better co-star or collaborator.

That collaboration is on full display in the most recent trailer for the film, which was screened again as part of the Warner Bros. Comic-Con panel. An all-new clip was also shown, one that featured Goslings character, Officer K of the LAPD, gathering intel on Fords long-missing blade runner (future slang for cyborg hunter) Rick Deckard, the conflicted hero of Ridley Scotts 1982 sci-fi classic.

2049 picks up the narrative 30 years after the events of the original film, and sets us down in an Earth that has only grown more dystopian with the passage of time. I didnt want anyone else to fk it up, Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve told the Comic-Con crowd about why he took on the seemingly impossible task of following in Scotts footsteps. It was my favorite movie of all time growing up and its part of my birth, my desire to be a filmmaker.

For his part, Ford feels that the sequel is definitely of a piece with what came before. We have a script that I think flowed naturally from the story of the first film, he tells Yahoo Movies. [Its] a really engaging opportunity to create new relationships and new characters. It also isnt lost on Ford that this is the latest example of him returning to a character hes played in the past, coming on the heels of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (A fifth Indiana Jones film is scheduled to arrive in 2020.) Asked during the panel whether its his life goal to reboot all of his iconic characters, Ford replied with a good-natured growl: You bet your ass it is.

Story continues

Does that mean we can expect to see footage from Working Girl 2 at SDCC next year?

Keep coming back to Yahoo Movies for the latest from San Diego Comic-Con 2017.

Read more from Yahoo Movies:
In President Donald Trumps operations, experience often takes a back seat to familiarity, trust, and a keen eye for what pleases the boss. So it made sense that Anthony Scaramucci was brimming with confidence when he took to the White House podium Friday, just hours after being named Trumps new communications director.

Scaramucci, a smooth-talking New York financier, has almost no experience in Washington politics other than as a writer of checks to members of both parties. But he knows both his audience and his way around a television camera, and spent much of his first 34 minutes at the podium emphasizing the close personal affection he has for his new boss.

The appointment of Scaramucci, which triggered the resignation of beleaguered White House press secretary Sean Spicer, may mark a turning point in an administration that is increasingly under fire. His hiring signals that a President increasingly irritated by the Russia scandals and congressional stalemate is putting his instincts ahead of the counsel of his most trusted hands.

In hiring Scaramucci, Trump overruled the advice of his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and chief of staff, Reince Priebus. Even Spicers decision to thrown down a him-or-me gauntlet didnt persuade the President. Instead Trump relied on the guidance of his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom pushed for the move.

For six months, Trump had tried it the Washington way, hiring veteran Republican hands to lead his communications shop. But both Spicer and former communications director Mike Dubke, who resigned at the end of May, lacked the most important currency in the Trump realm: a rapport with the boss. Neither was sure of their place in his orbit, and therefore neither could speak authoritatively for the President. Spicer, a Washington fixture best known as a strategist and flack for the Republican National Committee, labored under the impossible task of defending a President who never quite trusted him and often embarrasses his press shop by contradicting their answers.

Story continues

Within seconds of taking the podium, Scaramucci proved he was in a very different situation. His first act was announcing that Sarah Sanders, Spicers deputy, would be the outgoing press secretarys replacement. Naming such hires is a task traditionally left to the president.

Scaramucci, a Harvard-educated lawyer, has spent his career navigating the hard-charging New York finance scene. He isnt the first wealthy financier to find a valued place in Trumps inner orbit. Trump has demonstrated a penchant for placing trust in those whose success is independent of his, like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn.

The new hires easy demeanor and self-effacing answers about his past failures and middle-class upbringing drew an instant contrast from the man he was replacing. And he hewed to a cardinal rule of life in the Trump employ: keep the focus on the chief. Scaramuccis obsequious display of fealty and devotion may have elicited groans, but they were tailor-made for an extra special audience of one. Im very, very loyal to the President, he declared, adding at least four times that he loves the man in the Oval Office.

Scaramucci dodged questions about the ongoing Russia probe, saying hed yet to have been briefed by the White House Counsel on the limits of what he can say in public. But he failed to avoid some of the same pitfalls that have plagued his predecessor, as he found himself defending Trumps unfounded claim that 3 million or more illegal votes were cast in 2016. Theres probably some level of truth to that, Scaramucci said. (There isnt.) And he dismissed pessimism over the GOPs healthcare bill and the presidents dismal poll numbers.

The president has really good karma, and the world turns back to him, Scaramucci said of the healthcare bill.

Pressed on Trumps approval ratings, Scaramucci went further, spinning a yarn about how poll numbers are only an accurate reflection of a moment in time. The American people are actually playing a long game, he said. And I think they really, really love the president.

It was just the sort of answer the president loves.
The iPhone 9 is coming. Its an easy assumption to make: Apple has released a new flagship smartphone every year since 2007, the company is a juggernaut of the mobile industry, and the iPhone practically reinvented cell phones. Apple will almost certainly release an iPhone in 2018. Even several months before a still hypothetical launch, reports are surfacing that the company has already made some crucial decisions.

Rumors about a phone set to launch in fall 2018 seem farfetched, but its important to bear in mind that the iPhone 8, the device expected to launch this year, has been heavily rumored since early last year. A 5.8-inch OLED display in a phone the same size as the 4.7-inch iPhone 7, a dual lens camera, wireless charging the key selling points of the upcoming device have been known for a while.

In traditional fashion, Apple has not said a word about either phone, as the company tends to avoid revealing too much about its future plans. A notable exception was the companys announcement in April that its working on a redesigned Mac Pro due for launch in 2018, but because the news was so out of character, commentators immediately assumed that something was wrong and that Apple was trying to reassure its professional users. The iPhone is a massive cash cow for Apple, capturing 79 percent of all global smartphone profits last year, so its unlikely the company will do anything different from its usual quiet approach.

Despite that secrecy, there are a few details out there about the iPhone 9. Heres what reports are claiming:

It will be called the iPhone 9

A report published by Korea Economic Daily on Thursday claims that the 2018 model will be dubbed the iPhone 9. This sounds surprising, as until now Apple has alternated years between introducing a new numbered version: the iPhone 4 came out in 2010, the iPhone 5 in 2012, the iPhone 6 in 2014, and the iPhone 7 in 2016. Odd-year releases have been S versions that keep the phones design but change the internals.

Story continues

For 2017, the company is heavily rumored to introduce three new models: an iPhone 7S and 7S Plus, in keeping with previous patterns, but also an iPhone 8 priced higher than the other two that redesigns the device. If that and an iPhone 9 in 2018 are happening, it would represent a major shift in Apples naming strategy.

It will have an L-shaped battery

This nugget, from the same report, suggests Apple will use the same unique battery layout expected to debut in the iPhone 8. The company will stack the logic board to make room in the lower corner of the device. To make the most of that arrangement, Apple will split the battery out into two cells to extend the lower cell into the new gap:

In the iPhone 8, this is expected to offer 2,700 milliampere hours of capacity in a device the same size as the iPhone 7, which only has 1,960 mAh. LG is rumored to be the sole supplier of these batteries.

It will have an OLED screen

The expected iPhone 8 will feature an OLED screen, while the 7S and 7S Plus will only feature the thicker and heavier traditional LCD screen. This is rumored to change next year. Nikkei reported earlier this month that Apple wants every phone it releases next fall to come with an OLED screen.

The original iPhone compared to the iPhone 8.

OLED screens are also different from their LCD predecessors because they can produce perfect blacks. The display switches off areas displaying the black, rather than LCDs that shine a backlight across every pixel. This makes elements on a black background appear as if they are floating. It also means Apple can extend the screen to the far edges of the bezel, as OLED allows for non-square screen shapes. The technology has made an appearance in numerous Android phones over the years, and it seems Apple is ready to take the jump.

It could come in two sizes

While the iPhone 8 is only expected to launch in one screen size  5.8 inches  the 9 will reportedly come in both 5.28-inch and 6.46-inch display sizes. The latter screen would be huge in the smartphone world. The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, already seen as an incredibly large phone, only clocks in at 6.2 inches:

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus smartphones.

A report from The Bell in May claimed that Samsung has signed a deal with Apple to supply the displays, with shipments estimated to reach 180 million. Curiously enough, this report also refers to the 2018 device as the iPhone 9.

It will have a faster processor

A report from DigiTimes claims Apple is expected to ask TSMC to produce the next-generation processor, likely dubbed Apple A12. Samsung may also produce some of the chips. The two companies produced the chips for the iPhone 6S, but Apple switched solely to TSMC for the 7.

The iPhone 9s chip is expected to use a transistor channel length of seven nanometers, where the iPhone 8 will use a 10 nanometer chip. In laymans terms, the processor should have more computing power and less power consumption demands.

Photos via Benjamin Geskin, Flickr / pestoverde, Gabriele Barni/Flickr
Akannae Ayine Ebenezer, a science student of the Navrongo SHS in the Upper East, has eight As in the recently-concluded WASSCE, but risks missing out on university education.

Click here to get the latest trending news in Ghana.

Akannae Ayine Ebenezer. Image Credit: 3news.com

Ebenezer found out when the results were released on Wednesday that he had A in all the subjects he sat for, including Physics, Core Maths, Elective Maths and Chemistry.

However, poverty is threatening to shatter his dreams of going to the university to become a medical doctor, according to a report by 3news.com.

Ebenezer's parents are said to be very poor.

His mother reportedly washes people's clothes while his father does farming in Kumasi.

Due to the inability of his parents to properly cater for him, the Presbyterian Church in Bolgatanga adopted him.

Ebenezer's guardian is said to be appealing to members of the public for support to finance his university education.

On social media, Ghanaians urged Ebenezer's guardian to seek support from the scholarship secretariat.

YEN.com.gh readers also offered to help the young man achieve his dream of going to university to become a doctor:

Some of them also encouraged Ebenezer with prayers and words of support.

READ ALSO: Lil Win disrespected me twice - Wayoosi reveals Lil Win disrespected me twice - Wayoosi reveals

Share your views on this story with us in our comments section below.

Do you have an inspiring story to share? Get featured! We are on Facebook and can be reached via email at info@YEN.com.gh.

Source: YEN.com.gh
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 00:33:45|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- As the White House continues to weigh its options to deal with the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, a new poll found that a majority of Americans believe the United States should mostly use diplomacy instead of military action.

According to the NBC/SurveyMonkey National Security poll released early this week, 59 percent of Americans believe that U.S. President Donald Trump should mostly use diplomacy in dealing with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), compared to 35 percent who favor military action over diplomacy.

Opinions about how the Trump administration should handle the issue differ largely by party, the poll also found.

While 76 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners prefer diplomacy to military action in dealing with the DPRK nuclear issue, 56 percent of Republican and Republican-leaners say the United States should mostly use military action.

Tension has remained high on the Korean Peninsula over the past months between the United States and the DPRK over the U.S. threat to stage military attacks against Pyongyang in response to its nuclear and missile programs.

The United States and South Korea also held their largest-ever joint military exercises in the past months. At the end of April, the USS Carl Vinson nuclear aircraft carrier task group arrived in the waters off the Korean Peninsula for a separate joint naval exercise with South Korea.

However, a joint statement by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said in April that Trump aims to use economic sanctions and diplomatic measures to pressure the DPRK to dismantle its nuclear and missile programs.

The statement also said that the United States remained "open to negotiations" toward peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula while staying "prepared to defend ourselves and our allies."
- Former president Mahama is reported signing a secret energy contract for Namibia

- A Namibian news portal has laid claim to the former president leading investors from UAE

- Click here for the latest stories in Ghana

It has emerged that former president John Dramani Mahama could be brokering some energy deals for Namibia.

Mahama in a handshake with the Namibian president (photo:namibian.com.na)

READ ALSO: Nana Addo to investigate all debts under NDC

An article from a Namibian news portal titled; "UAE interested in Namibian electricity sector" reveals that Mr Mahama is attracting some investors from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to invest in the Namibian energy sector.

Because of Namibia's strategic geographical location, it has been identified as one of the countries to produce energy, Mahama is quoted as telling the Namibian president, Geingob.

The report further reveals that the former president was nominated by the African Development Bank (AfDB) to advocate African energy infrastructural investment.

The UAE has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world and has committed billions of dollars to infrastructure investment, including in the electricity sector, across Africa. The UAE has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world and has committed billions of dollars to infrastructure investment, including in the electricity sector, across Africa.

Do you have any story to share with YEN? Get featured! We are available on Facebook and email via info@yen.com.gh

Source: YEN.com.gh
- Dr Kwame Addo Kufuor has urged President Nana Akufo-Addo to delay free SHS by one or two years

- In an interview with Kumasi-based Nkyira FM, the former defence minister said the delay would ensure the successful implementation of the programme

- He said "Free SHS" was a good policy, but that wrong implementation of the policy would destroy the quality of secondary school education in Ghana.

Click here to get the latest trending news in Ghana.

Dr Kwame Addo-Kufuor, a former defence minister, has urged president Nana Akufo-Addo to delay the start of the free secondary school education (Free SHS) policy by one or two years.

Dr Kwame Addo-Kufuor

READ ALSO: Photos of Yaw Dabo's stunning girlfriend driver people crazy online

This, the former minister, said would enable the government put measures in place that would ensure the successful implementation of programme.

Dr Addo-Kufuor told Kumasi-based Nkyira FM that the "Free SHS" was a good policy and a laudable initiative.

He, however, warned that if wrongly implemented, the policy will destroy the quality of education at the secondary level in Ghana.

He said the one or two-year break will allow the government to raise money and also put measures in place for a successful implementation.

President Nana Akufo-Addo

Dr Addo-Kufuor said although Akufo-Addo has promised Ghanaians that the policy will start this year, he should plead with them to postpone the implementation for a better delivery.

According to him, rushing to implement the programme may do more harm than good.

"Free SHS" is scheduled to start in September 2017.

READ ALSO: Navrongo SHS students gets 8 As in WASSCE but cannot go to university due to poverty (photo)

Share your views on this story with us in our comments section below. Do you have an inspiring story to share? Get featured!

We are on Facebook and can be reached via email at info@YEN.com.gh.

Source: YEN.com.gh
File photo taken on Jan. 23, 2017 shows White House press Secretary Sean Spicer speaks during his first daily briefing at the White House in Washington D.C.,the United States. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, July 21 (Xinhua) -- White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer resigned Friday, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump appointed New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as the new White House communications director.

Spicer stepped down after telling President Trump he strongly disagreed with Scaramucci's appointment, U.S. media outlets reported.

"It's been an honor & a privilege to serve @POTUS @realDonaldTrump & this amazing country," Spicer tweeted after multiple U.S. news outlets broke the news of his abrupt resignation.

"I will continue my service through August," Spicer said.

According to media reports, Spicer, along with his ally Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, believed Scaramucci lacked the qualification for the post that he was offered.

"I am grateful for Sean's work on behalf of my administration and the American people," Trump said in a statement, adding "I wish him continued success as he moves on to pursue new opportunities: just look at his television ratings."

Trump later tweeted that "Sean Spicer is a wonderful person who took tremendous abuse from the Fake news media -- but his future is bright!"

In the White House daily briefing on Friday, Scaramucci announced that Principle Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders will replace Spicer.

"The president loves Sarah, he thinks she is doing a phenomenal job, I agree with him," he said.

Scaramucci also downplayed reports saying that he has had a tense and fraught relationship with both Spicer and Priebus, saying "I don't have any friction with Sean. I don't have any friction with Reince."

"If we have a little bit of friction inside the White House as a result of that, it's OK. We can all live with that. I'm a businessperson. I'm used to dealing with friction," he said.

Spicer has been a controversial figure in the White House since he started his early press briefings with a confrontational manner toward journalists.

Spicer was also known for giving the cold shoulder to traditional mainstream media and calling on previously lesser-known outlets more often.

The rocky start with the press has led to mockery and criticism from the media and spurred rumors of his possible departure just weeks after entering the new administration.

In a widely acclaimed sketch produced by comedy show Saturday Night Live, U.S. actress Melissa McCarthy acted out some of Spicer's worst blunders, including his untrue claim that this year's inaugural ceremony was attended by more people than that of Barack Obama's.

It is yet unclear what Spicer will pursue next. The 45-year-old has served as the communications director of the Republican National Committee and enjoyed some level of recognition within the conservative group.

Scaramucci, 53, is a U.S. political figure and financier who has worked in various banks and other financial institutions.

He was previously involved in a story released by CNN, which linked him to a Russian investment fund. CNN later retracted the story citing unmet editorial standards.

Scaramucci is set to fill the position vacated by the previous communications director Mike Dubke in early June.
Messages are seen at a memorial site outside Chester Bennington's private residence in Palos Verdes, California, the United States, on July 21, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhao Hanrong)

by Peter Mertz

DENVER, the United States, July 22 ( Xinhua) -- With each passing hour, another American celebrity posts words of dismay and sadness on social media, in reaction to Chester Bennington's suicide Thursday.

"Rest in peace ... my heart goes out to all the family left behind," blockbuster superstar Katy Perry said in a tweet.

"If you're suffering as well, don't be ashamed to talk to someone about it," Perry said, a reference to Bennington's lifelong struggle with depression that finally claimed him.

"Chester was one of the kindest men I've had on my show," said ABC talk show host Jimmy Kimmel on Twitter. "My heart breaks for his family and friends. He will be missed terribly."

Bennington's loss was mourned from Rihanna to the heir to the British throne, Prince William, who had announced that he was a Linkin Park fan.

Bennington, the lead vocalist of rap-metal band Linkin Park, died at the age of 41, and leaves behind six children from two marriages.

His body was discovered at his home in Southern California on what would have been the 53rd birthday of Chris Cornell, another rock icon and a close friend of Bennington.

Cornell killed himself about two months ago, a loss that devastated Bennington, friends said. Bennington sang Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at Cornell's funeral.

"It is a sad day today to know that so many of us will no longer share in your laughter, friendship and love," said a statement entitled "Chester" from Bennington's former band mates at the Stone Temple Pilots.

"You showed us time and time again what it is to be an incredible human being. A beacon of light and hope is what you will always be to us. We love you Chester. We will miss you."

Rap-rock band Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst shared a picture of Bennington on Instagram with the words "Gonna miss you."

Like Perry, the rock band Placebo warned on Facebook of the "life-threatening nature of the twin demons of addiction and depression."

Flowers, messages and candles are placed at a memorial site outside Chester Bennington's private residence in Palos Verdes, California, the United States, on July 21, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhao Hanrong)

Known as the frontman of Linkin Park, Bennington's loud, painful music is heard by hundreds of millions of people across the planet.

His band sold 27 million albums in the United States last year and his hit song "In the End" has been heard 339 million times on YouTube.

Bennington joined the Southern California band in the late 1990s. Their release "Hybrid Theory" in 2000 became a massive hit, followed by its enduring success later on.

Aside from the glory, Bennington had a difficult life, starting with his miserable childhood. His parents divorced when he was 11, he was separated from his mother, and he also became a victim of violent sexual abuse by an older boy.

The sexual abuse began when Bennington was 7 and continued until he was 13, when he had summoned up enough courage to tell his father about it. Bennington declined to pursue charges when he found out that his abuser was also a victim.

Bennington talked about his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, as well as depression in an interview earlier this year with Music Choice, a U.S. company that programs music and produces music-related content.

"My whole life, I've just felt a little off," he admitted.

"I find myself getting into these patterns of behavior or thought -- especially when I'm stuck up here [in my head]; I like to say that, this is like a bad neighborhood, and I should not go walking alone," Bennington said.

Linkin Park band members filmed a Carpool Karaoke episode for James Corden's late night talk show just days before Bennington passed away. "This was supposed to be happy and exciting, now everyone will be watching with tears in their eyes," fan Demi Bellini posted on Facebook.

Reactions to the artist's death flowed across social media the entire day and are expected to continue.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 04:40:20|Editor: Yurou Liang

Video Player Close

CAPE TOWN, July 22 (Xinhua) -- President Jacob Zuma on Saturday reiterated his call for radical socio-economic transformation to correct the wrongs of apartheid.

South Africa has high rates of unemployment (which hovers around 27 percent) because of the structure of the economy and labour market -- another direct effect of apartheid, Zuma said at the launch of the Truman Magubane Family Foundation in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal Province.

The foundation is aimed at supporting underprivileged children in various fields. Magubane, 74, is an anti-apartheid hero and spent 15 years imprisoned on Robben Island off Cape Town.

South Africa, Zuma said, continues to suffer the consequences of apartheid policies today even as the government led by the African National Congress (ANC) has expanded access to education for all.

"That is why we speak of radical socio-economic transformation: the fundamental change in the structure, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership and control of the economy," Zuma noted.

Citing several reasons for changing the structure of the economy, Zuma said South Africa's economy was built around commodities for export to Europe and later the Americas and other regions.

Even roads and rail were constructed so that they led from the mine shafts and the farms straight to the harbours like Durban, according to Zuma.

"Commodity prices are set in the international market. In other words the minerals come from our land but we do not determine their price," said Zuma.

The large economies buy minerals from South Africa as raw materials and manufacture goods which they sell back to the country at exorbitant prices, he said.

Capitalism works in such a manner that at times more is produced than what can be sold, resulting in the prices being reduced and commodity-based economies suffer, he explained.

It is in the nature of capitalism to concentrate capital in fewer and fewer enterprises, Zuma said.

Historically all the capital is controlled largely by white men, he added.

"Those who hold capital here and abroad instinctively become suspicious when we talk about changing the structure of the economy because they are making a lot of money from the economy as it is.

"They have to protect their hold on the economy even if it means they have to destroy our spirits and take our lives," Zuma said.

South Africa must re-industrialize so that more jobs can be created, he said.

"We also want to beneficiate our minerals and agricultural products so that we add more value and do not depend on import of finished goods from other countries," the president said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 06:26:13|Editor: Yurou Liang

Video Player Close

DUBLIN, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The Irish government on Saturday appointed the country's debt agency NTMA to procure a custodian for Apple state aid fund.

In a statement, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said that given the NTMA's existing functions and expertise, the agency has been appointed to run the procurement processes.

In Ireland, the NTMA is responsible for borrowing on behalf of the government and managing the national debt.

He said the government "is fully committed to ensuring that recovery of the Apple state aid takes place without delay", adding that the government "has committed significant resources to ensuring this is achieved, notwithstanding the appeal lodged in 2016".

In November last year, the government formally lodged its appeal against the European Commission's ruling that Ireland granted illegal state aid of up to 13 billion euros to Apple.

The recovery sums will be paid into an escrow fund pending the outcome of legal proceedings, according to the statement.

"Given the scale and bespoke nature of such a fund, the precise terms are still being negotiated and are subject to confidential and commercially sensitive considerations but will involve the appointment of independent third party service providers," it said.

The size of the escrow fund has yet to be confirmed, but it may be circa 13-15 billion euros, including EU interest, the statement said.

The escrow fund will be denominated in euro and will be invested in low risk assets, primarily fixed income instruments, it said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 06:26:16|Editor: Yurou Liang

Video Player Close

MOSCOW, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Moscow negatively viewed a the newly released U.S. draft bill on sanctions against Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Russian media reported on Saturday, citing the Kremlin.

"Extremely negatively," Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Sputnik news agency as saying when asked about the Kremlin's take on the draft bill.

U.S. Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on a bill that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and the DPRK, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday.

The bill reportedly allows sanctions against Russia for its alleged intervention in Ukraine and meddling in the U.S. presidential election, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied in public.

Seen as a follow-up to new U.S. sanctions against Russia and Iran announced in June, the bill will be put to a vote at the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 07:16:21|Editor: Yurou Liang

Video Player Close

UNITED NATIONS, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council will hold an urgent meeting on Monday morning to discuss the violence unfolding in Jerusalem, diplomats said on Saturday.

The meeting will be held behind closed doors, according to the UN mission of China, president of the UN Security Council for July.

"Sweden, France and Egypt request UN Security Council to urgently discuss how calls for deescalation in Jerusalem can be supported," said Carl Skau, Security Council coordinator of the mission of Sweden, on his Twitter account.

Three Israelis were killed on Friday in a stabbing attack by a Palestinian in a West Bank settlement.

The attack followed clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in Jerusalem's Old City, in which three Palestinians died.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Middle East Quartet-- Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations-- expressed concerns over the escalating tensions.

"The Quartet envoys reiterate that violence deepens mistrust and is fundamentally incompatible with achieving a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said the statement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 10:23:08|Editor: Yurou Liang

Video Player Close

YANGON, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar security forces have arrested nine people suspected of murdering a community leader in Buthidaung township, Rakhine state on July 4, Myanmar News Agency reported Sunday.

The arrest was made on Friday and all the suspects are under investigation.

A spate of violence occurred in Buthidaung and Maungtaw from last October to July with at least 44 civilians being killed and 27 others kidnapped by masked armed men.

The killing has prompted hundreds of Rakhine villagers to flee the area.

Myanmar security forces have been put on high alert in Maungtaw in the wake of the violence.

Security has been tightened around villages in Maungtaw.

According to a recent statement of the National Security Advisor on the security situation in the state, the military has found increasing evidence of extreme activities in recent weeks, with tunnels, guns and a terrorist training camp uncovered in Buthidaung-Maungtaw area's Mayu Mountain.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 10:43:14|Editor: Yurou Liang

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Republicans and Democrats on Saturday have reached agreement on a bill that would include new sanctions against Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The bill could largely limit Trump's power of easing sanctions on Russia, as it gives Congress power to veto any decision made by the president that would "significantly alter" U.S. foreign policy in connection with Russia.

The decisions could include easing sanctions or returning diplomatic properties in Maryland and New York that former U.S. President Barack Obama ordered vacated in December.

The House will vote on the bill on Tuesday and the Senate is likely to take it up after that. The bipartisan agreement could send the new bill to President Donald Trump by the end of the month.

The three countries have "in different ways all threatened their neighbors and actively sought to undermine American interests," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a joint statement released on Saturday.

"A strong sanctions bill such as the one Democrats and Republicans have just agreed to is essential," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

The bill came at a time when the Trump administration was under media fire over the Russia scandal.

Last week, e-mails surfaced between Trump's son and a Russian lawyer who allegedly had access to compromising information on then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The latest incident added suspicion that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during last year's election.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 10:53:17|Editor: Yurou Liang

Video Player Close

BAGHDAD, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in an air raid conducted by the Iraqi Air Force in the Anbar Province in western Iraq, Iraqi forces said Saturday.

Iraqi jet fighters carried out the air raid against two IS-controlled towns in western Anbar bordering Syria, said the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) in a statement.

According to the intelligence body, the Iraqi forces bombarded an IS command base, two weapons and ammunition warehouses, and a car bomb factory, killing dozens of IS militants.

The statement did not mention the exact time of the air raid.

On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi formally declared that Mosul, the last stronghold of the IS in Iraq, was liberated from IS control after nine months of fierce fighting.

On the following day, Iraqi local media reported the death of its top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a Russian airstrike in Syria.

However, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that he believed al-Baghdadi was still alive.

Mosul in northern Iraq had been seized by IS since June 2014.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 12:59:03|Editor: Yurou Liang

Video Player Close

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 23 (Xinhua) -- A total of 13 militants have been confirmed dead as aircraft targeted a Taliban hideout in Khan Abad district of the northern Kunduz province on Sunday, an army spokesman in the province, Abdul Khalil said.

"Acting upon intelligence reports, the government forces aircraft attacked a Taliban gathering in Bandar-e-Shorab area in Khan Abad district early this morning, killing 13 rebels on the spot and injuring three others," Khalil told Xinhua.

Taliban militants who have been mounting pressure to overrun Khan Abad district in Kunduz province have suffered casualties and their attacks have been repulsed.

Around 30 militants have been killed in fighting for control of Khan Abad district over the past two days, according to local security officials.

Taliban militants who are in control of parts of Kunduz province with Kunduz city as its capital 250 km north of Kabul, haven't commented.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 13:44:19|Editor: Xiang Bo

Video Player Close

KABUL, July 23 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban local leader was killed after clashes flared up in Afghanistan's western province of Ghor on Saturday, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday.

Mehraj Helmandi was killed when clashes broke out between the security forces and Taliban fighters during a military operation in Ghor's Pasaband district, the ministry said in a statement.

In addition, five Taliban militants were killed and a key Taliban commander named Rahmatullah Hijrat was wounded after Afghan air force struck a Taliban position in the same district Saturday, the statement added.

The targeted Taliban leaders were involved in armed attacks on security checkpoints and a series of terrorist attacks in the district, south of the provincial capital Firoz Koah, 360 km west of Afghan capital of Kabul, the statement noted.

Afghan security forces have beefed up security operations against militants recently as the war-weary Afghans have been witnessing a surge in attacks by Taliban fighters and Islamic State (IS) affiliates across the country.

The Taliban have yet to make comments.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 14:19:32|Editor: Yamei

A Palestinian protester hurls stones at Israeli soldiers during clashes at the Hawara checkpoint, south of the West bank city of Nablus on July 21, 2017. People protested against new Israeli security measures implemented at the entrance to the al-Aqsa mosque compound, which include metal detectors and cameras, following an attack that killed two Israeli policemen the previous week. (Xinhua/Nidal Eshtayeh)

BEIJING, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The escalating tension between Israel and Palestine in Jerusalem's Old City has left dozens dead or injured and drawn attention from the international community.

The United Nations Security Council will hold an urgent meeting on Monday morning to discuss the violence unfolding in Jerusalem, diplomats said on Saturday.

The meeting will be held behind closed doors, according to the UN mission of China, president of the UN Security Council for July.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Middle East Quartet-- Russia, the United States, the European Union and the UN -- expressed concern over the escalating tension.

On Saturday night, Palestinian worshippers and Israeli police renewed clashes outside East Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, a day after a similar clash in which three Palestinians were killed and nearly 400 others injured after the Friday prayers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

On July 14, Israel shut down the holy site and installed checkpoints and metal detectors at its entrances after a shooting attack earlier that day, which killed three Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and two Israeli security officers in the yard of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

The shut-down and metal detectors have sparked a huge protest. The Israeli behavior is seen by the Palestinians as a violation of the status quo at the Muslim-run compound and an Israeli attempt to gain more control over the holy site.

In response, Palestinians called for a day of rage to protest against Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced Friday a freeze of all contact with Israel until it commits to canceling security measures in Jerusalem, especially at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

"We reject the so-called e-gates as political measures that are covered by a false security cover," Abbas said in a speech after an emergency meeting of the Palestinian leadership.

As news of Abbas' ultimatum broke, the Israeli military reported that on Friday night, a 20-year-old Palestinian entered a family home in the settlement of Halamish, stabbing to death a father, his daughter and his son before he was shot and injured by a neighbor.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the knife attack.

Ramallah-based political analyst Mohammad Daraghmeh told Xinhua that he believes that tension may continue for a while.

"The people are united, and they feel their identity is threatened by the accumulating Israeli measures and interventions in Al-Aqsa Mosque," said Daraghmeh.

The Arab League repeatedly condemned the Israeli practices at Al-Aqsa Mosque as a blatant breach of the right of worship and violation of relevant international laws and UN resolutions.

The recent Israeli measures intensified the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that has lasted for decades.

Israel is criticized by the international community for the stalled peace process because of its settlement expansion policy.

The Palestinians seek to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital city in light of the UN-proposed two-state solution.
The Montana Family Medicine Residency recently welcomed eight new resident physicians who will spend three years practicing medicine through the residency. The physicians are: Dr. Stephen Bertucci, of Chalmette, Louisiana, a graduate of Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans; Dr. Danika Clark, a Montana native who returned to Billings after graduating from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Pennsylvania; Dr. Niki Davis, of Salt Lake City, a graduate of the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City and former mechanical engineer at NASA; Dr. Cody Englert, a Billings native and graduate of Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Parker, Colorado; Dr. Alastair Hutton, of Brantford, Ontario, a graduate of St. Georges University School of Medicine; Dr. Britain Parrish, a Utah native and graduate of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans; Dr. Sam Ward, who was born in Helena and is a graduate of Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine in Cleveland; and Dr. Justin Watkins, of Brigham City, Utah, a graduate of Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine in Yakima, Washington.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 14:59:44|Editor: Yamei

Video Player Close

ZHENGZHOU, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The National Museum of Chinese Writing has encouraged people from around the world to help decipher oracle bone inscriptions dating back more than 3,000 years to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC).

The museum, located in central China's Henan Province, said it will offer 100,000 yuan (around 14,779 U.S. dollars) for each unknown character that is deciphered.

It is also offering 50,000 yuan to anyone who can provide a definitive explanation for a disputed character, according to a notice posted on its website earlier this month.

Inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones represent the original characters of the Chinese written language.

In 1899, they were discovered engraved on "dragon's bones", an ingredient used as a type of traditional Chinese medicine.

So far, around 2,000 characters found on excavated oracle bones have been deciphered. Nearly 3,000 characters remain a mystery.

The museum is also encouraging oracle bone enthusiasts to use cloud computing and Big Data along with traditional methods to support their interpretation of a particular character.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 15:04:47|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-one insurgents and four police personnel were killed and 20 insurgents injured in two separate clashes in southern Afghan province of Kandahar, said a provincial police spokesman on Sunday.

In one clash, 15 militants and four police were killed and 20 militants injured after armed Taliban attacked security checkpoints in Nesh district late Saturday night, spokesman Zia Durrani told Xinhua, adding the police personnel fought back the attackers and six police were also injured during exchange of fire in the remote district.

In neighboring Maywand district, Afghan Special Forces targeted a Taliban's hideout, killing six militants, including a Taliban shadow district governor named Maiwand Khan, the spokesman added.

A militants' local commander was arrested after the raid and three vehicles, two motorcycles, weapons and ammunition were also seized by security forces.

Taliban have yet to make comment.

Security situation has been improving in Kandahar, the former stronghold of Taliban, over the past months as security forces have conducted search and cordon operations across the province, 450 km south of Kabul.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 15:19:43|Editor: Song Lifang

A U.S. Marines MV-22B Osprey lands on USS Gerald R. Ford for its commissioning ceremony at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, the United States, on July 22, 2017. The U.S. Navy commissioned United States Ship (USS) Gerald R. Ford, the newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, at Naval Station Norfolk, a navy base in Virginia on Saturday. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Navy commissioned United States Ship (USS) Gerald R. Ford, the newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, at a naval base in Virginia on Saturday, as President Donald Trump promises more budget to beef up defense.

Trump presided over the Ford's commissioning on Saturday morning at Pier 11 on Naval Station Norfolk, a navy base in the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the presence of high-ranking U.S. officials, military officers, sailors, and crowds of civilians, in an intense heat.

MORE MILITARY BUDGET PROMISED

"After today where this ship sails, you will all carry a proud title -- plank owner of the USS Gerald R. Ford," Trump said at the commissioning.

While praising what he described as an "incredible achievement" in building the Navy's latest and largest ship, Trump expressed his dissatisfaction with an insufficient input in new military technology and a decline in military readiness under the previous administration.

"It's been a very, very bad period of time for our military," Trump told service members as he highlighted his efforts to ask Congress for a 54-billion-U.S.-dollar extra budget for military purposes next year.

"You will get it. Don't worry about it," said the Republican president.

However, the 13-billion-dollar vessel equipped with an advanced electromagnetic jet-launching system, was seriously criticized by Trump earlier.

In May, Trump urged the Navy to go back to using steam catapults to launch aircraft because the electromagnetic systems "cost hundreds of millions of dollars more and it's no good."

Among a host of officials were U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.

McAuliffe told Xinhua that the carrier, built by 9,000 Virginians, is the most sophisticated fighting ship that the United States has ever built.

Addressing the crowd, the governor called for more military contracts to be put into the commonwealth as Trump promised to "deliver on time and ahead of budget".

According to the original schedule, the most expensive U.S. military vessel whose construction work started in 2009, shall be delivered in 2015 and at a cost of 10.5 billion dollars, but the delivery was delayed several times until late May this year due to technological obstacles and overspending. "We want the best equipment," Trump said, "We want it built ahead of schedule and we want it built under budget."

NEXT-GENERATION AIRCRAFT CARRIER

The vessel, the first of the next generation of nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carriers, is named after the country's 38th president Gerald R. Ford.

Susan Ford, Ford's daughter and the ship's sponsor, gave the command to set the warship on its path to sea after being placed in commission by Trump. Captain Richard McCormack then officially took over the helm of the warship.

Based on the U.S. navy's first new aircraft carrier design in 40 years, the 1,100-foot (about 335.2 meter) nuclear-powered supercarrier is equipped with the electromagnetic catapults and advanced operational systems that allow aircraft to take off and land more quickly and downscale the crew.

The new technologies launch a third more fighter jets than traditional systems in older carriers, with less heat and noise.

Besides, the 100,000-ton warship has a larger deck to improve aircraft maneuverability and a repositioned, smaller tower for better visibility. Two nuclear reactors allow the Ford to cruise at a speed of more than 30 knots (unit of speed, 30 knots=55.56 km/h) and run for over 20 years without refueling.

There will be a crew of 2,600 sailors on the USS Ford, about 600 fewer than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, which is expected to save over 4 billion dollars over the ship's 50-year lifespan, according to the U.S. Navy.

There are 10 U.S. carriers being operated in the 11 carrier-force mandated by Congress, after the retirement of the USS Enterprise in 2012.

In addition to the USS Ford, there are two other aircraft carriers of its class. The USS John F. Kennedy is scheduled to launch in 2020, and the Ford-class USS Enterprise to begin construction in 2018.

The USS Ford, having completed sea trials in April, will go through a series of tests and inspections before going into operation and deployment.

U.S. Congress's auditors estimated in a report earlier this month that the follow-up work will take four years and cost an additional 780 million dollars.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. (REUTERS FILE PHOTO)

MOSCOW, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Moscow negatively viewed a the newly released U.S. draft bill on sanctions against Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Russian media reported on Saturday, citing the Kremlin.

"Extremely negatively," Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Sputnik news agency as saying when asked about the Kremlin's take on the draft bill.

U.S. Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on a bill that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and the DPRK, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday.

The bill reportedly allows sanctions against Russia for its alleged intervention in Ukraine and meddling in the U.S. presidential election, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied in public.

Seen as a follow-up to new U.S. sanctions against Russia and Iran announced in June, the bill will be put to a vote at the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 15:34:49|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

LOS ANGELES, July 22 (Xinhua) -- A raging wildfire continued to burn in the northwestern U.S. state of Montana, collectively scorching an estimated area of 200,000 acres (809 square km) as of Saturday evening.

There is no containment on the fire yet and local authority is looking for firefighters enforcement from eastern states as far as Mississippi, the local Billings Gazette newspaper reported.

On Saturday, the blaze, code-named Lodgepole Complex, also forced the authority to close a large part of Highway 200, which is a main road linking Montana and the state of North Dakota.

Some 153 firefighters from the Western Montana Type 2 Incident Command (WMTIC) team arrived Friday night, and there could be 500 professional firefighting personnel by the end of Sunday if all requests are filled, said the report.

Tim Engrav, deputy public information officer of WMTIC, said that firefighting personnel could possibly be coming from states as far east as Mississippi, about 2,500 km away.

"We're getting some resources from the eastern states, because we're getting so stretched out here with big fires, over in the western part of Montana, too," said Engrav, quoted by Billings Gazette as saying.

"Some of the states out east are stepping up and sending folks out too," Engrav said.

Some 300 volunteers and landowners were also battling against the fire, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Anne Miller, the Lodgepole Complex Public Information Officer, also promised enforcement to local residents in a brief meeting Saturday night in Jordan, a town 52 miles (86 km) from the burning land.

Additional resources were on the way and proposal of deploying National Guard was brought up at the meeting with the governor, she said.

No order of state of emergency has been issued yet by Saturday night over the largest fire this summer in Montana.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 16:45:17|Editor: Yamei

Video Player Close

LUOYANG, China, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Yu Xiaokai from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) lifted his second national shooting title after 12 years, winning the men's trap gold medal at the 13th Chinese National Games on Sunday in central China's Yiyang county.

Yu, 29, shot 44 targets for the victory, 12 years after his first trap gold medal at the 10th Chinese National Games in 2005 when he was only 17 and was regarded a shooting prodigy at that time.

Yu shot down 120 targets in the qualification round in third place.

"I think I should get this gold medal earlier to prove myself again. I have persisted in training for many years and it has not been easy for me," Yu said.

Liu Jie from Sichuan province got 43 targets to win a silver medal, and Zhang Pan, also from PLA, got bronze with 36 targets.

The 13th Chinese National Games will officially run from Aug. 27 to Sept. 8 in Tian Jin while trap and skeet shooting events were held in advance in Yiyang, a small county in central China's Henan province.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 17:45:42|Editor: Yamei

Video Player Close

PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, July 23 (Xinhua) -- A total of 14 people were killed and 26 others injured as a passenger bus turned turtle in the northern Baghlan province in Afghanistan on Sunday, a local official said.

"A passenger bus was heading from the northern Mazar-e-Sharif city towards Kabul but due to reckless driving turned turtle in Kilagi area of Dushi district, Baghlan province at noon today leaving 14 people dead and injured 26 others," the official told Xinhua but declined to be identified.

Meantime, Shamsudin Sarhadi the governor of Dushi district confirmed the incident.

Head of hospital in Pul-e-Khumri the capital of Baghlan province, Mohammad Anwar has confirmed that 14 dead bodies and 26 injured persons including women and children had been taken to hospital.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 17:50:54|Editor: Yamei

Video Player Close

MOGADISHU, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) senior commanders ended their three-day strategy meeting in Mogadishu late Saturday by resolving to continue to ensure clearance of the main supply routes (MSRs) for easy access of humanitarian activities.

The security meeting which reviewed ongoing operations and discussed an upcoming reorganization of troops pending the commencement of a draw down, noted that the supply routes are crucial for lives of Somalis.

"Clearing the main supply routes is very important as the lives of the Somalis and of AMISOM are at stake," said Osman Noor Soubagleh, who chaired the meetings.

The meeting attended by commanders of various contingents also discussed recommendations of the recent joint AU-UN review of AMISOM, continued threats posed by widespread use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) by militants and critical aspects of troops' logistics.

A statement issued after the meeting said the work being done by the military to clear and secure Main Supply Routes will enable free movement of humanitarian supplies and people, across south central Somalia, and committed to continue with the clearance explosive devices on the routes.

"If we open the MSRs, this will ensure that the business of the Somalis between the various towns will be active, so I ask you to open the MSRs; this is an obligation," said Soubagleh.

The Force Commander also emphasized the importance of continued capacity building of the Somali National Security Forces, ahead of the transition from AMISOM.

Aid agencies say the poor state of main supply routes in south-central Somalia had provided conditions for Al-Shabaab to continue laying ambushes and use explosive devices against AMISOM convoys and Somali national security forces.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 18:16:04|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

KABUL, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Taliban have obviously increased activities in Afghanistan's northern region as the armed insurgents conducted series of offensives in a few districts in a single day on Sunday, leaving over three dozen people dead and injured, officials said.

The armed insurgents, according to local media reports, in a surprise move overrun Kohistanat district in the northern Faryab province on Sunday morning.

Confirming the report, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit, in contact with media claimed that the militants after fierce fighting and inflicting over two dozen casualties to the government forces captured the headquarters of Kohistanat district at wee hours of the day.

Without furnishing details the spokesman of Faryab police, Abdul Karim Yuresh, has confirmed the fall of Kohistanat district to the Taliban.

Taliban' rule on Kohistanat, according to local observers would facilitate militants to influence parts of the neighboring Ghor and Badghis provinces.

The armed insurgents, according to local observes, have been gradually attempting to shift their fighters from their traditional hotbeds in the southern region to the relatively peaceful northern provinces.

Similarly, the Taliban fighters attacked the peaceful district of Gazargah-e-Noor in the northern Baghlan province Sunday morning but after suffering 15 deaths and injuries fled away, local officials said on the condition of anonymity.

Taliban militants reportedly attacked Nahrin district in Baghlan province on Sunday but the attack has been repulsed.

Meanwhile, Taliban offensive on Khan Abad district of the northern Kunduz province has been thwarted after airstrikes on their hideout left 13 fighters dead on Sunday morning.

Taliban militants who killed 35 local police personnel in Tagab district of the northern Badakhshan province on Friday have also stepped up activities in parts of Baghlan, Sari Pul, Balkh and the northern Jawzjan provinces.

Governor of Balkh province Atta Mohammad Noor has warned that the northern region would be destabilized if the Taliban activities were overlooked.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 18:21:00|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

TEHRAN, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. President Trump's demand to release detained Americans, describing it as "interfering and unacceptable," Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday.

"The meddlesome and threatening statements by the United States would not affect the Iranian Judiciary's determination to prosecute and punish the violators of Iran's law and national security," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying.

Qasemi stressed the independence of Iranian Judiciary, adding that Iranian Judiciary is responsible to deal with the behaviors and moves that would threaten the national security.

He also said that the U.S. administration is pursuing an incorrect and illegal approach, in which it threatens other countries and interferes in their internal affairs.

The spokesman also urged Washington to immediately release the Iranian nationals who have been jailed in the United States on "false" charges.

On Friday, Trump warned Iran of facing "new and serious consequences" if Iran did not release the imprisoned Americans.

"President Trump is prepared to impose new and serious consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens are released and returned," said the White House in a statement.

The U.S. statement followed earlier remarks by an Iranian Judiciary official, saying that an Iranian court had sentenced a U.S. dual national to 10 years in prison over spying charges.

The person who owns the nationality of both the United States and another country had snooped into Iran to gather documents and intelligence, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie, spokesman for Iranian judiciary, told the reporters.

Iran has sentenced several dual nationals, some of them hold U.S. citizenship, over spying charges in the past years.

The latest example dates back to September 2016, when Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced the arrest of an Iranian-American in the country's northeastern province of Golestan over spying and security charges.

In August 2016, Iran reportedly arrested another person, also with dual citizenships, accusing him of linking to Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6.
Photo taken on Sept. 15, 2014 shows the Ghana National Theater against the backdrop of Gulf of Guinea. (Xinhua/Lin Xiaowei)

ACCRA, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government has handed over a support package for small-scale agro-processing initiatives in northern Ghana.

Through its grants for agricultural development in the West African country, the Chinese government Friday donated 13 sets of corn grinders, two sets of soya bean flour milling machines as well as one set of millet milling machine to the Development Authority in charge of the Northern Savannah zone.

Presenting the items meant to help initiate community-based agro-processing in the northern parts of the country, China's Ambassador to Ghana, Sun Baohong, stressed that her country's high achievements in agriculture had been a result of the high premium the Chinese government places on the sector, with advanced technology and effective policies.

She lauded the government of Ghana for launching such initiatives as "One District-One Factory"; "One Village-One Dam"; and "Planting for Food and Jobs", which she said demonstrated the government's great attention to agricultural modernization.

"Over the years, China and Ghana have conducted win-win and fruitful cooperation in agriculture. China provides a good number of training opportunities to Ghana for bringing up the agriculture talents," she noted.

About Chinese achievements in agriculture and food security, the ambassador said, with only about nine percent of the world's land, China produced 25 percent of the world's food to feed 20 percent of the world's population.

She said following the visit by Ghana's Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia to China, more credible Chinese enterprises were willing to come and explore investment opportunities in the West African country.

"A number of Chinese enterprises are also here investing in agriculture, from planting to processing. As an important partner, China will strengthen cooperation with Ghana in agriculture in the future," Sun pledged.

Receiving the donated items, Ghana's Minister for Special Development Initiatives Mavis Hawa Koomson observed that the arrival of the equipment was timely, since they would support the flagship programs of the government.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 18:31:05|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

ISTANBUL, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Turkey is seeking an immediate resolution for the ongoing diplomatic row between Qatar and other Arab countries, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday.

Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul before leaving for Saudi Arabia that his current Gulf tour, which also takes him to Kuwait and Qatar, will focus on resolving the crisis, in which Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain have cut diplomatic ties with Doha and imposed sanctions on it since June 5.

"Nobody has any interest in prolonging this crisis anymore," Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Hurriyet Daily News.

While accusing some hostile forces of firing up tensions "between brothers," he stressed that Turkey supports an immediate solution to the row.

Turkey has stood behind Qatar during the crisis and has sent military personnel and equipment to its base there on top of food shipments.
In this picture taken on May 11, 2017, a drone flies in the showroom of the DJI headquarters in Shenzhen, China. (AFP photo/ Nicolas Asfouri)

LONDON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- British government announced on Saturday its plans to regulate drone use, under which drones will have to be registered and users will be required to sit safety awareness tests.

Owners of drones weighing 250 grams and over will in future have to register details of their drones, and users may be able to register online or through apps, under plans being explored by the government.

Meanwhile, a new drone safety awareness test means owners will have to prove that they understand Britain's safety, security and privacy regulations.

The move follows safety research that concluded drones could damage the windscreens of helicopters.

Drones weighing 400 grams could damage the windscreens of helicopters in particular, but airliner windscreens were found to be much more resistant, according to a summary report released by the government.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 19:37:55|Editor: Song Lifang

A staff worker of Nanhai Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Transport rescues crew members in the water on July 23, 2017. A cargo ship carrying grit sunk in the sea area 5.6 nautical miles southeast of Daxingshan in Huidong of Guangdong Province Sunday morning. All 12 crew members have been rescued as of Sunday noon. (Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 20:16:37|Editor: Liangyu

Video Player Close

RABAT, July 23 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese firm has signed a deal with Moroccan companies to build the tallest skyscraper in Africa in the capital of Morocco, local media reported on Sunday.

The deal was concluded in Casablanca by China Railway Construction Corporation and Morocco's BMCE Bank of Africa and Travaux Generaux de Construction de Casablanca, Morocco's leading construction company, le360.ma news site said.

The 55-storey tower will reach 250 meters high, with the adoption of ecological and sustainable design concepts. It will include offices, hotels and luxury apartments, according to the report.

The tower will be the highlight of a large-scale project to develop the Bouregreg valley in Rabat, a key component of the 2014-2018 Integrated Development Program dubbed "Rabat, City of Light, Moroccan Cultural Capital."

The new project also involves the construction of several innovative facilities, including the Grand Theatre of Rabat, the Arts and Culture House, the National Archives of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Archaeological Museum.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 20:21:41|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

DAMASCUS, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Syrian activists said Sunday that the Syrian government forces carried out several violations to a ceasefire that went into force a day earlier in the Eastern Ghouta region east of the capital Damascus.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes targeted the towns of Douma and Ayn Tarma area in Eastern Ghouta on Sunday, adding that the Syrian forces also fired several shells on other areas in that region on Saturday, the day when the ceasefire went into effect.

A day earlier, the Syrian army declared a ceasefire in the Eastern Ghouta countryside of the capital Damascus starting at noon time Saturday.

The army said that any violation of the ceasefire will be responded to accordingly, stopping short of giving details on how long the ceasefire will last.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its officials had signed a deal with moderate Syrian opposition at peace talks in Cairo on how a safe zone near Damascus will function.

Still the ceasefire is holding in Eastern Ghouta, as the al-Qaida-linked militants were excluded, which explains the continued operations in parts of Eastern Ghouta.

Additionally, the Syrian army mentioned in its statement that the ceasefire includes "areas of Eastern Ghouta," not the entire region there.

The opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta is in one of four proposed "de-escalation zones" designated in an agreement reached by Syrian government allies Iran and Russia and opposition backer Turkey in May.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 20:21:42|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

MANILA, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government on Sunday warned Islamist militants and their sympathizers to surrender or face the full force of the law.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana issued the warning a day after the Philippine Congress approved the extension of martial law in the entire Mindanao until the end of the year.

He said security forces are determined to defeat terrorism within the next five months when martial law is enforced in the south Mindanao region.

"With the overwhelming vote of confidence from our legislature and the ardent support of the Filipino people, your defense department will strive even more to deal with the rebellion decisively and expeditiously," Lorenzanna said in a statement.

Lorenzana urged militants to return to the government fold, saying the government is ready to welcome them anytime they want without any conditions.

"But if you persist in your crooked ways, the armed forces and the police will come after you without let-up," he said.

"The ones who should worry are the members of the terrorist-extremist group, the law violators, the supporters and sympathizers of the extremist-terrorist group and not the ordinary people."

Some 700 militants affiliated with IS overran Marawi City in the southern Philippines on May 23, prompting the government security forces to launch a series of airstrikes to crush the insurgents.

The ongoing battle has so far claimed the lives of some 600 people, including 105 soldiers and policemen and 428 terrorists and 45 civilians. The government said 40 civilians, who fled the city when the war broke out on May 23, died from sickness in local hospitals.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 20:21:44|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

ATHENS, July 23 (Xinhua) -- An innovative interactive tool that helps dyslexics read easier online was developed by students of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in northern Greece and was used for first time this week for educational purposes during a Summer School hosted at the university.

The tool named "3asyR" (Easy Reader) allowed dyslexics and people with learning disabilities read easier the website created for the 1st International Journalism Summer School hosted by the Aristotle University's Department of Journalism and Mass Media Communications from July 16 to 23, according to a press release.

The tool provides the opportunity for users to underline words or highlight material on online texts and choose among 15 dyslexic friendly colors and font size options or a Text-to-Speech option, supporting almost all languages.

"Our main priority is to make the reading experience in any electronic device easier and more fun," Maria Tsiana, the founder of "3esyR" explained on the website.

As a dyslexic herself Tsiana worked on the tool while studying journalism at the Aristotle University cooperating with other students and young experts in many fields.

The final touches on "3asyR" were put in August 2016 in Dublin where she sought working experience.

This July Tsiana returned to Thessaloniki to present it and put it in use during the Summer School set up via the collaboration of the Aristotle University with the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) and the Deutsche Welle Academie.

Four Chinese students were among participants in the school entitled "International Journalism and media organizations in a turbulent age: European and Asian Perspectives", organizers told Xinhua.

Tsiana's participation was a way to express gratitude to her professors for the support she received while developing "3easyR".

"We support our students' efforts. Their achievements show their potential and our commitment to help them progress," Christos Frangonikolopoulos, Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki said.

Tsiana on her part wants to offer the opportunity to the more than 700 million dyslexics on the planet and many more with other kinds of learning disabilities to customize their online reading experience and make it simpler and fun.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 20:47:03|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

DUBAI, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The central bank of the United Arab Emirates said Sunday its total assets have increased by 10.8 percent to 391.96 billion dirham (106.8 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of this year, UAE state news agency WAM reported.

The report added that the total foreign currency supply at the UAE Central Bank surged to 338.34 billion dirham (92.19 billion U.S. dollars) by the end of June, a growth of 47.6 billion dirham (12.97 billion U.S. dollars) and a 16.37 percent increase from the beginning of 2017, according to data recently released by the bank.

The bank explained that the growth in bank balances and deposits overseas were the driving forces behind the rise. The UAE currency, the dirham, is pegged in a fixed regime to the U. S. dollar, as one dollar equals 3.677 dirham.

Held-to-maturity securities have risen in value during the same period from 101.46 billion dirham (27.64 billion U.S. dollars) to 104.33 billion dirham (28.43 billion U.S. dollars), while "other foreign assets" increased from 5.29 billion dirham (1.44 billion U.S. dollars) to 6.36 billion dirham (1.73 billion U.S. dollars).
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is making his State Of The Nation inside Parliament in Harare, Zimbabwe, December 6, 2016. (Xinhua/Stringer)

HARARE, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has appealed for youths to register in their numbers ahead of national elections next year.

Mugabe's ZANU-PF, which has relied more on the women's vote, is targeting the youth vote to win next year's polls.

"We are going towards the election date. Are our people registered as voters, all of them even those young ones who yesterday were 16, 17 years old and have become 18 and therefore now able to vote?" Mugabe said Friday while addressing his fourth provincial youth interface rally in Lupane, Matabeleland Province.

He tasked the party's youth wing to ensure that all party youths were registered, including those in colleges and universities, local media reported Saturday.

"Our universities have lots of young people, we should not ignore them, approach them," he said.

Mugabe has been endorsed by his party as its presidential candidate for next year's polls, when he will be 94.

His party, however, is riddled with intense factionalism as senior members vie to succeed him.

He praised the youths for shunning factionalism, saying they, together with the women's wing, remained in support of his presidency.

"There is no back biting (among the party youths), no factions and they have no desire at the moment to be successors when the president is still there," Mugabe said.

Mugabe berated the opposition MDC-T as a "zero" party that was bankrupt of policy programs to develop the country.

"People should look at what these so-called opposition parties really are. What are their proposals and programs for the nation?" he said.

Mugabe is likely to square off with his perennial rival, MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai in next year's presidential polls.

Meanwhile, Mugabe condemned violence by his party supporters ahead of the election.

He said the party must not tolerate perpetrators of violence, warning that members should decisively deal and stop "those small groups in the name of ZANU-PF that were beating up people."

"That is not our mode of operation. We should not allow those small groups to spoil our name. If you see them, hold them, kick them and give them the punishment they deserve and then call police afterwards," Mugabe said.
The 1,215-acre Sage Hills fire that began burning on Thursday southeast of Billings was completely contained as of Saturday afternoon.

Lockwood Fire District Chief John Staley said that after taking the hour-and-a-half drive to survey the perimeter, it was determined at about 4:45 p.m. that the fire was completely contained.

The fire began burning east of Highway 87 east on Thursday on the Crow Tribe land, Staley said.

Pre-evacuation notices were issued Thursday for about a dozen residences in the Lockwood area for the Huntington Hills neighborhood near Emerald Hills. At one point the fire burned within 100 feet of a couple homes in the neighborhood, Staley said.

Though the fire is contained, it is not extinguished, he said. "We will be watching it for the next two days because there's several large trees or tree stumps burning well within the perimeter of the fire. We just want to make sure with the winds they don't go anywhere," he said, adding the burning fuel was about 200 feet inside containment lines. "It'll produce a little smoke," he said.

A cause for the fire has not been determined yet. Staley said he believes the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office is investigating the cause of the fire.

"It definitely started on the east side of Highway 87 East at mile marker five," Staley said, adding it was in the area of the old Leachman Ranch where the fire began. "For us that could be a lot of things. It could be a spark from a vehicle. Rarely a cigarette. We hope that no one started it."

The fire damaged some fence line as it burned through the land. "Unfortunately for a lot of farmers and ranchers, a lot of good pasture and grazing area," Staley said of the burned area.

With temperatures in the 90s, humidity dropped below 20 percent and winds were gusting up to 35 mph around the time the fire began, according to the National Weather Service.

"We're feeling really lucky," Staley said. "We caught some breaks with the weather after the weather didn't help us at first."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 21:47:18|Editor: Liangyu

Video Player Close

BEIJING, July 23 (Xinhua) -- China increased liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports in the first half (H1) of 2017, as part of an effort to clean up its coal-dominated energy mix.

The LNG channeled into the world's biggest energy consumer rose 38.3 percent year on year to 15.89 million tonnes in the January-June period, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs Sunday.

The growth rate is higher than the 21.2-percent increase registered in the same period last year, partly encouraged by the lowering policy barriers for LNG from the United States to enter the Chinese market.

The country had already imported 400,000 tonnes of U.S. gas in the first five months, in sharp contrast to zero a year ago, Vice Premier Wang Yang said Tuesday during his visit to the United States.

The country's demand for natural gas is on the rise as the government eyes the clean fuel to help gradually replace dirtier coal. Coal consumption accounted for 59.8 percent of China's overall energy use in H1.

Measures have been taken to encourage imports and explore the potential of domestic shale gas reserves.

Pipeline networks for natural gas will be expanded to 104,000 km by 2020, a substantial improvement from 64,000 km in 2015. The figure will go up to 163,000 km in 2025, when all Chinese cities with more than half a million residents will have the access.

The government plans to increase the proportion of natural gas in energy consumption from the current 5.9 percent to around 10 percent by 2020, and to 15 percent by 2030.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 21:57:20|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

MOGADISHU, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Somalia has warned telecommunication and money remittance companies against facilitating transfer of money to fund terror activities in the Horn of Africa nation.

The country's internal security Minister Mohamed Abukar Islow said in a decree issued on Saturday that the money transfer companies have been aiding the militant group Al-Shabaab by sending meant for the group.

"The cabinet passed a resolution which outlaws telecommunication and money transfer companies from facilitating money transfer to Al-Shabaab. Banks and remittance companies are included in this category and are therefore warned against violating the resolution," said Islow.

The announcement follows reports that Al-Shabaab has been imposing fines on traders in the country which are then transmitted through telecommunication and remittance companies.

The government also warned traders against paying levies to Al-Shabaab, failure to which they will be prosecuted.

"Anyone who gives money to Al-Shabaab in form of fines will be prosecuted and the government will not consider any excuse," the resolution read.

The National Intelligence Services Agency (NISA) chief Abdullahi Mohamed Ali Sanbaloolshe said the government would monitor transactions by telecommunication and remittance companies.

Ali said they want the telecommunication sector, banks, money transfer agency not to provide service to them like savings, investments or funds transfer.

"From now on there will be plans that will have close ties in regard to banking services like opening an account, withdrawal and no economic activity executed without government's knowledge," said Sanbalolshe.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 21:57:22|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

CAPE TOWN, July 23 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Sunday called for the regulation of private financing of political parties amid growing reliance by these parties on private donations.

In a submission to Parliament on matters relating to the review and strengthening of political funding, the ANC said political financing must be transparent in a way that will promote and support democracy.

This came after the current over-reliance by political parties on private donations as well as the secrecy that clouds political party financing has fueled perceptions that anonymous donations from masked sources subvert democratic processes, lead to a manipulation of public policy positions in favor of those private interests and dilute the voice of citizens.

"Transparency therefore is necessary to increase public confidence in the democratic system and to allow parties to remain financially sustainable in an ethical, lawful and predictable manner," ANC Treasurer General Zweli Mkhize said.

Party finances, Mkhize said, must be open to public scrutiny and discussions engaged on the desirability of donations from, amongst other categories, foreign interests or from companies that conduct substantial business with the state.

The ANC appreciates the current fiscal constraints and thus the need to revise current allocations to political party funding without sacrificing other important public priorities, said Mkhize.

The ANC therefore calls on Parliament's Ad Hoc Committee to consider these proposed reforms to strengthen democracy, combat corruption and build transparency and accountability in the funding of political parties in line with the party's stated commitments to prudent financial management.

The multiparty special parliamentary committee, set up earlier this month, is responsible for enquiring into and making recommendations on funding of political parties represented in national and provincial legislatures.

At its first meeting on Friday, the committee unanimously decided that the public will be invited to submit views on the proposed model to adequately fund political parties, regulate private funding and to ensure transparency and accountability.

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, political parties in the country have been united in refusing to open their books.

Currently political parties are not required to declare sources of their funds or how they use their money.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 22:07:28|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

NAIROBI, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Africa's health charity, Amref Health Africa and the Coca Cola Africa Foundation have announced a joint venture to promote access to clean water and sanitation in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

According to a press release received Saturday night, Coca Cola Africa Foundation said it will provide 4.2 million U.S. dollars to help the Nairobi-based Amref Health Africa implement projects that enhances access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation to an estimated 500,000 people in the four countries.

Kenya's Principal Secretary in the State Department of Water Services, Fred Segor hailed the new partnership saying it will have positive health and economic outcomes on local communities in the region.

"Governments in this region are keen to join alliances with charity groups to tackle an endemic water and sanitation crisis that undermines sustainable development," Segor remarked.

He noted that underserved communities in Kenya's arid regions and urban slums will benefit from the novel program to expand access to clean water and sanitation.

The Coca Cola Africa Foundation has established a long-term partnership with Amref Health Africa to address water, sanitation and hygiene challenges in the continent through the flagship Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN).

According to the President of Coca Cola Africa Foundation, Susan Mboya, this initiative aims to reach six million people with clean water and improved sanitation in the world`s second largest continent.

"We recognize the urgency to help local communities in this region access safe drinking water and modern sanitation in order to ensure they are healthy and productive," Mboya remarked.

She added that Coca Cola Africa Foundation will commit additional resources to hasten implementation of livelihood projects in remote parts of the continent.

Charity organizations have established strategic alliances with governments and industry to tackle poverty, water insecurity, diseases and ecological depletion that have escalated in a huge swathe of east and horn of Africa region.

Githinji Gitahi, Group CEO of Amref Health Africa, said the new partnership with Coca Cola Africa Foundation entails investments in high impact interventions to end perennial water scarcity and poor sanitation in the region.

"Lasting health and economic benefits of water, sanitation and hygiene are optimized under conditions of full and sustainable access to these services," Gitahi said.

He added that a durable solution to water and sanitation challenges in the region hinges on investments in infrastructure coupled with strengthening of national institutions alongside promotion of entrepreneurship and innovations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 22:27:52|Editor: Song Lifang

Video Player Close

DAR ES SALAAM, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Scientific researchers from East Africa and the European Union (EU) said on Sunday they have embarked on an intensive research on ways to tackle the health hazards caused by flouride on human health.

The scientific researchers from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and the EU told a meeting with water authorities in Tanzania's northern city of Arusha that flouride affected humans when consumed through water.

The research covered the semi-arid areas around Arusha and the Great Rift Valley which were notorious for having large quantities of flouride in waters drawn from boreholes, lakes and rivers.

Speaking during the meeting, the Arusha regional water engineer Joseph Makaidi said Tanzania was yet to find an effective technology to remove flouride from water for domestic use.

Giogio Ghiglier, the lead researcher from Cagliari University in Italy, said fluoride also affected animals, including livestock, but he added there was no conclusive research findings done on its impact compared to humans.

Flouride from water has for many years gravely impacted on the health of the residents of Arumeru in Arusha region weakening of their bones, including teeth, often leading to physical disability.

In the 1990s, the government set up a research center for deflouridization of water at Ngurdoto outside Arusha in collaboration with the University of Dar es Salaam.

However, for many years the center remained idle and it was reported only recently that it was about to operate a deflouridization plant that was to be installed there.
A new train stops at a railway station in suburban Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Oct. 1, 2016. (Xinhua/Sun Ruibo)

ADDIS ABABA, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian Minister of Transport Ahmed Shide, who hailed his country's overall relations with China, has called for further strengthening the existing inclusive partnership between the two friendly countries.

Shide, in an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Saturday, hailed Chinese engagement with the east African country both in business and people-to-people relations.

"We have broadened the partnership in so many areas with infrastructure cooperation being one area, industrial development cooperation another area, agricultural development cooperation is another one together with cooperation in capacity building," he said.

Ethiopia's Ministry of Transport supervises the country's overall infrastructure development endeavor that includes airport construction and expansion activities, railway construction projects and road infrastructure developments.

"In the last 20 years the level of economic cooperation has grown very fast. It will facilitate industrial manufacturing development, boost Ethiopia's competitiveness," Shide stressed.

"Chinese engagement in Ethiopia is harmoniously contributing to the development of Ethiopia," he said, adding that "Chinese personnel, be it workers or business people, are contributing to the development of Ethiopia."

Referring to Chinese-funded and built infrastructure development projects in Ethiopia, Shide further noted that the current partnership between Ethiopia and China needs to be strengthened.

"Interaction of Chinese with Ethiopians is very positive and it's growing. The integration process will continue. Business to business, people to people engagement, cultural exchanges have to be strengthened," he said.

He also commended the people to people relations between the two countries, saying that "Chinese people have become well known in Ethiopia as they engaged in industrial development, infrastructure, roads, rails along with Ethiopians. Some Ethiopians have even started speaking Chinese," he said.

The Minister, who was previously Ethiopia's Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Cooperation, also lauded Chinese support to Ethiopia's ambition to be a manufacturing hub of the African continent.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 22:58:00|Editor: Mu Xuequan

Video Player Close

CAIRO, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian police killed on Sunday eight militants loyal to the outlawed group Muslim Brotherhood during clashes in Fayoum province, Egypt's Interior Ministry said.

Police forces raided a training camp in Fayoum, 100 km southwest of Cairo, used by the Brotherhood-linked Hasm militant group, the ministry said in a statement.

The police raid came after receiving authentic information that the group was plotting to carry out a number of terror attacks in the country.

The terrorists were killed in a shootout after they opened fire at police forces attacking them, according to the statement.

Egyptian police have recently also killed about 22 militants in Giza province near Cairo and in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. They were believed to belong to the Cairo-based Hasm group, regarded as the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a militant group loyal to Islamic State (IS) that is based in the restive Sinai peninsula.

Egypt has been battling growing terror activities following the military's removal of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently-blacklisted Msulim Brotherhood.

Terror attacks in Egypt have been centered in restive North Sinai before they spread nationwide, killing hundreds of policemen and soldiers over the past few years.

Most of the anti-government terror operations were claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to IS.

The Egyptian military, in cooperation with the police, have killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the country's anti-terror war declared in 2013 by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, then army chief, following Morsi's removal.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 23:38:10|Editor: Liu

A welcome ceremony is held for the visiting Chinese naval fleet at Piraeus port, Greece, July 23, 2017. A Chinese naval fleet arrived on Sunday at Piraeus port for a four-day friendly visit to Greece, conveying a message of friendship and cooperation.(Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

ATHENS, July 23 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese naval fleet arrived on Sunday at Piraeus port for a four-day friendly visit to Greece, conveying a message of friendship and cooperation.

Missile destroyer Changchun, missile frigate Jingzhou and supply vessel Chaohu docked at Piraeus, Greece's largest port, receiving a warm welcome by Greek and Chinese officials, and more than 1,000 Chinese living in Greece, as the Philharmonic band of the Municipality of Piraeus performed.

"I want to welcome you and your ships in the port of Piraeus. The recent relationship between our countries is in a very high level due to commercial and cultural cooperation and we are looking forward to be better," Commodore Georgios Agrafiotis, Commander of the Naval Command of Aegean, said during the welcome ceremony, as the crowd was waving Greek and Chinese national flags.

"The Naval Task Group 150 of the Chinese People's Liberation Army departed from Shanghai on April 23 and during the mission we will conduct maritime training and goodwill visits to Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania," said Rear Admiral Shen Hao, Commander of the Chinese navy fleet, while addressing the event.

The Chinese officer expressed confidence that the good will port call in Greece will help further advance bilateral cooperation, receiving the warm applause of the crowd.

The Escort Task Groups of the Chinese Navy have been offering protection to Greek commercial ships since 2008, while the Greek Navy has helped the Chinese side evacuate overseas Chinese from war-torn areas in recent years, Gao Wenqi, Charge d'Affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Greece, noted, delivering a speech during the ceremony.

As this year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Greece, the visit of Task Group 150 will reinforce the friendship between the armed forces and ties between the two countries and peoples, he said, highlighting that Piraeus is a great example of win-in bilateral cooperation in recent years, since Chinese giant COSCO Shipping has taken over the management of Piraeus Container Terminal and Piraeus Port Authority.

"The Piraeus port, which the Task Group 150 is visiting, is a pearl of the Mediterranean, the pride of Greece, the lodestar of China-Greece cooperation, and a place where our joint dreams come true," Gao Wenqi stressed.

"China and Greece are promoting the China-Europe Land-Sea Express Line in which Piraeus is a key port. Our two ancient nations, inheritors of illustrious civilizations, are marching hand-in-hand towards their common goal of rejuvenation," the Chinese diplomat added.

Two Greek girls from the Hellenic-Chinese Centre for Entrepreneurship dressed in ancient Greek costumes greeted Rear Admiral Shen Hao with olive branches as a symbol of peace and cooperation, after the impressive performance of martial arts by young students of an Athens Kung Fu Art Shaolin school.

After the ceremony the Greek Navy officers, Chinese embassy officials and overseas Chinese in local communities visited the ships which will depart Piraeus on Wednesday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 23:38:11|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

NAIVASHA, Kenya, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan authorities on Sunday arrested four police officers behind a robbery along Nairobi-Nakuru highway.

Police investigators said the suspects allegedly attacked and robbed a Chinese national as he drove from Nairobi to Bomet.

The driver of the Chinese national was also arrested after he was linked to the incident as investigators said he leaked information to the attackers before they struck on Saturday morning.

Nairobi County police commander Japheth Koome confirmed the arrests and said the suspects would be arraigned in court on Monday. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-23 23:48:15|Editor: Mu Xuequan

Video Player Close

BEIJING, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Sunday decided to posthumously honor late geophysicist Huang Danian as an "outstanding CPC member."

A statement of the CPC central leadership noted that Huang had made outstanding contributions in education and scientific research, and had devoted his life to national prosperity and people's wellbeing.

He showed his loyalty to the Party and selfless devotion to duty, the statement said.

Huang died from illness on Jan. 8 at the age of 58.

About two months ago, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, praised Huang for his excellent service, calling on the public to learn from his patriotism, professional dedication, and the noble spirit of being indifferent to fame and wealth while dedicated to the country.

Huang, known for his expertise in deep earth exploration technology, studied and worked in Britain for 18 years before returning to China in 2009. Over the ensuing years, he made a series of major achievements, helping China become one of the world's leaders in a number of technical fields.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-24 00:08:24|Editor: Mu Xuequan

Video Player Close

MOSCOW, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Russia and China have great potential in cooperation in the aviation and aerospace sector, which contributes to the amplification of economic relations between the two countries and help achieve their bilateral trade goals, Russian industry insiders have said.

"It (Russian-Chinese cooperation in aviation) has longstanding traditions of many years, and we have traditionally supplied aviation equipment to China," Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov told Xinhua at the ongoing 13th MAKS-2017 airshow, which runs from Tuesday to Sunday in the Russian city of Zhukovsky on the southeastern outskirts of Moscow.

Over 790 aviation and aerospace companies from 26 countries and regions are displaying thousands of products and design projects at the MAKS airshow in search of cooperation opportunities, among which Russia-China businesses are deemed with excellent prospects.

Manturov said that the two countries now have two major joint projects. One is intended for producing a heavy-lift civil helicopter which will be developed by the Russian Helicopters company and Chinese institutions, and the other is for developing, designing and producing a wide-body long-haul aircraft by companies of both countries.

"(The new heavy-lift helicopter) will be of mutual benefit for China and Russia and will be widely operated in both countries," said Dmitry Zuykov, head of product marketing of the Russian Helicopters company.

Highlighting that China is one of the biggest markets for Russian Helicopters, Zuykov told Xinhua that currently more than 400 Russian-made helicopters are operating in China for a wide range of civil and military services including transportation of cargoes, passengers, search, rescue and fire-fighting.

"We are going to increase this number and to provide new-generation helicopters for services," he said.

According to Zuykov, the Russian Helicopters company provides China with its best products, including the low-noise MI-8/17 helicopter, the MI-26T helicopter which can carry up to 20 tons of cargoes, and the Ka-32A11BC helicopter for fire-fighting in forests and in cities between high buildings.

Russia's MiG Aircraft Corporation also showed its interest in the Chinese market. The company showcased its latest MiG-35 aircraft for the first time at the MAKS airshow, aiming at finding more potential buyers including China.

"Naturally, we offer this aircraft not only on the territory of India, but also to countries of Southeast Asia, the countries of the Middle East, the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries, and Latin America... Some 30 countries are our potential customers," MiG Director General Ilya Tarasenko said.

In Manturov's opinion, apart from impelling the development of the entire industry, the expansion of joint aviation projects and relevant businesses also contribute to the promotion of the bilateral economic and trade relations between China and Russia.

"We see positive dynamics this year, and we expect that aviation projects, of course, will provide added value and an additional economic result, which will in general affect our trade relations and bring us closer to the goal of reaching the annual turnover of 200 billion dollars by 2025," Manturov said.

Both the Chinese and the Russian governments are simultaneously working in this direction to facilitate the increasing implementation of the joint projects and boost supply volumes, he said.

On the opening ceremony of the airshow, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he expected the airshow to help strengthen production cooperation, the growth of international cooperation and the promotion of Russian products in the global markets.

Founded in 1993, the MAKS is a biennial event aimed at displaying Russian aerospace-related high-tech products and promoting business cooperation with foreign partners in the aerospace sector.

The entire event received more than 330,000 visitors in the past five days, according to the Russian Interior Ministry.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-24 02:14:12|Editor: Mu Xuequan

Video Player Close

DAMASCUS, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army and the Lebanese Hezbollah group have defeated the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front in the mountainous Qalamoun region near the Lebanese-Syrian border, activists and military sources told Xinhua.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor group said Sunday sounds of gunfire are still being heard in the barrens of the western Qalamoun region, northwest of Damascus adjacent to the Lebanese border, as the Syrian forces and Hezbollah were combing the area of Fleita barrens.

After completing the combing process in search of militants, the Syrian army will retake all the regions in western Qalamoun, said the observatory.

This progress ends the presence of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front in all of the northwestern countryside of Damascus, as the Nusra militants used to smuggle weapons and explosives to both countries through the barren areas.

The Syrian army and Hezbollah launched a double battle Friday on both sides of the Syrian-Lebanese border against the Nusra Front.

The Syrian air force has also played a significant role in backing up the ground forces.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-24 02:44:20|Editor: Mu Xuequan

Video Player Close

by Keren Setton

JERUSALEM, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Israel's installation of metal detectors at a contested holy shrine in East Jerusalem that triggered off a wave of violence is an act of stupidity, an Israeli expert told Xinhua in an interview on Sunday.

"Putting the metal detectors is stupidity. It shows lack of understanding of the conflict," said Ronni Shaked, head of Middle East Studies Department of the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Israel's banning Muslims from prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, "means not only hurting the Palestinians, but offending the entire Muslim world," Shaked said.

The site, revered by Jews as the holiest site, has been the focal point of repeated Israeli-Palestinian tensions and clashes for the past decades since Israel took over East Jerusalem in the 1967 War.

Israel has been holding security control over East Jerusalem, though the mosque compound has been managed by Muslim authorities.

The latest wave of violence erupted sine July 14 after a shooting incident, in which two Israeli police officers were shot dead by three Israeli Arab gunmen after Friday prayers at the mosque. The three attackers were killed later on the compound by Israeli police.

In response, Israel decided to set up metal detectors and cameras at the entrances to the compound as security measures to prevent further attacks.

Israel also banned Palestinians under 50 from access to the mosque for doing prayers on Friday, sparking widespread angry protests in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The Israeli moves were seen by Palestinians and the Muslim world as a provocation and an attempt to alter the status quo on the holy site.

Renewed clashes have already resulted in loss of lives of both Palestinians and Israelis in the past week.

Three Palestinians were killed in clashes on Friday, while hundreds of others were wounded by Israeli forces. Hours after that, a Palestinian attacker stabbed to death three members of a Jewish family inside their home in a West Bank settlement.

Shaked said that he believes the conflict has taken on an increasingly religious tone, noting that the detectors are just a symptom of a wider problem.

"The Temple Mount has become not only a religious symbol but a national religious symbol, as it is now used as a resource for politicians and the public to promote the struggle and the conflict between the two sides," said Shaked.

Tensions keep rising over the past days after the clashes, especially after Israel refused to heed the calls for dismantling the detectors.

To add to the tensions, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced he was "freezing" all ties with Israel. In response, the Israeli army has beefed up its presence in the West Bank.

The boiling point has been reached and without international interference, it seems the tensions and bloodshed are not going away, Shaked said.

"The Palestinians feel they are on the losing side throughout the years, they feel that the last stronghold is the Al Aqsa mosque which they feel has been given to them as a deposit by the Muslim world in order to defend it from a Jewish invasion," he said.

Indeed, for all Palestinians, who on other matters may be deeply divided, are united on the issue of Jerusalem because they see it as the cornerstone of their national identity. The Palestinians hope to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

"This conflict has been going on for a long time. Its religious aspect makes it easier to gather the public's support for the struggle," said Shaked.

The international community has not recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Eastern part of the city, the holy sites within.

From 1967 to about five years ago, the status quo was maintained as non-Muslims were not allowed on the site. But in recent years, the right-wing Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has allowed a trickle of Jewish presence on the site.

Israeli media reported that security officials had strongly advised the government against putting up the detectors, citing their inciteful potential. But the Israeli government ignored their advice.

While the Israeli government has repeatedly said it intends to uphold the status-quo, its actions speak otherwise.

Amid international calls for calming down the tensions, the United Nations Security Council is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the violence in East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Arab foreign ministers will also hold an urgent conference in Cairo, Egypt on Wednesday to coordinate their response to Israel's provocations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-24 02:54:22|Editor: Mu Xuequan

Video Player Close

DAMASCUS, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Some 50 militants with the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front were killed Sunday in an explosion in Syria's northern city of Idlib, pan-Arab Mayadeen TV reported.

The cars, loaded with ammunition, went off near a gathering of Nusra militants, with no further information indicating whether the bombings were planned or accidental.

The cars belong to the rival Ahrar al-Sham movement, which lost dominance of Idlib earlier in the day to the Nusra Front, or the Front for Liberating the Levant, following infighting between both groups.

Their infighting has recently flared in Idlib, which is largely under the Nusra's control, with Ahrar al-Sham's reported withdrawal from the city.

The Nusra Front is designated as a terror group by the international community and the UN, and was excluded from any deal along with the Islamic State group.

The battles against Nusra have pushed several rebel groups previously allied with it to withdraw amid reports that Ahrar al-Sham has joined the alliance with the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-24 03:14:26|Editor: Mu Xuequan

Video Player Close

ALGIERS, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The latest developments in the occupied Palestinian territories were at the heart of the phone talks between Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel and his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi, a Foreign Ministry statement said Sunday.

The two officials discussed "mainly the developments in the occupied territories and the tension resulting from the recent measures taken against the Palestinians.

The two parties agreed to "exert necessary efforts in consultation with the international community, including Arab and Muslim countries, as well as international organizations, to ensure the protection of Palestinian people and their holy sites, while pressing the occupier to put an end to escalation and blackmail."

The surroundings of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in eastern Jerusalem are the scene of daily confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli police, leaving so far three Palestinians dead and 400 others injured.

The clashes erupted last Sunday following the installation of electronic gates by Israeli forces, in response to the killing of two Israeli policemen by three Palestinian gunmen, who were also shot dead.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-24 03:29:37|Editor: Mu Xuequan

Video Player Close

KUWAIT/CAIRO, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Kuwait's Foreign Minister Sabah Khaled Al Sabah met on Sunday with European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on latest developments in the regional and international arenas, state news agency KUNA reported.

The Kuwaiti foreign minister praised the distinguished ties between the EU and Kuwait, along with relations between the European bloc and the Gulf Cooperation Council in various fields.

Mogherini started a visit to Kuwait on Sunday to express EU support of its mediation efforts to resolve the Gulf dispute.

The Saudi-led bloc cut ties with Qatar and imposed a blockade on it on June 5, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism and interfering in their internal affairs. Qatar has strongly denied the charges.

The Arab quartet initially put forward a list of 13 demands to Qatar, demanding it close the Al-Jazeera channels, downgrading diplomatic ties with Iran, and stopping financing extremist groups.

Signs of easing of the Qatari crisis emerged recently after the visits to Gulf by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as well as by foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France. Kuwait has also played a role in calming down the tensions through its intense mediation efforts.

After Qatar signed a deal with the U.S. on combating terrorism funding during Tillerson's visit, the Saudi-led alliance has reduced their demands for Qatar to only six broad principles, mainly including ending financing terrorism and inciting propaganda against them.

Qatar also revised its anti-terror law over the week in a bid to show its willingness to end the crisis. This move was welcomed by the UAE, which hailed it as a "positive step" on Friday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-24 03:49:40|Editor: ying

Video Player Close



Chinese officers and soldiers waves to say goodbye to Russian fleet during a China-Russia naval joint drill at sea off south China's Guangdong Province, Sept. 19, 2016. (Xinhua File Photo/Zha Chunming)

KALININGRAD, Russia, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and Russian commanders conducted a simulation exercise here on Sunday for the ongoing joint military drills code-named "Joint Sea 2017" in the Baltic Sea.

In the hours-long exercise, two tactical assault groups, consisting of mixed warships from the Chinese and Russian fleets, simulated details of the drills on a map, including ship-to-sea firing by secondary cannons, air defense, joint landing and inspection, maritime search and rescue, underway replenishment and other subjects.

"The simulation exercise was conducted for two purposes, namely, making commanders at all levels more familiar with the procedures and subjects of the drills, as well as enhancing coordination and tacit understanding between commanders of the two countries," said Wang Xiaoyong, deputy captain of a destroyer detachment of the Chinese Navy.

During the drills, the participating air forces and sea forces will be deployed through unified guidance by a joint directing center, a joint headquarter and a tactical command post, which are formed by commanders from both countries.

The Joint Sea 2017 drills, which kicked off on Saturday and will last until July 28, aims to carry out joint rescue missions and ensure maritime economic activities.

The Chinese fleet consists of one destroyer, one frigate, one supply ship, ship-borne helicopters and marines. The Russian side includes one frigate, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and marines.

Chinese and Russian navies will conduct a variety of joint exercises and attend the parade in St. Petersburg on the occasion of Russia's Navy Day.
Police vehicles are seen at a Walmart parking area after it was cordoned off by local police in San Antonio, Texas, the United States, on July 23, 2017. Eight people were found dead in a trailer carrying illegal immigrants at the Walmart parking area in southern Texas City of San Antonio early Sunday morning, authorities said. (Xinhua/Yan Bo)

HOUSTON, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Eight people were found dead in a trailer carrying illegal immigrants at a Walmart parking area in southern Texas City of San Antonio early Sunday morning, authorities said.

The San Antonio Police Department said the victims include at least two children, adding that about 30 more people were found inside the truck and were transferred to local hospitals for treatment.

Photo taken on July 23, 2017 shows a Walmart parking area where an illegal immigrants' incident occurred in San Antonio, Texas, the United States. Eight people were found dead in a trailer carrying illegal immigrants at the Walmart parking area in southern Texas City of San Antonio early Sunday morning, authorities said. (Xinhua/Yan Bo)

Police did not know the victims' country of origin, destination, or ages of the deceased or injured, it said.

San Antonio is a U.S. city close to the border area with Mexico. Border Patrol agents have reported an increase in smuggling attempts in tractor-trailers in recent weeks, starting with 44 people from Mexico and Guatemala discovered after police stopped an 18-wheeler on June 19 near one of the city's international bridges.

On July 7, the agents found 72 people from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador inside a locked trailer in the same part of town. The next day, they found 33 people from Mexico and Guatemala inside a trailer stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint.

In another incident last week, border patrol agents found 16 people inside a locked trailer.
U.S. Air Force Capt. Robert Edwin Holton was buried under hazy but cloudless blue skies Saturday, finally resting in his home state of Montana after 48 years of being missing in action during the Vietnam War.

After morning services in Butte, where he grew up, Holton received full military honors at Sunset Memorial Park west of town. At 11:15 a.m., a massive C-130 Hercules flew over the cemetery and tipped its wing.

It was a fitting send-off for Holton, who was serving his country when the F4 Phantom fighter he and Maj. William Campbell were flying over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos was shot down on Jan. 29, 1969.

Although the Air Force presumed him dead starting in 1972, he was listed as missing in action until his remains were excavated in Laos and verified earlier this year. They arrived in a sealed casket in Montana on Friday.

Its almost like they were searching for a needle in a haystack and they found the needle, Dianne Moody, who married Holton in 1966, said to scores of people who attended the service at Wayrynen-Richards Funeral Home.

The pews were filled an hour before the service, but people filtered in nonetheless, standing in the back and along the sides and looking and listening in from the parlor.

The homecoming began Friday, when more than 70 motorcycle riders and 20 vehicles led Holtons casket from Bozeman to Butte. People waved American flags from every overpass on Interstate 90 along the way, and hundreds greeted him here.

His mission wasnt just fighting for his country, Moody said. I feel like part of his mission was bringing us all together here this weekend.

Pastor Martha McCreight, who presided over the service in Butte, said there was relief in knowing Holton was finally home and there was now a physical place where people could visit him.

It was also a day of sadness and grief, she said, but even though Holton was missing on Earth for 48 years, He was never apart from God.

It was only last month that the Air Force called Bill Holton in Butte to say that remains of his brother had been verified.

Todd Holton, Bills son, was only 3 when his uncles plane went down. But he, too, was left with questions and uncertainty for nearly five decades.

I am so glad our family has gotten closure, he said before offering a toast to his uncle at the service.

He, too, said the homecoming had been amazing.

I couldnt be more proud to be from Butte, he said. I couldnt be more proud to be an American.

Members of the Butte United Veterans Council carried Holtons flag-draped casket to the hearse, and when it arrived at the cemetery, members of the Air Force carried it to its final resting place.

After a gun salute from an Air Force honor guard, "Taps" was played, and the flag was lifted from the casket and folded. Air Force Gen. John P. Hronek, chief of staff for the Montana Air National Guard, presented it to Bill Holton. He presented another folded flag to Moody.

But the final touch belonged to Sue MacPherson, who hung out with Holton as a teenager in Butte and has worn an MIA bracelet in his honor since 1972.

She took it off on Saturday and, with tears in her eyes, laid it on top of the casket so it would be buried with her lifelong friend she has missed and wondered about all these years.

It was perfect, she said.
In Montana where barely 10 percent of the people who need treatment for alcohol or other drug abuse actually get it, even the children suffer.

Substance abuse is reaching catastrophic levels in Billings, said Jennifer Owen, Billings Head Start executive director. Many of the three- and four-year-olds we serve in Billings deal with substance abuse in their daily lives.

The neglect and trauma they suffer keeps these children from growing and developing at a normal pace, Owen said. Many are food insecure, so Head Start sends home weekend food supplies that preschoolers can open and eat themselves because their parents might not be available to feed them.

Owen was one of the first speakers Thursday when health care professionals, corrections administrators, law enforcement and court officials, childrens advocates and lawmakers gathered in downtown Billings for the third listening session in a series organized by the Montana Healthcare Foundation and the Montana departments of justice, corrections and public health.

Dave Armstrong, executive director of Alternatives Inc., described an epidemic of drug abuse. More than four out of five probationers and parolees Alternatives serves are addicted to alcohol or other drugs, Armstrong said. Use of heroin, opioids, methamphetamine, spice and other drugs is growing. Demands for services are overwhelming resources.

Even in Billings with our great resources, you may have to commit an offense to get help, Armstrong said.

The number of kids in foster care in our county grows almost on a daily basis, said John Felton, CEO at RiverStone, which provides health care for children in the foster system. So many of these child neglect and abuse cases are related to parental drug abuse that Felton worries the community is dangerously close to normalizing substance abuse.

Sixty-five percent of Montana child abuse and neglect cases have indications of parental drug abuse, according to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. In Yellowstone County, the figure is higher, according to the Yellowstone County Attorneys Office estimate: about 75 percent.

As of last week, the Yellowstone County Attorneys Office had about 900 active child abuse and neglect cases. With the number of new cases for 2017 running ahead of last year, the office is on a pace to file for protection of more than 600 children by years end.

In the past year, Medicaid has become Montanas No. 1 source for substance abuse treatment payment. Thanks to the Montana HELP Act, our state has a powerfully expanded tool to reduce substance abuse.

With Medicaid eligibility now expanded to virtually all adults whose income is below $16,000 a year, the program can cover most people on probation and parole who need treatment in the community. In the first six months of 2016, Medicaid coverage reduced the states costs of substance abuse treatment by $1.5 million because the federal government picked up the tab.

If Montanas state leaders and its congressional delegation did only one thing to effectively combat substance abuse, they would support continuation of treatment coverage through Medicaid  including the adult expansion population.

Without Medicaid paying the costs for most of the low income Montanans needing treatment, all other efforts to deal with the meth and opioid epidemics will be much, much harder.

When Sen. Steve Daines said last week that he wants to repeal the law that makes drug treatment available to more Montanans who desperately need it, he may not have thought of that consequence. Daines must consider the imperative to support addiction treatment and other mental health care as provided under the Affordable Care Act. Drug addiction is a community issue and a national issue  not a partisan issue.

Mondays Gazette opinion will discuss making Medicaid and other drug abuse reduction efforts more effective.
James R. McGill's letter, "Repeal Obamacare Immediately," urges repeal without replacement, as "Neither health care bill presently under consideration by the Republican-controlled House or Senate goes far enough." No, removing 22 million from health care is no bargain when removing some 55 million is in sight. McGill has evidently never required medical care, won't ever require it, nor will he ever get old. Or, maybe he married into the Walton family or inherited a bundle. Or, like other Libertarians and Trumpsters, he is a special case, not subject to the laws of evolution, genetics, mathematics, mortality or physics.

As a raving liberal, I agree with him, but for a better reason. The lack of imagination or projective empathy disabling him from ever seeing himself suffering adversity ("losing"), fuels his objection to any common benefit idea. These are for losers: Aid for Dependent Children, Medicare, Medicaid, school lunch, Social Security, veterans benefits, unemployment compensation, welfare and, certainly, any national health care plan. Remember: "John McCain wouldn't have spent seven years in the Hanoi Hilton if he was a decent pilot," says the five-time deferred "I love war" president.

So, the only cure for immortal exceptionalists is to get old, get sick, get hit on his/her Harley and then lose his/her car, house, ranch, and savings to Billings Clinic or St. Vincent Healthcare. Don't think they won't come after it, especially if they have no other appeal.

Charlie Donnes

Billings
Burn victim recovering

Samuel, who is being treated at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex for second and third degree burns over 70 percent of his body, is said to be in a satisfactory condition and is resting comfortably.

Relatives told Sunday Newsday the combination of worrying over Samuels condition and having to seek alternative accommodation for the family members whose homes were burnt during the incident has taken a toll on them all. They said they have been applying to several organisations for assistance.

Last Wednesday afternoon, residents of Eighth Street East, Arouca heard arguing and scuffling in a house in a small yard on the street. Moments later, an explosion was heard and Samuel and his female companion Anika La Rosa, 37, were heard screaming.

Samuel ran out of the back of the house with his body on fire.

He fell in a nearby drain and people came to his assistance.

When asked what happened, Samuel said La Rosa was trying to kill him. La Rosa died in the fire.

Homicide detectives are continuing investigations.
Kings Wharf resident gets eviction notice

Ramkissoon, a fisherman, told Sunday Newsday yesterday he cannot understand why he is being told to move. My house was destroyed by Tropical Storm Bret and I am in the process of re-building my home, Ramkissoon said. He said he went to the National Commission for Self Help and received material to start a new home .

This is why I question this eviction notice. He said the notice states he has a container on the property but he is denying it saying he never had a container there .

Ramkissoon visited the city corporation on Friday hoping to meet the city engineer .

He said he was told he needs to return tomorrow at 10.30 am .

I would like the mayor to come down here at Kings Wharf and see how hard we work and how we struggle to make a living.
Umar Abdullah calls for investigation into police killing

The Islamic Front would not stand idly by in the face of an act which is bound to erode public trust in our security forces, Abdullah said.

This approach to battling the challenges of crime and corruption in our nation must be reviewed.

Those responsible for this behaviour must be brought to account and pay a heavy price, Abdullah said.

Conflicting reports surrounds the shooting death of Martins said to be a member of the Unruly ISIS gang (now referred to as the Masjid of Peace) which is based in Enterprise, Chaguanas. Police said shortly before 4 pm on Friday, Martins opened fire at their members who returned fire at Caroni Savannah Road, Chaguanas, near a car dealership.

However there is a claim that Martins, formerly of Diego Martin, was unarmed and police simply shot and killed him while speaking to a businessman. Martins, police said, was wanted for a series of capital offences including murder. Police investigators said Martins had gone to the businessplace to collect tax (a form of payment businessmen make to criminals to forego being robbed and kidnapped).

However, Martins associates claimed he had gone there with over $20,000 to purchase a car.

Yesterday Abdullah said he contacted head of the Police Complaints Authority David West about the issue. In a media release yesterday, he said West is awaiting an official complaint tomorrow.

The Imam called for the immediate suspension of the police involved and added witnesses and video footage would be made available.

From the information received, we are of the firm belief that officer (name called) and his men should be investigated for the homicide of Jelani Martins and the unaccounted $21,500 which he had on his person. (Name of businessman) was taken into custody.

A story, we understand, is now being concocted to say Jelani went to rob and shoot him. Abdullah said Martins killing is not sitting well with Islamic Front.

This act by the TTPS (TT Police Service) is going to tarnish and deliver a heavy blow to an already ugly image and will further degrade the public perception of the entire service. He accused the police of showing its inability to act positively and appropriately to curb the exploding crime rate and the inherent social and economic challenges.

The TTPS seems to be evolving into a plague with a purpose to destroy the poor family structure which is the basic building block of society, Abdullah added.

After the shooting on Friday, Martins was taken to the Chaguanas Health Facility where he died.

But tension erupted with relatives and friends expressing anger over the killing. Members of the Defence Force and police had to be called in to quell the angry mob.

Up to yesterday the businessman was assisting police with the investigations.

Efforts to contact Williams yesterday proved futile as calls to his phone went unanswered yesterday
Return to Enterprise one year after Robocops murder

Alexis was shot dead on July 17, 2016 at his car wash off Freedom Street. Customer Kevin Escayg, 43, and another man, Thomas Hamza Sharpe, also died in that shooting.

Sunday Newsday spoke with head of the Crown Trace Mosque Imam Morland Lynch who said since Alexis killing there has been a new influx of more brazen criminals in Crown Trace, Enterprise.

I dont think everyone has moved on, Lynch said. Its gotten worse and it will continue to get worse before it gets any better. Just last week they killed a businessman by the name of Joey because he refused to pay protection money to some guys who recently moved into the neighbourhood. What these guys are doing is not only killing the residents, theyre also killing the community because a lot of these businesses are forced to close down. Lynch, who lost his son Akmal to gun violence in 2015, has since lobbied for an end to ongoing violence between warring gangs in the community. Asked what it would take for Enterprise to leave behind its history of crime and violence, Lynch said residents should focus on the future and leave the past in the past.

People need to start healing again. They need to be able to take back their communities from these people that are coming in and doing what they want.

We also need more officers who are above corruption, who can put these guys away once and for all. We wont be able to see any kind of change unless we get that support from the police. Sunday Newsday spoke to a longtime Chaguanas resident, who asked only to be identified as Dennis, who claimed he witnessed Alexis assassination.

I saw it from over the road.

One of those fellas had a long machine gun. They stood over his head and fired down at him.

They wanted him dead and they werent going to take any chances. After Alexis death, tensions rose as residents feared they would have been caught in the crossfire of gang warfare. They say while the tension has eased slightly, the threat of violence is never far as many refuse to venture out after dark.

On December 4, 2016, Alexis brother Mervyn, 46, was shot dead along Railway Road in Enterprise.

On March 24 this year, another sibling, Sylvan Alexis, 60, was shot and killed at Francois Street.

Here is not like it used to be, one resident said. Back in the day you could have gone out to a movie, but I wouldnt take the chance now. Too many young fellas with a short fuse out here. Sunday Newsday spoke with ASP Richard Smith, supervising officer of Operation Enterprise  a community-based initiative of the Police Service in Enterprise, who confirmed while there has been a recent upsurge in reprisal killings in the community and environs, the police, through a variety of community outreach programmes and more routine patrols, have arrested the crime rate.

Before we (the TTPS) stepped up operations in the community there was an upsurge in reprisal killings especially in March where we had about ten murders for that month alone, Smith said. But since we went into the area and began our operations weve seen a dramatic reduction in the incidence of crime. Smith credits the reduction in the incidence of violent crime not only to hard tactics, but also to more inclusive, community- based approaches.

Weve established the Enterprise community council, we also have a youth camp at the Enterprise Government Primary School. Since weve occupied the community, weve only had one murder and that was outside our area of operations. And since then, weve extended our reach to other areas in order to increase and improve our capacities. While crime and violence in Enterprise appears to have remained stagnant for now, many residents are still unconvinced the changes are permanent as one elder explained, the violence is seasonal.

It comes and goes like the wet season. Right now we havent seen much of it but who knows in the next few months that will change. We havent seen the last of it.
Ramesh: I received no application to seal Ayers-Caesar proceedings

In a letter yesterday, Maharaj said there were reports in the media on Friday that the Judiciary has moved to seal all the documents filed.

It is to be noted that the President under the law can only be sued in the name of the Attorney General. This is made clear by the State Liability and Proceedings Act. Maharaj said he was contacted by reporters who asked whether it was true the proceedings were sealed since some of them went to the Registry in the Port of Spain High Court to ask about the claim and were told by officials at the counter those proceedings were sealed.

I informed the media that no application to seal these proceedings were served on me or my law firm and the procedure required to seal the proceedings required an application to be made to a judge. He said he sent a letter to the Registrar of the Supreme Court on Friday.

I wanted her to inform me if the proceedings were sealed, and if so, what was the process used for such an order to be have been made. Maharaj said he has not received any response to his letter.

It must be presumed therefore that no application was made to a judge for these proceedings to be sealed and no judge has made any order for these proceedings to be sealed. Maharaj said sealed may have been a wrong term used to members of the media in describing restrictions.

Using the term that the proceedings were sealed could have given the impression that there was a court order with the consequence that the hearing of the proceedings would be conducted in private.

There is a distinction for non-parties to proceedings to be denied access to documents filed in court...
Nicole Dyer-Griffith gets real

She was adamant the COP, which was founded on the principles of inclusive politics, had veered from its moorings and needed to quickly re-engage the people if it stood a realistic chance of being a worthy political force.

This has been one of the bugbears for our organisation, getting real, an outspoken Dyer- Griffith said on Friday.

The former COP chairman also observed the party has not been connecting with the vast majority of citizens.

We need to speak in terms that people can understand what we bring to the table. We need to move away from speaking this language that seems to be abstract and that does not connect. According to Dyer- Griffith, discipline is the major problem confronting the COP.

She referred to the controversy surrounding her eligibility to contest the election, given her recent position as leader of the Alliance of Independents, as a case in point.

The leadership election was supposed to have taken place on July 7 but was postponed pending the outcome of todays meeting at the COPs Operations Centre, Charlieville. It is expected that a new date for the election will be set at the meeting.

Dyer-Griffith, who said she will attend todays meeting, said questions about her eligibility were unfounded.

As far as I am concerned, I am the holder of a letter from the political leader of the Congress of the People (Dr Anirudh Mahabir) stating that I am a member of the organisation. I am the holder of a membership card of the organisation.

My name is on a list of members of the organisation. I went through the process. I was vetted. I was interviewed and accepted a member. Of the controversy, Dyer-Griffith said, If one were to look closely, the COP always tends to put itself apart from the rest. And if it is we were to look at the two primary organisations, these issues that the COP faces now will never become challenges in those organisations because they maintain a level of discipline amongst the ranks and, therefore, they do not have to face, every Monday morning, waking up to a lawsuit from a member who feels aggrieved one way or the next. It just does not occur.

If you look at the COPs history, you will find that there are different elements that would speak to the organisation not being able to treat with certain issues from a disciplinary perspective. A former model, Dyer- Griffith represented Trinidad and Tobago in the 1999 Miss Universe pageant. She has also dabbled in nursing, communications and business before moving into politics as a member of the COP, where she is bent on making her mark if elected leader.

Asked why citizens should see the COP as an alternative to the other two major political entities, she said, The rationale for looking for an alternative to the two primary options is really simple. All you have to do is look at the track record of the current government and the last Opposition and it easily demonstrates that there is much to be desired. The mother of one claimed the margin of people looking for a viable alternative has grown over the years.

She recalled the COP, when it had contested its first general election, was able to win the support of a sizeable number of voters (147,000), as did other parties before, including the Organisation for National Reconstruction and the National Alliance for Reconstruction.

So that with every electoral period, those persons who can be considered marginal voters, the population grows. As Dyer-Griffith sees it, the challenges confronting the country include national safety and security, management of the economy and economic diversification - issues which, she feels, the Government seems incapable of handling at this time.

She said the COP, under her watch, will seek to provide much needed solutions to the problems plaguing the country.

People want to hear solutions that will really impact on their daily lives, she said.

Dyer-Griffith, who in 2011 was appointed parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Communications, said the COP must re-invent itself to effect such changes.

When we speak about good governance, all that is well and good.

But people want to know, How am I going to make myself and my family safer? What are the strategies that are going to be employed to make the nation safer? What are the strategies that are going to be employed to be able to put food on my table? Those are the bare basics that we need to get back to. So, we need to get down to brass tacks and get real. Focussed on healing the fractures within the COP, especially with all of the unnecessary distractions, Dyer-Griffith said members who may have fallen by the wayside over the years as well as those seeking a fresh alternative, needed to feel re-assured.

However, she understands the process will not be a walk in the park. It is going to be very challenging but we are committed to making it work and we are committed to ensuring that the COP can be seen a s viable alternative to the options that are currently before us. Asked if the COP, under her leadership, will be in a position to contest the next general election on its own, Dyer-Griffith declared: Absolutely.
An Alford plea is a guilty plea where the defendant doesnt admit guilt, but admits that the prosecution has enough evidence to likely prove the charge. I think it's high time the Alford plea is taken off the books. In essence, what it is saying, is, I didn't steal the cookie; my hand did. Isn't it time to stop this insanity? I would hope the Montana Judicial system would choose a higher standard of integrity than this.
Flooding in Diego Martin, Santa Cruz and Maraval

When Sunday Newsday contacted Deputy CEO of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management, Neville Wint, he said he had only received preliminary reports at the time but teams from the various regional corporations were in the field assessing the situation.

We know rivers would have crested in some areas and in some places it would have burst. There are sporadic reports of landslides and flooded homes in those areas.

We are trying to assess the impact. One driver on his way into Santa Cruz yesterday afternoon said the traffic was at a standstill outside La Canoa Village as drivers were unable to pass.

As far as the eye could see the whole road was water, he said.

Realising there was nowhere to go, the driver said many drivers simply turned off their engines to wait for the water to recede.

Some exited their cars with umbrellas and either walked to the flood area to see the reason for the stalled traffic, or to wait in nearby shops and generally find shelter. Still others walked to the bridge at Hololo Mountain Road to watch the water in the river rush by.

However, a few drivers of pick-up trucks slowly made their way through the floods while others who tried the same experienced mechanical problems and stalled.
North Korea already has capability to strike the USA with an EMP weapon, warn analysts

Over the Fourth of July holiday, North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un ordered the test-firing of a newly upgraded missile that Western analysts assessed as capable of intercontinental travel. The ICBM, called the Hwasong-14, or KN-14, flew on a trajectory that U.S. defense experts believe could put Alaska or parts of the West Coast within range.

That means Pyongyang is closer to developing the capability to detonate a nuclear device over the U.S., creating an electromagnetic pulse [EMP] event that could wipe out large portions of the power grid, financial system, and critical infrastructure that controls dams, water treatment facilities and nuclear plants.

Its not as if all of this has occurred in a vacuum. As Dr. Peter V. Pry, chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission who served in the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA, noted in a March column along with former ambassador and CIA Director James Woolsey, such a weapon, if it were detonated over the U.S. directly, would eventually kill 90 percent of us.

The mainstream media, and some officials who should know better, continue to allege North Korea does not yet have capability to deliver on its repeated threats to strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons. False reassurance is given to the American people that North Korea has not demonstrated that it can miniaturize a nuclear warhead small enough for missile delivery, or build a reentry vehicle for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of penetrating the atmosphere to blast a U.S. city.

Yet any nation that has built nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, as North Korea has done, can easily overcome the relatively much simpler technological challenge of warhead miniaturization and reentry vehicle design.

In fact, the pair note, Kim was photographed recently posing next to what may very well have been a miniaturized nuclear weapon ready to mount atop a missile.

Not only that, but the North is also improving its submarine-missile-launch capability as well. In April 2016, CNN reported that Pyongyangs capabilities in this realm have also improved dramatically. North Koreas sub launch capability has gone from a joke to something very serious, one U.S. official told the news service. The U.S. is watching this very closely.

In August, NationalSecurity.news reported that the North launched a ballistic missile via submarine that traveled about 310 miles, flying into Japans air defense identification zone. Officials presumed the missile was a KN-11. The missile was launched from one of North Koreas Sinpo-class subs, which can travel about 620 miles underwater at one time. This threat is real enough that the U.S., South Korea and Japan are stepping up their sub-hunting skills.

Add to this the fact that the U.S. is stepping up its missile defense exercises, as well as the deployment of missile defense assets in South Korea.

But just how likely is such an EMP strike by the North? That depends on what the United States and its allies in the region do. (Related: New report notes even a LIMITED nuclear attack could lead to one billion deaths and the collapse of the global food order.)

President Donald J. Trump, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have all made it clear a nuclear-armed North Korea with the means to deliver a weapon anywhere over U.S. soil represents a clear and present danger to America and will not be tolerated. So  preemptive military strike is an option that no one in the White House or administration has yet to take off the table.

A lot of things would have to happen first  such as getting South Koreas president Moon Jae-in, who much prefers diplomacy over conflict in resolving the North Korean issue  on board with a U.S. first-strike (China and Russia too, but less so than South Korea).

If that were to occur, most experts on North Korea  and some North Korea defectors  believe Kim would launch everything he had remaining, including nuclear and chemical weapons. War would follow.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

NationalSecurity.news

SHTFPlan.com

TheHill.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

Submit a correction >>
This week marks the 230 anniversary of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Morocco and the United States, said the Moroccan American Center for Policy on behalf of the Government of Morocco.

This longest unbroken treaty in the US history testifies to centuries old ties that stretch as far back as 1777, when Morocco became the first country in the world to officially recognize the fledging American nation.

In 1780, General George Washington and the Sultan of Morocco began an official correspondence that quickly led to a mutual interest in negotiating a Treaty of Amity and Commerce to set out the conditions of trade relations between the two, recalled the Moroccan American Center in a statement.

The final draft of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship was approved by the Confederation Congress in July 1787.

Other milestones include the first US consulate in Africa and the Middle East, inaugurated in Tangier in 1797, and the first multilateral treaty, signed by the US and nine other countries in 1865, to erect a lighthouse in Tangier as a navigational aid, adds the statement.

Ties between the two countries steadily developed as Morocco assisted the US and its allies during WWI, notes the statement, highlighting the growth in economic ties with the signing in 2006 of a bilateral Free Trade Agreement.

At the level of counterterrorism cooperation, Morocco takes part in the US-led Strategic dialogue and in joint military training exercises, writes the Washington-based Moroccan American Center.

The Treaty of Peace and Friendship is a remarkable document with an enduring legacy, the statement quoted former US Ambassador to Morocco Edward M. Gabriel as saying. Our long friendship with Morocco continues to this day, based on shared values and a common vision, he said.

The Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) is a non-profit organization whose principal mission is to inform opinion makers, government officials, and interested publics in the United States about political and social developments in Morocco and the role being played by the Kingdom in broader strategic developments in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.
BMCE Bank of Africa signed an agreement to build Africas tallest tower in Rabat with State-owned giant China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) and the General Construction Company of Casablanca (TGCC).

Speaking following the signing ceremony in Casablanca, CEO of BMCE Bank of Africa said that the new edifice, which will be known as Rabat Tower, is meant to be an impressive icon in the urban and economic, cultural and touristic landscape of Morocco.

The Chinese-Moroccan consortium won the contract to build the tower last May. The CRCC said previously in a statement that it will take responsibility for 60% of the project, which is budgeted at $380 million, while their Moroccan partners will handle the other 40%.

The skyscraper, adopting ecological and sustainable design concepts, will be home to office spaces, luxury apartments and hotels with a total designed floor space of 86,000 square meters.

The tower is owned by one of Moroccos top billionaires Othmane Benjelloun through his Paris-based money management firm, FinanceCom Asset Management.

BMCE bank is the largest in Africa with operations in more than 20 countries. Its CEO Benjelloun is also planning to build a 30-story rocket-shaped tower that will loom over Casablanca.
Brain cancer isnt the only problem John McCain has to deal with. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Politicians from all corners of the ideological spectrum sent Senator John McCain words of encouragement after it was revealed this week that hed been diagnosed with brain cancer. But one of his rivals dispensed with decorum and said that the senator should vacate his seat immediately.

Arizona republican Dr. Kelli Ward said in an interview with Indiana radio station WOWO that she thinks McCain should step aside.

I hope that Sen. McCain is going to look long and hard at this, that his family and advisers are going to look at this and theyre going to advise him to step away as quickly as possible, she said. So that the business of the country and the business of Arizona being represented at the federal level can move forward.

In a statement posted to her website, Ward, who is an osteopathic physician, offered her prayers to McCain, but wrote that the medical reality of his diagnosis is grim and that As a doctor, Ive counseled people in similar situations and these end-of-life choices are never easy. I usually advise terminal patients to reduce stress, relax, and spend time laughing with loved ones.

Shocking no one, Ward also suggested that she would be a suitable replacement for the 81-year-old McCain.

Ward ran a primary campaign against McCain last year, losing by about 11 points. (She made McCains age an issue, predicting that he might die in office.) Ward is currently mounting a primary challenge to Arizonas other senator, Jeff Flake, who is up for reelection in 2018. Because of Flakes longtime criticism of President Trump and possible resistance to voting for Obamacare repeal, the president has considered backing Ward against him, in what would be an extremely unusual move.

Responding to the predictable backlash to her comments, Ward appeared on a local radio show and, in a back and forth with incredulous hosts, clarified that McCain should walk away if he were debilitated. But in keeping with the times, she labeled criticism of her response fake news on her Facebook page. Many of her supporters made it clear that they stood by her.

McCain was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain tumor that carries a dire prognosis. If the senator couldnt finish his term or dies in office, Arizona governor Doug Ducey would appoint a Republican to fill the seat until the next statewide election, in November 2018.

In a lighthearted tweet posted on Thursday, McCain said he will return to the Senate. On Saturday, his daughter Meghan, posted a photo of her and the senator hiking in Arizona:
McConnell may have lost this fight just by picking it. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

As Republicans fumble around in the dark trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the law has never been more well-liked. Poll after poll shows that Americans widely prefer Obamacare to the various sadistic plans Republicans have put forward to replace it. Until recently, the Affordable Care Act had struggled to gain widespread acceptance for a variety of reasons: nonstop scorched-earth opposition from the GOP; built-in American resistance to more government involvement in health care; a lackluster sales plan from President Obama and other Democrats; and the laws actual shortcomings.

But once a Republican Congress and president possessed the power to actually destroy Obamacare, the partys health-care hypocrisy was finally revealed for all to see. With its bumbling, bad-faith effort to take away health care from millions, the GOP has managed to do what Democrats never could  make the Affordable Care Act popular.

Meanwhile, the once-bedrock issue of Obamacare repeal has faded as a unifying plank among most of the GOPs rank-and-file voters.

A New York Times article published on Friday offers a revealing glimpse into the minds of some average conservatives who once vehemently opposed the bill and now are lukewarm, at best, on the prospect of its destruction. For instance:

Five years ago, the Affordable Care Act had yet to begin its expansion of health insurance to millions of Americans, but Jeff Brahin was already stewing about it.

Its going to cost a fortune, he said in an interview at the time.

This week, as Republican efforts to repeal the law known as Obamacare appeared all but dead, Mr. Brahin, a 58-year-old lawyer and self-described fiscal hawk, said his feelings had evolved.

As much as I was against it, he said, at this point Im against the repeal.

Now that youve insured an additional 20 million people, you cant just take the insurance away from these people, he added. Its just not the right thing to do.

Another key vignette:

I cant even remember why I opposed it, said Patrick Murphy, who owns Bagel Barrel, on a quaint and bustling street near Mr. Brahins law office here in Doylestown. He thought Democrats jammed it down our throats, and like Mr. Brahin, he worried about the growing deficit. But, he said, he has provided insurance for his own dozen or so employees since 1993.

Everybody needs some sort of health insurance, Mr. Murphy said. Theyre trying to repeal Obamacare but they dont have anything in place.

Theres more here than just the political truism that its almost impossible to take away an entitlement once its been bestowed. The reversal in public opinion cuts to the emptiness at the core of the national Republican agenda on this issue.

Ever since health-care legislation leapt to the front burner in 2009, Republicans have chosen to oppose the law in almost complete lockstep  not just as a policy difference, but as an affront to their sensibilities. (Several GOP governors have avoided this path, to their states benefit.)

As even enthusiastic supporters of Obamacare are happy to testify, the law has some significant problems, from too-high premiums to the too-limited selection of doctors and hospitals for many patients who buy insurance on the exchanges. (This is in large part because of the Republican opposition, which forced Democrats to create a system with a lot of moving parts.)

But most Republican lawmakers and officials have never engaged with such complications on the plane of reality. They pushed the fiction of death panels, brushed off complaints about the pre-Obamacare status quo by proclaiming that the American health-care system was the best in the world (a claim you dont hear so much anymore), and then, once the law was in effect, moved on to other false narratives  for example, that the exchanges were perennially on the verge of imploding. They never dared admit the conservative roots of the Affordable Care Act, to the point that their 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, had to painfully contort his position on the matter after having passed an Obamacare-like law when he was the governor of Massachusetts.

Most important, they never grappled with the reality that the law has helped tens of millions of people.

The GOP was able to get away with their alternate-universe vision for so long because, without control of the three branches of government, it could revel in a series of symbolic repeal votes without offering an alternative.

Americans were also confused by the mechanisms of the Affordable Care Act when it was introduced, and indeed, the Times reports that many still dont understand how the law works. This widespread perplexity created an opening for Republicans to claim vaguely that they could easily do better than the status quo  something terrific, in the words of Donald Trump.

But now, Republicans control every lever of the federal government, and any illusion that replacing Obamacare would be simple has been well and truly shattered. Instead, the relentless news coverage around health care has finally revealed Republicans philosophy on the issue: nothing more than knee-jerk opposition to the previous president combined with an overwhelming desire to cut taxes for wealthy Americans.

And by thus far rejecting any reasonable fixes to the law, the GOP has inadvertently helped drag the American public to the left. A recent Pew survey found that 60 percent of Americans now believe that government has a responsibility to ensure health care for its citizens, the highest number in a decade. That includes 52 percent of Republicans with family incomes below $30,000, up from 31 percent a year ago.

Propaganda works best when the enemy it conjures is hazy and easily caricatured; it works less well when everyday reality intrudes. Americans have now gotten a taste of what citizens in other industrialized nations have long become accustomed to, and they dont want less of it. They want more.
New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Photo: Screencap/Fox News Sunday

After Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday that he possessed the complete power to pardon, new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci shot down speculation that the president might use that power to pardon himself. In an interview on Sunday with Fox News Chris Wallace, Scaramucci elaborated:

Im in the Oval Office with the president last week, were talking about that. He brought that up, he said but he doesnt have to be pardoned. Theres nobody around him that has to be pardoned. He was just making the statement about the power of pardons. And so, now, all of the speculation and all the spin, and oh, hes going to pardon himself and do all this other nonsense  the president does not need to pardon himself. And the reason that he doesnt need to pardon himself is he hasnt done anything wrong.

Scaramuccis revelation that he had spoken with the president about pardons didnt quite meld with the message from Trumps lawyer, Jay Sekulow, who told ABC News George Stephanopolous on Sunday that pardons have not been discussed and pardons are not on the table. Sekulow later went on to say that its never been adjudicated, whether a president could pardon himself and that theres a big academic discussion going on right now about the scenario.

Indeed, the question of self-pardoning has never been fully resolved, and it may take a Supreme Court ruling, if things get that far, to gain real clarity on the issue.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post on Friday, constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe, former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, and Brookings Institution senior fellow Norm Eisen made a forceful case that the president cannot self-pardon, based on the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law. But Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, wrote on the same day for the same publication that Trump clearly possesses the authority to pardon associates and family members under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.

One thing is clear: A debate around how pardon power relates to oneself and ones family members is exactly the conversation President Trump wants to be provoking six months into office.
1. The Washington Post almost scraped the work of Woodward and Bernstein.

Editors wanted to give the story to big time reporters because Woodward had only been working there nine months. There was also a fear of being in danger as many were not reporting on it and White House staffers called the story a "compulsion". It is something that is also happening today in which anything anti-Trump is being dubbed "fake news" and a "witch hunt" by the president himself.



2. Woodward and Mark Felt aka Deep Throat

Woodward had used Mark Felt as an anonymous source in the past and contacted him regarding Watergate. The two constantly met up in a parking garage late at night and used the New York Times newspaper as a way to communicate out of fear of being watched. Woodward and Bernstein run into some trouble after Hugh Sloan denies testifying against Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, despite previously saying yes to the two men. Felt later confirms that they were right and Haldeman masterminded the break in. Felt also warns Woodward later on that he and others are being watched and their homes have been bugged.



3. The U.S. Intelligence agencies and President Nixon were part of the cover up

The cover up was less about the slush fund and more about hiding the covert operations of the entire U.S. intelligence committee. Nixon was a knowing participant and agreed to the entire operation. And much like Nixon, it is quite obvious that the current President was well aware that his campaign colluded with Russia to defeat HRC.



4. Attacks on the media

45 years after Watergate, Redford wrote a op-ed for the WaPo. Redford states that the truth is in danger again. Redford goes on to say that much of the country is divided along with Congress. He also states that, like Nixon, Trump consistently attacks the media in order to cast doubt on their legitimacy.



5. "These are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand"

The President's men were are not the smartest and the cover up was messy. No one taught them that you never leave a paper trail. This is one of the other similarities between the two scandals, this administration isn't filled with the smartest people you will ever meet. Don Jr released his own emails and basically outed himself in the subject line while you have lawyers checking in on social media when they are about to head into covert meetings.



6. Robert Redford's influence on the book

Robert Redford overheard about the break in while promoting his film "The Candidate". He became fascinated with the story and followed the work of Woodward and Bernstein. He tried to get in contact with the two journalists to buy the rights and they thought it was a prank by the Nixon administration. Woodward and Bernstein were still working on the story as it was still unfolding. Redford impacted the book by telling the two to lay the story out piece by piece instead of writing about what was discovered.



7. They found a conscience



The story unfolded over the course of 26 months while this scandal feels like it's been 84 years. Eventually, the country was put before party and both congressional Democrats and Republicans got together. Due to politicians actually doing their job, Nixon resigned even though he initially refused to. The Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General resigned over Nixon's request to fire the special prosecutor.
Get that Marvel and DC money Lawrence!

Reply

Thread

Link

SCREAMING ABOUT MICHELLE. I love her so much and am so fucking excited about this! Amazing about Laurence too.

Reply

Thread

Link





Omg!! #CaptainMarvel is set in the 90's and the #Skrulls will be the villains!! So ready for @brielarson to embody this role. pic.twitter.com/zCcL8b6Y5k  Jim Phan (@JimPhan91) July 23, 2017





Edited at 2017-07-23 01:11 am (UTC) ahhhhhhh everything is so exciting omg <3333333333

Reply

Thread

Link

set in the 90's



?????

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

they kinda messed up with not starting with her since she lowkey is the leader of the avengers haha

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

In the 90s? I guess marvel is coming for Fox's inconsistent timeline.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

imma assume she spends all her time offworld until now because where the fuck has she been lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

The 90's?? Why do that when it just creates a bunch of massive continuity errors?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

YESSSSS

THEY BETTER INCLUDE SOME MUSIC FROM THE SPICE GIRLS

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

that's fantastic casting for janet 

Reply

Thread

Link

akdsj michelle!



the skrulls will be in captain marvel!!!!

Reply

Thread

Link

i am here for anything that provides us a pfeiffernaissance

Reply

Thread

Link

mte

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Mte

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

whatever happened to laurence fishburn's daughter?

Reply

Thread

Link

oh my

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

oh.... my god

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Shame on you, squirtle

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I liked Ant-Man a LOT more than I thought I would, so I am HERE for this sequel.

Reply

Thread

Link





Yesss Walton

Reply

Thread

Link

I got so excited when I saw her name :D

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

same; it was hard watching her on Killjoys after seeing her be evil on The Tunnel. she's good at it lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

whatever happened to laurence fishburne's daughter. is she still doing porn under the squirtle moniker

Reply

Thread

Link

STOP why did I immediately wonder about her too when I saw his name

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i saw a gif of her squirting the camera way back when and i havent been the same since

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Queen Chippy D!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

hft casting

Reply

Thread

Link

i'll always be in the doona bae for janet van dyne camp but this is... acceptable.

Reply

Thread

Link

In a completely different series sure but in this one? that wouldn't work at all

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

THIS CAST OMG MAKING ME WEAK



when Paul Rudd is the last on a list of amazing actors in a movie like what



Does this mean Michelle is gonna be in avengers 4?!?!!?!?!??!!??!?!?!?

Reply

Thread

Link

I'm dying reading a live blog of the Marvel panel. I wanna see what they're showing so bad!



Anyway, Fury is gonna be in Captain Marvel too, with both eyes, lol.

Reply

Thread

Link

I don't understand how Captain Marvel can be set in the 90s. Does that mean Carol is gonna be in her 40s in Infinity War? Is her powers gonna stop her aging?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I don't get it either. I liked the idea at first (because Bree is young) but it doesn't really make sense unless she's been off-planet for 20 years??

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
She also uses the Fox News app to share stories very frequently.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i think i knew this. i think it might just be bts?? idk i feel like she followed them in like 2014

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I just find it hilarious that the source is Stalker Sarah.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmao of course she does. is there any other genre better for someone who willingly calls themselves stalker?? she'll fit right in.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

she probably learned of sasaengs and was eager to join her brethren

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

her irl style is always hopelessly tragic. it's surprising but true.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

She's very devoted to her trailer park aesthetics irl.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

And she's wearing those ugly pink flats with the tracksuit 



Lizzy Grant's off-stage style has always been tragic.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i love ha for her reliably awful personal style

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Same lol it's endearing

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

she looks cute

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

haha this is how she dresses everyday tho. I think it made the whole thing really intimate and lowkey I liked it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Britney taught ha.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I'm disappointed she doesn't actually date daddies. Where's that artistic integrity, Lana??

Reply

Thread

Link

She's a princess of imagination!



I lowkey love how "Lana Del Rey" is an entirely made up persona. It's refreshing to know she's not anywhere near as messy in her personal life as her songs would lead you to believe.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

She does hint that things in her music aren't entirely true in interviews but I do believe she's had her share of a couple of older men in her formative years.



Substance use I don't think is as often as it seems in her music though

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

i need her to come thru with those lyrics and date a fine ass salt n pepa daddy at least once

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

nnn not them matching, i thought she was with mgk? welp, halsey clearly has a type...and awful taste in men.

Reply

Thread

Link

wasn't he "making out" with britney spears like last week? WHO IS THIS GUY????????

Reply

Thread

Link

wutt? isn't britney spears with that kid atm?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

That kid lmaoooo

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I think it was like a year ago when they had that song to promote

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Whaaaaaaaat

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

white usher

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

NOOOOO Britney is dating that model from her music video

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

HOW THE FUCK IS STALKER SARAH VERIFIED



LMAO







Reply

Thread

Link

mte. why is the internet encouraging ha..

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Check it out sis. It's great. Aside from Love and Lust for Life, the other bops are Cherry and In My Feelings.



Get Free, 13 Beaches and Heroin are great too. The production is ace.



I'm digging her anti-Trump songs too. Lol.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

its better than honeymoon, that's for sure.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

it's not better than BTD but it's enjoyable



i really like the song with stevie nicks

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I'm an awful white g(al), date me Lana!



You guys always talk about this Halsey person, I still didn't bother checking for ha.. should I?

Reply

Thread

Link

no

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

no (2)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Don't do this to yourself

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I like hurricane and ghost. Her album is listenable, but the lyrics are a little cringy

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Lol she's fucking annoying but Strangers is a really good song.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

She's no Lana but I don't mind her music.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I......don't even have a response. I'm out. Lol!!!

Reply

Thread

Link

lmao their matching outfits tho

Reply

Thread

Link

OMG @ Stalker Sarah being verified, lmao

Reply

Thread

Link

They decided to verify journalists a little while ago.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

how is Stalker Sarah 21 years old tho????????????????????????????????

Reply

Thread

Link

i think she's been """""21"""" for awhile now

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

She has to be mid 20s by now... she's been stalking forever

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmaooo

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Back by popular demand. Footage I never posted back on June 2nd (catch me outside)  pic.twitter.com/H8VQSVzv2K  Stalker Sarah (@SarahMOnline) July 16, 2017







ugh ugh

Reply

Thread

Link

her mom is just as vile as she is

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link





Anyway this has been me since friday

Holy goddamn moly I cannot believe G-Eazy is responsible for A GOOD SONG, I'm thru the looking glass hereAnyway this has been me since friday

Reply

Thread

Link

In My Feelings is not a stand out to from the album. I probably need to play it a couple of more times.



Anyways I think Heroin is overhyped by the way ppl talked about it when it leaked.

Get Free is an epic little song and it closes the album so well.

God Bless America has such a 90s feel in the beats and is also one of my favorites.

Tomorrow Never Came & When the World Was at War I like a lot too 



I'm so happy about her showing different perspectives this time around.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Oh, In My Feelings and God Bless America were the immediate stand-outs for me!



I like all the songs though, and I love how it shifts from a more classic pop record halfway through to become more of a ~conscious~ Laurel Canyon singer songwriter record on the second half. I like this album soooo much more than Honeymoon, I'm just so happy with it!

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

same lmao

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

oh my fucking god!!!!!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

stop making fun of kween trisha!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
[ transcript ]

"So, recently I got social medias panties in a bunch because I did braids to my hair. This is so stupid. I cant believe Im talking about it, and I believe this shouldnt be turned out to be a race thing. I did my braids and I called them the Coco Swoop. I name all my styles that I do to myself. These are called the Coco Swoop. The braids before were called the Bo Derek Braids. And its a Coco-ism. I've always done it. Why cant we all rename hairstyles or braids? That sounds so stupid. Why is everybody claiming something they shouldnt? I know braids have been around for thousands of years. Dont you think I know that? If I wanna wear a pineapple on my head, then I should be able to wear a pineapple on my head and call it the Pineapple Cocowop. I dont know. You see where Im going with this? Why is everybody hating?"



[ transcript ]

"People rename hairstyles all day long. Look Beyonce. Beyonce  she does this hairstyle, and now its the Lemonade, but no ones gonna get mad at her, right? So, at the end of the day, this shouldnt be a race war. This should be a 'human thing,' right? Everybody should be able to do it. Its a 'human thing'  give that a shot  not a race war. It has nothing to do with race. But this just goes to show you that no one reads the captions underneath pictures. Otherwise, you would understand that this is not an issue. Its something that I do. Its a Coco-ism, okay? Now, to the love out there. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I see it. I see all the comments. You know, power to you guys. I get this much love and that much hate, but sometimes, its gotta come in and say something about it, because its so disgusting. That we should be, like, loving each other, instead of hating on each other because of a hairstyle. Get over it."



Since everybody is trying to make a big deal about my braids let me tell you how I feel.... I'm trying to nip this in the bud now..(Watch the next post for a continuation of this video)Part 2 of how I feel about my braids.Let's put this to rest and worry about real issues we have in this world
China has a no-nonsense approach to pretty much everything. After its rapid growth as an industrial power, it is now employing this very same approach to deal with its consequences: the country is already the worlds top spender on solar power, and everything suggests Beijing plans to keep things this way.

After the completion in June of what could be the worlds biggest floating solar farm, now media report that during the first half of the year, Chinese companies installed 24 GW of solar capacity, of which 7 GW is distributed. Thats after last year China doubled its solar power capacity, adding almost 35 GW to a total 77.42 GW at the end of the year.

The capacity installed in the first half alone equals, Bloomberg notes, more than 50 percent of the total solar installed capacity in the U.S. as of the end of 2016. If the pace of expansion continues, this year will see another substantial increase, maintaining Chinas spot as the worlds largest solar power market in terms of number of panels. Solar panel production, of course, is also set for a rise: 25 percent on an annual basis this year, to 60 GW.

Rising domestic demand for renewable powerspurred in no small measure by a government drive to shift to renewableswas the main reason behind the increase. Earlier this year, Beijing said it would splash US$361 billion on expanding the countrys renewable power capacity by 2020. Solar capacity was originally projected to reach 110 GW by 2020, but it seems the target will be hit much sooner: at the end of June 2017 capacity stood at 101.82 GW. Related: Why Oil Prices Arent Going Anywhere

By 2022, China should have 320 GW of wind and solar power capacity, along with 340 GW of hydropower. By 2030, China aims to generate a fifth of its energy from renewable sources.

And thats not all. The installed capacity is also being utilized more efficiently. Earlier this year, the countrys National Energy Administration reported that power generation from PV plants went up by 80 percent between January and March. Also, in the first half just 7 percent of the total solar capacity was idle, down by 5 percentage points from the first half of 2016, Bloomberg notes, quoting NEA green energy official Xing Yiteng.

Yet this solar drive is not without its problems, the biggest of which seems to be wastage as a result of inadequate grid connections, or curtailment as it is also called. Reuters quotes Greenpeace as estimating the solar curtailment rate across the country went up by 50 percent during 2015 and 2016, with as much as 30 percent of solar power generated in two northwestern provinces, Gansu and Xinjiang, never reaching the grid. Related: Daily OPEC Oil Prices Now Public For The First Time Ever

Another challenge Beijing needs to overcome is a shortfall in renewable energy subsidies. Last year, this shortfall was around US$8.86 billion, and as the rate of capacity expansion accelerates, the chances are that the gap will only rise.

Despite these challenges, the long-term potential of solar power in China remains robust. International demand for solar capacity is also on the rise and will continue to rise for the observable future, which will certainly benefit Chinese solar panel producers, as will ever-falling production costs. All in all, the future is bright for the solar industry in China until it reaches the point of saturation, which, too, could happen sooner than previously expected.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
WASHINGTON: U.S. legislation renewing and tightening sanctions on Russia, stalled in the House of Representatives, was not passed before the U.S. and Russian presidents met at the G20 summit in Hamburg. The proposed bill had already received criticism not only from Russia but also from Germany and Austria about the impact sanctions may have on Europes gas supply.

Europe and the United States need not worry: Energy markets have undergone significant transformation in favor of importers, and Russias tough talk warning against sanctions is little more than posturing. Russia needs Europe as a market for its oil and gas.

The proposed sanctions bill  if passed by the House of Representatives and not vetoed by President Donald Trump  would put into law sanctions previously established under former President Barack Obama as well as expand them, targeting various companies and sectors of the Russian economy, including the energy sector. The sanctions, renewing earlier sanctions for Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 and involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine, are a response to Russias cyberattacks during the 2016 U.S. presidential election as well as weapons supply to Syrias government. Significantly, the new bill hinders Trump from easing sanctions on Russia without approval from Congress. The Senate approved the bill nearly unanimously in June.

Russias majority state-owned gas company, Gazprom, complains that the new sanctions target European companies involved in Russias controversial Nord Stream II pipeline project. The planned project expands the existing Nord Stream system that pumps Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany and bypasses Europes previous gas transit hub, Ukraine. With companies from Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK on board with the project, Nord Stream II, if completed, would support the dominance of Russian gas in Europe. Gazprom controls about 15 percent of global reserves and more than 70 percent of Russias. Related: 4 Reasons Oil Will Rally Back To $50

In response to the sanctions, Viktor Zubkov, chairman of Gazproms board and former prime minister stated, As the project moves towards implementation, the basic design is completed, the construction of the pipes continues, there are now more insinuations and tightening of sanctions against Russia in the field of energy. In Europe, the regions gas supply is being threatened. Washington pursues purely economic interests by lobbying for American energy companies in Europe.

There are two ways to interpret Zubkovs statement. First, given the Kremlins history of using energy as a weapon the statement reads as an innuendo that Russia could or has the potential to threaten Europes gas supplies. Another, that the Nord Stream II pipeline ensures European gas supplies from Russia, and thus US sanctions that threaten the pipelines completion indirectly threaten Europes imports. Neither is quite accurate though the threat could ring true to long-term Russia watchers.

Zubkovs statement echoes the Kremlins tradition of veiled threats to cause disruptions in energy supplies to its rivals. Indeed, Russia has cut gas supplies to Ukraine on multiple occasions and hiked gas prices to Central and Eastern European countries when political tensions ran high.

Gazproms leadership has been closely tied to the Kremlin since the 2000s. For instance, before he was elected Russian president in 2008, current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev served as Gazproms chairman of the board in 2000 and then on the board of directors between 2000 and 2001 and between 2002 and 2008. Chairman of the management committee of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, not only worked for Putin in the St. Petersburg Mayors Office in the 1990s, but was also a loyal friend. Zubkov was prime minister under Putin before Putin became prime minister himself while Zubkov replaced Medvedev at Gazprom when he took the presidential office.

However, the Kremlins innuendo that U.S. sanctions threaten Europes supply of Russian gas is either empty bluff or dangerous miscalculation. At the end of the day, the global natural gas markets have transformed with much greater supply and liquidity from booming US natural gas production and rising US liquefied natural gas exports.

For instance, this month the first U.S. shipment of LNG arrived to Polands new Swinoujscie terminal. Likewise, Lithuania signed its first agreement to receive U.S. LNG by August of this year, utilizing its LNG terminal that since 2014 has challenged Gazproms gas supply monopoly in the Baltics. Even within Russia itself, Gazprom is losing the power it once had over the export market. A private Russian gas firm is slated to deliver the first Russian LNG shipment to Europe, ahead of Gazprom.

Overall, Gazprom has been desperate to hold on to the European gas market where it faces not only more competition but also a political backlash due to its previous heavy hand in energy trade exemplified by political gas pricing and threats of gas cuts. Eastern European, Nordic and Baltic states have denounced Nord Stream II as another monopoly effort by Russia in Europe and a security threat given Russias increased military presence in the region where the pipelines would be laid. Moscows suggestions that Europes gas supplies from Russia are threatened may convince other EU countries of the need to secure alternatives for Russian gas imports. Related: Ecuador Abandons The OPEC Deal: Whos Next?

Nonetheless, some in Europe prefer more Russian gas imports via Nord Stream II as exemplified by German and Austrian criticism to the new sanctions. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said, Europes energy supply is a matter for Europe, not the United States of America.

Russias threats can only backfire. As explained in my new book, The New Geopolitics of Natural Gas, the changing nature of the natural gas markets are increasingly chipping away at the Russian monopoly over Europe, with growing LNG trade, new U.S. imports and a buildup of new infrastructure to bring alternative sources of gas from the Caspian. Russia no longer has the influence it once had over gas markets in Europe, and the new market realities will prove stronger than Russias sharp rhetoric.

Thus, European countries like Germany should not fear further U.S. sanctions on Russia. Europe has alternative sources and future gas supplies will not depend exclusively on Gazprom and Nord Stream II. Likewise, the House of Representatives should take advantage of the historic transformation in the global energy market and feel free to press for Washingtons long-term goals in Europe and vis-a-vis Russia.

By Yale Global

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The U.S. government has warned that it would take swift economic actions if the Venezuelan government proceeds with a July 30 move to rewrite the constitution to consolidate power in the hands of President Nicolas Maduro. With the country in shambles, the move is clearly intended to shore up the Presidents power in the face of fierce and growing opposition.

The statement from the U.S government is widely interpreted as a threat to sanction state-owned oil company PDVSA, the governments main source of revenue. My sense is theres an intensive review on a variety of options, Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, told the WSJ last week. I wouldnt be surprised about discussions on very severe measures against the Venezuelan government. If so, I hope they do more good than harm.

The precise details of what the sanctions might look like are not known yet, with a spectrum from mild to exceptionally aggressive. At the more minor end, the measures could amount to just sanctions on individuals, like the U.S. government did with Russia a few years ago. A more severe action reportedly under consideration would be a ban on Venezuelan crude oil imports into the U.S., which would likely have far-reaching implications for Venezuela, the U.S., and the oil market.

Obviously, a ban would inflict staggering damage on Venezuela, which well get to in a moment. But the ban on Venezuelan crude would also affect the U.S., particularly American refining companies. EIA data shows the U.S. importing an average of 857,000 bpd from Venezuela in April, the latest month for which data is available. Crucially, much of that goes to the Gulf Coast, and nearly all of it is in the form of heavy crude, a type of oil for which Gulf Coast refiners are particularly equipped to handle. Related: Daily OPEC Oil Prices Now Public For The First Time Ever

S&P Global Platts argues that a ban could strain the supply of heavier types of crude for U.S. refiners. For example, Phillips 66 Sweeny Refinery in Old Ocean, Texas imported over 46 million barrels of Venezuelan oil last year, the most out of any other refinery. Also, Citgo  which is owned by PDVSA  has a refinery at Lake Charles, Louisiana, a facility that imported 44 million barrels in 2016.

A ban on Venezuelan oil would strain the market for heavy crude in the U.S., which is already tightening because of declining imports of medium sour oil from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is aiming to cut exports to the U.S. in an effort to drain U.S. inventories. In the most recent week for which data is available, the EIA said U.S. imports of Saudi crude fell to 524,000 bpd, a seven-year low.

That has put a premium on medium-to-heavier types of crude. Other sources might not be able to replace the lost supply. Heavy crude from Canada is capped by pipeline constraints. Heavy crude production from Mexico and Colombia are both stagnant or in decline.

As such, Venezuelan supplies are exceptionally important to some U.S. Gulf Coast refiners in todays market. "We're out of balance right now and [sanctions] would make us more out of balance," said Rick Joswick, managing director for oil with the PIRA Energy Group, a unit of S&P Global Platts.

Still, refiners would probably adapt if the sanctions were phased in rather than implemented abruptly. Joswick says that heavy crude refiners would be able to run medium varieties, while medium-based refiners would switch to lighter oils.

But, if the U.S. government suddenly slapped a ban on Venezuelan oil, the move would be very disruptive, leading to a spike in medium and heavy crude prices, which would squeeze margins. Those refiners would be scrambling, buying up whatever they can, probably cutting back their runs, Joswick said. Ultimately, the cut off of supply would probably force refiners to scale back production by about 400,000 b/d for roughly two months.

Meanwhile, Russias Rosneft is reportedly looking to swap its stakes in the Venezuelan-owned Citgo for more secure stakes in Venezuelan oil fields. Citgo is owned by PDVSA, but based in the U.S., where it might get caught up in sanctions. Rosneft has a 49.9 percent stake in Citgo as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan it gave to PDVSA in 2016. A ban on Venezuelan crude into the U.S. could be ruinous for Citgo, so Rosneft wants to swap out its stake for more operational control of joint ventures inside Venezuela.

For Venezuela, however, there are no good options. PDVSA could be forced to send more oil to Russia, or agree to more favorable upstream deals to Rosneft. That also carries a political price as President Maduro has been criticized for selling off the countrys crown jewels.

More importantly, though, is the effect of a potential ban on Venezuelan crude by the U.S. government. It could be disastrous for the average Venezuelan citizen, as the already decrepit Venezuelan economy would sink deeper into depression. More people would go hungry in the streets. Venezuela would scramble to find other buyers, but that could take time since only heavy crude processors would be interested. It would surely force PDVSA to offer steep discounts. Related: New Solar Tech Produces 50% More Energy Than Silicon Cells

The move could bring PDVSA, and the Maduro regime, to its knees, Jorge Salazar-Carrillo, an economics professor at Florida International University in Miami, told South Florida-based WLRN Public Radio.

The one unknown is that aggressive action from the U.S. government has historically emboldened leftist rivals in Latin America, playing into the hands of strongmen who oppose Yankee imperialism.

That would normally be the case, although this time could be different simply because Venezuela is at a breaking point.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
When will Montanas independent voters wise up? Take Steve Daines. Why does he tell us he is studying the GOP health care plan while he secretly joins a group of supporters for dinner with Trump? For years I received emails from Daines lambasting Obamacare, but not once did I receive his blueprint for a health care plan.

Daines calls for a balanced budget amendment, but he wants to give billionaires huge tax cuts, fund Trumps wall and increase military spending. That wont balance the budget, Steve.

Daines tells us he supports access to public lands, while working to transfer a U.S. Forest Service ranger to apparently benefit wealthy landowners and reduce access by ordinary Montanans. Daines refuses to support limitations to destructive mining by foreign owned firms near the Yellowstone River. He has a 1 percent conservation voting record, among the worst in the Congress.

Then we have Zinke, Trumps chosen soldier to review cutting 27 of our nations cherished national monuments at a time when increasing visitation is causing terrible congestion at our existing national park areas. How much sense does that make? It is also wildly unpopular. Will Giantforte be any different? Not based on his campaign rhetoric. Not to mention the numerous members of the state legislature who actually want to sell off our public land, which not only is huge to Montanas economy, but is a big reason why many folks choose to live here.

When will Montanas Independent voters say, ah ha, and finally wake up?

Orville Bach

Bozeman
Pak Army completed first phase of Operation Khyber-IV in Rajgal

ISLAMABAD / LANDI KOTAL: The Pakistan Army announced on Saturday that it had completed the first phase of Operation Khyber-IV in the Rajgal area of Khyber Agency after gaining control of a key mountain top.



Khyber-IVs Phase-I has been completed after clearance of Brekh Muhammad Kandao, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the military, said in an update on the operation that started last Sunday.



Two soldiers have been martyred in the operation in which over 90 square kilometres of a total of 250 square kilometres have been cleared.



Troops are now advancing to clear the remaining area of the Rajgal Valley. Every inch of Pakistan will be peaceful, no one can beat resilient Pakistan, the military spokesman tweeted.



The operation is being conducted by a division-size force supported by commandos, artillery, aviation and air force in the area that was infested with hideouts of the banned Lashkar-i-Islam, Jamaatul Ahrar and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.



The operation has been launched to prevent the militant Islamic State group from making forays into Pakistan from its stronghold in Nangarhar across the Afghan border through collaboration with Pakistani terrorist groups having sanctuaries in the Rajgal Valley.



Brekh Muhammad Kandao, near the border with Afghanistan, is said to be the highest and craggiest mountain top. The clearance of the mountain top by special services troops was described as a major achievement.



Terrorists had set up an observation post at the top of the mountain and stored arms and ammunition at its base.



The ISPR said the mountain top was cleared after a tough fight with the terrorists, who had been holding it. Terrorists gave stiff resistance but couldnt sustain against determination of Pakistani troops.  Many terrorists were killed, few fled to Afghanistan. Terrorists hideout was dismantled, and cache of IEDs, arms and ammunition was recovered.



The troops have now established posts on the over 12,000 feet mountain, which has a thick forest.



The operation was initially expected to be slow because of difficult terrain, thick forests and mining of the area by terrorists, but is now said to be ahead of the schedule.



The mountain top was planned to be cleared little later as per initial plan but with high tempo operation it has been cleared well ahead of planned timings, the ISPR said.



The operation had been criticised by the Afghan government which said it had been started without coordination and agreed monitoring by China and the United States. The Army had rejected Afghan reservations about the operation as unwarranted.



Afghan Ministry of Defences response to operation Khyber-IV is unwarranted and runs counter to Pakistan Armys efforts for better Pak-Afghan coordination and cooperation, a military spokesman had said while responding to the Afghan governments reaction to the operation.



The security forces captured the strategic mountaintop in the Rajgal area of the Tirah Valley on Saturday, besides killing a number of militants and forcing others to retreat and flee to Afghanistan.



A statement issued by the ISPR said that security forces had established their control on Brekh Muhammad Kandao while forcing militants to flee after a fierce gun battle. Heavy artillery pounded the surrounding areas to prevent militants possible reinforcement reaching from across the border in Afghanistan.



The ISPR said that commandos from the Special Services Group of the Army were leading the ground offensive and had made rapid advances into the forested areas of Rajgal.



The Army also claimed to have seized a large quantity of arms and ammunition stored in militant bases in Rajgal and surrounding areas.
Sindh cabinet rejected the objections on proposed Sindh Accountability Bill

KARACHI: The Sindh cabinet on Saturday rejected the objections on the proposed Sindh Accountability Bill 2017 by Sindh Governor Zubair Umar and approved the draft and sent the bill to the provincial assembly for approval.



The cabinet meeting, which was held under Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah at New Sindh Secretariat, approved six different bills. The cabinet meeting, after discussing objections made by the governor on the act, which was passed by Sindh Assembly, rejected the objection, unanimously, approved the draft bill and referred it to the assembly. Talking to reporters, after the cabinet meeting, Law Minister Ziaul Hassan Lanjar said that the meeting has also approved the cancellation of the "Removal from Service Ordinance", enhancement of disabled persons' quota in government jobs and approval of captive power plant subsidy bills. "After 18th Amendment, provinces have right to constitute their own laws," said Lanjar.



Sindh Accountability Act 2017 would apply to all office-holders who are performing their functions in connection with affairs and employment of the government funds in the province.



The Sindh Accountability Agency would be headed by its chairperson. There would be an Accountability Commission consisting of chairperson, advocate general, prosecutor general of the agency; director general and director investigation.



The chairperson would be a judge of the Sindh High Court or is qualified to be a judge of high court; civil servant of grade 21 or above with proven competence, good reputation and high integrity.



The chairperson shall be nominated by a parliamentary committee of Sindh Assembly consisting of six members, three each from treasury and opposition named by the leader of the House and the leader of opposition. The committee shall be headed by the Speaker of the Sindh Assembly.



The Sindh Enquiries and Anti-Corruption Act, 1991 and Rules made there under have been repealed and all cases pending with the Anti-Corruption Establishment under the repealed Act, employees recruited by the Anti-Corruption Establishment and all assets and liabilities, including furniture, fixtures machinery and vehicles shall stand transferred to the Agency.



The other items that were discussed during the cabinet meeting were the establishment of "Sindh Forensic Science Laboratory" at Karachi with the objective is to create a facility for forensic examination of material, documents etc. for presentation before Courts, Tribunals or other legal authorities. In the lab there would be different facilities such as audio-visual analysis, computer forensics, crime Scene & death Scene Investigation; DNA & serology, forensic photography, narcotics, toxicology, trace chemistry, polygraph; fire arm & tool marks, latent fingerprints; pathology and questioned documents. PC-I of the laboratory project has already been approved with a cost of Rs 2.7 billion. The project will complete in 30 months.



The cabinet approved the Sindh Forensic Science Agency Act 2017 for its placement before the assembly. The cabinet also discussed enhancement of quota for disabled persons from two percent to five percent.



Under the Sindh Civil Servants Act, 1973 there is to percent quota of disabled persons in government jobs which the cabinet increased to five percent. The cabinet approved the placement of the amendment before the assembly.



The cabinet discussing The Removal From Service (Special Powers) Sindh, Sindh Ordinance 2000 for which advocate general read out the statement which says "the law that confers arbitrary powers on the competent authority in violation of the fundamental rights conferred by the constitution and the law, specific laws relating to this subject are already in the field, hence this law is not required." The cabinet approved to repeal it.



The other item the cabinet discussed was The Sindh New Captive Power Plants Subsidy Bill 2017 passed by the Sindh assembly has been referred back to the provincial assembly for reconsideration.
SARATOGA SPRINGS  Even though the horses are racing in a competition that takes skill, artistry and speed, theres a sultry summer mint julep kind of feeling at Saratoga Race Course.

There are the revved-up, perfectly groomed thoroughbreds, ready to conquer the grass track, the brightly uniformed jockeys, the women in big brimmed and feathered hats and the men in brightly banded summer straw fedoras. There are cigars, cash winnings and tattered racing forms.

Just off from the reserved clubhouse, the backstretch and the rail are the musicians and families and friends with coolers, elaborate picnics and plates of pizza pies to go.

And in a truly back-to-the-earth offering, each Saturday there is the New York Racing Association-sponsored food and artisan market in the Berkshire Bank Pavillion, right near the employee entrance to the track, the childrens playground and the horse walkway to the paddock.

On Saturday, this years market opened with vendors from around the state offering all-natural, gluten-free and handmade items.

Its like going back to our roots, said artisan Margaret Bena, owner of I M 2 handmade items, who travels to Saratoga Race Courses Saturday market from Nassau County.

I come here because the people in Saratoga are so amazing, she said. There are good homemade foods, handmade items. My friend usually comes with me and she knits and thinks its amazing here.

The markets natural and healthy foods seem a bit out of step with some track foods, like fried potatoes and fried dough, but the artisans and chefs add another dimension to a place that feels like a step back in time.

Reuben Schwartz, who co-owns Vital Eats with his cousin Jude Goldman, was working the track market while other family members worked farmers markets in other area locations.

Vital Eats offers gluten-free, nut-free, all plant-based sauces and other foods. Theres the increasingly popular Cheezy, made from chick peas. Or what about Vampire Blood Hot Chili Sambal or Sriracha ketchup?

The cousins both worked in media and advertising but really loved cooking, so a few years ago, they started their business with two plastic tables and a pop-up tent. We both started cooking as kids and this was an opportunity to work together, Schwartz said. We got into Wegmans Market for the first time this weekend and Price Chopper is trying it in a few locations.

Darshan Little, who was working the market on Saturday afternoon, was helping her friend who owns Lucky Clover Artisanal Bakery based in Cobleskill. The bakery offers traditional, gluten-free, paleo and vegan baked goods, Little said.

What feels really good about the track farmers market is that most of the businesses are family run and started from a seed of a dream.

Take RAD Soap Co., started by Sue Kerber when she couldnt find anything to help her sons eczema.

She started it in her kitchen, said one of her friends working at Saturdays market.

The soaps, lotions and other natural yummy smelling body products are all made by hand and have a hemp oil base.

Just outside the market, open air shops sell upscale hats and mens track wear like bow ties, summer sport coats and oxfords.

At about 2 p.m., the market started getting crowded, while post-time calls continued, horses clomped their hooves when passing the market and musicians playing banjos, guitars and violins dotted the white-fenced walk-ways.
John LaVelle just drove half-way across the country and back to walk where his Native American ancestors walked more than 150 years ago.

A law professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law and an enrolled member of the Santee Sioux Nation, LaVelle wanted to visit the places in Minnesota that figured into the Dakota-U.S. War of the summer of 1862, formerly called an "Indian uprising."

His journey also brought him to Davenport.

A week ago he and his husband, Monte Deer Carden, drove to Lindsay Park where there is a plaque on a boulder that states, "In 1862, several hundred Sioux Indians were imprisoned here after the Minnesota Massacre."

They drove to the hill behind the Y-shaped intersection of McClellan Boulevard and Hillcrest Avenue, an area that is believed to be where the remains of about 120 Indians who died while imprisoned were buried.

And they walked to the intersection of Middle Road and Crestwood Avenue where it is believed the prison stood.

"Of course now it is just residences," LaVelle said of the area. "It is always a matter of imagining what it was like back then.

"But there is a sense of place. Sense of place is very important to the Santee Sioux people. Just knowing that I'm standing where they stood, on the very ground, is a profoundly moving experience. To be actually walking on the ground where they walked."

The prison was called Camp Kearney, located in the same vicinity as Camp McClellan, where soldiers were being trained for the Civil War, raging elsewhere on the continent during this same time period.

Readers may recall a series of articles I wrote about this mostly forgotten prison several years ago. LaVelle found them online and called me when he visited, which is how I am able to share his story today.

How the war started; the prison

The Dakota (also known as Sioux) war began like this: After years of seeing their lands taken by European settlers, being cheated by traders and government agents and pushed to the brink of starvation because promised annuities, including food, had not been paid, four young Dakota men killed five white settlers on Aug. 17, 1862, near Acton, Minnesota.

The fighting spread and, by late September, more than 600 white people, mostly unarmed civilians, had been killed along with 75 to 100 Dakota warriors, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.

The white community responded with mass hysteria and calls for retribution, which is why the Dakota men were loaded into a boat under cover of darkness and moved down the Mississippi River to Davenport.

The prisoners arrived on the morning of April 25, 1863, (the date on the boulder in Lindsay Park is one year off) docking near what is now the McClellan Heights neighborhood.

There were about 265 men prisoners plus 16 women and two children. Among them were two men who lived to become LaVelle's great-great-grandfathers. Had they not survived, had they succumbed to the cold, the hunger, the disease and the heartbreak of having their people and culture torn apart, LaVelle would not be living today.

LaVelle's journey to the Midwest was to honor these men and to learn more about his family's intersection with history. "It was a deeply moving and sacred thing for me," he said.

Trials, execution, pardon

His great-great-grandfathers were Iyasamani and the Rev. Artemas Ehnamani. The latter had converted to Christianity and became the minister of the Pilgrim Congregational Church on the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska. That is where he settled after the Civil War ended and the remaining prisoners in Davenport were released by order of President Andrew Johnson.

Both men had been among the hundreds rounded up after the six-week war and tried individually by a military tribunal. The trials were conducted in a language most Indians did not understand and without legal representation.

LaVelle read through the trial transcripts on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. It's likey each trial lasted only about five minutes, he said. "They are one paragraph," he said of the transcripts for each.

Of those tried, 320 were convicted and 303 were sentenced to death.

Presbyterian church leaders who had been ministering to the Indians for nearly 40 years before the war urged President Abraham Lincoln to overturn the death sentences. But there also was pressure in Minnesota to uphold them.

Lincoln responded by sparing all but 39. And due to a last-minute reprieve, one more was spared.

On Dec. 26, 1862, 38 Indians were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota. It remains the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

"I am living proof of Lincoln's mercy," LaVelle said. "If he had not intervened, I would not be here today. He was under huge pressure to execute them all."

Those spared remained under the cloud of possible execution as they were moved to prison in Davenport. But during the time of incarceration, Presbyterian ministers and others continued to plead on the men's behalf and on April 30, 1864, Lincoln signed a pardon for another 25, ordering their immediate release.

The Putnam Museum holds in its collection the original document signed by Lincoln.

When LaVelle visited Davenport, curator Christina Kastell retrieved the document, and LaVelle was able to hold it in his hands. He found the name of his great-great-grandfather, Iyasamani, at the top of the second column.

Honoring memory

While the war and the existence of a prison in Davenport has long since vanished from the collective memory of most people living in the Quad-Cities today, it is very much alive among Indian descendants, such as LaVelle.

LaVelle grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, but his mother was born on the Santee Sioux Reservation where the history of the people was part of growing up.

During his journey, LaVelle researched several other ancestors and visited places such as the area below Fort Snelling in St. Paul where about 1,700 of the Indians who were not sentenced to death, mostly women and children, were first confined.

"Below the actual walls there is a steep grade, a road, to the low lands where the internment camp was," LaVelle said. " It was the world's first concentration camp. It was very moving. There were prayer ties, red prayer ties in the trees. There was a circle of prayer sticks."

As LaVelle told me about his journey to honor his ancestors, I felt honored myself.

I got quite immersed in the story of the war and the prison in Davenport when I researched it four years ago. I never imagined I would be able to talk to someone with a connection to both.
It's been 44 years since the mighty Saturn V last thundered skyward from a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The towering rocket, generating enough power to lift 269,000 pounds into orbit, had been the workhorse of the Apollo moon missions.

Later this year, SpaceX plans to launch its most powerful rocket yet from the same pad. The long-awaited Falcon Heavy is key to the California company's plans to get more defense business, send tourists around the moon and launch its first unmanned mission to Mars.

But unlike the Saturn V, the Falcon Heavy will have plenty of competition.

Years in the works and the product of hundreds of millions of dollars of investments, a new generation of huge rockets will soon take off. Their manufacturers range from space startups to aerospace giants to the space agencies of the United States, Russia and China.

Because of advances in fuel, materials and electronics, the new rockets, while smaller than some of the Space Age beasts, may be more efficient and cost-effective. They will be able to hoist big spy satellites to a high orbit or ferry crews into space.

The rush of new rockets has prompted some to question whether NASA even needs to build its own massive new space vehicle  and whether there will be enough launch business to go around.

After years of a monopoly, the lucrative business of launching sensitive national security satellites is now competitive. But at the same time, the launch demand for large satellites is not expected to change.

And in the case of SpaceX, the workhorse Falcon 9 rocket  which recently completed its 10th mission of the year  has been upgraded to the point where it can handle heavier loads than originally expected.

Whereas SpaceX first thought that it would fly the same numbers of Falcon 9s as Falcon Heavys, it is turning out that Falcon 9s will have two to three times as many commercial missions. The company's May launch of the Inmarsat-5 F4 satellite on a Falcon 9 was originally slated for a Falcon Heavy.

"There is a part of the commercial market that requires Falcon Heavy," said Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX. "It's there, and it's going to be consistent, but it's much smaller than we thought."

SpaceX says the price of a Falcon Heavy launch will be at least $90 million, versus $62 million for its Falcon 9.

That hasn't deterred rocket makers.

Last year, Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos announced a plan for a heavy-lift rocket called New Glenn to be built by his space firm, Blue Origin. The rocket, which will have two-stage and three-stage versions, was designed to launch commercial satellites and to take humans into space.

United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., has proposed a new rocket called the Vulcan, which would eventually replace its current intermediate- and heavy-lift vehicles.

Orbital ATK Inc., a commercial aerospace firm in Dulles, Va., intends to expand its lineup with its first intermediate and heavy-lift rockets, known for now as the Next Generation Launcher (NGL).

Europe's Arianespace already can use its Ariane 5 heavy launcher to take two large satellites into space.

While rockets may look similar on liftoff, their makers can be selective in the contracts they target.

SpaceX, for example, instance, has tried to compete for nearly all types of launches, but Orbital ATK seems to be focusing on the extreme ends of the market  small and large payloads, said Carissa Christensen, chief executive of consulting firm Bryce Space and Technology.

"The launch market is complicated and so specialized that all of those players could find a niche," she said.

The U.S. government and its contractors have a long history of developing large rockets. That includes the Saturn V, the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown successfully, and ULA's Delta IV Heavy, the most powerful rocket currently used by the Air Force to carry national security satellites to orbit.

The heavy-lift launchers of tomorrow would take advantage of key developments in composite materials, electronics and other technologies.

The first-stage booster of ULA's proposed Vulcan rocket, for example, could be powered by BE-4 engines under development by Blue Origin that run on oxygen-rich staged combustion of liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen. Those engines will also be used in Blue Origin's New Glenn heavy-lift rocket.

Liquefied natural gas is cleaner than kerosene, a more conventional rocket fuel. That means it's less likely to clog fuel lines in the engine and is easier to purge and use again, said Ann Karagozian, a UCLA professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Not all the technology is completely cutting edge. The core stage of NASA's Space Launch System vehicle will use four RS-25 engines  relics from the space shuttle program that are being retrofitted with new controllers that are smarter and lighter than past computers.

NASA already had 14 engines that had previously flown on the space shuttle and enough material to make two new engines, said Jim Paulsen, vice president of NASA programs at Aerojet Rocketdyne, which makes the engines. The company will perform tests on the engines to make sure that everything is running properly before being tested as a core stage.

Reusing parts after launch has changed the conversation about rocket economics, and it could be a factor in knocking down prices of the big rockets too, if there is enough demand. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX designed their first-stage boosters to be able to land after launch.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the Falcon Heavy will attempt to land its two side boosters  which on its demonstration flight will be reused first stages from previous missions  as well as its center core booster in a kind of "synchronized aerial ballet."

Shotwell said the company is working to see if it can bring the side boosters back to land, which would require overhauling its landing zone at Cape Canaveral. SpaceX may also need to build more drone ships if the company chooses to land the side boosters at sea, she said.

A boom in small satellites for Internet access, commercial imaging and Earth observation has led to a surge in new rocket companies, several of them based in Southern California.

While small launchers are being developed to give these satellites a dedicated ride to space, initial deployment of these so-called constellations is likely to require launches of 10 or more satellites at a time  and heavier rockets  to start operations as soon as possible, said Marco Caceres, senior space analyst at the Teal Group.

Demand for heavy rockets will remain relatively flat over the next 10 years, at 20 to 25 launches a year, according to data from Bryce Space and Technology. However, U.S. companies are expected to win more contracts in the international launch market, said Phil Smith, senior space analyst at Bryce Space and Technology.

SpaceX's success two years ago in challenging ULA's monopoly on military launches may have emboldened new challengers to try to compete for the limited number of military and other national security launches.

Orbital ATK plans to compete its proposed NGL intermediate- and heavy-lift rockets in future Air Force competitions. So far, the company has passed design reviews and is working toward a static fire of its four-segment heavy-lift booster in about 2022. The company expects that rocket to be operational in 2024.

Orbital ATK sees NGL as a natural progression from its smaller rockets, such as Pegasus and Antares. Antares currently delivers supplies for NASA to the International Space Station.

Orbital ATK and the Air Force together are investing more than $200 million to develop the launch system.

SpaceX also plans to seek certification from the Air Force for its Falcon Heavy for national security launches. After a demonstration flight later this year, the Falcon Heavy's first customer launch will be for the Air Force.

NASA has embarked on a likely decades-long, multibillion-dollar program to develop the SLS rocket, the Orion crew capsule and its associated launch facilities.

The smallest version of the rocket is set to make its first, unmanned flight in 2019 when it journeys to a distant retrograde orbit around the moon. The larger, 365-foot version of the rocket is expected to make its first flight in 2028 or 2029.
MINNEAPOLIS | On the same day congressional Republicans realized their latest efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would come up short, UnitedHealth Group reported that its second-quarter income surged by 30 percent, prompting the company to boost its full-year guidance on earnings per share.

The company, based outside the Twin Cities, reported faster growth in the second quarter from its Optum division for health care services than its core business selling coverage as the nation's largest health insurer.

Even so, the UnitedHealthcare insurance business continued to benefit from a scaled back presence on health insurance exchanges launched under the ACA, which were a source of red ink last year.

UnitedHealth Group chief executive Stephen Hemsley did not comment on the political developments but said the chance of health care policy change is one of several potential challenges for the company.

"The headwinds are largely around externalities  national and state health care policies, funding trends and taxes  which we and you are all following closely," Hemsley said during a conference call with investors.

"We respect the complexity of the social, economic and political matters that are intertwined here," Hemsley said. "Certainly, at this stage in the national conversation, speculation about any outcome here would be just that."

Hemsley also rattled off a list of factors that could continue to drive growth, saying "the fundamentals of our businesses remain strong."

While UnitedHealthcare has significantly pulled back from the health law's individual market exchanges, which serve self-employed people and those who don't get employer coverage, the company is still a large operator of Medicaid health plans. Eligibility in the Medicaid program expanded under the ACA and would have faced likely cuts under the Republican plan.

The company's Optum division includes a large business managing pharmacy benefits for other health plans. It also sells data services to health care providers and provides outpatient care directly to patients.

Earlier this year, Optum announced a $2.3 billion deal to purchase a large surgery center group, making the company one of the nation's largest providers. Optum chief executive Larry Renfro said Tuesday the surgery center business is performing slightly ahead of expectations and is establishing six surgical outpatient facilities so far this year.

Renfro also lauded an announcement Monday that UnitedHealthcare and AARP have renewed a marketing partnership for selling Medicare Part D prescription drug plans. The insurer has seen notable growth this year in its business selling "Medicare Advantage" health plans, where seniors receive their government health insurance benefits through a private managed care company.

In the second quarter, UnitedHealth Group posted earnings of $2.28 billion on $50.05 billion in revenue. The profit was up about 30 percent compared with earnings of $1.75 billion during the year-ago quarter.

It was also the first time in company history that UnitedHealth Group surpassed the $50 billion mark in quarterly revenue, said John Rex, the company's chief financial officer.

After adjusting for one-time factors, earnings per share of $2.46 beat analyst estimates by 8 cents.

UnitedHealth Group now expects adjusted net earnings of $9.75 to $9.90 per share for the year, up from the previous range of $9.65 to $9.85 per share. The increase and narrowing of the guidance is "prudently recognizing the strength in this quarter," Rex said.
My name is Todd, and I am addicted to Disney theme parks.

This spring, I spent 10 days at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., even though I live less than an hour away from Disneyland, which I visit at least several times during any given month. For the amount of money it cost me to go to Disney World, I could have gone almost anywhere on the planet, a fact pointed out to me by a woman I had hoped to date.

"Why?" she said, with a mixture of confusion and disgust when I told her about my then-upcoming trip; she herself was headed to Spain for two weeks. The implication: Why didn't I take this opportunity, as a single man in his soon-to-be-late-30s, to explore the world rather than the World Showcase?

That's a good question.

It's not weird to be a fan of Disney parks. Just shy of 18 million people visited Disneyland alone last year, according to a report from Los Angeles consulting company Aecom, and the tourist franchise it spawned has shaped and reflected American pop culture for more than 60 years. And yet I recognize that my habit of visiting Disneyland multiple times each month could be viewed as odd.

So while I wasn't going to change my vacation plans, I realized I needed a solid answer to that semi-disgusted "Why?" _ one that went beyond the standard conclusion that it's "fun."

After things with the woman went bust and I returned from Florida, I rang up Marty Sklar. If anyone should be able to articulate why we love Disney parks, it's a former head of Walt Disney Imagineering who wrote speeches for Walt. So, I asked Sklar, why did I pick Disney World over, say, Spain?

"That's a hard question to answer," he said.

Clearly, this wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.

___

Familiar complaints

Disneyland has many detractors with a familiar litany of complaints: It's hot. It's crowded. It's expensive. There are too many strollers. There are too many childless guests complaining about the strollers. Parts of the park, especially Main Street U.S.A., present a tidied-up vision of America that never existed.

Irving Biederman, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, has been to some Disney parks and his gripe is one I regularly hear from friends: too fake. As a child, Biederman rode the park's submarine attraction and was less than enamored with the mechanical fish.

"One of the things I don't like about Disneyland is the design almost forbids surprises," he says. "The fish weren't real. I would have preferred real fish. Then something unusual could happen. If it's fake fish, there's no surprise. Once you get by the initial experience of Disneyland, one of its shortcomings is there's going to be no surprises."

I'm about to counter with the level of spontaneity present at Disney World's Animal Kingdom, when he notes that even with such "shortcomings," it makes perfect sense that millions of people will endure potential headaches to experience a place such as Disneyland.

Humans, he says, are "infovores." We're always on the prowl for new information and fresh experiences that have the ability to trigger opioid receptors in the brain, which in turn give us pleasure. He offers as an example two windows, one looking out toward a brick wall and the other a grand, beachlike vista.

"So," he asks, "which window would you gaze out? It's a no-brainer. We would take it as a sign of pathology if someone was staring at the brick wall."

Disneyland, with its lush and fanciful architecture _ a fairy-tale castle up ahead, a Swiss mountain to the right, and ol' western-like movie set to the left _ is full of details that attract our brain's attention.

"So why do we go to theme parks? It gives us new experiences if you haven't been there before, or if you've only been there once or twice it's still different from your everyday life," Biederman says. "There can be other elements _ the thrill we get of rides that are exciting. That's an opioid release."

The concept of repeat visits, however, gives him pause. He questions whether I would want to watch the same movie 20 times and then he begins asking things like, "Does your repeated engagement with the Disney experience stem out of anxiety or fear of less safe, less predictable settings?"

I am indeed beginning to experience anxiety when, mercifully, he assures me that I am not crazy. "Your self-awareness of this as a potential problem is an indication that this engagement with the world of Disney is not a distortion of reality," he later clarified in a follow-up email. "If your passion was music, painting, cooking, chess or automobile mechanics, people wouldn't bat an eye."

For the record, I am also quite heavily obsessed with music and have recently taken up cooking. Disney devotion can connote endless adolescence, but as Biederman began to interview me, the ways in which I engage with the parks became more clear.

Sometimes I don't even go on a ride; instead, I simply people-watch and soak up the atmosphere. Other times, I'll bring work, sit with my laptop in the lobby of the Grand Californian, only venturing into one of the parks when I need to clear my head. Increasingly, I've been approaching the parks from a more studious perspective, investigating its history and reporting on new developments.

While in Orlando, I worked on a story about the then-upcoming debut of the "Avatar"-inspired land of Pandora. During an interview, veteran Imagineer Joe Rohde, who oversaw its creation, reiterated that nothing at a Disney park was there by accident.

"If a detail is onstage," Rohde says, "that detail is there for a reason. The detail does not exist to serve its own purposes. It only exists to serve narrative purposes."

A small thing, perhaps, but one that turns any visit to a Disney park into something more akin to a game. In Disneyland's New Orleans Square, for instance, there is what appears to be a boarded-up tunnel, which many fans believe was a crypt designed to connect the story lines of Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion.

Unlikely, but such minutiae turn the park into more of an active experience, as the many fan websites prove. We are not simply spectators, we're players, exploring a world that has been crafted by master designers while concocting our own set of stories.

"You're not gaga over cartoon characters," Biederman says with a hint of relief. "I think your motivation is kind of an intellectual one. What you're sensitive to and trying to understand is the brilliance of the design."

Yes, yes, that's it _ I'm sensitive to brilliance. I'm feeling better about myself already.

___

'A lot to unpack'

There are also emotional factors at play and most certainly nostalgia. It's no secret that many gravitate to Disney parks for family bonding experiences, which the parks leverage at every photo op. But as I don't have a girlfriend, let alone children, such a thesis doesn't apply to me.

Sklar, after a moment, offered the theory of Disney artist/Imagineer John Hench, who worked on "Fantasia," "Peter Pan" and more.

"John Hench used to say that Disneyland was reassuring," Sklar said. "You could speak to a stranger. You feel safe. You know you're going to be respected. Everything is clean. It's an example that you take back to your own community. 'Why can't it be like this? Why can't we treat people like we get treated at the Disney parks? Why can't our streets be as clean as it is at Disney?'

"It's reassuring because you know things work."

Idealism, then, which appeals to my serious streak of hopeless romanticism; perhaps that's the answer? I ask Andrea Letamendi, a clinical psychologist who has delved deep into fandom, what she thinks.

"It's much more complicated than it being one thing," she said, adding: "There's a lot to unpack."

She keys in on my ability to work while at Disneyland, noting that I'm not going there solely for escape, and compared my enjoyment of the parks with that of those who engage in cosplay, which, she says, enables many to heighten aspects of their personality; in my case, she suggests, Disneyland speaks to my optimistic nature.

I may not wear a costume, but, she said, Disneyland obviously enables me to feel more in touch with my identity. "For you," she said, "that's who you are. Maybe for other people it bothers them. 'Why are you here by yourself?' 'Why do you collect Disney artifacts?'"

"But," she continued, "you find it quite calming, and you find it to be a nice blanket and cushion to relax in. You're not alone. Many people have that experience, but I can see why it's difficult to relate to that."

She does, however, wonder if it's sustainable as I get older. "If you see a guy in his 50s just kind of wandering around the park, it's off-putting. As a psychologist, I know there's nothing wrong with it. But I know that society has concerns."

Yet for all its youthful draw, Disneyland is not a playground. Theme parks are a thoroughly modern invention based as much on technology as the belief in pixie dust, and we're only just beginning to understand their growing role as a storytelling medium.
Even though South Dakota has experienced numerous cases of opiod addiction and endures dozens of overdose deaths each year, the state has dodged the mass devastation the opiod epidemic has wrought in many other states.

In 2014, South Dakota ranked 49 out of 51 states for drug overdose deaths, making up less than 1 percent of the fatal overdoses in the U.S.

Even so, state Attorney General Marty Jackley and other officials want to ensure the trend doesn't worsen in South Dakota.

Last month, Jackley announced he had joined a coalition of attorneys general across the nation to investigate whether pharmaceutical companies have engaged in unlawful advertising of the strong prescription painkillers that are highly addictive.

Jackley, a Republican candidate for governor of South Dakota, also pushed for greater enforcement overall, including in South Dakota, of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, a law passed in 2010 that allows physicians to see patients prescription history before prescribing narcotics.

Despite those recent efforts, however, overdose deaths are on the rise across the country, including in South Dakota.

Opioids, a set of powerful painkillers, were involved in more than 33,000 deaths in 2015, a number that has quadrupled since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services says that drug overdose deaths are now a leading cause of death in the country.

The CDC reported 65 drug overdose deaths in South Dakota in 2015, 63 in 2014 and 55 in 2013  a steady rise, in spite of the states efforts.

The Pennington County Sheriffs Office reported 11 drug overdose deaths in 2016, six of which involved illegal substances. Six drug overdose deaths have occurred since the beginning of 2017, but Sheriff Kevin Thom says the office may or may not know about all overdose deaths.

Im shocked by how common it is, said sheriffs office spokeswoman Helene Duhamel. It seems like if they do one (drug), they do all.

Thom estimates that 90 percent of his jail population is there because of drug- or alcohol-related offenses. Thom thinks the reason overdose deaths are on the rise is simply because prescription drugs, such as fentanyl and oxycodone, are more prevalent and readily available than in the past.

Thom works to ensure police officers and deputies are trained to use latex gloves and other safety procedures when handling narcotics. However, Thom says that neither police officers nor sheriffs deputies carry naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, a lifesaving drug that can treat the effects of overdose in emergencies. Jackley sponsored legislation in 2015 to ensure Narcan was available to all counties that wanted it. Pennington County's emergency responders already had it.

The Rapid City Fire Department has carried Narcan since the 1970s, but agency spokesman Lt. Jim Bussell said that the drug is often used for a variety of medical uses and can be administered even when it is unknown if someone has overdosed. The department spends about $1,100 annually on Narcan, he said.

Narcan has been administered by Rapid City Emergency Medical Services officers 61 times in 2017, but theres no data to confirm why it was administered in each instance. Bussell said he is confident that Narcan use is not on the rise, and also that it is not correlated to opioid use.

Users have found new ways to get high and put themselves in danger, police said.

Sgt. Cathy Bock, who supervises the narcotics task force for the Rapid City Police Department, said shes seen illegal drugs disguised as nasal sprays and tucked in prescription bottles. One of the most prevalent is carfentanil, a derivative of fentanyl that is typically used to sedate large animals such as elephants. Carfentanil is illegal for human use and extremely dangerous  its 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. Extremely small amounts can cause overdose and death, and Bock says its especially dangerous because it doesnt come from a pharmacy.

You know what youre getting from the pharmacy, Bock said. You dont know what youre getting off the internet.

Bock says many overdose deaths happen by accident because the drugs are synthesized in a non-pharmaceutical setting, meaning one batch could have hot spots.

One time it might take you this amount to get high and another time it might make you overdose, Bock said.

But for Bock, the solution to the rising death toll isnt better policing or prosecuting, it lies in creating new treatment options.

Bock and Jackley say South Dakotas biggest problem is methamphetamine. Bock said officers on her team see meth almost every day.

Jackley says the real ways to fight drug abuse  both prescription and illegal substances  are prevention, enforcement and treatment. Thats what he and 55 other attorney generals are working to facilitate.

We are part of a pathway of how a state can be 49th out of 51 for what weve done, Jackley said of South Dakota.

Jackley helped launch Project Stand Up in May, which acts as an anonymous drug tip line. Sisseton was the first community to start a local push for the project.

U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds is pushing proposed legislation called the VA Prescription Data Accountability Act, which would allow the Department of Veteran Affairs to share data with the prescription databases.
F.E. WARREN AIR FORCE BASE, Wyo. | The Air Force Commendation Medal was awarded to Senior Airman Kaiea Hokoana, 90th Security Forces Squadron installation patrolman, for his distinguished and courageous actions in helping to save a life while on leave in his hometown Wailuku, Hawaii, Oct. 1, 2016.

On this date, a week before Kaieas wedding, he witnessed a motorcycle accident outside the Haiku Community Center on Maui, Hawaii. Kaiea and his soon-to-be bride, Airman 1st Class Veulah Hokoana, 90th Force Support Squadron missile chef, rushed to the scene to provide care to the motorist who was seriously injured.

Kaiea was the right person at the right place at the right time, said Col. John Grimm, 90th Security Forces Group commander. Its whats expected of us and shows the character of this Airman. It doesnt matter what rank the person is, its about doing what is right, whats expected of us as military members.

Kaiea and Veulah were able to slow the motorists bleeding and dress his wound with what was available to them. Once stabilized, they decided that due to the remote location of the accident, another member of Kaieas family would drive the injured motorcyclist to the closest hospital.

Kaiea credits the training he received in the Air Force and as a 90th SFG member for being able to provide the necessary treatment to care for the motorist.

At the time I can remember being very shocked, but it took me a second to get back into the first responder mindset, said Kaiea. I responded and acted accordingly to ensure that the person involved in the crash got the treatment that was necessary for their well-being.

Kaiea reflected credit upon himself and the U.S. Air Force by providing first responder assistance which contributed to saving a motorists life.

Senior Airman Hokoana has always been a leader first, said 1st Lt. Raven Jackson, 90th SFG executive officer and Kaieas previous supervisor. He has character which displays his principle, standards and values above anything else. He really couldnt explain to me what motivated him to help out the individual who had the accident. He just reacted, and I believe that is a core characteristic that all defenders should have today within our core.

You went to the scene of the accident, took charge and provided the care the person needed and saved a life, Grimm added. It didnt matter who he was, whether they were civilian or military, what mattered was you did the right thing. You definitely made a difference in that persons life. You did a great job.

Kaiea will be leaving the Air Force in October 2017. He plans to return to school to get his bachelors degree. He hopes to return to the Air Force, but this time as an officer.
Virtually every South Dakotan is now living in an area of the state thats facing drought conditions. In fact, according to the latest Drought Monitor, 99.97 percent of South Dakota land is now being ravaged by the extreme heat and lack of adequate rainfall. We could have a long conversation about statistics and historical averages, but none of that matters to South Dakota livestock producers who are on the receiving and damaging end of this severe weather. All that matters is the here and now. It either rains or it doesnt. They either have the feed for their livestock or they dont. Thats what counts today.

Since the drought first started a few months ago, Ive been working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on a nearly daily basis to both relay the concerns I hear from folks across the state and find ways to provide assistance to producers whose livelihoods literally depend on the livestock they raise. I was recently traveling through a particularly hard-hit area in South Dakota and called USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue. I wanted to give him as close to a firsthand account as possible of what was happening in the state.

Secretary Perdue has always been willing to listen, which I greatly appreciate. In late June, he accepted my common-sense recommendation to stop USDA from forcing ranchers to destroy good hay on certain CRP-enrolled acres that are subject to mid-contract management. The fact that USDA was even considering going forward with such an idea is a perfect example of how Washington can be out of touch with the real world. Secretary Perdue granted several other requests that I made, including opening up non-environmentally sensitive CRP acres to emergency haying and grazing, which folks have been able to access since July 16. He also waived a 30-day ownership requirement under the Livestock Revenue Program that would have cost insured livestock owners who face early liquidation, due to the drought, their premium and any indemnity.

In my first letter to Secretary Perdue after the drought began, I asked that he also open the hundreds of thousands of environmentally sensitive CRP acres in South Dakota, which have been off limits, to emergency haying and grazing. Of all the hay thats currently available, its the hay on these environmentally sensitive acres that is some of the most useable. Ive been hearing from producers for more than a month who say this would dramatically help their operations, and Ive been in contact with several wildlife organizations that support my proposal. I appreciate their concern for our livestock producers and agreement that nearly all CRP acres should be used to provide hay and grazing this year.

After many letters, emails, and phone calls with USDA and wildlife groups, Im glad to hear that USDA is immediately opening more than 450,000 environmentally sensitive CRP acres in South Dakota to emergency haying and grazing. This will be welcome news to folks across South Dakota, particularly producers in the northeastern part of the state where a large percentage of these acres are located.

This recent announcement means that USDA has used nearly every CRP option thats available to provide assistance to livestock producers in South Dakota. None of these actions will stop the drought or reverse the damage thats been done, but they will certainly help alleviate some of the pain and give folks greater peace of mind as we head further into the summer months.
For an inside view of what it's like to be a journalist today, tune into the new weekly audio podcast that will debut Monday on the Rapid City Journal's website.

The new series, "Journal Storytellers," will post at 8 a.m. Monday at rapidcityjournal.com, and is the first episode of a weekly podcast that will feature Journal editors, reporters, photographers and others from the newspaper sharing the stories behind the biggest stories in western South Dakota. The podcast will feature interviews that shed light on how news articles arise, how they are reported and written, and how the journalists in the Journal newsroom tell stories that inform the Black Hills community.

Episode 1 features interviews with reporter Tiffany Tan about sharing the grief of family members of a local man shot and killed by police, and with reporter Seth Tupper about his entertaining Eight Over Seven series on Black Hills mountain peaks.

We hope you will tune in to hear the real story of how your hometown newspaper and news website are created each day, and enjoy this new platform for connecting Journal staffers with the community.
Following the 2010 census, Box Elder was recognized as the second-fastest growing city in South Dakota.

But last week, the meteoric rise in population and the constant need for more infrastructure to accommodate that growth reached an impasse, forcing officials to throw the future of a planned subdivision into question.

As Box Elder's population continues to climb  the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimate is at 9,348, up more than 1,500 since the 2010 census  the stress on its overburdened water system in particular continues to mount.

At the Pennington County Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday, commissioners approved a temporary moratorium on building permits for the Valley Heights Subdivision located about one mile south of Box Elder city limits. The moratorium came in response to a Box Elder resolution prohibiting any further expansion of the citys water system outside city limits.

Though the subdivision and its roughly 150 single-family homes currently receive water from Box Elder, the county moratorium and Box Elder resolution brought uncertainty to the remaining 68 vacant lots, most of which are owned by TNT Homes & Construction.

At the meeting, TNT owners Forrest and Tony Thompson, who have already built and sold about 65 single-family homes in Valley Heights, said they believed a 2001 agreement between Box Elder and the Deutsch family  the original developers of the land  clearly stated that Box Elder would provide water to 250 units and possibly up to 400.

But the following day, Box Elder city officials said an updated agreement from 2007 between the Deutsch family and Box Elder made clear that water would only be provided if water is available. The Rapid City Journal was not able to get a copy of that agreement in time for the publication of this story.

The nature and relevance of the agreements remains unclear. But to County Commissioner Deb Hadcock, the problem itself is crystal clear.

The bottom line is that you need an alternative source of water, Hadcock said to the Thompsons at the meeting. Noting that the subdivision is outside Rapid City and Box Elder city limits, Hadcock explained that if something were to happen to the water supply, it would be Pennington Countys responsibility to provide water to existing and possibly future homes. As a result, she said, the moratorium on building permits to TNT and the subdivision were necessary.

High and dry

Already under pressure from the population boom, Box Elders water system  which provides an average of 850,000 gallons per day to about 9,300 residents within city limits and more than 1,000 people outside the city  is also experiencing difficulty transporting water within city limits.

We do have a pretty good water supply to the west, but we cant get that water very easily to the east side of town because of an old 6-inch line, Box Elder Mayor Larry Larson said in a Journal interview. We cant get it through fast enough.

Public Works Director Bob Kaufman said the 6-inch water main would be replaced with a 12-inch main by the end of August. The project will cost $169,000.

While the new main line will help with water service to residents within city limits, the fate of services to Valley Heights residents remains murky and was recently compounded by the failure of a new city well.

Box Elder will not allow any additional taps to water systems supplied through the city of Box Elder, Kaufman wrote in a July 7 email to Pennington County Planner Britney Molitor and Box Elder Planning Director Ron Koan. This comes as a result of the failure of the Ghere well to become a productive well for Box Elder.

At a depth of 4,800 feet, the Ghere well was found to have high levels of radon and heavy metals, Kaufman said in a Journal interview.

Rapid Valley Fire Chief Tim Kobes also expressed concern about the subdivisions fire suppression capabilities at the county meeting, calling the existing water service at Valley Heights marginal at best. Concerns over how an extension of water services to Valley Heights would affect the fire suppression capabilities at Rapid City Regional Airport were also noted.

But issues with the water supply werent the only hesitations expressed by officials. Kaufman raised the question of the structural integrity of the Wall water tower atop Radar Hill Road that supplies water to Valley Heights. Estimating the tower to be over 30 years old, Kaufman said the problem was the tower stood on a concrete foundation buried beneath the ground. As a result, the city couldnt assess the integrity or remaining lifespan of the tower.

The Wall water tower is supplied with water by Box Elder via a booster station at the base of Radar Hill Road on the southern edge of the Cheyenne Pass subdivision. If the tower were to structurally fail, Valley Heights residents would be left high and dry.

Immediate future uncertain

In 2003, the South Dakota Legislature passed House bill 1190, allowing Rapid City to annex Regional Airport even though the airport did not border Rapid City limits. The law also established jurisdictional rules in such situations, giving Rapid City extraterritorial jurisdiction within 1.25 miles of the airport boundaries.

As a result, Box Elder cannot annex the Valley Heights subdivision. Since the subdivision does not lie adjacent to Rapid City limits, Rapid City cannot annex the area either.

In past city/county working sessions, Box Elder officials have said the city will not build a new water tower for Valley Heights, and Rapid City officials said they would not connect its water sourcing lines to the subdivision. And though a Rapid City water main project is expected to be completed this year to bring a 12-inch water main to Buckskin Lane, a half-mile south of Valley Heights, Rapid City Public Works Director Dale Tech said a booster station would be required at a cost in the millions of dollars. That cost, he said, is likely too expensive for the Deutsch family, TNT or Valley Heights' residents.

It appears the most probable solution may be for residents to take the matter into their own hands and form either a sanitary district or a nonprofit organization. To create a sanitary district, a majority vote of the residents in the proposed district is required. A board of trustees composed of residents would govern the district and additional tax levies on the residents would be one way of funding the water infrastructure improvements.

The real benefit of a sanitary district, though, is that it opens the door for state grant and loan programs.

If they form a sanitary district, then theyre eligible for about anything that a municipality would be eligible for, said Mike Perkovich, administrator of the DENRs Water and Waste Funding Program, in a Journal interview.

DENR programs like the Drinking Water Aid Revolving Fund Program and the Consolidated Water Facilities Construction Program are two such programs that offer low-interest loans  sometimes with principal forgiveness  and grant monies to accepted applicants.

Because the area likely only needs drinking water and not wastewater assistance, Perkovich said residents could also potentially form a nonprofit, which would not require a vote from residents but would oversee and operate the private water system.

In the immediate future, officials from Box Elder, Rapid City and Pennington County will continue discussing the best options moving forward. The Deutsch family, TNT, and Valley Heights' residents will also likely play a role in any decisions.

As for Box Elder, Mayor Larson has said that in the next few years the city may consider digging another well, but added that if any water shortage or supply problems arise, the city can always buy water from Ellsworth Air Force Base or from Rapid City as it did last month when a water pump failed in one of its wells. For now, he said, his focus is making sure residents within city limits are looked after.

Were not going to be without water, Larson said. Were just being cautious as far as allowing outside city hookups. We can get water. Well never be without water.
It would take pretty much the entire "SNL" group to do a bit on the meeting between Don Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and the gang from the Kremlin. There were at least eight people at that infamous get-together that we now know was called to dish some dirt on Hillary Clinton. "SNL" already has been feasting on the Trumpsters to the point that this season it gathered 22 Emmy nominations, the largest number ever in the show's four-plus decades of existence.

Take that meeting with the Trumpets and the Soviets  oh, excuse me, Russians. That, by the way, was the first mistake of Junior and the rest: agreeing to take that meeting. First, they had to find an office big enough to accommodate the crowd. Presumably the ostentatious building has conference rooms, because this gathering featured a cast of characters that could fill one of those TV reality shows.

Of course, there was young Donald; we call him "young," although, as many have pointed out, he's the same age as French President Emmanuel Macron. You know Emmanuel Macron: He's the one whom Trump the elder was cavorting with in Paris, telling Macron's wife what "great shape" she was in. Our president is nothing if he's not cool. (What's French for "ewwwwww"?)

All this while his son was back home trying to deflect charges he was consorting with Putin's Posse.

The others in the meeting room were Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with close ties to the Kremlin, and with oligarchs and mobsters for clients. Also there was Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who began his adult life working in Soviet intelligence. Then there was Rob Goldstone, public-relations person to another oligarch's family, the one who had enticed young Donald with his email promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." There were a couple of others on the Russian side, along with Junior, Jared and Manafort. It's not clear whether they, too, were on the Russian side.

We can assume that neither Vladimir Putin nor Trump Sr. were listening in on speakerphone. Putin claims to not know any of the participants, which is a little bit more difficult for President Trump to claim.

After all, Paul Manafort is the political fixer who was Trump's campaign leader at the time, until he was shoved aside because of disclosures that he had made millions of dollars from a Ukrainian party with close ties to the Kremlin. Jared is the Trump son-in-law and presidential adviser who has massive influence on anything that happens in this White House. Don Jr. is the son who enjoys himself by slaughtering unsuspecting big game.

As dramatic as the charges are that Trump's campaign and the Russians conspired to steal the U.S. election, this also is comedy. And it's not just "Saturday Night Live." These players could inhabit a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin might easily be mistaken for Boris and Natasha. And as much as Jared's name swirls around unsavory developments, he's starting to look like Snidely Whiplash. Yes, it's funny burlesque. At the same time, it's deadly serious.
Despite the smoky air and high temperatures, contestants of all ages participated in the ninth annual Lake Como Triathlon Saturday.

The triathlon is a true community and family event, with many teams comprised of husbands and wives, or mothers and daughters. At one point, the emcee handed the microphone over to participate in a leg of the event.

Ben Steadman, the youngest participant at age 13, joined the race this year because he saw his brother and cousin do it last year. Ben finished all three legs of the triathlon in less than three hours.

It was hard, but fun, Ben said. I didnt do as much training as I should have.

At this years triathlon, 48 contestants or teams ran the race. First, racers swam 1,500 meters in open water on Lake Como. Next, they mountain biked 12.6 miles over rugged forest service roads. The final leg is a 7.7 mile run on the hiking trail, which traces the perimeter of the lake.

Mark Butler has volunteered each year for the Lake Como Triathlon. He said they plan for the event six months in advance, securing sponsors from local businesses, permits from the U.S. Forest Service and organizing volunteers.

Not to mention registering racers.

We peaked at over 100, but its leveled off at about 50 each year for a while now, Butler said.

Many local organizations sponsored the race or volunteered their time. Students from Trapper Creek Job Corps assisted racers in their transitions from event to event and cooked everyone lunch after the race. Therapists from Hamilton Physical Therapy helped racers mend muscle and cool down after their leg of the triathlon.

While a triathlon might not seem like a relaxing weekend to most, Mike Lavery and his wife drove from Bozeman to compete in the weekends event.

Weve never been to this part of the state, so it makes for a nice weekend, Lavery said. Well hang out on the beach for the rest of the day.

Lavery won the triathlon with a time just over two hours. He said the swimming segment of the race is by far the hardest for him.

I didnt start swimming until I was 20, Lavery said. Im a decent swimmer, but it's not my strength. Once Im out of the water, Im in my element.

Lavery competes in triathlons across Western Montana, but this was just his second off-road event.

I was expecting the roads to be a little more smooth, Lavery said. My tires were way too narrow and pumped up.

Lavery works from home as an engineer and has a, pretty flexible schedule. He said he trains about 15 hours each week, and makes sure at least three of those workouts are swimming.

For Lavery, the spirit of competition is what keeps him going when the race is at its most challenging.

Im just competitive, Lavery said. Sometimes I wake up and want to just sleep in instead, but as soon as I get out there in the race Im like, lets go.
You don't have to crane your neck to see the osprey nest on the crane at Pioneer log homes in Victor anymore. But you did for a while last week after a lightning bolt took out a special camera that broadcast live video of the nest and it's family of four.

Last year after noticing a pair of osprey trying unsuccessfully to build a nest atop a large crane, the management at Pioneer Log Homes decided to decommission the crane, and build a nest box for them.

The osprey took right to it.

Shortly after the pair took to to the nest, Pioneer Log Homes installed a video camera, which provides an in nest view of the large raptors. The osprey camera has developed a loyal following online, however during the severe thunderstorms last Saturday, a lightning strike fried the wiring of the Pioneer Log Homes osprey camera.

Less than a week later, the treasurer for Pioneer Log Homes, Dean Jordan, pulled on a harness and climbed the crane to replace the broken camera, braving swooping osprey and a 60-foot fall.

They dont like me, Jordan said.

The two osprey parents hovered over Jordan as he worked to install the new camera. They displayed their anger clearly, screeching and circling him, but never made a complete dive.

How close were they? Jordan asked after safely stepping back onto the ground. I didnt want to look up.

Jordan said hes been surprised at the reception the cameras received. The builders receive messages from viewers asking for updates on the birds behaviors outside the nest.

"Since the chicks hatched the viewership has been amazing, Jordan said. I turned on the camera to test it, just facing the wall, and it had 18 people watching when I checked back in. Its like a soap opera for some people.

Pioneer Log Homes osprey nest stream has had more than 26,000 individual viewers and more than 400,000 minutes of watch time. Fans have gone as far as to name the birds, the parent birds are Olivia and Oscar, and their children are Ollie and Squirt.

Ollie and Squirt are the result of a second attempt at offspring for Olivia and Oscar. The pairs eggs were destroyed by another osprey last year, but the same pair returned this spring and had better luck.

Fledglings Ollie and Squirt are now learning to fly.

From a business standpoint, Jordan said he hopes the osprey camera draws more people to the Pioneer Log Homes website. But when he was first approached about the camera, it surprised him.

A guy out back asked if we could put a camera up there, I was like, Yeah I guess, Jordan said.

General manager at Pioneer Log Homes, Rob Ridgway, said the osprey are a nice addition to the workplace.

Having the osprey around is fun for the guys out in the yard, Ridgway said.

On the Pioneer Log Homes Youtube page, viewers from across the country discuss the development of the birds on screen and birding in general. For Meghan White, a viewer from New Jersey, the osprey camera at Pioneer Log Homes was unique.

These people are pulling money out of their own pockets to put this up, White said. What struck me was that this has nothing to do with their business, and thats really special.

White began watching bird cameras because her mother would do the same. While she doesnt do much birding outside, she said she realized shes become more into it than she thought.

Im kind of an animal person and I started looking at the bird cams online and found myself getting more and more interested, White said. Its very educational. You can watch their behavior, and see what their calling means if theyre hungry or whatever.

White described how bird cameras vary from place to place. She said there is everything on the web from peoples backyard birdfeeders, to big projects sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

For the Pioneer Log Homes camera, the location is a big draw.

Im kinda a weather nerd too and seeing the crane move around with the mountains in the backdrop is really cool, White said.

Last year, at the Pioneer Log Homes nest, an intruder female osprey claimed the nest and ignored the eggs, despite the male osprey doing his best to keep them alive. Watching the more brutal aspects of nature can cause tensions in the viewer discussion, according to White.

You have people who kinda get in trouble. White said. Some people will get upset when a baby dies and you can have people fight about whether or not to intervene. Some are angry some are sad, some are like, this is just nature.

White said she expects the nest at Pioneer Log Homes benefitted from the Hellgate nest camera, which did not have any chicks this year. She thinks its likely the Hellgate nest camera pushed new people to try out the Pioneer Log Homes nest.

The nest cameras develop a community and over time people become friendly with one another. And for White, thats just an added bonus.

Ive met people from Portugal and Poland, White said. Its really amazing what kind of people you meet."
Guwahati: Security forces on Saturday had apprehended an Adivasi militant and recovered 29 numbers handmade grenade in possession from him in Assam's Kokrajhar district, officials said.

A top official of Kokrajhar district police said that, following a tip-off, police and CRPF troops had jointly launched operation at Malbhug village under Kachugaon police station in the lower Assam district and nabbed the militant.

The nabbed militant was identified as Suphal Hebram and he is the self styled commander of newly floated outfit group Adivasi Dragon Fighter (ADF).

Security personnel had recovered 29 numbers handmade grenade, one handmade rifle, ammunition in possession from him.

Police has continued interrogation him to collect more information about the militant group.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati: At least four students and a police personnel were injured in a clash between students and security personnel in Manipur's Imphal on Saturday, while the students of a higher secondary school protesting to demand roll back of the transfer of eight teachers.

The protest march turned violent when police tried to stop the students of CC higher secondary school in Imphal tried to march towards the Chief Minister's BUNGALOW to demand for immediate revocation of the transfer order of eight teachers.

According to the reports, the protest turned more violent after the protesters pelted stone targeting to the security personnel whom were stopped.

To bring the situation under control police personnel fired tear gas cells and also used mock bombs.

In the clash, four students were sustained injuries and a police personnel also injured.

Later, police and district administration had brought the situation under control after discussed with the student leaders about the issue.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Blog Archive June (1) May (16) April (23) March (20) February (17) January (13) December (22) November (40) October (57) September (45) August (55) July (52) June (165) May (121) April (141) March (32) February (76) January (141) December (85) November (130) October (146) September (96) August (89) July (82) June (64) May (99) April (41) March (98) February (61) January (64) December (67) November (51) October (70) September (75) August (52) July (66) June (76) May (104) April (93) March (151) February (168) January (107) December (42) November (56) October (69) September (103) August (75) July (191) June (171) May (207) April (302) March (490) February (155) January (138) December (135) November (226) October (146) September (107) August (160) July (292) June (316) May (361) April (460) March (327) February (49) January (2) November (13) October (3) September (37) August (43) July (6) June (12) May (1) April (29) March (30) February (58) January (27) December (11) November (16) October (34) September (81) August (81) July (93) June (12) May (1) February (1) November (3) October (2) September (6) August (1) July (2) June (14) May (10) April (8) March (13) February (1) January (5)
The Moroccan phosphate group (OCP) denounced on Thursday (July 13) South Africa for committing an act of political piracy after its justice had ordered, in mid-June, the seizure of a ship carrying a cargo of Moroccan phosphates mined in Western Sahara.

The incident dates back to May 1, when a South African court ordered the hailing of Cherry Blossom, a ship laden with phosphates, which was sailing from Laayoune in the Moroccan Sahara to New Zealand. The ship has since then been detained in Port Elizabeth.

In deciding to refer the case to a trial on the merits, the South African court makes an eminently political decision and commits a serious abuse of power, said the OCP in a statement. The OCP Group also denounced the serious political interference of South African judges in the Sahara issue, which falls exclusively within the competence of the United Nations.

The court assumes powers to rule on a case that does not fall under its competence, an act that contravenes the basic principles of international law. Moreover, its ruling constitutes a political interference in the process being conducted under the auspices of the UN Security Council, the Moroccan group said.

The OCP and Phosboucraa, the OCP subsidiary operating in the Sahara, also deny the South African court any legitimacy to rule on the merits of a case handled at the highest international level, the statement said, adding that the request sent to a South African judge on May 1 was based on purely political allegations, made by the Polisario.

This preliminary decision interferes dangerously in the ongoing international process under the aegis of the UN Security Council, the OCP insisted.

The statement recalled a similar case in Panama, where the Polisario filed a lawsuit for the seizure of a cargo of Moroccan phosphates being shipped to Canada. The case was rejected by the Panamanian Maritime Court on June 8 and the ship was free to continue its journey.

The OCP and Phosboucraa described the decision of the South African justice as an act of political piracy, committed under the cover of justice.

The statement said the OCP has filed a letter of denunciation in the Registry of the South African court.

Actually, this case reflects once again the frantic hostility of Jacob Zuma regime, a close ally of the Algerian regime, towards Morocco and its sovereignty.
Jois childhood was plagued with teasing and bullying by the governor's son and his friends. Though his father refuses to put him in a Muay Thai school, Joi secretly trains himself.

When a confrontation with his bullies leaves the governor's son badly hurt, Joi is told he can never practice Muay Thai. Formally that is. Of course Joi is going to go against his familys wishes and still train.

Fast forward many years and Joi has grown up to be a formidable fighter, the best in the area. He still has run-ins with the Governor's son but Joi always hands him and his men their asses. Joi fights in local matches and is seemingly unstoppable until he meets his match and left face down in a river by his former master.

He is encouraged to go on a quest and seek out other Masters of disciplines of Muay Thai. At the first village he goes to he adopts the false name of Thongdee. On his tail is the Governors son, still hell bent on making Jois life miserable, but now he has enlisted the help of his military trained uncle. As Thongdee travels from camp to camp, his fighting skills grow until the ultimate showdown brings him back to the fighter who bested him all those years before.

From the opening scene of Bin Bunluerits Broken Sword Hero, you know what kind of film you are in for. Our hero Joi (Thongdee from this point on) is running across an open plain when half a dozen or so men on horseback pull in behind him in pursuit. Thongdee looks back at the riders, turns around, and a big stupid grin comes across his face, like he is enjoying the chase.

As Bunluerits experiences reportedly run mostly in the comedy genre, there are a fair number of laughs throughout the film and the buddy road trip aspect of the film works well. Along his way from camp to camp, Thongdee adds an earnest and young follower, a young woman from a travelling Chinese Opera troupe, and another Muay Thai fighter, who was also unceremoniously dumped by his master for losing to Thongdee.

I will admit that around the halfway point, I was getting restless, though. Growing leary of the endless shots of horses; feet -- Yes! We know theyre coming already! -- I had not tempered my expectations from an all-out action film down to a period action film. The slowed down action sequences allow everyone to see all the contacts and appreciate all the moves: the kicks, the knees, the elbows, all of that glorious Muay Thai contact. The action is shot for show, not for effect; most of it is slowed down and cut to ribbons in the editing room. But in the end I can appreciate the artistry of Muay Thai on display in Broken Sword Hero and look for the martial side of it elsewhere.

My mood did change around the halfway point when Thongdee saves his inevitable love interest during a raid from some Burmese raiders. This one scene has the most of what you could call violence in it: stabbings, slashing and spearings. It is during this sequence when Thongdee vaults up and kicks a horse in the face to dismount its rider.

Thongdee kicks the horse.

In its face.

Now, I do not condone violence to animals but this such an amazing thing to behold that from that point on I was committed to the film. I was not looking out for more horse kicking, but anyone willing to throw in their version of a Mongo moment now has my interest.

It is sad that the women in the movie are more for show. When a couple of them are called upon to participate in action sequences, it is clear that they are out of their element. They do not complete the choreography with any conviction or perceived strength. Sure, they have the fortitude to stand up and fight, but when it comes down to it, they look scared and too weak when blows are exchanged. I wish this wasnt so.

Overall, if you go into Broken Sword Hero looking for generous breakdowns of Muay Thai instead of hard hitting action, you will not be disappointed. A deeper appreciation of the martial arts and the skills involved in portraying them on film would have been achieved had we been allowed more time to focus on the movements instead of shifting our gaze after each edit. Broken Sword Hero is not the hard-hitting Thai action film you want, but perhaps it is the soft motion film you need to appreciate Muay Thai even more.

There is no doubt that star Buakaw Banchamek establishes a physical presence early and often in the film. Is he the next best thing to come out of Thailand since Tony Jaa? The man is clearly a beast and perhaps a couple action films set in a contemporary setting, focusing on the martial side of Muay Thai, will catch the eye of the international audience. We thought Dan Chupong was the next big thing to come from that area. Well. Here we are still waiting.

There are a couple haphazard wrapups thrown in at the end. Something thrown in to warrant calling it Broken Sword Hero in the first place and another to reconnect Thongdee back to his family that he left all those years before. While i understand that you had to tie up a couple loose ends at the end of the film, stopping it after his big final dual and test of morality would have left questions unanswered but it would have at least been a more satisfying conclusion than the realization of, Shoot. We forgot to explain why he will be called Broken Sword Hero.

A final note about the teeth commentary in the film. It comes up enough that some knowledge about it may help understand why there is so much of it. A number of times Thongdees white teeth are pointed out. I will admit as well that I found the black teeth a distraction, because what the hell Thailand? So teeth blackening is a centuries-old tradition in most Asian countries.

In Thailand, they chew the leaves and berries (Betal nut) of the Areca tree. Like chewing tobacco it is a stimulant, and like chewing tobacco it also has its health risks too. In most Asian cultures white teeth were associated with monsters and demons, which better explains why everyone was so taken with Thongdees white teeth. Seems good dental hygiene befits his personality too.


If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE).
 Senators Kamala Harris and Rand Paul make the case for bail reforms | Main | "North Dakotas Norway Experiment: Can humane prisons work in America? A red state aims to find out." 

July 23, 2017

Reduced jail time in Tennessee for inmates who ... agree to vasectomy or birth control implant!?!?!

This local story out of Tennessee is hard to believe, but it does not appear to be fake news. The story is headlined "White County Inmates Given Reduced Jail Time If They Get Vasectomy," and here are excerpts:

Inmates in White County, Tennessee have been given credit for their jail time if they voluntarily agree to have a vasectomy or birth control implant, a popular new program that is being called unconstitutional by the ACLU. On May 15, 2017 General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield signed a standing order that allows inmates to receive 30 days credit toward jail time if they undergo a birth control procedure. Women who volunteer to participate in the program are given a free Nexplanon implant in their arm, the implant helps prevent pregnancies for up to four years. Men who volunteer to participate are given a vasectomy, free of charge, by the Tennessee Department of Health. County officials said that since the program began a few months ago 32 women have gotten the Nexplananon implant and 38 men were waiting to have the vasectomy procedure performed. Judge Benningfield told NewsChannel 5 that he was trying to break a vicious cycle of repeat offenders who constantly come into his courtroom on drug related charges, subsequently cant afford child support and have trouble finding jobs. I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves, Judge Benningfield said in an interview. First elected in 1998, Judge Benningfield decided to implement the program after speaking with officials at the Tennessee Department of Health. I understand it wont be entirely successful but if you reach two or three people, maybe thats two or three kids not being born under the influence of drugs. I see it as a win, win, he added. Inmates in the White County jail were also given two days credit toward their jail sentence if they complete a State of Tennessee, Department of Health Neonatal Syndrome Education Program. The class aimed to educate those who are incarcerated about the dangers of having children while under the influence of drugs. Hopefully while theyre staying here we rehabilitate them so they never come back, the judge said. District Attorney Bryant Dunaway, who oversees prosecution of cases in White County is worried the program may be unethical and possibly illegal. Its concerning to me, my office doesnt support this order, Dunaway said.... On Wednesday, the ACLU released this statement on the program: "Offering a so-called 'choice' between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional. Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it. Judges play an important role in our community  overseeing individuals childbearing capacity should not be part of that role."

There are many thing so very remarkable about this story, but I am especially struck by how many jail inmates are willing to undergo a life-changing procedure simply to avoid 30 days in jail. Anyone who doubts the coercive pressures of even a short jail stay (say because of an inability to make bail) should be shown this story.

July 23, 2017 at 04:43 AM | Permalink

Comments

Nothing that happens in the US "Justice" system surprises me anymore. I see you are now deporting the Irish - that should go down well too! http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40332646

Posted by: peter | Jul 23, 2017 6:26:22 AM

Kinder than summary  execution or Night & Fog 

Posted by: Docile/Kind Soul in OR | Jul 23, 2017 9:18:31 AM

Its not fake news. Its typical nutty, rural Tennessee judges who want to save us.



David Louis Raybin

Raybin & Weissman P.C.

Fifth Third Center / Suite 2120, 424 Church Street / Nashville, Tennessee 37219

Phone: 615-256-6666 Ext. 220 / Fax: 615-254-4254

E-Mail: DRAYBIN@NashvilleTnLaw.com / Website: www.NashvilleTnLaw.com



Posted by: david raybin | Jul 23, 2017 10:25:39 AM

"... struck by ho many jail inmates are willing to undergo a life-changing procedure simply to avoid 30 days in jail."

Harvard Law grad has contempt for the judgement of inmates. He is not better nor even any smarter than they are. For example, let him survive in their neighborhood for a week. Many are making more money than he is, when not in prison. They may be losing tens of thousands of dollars in 30 days in prison. Many also have 10 kids already by different baby mothers. They have more energy, brains, and enterprise than credited.

Appellate court judge elitists reversing this sentence should be run out of the state.

The prevention of 10 more kids by these criminals has $millions of value to us all in prevented damages and tax costs.

Posted by: David Behar | Jul 23, 2017 11:07:34 AM

The prosecutor is freaking out about the future of his budget, if crime is prevented, and about his job.

Posted by: David Behar | Jul 23, 2017 11:10:44 AM

"I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be *burdened with children.*

Why did I read that and then think, "actually, the judge means he doesn't want society to be burdened with what he sees as subhuman beings"?

Oh, because David Behar that's why.

Which once again proves Doug's axiom that as crazy as David is he's not the only nutcase around. Some of them are even judges and US Attorney General.

Posted by: Daniel | Jul 23, 2017 12:11:54 PM

This is all very Buck v. Bell, which if I recall correctly has never actually been overruled, despite being up there with Dred Scott, Plessy, Korematsu, Bowers, etc., as one of the worst all time SCOTUS decisions.

This could be a great test case.

Posted by: Anon | Jul 23, 2017 12:15:51 PM

@David

I have a question I would like to ask you. Do criminals with vasectomies taste better on the table than criminals who have not had vasectomies? I ask because eating the poor has a long and storied tradition in the West and I am curious as to whether there might be some underlying gastronomical motive on the judge's part. If he did it might make his modest proposal a wee bit more acceptable.

Posted by: Daniel | Jul 23, 2017 12:16:10 PM

@anon

The obvious distinction is that Buck involved involuntary sterilization while in this case the sterilization are--at least nominally--voluntary. Whether the decisions are pragmatically voluntary is a different question and one that I think can easily enough be resolved under SCOTUS 4A precedent. (Hint: they are not.)

Posted by: Daniel | Jul 23, 2017 12:21:50 PM

Daniel. What an excellent question. I oppose all forms of cannibalism, especially of disease ridden meats.

Calling people who dissent from your sicko, pro-criminal views, crazy brings up a professional responsibility question, in your case.

Posted by: David Behar | Jul 23, 2017 12:33:24 PM

@Daniel,

I don't disagree with any of your comments. The interesting question here is how, not whether, the current SCOTUS would strike this down. Conservative Catholics are strongly opposed to eugenics (and birth control for that matter), and liberals obviously don't like state coercion in reproductive matters. But the legal reasoning would be interesting.

@David Behar, "Three generations of [criminals] are enough."

Posted by: Anon | Jul 23, 2017 1:48:00 PM

Anon. OW Holmes has never ever been wrong.

An article criticized his support of the felony murder rule. It contained an arithmetic error. When corrected, the data supported OW.

Posted by: David Behar | Jul 23, 2017 1:54:01 PM

I love the idea, it may help the addicts when they get out, but definitely helps society.

I agree, trade 30 days in jail for a vasectomy. Ouch, hmm.

Judge keep up the good work, need productive ideas like this.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Jul 23, 2017 5:45:51 PM

The vasectomy is worth five years off in my book. The same should be offered for a tubal ligation.

The implants can be removed if a need for more welfare pay is felt. Welfare benefits are worth $50000 a year, tax free. The feminist lawyer is paying by the spawn. The more spawn, the higher pay, according to the family destroying feminist lawyer. If a father stays in the house, the loss of income can be in the 6 figures in pre-tax amounts.

Even if the prevented spawn were not be criminals, their cost to college would still be extremely high. As mentioned elsewhere, the crime spree of these spawn starts at three. The special education cost is 4 times the already bloated tuition of public school education.

To recap, the offer will save money in 1) less crime; 2 less dependency cost; 3) less special education; 4) less damage and mayhem from their conduct on the street; 5) less damage to real estate prices and to the economy; 6) less foster care; 7) less medical care for mental and physical trauma care; 8) less disruption and terror in the streets for other poor people; 9) less money going to billionaire drug cartel owners.

When we say, less, we are, of course, referring to less pay going to lawyers, government workers, social workers, foster parents, doctors, teachers and other tax sucking parasites. Thus, the outrage by these dirty traitors to our country.

Posted by: David Behar | Jul 23, 2017 5:49:39 PM

David Louis Raybin

Raybin & Weissman P.C.

I demand to know the fraction of your clients who are found, not guilty. I do not want to pay for an email service, which I can get for free. Are you just going to transport the plea offer of the prosecutor? At least 20% of your clients are innocent. If your track record of getting people found innocent is lower than that fraction, you are worthless.

Posted by: David Behar | Jul 23, 2017 5:53:17 PM

I am a criminal defense lawyer in Knoxville and agree that this is not fake news. This action by a small county sessions judge seems to be playing well with the law and order crowd. Those of us in the system understand it will not decrease drug use. It may have the opposite effect.

Posted by: Doug Trant | Jul 24, 2017 11:07:56 AM

@Anon, Buck v. Bell was never overturned, but it was severely limited at least when it comes to criminal justice matters where forcible sterilization for some charges and not others were found to violate Equal Protection. The case is Skinner v. Oklahoma.

I think the strongest argument for striking down this is as follows: Consent to the procedure is invalid under these coercive conditions and, under Skinner, it violates the Equal Protection Clause unless it applies to every crime (white collar, violent, non-violent, etc.) and both male and female inmates. Alternatively, development in case law with Griswold, Roe, Lawrence, etc. have undermined the reasoning of Buck v. Bell and that case should be overturned.

An inmate who wants to save 30 days but doesn't want to be sterilized would be the best to challenge this, although I suspect the individual would be released prior to any court ruling.

Posted by: Erik M | Jul 24, 2017 11:27:29 AM

True, Erik M, but some sort of TRO action, which moves relatively quickly, combined with the "capable of repetition yet evading review" argument on mootness might get a decision.

Posted by: Mark M. | Jul 24, 2017 11:36:04 PM

A little castration history from San Diego, CA.

THE MOST CRITICAL OPTION

Posted by: George | Jul 26, 2017 4:50:52 PM

Post a comment
The Detwiler Fire west of Yosemite is raging on in its third day, tripling in size since just yesterday to encompass nearly 46,000 acres, and now threatening the town of Mariposa, which has a population of 2,000 people.

The Mariposa County blaze, due east of Modesto in the Sierra foothills along Highway 49, near Lake McClure, broke out Sunday afternoon and has ballooned quickly thanks to dense and abundant fuel  some of it sprouted up in the spring after abundant rains this past winter and now dried to a crisp. Also, as the fire's incident management team tells the LA Times, the area has an ample amount of dead trees killed by both the drought and the bark beetle infestation. The terrain into which this fire has been moving is steep, which has added to the challenge of battling it, and it is now just at seven percent containment, as local station ABC 30 reports.

As of Wednesday morning, the fire had destroyed eight structures, and has spread across 72 square miles, with another 1,500 homes still possibly in its path, making the evacuation of Mariposa mandatory. 2,200 firefighters are now battling it. As the Associated Press reports, in addition to the 1,500 homes, the fire is threatening some power lines that provide electricity to Yosemite National Park.







Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Mariposa County on Tuesday, and FEMA emergency funds were made available from the federal government.

CalFire's report describes the "extreme and aggressive fire behavior" of this blaze, and says that it now "encroaches on culturally and historically sensitive areas."

And a CalFire spokesman tells the Chronicle that 4,500 homes are actually under threat.

Smoke from the Detwiler Fire can now be seen from weather satellites spreading as far as the northern edge of Nevada.

Almost certainly, this looks to be one of the major fires of this wildfire season. Investigators continue to search for its cause.
A manhunt is intensifying for two members of Richmond street gang known as the Manor Boyz who were the subjects of a six-month police and FBI investigation and crackdown. As Richmond Police Lt. Felix Tan tells CBS 5, investigators are now reaching out to the media and "hoping to push this guy out [of hiding]," referring to suspect Teari Watts, who along with his 15-year-old brother Joshua are the only two remaining members of an eight-person gang who have eluded arrest following a May 18 murder in a local park in which the Manor Boyz have been implicated.

The fatal shooting took the life of 20-year-old Alexandra Sweitzer, during what's described as a drug transaction gone wrong in Booker T. Anderson Jr. Park. But the Manor Boyz have been the subject of multiple homicide investigations dating back to July 2016, and they are suspected of multiple other crimes around the Bay Area including home invasion robberies, credit card fraud, narcotics trafficking, firearms trafficking, and human trafficking. According to Lt. Tan, "Prostitution of juveniles and adults, they dont really care."

Six members of the Manor Boyz  named for the housing complex they live in formerly known as John F. Kennedy Manor, and more recently renamed Monterey Pines Apartments  are now in custody following three arrests on Wednesday, and Richmond Police and federal officers, along with the Contra Costa County Safe Streets Task Force, seized 11 firearms in the process of their sting, as well as heroin and cash, as KRON 4 reports. They also report that Joshua Watts is the prime suspect in Sweitzer's murder.

In addition to Sweitzer's murder, the gang has been implicated the killings of Chrisean Nealy and Javonte Prothro in September 2016.

Richmond police Chief Allwyn Brown calls the hunt for the Watts brothers a "high priority concern" and they are considered armed and dangerous.

Richmond has long been a nexus of gang activity in the Bay Area and NeighborhoodScout notes that the small city averages 755 violent crimes per year. A decade ago, after earning a reputation as having one the highest murder rates in the state, Richmond launched the Office of Neighborhood Safety, and as Mother Jones reported in 2014, the department launched a program in which city-funded stipends were paid to several dozen individuals who were deemed to be the most likely to be the perpetrator or victim of a shooting. The catch was that in order to stay in the program and receive payments of $300 to $1000 a month, the participants had to shun crime and violent behavior and prove that they were turning their lives around. The program was credited with dropping Richmond's murder rate to the lowest it had been in 33 years, and well below nearby Oakland's, at 11 per 100,000 people in 2014  but that number jumped to 22 per 100,000 people in 2016, suggesting an uptick in gang violence.


Delegate will discuss global and regional markets after the USs withdrawal from Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), challenges and opportunities for Vietnamese businesses to attend global supply chains. In addition, they will analyze quality and competitiveness improvement of Vietnamese products. Domestic business associations will share risk management modes in exports.

The forum will also connect Vietnamese enterprises with Indonesian, Malaysian, South Korean and Japanese firms, supply newly updated information about export markets and solutions to improve the competitiveness of export companies in key markets.

From that, businesses can estimate, adjust and improve their management and production process as well as product quality to meet technical requirements and trade barriers in countries and participate in global supply chains.

By HAI HA  Translated by Hai Mien
Model Huu Long has asserted that he will represent Vietnam in the Man of the World Pageant taking place from July 23 to 28 in Philippines. Model Huu Long has arrived in Manilla where he hopes to command the runway at the Man of the World competition.

The Man of the Worlds official fan page has released the photos of model Huu Long and other candidates.



Model Huu Long said that he is honored to represent Vietnam in the competition expecting people to back him.

The young model hailing from Hanoi born in 1991 is 1.86m tall and was previously crowned best body at Vietnam Supermodel 2011 and claimed first place at Vietnam Supermodel 2012.

The grand finale of the competition will stage on July 28, starting at 7pm, at One Esplanade in Pasay City with the theme Celebrating Masculinity with Responsibility.





By QUANG TIEN - Translated by UYEN PHUONG
The martyr had been dead for years but the family couldnt afford to search for his body.



The informant was veteran Dao Thien Sinh in Vinh Khanh district of the south central coastal province of Khanh Hoa.

Since 1976, Sinh has sent about 40,000 letters to martyrs families and relatives, supplying them with information he learned from trips to cemeteries nationwide.

Since we heard about my elder brothers death, every day my mother longed for a letter which might inform us of the place he was buried, Sinh recalled.

Understanding the mothers pain and martyrs families thirst for news, Sinh decided to start travelling to cemeteries.

At 20, Sinh fought in the Quang Tri battle field until Liberation Day on April 30, 1975. Four years later, he re-enlisted to fight in Cambodia. Returning from both battlefields, he began a normal job.

Using his free time, first he travelled to cemeteries close to Khanh Hoa province to search for his brothers grave where he also found many unmarked graves. Then he started collecting information engraved on the graves and began writing letters to martyrs families.

My father-in-law is lying down here. Its such a feeling of warmth knowing my father-in-law can finally rest in peace, said Tran Huyen Tran, the daughter-in-law of martyr Luong Khanh, as she visited Khanhs grave.

He died when my husband was only three. Years later, my mother-in-law lost hope in finding his grave due to the familys economic hardships," said Tran, a resident of Nha Trang city.

I and my husband burst into tears upon receiving Sinhs letter informing us that our father was buried in a cemetery in Tay Ninh province and then Sinh and my father-in-laws comrades helped bring him home, Tram added, saying that the father enlisted in 1976 and died two years later in Cambodia.

It was sad that my mother-in-law was not alive to witness this miracle.

Over the past decades, Sinh has gone far and wide to more than 200 martyrs cemeteries including those for unknown soldiers from the central province of Quang Tri to provinces in the southeastern region.

Visiting any cemetery, Sinh noted down every name, age, birthplace and any information available on martyrs, searched for more information and decoded them before writing letters to the martyrs families.

The trips took place day or night; sometimes he even slept in cemeteries.

I do this out of love for my fallen comrades. I always feel something pushing in my mind and my heart, the veteran said.

Sinh has also helped carry the martyrs remains home. It is an indescribable joy to bring them home, seeing them rest in peace. Im determined to do this job as long as my health allows, said Sinh.

Sinhs mission hasnt gone unnoticed. He has received support from local post offices with more than 10,000 commune-based post offices delivering the letters to martyrs families for free. Many other veterans have also helped him with funds to buy envelopes and papers.

My whole family is grateful for Sinh as he let us know the location of my elder brothers grave, martyr Bui Van Phuoc who died in Cambodia aged 22, said Bui Van Duoc, at his brothers grave in Khanh Hoa provinces Ninh Hoa township.

Deputy head of Khanh Hoa provinces War Veterans Association, Ngo Mau Chien, said Sinh is a person dedicated to work related to veterans, especially writing letters about martyrs graves.

Due to his efforts, Sinh has been granted numerous certificates of merit by the Vietnam War Veterans Association and Khanh Hoa provinces War Veterans Association.

Living relatives of the martyrs call Sinh a perfect connector.

And Sinh will continue his journey as he is uncomfortable with so many Vietnamese martyrs resting place still unknown to their families.

Vietnamnews
The article, The Faun Beneath the Lamppost: When Christian Scholars Talk About the Enlightenment," ran in the Summer 2017 edition of Christian Scholar's Review, a journal for Christian academics.

Kugler argues in his article that "a wide range of contemporary Christian scholarship defines modern moral, religious and social malaise in direct descent from the philosophical speculations known historically as the Enlightenment." While this scholarship is convincing to some, Kugler says in his article he is unconvinced.
SIOUX CITY  Sioux Citys two hospitals pumped a combined $240 million into the local economy last year, according to a new report.

The Iowa Hospital Association's 2017 economic impact report showed that Mercy Medical Center had a $132 million impact on the region and UnityPoint Health - St. Lukes contributed nearly $108 million.

Additionally, the ealth care providers are two of regions largest employers with Mercy employing 1,324 and St. Lukes nearly 1,300.

Mercys workforce spends about $57 million in retail sales and generates about $3.4 million sales tax and St. Lukes employs spend about $46.5 million locally and create nearly $2.8 million in sales tax, according to the IHA report.

When employees are factored in, Mercy's impact jumps to $192 million and St. Lukes rises to a little more than $156 million. This is an increase of $6 million for Mercy and increase of $18 million for St. Luke's from the IHA's 2016 report.

In separate releases, officials from both hospitals noted they were pleased with the IHA analysis and their organizations' roles in the economy.

We are proud to be the leading health care delivery organization that provides jobs that not only make an impact on the economy but also improve the health of our community, said Lynn Wold, president and CEO of UnityPoint Health  St. Lukes. Our team members are providing the best outcome for every patient every time; from the moment our patients are born to their ongoing care along their journey through life. It is a privilege to serve the Siouxland community.

"As the area's largest healthcare employer, Mercy Medical Center plays a vital role in the economy of Siouxland," said Jim Fitzpatrick, president and CEO of Mercy Medical Center. "For over 125 years, Mercy has been a part of this community and has maintained a strong, mission-driven approach to caring for our patients. We are honored to be their trusted health partner for life and honored be a part of the Siouxland community."

The IHA study examined the jobs, income, retail sales and sales tax produced by hospitals and the rest of the states health care sector. The study was compiled from hospital-submitted data on the American Hospital Associations Annual Survey of Hospitals and with software that other industries have used to determine their economic impact.

Across the board, Iowas hospitals contributed $4.5 billion to the economy and provide more than 72,000 jobs.
"The Emoji Movie" doesn't start until the end of July, but it's a fairly safe bet The Boss Baby is the best animated film of the first half of the year.

Filled with so much creativity  from visuals to sly adult references  its the kind of cartoon you wish more directors would make.

Arriving at a one-kid house, the Boss Baby (voiced by Alec Baldwin) immediately rubs his older brother (Miles Christopher Bakshi) the wrong way. Older brother Tim lets the newcomer know and, before long, discovers the kid's not just any baby. Hes a member of the management team at Baby Corp. If he pulls off a mission (to discover what the next big puppy is at Puppy Co., he can get a corner office and a private potty. Big brother Tim agrees to help him get the intel  if he promises to leave.

Very quickly, the adventure begins. Before you know it, a group of Elvis impersonators, an evil businessman and a male Mary Poppins are in the picture.

Director Tom McGrath tells the story (based on a book by Marla Frazee) with all sorts of animation techniques. He turns some bits into pop-up book pages. He uses kid drawings to handle others.

The Boss Baby moves at such a fast clip its impossible to get bored, particularly when the two bros go to Puppy Co. and see just how others handle brotherhood.

Diapers, pacifiers, baths and matching outfits factor in, too, leaving no aspect of toddler life unturned.

While Boss Baby has too many butt scenes (its practically an obsession), it doesnt go anywhere parents wouldnt like.

Baldwins Trump-like take on the role is pretty benign, too. He isnt as conniving as Roger Rabbits Baby Herman but he does give Family Guys Stewie a run for his contempt.

When the two boys join forces, the film becomes a great lesson in family support, particularly when theres discord.

As colorful as parts of Inside Out, Boss Baby has moments that seem like theme park rides. The brothers get involved in plenty of chases and a teachable moment about confidence and training wheels. When they get into the Tickle Zone, this becomes the conversation starter most parents will love.

Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow provide the voices of Tims parents but theyre barely visible. They put the story into motion, then step back while Bakshi and Baldwin take over. The two are super team. Bakshi has an attractive innocence; Baldwin offers up sibling superiority.

Both make this a film you cant help but love.
DENISON, Iowa | Ashlynn Lingle's busy week started with a talk on Tuesday night at Denison-Schleswig High School, site of the Crawford County Fair Queen Pageant.

Lingle, 19, took her position on the stage in the high school auditorium. One of nine vying for the queen's crown, Lingle picked her question from the bucket. "What is something you're good at?" the question asked.

Lingle, the daughter of Leonard and Paulette Lingle, of tiny Aspinwall, Iowa, composed herself and answered honestly, not succinctly.

"Talking," she said. "I'm good at talking."

Lingle proceeded to carry on with a smile for the next two minutes, chattering about propensity to talk. When responses from other queen contestants lasted a minute or less, Lingle marched on in a monologue that likely showed she could hold her own, and then some, as a representative of the fair in which she's participated for nearly a decade.

"I talked for at least two minutes and the crowd started laughing," said Lingle, a sophomore to-be at Des Moines Area Community College. "The crowd knew I could talk. I get it from my mom."

Lingle earned the crown at the end of the pageant and she returned to get the fair going the following morning. On Thursday, she took her position in the show ring well before 9 a.m. for the goat show. She broke for a few minutes to greet seniors playing bingo on their special day at the fair in Denison. And then she was back to hand out more trophies to those in the goat show and sheep show.

"I like attending all the shows and the grandstand events," Lingle said, mentioning that the figure 8 races and the RV demolition derby rated as her favorite shows.

On Friday, Queen Ashlynn showed her saler heifer in the beef show, an activity this FFA member has done since she was a fourth-grader.

"I show my cows all over the U.S.," said Lingle, who recently returned from the junior nationals saler show in Corinth, Mississippi. She took third place in that show for overall heifer futurity.

And what exactly is Lingle's future? Well, after the Crawford County Fair, she'll prepare for the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. After that, she's off to study agriculture education in her second year at DMACC. Someday, she said, she'd like to work for ISU Extension or teach. Maybe, there's an FFA adviser position for her somewhere down the road.

"I like promoting agriculture," she said while standing beneath a wooden plaque she made seven years ago to mark the cattle barn area for the Sunshine Friends 4-H club of Manilla, her group. "I like talking about our fair and letting people know about the good things happening in agriculture."

Lingle, whose sister Jackie Lingle was third runner-up in the pageant, said the 2017 pageant represented her first attempt to become queen. The 2016 IKM-Manning High School graduate, thankfully, still had her 2016 prom dress to wear to the pageant on Tuesday, observing a tradition in Crawford County for queen candidates.

"Our queen pageant is kind of a big deal," said Lingle, who earned $100 cash and a trophy for being named queen. "There were a lot of people there."

Lingle, president of the American Salers Junior Association, checked on her cows at mid-morning on Thursday, and noted how thankful she is they come from hardy stock that likely originated in the mountains of France.

"They can withstand the heat," Lingle said.

Her heifer, she added with a laugh, won't get too worked up anyway. And why is that? "She's lazy," Lingle said of Destiny. "She acts like a princess."

A princess that, this week at least, was paraded into the show ring by a queen.
SIOUX CITY | On Friday, District Judge Jeffrey Poulson sentenced Rogelio Morales to 50 years in prison.

Morales, found guilty by a jury last month of strangling his estranged wife to death two years ago, was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, soon to be transported to Oakdale, Iowa, where he will begin his prison sentence.

The evidence used at trial to convict him -- a couple greeting cards Morales sent to his wife, some photos and other documents -- soon will be placed in an envelope or box with an inventory list taped to it. A sheriff's deputy will escort a deputy clerk of court into the basement of either the Woodbury County Courthouse or the Law Enforcement Center, and that evidence will be placed in a storage room far from public view.

It will sit behind locked doors for as long as Morales is locked up, and then some.

State law requires that all records and exhibits that have been filed with the court and introduced as evidence in cases ranging from small claims to murder be kept and maintained by the clerk of court. That requirement has led to a collection of murder weapons, bloody clothing, drugs and hundreds of photos that have been shown to Woodbury County jurors during cases that resulted in lifetime prison sentences, short stints in jail and everything in between.

"We call it the drug room, but there's a lot more than drugs in here," Woodbury County Clerk of District Court Amy Berntson said as she unlocked a door into a small storage room in the Law Enforcement Center basement.

Inside, one can find a box containing the knife Isack Abdinur, convicted of murder last year, used to kill his girlfriend. Guns stolen by Isaiah Mothershed, who committed a series of armed home invasions and shot a police officer before his conviction for robbery and attempted murder, are kept in boxes. There are several envelopes containing marijuana and other drugs. A couple unopened cans of Keystone Ice beer sit on top of a filing cabinet.

Across the street, beneath the sidewalk on the west side of the courthouse is a room that contains even more boxes. A mannequin that a prosecutor used to show jurors the stab wounds of a murder victim is here. A Dallas Cowboys coat covered with dried blood sits on top of a stack of boxes and other clothing items. Numbers on the boxes indicate cases that go back decades.

"We have plenty of space," Berntson said. "We haven't gotten rid of anything in years."

For major cases in which a defendant is sentenced to life in prison, evidence must be kept until the offender dies or a judge issues an order allowing its release.

In civil cases and small claims cases, the clerk's office can dispose of evidence a year after the case's disposition.

In other criminal cases, evidence can be disposed of 60 days after the defendant's prison sentence expires. All case records are now filed electronically and can be maintained on a computer server forever.

The main purpose for keeping the evidence: appeals. Defendants, especially those serving life sentences, file lots of them, and an appeals court could overturn a conviction and order a new trial.

"That's one of the purposes of holding on to these things on people doing life (sentences) is if you need the evidence again, you can pull it," said Mark Campbell, First Assistant Woodbury County Attorney.

Or, evidence can be tested with technology that didn't exist at the time of the trial to further prove a conviction.

That's happened twice in recent years, when two men who were convicted in separate kidnap/rape cases some 30 years ago and sentenced to life in prison contended during various appeals that there was no DNA evidence presented at trial to prove they were guilty. An understandable claim, since DNA testing wasn't available when those cases were tried in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The county attorney's office retrieved blood-stained clothing and other evidence from storage and had it tested for DNA at the state crime lab. In both cases, the defendants' DNA was found, thus supporting the conviction.

"DNA is a good example of what we can do with the stuff that is stored," Campbell said.

The county attorney's office also maintains its own storage area in the courthouse basement, where it keeps items that weren't used as evidence -- mostly paper records, deposition transcripts, videos, reports, emails and other communications.

"It's been fascinating when we've looked at some of this stuff and realized there is some value in saving it," Campbell said.

Berntson said many of the items in storage probably could be destroyed, but she doesn't have enough staff to periodically go through all the boxes to determine which have been kept past the required time.

Parties involved in cases can file requests to have personal property returned, and the clerk's office also sends notices to parties before it disposes of any old evidence.

"More than likely people do get their property back," Berntson said. "We do see a lot of it go back."
KIRON, Iowa | It was a packed 24 hours when Iowa 4th District Rep. Steve King managed on the U.S. House floor not one but four major bills that all won final passage.

King said it may seem he reached a major summit, and some might think "you should be jumping up and down to the theme song of Rocky."

However, he added, "But it isn't that way for me, because I always think we should be doing more."

Now, those bills, on the subjects of immigration and health care, are waiting in the Senate with an unclear calendar for action. Both chambers must pass legislation within a two-year session before they are sent to the president for his signature.

To spur that along, King is more than ready for President Trump to employ his well-recounted usage of Twitter to air issues he supports, sometimes in the wee morning hours.

"There is no reason to wait (for Senate action), none of this has a reason to wait. I hope (Trump) wakes up at 3 o'clock in the morning and sends out a tweet and says, 'Why don't you just act on all this within a 24-hour window, like they did on King's legislation in the House,' " the Republican congressman said in a Journal interview.

The bills were passed by the 435-member House in almost exactly 24 hours, from 5:19 p.m. June 28 through 5:26 p.m. June 29, making for one of the most pleasing periods for King in his congressional career, which began in January 2003.

"I was deeply into each one those from the author standpoint, because I did that (bill) language," King said.

Three of the bills involved immigration policy issues, a topic that is a preeminent point for King, who says illegal immigration undermines the nation's legal fabric and costs too much in law enforcement and social agency costs.

One bill was particularly important to King, since it was in response to the death of a Council Bluffs, Iowa, native. Sarah Root was killed in a street racing crash in January 2016 that involved an undocumented immigrant from Honduras.

The so-called Sarah's Law, or HR 174, requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take into custody undocumented immigrants charged with a crime resulting in the death or serious injury of another person in the U.S.

"It wasn't the most impactful piece, but it was personally and emotionally the most important piece," King said.

More than a year ago, King said he was introduced to the Root family, who have roots 65 miles south of Sioux City in the small Harrison County town of Modale.

King said over the last decade he's met with many family members of people killed by undocumented residents, or, as he calls them, illegal immigrants. He said he starts his days in his home in Kiron with prayers for those families.

"There isn't hardly any of them whose tears haven't dried on my jacket," he said.

Movement of the House bills to the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority, places King in the position to perhaps finally see a bill he initiated be enacted into law.

Many critics have aired charges that King is an ineffective congressman who should be focusing more on his district and less on national wedge issues like immigration. A GovTrack Summary showed none of the bills King has introduced over 14 years had become law through 2016.

In August 2015, InsideGov, a government research website, named King the least effective member of Congress because none of the 94 bills he has sponsored has moved out of a committee.

King noted he's worked on medical malpractice issues for his entire House career.

"Sometimes it takes a long time to get the politics set up right to get a good idea passed," he said.

WHIPPING VOTES

King said the time for the four pieces of legislation to come to the House floor had been delayed several times.

Managing the bills meant King essentially oversaw all aspects of debate directly from the House floor. As the floor manager, he served as the lead debater and rebutting opponents, managing the time allotted to his side and raising or contesting procedural points that required a ruling.

King's work on the bills also included taking names from House Republican leadership of six people and aiming to move them to yes votes. King chuckled, saying he soon figured out, "they were giving me the toughest list they had" of intransigent House members.

"We were whipping votes all the way up to the time the vote was called," he said.

Sarah's Law was eventually wrapped into King's bill seeking to stem the functioning of sanctuary cities (HR 3003, the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act), to improve its passage.

The other approved bills included HR 1215, the Protecting Access to Care Act, which sets a limit of $250,000 on medical malpractice lawsuit plaintiff non-economic damages. The fourth was HR 3004, or Kates Law, which would raise maximum prison penalties for immigrants caught repeatedly entering the U.s. illegally, with escalating penalties for the number of repeat offenses.

The latter bill was named for Kate Steinle, who was murdered on a San Francisco pier in 2015, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant who was a repeat felon and had been deported many times.

Judging the future ahead for the bills, King said, "Sarah's Law is so obvious and so compelling, I think it is likely to be passed."

He added that Trump has said he would sign the medical malpractice bill into law. King said the sanctuary cities bill has opposition from large city mayors, who "get political support from criminals and criminal sympathizers."
SIOUX CITY | Sioux City Councilman Alex Watters has announced he will run for his first full term on the council this November.

Watters, 31, was appointed to the council in February to fill the seat left vacant by former councilman Keith Radig, who joined the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors in January. The seat is now up for re-election, since Radig's four-year term was set to expire at the end of the year.

Pointing to his first five months on the council, Watters said he wants to continue momentum in increasing quality of life amenities in Sioux City, including the expansion of the city's trail system, parks and downtown revitalization.

He said his goal is to grow the city's population and tax base, attract young professionals and retain the community's college graduates. He also said he wants to increase the city's engagement with the community.

"I want to continue to be a part of the solution to the challenges we face, and develop a long-term vision for our city," he said in a statement. "I look forward to continue representing and serving this community in the future."

An Iowa Great Lakes native, Watters graduated from Morningside College and earned his master's in negotiation and dispute resolution from Creighton University. He currently works as a first-year adviser at Morningside College.

Watters had not held elected office prior to his council appointment.

He is among three council members whose seats are up for election this year. Councilmen Dan Moore and Pete Groetken, who are both concluding their first terms, have yet to announce their intentions.

With his announcement, Watters joins two other candidates, Jake Jungers and John Olson, who have publicized fall 2017 intentions.

Candidates can file nomination petitions with the city clerk Aug. 14-31. If seven or more candidates file, a primary election will be held Oct. 10. The top six-finishers would then advance to the general election on Nov. 7.

Council members serve for four years.
COLLECTIVE MADNESS



Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to eliminate governmental waste and fraud, just released its "2017 Congressional Pig Book," an annual publication highlighting wasteful government spending that should embarrass each and every member of Congress.

While it is true that most government spending is for "entitlements" and other fixed costs, the "Pig Book" properly ridicules politicians who waste significant amounts of money on questionable programs.

In 2011, Congress promised to go on the wagon when it came to pork. That didn't last long because pork to politicians is like blood to a vampire.

Members promised to swear off earmarks, which is spending attached to bills that don't go through the appropriations process. As CAGW notes, despite that supposed moratorium, earmarks keep showing up in numerous bills. The "Pig Book" exposes 163 earmarks in the fiscal 2017 budget, an increase of 32.5 percent from 123 in fiscal 2016.

You owe it to yourself to get this book at cagw.org. Check your outrage meter when you're done. In 2014, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called earmarks "a corrupt system." And it's bipartisan, perhaps the only activity that qualifies for such a designation in divided Washington.

There's $150 million going to the Department of Defense for the National Guard Counter-Drug Program. The Drug Enforcement Administration, which has a budget of $2.1 billion, is already responsible for these activities, but duplication is no reason to stop the spending.

How about $15 million for alternative energy research within the Combat Vehicle and Automotive Technology program? Since FY 2004, Congress has used the Defense Appropriations bill as a vehicle to insert 27 earmarks worth $289.9 million for this purpose, despite the billions already appropriated for alternative energy research through the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act. Aren't we already exporting natural gas and headed toward energy independence with less reliance on Middle East oil?

"Legislators have long treated the Army Corps of Engineers as a prime repository of pork," notes CAGW, "and it is among the most heavily earmarked areas of the federal budget. Since FY 1996, members of Congress have added 6,916 earmarks for the Corps, costing taxpayers $12.8 billion."

A lot of this spending, of course, goes straight to a member's state or congressional district and is designed to sustain politicians in office.

One item not in the "Pig Book," but reported by the Washington Free Beacon, is $224,999 for a clean water video supplied by the National Institutes of Health that is aimed at helping children "right the environmental wrongs" in a fictional town. My free "program" growing up was from my conservationist father who told me not to throw trash on the ground or in the creek behind our house.

Back to the "Pig Book": $2.387 million for "advanced materials and structural safety within the Airport and Airways Trust Fund (AATF), through which the Federal Aviation Administration finances infrastructure improvements for airports."

The CATO Institute, a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., has noted that the AATF has the indirect effect of preventing competition among airlines at airports. Because the AATF allows for only limited funding for maintenance and improvements, airports are limited in the number of gates they can build. As a result, airports ration gate access through long-term contracts with established companies, creating a barrier for potential competitors.

I'm betting that some of the recipients of this largesse probably contribute to their benefactor's political campaigns. It's the way Washington works, or more accurately, doesn't work, at least not to the benefit of taxpayers.

The larger point is not whether any of these earmarks produce anything that benefits anyone other than the recipients of the money. It is whether all this spending is constitutional and something the federal government should be doing in an age when the national debt continues to grow.

Don't read the "Pig Book" and weep. Read it, get angry, call your representatives and ask them to give up earmarks for good.
Announcement earlier this month by the Environmental Protection Agency on new volumes under the Renewable Fuel Standards program produced a mixed bag of news for farm states like Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The federal RFS began with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and was expanded and extended by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It requires transportation fuel sold in the U.S. be blended with a minimum volume of renewable fuels.

We hope some of the numbers go up before the new rules take effect.

On July 5, EPA issued proposed RFS volume requirements for total renewable fuel, cellulosic biofuel and advanced biofuel for 2018 and a proposed volume requirement for biomass-based diesel for 2019. Key pieces of the announcement include:

- The EPA proposes to keep the conventional ethanol requirement of 15 billion gallons the same in 2018.

- The EPA proposes no increase in the biodiesel requirement of 2.1 billion gallons between 2018 and 2019.

- The EPA proposes decreases in the cellulosic biofuel requirement from 311 million gallons to 238 million gallons and the advanced biofuel requirement from 4.28 billion gallons to 4.24 billion gallons in 2018.

Reaction within the Midwest reflected both the good and the disappointing numbers within the EPA announcement. Here is a sampling:

- The EPAs proposed renewable volume obligations under the RFS program is a mixed bag. While Im glad the EPAs proposal holds steady the requirement of 15 billion gallons for conventional ethanol, the lack of any increase for biodiesel is a missed opportunity," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said. "The proposal fails to recognize the ability of the domestic biodiesel industry to produce at much higher levels. The proposed cut to advanced and cellulosic fuels will have a chilling effect on the push toward next-generation biofuels, and will certainly harm investments in this area. ... I am disappointed in the direction of these proposed volumes, and I hope the EPA will consider increasing these levels once stakeholders weigh in.

- While I am pleased the new administration has set the proposed volume requirements for conventional ethanol for 2018 at congressionally approved levels, I am disappointed that the 2019 biodiesel number was held constant, and would like to see it more accurately reflect current domestic usage and production capacity," Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said.

On July 4th, America celebrated our Independence Day. On July 5th, we learned that the United States Environmental Protection Agency proposed new RFS standards that are a missed chance to use ethanol and other biofuels to declare an American Energy Independence Day, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said. There is a direct correlation between increased production and use of American ethanol and decreased importation of petroleum from foreign nations, some of whom are hostile to us. In order to make America great again, we need an energy strategy that recognizes the important role biofuels play in making America energy independent, and sets targets that encourage greater production.

Perhaps no state is impacted by RFS rules more than Iowa, the No. 1 producer of ethanol and biodiesel in America. Because we wish to see stability and expansion within an industry not only important to the future of agriculture states like ours, but to the future of America because it helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduces dependence on foreign oil, we join supporters of renewable fuels in urging increases for cellulosic and advanced biofuels in 2018 and for biomass-based biodiesel in 2019.

We urge our elected state and congressional leaders to take a leadership role during the public comment period on the EPA proposal, which ends Aug. 31, in making this happen.
The Iowa Supreme Court did not rule on a case, write a judgment, or issue an opinion regarding gun rights in public places, including the Woodbury County Courthouse. A single judge, the chief judge, wrote an order by fiat. His order overreaches by supposedly claiming for the judicial branchs authority those public spaces reserved for executive and legislative functions. No longer do judges control their court, they now supposedly control the entire courthouse.

Everyone is talking about guns, but no one is talking about separation of powers. The entire county courthouse is not owned by the court; it is a ludicrous assertion and certainly not based in the Iowa Code or Constitution. But by a very loose self-interpretation of a single judge, the people and most counties are buckling to peer pressure. Theyre seeing that attorneys are intimidated to speak out against a judge, and theyre taking a timid approach.

The Woodbury County board and especially Chairman Matthew Ung and Supervisors Jeremy Taylor and Keith Radig have filled this vacuum of leadership by putting your rights reaffirmed by the state law before an opinion of a judicial activist and refusing to hide behind the mantra of just following orders.

And by judicial activist, I mean Sheriff Dave Drew. As the chief law enforcement officer of Woodbury County, he should stop playing the big bully - insulting board members personally and then accusing others of politics. If you dont want to enforce the law, take the pay cut and run for the Legislature. - Jacob Hall, Sioux Center, Iowa
America is $20 trillion in debt and $15 trillion of this debt has come in the last 16 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The current year budget deficit is now projected at a negative $700 billion. President Trumps projected budget deficit next year is close to $600 billion. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans can tell us that we can have a budget surplus within 10 years. Fiscal insanity.

Republicans are trying to rein in the annual increase in Medicaid funding and are getting lambasted for doing so. Their plan would have Medicaid spending still 20 percent higher in 10 years than what we are spending today. Is that not what we should be trying to do with all government expenditures?

We definitely need a cost/benefit audit on all government spending programs. For example, mainstream media reported that 17 government agencies had come to the same conclusion that Russia meddled in our last election. Why do we have 17 government agencies doing the same thing?

Major tax reform is needed with lower taxes collected from the middle class, but I am willing for my childrens benefit to continue to pay the same amount of income taxes as I do today to help resolve this national crisis - but only if the politicians/American electorate understand that our continuing budget deficits come from ever-increasing spending, not from insufficient tax revenue.

To resolve this crisis, we need to compromise, have leadership from both political parties and have a media focused on this crisis. - Bill Young, Le Mars, Iowa
It's interesting how a Republican majority Congress can easily pass a repeal of Obamacare several times when the president in power will veto it, but now with a Republican president who would sign it they don't have the votes to pass such legislation.
The mainstream news media and the Democrats in Congress daily claim that President Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election. Some say that he should be impeached and some declare that treason has been committed.

The truth is that no one has given a credible explanation of what the Russians actually did, or even could do, to change or affect the outcome. The most concerning scenario would be actual evidence that the Russians somehow hacked state voting machines and manipulated the outcomes. But Republican and Democrat officials, including President Obama, have universally agreed this never happened.

Yet the smear continues and nothing productive is accomplished in the Congress.

A majority would prefer that all the members of Congress focus on making life better instead of a quixotic effort to overturn the election. - Bill Hackett, Sioux City
What about the 27 other counties who had no gun ban when the Iowa Supreme Court chief justice signed his personal opinion on the state law and called it an order"? What about the rule of law? If we dont like a law thats duly passed and signed by the governor, do we just debate it like it never passed? The Journal reported that a local attorney, madder by the minute, lectured the board at its July 11 meeting. The recording of the meeting shows she told the board it doesn't have the right to question the sheriff until a judge tells it Chief Justice Cady is wrong. That seems a little totalitarian to me, cutting off debate and all, but it shows how elementary the sheriff and his cheerleaders debate this law, which Dave Drew said before the bill passed would turn us into the wild, wild West. What, like we were for the decades before we had a gun ban? Kudos to Chairman Matthew Ung for putting up with baseless and personal vendettas.
Coming of age is usually celebrated with much fanfare.

However a journey of 21 years for Sails Restaurant was celebrated in a low key, personal style with family, friends and the business community, over the last two weeks of July.

It was just the way the hard working restaurant owners, Seiuli Ian and his wife Lyvia Hansell Black, wanted it.

The celebration was in partnership with Bluesky Samoa and Taula Beverages Samoa. Sails has been hosting their Clients at Sails Restaurant and Bar in Mulinu'u, to a series of After Work drinks with a limited number of guests daily.

It was an excellent opportunity to thank our guests and business community for their support over the past 21 years, said Lyvia.

Sails Restaurant first opened its doors at Tauese in a classic 140 year old building, that was owned originally by HJ Moors, and it was where Robert Louis Stevenson first lived in when he came to Samoa."

Sails moved to its current Mulinu'u location in May 2007, and was reopened in December 2007.

Sails was dubbed to be one of the first modern restaurants in Samoa in July 1996. As per Robert Louis Stevenson's Requiem, home is the sailor, home from sea, so did Seiuli Ian Black of Sails Restaurant when he and his wife Lyvia decided to return to Samoa from managing Hotels and Resorts in Fiji in 1996, to set up Sails Restaurant at Tauese, Apia.

Seiuli was a Sailor from years ago, when he used to Sail the vast Pacific Ocean with a crew on various yachts. As a young Tasmanian lad, he sailed through Samoa in 1978 on US Yacht Integrity."

Seiuli's Grandmother was of the Chesterman family, who owned Australia's oldest trading ketch, the 150 year old May Queen. It is one of only a handful of surviving wooden construction vessels afloat in Australia."

This UNESCO Maritime Heritage vessel, which is docked at Constitution Dock in Hobart, Tasmania, is preserved and offers locals and visitors alike a rare historical glimpse, into Australia's nautical ventures of the mid 1700's. It is preserved by the Maritime Museum of Tasmania in Hobart, Tasmania."

In his sailing adventures, Seiuli spent months and years at various Ports including Fiji; Tahiti, and delivered Yachts throughout the West Coast of the USA.

Eventually Seiuli's Hotelier career called with stints in Tahiti, Darwin, Tasmania, Melbourne and Fiji.

But it is Samoa that he now calls home, as he stated, I've dropped anchor - at the Port of Apia.

Seiuli has been Vice Patron of the Apia Yacht Club over the past years. He is an active advocate for Youth Sailing developments in Samoa.

And so, home is the sailor, home from sea. The adventures of this Sailor continues, noted Mrs. Black.
We want everyone to access this number free of charge and weve activated the number for all to call. We are also calling on other service providers to zero rate this number for their networks. That way everyone in Samoa with a phone can call 800 6438 for free - Country Manager Alex Abraham

Its no secret that Samoa is challenged with issues of family violence.

Many stories have made front page news including last Thursdays Samoa Observer front page headlining, Man stabs wife in public.

Things on this front need to improve drastically and Bluesky has come on board to support the office of the ombudsmans national inquiry into family violence by providing a toll free number 800 6438 for all its customers to call to take part in this inquiry.

We want everyone to access this number free of charge and weve activated the number for all to call. We are also calling on other service providers to zero rate this number for their networks. That way everyone in Samoa with a phone can call 800 6438 for free, said Bluesky Country Manager Alex Abraham.

Bluesky is encouraging all members of the public to participate and support the office of the ombudsman with this important work for the community through their national inquiry.

The Office of the Ombudsman has been established independently by law to promote and protect human rights in Samoa. Established in December 2013 under the Ombudsman Act 2013 (the Ombudsman Act) the Ombudsman Office was awarded A status by the international accrediting body, the Global Alliance for NHRIs. This accreditation at the highest level reflects international recognition of the independence of the Office and its record in effectively protecting and promoting human rights since its establishment in 2013.

The Ombudsman Act gives the Ombudsman wide-ranging duties and powers to promote and protect human rights in Samoa. One of its human rights functions is to inquire into widespread, systemic or entrenched situations or practices that violate human rights. This can take the form of a National Inquiry  one of its most powerful tools.

A national inquiry enables a broad human rights approach and examination of a large and complex situation. It has both fact finding and educational roles and has been used to great success globally. The process has the potential to address and resolve wide-spread human rights issues, such as family violence, in a manner no other approach could achieve.

Despite these initiatives and many efforts over the past years to address the issue of domestic violence against women and girls, violence still remains prevalent in Samoa and is increasing with serious cases resulting in the death of women.

Data from the Domestic Violence Unit of the Ministry of Police shows the increase of reported domestic violence cases of female victims between the ages of 17-33 between the years of 2007-2015. These numbers were cases reported only to Police headquarters in Apia and do not include cases reported to police outposts. This indicates that violence against women is endemic and widespread in Samoa.

There is concern and international pressure to address domestic violence especially with regards to women, girls and children. This was evident in Samoas second U.P.R. review earlier this year when the U.N. Human Rights Council recommended to Samoa to continue to take active steps to implement measures aimed at combating and preventing domestic violence. At the same time there is strong concern from the public on the severity and increase of domestic violence.

Some of the matters that the national inquiry will focus its investigation on include but not limited to: Identify who are the victims of family violence; Who are the most vulnerable to violence within a family context; The nature of violence experienced by the victims; The severity and level of impact of family violence; The root causes and contributing factors to the occurrence of family violence; Who are the first responses to family violence complaints and how effective are their responses (examining their roles and responses to complaints); Measures and initiatives established to combat the issue and how successful or effective have they been implemented; What services are available to victims after the violence; What legal methods are in place and how effective are they in protecting victims of family violence.

Posters and communications have already commenced distribution into the community and there are many ways to participate such as: a public hearing; OR a Private/closed hearing; OR in writing; OR email; OR by calling the toll free number 800 6438.

Bluesky is calling on the community to spread the word and let loved ones know that they can call 800 6438 free of charge from any Bluesky phone to share their stories.
North Dakota wants to reduce the number of inmates in the state prison and provide treatment for those with drug problems and behavioral issues. Its the smart thing to do, but it wont be easy and it will take time.

There are growing pains involved and that was apparent in a story last Sunday by reporter Caroline Grueskin. Sheriffs across the state voiced concern about a number of bills passed by the Legislature intended to reduce the number of prison inmates. Legislators, state officials and others are worried by research showing the state prison population could grow by 36 percent and $130 million by 2022. Among the goals of the new legislation is to avoid sending people to prison for lesser offenses and to provide them with treatment so they dont reoffend.

Among the new laws is a provision to reduce the penalty for first-time drug possession from a Class C felony to a Class A misdemeanor and reduce mandatory minimums for drug charges. The new laws also ask state and local correctional facilities to prioritize who gets locked up. If the penitentiary is full, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation can make inmates wait in county jail until there is room. Regional judicial districts are required to come up with plans to manage their inmate populations and stay within budgets.

Many sheriffs see this as the state passing the buck back to them. They are being given the responsibility of housing the inmates and providing treatment for them, especially if its court ordered. Some rural areas lack treatment facilities and professionals needed to provide the care. Jail space is increasing in the state, with capacity expected to grow from 1,765 to 2,633 beds. The prison system housed 1,791 people at the end of 2016. Its not the intention of the Legislature to fill the jails, instead they want to rehabilitate as many offenders as possible.

One way the Legislature and state hope to accomplish this is through Senate Bill 2015. The measure allocated $7 million for the Justice Reinvestment Initiative. The focus of the initiative is to reduce repeat offenses, cut incarceration rates and help with housing and employment. The program is being launched in in Dickinson, Fargo, Devils Lake and Bismarck and involves the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Department of Human Services, and probation and parole officers.

If successful, the initiative could help resolve some of the issues troubling sheriffs.

The sheriffs want to be part of the solution but they are worried about available resources. Burleigh and Morton counties have built a joint detention center and the new facility offers them some opportunities lacking in the past.

Burleigh County Sheriff Pat Heinert says those opportunities include work release, re-entry counseling and increased chaplain and Alcoholics Anonymous groups. The counties wont have to haul prisoners to other jails due to overcrowding, providing the prisoners with more stability.

As Heinert told the Tribune earlier, "We just can't open the doors any longer and let them walk out." Instead, all correctional facilities, whether county or state, need to provide the groundwork for prisoners to have a second chance.

As noted earlier there will be growing pains involved in these changes. There will be successes and failures and we shouldnt let the failures deter us. The alternative of building more jails and prisons and locking up more people shouldnt be an acceptable choice. The best answer is for everyone to work together to solve the problem.
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.
A pair of $25,670 divisions of the Frank and Beth Stanfield Memorial helped highlight Truro Raceways Sunday, July 23 program of live racing.

The memorial stakes event was for three-year-old pacing fillies that were foaled in the Atlantic Provinces. The connections of 15 fillies entered their charges to contest the Stanford Memorial, which saw the divisions carded as Races 5 and 8 on the eight-dash docket.

The first division saw the Robert Phillips-trained and Gillies Barrieau-driven Traces Of Purple ($4.60) shrug off an overland trip before getting up for a three-quarters of one length win in 1:58.2.

Traces Of Purple, a bay daughter of Brandons Cowboy, started from Post 6 and was overland at each call. The fractions in the dash were sliced in :28.4, :58.2 and 1:28. Traces Of Purple was racing two-wide in fifth at the quarter, and had caught up to her cover by the time the field paced by the half. She was right up and challenging the leaders as the field passed three quarters, and had more in the tank as she and her foes charged home.

Traces Of Purple, who was sent off as the publics choice, out-sprinted her rivals in the final quarter and posted a lucrative win for owners, breeder Kevin Harvey (of Hammonds Plains, NS) and trainer Robert Phillips (South Pinette, PE).

Winrlosedrnkdaboze, who was handled by invading driver Rick Zeron, put forth a strong bid late. She came home with the fastest closing quarter of the bunch (:29.3) and fired for the wire from the back of the pack. She just missed and finished less than one length in arrears of the victress. Elm Grove Ladyluck, who was driven by her trainer, Mark Campbell, had raced on the point through the fractions and hung on for third, beaten by three and one quarter lengths.

The second of the divisions was won by the Mark Campbell-trained and Ryan Ellis-driven Elektra Express ($3.60), who fought hard and prevailed going away with a three-length win that was clocked in 1:56.

The brown Western Paradise filly started from Post 2 for owner Danica Ellis (Brookfield, NS) and took the cautious approach early. She allowed horses to cross over in front of her, as she sat fourth through the :28.2 opening quarter. Filly Forty Seven and driver Mark Campbell were on the point and they led the charge down to the half-mile marker. Elektra Express had moved first-over in the second panel and was overland in third when the half flashed to life in :57.1.

Elektra Express continued to advance in the third quarter of the dash and paced up alongside Filly Forty Seven, as the latter clicked off three quarters in 1:26.3. The nose-to-nose battle continued into the final quarter of the race, as the pair was almost inseparable at the head of the lane. Although, after having gone a taxing trip on the engine, Filly Forty Seven succumbed to the pressure in the lane, as she faded late and had to concede the affair to the Truro Raceway track record holder. Glenview Paisley (Ernie Laffin) finished third, six lengths in arrears of Elektra Express.

The eight-dash program also featured the Truro vs. Ontario  Best of the Best Team Showdown. Ontario-based drivers Carl Jamieson, Paul MacDonell, Mike Saftic and Rick Zeron  aka Team Ontario  battled it out against Team Truro, which consisted of Dave Carey, Clare MacDonald, Pooker McCallum and Danny Romo.

Team Truro won the showdown by a score of 74-70. Click here for more.

To view the harness racing results for Sunday at Truro, click the following link: Sunday Results  Truro Raceway.
The news has definitely flown under the radar, but it was recently announced that one of the most unique Standardbred raceways on the continent will be reduced to rubble at some point this year.

Last August, Trot Insider helped shed light on the fact that the property in which the Phoenix Trotting Park sits upon was up for sale, and that the grandstand and its accompanying facilities could be reduced to ashes.

According to a piece by azcentral.com, the owners of the Phoenix Trotting Park have since made the proper steps in order to have the grandstand demolished by the end of 2017.

The Phoenix Trotting Park was a dream of three horsemen from the U.S. east coast  John Dunnigan of Buffalo Raceway, Norman S. Woolworth and Hall of Fame horseman Delvin Miller. The track opened to rave reviews in 1965 with its massive futuristic-looking grandstand, but closed the next year and has not been operational since 1966.

Removal of asbestos from the four-story facility commenced this spring. It is expected that demolition of the 100,000-square-foot building will be completed by December. Information in regard to the upcoming demolition comes from permits, via the Maricopa County Air Quality Department. It has been also been confirmed that the grandstand, horsepersons building, and maintenance building are all scheduled to be demolished.

The azcentral.com piece states that the grandstand, which has become an iconic area landmark over the past 50 years, has been essentially vacant for five decades. The defunct track and its grandstand are situated along two of the greater Phoenix-area's busiest highways  in Goodyear, technically. The intersection where the 194-acre Phoenix Trotting Park resides has been eyed as a location for potential commercial and industrial growth.

The Phoenix Trotting Park has made the news in the past few weeks due to trespassers that have descended on the location in 2017.

"This is not a structurally sound building," Goodyear Police representative Lisa Kutis has been quoted as saying. "There's lots of issues with the building. It is private property, and we do not want anyone on that property."

Kutis said that she believes that the trespassing incidents, which have been plentiful, have come due to peoples curiosity. "I think for some reason, there's been attention drawn to this location, said Kutis, so people are curious, but it's just not worth the risk."

She went on to say that a picture is not worth the possibility of becoming injured, or even dying. If a person is caught trespassing, that person could face charges, as the property is private.

It's a criminal trespass charge if caught on that property, said Kutis, which is a Class 2 misdemeanor and subject to fines and even jail time, depending on the courts."

(With files from azcentral.com and FOX 10 Phoenix)
Hot and humid conditions greeted Meadowlands patrons on Saturday evening (July 22), with a pair of Arthur Tompkins Memorial events for three-year-old trotters highlighting the action.

In the $49,870 split for fillies, it was a dominate down the road win for Feed Your Head, as Yannick Gingras hustled her right to the lead from post three and carved out reasonable fractions of :27.4, :57, and 1:25, before effortlessly sprinting clear down the lane with a :27 final quarter to win by two and a quarter lengths in 1:52.

Jimmy Takter trains the daughter of Muscle Hill for Melby Gard Inc. of Delray Beach, Florida. It was the first win of her sophomore campaign, and a career-best effort. She returned $4.80 as the slight second choice, with 3-5 favourite Overdraft Volo (Andy Miller) having to settle for second after launching a first-over bid around the far turn.

The $59,370 split for colts attracted a contentious field of 10, and went as the seventh race of the night.

Perfect Spirit, fresh off a fourth place finish in the $500,000 Beal at Pocono, blasted right to the top and led the field through an opening quarter of :27.3 for trainer/driver Ake Svandstedt. He faced early pressure from his stablemate, Yes Mickey (Andrew McCarthy), who took over the lead up the backstretch. Fly On (Andy Miller) was left uncovered in a tough spot alongside the Svanstedt trainees past the half in a quick :55.2.

Fly On would eventually flatten out after the tough trip, which allowed the Svanstedt trainees to draw clear shortly after three-quarters in 1:23.4, making way for a stablemate slugfest down the lane, with Perfect Spirit using that pocket trip to edge by Yes Mickey to win by a half-length in a sparkling 1:51.2.

Perfect Spirit has now won three times in his last four starts for the SRF Stable of Delray Beach, Florida. Southwind Hydro (Marcus Johansson) rallied from far back to finish third, beaten four lengths.

Hambletonian hopeful International Moni won a $15,000 overnight event for three-year-old trotting colts earlier on the card. He got away in the pocket behind Enterprise (Tim Tetrick), and skimmed the cones to cruise to a one and a half length win in 1:52 over that rival. Frank Antonacci trains the son of Love You-Moni Maker for the Moni Maker Stable.

Fine Tuned Lady (Andy Miller) cruised to an easy victory in a $15,000 overnight for three-year-old trotting fillies, darting right to the lead en route to a 1:52.2 win. It was her ninth win in only her 19th career start for trainer John Butenschoen and owners William Wiswell and M&L of Delaware Inc.

Andrew McCarthy was the driving star of the night with four wins.

Total handle on the 12-race card was $2,056,320.

Live racing resumes next Friday. Post time is 7:15 p.m.

(Meadowlands Racetrack)
Police can now release the name of the 48-year-old man killed in Kinloch on Thursday July 20.

He was local man Scott John Henry.

Police extend their sympathies to his family and friends.

A post mortem conducted on Saturday has established he died as the result of a gunshot wound.

The scene examination and search of the victims property in Whangamata Road is ongoing.

No further information is available at this stage.
It can be so tempting.

Youre behind the wheel, stopped at a red light; youve got about 30 seconds to kill. Next to you, often just inches away, your cellphone beckons. Your car isnt moving, so what the harm in firing off a quick text or checking your email, right? In fact, it could cost you plenty.

Starting today, drivers caught holding a cellphone or any other electronic device while stopped at a red light or intersection will be subject to a $136 fine under Washingtons strict new E-DUI law. The fine for repeat offenses within five years is $234.

Drivers who are pulled over and found carrying out other types of dangerously distracted behavior such as grooming, smoking, eating or reading can also receive a secondary fine of $99.

The new law does allow minimal use of a finger to activate an app or device, so a single touch or swipe is still permitted.

The new law is part of the states push to reduce traffic fatalities, which are increasingly tied to distracted driving. According to a recent study by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, nearly 10 percent of motorists are holding a device at any given moment. A recent HuffPost/YouGov survey found that more than half of smartphone users between the ages of 18 and 44, and 40 percent of users aged 45 to 64, have texted while stopped at a red light.

Erica Mascorro, a spokeswoman for the traffic commission, said using a phone while stopped a traffic light or intersection is still dangerous even if the drivers car isnt moving.

Were supposed to use that time to scan the intersection and were supposed to pay attention to how traffic is moving ahead, she said.

In 2015, the commission recorded 171 deaths from distracted driving in Washington  a 30 percent increase from the previous year.

In 2016, the Washington State Patrol had more than 13,000 contacts with motorists for cellphone use while driving and more than 3,300 contacts for texting while driving. Overall, troopers issued more than 9,000 distracted driving-related citations.

Longview Police Sgt. Chris Blanchard said the new regulation is a natural extension of Washingtons 2011 law that prohibits talking on a phone or texting while driving. Blanchard said the new regulations make it clear that people need to pull over to the side of the road and come to a complete stop before holding any type of electronic device.

This codifies things more specifically and is more encompassing, he said.

In Cowlitz County, the number of phone-related citations and vehicle collisions increased with the growing popularity of smartphones.

In 2008, the year after the iPhone was released, there were two fatal crashes and five crashes that resulted in serious injury from distracted driving. Fast forward to 2016, the most recent year for publicly available data, and there were two fatal crashes and 12 serious injury crashes.

The number of citations issued by law enforcement in Cowlitz County has also risen as smartphone technology has become ubiquitous. From 2011 to 2012, the number of citations issued for cellphone use while driving more than doubled in Cowlitz County. Texting-while-driving citations during the same time period increased by more than 1,000 percent locally.

While citations have generally been trending downward since then, thats more a reflection of staffing levels than any other factor, Kelso Police Captain Darr Kirk said. For example, Kelso officers issued 88 illegal cellphone use tickets in 2011, accounting for nearly 80 percent of all cellphone use infractions in the county that year. The following year, the police department lost eight staff members to retirement and only issued 21 citations.

Everything is a priority for us, but we do have to prioritize, Kirk said. When call volume is low, officers have time to conduct proactive traffic patrols, he said. But Kelso doesnt have a dedicated traffic unit and officers have to respond to calls as they come in, he said.

Longview Police appear to be enforcing distracted driving laws on a routine basis, with roughly 1,100 citations issued since 2008  twice as many as the Olympia-based Washington State Patrol unit.

Sgt. Chris Blanchard said distracted driving has become as big a problem as drunk driving. Based on the behavior of a vehicle, it can be impossible for officers to tell the difference between an intoxicated driver and a distracted driver, he said.

People who text while behind the wheel have a 23 percent higher chance of causing a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Those are roughly the same odds as someone whos had four beers and decides to drive.

Blanchard said Longview Police is not planning on conducting additional enforcement as a result of the new legislation, but will continue to enforce traffic laws as they are written.

Local state Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, who voted against the law, said his main concern was that parts of it are poorly worded.

Some of the language about the one-finger operation was convoluted, he said.

Walsh also said he thinks the new law could disproportionately affect rural and suburban drivers.

I think this law may not be applied to the same standard everywhere, he said.

When Kelso resident Shalisa Caskey was cited in late May, she said Officer Roy Slaven explained that Kelso has a zero tolerance policy for talking on a phone while driving.

Caskey had just finished dropping off her boys at daycare and was about five blocks away from her house.

Reached by phone while she was pulled over on the side of the road, Caskey said she hasnt used her phone while driving since receiving the $136 ticket.

I will never talk on my phone and drive ever again, she said. It was stupid.
SKAMOKAWA  Eighteen-year-old Josh Markovich may be a young sailor, but he had the chance to learn from a pro. About six years ago Markovich starting sailing alongside Todd Christensen, whose speed and grace on the water made him a Northwest icon in catamaran racing.

Hed always be the last one out on the water, but he would be the first to cross the finish line, Markovich of Seattle recalled Saturday. He taught me basically everything I know right now. He taught me how to basically sail the boat and get it going. He taught me all the tactics that he knew.

When Christensen died suddenly at the age of 52 from post-surgery complications in 2014, it took Markovich and the entire Northwest sailing community by surprise. The Seattle-based Hobie Fleet 95 renamed a Skamokawa regatta in honor of Christensen.

Saturdays Todd Christensen Memorial Regatta in Skamokawa was especially meaningful for Markovich because of its connection to his deceased mentor, and because it was the same place where he first fell in love with the thrill of racing six years ago.

Its basically like flying. The dynamic of cruising through the water, no motor or anything  it gets the adrenaline pumping, Markovich said.

Gliding through the waves while wading through river currents makes the Skamokawa race especially exhilarating, sailors said. And at the Vista Park regatta, skippers know they can count on consistent winds, decent weather and a long-distance race thats unique for the West Coast.

You put your feet on the edge of the boat, and youre hooked onto a wire that goes up to the mast, and youre just flying over the water,  said event organizer Peter Nelson as he leaned back to demonstrate sailors hanging on the edge of a hull. Its a lot of fun.

About 24 boats competed in the regatta Saturday, each with a crew of two people. The annual event is organized by the Seattle-based Hobie Fleet 95, yet it attracts sailors of varying ages from Southern Oregon to Vancouver, B.C, Canada.

Most regional catamaran regattas take place in lakes, which precludes long-distance challenges, Nelson noted. The Columbia River gives sailors more room to race, and depending on the weather the boats can reach close to the Astoria Bridge, he said.

Its quite fun because of the river winds, and theres a current  Where you put your boat really depends on where you are in the river, Nelson said.

Beyond navigating river currents, sailors also must watch for commercial ships in the international shipping channel  which can sometimes create currents of their own, said Jennifer Hoag, 17, of Seattle.

It definitely takes a lot of attention and focus. When youre sailing, everything is changing, youre constantly having to adjust, Jennifer said as she tugged on the rope of her brightly-colored sail.

Jennifer and her friend Kailey Jones will be competing in a youth Hobie competition in Sandy Hook, New Jersey in early August. Theyll be joined by their friends Will Nelson and Markovich, too.

This years Skamokawa race had special trophies made from wood and pieces of a ships mast, with a picture of Markovich and Christensen sailing together printed on the top.

Markovich said he hopes to achieve the same skill level as his mentor.

I keep doing it because  I want to try to get to how Todd was, Markovich said. He would never give up and always try new things.
FARGO  Richard Boulger immigrated from Ireland during a potato famine and found his way to the bustling prairie town of Fargo, where he became established in the hotel business.

For years he ran the Hotel Boulger at 223 Broadway, the corner of Broadway and Third Avenue North, which previously was home to the Exchange Hotel, in the heart of a fledgling downtown.

In the 1880s, when Boulger arrived, Fargo was brimming with opportunity, enjoying a growth spurt after its founding in the 1870s as a prairie village of tents and huts.

A home like atmosphere pervades the entire house while the individual comfort of each guest is looked after, a glowing appraisal of the hotel noted years later, in 1901. The rates are reasonable by the day, week or month.

The 200 block of the east side of Broadway was home to a series of hotels and shops over the years, as Fargo evolved from a frontier town into a regional rail hub, banking and trade center.

At the southern end of the block, a brick building called the Keeney Block teemed in the 1880s and 1890s with small businesses, including sleeping rooms, a real estate office, Western Union telegraph office and a Turkish bath  a precursor of the suburban shopping mall.

But in recent decades, the once-bustling east side of Broadways 200 block has been largely vacant, home to parking lots and the plaza for U.S. Bank. But that prominent blank spot in the heart of downtown is poised to be transformed.

Construction is slated to begin soon on the Block 9 tower, a $98 million project that, when announced, was envisioned to rise 18 stories tall. Developers have said the multi-use tower will include offices, high-end condominiums and a hotel.

In other words, it would become a vertical version of the old Keeney Block, a brick edifice built in 1882 at a cost of $80,000, a bastion of commerce located at Broadway and Second Avenue North. The building was developed by Gordon J. Keeney, a lawyer from Michigan who was one of Fargos pioneers, serving as its first postmaster and later as a Dakota Territory U.S. attorney. To reach Fargo, he crossed the Red River on a raft.

Signs visible in a photograph of the Keeney Block taken in the early 1880 indicate it housed the Fargo Furniture Co., Millers Music House, Freeman & Putnam, purveyors of crockery and glassware; Harwood & Wilson real estate, Spalding & Templeton, attorneys at law, and a dentists office.

In the middle of the block, at 213-215 Broadway, one of the pioneer merchants was William O. Olsen, who ran a furniture store that originated in Moorhead. Earlier hed farmed using oxen. His other enterprises included part ownership of a Norwegian-language newspaper. Olsen walked for miles up and down the Red River Valley hawking subscriptions.

Although Olsen would remain in business for more than half a century, his move to Broadway was ill timed. He arrived in 1893  shortly before the Great Fargo Fire, which swept through the downtown and beyond on June 7, 1893.

Great Fargo Fire reshaped downtown

The Hotel Boulger and Keeney Block also were destroyed in the fire. Boulger watched helplessly as his hotel went up in flames, which turned most of the downtown into smoldering cinders, according to his great-great grandson, Larry Boulger.

The fire started in a dry goods store on the 500 block of Front Street, now Main Avenue, where the Bank of the West now stands. Fanned by stiff southerly winds, the flames spread north and east, often traveling along wooden boardwalks, reaching Broadway.

And from now on there seemed to be no hope for the east side of Broadway, for the flames leaped in rapid strides from one building to another, at times leaving for a while a smaller building, as if to wreak their vengeance on some monster structure that stood in defiance beyond, an unnamed writer noted in the book, Souvenir of the Fargo Fire.

The fire proved to be a catalyst in modernizing downtown. After the fire, builders turned to brick and spurned wood. Wooden sidewalks were banned and the city adopted stricter fire codes.

The Fargo fire reshaped it, said John Hallberg, an archivist with the North Dakota State University Archives.

By November 1893, in the midst of a rebuilding boom, the transformation was well under way.

Fargo is being made the handsomest city in the Northwest, a newspaper reporter wrote. Broadway, lately a mass of smoking ruins, is the most beautiful street west of Minneapolis.

After the turn of the century, by 1910, when the citys population reached 14,331, streetcars were traveling up and down Broadway alongside the horse carriages. It wouldnt be long before cars and trucks would take their place.

Another fire takes its toll

Boulger, Kenney and Olsen were among the Broadway merchants who rebuilt after the fire.

There were no safety nets in those days, Larry Boulger said, so if your hotel burned down, you were on your own.

According to stories passed down in the family, Richard Boulger owned two or three hotels in downtown Fargo, Larry Boulger added. Richards son, John, Larrys grandfather, branched out into the funeral home business in 1897.

By 1910, Hotel Boulger had become Norden Hotel, and Richard Boulger died the following year. A bigger change was in store for 223 Broadway. By 1928, after decades as a hotel, the building was home to Model Clothing House.

By the 1930s, the former Keeney Block was now the Continental Block, 201-207 Broadway. A new facelift for the building in 1935 was heralded as one of the greatest improvements to the appearance of Fargos downtown in years.

The Continental Block got another makeover in 1947, including the remodeling of one of its star tenants, the Five Spot Tavern at 205 Broadway. The $20,000 project featured modernistic decorations and fixtures, including an orchestra stand.

In later years, the Five Spot would be known for its balloon night and for the western outfits donned by its wait staff. Still later, it gained notoriety for its go-go dancers.

Inevitably, many buildings housed an ever-changing assortment of shops of the times. For instance, an address in the Continental Block, 203 Broadway, hosted the Shelbrook Cafe in 1928, a shoe repair shop in 1940 and, by 1955, Hobbyland and Broadway Figurine. By 1964, it was Ivers Barber Shop.

Fire would once again bring significant change to the east side of the 200 block of Broadway in 1976, when an arsonist torched the Continental Block, resulting in losses of $672,000 and destroying half a dozen businesses: Cripple Creek Bar, Tandy Leather Store, Barber Palace, Fortune Hotel, SKR Realty and Take 5 Lounge, a successor of the Five Spot.

The 200 block of Broadways east side never really rebounded from the 1976 fire, which razed the Continental Block. Not long after, around 1983, 223 Broadway, the former Boulger Hotel, was demolished to make way for parking and the U.S. Bank plaza.
tech2 News Staff

New images of the upcoming Nokia 8 have leaked online at Nokiamob.net. The images first spotted on Chinese website Baidu show a pre-production unit of Nokia 8 in gold/copper color variant. The dual camera on the image of the device has no Carl Zeiss logo. However, the website has mentioned that the logo might be missing because the images are of a pre-production unit and that the phone might include include the logo on the final unit.

The Nokia 8 is expected to come in three color variants blue, Steel, gold/blue, and gold/copper. HMD global, the owner of Nokia, is expected to bring Carl Zeiss cameras optics with the Nokia 8 smartphone. Famous leakster, Evan Blass, recently tweeted the images of Nokia 8 devices with a Carl Zeiss logo marking below the camera on the smartphone.

The pictures confirm a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the top of the device, a Type-C charging port at the bottom, dual cameras on the rear side and fingerprint scanner on the front part of the device. A single speaker has been spotted beside the charging port on the device.

A recent report mentioned that Nokia 8 will go on sale on 31 July and is expected to be launched at 589 (approx Rs 43,415) in Europe. According to the report, the Nokia 8 is expected to come with a Snapdragon 835 chip-set, 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. The phone is expected to bear a model number TA-1004 on its devices.
tech2 News Staff

State Farm, a US insurance giant and Xai Thao, the co-complainant have filed a lawsuit of $75,000 against Apple Inc for damages from fire in the complainant's house.

State Farm had lodged a complaint with the US District Judge court. As per a report in Apple Insider, the complainant, Thao, a resident of New Richmond (a suburb in Wisconsin), had bought an iPhone 4s in 2014. The phone had 'failed' her as it had caused fire in the house. Moreover, the investigation carried by the insurance company, revealed that the device to be faulty.

As per their report, there was a 'a significant and localized heating event' near the battery along with internal shorting. Since even the plaintiff believed that there was no other source, which could have caused fire, it was concluded that only the phone could have caused the fire in the house.

The complainant also mentioned, that neither had she ever changed the battery and that it was still in a new condition.

Xai Thao, who had taken State Farm's property insurance policy, approached them for the damages incurred and to recover the cost of damages that was covered by her policy. As per the complaint, the insurance company has concluded that the device was in a defective state when it was sold to Thao and secondly, the company was negligent while designing, manufacturing, and circulating the device.
tech2 News Staff

While the details of the much talked about JioPhone announced on 21 July are still sparse at best, chipmaker Qualcomm decided to open up and shed some light on one important hardware bit of the feature phone, its processor.

Yes, Qualcomm made official via a tweet from its official Twitter handle that Reliance Jio's JioPhone would be powered by the chipmaker's Snapdragon 205 mobile platform.

Glad to partner with @reliancejio on the new #JioPhone, powered by our #205 mobile platform.  Qualcomm India (@qualcomm_in) July 22, 2017

Going through Qualcomm's website, the 205 mobile platform has been design to bring 4G LTE to feature phones. The platform brings a combination of features with performance that somehow does not compromise battery life.

Now that the platform has been confirmed by Qualcomm, we now know that it will feature the Snapdragon X5 LTE modem, supporting Category 4 peak download speeds of 150 Mbps and peak upload speeds of 50 Mbps.

Obviously, there's VoLTE support along with Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) as well. The platform also allows for Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth version 4.1, GPS, GLONASS, A-GPS and USB 2.0 ports.

Camera support also includes modules up to 3 MP, while video capture is capped at 480p @ 30 fps. The device should also be capable of 720p video playback, which should be great for the JioTV casting feature.

Supported video codecs include H.264 (AVC), MP4 and VP8.

Coming to the CPU itself, it offers clockspeeds up to 1.1 GHz and a dual-core architecture using the 28 nm LP manufacturing process. There's also an Adreno 304 GPU (with OpenGL ES 3.0 API support) to support the graphics, which is pretty cool.

The platform also supports LPDDR2 and LPDDR3 RAM modules clocked at 384 MHz and eMMC 4.5 storage.

A detail to note is that all of the above is the hardware that the Snapdragon 205 platform supports as per the Qualcomm website. The hardware on the JioPhone could have the above bolted on to it, but its not necessary, that all the features mentioned above will be a part of the final package.

The Reliance Jio JioPhone will be available for pre-booking via the MyJio app, the Jio website, or across Reliance Digital stores, all of which will begin accepting pre-orders for this 4G feature phone from 24 August. You can click here to know about the booking details, features, plans, pricing and more.

Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.
tech2 News Staff

India will be hosting the fifth Global Conference on Cyber Space (GCCS) on 23 and 24 November in New Delhi, and will see participation of big telecom and IT leaders.

Set to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the conference will highlight on digital inclusion and internet safety. Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was joined by Union Minister of State, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, PP Chaudhary, in a recent press conference said, "The theme of this conference (sic) in a way reflects the changing architecture of India in digital space."

With 32 delegate participation confirmed, 50 ministerial level delegations, 2000 delegates from 100 countries are expected to be a part of this event. Along with ministries like the Home Ministry, External Ministry and the Defence Ministry, industrial bodies like FICCI, CII, NASSCOMM, and ASSOCHAM would be a part of this event.

Digital initiatives of the government like Digital India, Make In India, Startup India, and Stand Up India amongst others are also expected to be a part of the event. It also intends to involve educational institutes like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and National Institute of Technology (NIT).

India will be the 2nd country in Asia- after South Korea, to host the prestigious Global Conference on Cyber Space on 23-24 Nov.2017. pic.twitter.com/7nqPmHbri0  Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) July 21, 2017

The Cyber Space summit will also focus on cybersecurity, cyber safety, and ways to bridge the digital gap. First held in London in 2011, then Budapest , Seoul, and then the Netherlands, India is the second Asian country to host the event.
I prepared for the 2017 Tour de France with rather tepid expectations. When the route was announced, the stages didnt really fly off the page and such legendary mountains like Mont Ventoux and Alpe dHuez werent included and the Tour only had five high mountain stages.

Not only that, we all pretty much assumed that Chris Froome (Tour de France winner in 2013, 2015 and 2016 and would have won in 2014 if he didnt have to abandon for injury) would win this year while Peter Sagan (Green Jersey winner every year from 2012-16) would win the same competition while Sagan or Marcel Kittel won the sprint stages.

But while we assumed a boring 2,200 mile trek through eastern and southern France, the 104th edition wound up being incredibly exciting and unpredictable.

The Yellow Jersey

Yes, Froome still won the Tour de France and despite him being seconds in front and it was always a very close margin, Froome had the benefit of the Individual Time Trial at Stage 20 to pull away. But having said all that, Froomes margin of victory was his closest yet. In 2013, Froome won by 4:20, won by 1:12 in 2015 and then by 4:05 in 2016. So a 54 second victory mustve felt too close for comfort.

Not only that, in contrast of previous years where Froome seemed to be in control in every stage, riders like Rigoberto Uran, Romain Bardet, Fabio Aru and Dan Martin all put forth attacks at various points in the race and had been able to crack Froome at a couple points throughout the three weeks. Froome still ended up with the maillot jaune but Froome and everyone else learned that hes not invincible anymore.

The Green Jersey

The battle for the green jersey wound up being something that nobody expected. The normal faces for the points classification like Sagan, Kittel and even Mark Cavendish, who had been getting over an illness, were there with Sagan taking the maillot vert because he could handle some of the medium mountains and take points over the sprinters who cant do any mountains.

Then all hell broke loose after Stage 4 and the narrative shifted. Sagan would be disqualified for throwing an elbow that caused Cavendish to crash and get his head run over by hard charging cyclists behind him. Cavendish broke his shoulder blade and was also out so that left Kittel by default.

But with two favorites out, it meant new names emerging for stage wins at the most prestigious race. Arnaud Demare, Fabio Aru, Bauke Mollema and Dylan Groenewegen, who won Stage 21 on the Champs-Elysses, all won their first Tour de France stage on a flat or medium mountain stage. Edvald Boasson Hagen won his first stage since 2011 even after losing by three ten-thousandths of a second.

Then Kittel abandoned at Stage 17, leaving another new face in the lead of the competition. At the end of the day, Australian Michael Matthews wound up as the sole survivor and won the green jersey at the end of the day.

The French Revolution

There has been a cooling off period of French success in their home race. Despite having the most overall winners, Frances last yellow jersey winner was Bernard Hinault in 1985 and last green jersey in 1995. This year, Frenchmen not only won five stages of this years Tour de France, they celebrated Bastille Day with a French stage win with Barguil for the first time since 2005. In addition, the French have a serious contender for the yellow jersey in Bardet as well as Barguil taking the polka-dot jersey. The French are coming and they have some people in line for huge success in the coming years.

This 2017 Tour de France may wind up being a very pivotal edition for the future. We got exciting action, close finishes, hard crashes and some new names on the list of stage winners. Yes, Chris Froome is going to remain the favorite for the time being but his target is going to be a bit bigger next summer.
68.91 pc pass HSC, equivalent exams

The results of this year's Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and its equivalent examinations were published on Sunday, showing a pass percentage of 68.91.



Of these, 66.84 percent passed the HSC examinations while 77.20 percent came out successful in Madrassah Board and 81.33 percent in Technical Board examinations.



A total of 801,711 examinees came out successful in the examinations in all the 10 education boards of the country.



Earlier, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid along with the chairmen of all the education boards handed over the results to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her official residence Ganobhaban at 10:17am.



The minister will formally announce the results at 1:00pm at a press briefing.



Controller (Examination) of Dhaka Education Board Tapan Kumar Sarker said the results will be published simultaneously from respective certres or colleges and online at 1:30pm.



Institution-based result sheets could be downloaded through entry of EIIN of respective educational institutions from www.dhakaeducationboard.gov.bd.



Students will also be able to collect their results from websites like www.educationboardresults.gov.bd, result corner of www.educationboard.gov.bd and website of respective education board.



The soft copy of the result sheets of centres or educational institutions will be sent to the e-mail addresses of respective deputy commissioners and upazila nirbahi officers. If necessary, the hard copy of the results can be collected from the offices of deputy commissioners and upazila nirbahi Officers.



This year, a total of 11.83 lakh candidates appeared at the examinations that began on April 2. The written tests ended on May 15 while practical tests on May 25. -- UNB, Dhaka.






Nabila Islam busy with Eid works

Sheikh Arif Bulbon :

Promising actress Nabila Islam went to Malaysia on July 8 to take part in shooting of three Eid plays and an ongoing TV serial. After taking part in shooting there for 14 days at a time she has returned to Bangladesh on Sunday.

There she took part in six-episode Eid serial Smart Boy-er Bidesh Sofor, Chakchak Korley Sona Hoina and a play which title yet cont finalised. Shamim Zaman was director of Nabilas all works. Therefore, she also took part in a serial Jhamela Unlimited there is being telecasted on Rtv now. She took part in shooting in Malaysia for two weeks there at a time.

While sharing her feelings about working experiences there Nabila told this correspondent, Everybody of the unit worked hard without wasting any time while taking part in shooting. I have tried my level best effort to work properly. Stories of all the works are really nice. Overall we have tried our best effort under a team work. I believe all of these works will be enjoyed by the viewers in Eid.

Meanwhile, before flying to Malaysia Nabila finished shooting of a telefilm titled 'Meye Manushi' under Nahid Babus direction against Emon. Therefore, she also worked in another play with Niloy. After taking rest she will take part in shooting of Ehsan Elahi Bappis ongoing serial Gulbahar.

Though she has been studying MBA in North South University acting is now profession of Nabila. Besides acting, she is also engaged with hosting. She is hosting a TV programme Rupkotha on Maasranga TV now.

Therefore, Nabila has also performed as a model in two TVCs under Sharaf Ahmed Jibon and Adnans direction. Hailed from Chittagong Nabila is regularely acting serials Kaiser Ahmeds Mohaguru, Rahmatullah Tuhin's Kokkho Number 52, Muntasir Bipons Olpo Sholpo Golpo, Imraul Rafats Cinematic, Biplab Haiders Mogher Mulluk, Hridoys Objection Boss and Himel Ashrafs Welcome Boss. Nabila acted first TV serial was Imraul Rafats Calling Bell. Her acted first work was Wahid Tariqs telefilm Angel, I am Dying.


Let students know real history of genocide: President



President M Abdul Hamid on Sunday called for appropriate steps to be taken for the new generation to know the real history of genocide in the 1971 Liberation War.

"Let the students of all educational institutions have the album of 1971 genocide and know the real history of Bangladesh Liberation War," the President said while receiving an "Album of commemorative postage stamps on genocide in Liberation War" from State Minister for Post and Telecommunication Tarana Halim at Bangabhaban here.

President Hamid thanked the post and telecommunication ministry for publishing the album depicting the brutalities of the occupation forces during the War of Liberation, his press secretary Joynal Abedin told reporters.

The State Minister apprised the President that her ministry had already distributed the album to the United Nations, different international agencies and Bangladesh missions abroad.

Secretary concerned of Bangabhaban were present on the occasion.


Engaging civil society more actively in SDG execution

Tharanga Yakupitiyage :

Showing up in record numbers, civil society groups are urging greater inclusion and accountability in sustainable development processes at a UN high level meeting.

Almost 2,500 representatives are currently gathered at the UN for its High Level Political Forum(HLPF), a meeting to monitor and review progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted in 2015.

Concerned about the slow progress towards sustainable development by governments after two years, civil society organisations (CSOs) from around the world have descended upon the global meeting to make their voices heard and demand engagement in order to achieve the ambitious agenda.

"One thing that is very different in the 2030 Agenda is the call for inclusion of all stakeholders and all peoplewe are not guests, we are not in the shadow, we are part of the implementation of this agenda as we were also part of the crafting of the agenda," co-chair of the Steering Group of the Coordination Mechanism of Major Groups and other Stakeholders (MGoS) Naiara Costa told IPS.

MGoS is a newly created space to help civil society access information, increase their participation in decision-making processes, and facilitate collaboration across major stakeholder groups including indigenous peoples, women, and persons with disabilities.

"It is an agenda that is attracting so much attention and that civil society is taking so seriously that you need to have a space where people can come and get information and be preparedif we are not engaged, [the agenda] is not going to be delivered," Costa added.Though there has been some progress towards inclusion of marginalised groups, there is still a long way to go.Yetnebersh Nigussie, who is the senior inclusion advisor of international disability and development organisation Light for the World, told IPS that persons with disabilities have long been neglected, stating: "When talking about persons with disability, we are talking about billions-that's 1/7th of the global population which is a huge segment of the population that has been highly overlooked."

Though comprising of 15 percent of the global population, persons with disabilities are overrepresented among those living in absolute poverty.

They encounter exclusion and discrimination on a daily basis, including in development programmes and agendas like the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which made no reference to persons with disabilities.

Two years into the new 2030 Agenda, participation is still uneven for persons with disabilities, Nigussie said.

"Most of disability organizations were not fully informed-even in cases that they were consulted, accessibility needs were not addressed, and they were not meaningfully included," she said, adding that there are also cases of exclusion against disability organizations within civil society itself.

Filipino indigenous activist and former Secretary-General of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) Joan Carling echoed similar sentiments to IPS on the exclusion of indigenous groups.

"Indigenous people who are defending our lands are being killed. So how can there be effective participation of indigenous peoples if that is the situation at the local level?" she said.

According to Global Witness, more than 200 environmental defenders, including indigenous leaders, were killed trying to protect their land in 2016, more than double the number five years ago.

Almost 100 have already been killed so far in 2017, including Mexican indigenous leader and illegal logging opponent Isidro Baldenergo Lopez.

States often exclude indigenous groups in development processes because it is too political otherwise, Carling noted.

"[States] are threatened by our demand of our rights to our territories and resourcesso they try to avoid any reference to indigenous peoples because once they call us indigenous peoples, then they have to recognize our rights," she told IPS.

Both Carling and Nigussie also highlighted the shrinking space for civil society around the world.

CIVICUS has found that civic space is severely constrained in 106 countries, over half of the UN's members, through practices such as forced closure of CSOs, violence, and detentions.

Civil society activists are imprisoned most when they criticise the government and its policies or call attention to human rights abuses, the group noted.

Nigussie told IPS that achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a "joint responsibility" between governments and civil society and that if they fail, they are "mutually accountable."

To promote such accountability, the SDGs must be linked to the human rights model which will entail frequent consultations with persons with disabilities from the grassroots to the international levels.

Though engagement at the local and national levels are most important to successfully achieve sustainable development, global forums like HLPF at the UN allow civil society to make sure their concerns are heard.

"There is a lot of interest in bring the issue of lack of consultations at the global level simply because the space at the national levels are not provided," Carling told IPS.

She highlighted the importance of indigenous peoples to identify, support, and have ownership of their own solutions.

"The goal is leaving no one behind-so if it is not participatory or rights-based, then it will end up as business as usual again," Carling said.

Costa urged for nations to bring lessons learned back home, concluding: "It cannot stop here, [countries] need to bring the discussion back home. Otherwise its just a talk shop and we cannot allow this to happen."

This year's HLPF is held at the UN from 10-19 July with the theme of "eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world." It will focus on evaluating implementation of SDGs in 44 countries including Argentina, Ethiopia, and Thailand.

-IPS


ST. PAUL  When a Hamline University student prepared to leave a house party in May 2016, her sisters roommate offered to walk her back to her dorm room. The students sister had asked him to make sure she got back safely, he reportedly told her.

When they got back to her room, he invited himself in, admitted he made up the story and raped her, according to criminal charges filed in Ramsey County District Court.

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Pierce Gerald Heston, 23, of Hinckley, Minn., who was charged with one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, according to the criminal complaint.

The victim showed tremendous courage and strength in coming forward to the university and the police. Her welfare is and continues to be of the utmost importance to us, Hamline University said in a statement. The university worked closely with both the victim and the accused individual to ensure that appropriate support, investigation, and adjudication procedures and timelines were followed as set forth by our Sexual Misconduct Policy and Title IX.

Hamline University officials wouldnt immediately say whether Heston was a student at the school. However, his Facebook page says he studied at Hamline.

Heston could not be be reached for comment Friday.

After the incident, the victim eventually escaped to a bathroom where she texted several friends for help. One called her, realized something was wrong and came over. The victim used her friend as a shield from Heston, according to court documents.

Why would you screw around with a drunk person? the friend reportedly asked Heston. He responded that he also was drunk and then walked away, the complaint said.

The victim was later taken to Regions Hospital, where she reported details of the assault, according to court documents.

The next day, Heston told his roommate that he had made a mistake but didnt want to talk about it, according to the complaint.

It takes tremendous courage for victims of sexual violence to report to police for a variety of reasons; they may be embarrassed or fearful of the perpetrator, or fear they wont be believed, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said in a statement. I am grateful this victim had the support she needed to come forward through her friends on campus.
Body found with missing limbs

Police recovered body of a schoolgirl from Sakhipur Soialkandi of the district's Vedorganj on Saturday, eight days after she went missing. But some limbs including kidneys, liver and lung were missing in the body, according to physicians to conduct autopsy.

The deceased was identified as Liza Akter, 10, daughter of Lihaz Uddin Sheikh of Sarderkandi village of the upazila and third-grader of No. 1 Sakhirpur government primary school.

Sheikh Md Ehsanul Islam and Sabrina Khan, physicians of Sariatpur Sadar Hospital, said she might have been killed a week ago. Some parts of the body decomposed while kidneys, liver, lung, heart and uterus were missing.

One of her wrists was also cut off, they added.

"They noticed the missing parts while they were about to collect samples from the limbs to examine whether she was raped," the physicians said.

Manzurul Haque Akando, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Sakhipur Police Station, said father of the schoolgirl filed a general diary (GD) over missing her daughter on July 16. Later, police recovered the body in decomposed state.
Trump talks pardons amid probes of Russia role in U.S. election

Norfolk, Va. (Reuters) :

U.S. President Donald Trump declared on Saturday that he has "complete power to pardon," as his administration confronts ongoing investigations of possible ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia.

In a series of early morning Twitter messages, Trump aired renewed frustration with his attorney general, the special counsel leading the Russia probe, and Republicans in Congress who are struggling to advance his legislative agenda. But Trump's comment about pardons, tucked into an attack on the media, raised the possibility that he was considering his options if the investigations do not turn out the way he hopes.

Trump did not specify who, if anyone, he might consider pardoning. His tweets appeared to be written in response to a report by The Washington Post this week that Trump and his legal team have examined presidential powers to pardon Trump aides, family members and possibly even himself.

Reuters has not confirmed the newspaper accounts. "While all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS," Trump wrote.

The Washington Post, citing current and former U.S. officials, reported on Friday that Russia's ambassador to the United States was overheard by U.S. spy agencies telling his bosses that he had discussed campaign-related matters with Trump adviser Jeff Sessions last year, when Sessions was a U.S. senator.

Sessions now leads the Justice Department as Trump's attorney general.

"These illegal leaks...must stop," Trump tweeted. At the Senate confirmation hearings for his Cabinet position, Sessions initially failed to disclose his 2016 contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and later said they were not about the campaign.

In March, Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe. During an interview with The New York Times this week, Trump lashed out at Sessions, saying he would not have chosen him for attorney general had he known Sessions would recuse himself. Trump, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in last year's presidential election but continues to use her as a foil, questioned why Sessions and special counsel Robert Mueller were not investigating former FBI Director James Comey or Clinton, for her email practices as secretary of state.

"So many people are asking why isn't the A.G. or Special Counsel looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes. 33,000 emails deleted...," he tweeted. Scholars have raised questions about the scope of the president's legal authority in issuing pardons. If Trump moved to pardon himself sometime in the future, the U.S. Supreme Court might have to decide on the constitutionality, some have speculated.

Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing by federal investigators who are probing alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Mueller is looking into any relationships or contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians during the election. Congressional committees also are exploring Russia's influence on the U.S. election. Trump traveled on Saturday to Norfolk, Virginia, where he spoke at a commissioning ceremony for the aircraft carrier the USS Gerald R. Ford, named for the Republican president who held the White House from 1974-1977. In his remarks, Trump made no mention of the Russia controversy, focusing his speech on the need for more robust U.S. military spending.


Power sector to ensure hassle-free service

Staff Reporter :

The country's power sector is working with four innovative ideas to ensure quick, hassle free and digital services to the consumers.

"These innovative ideas would resolve problems in the power sector and ensure quick, hassle free and digital service to the consumers," said Prime Minister's Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Affairs Advisor Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury.

Addressing a function on the occasion of the first ever National Public Service Day-2017 as the chief guest in the city on Sunday, he said four companies, including Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB), have introduced the innovative projects to reach the services to the doorsteps of all consumers.

Regarding the recent power shortage following the broke down of a national power grid due to cyclone, Dr Tawfiq said the government should always be ready to take mitigation measures considering risks in the power sector.

"The power sector officials should conceive innovative ideas, discover themselves with more advanced initiatives and get engaged in the service to the clients to ensure better future of the nation," the advisor said.

Chaired by Power Division Secretary Dr Ahmad Kaikaus, the programme was also addressed by Senior Secretary of the Public Administration Ministry Dr M Mozammel Haq Khan as the special guest. Dr Mozammel said as the Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry is one of the keys to the overall progress of the country, the consumers' rights must be protected in this sector along with making the electricity billing system more transparent.

Replying to a query about availability of prepaid meter card on electricity, Dr Kaikaus said the prepaid card would be available in seven days a week, now available in five days while two days remain closed due to weekly holidays.

He said the power division organised the function marking the National Public Service Day-2017 aimed at making the power division's works people-friendly.

Other speakers at the programme said that the government fixed its target to reach power generation capacity to 24,000 MW in 2021, 40,000 MW in 2030 and 60,000 MW in 2041.

They said now the power generation capacity reached 15, 379 MW and 80 percent people are getting electricity facility across the country. The foremost goal of the government is to achieve the sustainable development goal by 2030.
UNO Salman freed

AL man withdraws case, 6 cops closed

Specail Correspondent :

In the wake of widespread criticism, the defamation case filed by a suspended Awami League leader against Barguna Upazila Nirbahi Officer Gazi Tarque Salman was quashed on Sunday by the relevant Barisal court.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Amit Kumar passed the quash order after hearing on a petition filed by plaintiff seeking cancellation of the case proceedings.

The case was filed by Obaidullah Saju for publishing a "distorted" painting of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the invitation card issued on the occasion of Independence Day last year.

AL man Saju in his petition said that after filing the case he had realised Bangabandhu's painting was "not distorted". He also told the CMM court in the petition that he wasn't at all aware that the painting was drawn by a child.

UNO Salmon, however, was not present during the hearing. Additional Divisional Commissioner of Barisal Md Nurul Amin yesterday said, "The date of hearing was fixed on Sunday. Prior to that, a petition was submitted to the CMM court to quash the case on behalf of the UNO. On the other hand, the plaintiff Obaidullah Saju also gave another prayer seeking withdrawal of the case. In this context, the court dismissed the case."

The case was filed against the UNO in a wrongful way, the Additional Divisional Commissioner further said.

Interestingly, the plaintiff of the case Saju who earlier tried his best not to step aside from his stance made a reverse turn yesterday saying that he had filed case willingly and gave another petition to withdraw the case in the same way.

"I had no knowledge that the painting of Bangabandhu was drawn by a class-V student Adrita Kar. So, I gave a prayer when the accused person [UNO] submitted actual portrait to the court. I think, this situation has been created due to misunderstanding," advocate Saju said.

In another move, six policemen who were on duty on the court premises, when UNO was sent to jail in a defamation case, were withdrawn to the District Police Lines yesterday by Barisal Metropolitan Police [BMP].

Assistant Police Commissioner of BMP Nasir Uddin Mallick said, "The policemen are Sub-Inspector Nripen Das, Assistant Sub-Inspectors Sachin, and Mahabub, and Constables Jahangir, Hanif and Sujan. The six police personnel were closed for administrative reasons."

Meanwhile, the ruling Awami league government has fallen in an embarrassing situation following a Tk 5 crore defamation case against an UNO by an overenthusiastic party leader for printing Bangabandhu's portrait on the Independence Day invitation card.

Although the Awami League central committee suspended the plaintiff of the case Obaidullah Saju, Religious Affairs Secretary of Barisal district and also Barisal Bar Council, the party high-command believes that it was a 'conspiracy' to create an awkward situation for the government.

Already the Bangladesh Administrative Service Association and Bangladesh Police Service Association have given opposing statements over the "arrest" and "handcuff" of the UNO. Seeing this, the government also thinks that the conspirators had tried to create an abnormal situation among the cadre service officials.

"We think, the incident was created in a planned way. The harassment of UNO is not acceptable to the government by any means. There are no partisan affairs. We'll [govt] face it," LGRD Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said yesterday.

The Minister said: "Someone has committed a misdeed. The accused will face trial. The Prime Minister has taken firm decision in this regard. The government is also investigating whether any person or quarter has fuelled it from behind the scene. None will be spared if there is any evidence."

Earlier, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also Bangabandhu's eldest daughter had expressed severe astonishment over the incident and said that the portrait, painted by Class-V student Adrita Kar, was not 'distorted'.

"The UNO has done a good job arranging a competition over Bangabandhu's sketch and printing the award-winning picture in the cards," PM's adviser HT Imam told the media quoting Sheikh Hasina.

Adrita Kar, 11, a Class-V student of Srimoti Matree Mongal Girls' School at Agailjhara Sadar got second prize for painting in the competition held on Bangbandhu's birth anniversary on March 17 last year. It was used by the UNO in the invitation cards of Independence Day on March 26 same year.

The case was lodged with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's [CMM] Court in June. The UNO was transferred to Barguna Sadar from Agailjhara Upazila after filing of the case. Prior to that the UNO was served show cause notice by Barisal Deputy Commissioner being directed by Barisal Divisional Commissioner.


Govt gets one more week for gazette

Court Correspondent :

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on Sunday again allowed the government one more week for issuing the gazette notification on the disciplinary and conduct rules of the subordinate court judges.

The full Bench of the apex court led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha passed the order yesterday

after hearing on a time petition filed by Attorney General Mahbubey Alam.

Earlier, on July 20, Law Minister Anisul Huq told reporters on the apex court premises that there was a significant progress in a meeting with the Chief Justice about finalizing the rules and issuing the gazette notification. He expressed optimism that the gazette might be finalised within this week.

Earlier on July 16 also, the Law Minister met the Chief Justice to discuss the disciplinary and conduct rules. Anisul Huq then said, the government will finalise the rules determining the discipline and code of conduct for the subordinate court judges by next week.

On July 17, the apex court gave one week time to the government for issuing the gazette notification. Earlier on July 2, the seven-member Bench of the Appellate Division gave the government a two-week ultimatum for issuing the gazette.

The apex court on several occasions expressed annoyance and dissatisfaction at the government's failure to publish the notification in line with its orders.

Meanwhile, the judiciary was officially separated from the executive in November 2007, but the conduct rules for the subordinate court judges are yet to be finalised.

The government drafted the conduct rules and sent those to the Supreme Court for its opinion about two years ago. The apex court revised the draft in the light of the 1999 verdict in the separation of judiciary case.


HSC exam pass rate falls to 68.91pc

Students of Viqarunnesa Noon School and College celebrating their results on its campus after getting HSC results on Sunday.
Syria strikes hit near Damascus despite ceasefire

Syrian rebel fighters from the Faylaq al-Rahman brigade carry their homemade 12.7mm sniper rifle in Ain Terma in the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus

AFP, Beirut :

Syria's regime carried out air raids on one of the last rebel strongholds near Damascus Sunday, a monitor said, a day after it declared a ceasefire in parts of the besieged enclave.

The Syrian army on Saturday announced a halt in fighting for parts of Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held region on the outskirts of the capital that has been ravaged in the six-year conflict.

"Regime warplanes targeted the area of Ain Terma with at least six strikes since early morning, and two raids were carried out on and around the city of Douma," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

The Britain-based monitor, which relies on sources in Syria for its information, did not report any casualties.

Regime shelling also hit the outskirts of the town of Jisreen on Sunday, the Observatory said, after regime artillery and rocket fire on areas including Ain Terma and the town of Harasta on Saturday after the ceasefire started.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have surrounded the Eastern Ghouta region for more than four years, and regime forces have regularly targeted the area.

Assad's forces have for weeks been fighting rebels on the outskirts of Ain Terma, which links Eastern Ghouta to opposition-held parts of the Damascus district of Jobar.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said no jihadist forces were present in the areas targeted by regime bombardment.

The army announced a halt in fighting in areas of Eastern Ghouta on Saturday from midday local time, but did not say which areas exactly would be included.

The ceasefire announcement came after regime ally Russia said it had reached a deal with "moderate" rebels on the boundaries and policing of the safe zone.

It said the sides had also agreed "routes to supply humanitarian aid to the population and for free movement of residents".

But no rebel group yielding influence in Eastern Ghouta said they had signed that agreement.

The rebel enclave is in one of four proposed "de-escalation zones" designated in a deal reached by government allies Iran and Russia and rebel backer Turkey in May.

But the accord has yet to be fully implemented over disagreements on policing the safe zones.

A ceasefire was implemented in another "de-escalation zone" in southern Syria on July 9, but none has so far been announced for the northwestern province of Idlib or parts of the central province of Homs.

More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since its conflict broke out in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

In a new assessment, the U.S. intelligence community judges that large numbers of foreigners fighting for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria likely will stay to defend what is left of their self-declared caliphate rather than return to their homelands, a top U.S. counter-terrorism official said on Friday.

"Many if not most of the foreign fighters who made their way to the conflict zone will end up staying, fighting and potentially dying in order to maintain the caliphate," Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the U.S. National Counter Terrorism Center, told the annual Aspen Security Forum.

That contrasts with the previous assessment that many foreign fighters would return home, posing major security threats.

Rasmussen also said that he has seen no information confirming recent reports that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi has been killed. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday he assumes that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is still alive.




Divided UK, inconclusive election could put brakes on Brexit

EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, right, and British Secretary of State David Davis address the media after a week of negotiations at EU headquarters in Brussels.

AP, London :

Lucy Harris thinks Britain's decision to leave the European Union is a dream come true. Nick Hopkinson thinks it's a nightmare.

The two Britons - a "leave" supporter and a "remainer" - represent the great divide in a country that stepped into the unknown just over a year ago, when British voters decided by 52 percent to 48 percent to end more than four decades of EU membership.

They are also as uncertain as the rest of the country about what Brexit will look like, and even when it will happen. Since the shock referendum result, work on negotiating the divorce from the EU has slowed to a crawl as the scale and complexity of the challenge becomes clearer. Harris, founder of the pro-Brexit group Leavers of London, says she is hopeful, rather than confident, that Britain will really cut its ties with the EU. "If we haven't finalized it, then anything's still up for grabs," she said. "Everything is still to play for."

She's not the only Brexiteer, as those who support leaving the EU are called, to be concerned. After an election last month clipped the wings of Britain's Conservative government, remainers are gaining in confidence.

"Since the general election I've been more optimistic that at least we're headed toward soft Brexit, and hopefully we can reverse Brexit altogether," said Hopkinson, chairman of pro-EU group London4Europe. "Obviously the government is toughing it out, showing a brave face. But I think its brittle attitude toward Brexit will break and snap."

Many on both sides of the divide had assumed the picture would be clearer by now. But the road to Brexit has not run smoothly.

First the British government lost a Supreme Court battle over whether a vote in Parliament was needed to begin the Brexit process. Once the vote was held, and won, Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative government officially triggered the two-year countdown to exit, starting a race to untangle four decades of intertwined laws and regulations by March 2019. Then, May called an early election in a bid to strengthen her hand in EU negotiations. Instead, voters stripped May's Conservatives of their parliamentary majority, severely denting May's authority - and her ability to hold together a party split between its pro-and anti-EU wings.

Since the June 8 election, government ministers have been at war, providing the media with a string of disparaging, anonymously sourced stories about one another. Much of the sniping has targeted Treasury chief Philip Hammond, the most senior minister in favor of a compromise "soft Brexit" to cushion the economic shock of leaving the bloc.

The result is a disunited British government and an increasingly impatient EU.

EU officials have slammed British proposals so far as vague and inadequate. The first substantive round of divorce talks in Brussels last week failed to produce a breakthrough, as the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said Britain must clarify its positions in key areas.

Barnier said "fundamental" differences remain on one of the biggest issues - the status of 3 million EU citizens living in Britain and 1 million U.K. nationals who reside in other European countries. A British proposal to grant permanent residency to Europeans in the U.K. was dismissed by the European Parliament as insufficient and burdensome.

There's also a fight looming over the multibillion-euro bill that Britain must pay to meet previous commitments it made as an EU member. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently asserted the bloc could "go whistle" if it thought Britain would settle a big exit tab.




HC clears way for Shakib to act in 3 films

UNB, Dhaka :

The High Court on Sunday stayed a notice of Bangladesh Cholochitro Paribar, clearing the way for popular film actor Shakib Khan to act in three films.

The HC bench of Justice Salma Masud Chowdhury and Justice AKM Zahirul Hoque passed the order after hearing a writ petition filed by Shapla Media, the production house of the three films.

The films are 'Ami Neta Hobo', 'Mamla Hamla Jhamela' and 'Kotha Diye Keo Kotha Rakhe Na'.

The court also issued a rule asking the authorities concerned to explain as to why their inaction to ensure a favourable environment for the shooting of the three films should not be declared illegal and why the notice mentioning that no one can provide assistance for the films to be acted by Shakib Khan should not be beyond legal authority.

The information secretary, managing director of Bangladesh Film Development Corporation (FDC), convener of Bangladesh Cholochitro Shilpi Paribar, its member secretary, president and general secretary of Bangladesh Cholochitro Parichalok Samiti and 18 other organisations have been asked to come up with the explanation within four weeks.

Bangladesh Cholochitro Shilpi Paribar, a platform of 18 film organisations, issued a notice on July 18 requesting all concerned not to cast Shakib Khan in any film.

Earlier on June 23, 16 film associations collectively imposed a lifetime ban on Shakib Khan following his 'disparaging comments on film associations and senior actor Faruk'.
Erdogan heads to Gulf in hope of easing Qatar crisis

AFP, Istanbul :

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday embarked on a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no-one had an interest in prolonging the crisis.

Erdogan will first meet the Saudi leadership in Jeddah before moving on to Kuwait and then visiting Qatar on Monday for his first face-to-face talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani since the crisis began.

"No-one has any interest in prolonging this crisis any more," said Erdogan at

Istanbul airport before leaving on the two-day trip. He accused "enemies" of seeking to "fire up tensions between brothers" in the region. Erdogan praised Qatar's behaviour in the crisis, saying it had sought to find a solution through dialogue. "I hope our visit will be beneficial for the region," he said. On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut ties with Qatar accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with their Shiite rival Iran. Doha denies the claim and has been strongly backed by Ankara throughout the standoff.

The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible. Over the last years, Qatar has emerged as Turkey's number one ally in the Middle East, with Ankara and Doha closely coordinating their positions on a number of issues including the Syria conflict where both are staunch foes of President Bashar al-Assad.

Crucially, Turkey is in the throes of setting up a military base in Qatar, its only such outpost in the region. It has sped up the process since the crisis began and reportedly now has 150 troops at the base.

"From the first moments of the Qatar crisis, we have been on the side of peace, stability, solidarity and dialogue," said Erdogan. But Turkey, which is also going through a turbulent time with the European Union and the United States, also does not want to wreck its own relations with regional kingpin Saudi Arabia. As well as meeting King Salman, Erdogan is also due to meet his son Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since he was elevated to the role of crown prince and his father's heir in a dramatic June reshuffle of the royal house.
30 gold bars seized in Sylhet

Staff Reporter :

Customs Intelligence on Sunday seized 30 gold bars from an airplane from Abu Dhabi at Osmani Airport in Sylhet.

Tipped-off, it conducted a drive and checked the flight BG 128.

The seized 30 gold bars weighing 3.51 kilograms worth Tk 1.60 crore were left abandoned under a seat luggage hold.

The flight landed at Osmani Airport as transit route to Dhaka and there was no passenger booking of the seat which came empty from Abu Dhabi, said a press release.

The gold bars have been stored at Sylhet Customs warehouse and a case has been filed under customs regulation.
Police need not have applied brutal force against students

At least four students were injured when police charged batons and lobbed tear gas canisters to disperse a demonstration of students of seven colleges in the capital's Shahbagh on Thursday. The students held the programme demanding the announcement of their examination schedules.



Meanwhile, the authorities of the seven colleges -- Dhaka College, Eden Mohila College, Government Shaheed Suhrawardy College, Kabi Nazrul Government College, Begum Badrunnesa Government Mohila College, Mirpur Government Bangla College, and Government Titumir College -- Thursday announced the exam schedules following the protest.



Earlier in the morning, several hundred students of the colleges, who have been demanding announcement of exam schedules for the last few months, formed a human chain in front of the National Museum at about 10:00 am. At about 11:30 am, they occupied the busy Shahbagh intersection, causing traffic congestion in the area.

Police thwarted the demonstration with batons and teargas canisters. After the police action, the law enforcers filed a lawsuit alleging attempted murder on policemen against 1,200 such students. Other charges include rioting, obstructing police and unlawful assembly.



The college students were unarmed while protesting at Shahbagh on Thursday. Nobody saw them to damage any vehicles or attack anyone. In fact, police pounced on them with batons and fired teargas shells. This can't be acceptable behaviour by the police--it was not that they were criminals selling Yaba but only students who were peaceably protesting.



During a press conference at Madhur Canteen on Dhaka University campus on July 21, the students demanded withdrawal of the case, compensation to Siddiqur Rahman, a policy on the colleges affiliated with the DU and steps to ease session jams. They said they will go for a tougher movement if the authorities do not take actions against the policemen who attacked students without any provocation.



In a separate development, representatives of the agitating students met Dhaka University Vice-Chancellor AAMS Arefin Siddique at his office on July 23. After a one and half hour long meeting representatives of the students said they did not receive any clear assurance of having their demands met.



Students of third year and Master's of 2013-2014 Sessions had their registration done but no date of exam was fixed until Tuesday's meeting. Besides, there was no guideline from the University authorities regarding the exam process although four months have gone since they were affiliated with Dhaka University. So why would they not protest? And why should the police go for such a tough action--they could have requested them to postpone their campaign while the police could have talked to their administrators.



Excessive tear gas and baton charges are normally used by forces motivated by hatred .Our police cannot have hatred against our students. Whether they are police or politicians all must know that they have no other country to go to live safely. We must all learn to live safely together in our country.
The Undead Archives

I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
GRAND FORKS  The names of hundreds and hundreds of people are hidden, but not forgotten, beneath the rug in the Worship Center at Hope Evangelical Covenant Church.

The Rev. Paul Knight says each name scribbled in Sharpie marker was put there by a church member who deeply loves and cares about that person.

There are names written in Korean. There are names in Chinese. There are names of people from all over the country on that floor, Knight said. And all were doing is praying that God will somehow penetrate their lives with his love.

Its a bit symbolic and it might not be traditional evangelizing, but Knight says the power of prayer and a personal invite does work.

Every once in awhile someone will come to church with a guest and theyll come to me and say, By the way, their name is under the carpet over there. 

A new calling

As todays headlines shout U.S. public becomes less religious, faith leaders of all kinds are answering an urgent call to find new ways to reach followers before the tide can turn to a battle of biblical proportions.

The Pew Research Centers latest Religious Landscape Study released in 2015 said a large majority of Americans (77 percent) still identify with some religious denomination and remain strongly committed. In fact, two-thirds say they pray every day and that religion is very important to them.

The extensive survey of more than 35,000 U.S. adults found the religiously affiliated include a broad variety of Protestants as well as Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus.

But whats probably getting the most attention is the growing minority of nones -- the name given to those who dont claim affiliation with any organized religion.

The study said the nones and, in particular, millennials, account for the recent decrease in religious beliefs and behaviors. The nones now make up 23 percent of the population, up from 16 percent in 2007.

According to the study, only 27 percent of Younger Millennials (born 1990-1996) attend religious services weekly, compared with 51 percent of Silent Generation adults (born 1928-1945). Only 38 percent of the younger group said religion was very important in their lives, compared with 67 percent in the older group.

As older Americans die, they are being replaced by younger Americans who show far less attachment to religion than their parents or grandparents did at the same age.

A different world

It used to be in any neighborhood most everyone went to church, and you knew the people who didnt, said the Rev. Lynn Ronsberg of Sharon Lutheran Church in Grand Forks. Today, its probably the opposite.

Ronsberg estimates as many as 50 percent fewer people fill the pews each Sunday than did when she was first ordained 38 years ago. But shes also just as quick to say she doesnt believe people have lost their faith.

Faith is there as strong as ever. I think that the expression of that faith has changed, she said. Thats where we, as a church, are missing the boat. We need to say how do we speak the word to people today because what weve done forever isnt connecting.

We cant go back to the 50s and 60s because people dont (just) go to church because they should. Thats not how it works anymore.

Ronsberg says Americas evolving culture demands the church change up its pitch to appeal to younger generations.

Young adults want to make a difference in the world, and they want to do something worthwhile that changes things, she said. Its our job to provide those opportunities to serve and then figure out how to nurture their faith through that.

Sharon Lutheran is mixing it up with such things as contemporary outdoor services and a faith campout.

It also has a new minister, the Rev. Dominique Buchholz, whose focus is young adult ministry. Shes their age, shes one of them, Ronsberg said. The frustrating part is theres no guide to guaranteed success, she said. The only answer is to keep trying.

Growth at Hope

The Rev. Knights congregation is one church thats defied the odds. Hope Church has outgrown its space twice already and now is knocking out a wall to add 200 seats in its Worship Center. When Knight arrived in 1991, he said the church had 80 members.

Today, more than 1,000 people attend services there each Sunday, and the church moves Easter services to the Chester Fritz Auditorium to make room for the 2,300 people who come to pray.

The message never changes. Were teaching the same 2,000-year-old message, Knight said. But how we package it and how we present it has to change all the time to meet with the culture and to attract new followers.

Part of those changes include different kinds of music and staff than 20 years ago, he said. Just this month, the church added a full-time young adult minister. The church has a separate Connection Center, Youth Ministry Center and Hopeful Beginnings Day Care and Preschool.

We really want to pay attention to young families and the fact that its hard to raise kids these days, Knight said. If we can get the little kids understanding theyre loved by God right away, it changes so many things.

This summer, nearly a record 300 children and 75-plus volunteers took part in a weeklong vacation Bible school. The church also sponsors almost a dozen Christ-centered support groups, and its Grounds for Missions Coffee Bar raises money to support its work in Fitche, Ethiopia. A new Adult Ministry Center already is in the works, and construction is set for fall for a fully commercial kitchen.

Were not building our facility just for us. We want it to serve the community, Knight said. Our dream is to create a space where people will want to hang out, an oasis. My goal is to get as many people connected to Jesus as I can.

Peer to peer

Other churches are reaching out in similar ways.

Paul Braun, director of communications with the Catholic Diocese of Fargo, said special Focus Missionary members are connecting with students on the University of North Dakota campus, and The Newman Connection is linking entering students to existing Catholics already on campus.

We need to evangelize across the world, but most important, across the street, Braun said. Thats where we need to start.

Braun says the diocese also hopes to soon launch a social media campaign via Instagram -- a language in which young people are fluent.

We want to use social media as more than just a bulletin for upcoming events, he said. We want to send a message that will touch the hearts of our young people.

Recognizing that very powerful draw of popular culture, the diocese also is sponsoring a concert with popular Christian artist Matt Maher on Aug. 12 in Fargos Scheels Arena.

No matter how they see the state of Americas religion today, all of the faith leaders agreed a happy, healthy church is one filled with love and service.

At the core, its people who let God love them, love him in return and love others in Jesus name, Knight said.
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.
CARBONDALE  Southern Illinois Healthcare will kick off World Breastfeeding Week with Babys Best Start Fair from 1 to 3 p.m. July 29 at University Mall in Carbondale. The event also coincides with World Breastfeeding Month which runs throughout July.

According to certified lactation consultants Mary Jarvis BSN, RN and Mary Zeigler RN, breastfeeding offers benefits for both mom and baby.

A few of the benefits for moms are reduction in premenopausal cancers like breast and ovarian cancers, as well as weight loss. Jarvis said moms love the weight loss benefit. For babies, breast milk is the only thing that improves immunity.

The theme of Babys Best Start Fair will be Sustaining Breastfeeding- Together! with a focus on the key element of sustainability, which is support, not only at the professional level, but also by mothers themselves.

A variety of resources will be on display in one central location, including information on breast pumps, infant development, car seat safety, family resources and more. A pediatrician will also be available to answer questions.

Jarvis said some confusion has arisen over Memorial Hospital of Carbondale being a baby friendly hospital, but that does mean the choice for feeding are limited to breastfeeding.

We support a womans choice. We provide information and let moms make an informed decision, Jarvis said.

The hospital does offer lactation support to moms who choose to breastfeed, from before giving birth to after discharge. In addition to inpatient breastfeeding support, the hospital offers one-on-one lactation consultations by appointment that includes an assessment of the baby. The service is covered by most insurance, including Medicaid.

Support is also available from the free advice line. A lactation consultant will respond within 24 hours. Call 618-549-0721, ext. 65217 (8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday) or ext. 65230 (Mother/Baby department 24 hours per day)

The hospital also offers a Mommy and Me Support Group on the third Friday of each month in the OB education room on the second floor. It can also be viewed on Facebook Live.

A two and a half hour breastfeeding class is offered that covers the basics of breastfeeding, getting off to a good start and supplies a new mom might want. Moms can attend with a support person. Register by calling 866-744-2468.

Babys Best Fair is co-sponsored by Jackson County Health Department. Entry, entry to the Babys Best Start is free, with drawings for door prizes.

For more information about these programs or the event, contact Jarvis at 618-549-0721, ext. 65217 or Mary.Jarvis@sih.net.
CARBONDALE  Jackson County Board members might have not approved a proposed resolution to designate the county as "safe and welcoming" to immigrants, but the group that proposed that resolution has vowed to continue its work.

The Jackson County Board voted 6-6 at its Tuesday night meeting on the resolution, effectively killing it, as it needed at least 51 percent approval for acceptance.

At the heavily-attended meeting, people spoke for and against the proposed resolution, in a nearly one-hour session that some described as intense.

Nevertheless, the newly formed Southern Illinois Immigrant Rights Project is continuing to help make this area and region safer and welcoming to immigrants, those who are undocumented and documented, according to a co-facilitator, Becca Tally. She describes the committee as a group of concerned community-minded people  lawyers, college students, professionals and others with every day jobs  who "are concerned about the recent tenor or the discourse in our country about immigration."

"I think that within our group, people were concerned about the tone of the meeting last night, more so than the actual decision" to not approve the resolution, Tally said. "But I think that we were recommitted to the work that we are doing and that it does have value in it. And we are (grateful) to be engaged in that."

Volunteer opportunities

Anyone interested in volunteering with the organization can reach out via email at SIImmigrantRightsProject@gmail.com, Tally said.

The committee is seeking volunteers to help with a national project, the Welcoming Blanket for Immigrants; the group just got involved, but will work to create blankets, which will be displayed at a museum in Chicago before they will be taken down and distributed to immigrants through various centers and facilities. On Monday, July 31, people plan to gather to sew, crochet or knit parts of blankets for the project, at the Carbondale Public Library.

Volunteers can also help immigrant students and professionals at Southern Illinois University, who might need help with various concerns of theirs, she said.

The group also wants to continue dialogues with the community about immigrant issues.

They also plan to continue hosting workshops that educate immigrants, business owners and others about their rights and responsibilities under federal law.

This is especially important as Tally said she has heard of ICE officials visiting immigrants and detaining them.

"We feel basically that our diversity is the strength of our communities ," Tally said. "We would like to see us come together to support that."
CAIRO  Visiting Cairo earlier this month, Sen. Tammy Duckworth said she was alerted to concerns about the utility company and requested 10 years of financial audits from Cairo Public Utility Co. General Manager Larry Klein.

Klein said he's seeking advice from his attorney about whether and how to respond to Duckworth's requests. As of late Thursday, he had not yet turned over the documents she requested, according to Duckworth's office.

It's a longstanding policy of CPUC to keeps its financials closely guarded  but it appears this practice is not in accordance with state law governing nonprofits.

The last and only time Cairo Public Utility Co. complied with its annual reporting requirements to the Illinois Attorney General's Charitable Trust Bureau was for the 2008 fiscal year, according to Maura Possley, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, who provided the information in response to an inquiry from the newspaper.

Charitable organizations are required to file annual Form 990s with the state in accordance with the Illinois Charitable Trust Act, Possley said. Form 990s are IRS forms for tax-exempt organizations.

Organizations with revenue of more than $300,000 are also required to file annual audited financial reports with the attorney general's office.

In October 2007, Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office sent a letter to the Cairo Public Utility's then-board president informing him of the requirement. On the board officer's behalf, CPUC's attorney, Mark Johnson, wrote back the following: "I have confirmed with my client that Cairo Public Utility Company is not involved in any charitable work that I believe require reporting as mentioned in your letter."

In response, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Shapiro responded that filing is indeed required. Shapiro cited CPUC's articles of incorporation, which states that the company "is organized exclusively for charitable purposes meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code ... including the specific charitable purpose of lessening the burdens of government of the City of Cairo, Illinois, by owning and operating a public utility ..."

According to Possley, the spokeswoman for Madigan, the utility registered with the state in March 2008. CPUs registration canceled in October 2009 for failing to file its 2008 fiscal year Form 990. CPUC then re-registered in November 2009 by submitting that Form 990. Reports for the 2008 fiscal year were the last and only time CPUC complied with the reporting requirements, according to Possley, who reviewed the filings at the newspaper's requests.

On June 13, the attorney generals office sent a letter to Cairo Public Utility informing the utility it was not in compliance with the law and asking that they submit the required paperwork by July 7. To date, the utility has not responded.

The attorney general did not have further communication about the utility companys need to register until June, which was prompted by the newspapers inquiry. Klein said hes in discussions with his lawyer, Johnson, about how to respond to Madigan's office as well.

The utility company also has denied two requests made by The Southern Illinoisan seeking financial information under the Freedom of Information Act, a law that dictates what information public bodies must disclose upon request from members of the public.

In response to the papers requests, CPUC provided a 2010 opinion from Madigans Public Access Bureau stating it did not qualify as a public body subject to FOIA. The opinion was provided in response to a private citizens request for an opinion after her public records request to the CPUC was denied.

On July 27, 2010, our office received your response to the issues raised in (complainant's) Request for Review. In your response, you stated that the City of Cairo has no ownership in or control over the Utility and that the Utility, ... has received no revenue from any tax assessed or levied against any resident of the City of Cairo, the decision reads.

Based on the information provided, we have determined that the Utility is not a, public body, for the purposes of FOIA and therefore is not subject to the requirements of the Act, the AG determination reads.

This does not add up to Josh Sharp, vice president of government relations for Illinois Press Association.

The IPA firmly believes that Cairo Public Utility (CPU) is subject to the requirements of FOIA, Sharp said in an emailed statement. Recently, a top CPU official confirmed this assertion by telling others that CPU was established as an instrumentality of the city of Cairo. The IPA wholeheartedly agrees and looks forward to pursuing this matter in the coming weeks and months."

Sharp said the previous opinion from the Attorney General's office "did not take into account section 7(2) of FOIA, which provides access to contractors performing governmental duties for a public body."

After days of back-and-forth, the utility did provide the newspaper with six pages of financial documents related to its electric division, but declined to provide the entire audit.

In response to the FOIA, the utility also provided the newspaper a letter from the IRS it claims exempts them from having to file Form 990s with the federal government. You are not required to file a Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax if your gross receipts each year are normally $25,000 or less, reads the 1995 letter from the IRS to CPU that was provided to the newspaper.

Klein said he knows that there are numerous entities seeking the utilitys financial records in response to complaints.

But while the high-profile housing crisis in Cairo has turned up the heat on them, Klein said its not Cairo Public Utility that should be investigated, but rather the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency, its power supplier.
"Tracy and I can't thank the people of Southern Illinois enough for their support and their prayers. Our victory tonight sends a powerful message to out-of-touch politicians everywhere that we're unified and unyielding in the fight for our conservative values. Joe Biden's going to be held accountable for destroying the economy, ignoring the border crisis, and taking us from America First to America Last in two years flat. But none of this would be possible without the trust of voters from across our vast 12th District. Serving you is truly the honor of a lifetime."
We are offering this joint op-ed this week to explain our support for Gov. Bruce Rauners plan to fix the current school funding formula bill, Senate Bill 1.

SB 1 has passed the House and Senate, but is currently being held back from the governors desk because of a procedural maneuver. The purpose of this stall tactic is purely political, with the Chicago Democrat-led super majority in the Senate using the potential crisis of some schools not opening as leverage in their scheme.

This is unacceptable.

Imagine a would-be kindergartner eagerly awaiting their very first day of school, only to be left at the bus stop with no bus to ride and no school to attend because Chicago politicians are more focused on continuing their never ending pursuit of crisis-driven politics. The people of Illinois are tired of political cliffhangers. This is absolutely the wrong issue to play politics with. The Chicago Democrats political games are no laughing matter and we will not tolerate their attempts to bail out Chicago and keep Illinois schools from opening.

The recently passed budget contains $778 million in funding for K-12 public schools. The major complaint that we share with the current version of SB 1 is that Chicago would receive a disproportionate share of these education dollars. The way the bill currently reads means that 64 percent of all new funds ($495 million of the $778 million) for education are directed to Chicago Public Schools, despite the fact that they only have 19 percent of the state's students.

Also, $215 million of the $495 million allocated to Chicago in the current version of SB 1 would be used to pay Chicago teacher pension system payments in perpetuity. That redirection of state funding would be unprecedented and is not something we can support. That pension payment, in combination with the block grant that Chicago Public Schools gets for special education and transportation services, along with regular general state aid payments to CPS would give Chicago schools three bites at the funding apple.

That is fundamentally unfair.

The plan that we can support eliminates that extra $215 million payment to CPS pensions and allows that money to be redistributed through the new evidence based model formula.

In order to fix SB 1 to reflect our priorities for public schools in Illinois, we are supporting a plan offered by Gov. Rauner that includes a re-write of SB 1 via the amendatory veto tool that the Governor has. Eliminating those extra pension payments for Chicago would result in a more fair and equitable distribution of funding to K-12 schools.

Our two representative districts are home to dozens of public schools. Using the most up to date analysis made available by the Illinois State Board of Education, almost all public schools in the 115th and 117th districts are considered to be in the category of those most in need of additional state funding. Applying the governors proposed fix to SB 1 would mean that all of the schools we represent will receive more funding than if the bill becomes law with the Chicago bailout language included.

We urge Senate President John Cullerton to release his hold on SB 1 and allow the Governor to amendatorily veto SB 1. This will ensure our schools will open on time and that Chicago does not get a bigger piece of the education budget than they should. We need a deal that is fair to all taxpayers. The right plan is Gov. Rauners plan to fix Senate Bill 1.
230717 PATER WIN

By Aloysius Laukai

The Central Bougainville Open seat has been won by a new comer, FR. SIMON DUMARINU from Deomori in PANGUNA. He is from the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY led by POWES PARKOP the Governor for NCD.

FR. SIMON DUMARINU is a Catholic Priest from the Marist Society of the Catholic Church.

He polled 7,782 votes to defeat the former member for Central Bougainville and PNG Mining Minister SAM AKOITAI who polled 7,770 votes after the 19th elimination of the sitting member and Communications Minister, JIMMY MIRINGTORO who was running 3rd in the race for the Central Bougainville seat.

The declaration of the seat for Central Bougainville did not come easy as the counting started in Arawa Central Bougainville then transferred to Buka for the final count.

It went through several checks and rechecks and suspensions until Counting experts from South Bougainville led by the Returning Officer for South Bougainville came and assisted.

The winner was declared after midnight last night.

Meanwhile, the newly elected member for Central Bougainville has vowed to work for Bougainville in unity with the ABG and the three Bougainville members of the National Parliament.

Speaking after his declaration last night at the UNITED CHURCH in Buka town, FR. SIMON DUMARINU thanked the Electoral Manager for Bougainville, all Supporters, counting officials, Police, media, all candidates and their supporters and many people who have been praying for a good out come for making it to the final declaration.

The North Bougainville open seat was won by a NA Candidate WILLIAM NAKIN. MR. NAKIN was declared winner after the 3rd place candidate and former acting Chief Secretary for the ABG and lawyer Chris Siriosi was eliminated.

The South Bougainville Open seat was retained by TIMOTHY MASIU who is another NA candidate.

Another NA candidate for the Bougainville Regional seat is running second to the sitting member and URP candidate JOE LERA.

Counting for the Bougainville Regional seat is progressing well.With Eliminations that startd yesterday afternoon.

By this afternoon Candidates met with the Election Manager, DESMOND TIMIYASO to include votes for the candidate who died during campaign and was voted still by voters.

The candidates argued that those votes must also be counted and not counted as informal votes.

Meanwhile, two bridges on the Buka Arawa highway have been burnt by supporters of a losing candidate in the Central Bougainville.

The bridges destroyed are said to be in Wakunai one of them is the Red River bridge.

Ends

Caption of FR. SIMON DUMARINU signing the writs after his declaration last night.




BAMBERG  Justin Bamberg is building a name for himself as the attorney to call after a police shooting, representing three families in high-profile cases across the country.

But the two-term Democratic South Carolina state representative, who shares the same last name as his Lowcountry hometown, is anything but an activist attorney on a personal crusade against law enforcement.

Far from being hostile to the police, Bamberg has been involved intimately with law enforcement his entire life.

His father, Kenneth Bamberg, was police chief of the small town of Blackville and now works as an investigator for the Second Circuit solicitor's office. His mother Ronda, once an investigator for the Denmark Police Department, works for the Orangeburg County Sheriff's Department. His brother is a South Carolina state trooper.

"I don't know why so many people think you either have to love law enforcement or hate law enforcement, and if you love law enforcement, you have to hate the citizen-concern side," Bamberg said, recalling the stress at home as a child when one of his parents was called out late at night on police business.

"As a kid, you worry: When is your parent going to come home?" he said. "When my mom would get called out, or my dad would get called out, the one who was still at home wouldn't go back to sleep."

'Most people' don't have video

Instead of going into law enforcement, Bamberg went to USC's law school and became an attorney, eventually opening an office in his hometown of Bamberg, in rural South Carolina.

The Democrat was elected to the S.C. House of Representatives in 2014, at the age of 27.

A year later, Bamberg helped win a $6.5 million settlement from the city of North Charleston for the family of Walter Scott, who was shot in the back and killed by a city police officer while running from a traffic stop. Bamberg was tapped to act as the local attorney for the family by Atlanta-based lawyer Chris Stewart.

"I always find reliable local counsel whenever I take on a case," Stewart said. "He just came highly recommended from the people I talked to."

That impression was reinforced when Stewart and Bamberg first met.

It was 2 a.m, when Stewart arrived in South Carolina to meet the Scott family for the first time. Bamberg was there. "I literally called, and he hopped in the car," Stewart said.

The North Charleston case surged into the national spotlight because of a bystander's video, showing Scott being shot by police officer Michael Slager, who later pleaded guilty to violating Scott's civil rights.

"I literally couldn't believe it. I had to watch it a hundred times," Bamberg said. "That is why we have some of the problems that we have  the distrust citizens feel toward law enforcement is because you have guys like that who police these communities, and they do treat people very badly.

"Unfortunately, when most people have that experience, they don't have the benefit of a witness video."

Bamberg contrasts that experience with his father's reputation as a law-enforcement officer in Blackville, something the younger Bamberg was reminded of during a chance encounter at a college party.

"I had some guys roll up on me at this party and say, 'Are you Chief Bamberg's son? Man, your daddy arrested me,'" Bamberg recalls. "Then they laughed and we shook hands, and he said, 'If I have to be arrested by somebody, I want it to be somebody like your dad. He treated us with respect, let us know that we were wrong, and we're better for it.'"

Scott's shooting also caused Bamberg to think of his brother, a state trooper who pulls over drivers, often on the side of the interstate, miles from any backup. "Is that citizen going to be thinking about my little brother like he's Michael Slager?" Bamberg asked rhetorically.

'They want this contentiousness'

Other lawyers might try to excite public opinion after a controversial officer-involved shooting, Bamberg says he tries to act as a bridge between authorities and an angry community.

"You won't see me and my client with any other organization doing a joint press conference," he said. "The extremists on both sides of the color spectrum, the police ideological spectrum don't typically like me because they want this contentiousness, and I don't do that."

Thomas Dixon, a pastor and community organizer who was active in the North Charleston community as the Scott case played out, saw Bamberg's balancing efforts up close.

"Justin and Chris do a really good job as attorneys, balancing between respecting the wishes of the family and getting out information that can be disseminated to the community," Dixon said. "It can be very difficult for an attorney (because) people are saying, 'We want to know this. What about this?' And as a necessity of the investigation, you can't say what all the evidence is."

Bamberg said his legal work on the Scott case went hand-in-hand with acting as a go-between with activists and community members, on the one hand, and the city of North Charleston and its police department, on the other.

"As an attorney, that's important to me because this is my state, these are my people," he said. "So you try to facilitate opening that line of communication, and that goes a long way.

"A very, very large part of why things went the way they went (peacefully in North Charleston) was because of the respect people have for Mama Judy and Walter Sr.," Bamberg said, referring to Scott's parents. "That went a very long way to keeping things calm and peaceful."

'Law enforcement doesn't always mess up'

Bamberg's work for the Scotts has brought him into other cases involving controversial police shootings.

Along with Stewart, Bamberg is representing the family of Alton Sterling, an African-American killed by police in Baton Rouge, La.

No charges were filed against the officers in Sterling's death, and Bamberg is bringing a civil suit against the city.

From his small, one-man law office in Bamberg, the sophomore lawmaker is also working on behalf of the family of Keith Scott, a S.C. man whose shooting death at the hands of Charlotte, N.C., police set off rioting last summer.

Charlotte's police department says that shooting was justified. However, Charlotte's citizens review board found "substantial evidence of error" in that ruling, and, next month, Bamberg will take part in a hearing before that board.

"They want to hear additional evidentiary testimony because they feel like the police department could have made the wrong decision." Bamberg said. "We're going to wait for that to conclude, and then we're going to resume discussions with the city of Charlotte about resolving things. And if not, we're going to file a lawsuit."

As Bamberg's national profile has risen, he has received more and more offers to take part in other cases against law enforcement.

"Some of it is name recognition," he said. "Some people say we like the way you carry yourselves or speak about these topics. I turn down most of the calls I get because law enforcement doesn't always mess up."

Bamberg has sympathy for law enforcement officers, arguing the state of South Carolina needs to put more money into training and resources for local departments. He also has represented officers in workers' compensation cases, adding they need more support after finding themselves in traumatic situations.

"I have seen firsthand the result of having to shoot somebody," he said. "I can remember one night as a kid, my mother came home, and someone had to shoot somebody on the scene of something, and I just remember her crying and crying and crying, and she wasn't even the one who pulled the trigger."

'Don't abandon your community'

Bamberg's success makes him the second representative from Bamberg County's District 90 to take a star turn in the national limelight. In the S.C. House, Bamberg succeeded fellow Democrat Bakari Sellers, a law school classmate of Bamberg's who now is a CNN commentator.

"It's something in the water," Sellers jokes, adding he thinks his success and Bamberg's helps their rural district. "Whenever you get (attention) it shines a light on an area the Legislature ignores. Kids realize you can grow up and be something."

Whatever the future brings, Bamberg says he always will keep his main office in his namesake town.

"I've had people ask me, 'Why did you put your law office in Bamberg? You could put it anywhere and people would call,' " he says. "I live in an area where it's important, when you have a little bit of success, that you don't abandon your community. This community made me who I am, and there are a lot of people who invested in me."
With the naming of its first endowed chair, South Carolina State University is poised to strengthen and expand its cancer-related research and other scholarly activities. Dr. Marvella Ford, an expert in health disparities and cancer prevention research, will lead these efforts as the newly appointed SmartState Endowed Chair in Prostate Cancer Disparities at the university. She will begin her role in August.

The SmartState Endowed Chair Program was established in 2002 to invest in research areas that will advance South Carolinas economy. Each Center of Economic Excellence acts as a resource for the recruitment of leading scientists and engineers whose work will promote and expand knowledge-based industries and increase job opportunities in South Carolina.

It is a distinguished honor for South Carolina State University to appoint its first endowed chair. Dr. Marvella Ford is recognized as one of the nations leading authorities for cancer disparities research and cancer prevention research. As a university which seeks to provide research-based solutions to address challenges that impact communities we serve, we are honored to have such expertise on this campus," S.C. State President James E. Clark said.

"This strategic, inter-institutional partnership with MUSC through the SmartState Endowed Chair Program will advance the universitys growing cancer-related research and other activities designed to reduce the devastating effects of health disparities that have plagued the African American community, while boosting the states economy," Clark added.

Ford, a tenured professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, also serves as associate director of Population Sciences and Cancer Disparities at the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center. She will maintain her appointment at MUSC and will also hold a joint appointment as a professor in S.C. States Department of Biological and Physical Sciences.

Dr. Ford is an incredible asset. Her ability to forge partnerships with individuals from various institutions with different interests and expertise is the type of forward thinking that will allow us to tackle the biggest issues surrounding cancer prevention, control and disparities," said Dr. Gustavo Leone, director of the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center. "Cancer disparities, such as increased mortality in African American men with prostate cancer, are a major concern for our state, and exposing the underlying reason for these disparities will allow us to better diagnose and treat those patients."

In her role as the S.C. State University SmartState Endowed Chair, Ford will work with longtime colleague Dr. Judith Salley, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at S.C. State. In 2009, the pair submitted a proposal to create the South Carolina Cancer Disparities and Research Center (SC CADRE), which would facilitate collaboration between S.C. State and MUSC. Funding for the proposal was awarded in 2011, with grants awarded to both MUSC and S.C. State. The two have since applied for and were awarded four other collaborative grants totaling more than $3 million with focus on cancer and training for underrepresented students in the biomedical sciences.

According to Salley, the appointment of the endowed chair at S.C. State is the pinnacle of a nearly eight-year partnership in which she and Ford have worked to develop research and education training programs in cancer.

This is a turning point for S.C. State University and the Department of Biological and Physical Sciences. Dr. Marvella Ford and the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center have been collaborative partners for years with S.C. State in helping to strategically strengthen our focus on cancer. While I look forward to the impact the appointment of the SmartState Endowed Chair Program will make on this campus, I am more excited for our students because they will obtain the greatest benefits from the training and expert knowledge of Dr. Ford, Salley said.

Ford, whose lifes work stems from personal experience, is passionate about reducing health disparities. Before birth, she had lost her maternal and paternal grandparents. By the time she turned 40 years old, both of her parents had died.

According to Ford, Those experiences drive me every day to try to uncover solutions to the health disparities that continue to plague our nation. Weve made great strides in closing the gap in these disparities and improving health outcomes for all people in the United States, but those gaps in positive health outcomes still exist when you look across different racial and ethnic groups.

"Through the SmartState Endowed Chair Program, Dr. Salley and I will continue to develop and test research strategies to close these gaps.

Ford hopes that through her work at S.C. State, she will inspire the next generation of cancer disparities researchers. She has already developed the South Carolina Cancer Equity Health Consortium, a 10-week program for undergraduate students at the University of South Carolina and three HBCUs -- S.C. State, Claflin University and Voorhees College. The SC CHEC supports 20 students annually and is supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute and the Department of Defense.

In tandem with undergraduate training at S.C. State, Ford plans to teach seminar courses that may focus on social determinants related to cancer health disparities or applications of health behavior theories. The students will be exposed to world renowned research scientists, will have opportunities to develop their own research projects and will be encouraged to participate in peer-reviewed publications with MUSC investigators.

Ford said she plans to serve as a catalyst to stimulate more shared grant applications between S.C. State and MUSC. She also anticipates opportunities to mentor S.C. State faculty, as well as translating the scientific work of both institutions into ways that add meaning and value to the community.

Since her recruitment to MUSC in 2005, Ford has been awarded more than $27.5 million in extramural grants as a principal or co-investigator, including funding from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Department of Defense and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has published more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and mentored more than 30 individuals, ranging from undergraduate students to faculty.
Business / International

by APO

Distributed by APO on behalf of The Department of Trade and Industry, South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa is committed to increasing trade and addressing the trade imbalance with Zambia. This was said by the Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies ahead of a two-day Outward Trade and Investment Mission to Lusaka, Zambia from 24-25 July 2017. Twenty South African companies funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) will participate in the mission.According to Minister Davies, this mission will assist the department with contributing towards South African's objectives of regional integration by strengthening economic relations between the two countries. The mission also aims to advance the commitments made in December last year by the Heads of State of both countries during the state visit to South Africa by President Edgar Lungu of Zambia, where both countries agreed to deepen bilateral trade and investment relations. Zambia is one of South Africa's top five trade partners in the Southern African Development Community region with total bilateral trade amounting to R33 billion in 2016."Platforms of this nature afford us the opportunity to not only consolidate political ties but also to create the much-needed value-chains, skills and technology transfer and employment generation required to give effect to our economic ambitions, both in South Africa and Zambia," adds Minister Davies.According to Minister Davies, the mission will further enable South African companies to interact with leading private sector entities from agro-processing, agribusiness; infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, energy, services, tourism infrastructure development and mining and capital equipment."The mission will also present an ideal platform for South African companies who would like to export value-added products, and services as well as companies which are looking for joint-venture partnerships in Zambia," adds Minister Davies.The mission will be addressed by the South African High Commissioner to Zambia, Ms Sikose Mji and the Zambian High Commissioner to South Africa, Mr Emmanuel Mwamba, amongst others. The programme for the mission will be comprised of trade and investment seminar, business-to-business meetings, round-table discussions and sector-specific site visits.
Dollar General opens Sandy Run store

SANDY RUN - Dollar General has opened a location in Sandy Run.

The 9,100-square-foot store is located at 1700 Old State Road next door to Sandy Run Outdoors and across from the newly developed Creekside neighborhood. The store held a grand opening recently.

It is open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. It employs 6 to 10 people.

The store includes upgraded architectural features with full hardiplank siding and a brick skirt on all sides.

The store has about 46 parking spaces. It is on about one acre.

Dollar General stores are located across The T&D Region, including in Orangeburg, Branchville, Bowman, Santee, Elloree, St. Matthews and Denmark, according to the companys website.

Dollar General operated 13,601 stores in 44 states as of early May.

Fatz serves 4,000 veterans

GREENVILLE  Fatz Southern Kitchen celebrated the 4th of July by thanking more than 4,000 active military members and veterans with its signature World Famous Calabash Chicken on the house.

Fatz served more than 20,000 free Calabash Chicken tenders to veterans on Independence Day. In its 43 locations across the Southeast, more than 20,000 guests were served overall.

SRS public tours

AIKEN  Registration continues for the Savannah River Site's 2017 Public Tour Program. Seats are available for the tours held twice each month through December at the Department of Energy complex near Aiken.

The driving tours provide a view of the historical and operational facilities at SRS, where plutonium and tritium were produced during the Cold War. Tour participants also learn about the sites current activities and future missions.

The SRS tour program is managed by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) as the sites management and operating contractor.

The tours are free of charge and begin at the Aiken County Applied Research Center, an extension of the SRNL, located off Highway 278, near New Ellenton.

Each tour begins at 12:30 p.m. and typically ends at 4:30 p.m. Seats are filled on a first-come, first-served basis, up to 50 people per tour.

To register for a tour, visit www.srs.gov/general/tour/public.htm or call 803-952-9472.
South Carolina's Freedom of Information Act was strengthened by lawmakers earlier this year. Ensuring speedier access to public information and reducing costs for records were key revisions.

Lawmakers also took an intermediate step to make it more likely a citizen can achieve legal relief via the courts. The amended law provides for expediting cases in circuit court while an FOIA case is still relevant.

Government at all levels should take notice of the changes and the intent to ensure transparency. More likely in getting serious attention, however, is the decision in a recent FOIA case in Newberry County.

Public bodies are allowed to exclude the public from meetings if the subject being discussed meets criteria set forth in the FOIA. These include security, personnel issues such as employee discipline, contract negotiations and economic development.

The law states a public body must provide a specific reason for voting to enter closed (executive) sessions. Too often, public officials ignore the requirement and simply state criteria. Court decisions and attorney generals opinions have held that is not good enough, but how specific is specific continues as a source of controversy.

The new ruling puts public bodies on notice that specific means more than stating that a closed session is being held for personnel matters, or to receive legal advice, or to discuss economic development.

In the Newberry case, Circuit Judge Thomas Russo ruled Newberry County Council went into executive session improperly and must pay for not disclosing to the public what it was discussing behind closed doors.

The case was brought by Columbia attorney Desa Ballard, who was awarded $13,708 in attorney fees and cost. Ballard sued the county for violating FOIA.

The Newberry council repeatedly announced its reasons for executive sessions in such a general way that the specific topic of the actual executive session was hidden... (and) the public had no way of knowing what was being discussed, Russo wrote July 7.

Russos order made it clear that citing broad language from FOIA as a reason for a closed meeting is not sufficient, ordering the county to provide more details before meeting in private.

Ballards legal action arose because she was seeking information about a client whose situation might have been improperly discussed in executive sessions  which points to a further reason why illegally meeting in private can be a problem. Any actions resulting from such a session are subject to legal challenge and potential liability for public officials.

The Newberry ruling is a victory for the people of South Carolina  and the press in its mission of watching over government and informing the people about the officials they elect and those being paid by taxpayers.

But it will not ensure that other public bodies do not continue the practice of merely citing guidelines for closed sessions. There will continue to be a need for formal challenges such as Ballards. And that further reinforces the need for the FOIA change that died in the 2017 legislative session.

Taking cases to circuit court is expensive and not possible for most individuals. Even media find it cost-prohibitive in many instances to hire an attorney and pursue FOIA cases in court.

The solution was creation an Office of Freedom of Information Act Review with the Administrative Law Court to hear direct challenges from citizens or media pertaining to alleged FOIA violations.

But Sen. Margie Bright Matthews of Colleton County for the second year effectively objected to establishment of the office, arguing that people in her district cannot afford to go to Columbia to argue an FOIA matter.

In an ideal world, government would always follow the spirt and letter of the freedom-of-information law. And while rulings such as the one Newberry send a strong message, there must be a legitimate way to challenge government when it fails.

If the FOIA is to be more functionally useful in that regard, giving people a way to seek enforcement of its provisions without spending thousands of dollars in legal fees remains a priority.
March 10 was a sad night in the Cattle Creek community as many hearts felt deep pain as our beloved campground experienced a fire that destroyed 15 tents. Just days following the fire, we gathered under the tabernacle that represents God at the center of all that we face or encounter.

We sang songs of praise and joined hands and hearts with complete faith in God and the blessed assurance that nothing could or would stop the vision of our forefathers to utilize this spiritual heritage and legacy that means so much to our Lord and each of us. After many hours of prayers, sweat and tears, the campground will convene July 23-29 with evening services at 8 p.m.

Having the opportunity to speak at this opening nightly service is a most humbling experience. The highlight of my childhood centered around attending Cattle Creek with loved ones who are forever in my heart and so many of them who were used of God to help develop my faith as a young Christian.

Singing songs like "I know my God is able to carry me through" at Cattle Creek children's hour has meant more now than I could ever explain in this brief editorial. The powerful preaching and teaching from the Word of God and the messages in songs by groups and individuals echo throughout my spiritual journey.

It makes you want to live right to honor God and their memory as well. Please continue to pray and if God so leads you to give. Gifts are still being accepted to offset the cost of the rebuild project. But most of all join with us as at a service as we celebrate knowing our Almighty God who has blessed us beyond what we could ever have imagined.

A charred cross behind the pulpit and tents pointing upward to God testify that "He" is the only way all of this could have happened in such a short span of time. We truly believe and have witnessed again the lesson of Luke 1:37 that teaches "For nothing is impossible with God"!

Please join us as we honor the Lord. And oh yeah, plan a stop by the store and get some homemade punch or sherbert. You won't regret it.

Jerry C. Thompson, formerly of Branchville

Article disrespects deceased woman

I think the article on the front page of the T&D on Friday, July 7, about the identification of a body found in downtown Bamberg was inappropriate. I do not know any of the people in the article involved, but I felt the way the article reported the incident did not show proper respect for the deceased.

The relevant news was that a woman with multiple medical conditions was walking unaccompanied in the heat of the day on June 30 and died without identification. The details surrounding the discovery of her body and trying to identify it treated her as an object, not as a person. It is not news to be printed on the front page of a respectable newspaper. It would fit better on an inside page in the police report.

In the future, I encourage you to evaluate whether the way you report the news treats individuals with respect as persons, or as objects. Is the purpose of your reporting to titillate your readers' interest or to inform?

The article could have been used to discuss the medical dangers of being outside in the heat, especially with a pre-existing condition. Instead, it simply sparked interest in the circuitous route a police investigation in a small town takes.

Carol R. Cannon, Orangeburg

Cobb-Hunter deserves better

Orangeburg Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter is one of the few legislators that say what they mean and mean what they say. She is always strong but calm.

I am writing today because knowing Rep. Cobb-Hunter as I do, it is disappointing that her being assaulted by another representative has been basically swept under the table. I dont know if it is because it was the end of the legislative session or if it was because of misogyny, but I do know that violence against women is a big problem in South Carolina and I would have thought that the speaker would have done a more thorough investigation.

Women face many more challenges when running for office and being in leadership positions. When an officer has to come between legislators because one is screaming at the other, that is verbal assault; grabbing and pushing is physical assault. We deserve better than the investigation that Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter got.

Erin McKee

SC AFL-CIO President

Swansea
IFA expanding into Berkeley

COLUMBIA  IFA, a direct supplier of propshafts for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, is constructing a new manufacturing and distribution facility in Berkeley County. The development represents $69 million of capital investment and is projected to create more than 120 new jobs in the coming years.

As one of the largest manufacturers of propshafts in the world, IFA assembles approximately two million state-of-the-art propshafts every year in Ladson, S.C. The company was established in 2002 and currently employs more than 600 people in the United States, serving many of the largest global automobile manufacturers.

As a first step toward a future consolidated site, IFA will be constructing a new 234,000-square-foot facility at 479 Trade Center Parkway in Summerville, S.C. This new building will enable IFA to add constant-velocity joint (CVJ) manufacturing to its North American business portfolio. Hiring for the new positions is projected to begin in the second quarter of 2018.

Man charged with filing false report

MYRTLE BEACH (AP)  Authorities in Myrtle Beach have charged a man with making a false police report saying he was robbed of $20,000.

The Sun News reports the man told police Friday he was robbed at gunpoint after picking up a man who needed a ride to a shelter. The driver said a bag of money from his job was taken.

But Myrtle Beach Police Lt. Joey Crosby says evidence showed the driver wasn't in the area where he said the robbery occurred. Meanwhile his employer told authorities money was missing from bank deposits for several weeks.

Crosby said Frederick Baker, 49, is charged with filing a false report. Crosby said Baker concocted the robbery story to explain why his employer's money was missing.

Coroner ID's man found in ditch

COLUMBIA (AP)  Authorities say a man whose body was found in a ditch on the side of a busy South Carolina interstate was hit by a car about two weeks ago.

Richland County Coroner Gary Wats has identified the man as 40-year-old Craig Antoine Anderson. Watts says Anderson was likely hit July 6 or 7 and died from those injuries.

Anderson's body was found Wednesday by construction crews surveying an area along Interstate 77. Watts says Anderson's family had reported him missing, and his car was found nearby.

The South Carolina Highway Patrol is investigating.

Teen dies while kayaking

KERSHAW (AP)  A teenager has died while kayaking as part of a summer camp excursion on a South Carolina lake.

Authorities tell media outlets rescue crews were called to a recreation area at Lake Wateree at around 1:30 Thursday. About an hour and a half later, the Kershaw County Coroner's Office says investigators found the body of 15-year-old Muhammad Abdul-Qawee.

Authorities say the teen had been in a double kayak with someone else when it flipped over. The boy had been wearing a flotation device, but it came off.

The outing was part of a field trip put on by the Mission Hope Foundation Summer Camp. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources is investigating the death.
Oracle plans to hire announces 1,000 new sales representatives in Europe, Middle East and Africa under the Change Happens Here to support the growth of Oracles cloud computing business.



The move comes on the back of the company recently posting record financial results with total cloud revenue up 58 per cent. Oracle is now the fastest growing scaled cloud company and is predicting its cloud business will accelerate into hyper-growth in the current year.



Aimed at people from diverse backgrounds and profiles with between two to six years work experience, currently in Human Resources, Marketing, Recruitment, Finance, Supply Chain or Sales roles, Oracle will recruit candidates with a strong sense of personal drive and the ability to successfully sell some of the worlds most exciting cloud technologies.



Candidates can apply immediately for a range of positions throughout EMEA, by visiting the Change Happens Here page  oracle.com/experience. Oracle is looking for graduate level candidates who have a genuine interest in technology and the passion for the transformation cloud computing can bring to enterprises.



Tino Scholman, VP of Oracle Cloud in the EMEA region, said: Our cloud business is growing at incredible rates, so now is the right time to bring in a new generation of talent to our company. We are looking to hire relationship focused people who are self-motivated and smart, who thrive for business transformation for our customers and love delivering great results. Diversity is one of the cornerstones of the unique Oracle culture.



We want to offer 1,000 talented individuals the opportunity to change their career for the better, to access the best possible training and development, as well as the chance to accelerate their career within the fastest growing cloud company at the centre of a generational shift to digital enablement.  TradeArabia News Service
Qatars Special Economic Zones Company (Manateq) is set to announce huge business and investment opportunities for private companies, including for those keen to invest in the countrys booming hospitality and logistics industries, said a report.



Manateq is the state-backed company responsible for overseeing the development of economic zones, industrial parks and warehouse complexes across the country.



Manateq is the leading developer and operator of these special economic zones, which include Ras Bufonta economic zone (spread over an area of 4.01 sq km) near the iconic Hamad International Airport (HIA), and Um Alhoul (in an area of 34 sq km), which is strategically located adjacent to Hamad Port, the countrys dominant gateway for imports and exports.



The Um Alhoul SEZ for the water front projects development is to be announced by the first quarter of 2018, Fahad Rashid Al Kaabi, CEO of Manateq, was quoted as saying in a Peninsula Qatar report.



He added that like Ras Bufontas, Um Alhoul also have water front. The company intends to develop hotels and residential apartments there aswell, which will serve like businesses and holiday facilities.



He said that the company are trying to attract different types of investors, which will be announced by the first quarters of 2018.



Al Kaabi added: We are working to develop the basic infrastructure, such as electricity and water in these economic zones, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2018. Soon we will invite local as well as international businesses and developers to invest in these ambitious projects.



Manateq recently unveiled the signing of a series of landmark deals with private investors, to the tune of about QR1 billion ($274.6 million), for the development of several hotels, hotel apartments and residential buildings in the Ras Bufontas SEZ. And similar deals are to be signed with more local and international investors in the coming days, added the report.
The Opec Board of Governors has confirmed the appointment of Saudi Arabia's Dr Ayed S Al-Qahtani as the new director of Research Division.



The board also appointed new heads for the Energy Studies and Petroleum Studies departments.



Dr. Al-Qahtani has been advisor to Saudi Arabias Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, and current Opec Conference president, Eng. Khalid A. Al-Falih, since July 2016. He had previously led Saudi Aramco's Global Economic & Energy Outlook. He has also formerly served as senior project manager for global energy scenarios at the World Energy Council and the vice-chair of the industry advisory committee of the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum.



The previous incumbent in the poisition was Dr Omar S Abdul-Hamid, also from Saudi Arabia.



Dr Abderrezak Benyoucef has been appointed as the new head, Energy Studies Department. He hails from Algeria and has been acting director of studies and knowledge management, Sonatrach/Algerian Petroleum Institute (API), since November 2015.



Behrooz Baikalizadeh has been appointed as the new head, Petroleum Studies Department. Baikalizadeh, from Iran, has been general manager, Opec and International Energy Fora, and his countrys Opec national representative, since June 2016. He had previously held a number of positions at the Ministry of Petroleum.



Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo, Opec Secretary General, welcomed the new appointments and also praised the commitment and dedication of their predecessors in office.



The Vienna-based Opec Secretariat currently has 133 staff, comprising 42 nationalities. - TradeArabia News Service
The market for drones in the GCC is expected to reach $1.5 billion by 2022, presenting a massive opportunity for regional telecom operators, according to Strategy&, formerly Booz & Company, and part of the PwC network.



By leveraging their capabilities and resources, these companies can play a central role in the development of the regional drone industry.



Originally created for military purposes, the usage of drones in the commercial space has increased significantly in recent years. There are several types of drone-powered solutions depending on the purpose.



While being beneficial to a variety of sectors, telecom operators are uniquely placed to capitalize on the development of the drone industry in the GCC.



Telecom operators can leverage their existing capabilities and resources to offer advanced drone solutions to other sectors, said Jad Hajj, partner with Strategy& Middle East.



For example, with their extensive tower networks, they are able to provide constant connectivity which is crucial for data transfer. They have access to advanced cloud technologies which can be used for data storage, and are equipped with world-class data processing systems to analyse information collected by the drones. As the drone industry grows, it is an obvious choice for telecom operators to seize this opportunity, given its potential, he added.



Most importantly, as telecom operators reinvent themselves as digitization players, they are further developing solid capabilities in IoT, big data, and analytics. As a result, Strategy& outlines two specific opportunities that they should focus on.



First, they can offer drone-powered solutions to all other industries by building partnerships in areas related to drone procurement (providing the physical device), drone operations (piloting the drone), data processing (analyzing the collected aerial data by using qualified experts) and data delivery (using extensive cloud platform capabilities to store, manage, and deliver data to clients).

The second opportunity for telecom operators involves establishing a drone traffic control centre (DTCC) for governments.



Ramzi Khoury, principal with Strategy& Middle East, said: Airspace regulators are aware of the growth of drone technology, and are searching for balance between public safety and economic efficiency. Progress of drone legislation and regulation in the GCC is uneven, and therefore the main purpose of the drone traffic control centre is to serve as a centralized authority to manage drone traffic and ensure regulation is followed.



Telecom operators can cooperate with these regulators to generate revenue, reinforce their position as providers of drone solutions, or streamline approvals and licensing processes.



This concept has begun to be implemented regionally, with the UAEs General Civil Aviation Authority working with a technology vendor to establish a drone traffic control centre as of November 2016.



Micha Mazur, partner with PwC Poland and leader of Drone Powered Solutions, a dedicated centre of excellence for drone technology at PwC, said: Telecom operators need a tailored strategy and a clear implementation roadmap to turn this opportunity into a success.



This includes regularly engaging with regulators to understand requirements and obtain necessary permissions, analyzing the size and potential of the drone industry and what it can really offer, identifying an optimal operating model, and finally enhancing internal capabilities and technical expertise to run the drone services. By doing so, telecom operators will be well positioned to capitalize on the unique opportunities presented by the promising drones industry, he concluded.  TradeArabia News Service
The Thai tourism industry is to forge stronger links with the kingdoms agriculture economy by promoting the culinary delights of the Thai cuisine, Tourism Authority of Thailand Governor Yuthasak Supasorn has said.



Addressing more than 500 tourism industry executives at the summary session of the TAT Action Plan (TATAP) 2018, the Governor said this linkage would go long way towards creating jobs and prosperity in both of Thailands leading economic sectors.



The Governor said: This is a proactive approach under which TAT wants to use Thai food as its main product. Encouraging both Thai and foreign tourists to enjoy Thai food, especially home-grown products, not only increases the average expenditure per visitor, but also generates downstream benefits for suppliers of culinary ingredients and equipment. Ultimately, our farmer brothers will be the primary beneficiaries of the governments objectives.

He said the strategy also fits in with the marketing slogan of promoting a 'Unique Thai Local Experience' under the Thailand 4.0 concept.



Yuthasak added: The importance of Thai food is not only limited to being a product that contributes to economic growth, nor is it just because Thai food is a well-known global product because of its excellent taste. In fact, the wonders of Thai food can be traced back to the very livelihoods of the Thai people and wisdom of our ancestors. Thai food also tells great stories of the countrys history, culture and heritage.



TAT is ready to make everyone see the value of Thai food. For the Thai people, Thai food is more than just a means of filling the stomach, but a source of national pride.



He said the culinary delights of each province would also be highlighted under the Amazing G-Link programme, an extension of The Link project, which is designed to promote secondary provinces and decongest the well-established, popular destinations.



The Governor said that research showed that visitors are keen to save on airfares and accommodation but are happy to spend on food and beverage.



Agriculture has long been a bedrock economic sector for Thailand, one of the worlds leading rice exporters. Today, tourism is seen as a more promising sunrise industry, and an important source of jobs and income distribution.

The TATAP 2018 is a comprehensive strategy designed to maintain a strong flow of visitors in a highly competitive environment. Its overarching slogan is to ensure that Thailand remains a preferred destination and delivers a quality product, thus boosting the average length of stay, expenditure and repeat visitation.



The Governor also announced that in 2018, TAT will open offices in Toronto, Canada and Sao Paulo, Brazil, as well as join the Sao Paulo Fashion Week to present Thai designers at the global level.



He also noted that 2018 would get off to a good start with Thailand hosting the ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF) in January in Chiang Mai. This will help reinforce Thailands image as a hub of intra-ASEAN Connectivity and promote more intra-ASEAN travel.



Overall, the marketing strategy is designed to ensure that the Thai brand image remains strong in a highly competitive environment. It will also become more niche-market oriented with highly focused campaigns targeted at specific demographic and customer segments in specific markets at specific periods. - TradeArabia News Service


The first bust that Tom Gallagher witnessed was in North Dakota more than 30 years ago. The housing market fell apart.

Families hunkered down, first turning to unemployment and food assistance programs. Then they left.

Neighboring Wyoming was suffering from the same sickness: an oil bust in an oil-dependent economy.

Wyoming is once again dealing with the fallout from low energy prices, and over the last few years the bombardment has been staggering. Many have left the Cowboy State for greener pastures, and how many will come back is unknown.

Everybody wants to know if we are done with the recession in this state, said Gallagher, manager of the Research and Planning Division of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. We dont know.

Economists in the state recently revealed just how many people disappeared from the payrolls during the states economic decline from 2014 to 2016.

It was about 25,000, according to Research and Plannings report.

At the end of 2016, 112,000 people had disappeared from Wyomings workforce after the price of crude went sour, coal companies laid off miners and natural gas prices stagnated. Fewer than 88,000 came in.

***





A net loss of about 25,000 working people is significant in a small state like Wyoming, where the average monthly employment at the end of 2016 was only 267,000 people, and there are reasons to believe that the bounce back this time around wont be a steady increase.

The loss of workers is similar to the evaporation of jobs during the coal bed methane bust, the most recent swift downturn in Wyomings economy.

Between 2008 and 2010, the state had a net loss of about 30,000 workers.

When we went through the coal bed methane bust, a lot of these people went on unemployment insurance and virtually overwhelmed the system, he said. This was a time when there was a national recession, so there was nowhere to go.

Cinching your belt and finding other work in the state was, for many, the only option.

The difference between these two time periods is now, the economy is not in a national recession, he said. There are places to go.

From diversified economies like Colorado to bustling energy bastions in the Dakotas, Oklahoma or Texas, workers have options.

But the reasons people stay or come back are complicated.

Why would you stay here if you dont have a job? Gallagher said.

Some might have family in Wyoming or other personal ties that would draw them back if the oil and gas industry picks up.

Not all of the missing people on Gallaghers charts have deep ties here. Some may have earned a wage in Wyoming at some point and are counted on the payroll but arent necessarily residents of the state. For example, about one-third of Wyomings construction workforce, a sizable part of the states jobs picture, lives out of state, he said.

There are some job groups that didnt bleed workers in the downturn, and some demographics that dont appear to budge when the economy slides.

Most of the losses Wyoming has suffered are young men. Professional women represent a stable workforce, though their average wages are much lower, Gallagher said.

***





The rebound of the lost workers in the Cowboy State as things improve, or at least remain stable, has its challenges.

According to Jim Robinson of the Wyoming Economic Analysis Division the states labor market is in recovery mode.

The job gap has shrunk since this time last year.

Jobless claims in the mining sector, which includes oil and gas, are down by 80 percent compared with May of last year  the midpoint in a terrible year for oil, gas and coal.

The bleed of high-paying jobs in places like Campbell County, home to the states largest coal mines and a number of producing oil and gas plays, has tapered off.

Oil and gas jobs are up by 1,700 from a year ago, according to the economic analysis count. Those numbers are concurrent with the increase in drilling activity. The number of oil and gas rigs drilling in the state reached 25 in June, up from seven the year before.

From lease sales to applications with state regulators to drill in Wyoming, operators are clearly hoping to get back to business. Those companies will need workers.

However, the contraction in the job market may linger.

For coal jobs, only about 300 people have returned from a loss of 1,000 between 2014 and 2016, according to the Wyoming Mining Association.

As the most obvious, and most dramatic, impacts of a sudden downturn taper off, the gap in employment continues to hit local coffers.

Campbell County lost $1 billion of its overall value between 2015 and 2016  indicative of decreased spending by the biggest coal company to the average family. Sales and use taxes were down nearly $20 million over the last fiscal year, according to the economic analysis division.

The coal jobs that have evaporated in the region since the bust means roughly $11 million in salaries is gone from the local economy, said Gallagher, from the research and planning department.

Thats money not spent on car repairs, haircuts, groceries, he said. This is something thats not terribly visible. Its something that quietly works its way through the system. Its a fair amount of money.
 

 :      

  ,         ,       .
Entertainment / Movies

by Tidi Kwidini

From open mic nights to the big screen, multi-talented Zimbabwean born word poet, Munnya Usuwana has taken a giant leap and will star in upcoming film, Love Triangle premiering next month in London.Love Triangle, a Nigeria-Zimbabwe production features award winning Nollywood actors Alex Ekubo and Daniel Lloyd.Like a number of poets and rappers such as Saul Williams and Common, who have transitioned into the film world, Usuwana landed the role after impressing several producers at a film premiere, where he was invited to perform in March this year."This role was something I never expected in a million years," Usuwana said."There were a number of high profile Nigerian producers at the premiere in March, who were all very impressed by my wordplay performance and in May, one of them gave me a call and offered me a role alongside renowned actor Alex Ekubo," added Usuwana.Love Triangle follows the complex love story of protagonist, Razor, played by Usuwana, a very intellectual fraudster who is embroiled in a world of dishonesty and corruption."I play a very obnoxious, deceitful and illusive character, who will stop at nothing to acquire wealth and, will even go to great lengths, using the people that I love, to get what I want," he said.Thrust into the limelight at a young age, Munnya first performed at a church conference and this later inspired him to start writing and sharing his poetry publicly."One of the leaders in my church heard me reciting something and was amazed at the depth and sincerity of my poetry and wanted the world to hear what I had to say," said Usuwana."The onset of my journey was interesting. I never thought of myself as a writer, let alone a poet but, after that first encounter at a church conference, I found my passion and my voice, and I have never looked back."Munnya's first poem Andrew was written in 2012 and was later filmed as a video in 2014.The award winning artist has since performed at several prestigious events across England,including Havant Literary Festival, Petersfield Write Angle Poetry and Music Cabaret, BBC Radio Leicester and the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards.He recently performed at a dinner in honour of legendary musician, Oliver Mtukudzi's 65th birthday and his illustrious career that spans 40 years - dedicating a special poem to the music icon titled, How did you do it?Currently working on numeorus projects, he plans to host an evening of poetry towards the end of the year.Directed by award-winning film director Nelson Spyke, Love Triangle will premiere at the Odeon Imax in Greenwich, London on the 4th of August.Meanwhile, tickets are still available with early bird tickets being sold at a discounted rate of 20. VIP tickets are 100 and can be purchased exclusively from https://www.eventbrite.com/e/love-triangle-tickets-35168511966 For more information contact +44 7743 424314
It wasnt one event in the outdoors that saved Andrew Collins life.

It was when the Iraq combat veteran realized every time he felt lost, or things darkened, or the noise grew louder in his head, he grabbed his backpack or fishing rod and headed outside.

The only way I could find some sense of normal, he said.

Call it what you will: outdoor therapy, wilderness healing or just plain recreation. But for Collins, the power of being outdoors, of working through problems with other veterans under sun and in fresh air, has kept him from taking his own life.

The airborne infantry veteran in Lander spent six years on active duty in the Army, with two deployments in Iraq. He lost six friends in the war, and his squad leader since he came back home. In 2012, he tried to kill himself. Doctors had him on 17 pills a day, and in 2014 decided he needed a change.

I began to find other ways to deal with the pain. Being outdoors helped me mentally. I found value in the outdoors and that is drawing back to as a kid, said Collins, who grew up in Idaho. It allows a sense of peace, a sense of calm.

Collins isnt alone in his struggles. Each year, about 7,300 veterans commit suicide in the United States. Reasons are varied, complex and nuanced, but Collins and C. Michael Fairman know what can help: communication, community awareness and camaraderie based in and around the outdoors.

And Saturday, Collins will join Fairman and a handful of other veterans and volunteers to climb Gannett Peak, Wyomings highest summit, as part of a program called Summit for Soldiers.

Fairman co-founded Summit for Soldiers formally in 2014 as a way to build communities of veterans and non-veterans across the country. But its roots are simpler: He likes to climb.

The Ohio resident and climber served as a Navy Corpsman for 19 years and came back home with a mixture of bipolar, depression and PTSD.

In 2012, after a suicide attempt, he realized he needed to reclaim his life, and become, as he describes it, re-abled. He also wanted to show other veterans what they can do with renewed purpose.

On a climb up Mount Rainier in 2008, Fairman began noticing the healing power of not just the outdoors but working as a team to tackle challenges outside. When he returned to Rainier in 2013, he realized the full force of what the climbing missions could be.

So he began writing names of fellow veterans he knew or others knew who died of suicide on a flag, and to raise awareness he started carrying that flag to the highest summits in all 50 states. At the same time, he vowed to climb the seven summits  the highest points on each continent.

He reached the top of Kilimanjaro in 2014, and on May 19, 2016, he carried his flag on the top of the world.

Then his goal changed from a personal mission to a rapidly expanding nonprofit.

Its about activity and reconnecting. As veterans we will sit back and ask 'Are you a veteran, and are you a combat veteran?,' but outdoor activity neutralizes everything, he said. It starts as a distraction. You focus on the safety of the climb  We were a team in the military, and we are working as a team again.

He still plans to reach the top of each peak in every state -- he has more than half done now -- but hes also focused on building Summit for Soldiers chapters in more states. The chapters are made of veterans and local groups like the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

This kind of work is really at the heart of our mission and is an essential part of the Wyoming Outdoor Councils origins, said Gary Wilmot, executive director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council. Tom Bell came back from World War II an incredibly wounded man, both physically and spiritually, and he went out into the public lands around Lander, into the Red Desert, into the mountains, to heal. This experience was profound for him, and its one of the reasons he was driven to create the Wyoming Outdoor Council  to protect these public lands so future generations could experience them and benefit from them, too.

Collins, the Lander veteran, is going along on the Gannett Peak trip, and in September, he plans to move to Kentucky to work at the Life Adventure Center to help augment what the center has, learn different approaches that are based around the outdoors and to gain insight into programs that help veterans.

But hell return to Wyoming and its mountains and rivers and rocks. And he wants to continue working with veterans and the outdoors.

I am drawn to Wyoming for the access to the outdoors. The Wind Rivers less than 20 miles away and climbing less than 10 miles away, he said. But also the appreciation of veterans. I think there is a sense of pride for veterans in Wyoming.

I want to try to share with other veterans how I was able to move on and then ultimately enjoy the lands we were sworn to defend.
RAWLINS  Inmates peered from their cells through slender windows as the prisons facilities manager pointed to spiderweb cracks in the glass, the same glass that separates the prisoners common area from the hallway and the hallway from the guards control room.

In an activity room just down the hall, the manager, Jeff Heier, pointed out a large gap where a wall is splitting. He stuck his hand inside to show how wide it had become and pulled out a chunk of concrete, sharp on the edges.

Anything can be a weapon, remarked Major Ethan Remacle, who leads the prisons security.

Jagged rocks are just one of the security concerns at the states only high-security correctional facility as buildings slowly shift on unstable soils. Doors dont always latch. At least one office is no longer occupied due to safety concerns. Alarms dont always ring when an emergency door is breached. Telephone lines from command rooms are severed or crushed as the buildings move. In just one housing unit, 74 panes of glass are cracking. Leaks in the electrical room  which supplies power to the entire facility  are increasingly concerning. Inch-wide cracks in floors and walls become good spots to hide contraband.

Every day, staff at the Wyoming State Penitentiary make adjustments to keep the 16-year-old facility operational and safe for its employees and the 690 inmates who live there.

They adjust latches and shave doors, which hang crooked in their frames. They prop up ceilings. They build small ramps when the gap between one floor and the next becomes too large. They repair the wiring that powers the barred sliding doors. They reapply sealant as its sucked into voids between separating floors and walls.

The prison is making repairs as each immediate need presents itself, said Warden Michael Pacheco. Every area of the institution has issues, though some are worse than others.

The building is safe, he said. But concerns about security are growing. The Department of Corrections now looks to lawmakers to decide whats to be done.

We will keep that thing operational until we cant anymore, Pacheco told reporters after a tour of the prison Monday. But a decision has to be made.

An old issue

Its not the first time the state has dealt with structural concerns at its largest prison.

Within sight of the current prison is its predecessor, a complex of squat, tan buildings surrounded by overgrown bushes. The Department of Corrections was forced to abandon the previous structure, called the North Facility, after only 20 years when it became unsafe due to a variety of structural issues, including poor drainage and soils that swell and shrink in response to moisture.

State government officials decided to then build the new prison a quarter of a mile away. A 1997 report on the soils at the prospective site noted that the site appears suitable for proposed construction but expansive bedrock and soils will require particular attention in the design and construction, according to a state summary of the construction.

Inmates first moved into the main building of the prison in 2001, though construction on additional buildings continued until 2009. The prison was supposed to last at least 50 years. After only a few, however, facility staff started to notice that something wasnt right.

First, they noticed cracked windows. Then they discovered fissures on the exteriors and in the gym. The prison has been monitored, evaluated and repaired continuously since 2011. The staff maintains a spreadsheet of all the issues as well as photos tracking the progress. When asked on Monday how big the spreadsheet is, staff members simply laughed.

Along with daily maintenance to walls, windows and doors, corrections staff members have focused on repairs to two areas: the gym and the electrical room.

A temporary plywood wall blocked off a section of the gym Monday. Two-by-fours held up a wall in one of the corners, where a level duct-taped to the wall continued to monitor shifts. Cracks spidered away from the gap in the wall, each marked by the exact time they were noticed. In once case, a fissure expanded more than a foot in a six-minute period.

We were watching them move at one point, Heier said.

A sturdy pole held up the ceiling outside the electrical room, which directs power to the entire facility. Previously, one side of a heavy beam crashed through that area of the ceiling because the cinderblocks that held it werent properly constructed to hold its weight. Chunks of concrete weighing up to 4 pounds fell with the beam, staff said.

As the ceiling inside the electrical room shifts, fireproofing material continues to crack and fall. Steel beams that cross the space near the ceiling have bowed under the pressure. The roof occasionally leaks  an obvious hazard in a room of electrical equipment. If the electrical equipment were compromised, all power would be lost. Doors wouldnt open. Cooking appliances wouldnt work. Feeds from security cameras would go dark.

We would lose everything if we lost this room, Heier said.

Competing proposals

To prevent that catastrophe, lawmakers authorized $7 million in 2016 for immediate repairs, including work on the gym and the electrical room, which is being reconstructed in a separate prefabricated building outside of the facility.

But lawmakers acted less swiftly when confronted with the real questions: To rebuild or to repair? And if repairs are the right choice, how much are they willing to spend?

Those are tough questions at a time when revenue shortages caused by downturns in the energy sector are forcing the state to eliminate services and staff. And so, lawmakers looked to the experts.

In December 2014, the state asked an engineering firm, Martin/Martin Wyoming, to investigate the issues at the prison and estimate costs for rebuilding or repairs. For more than a year, the firms engineers reviewed documents and evaluated the facility. A task force created to review the issues at the prison recommended that lawmakers during the 2017 legislative session approve $87 million in repairs as outlined by Martin/Martin.

Legislators instead ordered a review of the Martin/Martin report, created a savings account for a future decision and authorized up to $15 million in spending from the rainy day fund for emergency repairs. The Department of Corrections also signed a contract with a private prison company that would provide housing for inmates should they be forced out of the prison.

Martin/Martin found that the structural issues are caused by primarily unstable soils that swell and shrink in response to moisture. The firm proposed four options, including rebuilding the prison at a new site, but legislators focused on one: an $87 million package of extensive repairs expected to keep the facility operational for the remainder of its 50-year lifespan.

Its not intended to be a Band-Aid, John Lund, the lead engineer on the project, told members of the Joint Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.

Lund also said he personally believed the best option was to rebuild the prison at a different site. A construction company that has been working on projects at the prison estimated a new prison would cost about $173 million to construct, not including the price of the land.

But those at the second engineering firm, WJE Associates, came away with a different diagnosis during their two-month review  and a cheaper solution.

According to the firms report, the structural movements at the South Facility, where most inmates live, are caused by uplifts farther beneath the surface that are slowing and could stop in the near future.

Their recommended repairs are far less extensive than those proposed by Martin/Martin and cost only $7.5 million.

Both firms, however, agreed on one issue. The prisons drainage and grading issues need to be addressed immediately. The ground outside the facilities slopes toward the buildings, sending water into, instead of away from, the area.

The one area where we are absolutely in agreement, where we are in lockstep, is that water is the enemy, said one of WJEs engineers.

The members of Joint Appropriations appeared to take that to heart when they decided Tuesday to recommend to Gov. Matt Mead that he approve funding to fix the facilitys drainage and grading as well as immediate repairs to damaged doors and glass panes. To do so, they will combine recommendations from both WJE Associates and Martin/Martin.

This is a mechanism to take care of the immediate problems, said Rep. Bob Nicholas, R-Cheyenne, who chairs the committee. We may be back here doing this again next year.

Broader issues

Department of Corrections Director Bob Lampert said Thursday that the decision will allow the prison to remain safe and operational for the time being.

If our repair and mitigation efforts prove inadequate in the long-run, the Legislature will then have to consider either funding a more aggressive level of mitigation for the existing facility or paying for a replacement facility in Rawlins, he said in an emailed statement.

But he reminded lawmakers Tuesday that he cant afford to lose a prison bed due to a growing number of people in the states corrections system.

Incarceration rates in Wyoming have risen drastically in the past few decades  from 114 people incarcerated for every 100,000 residents in 1980 to 407 people in 2016, Lampert told legislators.

In the same period, he said, the number of reported crimes has dropped by nearly half. But average sentence lengths have grown, as have average lengths of stay in prisons. By 2020, he estimates that the states five correctional facilities will be at capacity.

Despite the growth, Mead has asked the department to make budget cuts, which ultimately meant staff cuts from the state penitentiary, the freeze of other positions throughout the agency and reduced funding for substance abuse treatment programs. A rising percentage of probationers and parolees are becoming incarcerated for violations involving drugs and alcohol, he said.

None of the best practice solutions to substance abuse treatment are being provided, he said.

Lampert presented the Joint Appropriations Committee with two options: pay for more beds or expand alternative sentencing options and improve services that keep probationers and parolees from incarceration.

Unless public policy changes ... were going to have to be ready to build more beds, he said.

The continuous maintenance at the penitentiary has also stressed limited staff resources. The prison currently pays a staff of 308  substantially less than the 427 funded positions at the facility in 2003.

Not only are staff members spending their days making repairs, but they also have to allocate employees to monitor and protect contract construction workers. As of May 31, he had spent $2.4 million in overtime pay for workers at the prison  about $448,000 more than was budgeted to last the entire year.

Im not an alarmist, but staffing is becoming a more critical issue than some of the repairs to the building, he said.

The unanswered question

One question hovers over the controversy: Whos to blame?

The Wyoming Attorney Generals Office is investigating the construction and design of the facility to see if any of the contractors are liable. Attorney General Peter Michael said Friday that his office continues to investigate potential claim issues regarding the prison. He declined to provide and updates on the process, citing attorney/client privilege. Lampert previously told lawmakers that the prison wasnt constructed exactly to design.

Legislators attempted to address the issue at the meeting Tuesday. One asked Lund, the engineer from Martin/Martin, who made the decisions that fated the prison.

Ive not really found a clear answer to that, Lund said.

He said it could have happened when management of the project was outsourced to a private company.

It appears there was an incentive for the third party to keep costs down and expedite construction, Lund said. I think the state lost some oversight when they did that.

It also appears that some recommendations to mitigate that movement were not followed during construction, according to the firms report. For example, the firm found that builders failed to correctly install some concrete slabs and didnt construct critical empty spaces that the expanding soils could fill without impacting the structures. The report also noted that in some cases the recommended solutions were simply not pursued.

Structurally-supported ground level floors were discussed in the geotechnical report, but were not selected for use at the WSP, the report states. Properly designed and constructed structural ground level floors would have greatly reduced or eliminated the damage from floor slab movement.

Regardless of faults in design or construction, Lund said, the state knew all along the dangers the site posed.

The risks of movement at this site were pretty clear when it was built, Lund said. It was a risk that was taken that hasnt turned out well for the state.
Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems is working to pack more of its Tomahawk cruise missiles into U.S. submarines, just in time to avert a potentially large gap in the fleets arsenal.

Raytheon is helping General Dynamics Electric Boat division develop a new payload module for future Virginia-class fast-attack submarines that will triple the number of Tomahawks the subs can carry.

Made in Tucson and costing about $1.5 million per copy, the Tomahawk is the Navys main conventional deep-strike weapon and is fired by surface ships and submarines to destroy high-value targets with lethal precision.

The nations current fleet of 13 Virginia-class nuclear-powered subs features 12 individual vertical launch tubes, each with its own little door holding one Tomahawk, said David Adams, senior Tomahawk program manager for Raytheon Missile Systems.

Theyve found that its expensive, its harder to maintain that way, Adams said.

Electric Boat and Raytheon developed a design to replace those individual launchers with two larger launch tubes, each holding six Tomahawks and potentially larger weapons or undersea vehicles.

This Virginia payload tube was an evolution to that  they said, hey, lets create a six-pack of Tomahawks that would fit in a larger diameter (launcher), Adams said.

The new launcher design takes up less space, uses less material and has some operational advantages as well, he said.

The new launch tubes are going into the Virginia-class Block III submarines, four of eight of which have been delivered.

Last week, the U.S. Navy test-fired two Tomahawks for the first time from the new launch tubes on the Virginia-class fast-attack sub USS North Dakota, the first Block III submarine built.

But bigger things are planned for the future versions of the Virginia class.

For the Virginia Block V versions and beyond, Electric Boat and Raytheon are developing a new mid-hull missile module that will also add four of the larger launch tubes  each capable of carrying seven Tomahawks.

That will increase the number of launch-ready Tomahawks the subs can carry from 12 to 40 missiles.

While today, that would greatly increase the Navys Tomahawk launch capacity, the increase will come just in time to replace Tomahawks expected to be lost because of the planned retirement of another type of U.S. submarine.

Starting in the 2020s, the Navy plans to start retiring four large Ohio-class guided-missile submarines  the largest in the U.S. fleet  each able to fire up to 154 Tomahawk missiles.

The four Ohio-class subs  the USS Ohio, USS Michigan, USS Florida and USS Georgia  were originally nuclear-armed ballistic missile subs before being converted to conventionally armed guided-missile subs in the 2000s. (All Tomahawks are conventionally armed since the nuclear version was phased out.)

The Ohio-class submarines are scheduled to be replaced by a new ballistic-missile sub, the Columbia Class, starting around 2031. But in the meantime, the newer Virginia submarines will take up most of the slack.

The Virginia class is helping replace that (Tomahawk capacity), with an eye toward the loss of those Ohio-class subs, and the Columbias which will be replacing those Ohios pretty much on a one-for-one basis, Adams said.

The Columbia class will have pretty substantial capacity of Tomahawk-capable missile tubes, he said, adding that by the time the Ohios retire, there will be a small net decrease in Tomahawk capacity.

While work on the Virginia Tomahawk upgrades is led by Electric Boat and doesnt represent a big contract opportunity for Raytheon, its important work that continues a tradition of constant technology evolution for the Tomahawk, which has been fired in combat more than 2,300 times.

Tomahawk is a very dynamic program with evolution and development in multiple dimensions, and some are in the weapon itself and some have to do with the platforms where were deployed, Adams said.

With latest Tomahawk Block IV, the Navy and Raytheon have improved the weapons communications and navigation capabilities, while adding a multi-mode seeker so it can hit high-value moving targets at sea.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some July 23 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.
How is Veronica today? a smiling Justice of the Peace Keith Bee, of the county Consolidated Justice Court, asked in a soft voice in his courtroom.

Veronica Molina said she was doing fine, but less than five minutes later she felt even better, like a big weight has been lifted off my chest. I can breathe, she said after her hearing.

Molina had come to the special after-hours court event July 11 with an outstanding warrant for failing to appear on a 2014 driving on a suspended license charge, meaning she was subject to a disruptive and expensive booking at the Pima County jail if she was stopped by a law enforcement officer. She left without that worry, as well as with manageable fines and a path to recouping her drivers license.

Im glad to just get this fully taken care of and out of the way, she said. Its an immense sense of relief.

Several floors down, dozens of people were waiting in a line snaking far out of the waiting room, which itself was packed with people like Molina. Unlike similar events held over the last year, this was the first at which both Consolidated and City Court staffs were present, making it easier for people who are unsure which court issued their warrant.

Such special warrant-resolution events, coupled with longer-standing efforts at both city and county courts have helped drive the number of outstanding warrants to their lowest levels in years.

As of July 12, there were 16,809 active warrants out of Consolidated Court, the lowest figure since at least June 2009, according to data provided by interim administrator Micci Tilton. That figure reached a comparably low figure of 17,117 in the summer of 2012 before sharply rising to over 23,000 three years later.

At City Court, active warrants were at 37,436 in late June 2016, at least an 11-year low and down from sustained highs between 65,000 and 67,000 from 2005 to 2010, according to data provided by Chris Hale, the courts administrator.

A more current figure, which would have included any results from a number of new warrant-resolution events, was not available Friday. The largest part of that reduction came from administratively quashing old warrants and cases in collaboration with the City Attorneys Office between 2010 and 2013, according to Hale.

At Consolidated Justice Court, a similar effort in recent years resulted in the quashing of more than 5,000 warrants and cases, which were limited to older incidents and excluded DUI or domestic-violence charges. Some warrants were nearly 3 decades old.

The citys longstanding walk-in Warrant Resolution Court has also taken a big bite, with between 300 and 450 warrants quashed monthly over the current fiscal year. A recently revamped walk-in court at Consolidated Court has resolved between 83 and 141 warrants monthly since January.

However, in Tiltons court, the warrant-resolution programs implemented in the last year are what have made the difference between static warrant levels and a steady decline, she said. Roughly 1,000 warrants were quashed between June 2016 and May at such events and have contributed to net warrant reductions of between 80 and 200 a month, according to figures.

Hale said reductions at his court were largely the result of what weve been doing for years, but that newer after-hours and weekend warrant-resolution events enhance those efforts.

They literally live paycheck to paycheck, Hale said of those for whom normal court hours often conflict with work schedules, forcing them to choose between dealing with warrants and a days pay. Taking a day off of work, its a real burden for some people.

Its just huge for us, and for the people, these folks walk around on a daily basis afraid that theyre going to have some sort of contact with law enforcement and get swept away to jail, Tilton said of people like Molina. Its not a good way to live life.

A majority of active warrants  71 percent in Consolidated Court  were issued for failure to show up at court dates, as occurred with Molina, whose underlying charge  driving on a suspended license  was also the single most common leading to such warrants. Other common underlying charges include assault, shoplifting, trespassing and DUI. Hale said his court reflects that, with the exception of driving on a suspended license, which is a charge the City Attorneys Office dismisses.

Resolving a warrant doesnt just take away a source of anxiety for people like Molina. It also can save local government money and reduce demand at the county jail.

It costs roughly $400 to book someone on a warrant and, over the course of 2016, there were roughly 86,000 jail bed days for inmates with failure to appear charges, according to recent county data. That came at a cost of $7.6 million, down substantially from about $19.5 million in 2014.

Tucsons years-old alternatives to jail program does allow Tucson Police Department officers to allow many on City Court warrants to have out-of-custody arraignments, thus avoiding those steep booking costs, according to Judge Tony Riojas, City Courts presiding magistrate. There are hopes to expand out-of-custody resolution in the near future.

The high public cost and individual consequences of active warrants are why their resolution is one of the central goals of the ongoing Safety and Justice Challenge, which is funded by a $1.5 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and aims to reduce the local jail population.

But perhaps more effective than resolving active warrants is preventing their creation in the first place.

To do that, the Consolidated Court will have to contend with fairly high rates of defendants not showing up to court dates, which occurred nearly 25 percent of the time between February and April, according to data provided by the court. Thats up substantially from a longer six-month period in 2014, when 14 percent of defendants failed to appear at hearings, according to data from the Arizona Supreme Court.

Those higher rates may be the new normal, according to one county court official.

To fight failure-to-appear warrants, the court has implemented a system of automated calls and texts that remind defendants of hearing dates and have resulted in modest but consistent reductions in FTA rates. Calls with reminders of possible sanctions can drop FTA rates by as much as 24 percent.

While the likelihood of not appearing at court dates appears to have been on the rise in recent years, at least at Consolidated Court, Tilton said that without the automated reminders, the situation would likely be even worse.

Despite failure-to-appear issues, overall new warrants issued by the Consolidated Court are down over the first six months of 2017, compared with the same period for the last two years, according to data provided by the court.

City Court is working on getting a similar automated reminder system, Hale said. His court also just concluded a pilot program in which warrant issuance was delayed five days after a defendant failed to show up, but he said compliance among those contacted was an abysmal 16 percent.

Automated calls can only be made, of course, if the court has a phone number for the defendant. Tilton and Hale said both courts have reached out to law enforcement agencies in the area to try to get officers to collect phone numbers more frequently.

For example, 66 percent of citations from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which accounts for much of Consolidated Courts caseload, did not include phone numbers over a six-month period in 2016.

Pima County sheriffs Deputy Cody Gress, a department spokesman, said the supervisors he spoke with had not received direction on the matter or any indication that it was a problem.

Nevertheless, Gress said deputies make an effort to collect phone numbers as often as possible.

But overall, theres only so much the courts can do to get people to show up to court and abide by court orders, according to Hale.

The first thing is to just avoid it, he said. Show up in court when youre supposed to. If you cant show up, let us know ahead of time and maybe we can work with you. Dont ignore us.
PHOENIX  If the new language in Arizonas drivers license manual sounds like something written by Black Lives Matter, theres a good reason for it.

The provisions tell motorists what to do if theyre pulled over by a police officer. They also provide specific warnings about what not to do, like reaching around in the vehicle or getting out.

The goal is pretty simple, said state Rep. Reginald Bolding, a Laveen Democrat who helped write the section.

Its designed to keep drivers from getting shot by police.

Bolding, who is black, said the record shows that victims of police shootings during traffic stops are more likely to be black or Hispanic.

When you look at whats taken place across the country, you have seen a majority of individuals who are people of color that have had higher incidence of interactions with law-enforcement officers, particularly in shootings, he said. Hopefully we can get to a place where thats not the reality.

It was one such shooting of a black man  the 2016 killing of Philando Castile by a Minnesota police officer  that prompted Bolding to seek a rewrite of Arizonas driving manual.

Officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled Castile over because a brake light was out. Castile told the officer he had a firearm on him, to which the officer said, Dont reach for it then. Castile said he wasnt pulling it out, but the officer fired seven rapid shots into the vehicle, striking Castile five times.

The incident was captured on the dash camera of the patrol car. Prosecutors charged the officer with one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of intentional discharge of a firearm that endangers safety. Yanez, who testified he feared for his life, was acquitted earlier this month.

In the wake of that incident, Bolding said he reached out to eight different police departments, asking them what motorists should do to avoid becoming victims.

I got eight different recommendations, he said.

Queries to various motorists on what they should do also produced inconsistent responses.

Some people said you immediately reach into your glove department to grab your license and registration, Bolding said. Others said to turn on the dome light. Others said to wait.

So Bolding brought together the Arizona departments of transportation and public safety in hopes of coming up with some good  and consistent  advice for drivers when they see flashing lights in the rear-view mirror.

No one should ever leave a traffic stop in a body bag, Bolding said.

I recognize this wont solve all officer-involved shootings, he said. I do hope that this could potentially save a life by giving a recommendation of what to do.

The first piece of advice, obviously, is to find a safe place to pull over.

After that, the recommendations now included in the state manual for drivers say to park the car, remain in the vehicle, and for all occupants to keep their seat belts fastened. Motorists should keep their hands on the steering wheel in a visible location and wait for the officer to approach the vehicle.

Other suggestions include:

Lowering the windows, especially if they are tinted;

At night, turning on any overhead passenger compartment lights;

Informing the officer if the driver has a weapon or if there are any in the vehicle.

Bolding said this last tip is particularly crucial in a state like Arizona, where any adult can carry a weapon, open or concealed.

There has not been a lot of education on what individuals should do if they are carrying a gun, he said. We are a state that talks about the Second Amendment rights and we want individuals to have the ability to carry guns. But with that we also wanted to make sure that theyre protected and theyre not put in harms way.

The new manual also includes warnings about what not to do.

One is to not reach around inside the vehicle.

If you need to reach for an item, contact the officer verbally to indicate the item you need to locate and only do so after the officer has given verbal confirmation, the manual now says.

Dont get out of the vehicle unexpectedly or approach the officer.

Bolding said he wanted to make sure drivers knew what to expect, and what rights they have.

But he also cautioned against motorists getting carried away in demanding those rights, at least while theyre stopped at the side of the road.

The stop may not be the best point in time to have that protest, Bolding said.

Instead, the manual recommends that those who believe theyve been mistreated contact the officers supervisor or agency, using information on the officer thats listed on any citation issued.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves, whose agency was involved in coming up with the final provisions, said he thinks the advice will help all involved.

We consider these an outreach to assist drivers in understanding what can happen in a traffic stop, he said.
A Tucson student has attended an introductory astronaut training camp for seventh- and eighth-graders.

Karly Zamona, who will be an eighth-grader this fall at Magee Middle School, took part in the week-long Cosmosphere Camp in Kansas.

Campers learned to construct and launch rockets, trained on spaceflight simulators and toured the Hall of Space Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Military children

awarded scholarships

Six Southern Arizona students have received scholarships for military children.

The following were winners of the annual Scholarships for Military Children Program administered by the Fisher House Foundation, which also builds homes near military medical facilities: Anna Masciola, Noelle Kerr, Anisa Hermosillo, Mikaila Ann Bantugan and Arica Christensen of Tucson, and Joseph McCloskey of Sierra Vista. The scholarships aid graduating high school seniors or college-enrolled students who are children of members of the U.S. armed services.

Interfaith group collecting supplies for kids in need

Interfaith Community Services is collecting school supplies to help 1,100 children in need.

Suggested donations include backpacks, binders, notebooks, scissors, glue sticks, rulers, folders and markers.

Donations can be dropped off from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday at the ICS northwest office, 2820 W. Ina Road, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday at its east-side office, 8701 E. Old Spanish Trail.

The items will be distributed at the northwest and east-side locations on Wednesday, July 26, starting at 9 a.m. while supplies last. Another distribution is scheduled for Saturday, July 29, at ICS south-side volunteer office, 6740 S. Santa Clara Ave., from 9 to 11 a.m.

ICS can help a maximum of three children per family. A birth certificate or immunization record is required if the child is not present.

New member appointed to Altar Valley school board

The Altar Valley School District, west of Tucson has a new Governing Board member.

Pima County School Superintendent Dustin Williams appointed Martin Hudecek to replace Sharon Nicolas, who passed away earlier this year. Hudecek is a businessman with six children who attend Altar Valley schools.
News / National

by Staff reporter

The Zanu-PF juggernaut was officially set in motion yesterday with countrywide deployment of Politburo members to prepare ruling party structures for next year's harmonised elections. Last Wednesday, President Mugabe directed the party to focus on winning the elections and cementing unity.Politburo members were subsequently deployed to all 10 provinces to launch voter mobilisation and registration at inter-district meetings.The exercise will also finalise Zanu-PF's restructuring, and involves a headcount of members to gauge poll return estimates.Yesterday the Politburo members addressed Provincial Co-ordinating Committees and were briefed on restructuring and biometric voter registration, which begins within two months.Zanu-PF National Political Commissar Saviour Kasukuwere told The Sunday Mail, "The party programmes have begun and this weekend all provinces will be addressed by Politburo members as we prepare for structures for the 2018 elections."The party leadership will discuss voter education and BVR. The restructuring exercise is meant to align our party structures to voting and polling stations. Party members have a duty to vote and defend the party at their given voting stations."Members will also be updated on the success of our economy on the back of a strong agricultural season, mining growth and the manufacturing sector."Many positive economic indicators as per the Mid-Term Budget Statement by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa will be discussed. On the social front, the party leadership will be informed on the tough stance adopted by Cabinet, aimed at nipping rape in the bud and underage marriages."Kembo Mohadi and Sithembiso Nyoni are in Manicaland; while Ignatius Chombo, David Parirenyatwa and Kizito Kuchekwa will oversee meetings in Bulawayo.Harare inter-district meetings will be presided over by Sydney Sekeramayi and Kasukuwere; and those in Mashonaland East and Mashonaland Central will host Cleveria Chizema, Mike Bimha and Josaya Hungwe respectively.Masvingo is overseen by Thokozile Mathuthu, Joshua Malinga and Ezekiel Zabanyana; and Midlands has Patrick Chinamasa and Cain Mathema.Obert Mpofu and Kudzi Chipanga are in Mashonaland West; while Prisca Mupfumira, Jonathan Moyo and Florence Gwazemba are meeting the Matabeleland South leadership.Bimha told The Sunday Mail yesterday: "We went to Bindura and met all the district representatives from the province. We wanted to find out how many cell and branches have been properly constituted as part of revamping the party structures."In general, we were impressed that in four districts all the structures are fully constituted, while in the other four, there are just a few slots that need to be filled. We also delivered the message from the Politburo that they need to focus on unity and preparing for the elections."We also deliberated on several economic issues and how as party members they were contributing to programmes such as Command Agriculture, the Tokwe Mukosi Dam rehabilitation, the Beitbridge-Harare-Chirundu dualisation project, SI 64 and small-scale mining. We emphasised that as party members they needed to benefit from all these initiatives." Zanu-PF Mashonaland East chairperson Bernard Makokove said: "We were addressed by Chizema and she delivered the message from the Politburo on what we need to do in preparation for the elections."Mashonaland West provincial executive member Kindness Paradza added: "We are well prepared for the meeting and we are expecting Obert Mpofu to be the guest of honour."
The most interesting number in Martha McSallys latest finance report isnt the $1 million she raised for her re-election campaign.

It is the $663,000 that her campaign team doled out roughly 18 months before voters go to the polls in Congressional District 2.

The McSally for Congress campaign went through cash much faster than in previous election cycles, spending roughly $2 for every $3 the campaign raised.

In a 579-page filing with the Federal Election Commission, the two-term Republican reported paying off $186,200 in campaign debt.

The Arizona Daily Star has identified that the McSally for Congress campaign spent at least $429,320 between April 1 and June 30 to pay for the design, printing, postage and mailing of fundraising letters.

By the end of June, the campaign had only added $356,373 to its war chest.

However, with a six-figure amount leftover from the first quarter of the year, the McSally campaign has $987,000 in its campaign coffers with no debt.

Outside political observers say CD2 will be very competitive in the 2018 midterm elections, despite the fact that McSally won the district spanning most of Cochise County and part of Pima County with nearly 57 percent of the vote in 2016.

The Cook Political Report, a well-respected, nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections and campaigns, lists CD2 as leans Republican, giving McSally a slight advantage.

McSally is facing mounting criticism from both well-funded political action committees as well as a grass-roots group that has staged dozens of demonstrations outside her midtown offices.

For example, a group calling itself Save My Care bought a number of 30-second ads to air in the Tucson media market in April, criticizing the Republican lawmaker for her stance on health-care reform.

Locally, a grass-roots group called Represent Me AZ has formed a political action committee after growing frustrated with McSally.

The group plans on using funds it raises to pay for ads, billboards and to host candidate forums.

Adding to the heat in the Southern Arizona political climate are eight candidates, so far, vying for the Democratic nomination.

With some candidates either newly announced or still in the exploratory phase, only three filed with the FEC for the last quarter.

Emergency room physician Matt Heinz  who ran against McSally last year and lost  has the largest campaign war chest among the Democratic candidates.

He raised $201,086 in the last reporting cycle and has $181,145 in cash reserves, according to recent filings with the FEC.

Heinz has spent a fraction of what McSally spent  $19,941 on election-related expenses.

One of his biggest expenses was a phone poll, which cost $4,500.

The poll, performed by Public Policy Polling in June, suggested that local Democrats gave an edge to Heinz over former U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in a hypothetical race.

At the time of the poll, Kirkpatrick had not formally announced she was entering the race.

Kirkpatrick, who has moved to Tucson and filed to run in the Democratic primary on Friday, did not have to file a report for the last quarter.

Retired assistant secretary of the Army Mary Matiella raised $31,214 in the three-month period but only spent $615.

Businessman Billy Kovacs received $12,733 in the same period but spent $14,678. He had $5,492 in cash reserves at the end of June.

Other CD2 Democratic candidates, former state Rep. Bruce Wheeler, small-business owner Charlie Verdin, pilot Jeff Latas and consultant William Foster, did not have to file paperwork with the FEC.
Arizona Daily Star page designer Maria Camou de Toledo was named designer of the year by the Arizona Press Club and Star journalists took home nine first-place awards in the clubs 2016 contest  three of them by investigative reporter Emily Bregel.

Also, Star graphic artist Chiara Bautista was a finalist for designer of the year and Star border reporter Perla Trevizo was a finalist for journalist of the year.

Judge Andrea Zagata, a page designer for the New York Times, said Camou has a clear voice with intelligent photo editing and clean design free of gimmicks.

Zagata called Bautistas graphics and illustrations whimsical and fun.

A judging panel said Trevizos elegant writing, combined with solid, in-depth reporting, presents a vivid and nuanced portrait of life on the border.

Public-safety reporter Caitlin Schmidt won the Don Bolles Award for Investigative Reporting for her coverage of misspending at the Pima County Sheriffs Office.

Through digging by the Arizona Daily Star, what appeared to be small case of wrongdoing ballooned into criminal charges, wrote judge Dee Hall, co-founder of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting. This is classic investigative journalism at its finest!

Here are the Stars awards:

FIRST PLACE

Tom Beal, science reporting: Osiris-REx

Emily Bregel, breaking news: Officials look into reports of Pima County voting problems

Emily Bregel, health reporting: Cenpatico

Emily Bregel, sports investigative reporting: Tucson Tech prep school

Maria Camou de Toledo, multi-page design: Beyond the Wall

Jon Gold, sports column writing

Ernesto Portillo Jr., Spanish-language commentary/analysis, La Estrella de Tucson: Republicanos procrean hijos de la SB 1070

Caitlin Schmidt, Don Bolles Award for Investigative Reporting: Pima County Sheriffs Office

Perla Trevizo and Curt Prendergast, Spanish-language news reporting, La Estrella de Tucson: Beyond the Wall

SECOND PLACE

Chiara Bautista, drawn illustration: Tucson Festival of Books

Timothy Gassen, sports column writing

Jon Gold, sports beat reporting

Jon Gold, sports feature writing: Heres how Tucson Roadrunner Craig Cunningham cheated sudden death

Stephanie Innes, health reporting: The hardest test

Dave Ord, headline writing

Liliana Lopez, Spanish-language feature reporting, La Estrella de Tucson: Centro Muhammad Ali: la fuerza para seguir peleando

Ernesto Portillo Jr., Spanish-language commentary/analysis, La Estrella de Tucson: Personas transgenero buscan igualdad

Tim Steller, column writing

Perla Trevizo, public safety reporting

THIRD PLACE

Chiara Bautista, drawn illustration: This is Tucson emojis

Tony Davis, environmental reporting: Rosemont Mine

Greg Hansen, column writing

Ernesto Portillo Jr., Spanish-language commentary/analysis, La Estrella de Tucson: Hablar de tortura es el primer paso para erradicarla

Ernesto Portillo Jr., Spanish-language feature reporting, La Estrella de Tucson.: Desde Tucson: De la prision al temple

Ernesto Portillo Jr., Spanish-language news reporting, La Estrella de Tucson: El sueno de esta Dreamer esta en el scenario

Zack Rosenblatt, sports beat reporting

Staff, public-service journalism: Beyond the Wall

Perla Trevizo, public safety reporting: Fentanyl
If you have a job, you may have labored under the same misunderstanding that I have for the last few months about Tucsons job market.

But if you werent laboring, you probably did understand.

Ive been thinking Tucsons economy had finally turned the corner, as they say. That we had finally shaken off the Great Recession blues. That jobs were becoming plentiful and better-paid.

Its easy to see why. Here in downtown, where Im writing this, there are five construction projects within a couple of blocks, suggesting a boom time. And even beyond this construction zone, there has been great economic news for the region.

Caterpillar announced it is moving a regional headquarters here, adding up to 600 well-paying jobs.

Two space companies, Vector Space Systems and World View Enterprises, announced they plan to stay and grow here. Over five years, Vector and World View hope to add up to 900 good jobs.

And most importantly, Raytheon Missile Systems announced last year it plans to add at least 1,900 jobs on land near its current plant at Tucson International Airport, potentially drawing other suppliers to the site as well.

These were all big psychological boosts and created a welcome sense of momentum for Southern Arizona. I wrote a column in May 2016 headlined Be careful  economic optimism is in Tucsons air. I cited some of these economic-development wins as well as findings by UA economist George Hammond that the local economy was growing faster than expected.

But that perception has run into a wall called reality. And coincidentally, I started noticing that about a month ago at a presentation by Hammond, the director of the economic and business research center at the UAs Eller College of Management.

The third slide in that presentation showed Tucsons job growth versus comparable cities in the broader Southwest. At 1.3 percent growth, Tucson was last by a long shot. Only Albuquerque was close, at 1.7 percent. Phoenix: 3.1 percent.

Our wages, too, were well below the median, Hammond reported, helpfully adding that this is not explained just by cost of living. In other words, yes, its relatively cheap to live here, but no, thats not why our pay is so low.

Even our one seeming advantage  higher levels of college attainment  is a bit of a mirage, Hammond reported. Its skewed by the high number of retirees with bachelors degrees who move here. Working-age residents have a lower rate of college attainment than the overall population.

The overall feeling of Hammonds presentation was meh.

Now, six weeks, after that uninspiring forecast, the state is reporting similarly blah news about the Tucson metro areas economic performance. While the number of jobs in Arizona grew by 2.4 percent from June last year to June this year, that growth happened mostly in Maricopa County.

The Tucson area added just 1,900 jobs in the same year, for 0.5 percent growth. Thats not enough to keep economic optimism afloat.

The problem seems to be that what boosted our optimism were announcements of relatively small projects that will be spread out over years. They dont necessarily reflect a robust underlying economy.

The scale of the announcements has seemed to me to be pretty small relative to the overall size of the Tucson economy, Hammond told me Friday.

Bill Assenmacher, CEO of steel-fabricating company Caid Industries, told me his company hit some new heights last year, but its growth has leveled off.

Right now were feeling a little lull in the general economy, he said.

Hammond noted the Tucson area, which includes all of Pima County, would need to add 7,500 jobs per year just to come close to the state growth rate at 2 percent.

Also, we have had some surprising shrinkage in an important category of good-paying jobs, professional and business services. That category includes engineers, architects, accountants and others who usually have a professional degree and make good salaries.

We lost 2,100 of those jobs in the Tucson area between June of 2016 and June this year, the latest state reports say. Hammond called it a puzzling weakness that I cant explain.

You might apply that phrase to the local economy overall. Even after a hopeful 2016, it remains puzzlingly weak.
Trump supporters arent racists

Re: the July 16 column 63 million voted for this guy  thats the problem

After reading one of your often-featured syndicated columnists rant about 63 million people who voted for Trump because they dislike Mexicans and Muslims, oppose same-sex marriage and were mortally offended at a black guy with a funny name, I had to respond. Give me a break!

I believe in free speech, but being constantly bombarded by this type of rhetoric is getting tiresome and in my opinion is racist. The vast majority of the referenced millions are not prejudiced against Mexicans, Muslims, women, gays and transgenders. They didnt hate Obama because he is black. The problem was the way he and his administration did business, nearly everything about it, and you know it. That is why Trump is president and Congress is controlled by Republicans. The hate and vitriol of the left and the media is so apparent its depressing.

John P. Slusser Sr.

Northeast side

Credit citizen voices for foiling GOP plan

So after two years of promising to replace Obamacare with something tremendous and beautiful, Trumps promise now joins all the others on which hes turned his back. And why did repeal fail? The president says its the Democrats fault; some Republicans say its the fault of other Republicans. The fact is that this failure was nobodys fault, other than the people who drafted the dismal act.

Rather than finding whos at fault, we who raised our voices and sent letters and emails and who made phone calls to our elected officials should get the credit. We citizens have only a few ways of expressing our feelings to politicians, especially those who have stopped holding open meetings. Its our responsibility to let them know what we think, what we want and what well do if they dont truly represent us. Ill gladly take credit for what I did and I hope you will do the same.

Eliot Kohen

Oro Valley

Republicans have failed the nation

The sad thing is, if the Republicans hadnt been so vindictively intent on erasing the Obama legacy, they might have been able to work together  maybe even with the Democrats  to improve on the Affordable Care Act. Instead, they have simply embarrassed themselves and, more importantly, failed the nation.

Gerard Ervin

Northeast side

Let the president do his job

First I chose Dr. Ben Carson: decent, intelligent, cool-headed, pragmatic. He lost. Next, I chose Sen. Ted Cruz: loud, brash, again intelligent, with good leadership attributes. He lost! Both I considered to be conservative, whatever that is. Well, I voted for The Donald rather than eight years of the Clinton mafia.

Since elected, he has sounded good. He could be more presidential; nevertheless he is the president of these United States of America, and I aim to support him and give him the same chance to prove himself that we gave to all his predecessors. I agree with him so far: smaller central government; larger, stronger military; simpler, fairer tax system; fewer government regulations for business, especially small business.

The Democratic Party, the mainline press and the holdover Washington insiders seem to have formed into an enemy camp that opposes President Trump at every turn. I say hooray for Trump, give him all the rope he wants. He cant do any more damage to our country than Obama did.

Cliff Franks

Northwest side

Canyon pipeline repair needs public support

This month, Grand Canyon National Park seeks public input on an overdue plan to replace an important water pipeline that pipes water across the Canyon to the South Rim to meet the needs of thousands of residents and millions of visitors.

This aging structure, which breaks regularly, must be replaced before a catastrophic accident forces the South Rim to close. Project details, upcoming public meetings and instructions for how to comment online are at goo.gl/deC3JJ

The pipeline is one of thousands of overdue repair projects in our national parks. Trails, roads, visitor centers and more are falling into disrepair because of insufficient funding from Congress.

Please support the new pipeline at the Grand Canyon. More importantly, urge your members of Congress to co-sponsor the recently introduced bipartisan House and Senate National Park Service Legacy Act, which dedicates needed funding to the park service maintenance backlog.

Kevin Dahl

Arizona senior program manager, National Parks Conservation Association

Gowans ignorance of the law no excuse

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued a statement declining to prosecute David Gowan because there is insufficient proof that Gowan had both actual criminal intent as well as knowledge of the laws that were being broken. Wait, what? Ignorance of the law is an excuse? When did that change? I realize that Brnovich is allowed discretion regarding prosecutions, but this proclamation sounds more like a judgment.

Rick Cohn
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter

Political commentator, human rights defender and activist Vidya Bhushan Rawat has released a book titled Contesting Marginalization consisting of various interviews on Ambedkarism and Social Justice.

Support TwoCircles



Interestingly, the book has focused on interviewing those who might not have a valid professional qualification yet have wide experience of social movements that we study. As the book intro also says, There is a huge information and knowledge waiting to be recorded at various levels.

The book attempts to bring in such voices and documents their views to preserve and promote their idea of Ambedkarism through the eyes of Ambedkarites like Bhagwan Das, L R Balley, V T Rajshekar, Raja Dhale, Vijay Surwade and many others.

Moreover, the book also contains interviews from individuals like RM Pal and Anand Patwardhan, who may not Ambedkarite but support the movement and vision which Ambedkar espoused for.

From critical piece of Anand Teltumbde to AK Biswas and Manohar Biswass narratives about brahminical dominance in politics of West Bengal, the book contains conversations from human rights activists from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, UK and USA.

Anand Teltumbde has said, Babasaheb Ambedkars economics was predominantly normative. He was more concerned with the economic policy being used for the benefit of the majority of people than the technical aspects of the discipline. The most inspiring thing about his study of economics is that he boldly engaged with the contemporary debate and crossed swords at times with the greats of those times. All of his academic theses in economics dealt with the problem of administrative economics, public finance and currency system to be followed by the state. Ambedkar provides solution in terms of industrialisation that would release the pressure of population on land and generate surplus that could help optimise the inputs to agriculture enhancing its productivity. The solution is still relevant to India as it was then.

The book also contains interviews of Santosh Dass, Arun Kumar and Bishan Dass Bains who are UK-based Ambedkarites. It also includes a well-explained interview of Prof Kevin Brown over the issues of African American as well as his fascination towards Ambedkar.

Kevin Brown said, The main problems facing the Black Community, (or portions of it) are not ones that religion or religious conversion will solve. The Black Community tends to focus primarily on material differences as the basis of our oppression. I agree with Dr Ambedkar, the problem that Dalits have is rooted in Hinduism. Dalit liberation is tied to either the significant reform or collapse of Hinduism.I cant see much in Brahminism that benefits Dalits. But, I would not suggest that Dalits ignore religion altogether. Religion has the ability to provide people with meaning for their lives.

Rawat has been engaged in public discourses on vital human rights issues particularly related to Caste Discrimination, Religious Intolerance, Untouchability and Minority Rights issues for the past 25 years.

He has authored over 15 books and made an equal number of documentaries which are available on YouTube. He was awarded Ambedkar International Award 2016 for his services to strengthen the Ambedkarite movement in India by Ambedkar Association of North America.

He was also awarded Distinguished Services to Humanism Award 2011 by International Humanist and Ethical Union, London, at its conference in Oslo.

The book, which aims not to define anything but to bring forth those voices who might have been forgotten in the digital age, has been published by Peoples Literature Publication.
Help India!

Istanbul, (IANS): Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said prolonging the Gulf crisis was not in the interest of anyone, local media reported.

Erdogan made the remarks at Istanbul airport while leaving here on a two-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, Xinhua reported.

Support TwoCircles



The crisis with Qatar has put Turkey in a delicate position and Erdogan has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the dispute as soon as possible.

Qatar has been Turkeys key ally in the Middle East, with both countries sharing common stance on a number of regional issues.

Erdogan said he supported the mediation efforts of Kuwaits Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah  an indication that Ankara sees Kuwait as the key to resolving the crisis.

Qatars emir said on Friday that he was ready for talks to resolve the crisis so long as the emirates sovereignty is respected.
News / National

by Staff reporter

The United Kingdom (UK) has released a report in which it says the human rights situation in Zimbabwe has deteriorated on the back of violations by security agents.In its July 2017 global report titled Human Rights and Democracy the UK grouped Zimbabwe together with Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Libya, Eritrea, Egypt and Sudan, which it said were rights priority areas in Africa.The cited human rights abuses in Zimbabwe are illegal demolition of homes, continued violations of property rights, abductions and torture, and politically-motivated sexual violence by State actors."An increase in public protest over the summer in response to the political environment and the deteriorating economic situation saw police respond using dogs, tear gas, water cannon and baton charges.""The government denied permission for activists and opposition parties to hold rallies but granted similar requests by the ruling party. Reports of intimidation, rape, assisted voting and vote buying primarily by the ruling party marred two by-elections. Partisan distribution of food by government agencies was also reported in seven provinces in October 2016," it said.This was in reference to several demonstrations by pro-democracy groups and July 2016 riots which were both crushed by heavily-armed police in Harare and Beitbridge, respectively.On July 1, last year, the small border town of Beitbridge witnessed riots which were sparked by government's ill-advised decision to ban the importation of consumer goods mainly from South Africa.Angry protesters looted shops and set alight a warehouse belonging to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) prompting police to call for re-enforcements from Harare.On July 4, police, apart from severely assaulting commuter omnibus crews in Mabvuku and Epworth, set dogs on jobless youths who were barricading roads in solidarity with transporters who were complaining over too many roadblocks along their routes.And on July 6, in one of the most successful strikes ever to be organised in Zimbabwe, thousands of impoverished workers heeded calls by activist clergyman Evan Mawarire to stay-away from work - in a move which saw authorities clashing with jobless youths in poor townships.The UK report also re-visited promises made by government when Zimbabwe engaged with the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session where it committed to step up efforts to improve prison and police cell conditions and to reconsider its approach to the death penalty."At the UPR, the UK welcomed Zimbabwe's 2013 Constitution but expressed concern at the slow progress of legislative alignment and called for the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission to investigate allegations of political violence."We will press for delivery on the UN UPR commitments, through the tripartite process (Government of Zimbabwe, UN and NGOs)."We also reiterated the importance of respect for the right to shelter and property."The Government of Zimbabwe accepted our recommendations to accede to the Convention against Torture, and noted our recommendation to align electoral, public order and media laws with the 2013 Constitution before the end of the current Parliament," the report said.The UK said it will continue to prioritise human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe in keeping with the country's status as a human rights priority country."The UK funded training on human rights legislation and the constitution for Zimbabwean prosecutors. We worked through the multi-donor Transparency, Responsiveness, Accountability and Citizen Engagement (TRACE) Programme to improve access to justice, media and information freedom and the electoral environment in advance of the 2018 elections."Zimbabwe Human Rights Association director, Okay Machisa, urged government to take heed of the report's concerns."Equally, the government must take steps to ensure that the Constitution and its human rights friendly Bill of Rights in Chapter 4 is respected," said Machisa.
The final week of parliament before the summer recess was quieter nonetheless there were still some important announcements. Vince Cable was announced as leader of the Liberal Democrats after no-one stood against him, The BBC announced Jodie Whittaker as the new Doctor, the Conservatives announced an extra 1.2 billion for schools, banned microbeads in Cosmetics and Atari announced their first games console for 24 years.

Sadly, the first female to win maths most prestigious prize passed away after a battle with cancer, Maryam Mirzakhani was a professor at Stanford University and at just 37-years old, she is a massive loss to the mathematics community.

The UK in brief

Last Sunday night saw a mosque in Manchester suffer a suspected arson attack, with the classroom and prayer rooms gutted by the fire. The police have stated the cause is unknown but suspect that it was arson. The Manchester Nasfat Islamic Centre has been at the centre of anti-Muslim abuse in the past with pig heads thrown inside during prayer time on two occasions and people have urinated outside the building. The secretary, Monsurat Adebanjo-Aremu, said that this was third major fire this year and that it makes them feel unwanted within the community.

The Education Secretary, Justine Greening, announced that an extra 1.3 billion would be put into schools. This come after months of complaints, including from Conservatives MPs, that the funding formula was going to cut school budgets by 3%.

Whilst it is a step in the right direction, it doesnt solve the issue created by the Conservative government as schools face a funding crisis. Angela Rayner, Shadow Education Secretary, pointed out that the Conservative Manifesto promised an extra 4 billion but the hadnt even managed half of this.

The other issue is that the money itself isnt extra, it is in fact coming from elsewhere in the education budget, this was later admitted by Ms Greening.

The problem is that schools have been cut approximately by 3 billion and school spending per pupil has fallen around 4-5%. A researcher from the independent think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Luke Sibieta, has stated that the extra 2% would not reverse the cuts that have already taken place due to the money coming from savings elsewhere.

michael gove announced in his first speech as Environment minister that the government were to press ahead with their ban on microbeads in cosmetic products. After a public consultation and recommendation from parliament, the ban is a positive step to protecting marine life. This comes after increasing evidence that the tiny plastic particles are a risk to marine life and even human life.

This ban has been hailed by Greenpeace UK but the Marine Conservation Society says the ban should have a wider reach that includes products that could be flushed down the drain. The cosmetic industry resisted the calls for the ban to be included on leave-on products such as make-up and sunscreen as they would have to reformulate 90% of their products which would be expensive and difficult.

World news

Germanys patience with Turkey has run out after a Turkish court ordered six human rights activists, including a German trainer, to be arrested. German foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, cut loose two days later and has since proposed rolling back EU economic assistance and suggested his government could stop providing export credit guarantees to companies doing business in Turkey. He also said, we cannot advise anyone to invest in a country where there is no longer legal certainty and even companies are being accused of supporting terrorists.

Polands right wing authoritarian government have passed a law that puts the countrys judiciary system under the direct control of the justice minister and the president.

They pushed ahead with the reforms despite mass protests and condemnation from the international community. The EU plan to hit them with a September deadline to reverse the changes and they believe they have two possible avenues of infringements to follow.

Law-enforcement agencies have shut down two dark-web marketplaces, AlphaBay and Hansa. After news broke that AlphaBay had been taken down, users flocked to Hansa unaware that the site was compromised after authorities took control for a month to gather information about vendors and customers. However, history suggests that other websites will take their places.

Finally, Sean Spicer quit as Donald Trumps spokesperson in protest to the appointment of Wall Street Financier, Anthony Scaramucci, as communications director. But has since played down the divisions in the White House stating that he has no regrets over his 6-month stint in the White House.
Every June the LGBTQ community and its allies and advocates come together to celebrate the Pride month, waving rainbow flags, organizing marches and conducting various events to support the Queer community. But how did Pride month begin? Why is it celebrated in June? Lets take a look at the rich history of this month.

The Stonewall riots

The origins of this month trace back to 1969 when the Stonewall Riots had begun. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village section of New York City.

The police claimed that they raided the bar for serving alcohol without a liquor license, but back then, it wasnt uncommon for law enforcement to target gay-friendly establishments like the Stonewall Inn.

In 1969 the solicitation of homosexual relations was an illegal act in New York City (and indeed virtually all other urban centers). Gay bars were places of refuge where gay men and lesbians and other individuals who were considered sexually suspect could socialize in relative safety from public harassment. Many of those bars were, however, subject to regular police harassment, states Britannica.com.

It was the third such raid on gay bars of the Greenwich Village section in a very short span of time. The patrons of the popular gay bar clashed with police as the employees were being arrested. But when the cops started forcing some drag queens and a lesbian into a paddy wagon, the spectators became outraged and the brawl erupted into a riot that quickly turned into an international movement for Gay And Lesbian rights.

"The queens were fighting the cops. The cops were fighting back," Henry Arango, a riot witness, told the Huffington Post in a 2015 report. "I saw police cars being put on fire. The drag queens were calling names, throwing rocks," he added.

The Stonewall Riots are considered the first major protest for LGBTQ rights, according to HISTORY.com.

Post the riots, the anguish and the overwhelming support that poured in for the Queer community spurred the creation of the Gay Liberation Front and numerous other civil rights groups.

The first Pride Parade

A year later, the first Pride Parade took place on June 28th in New York to commemorate the Stonewall Riots. Pride marches were also held in other cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs. The cops turned their backs on us to convey their disdain, but the masses of people kept carrying signs and banners, chanting and waving to surprised onlookers, wrote Fred Sargeant of villagevoice.com in his first-person account of the 1970 parade. Say it clear, say it loud. Gay is good, gay is proud, chanted the crowd at the historic Pride Parade.

The credit for organising the first Pride march goes to a bisexual woman named Brenda Howard who was the driving force behind the landmark event. You needed some kind of help organizing some type of protest or something in social justice? All you had to do was call her and shell just say when and where, Larry Nelson, Howards partner, told The Advocate.

Other historic events that impacted the LGBTQ community

In the next few years, various other events helped in cementing the presence of the LGBTQ community. For instance, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973, in a bid to eradicate stigma and raise awareness to create a more inclusive society.

In 1978, Gilbert Baker of San Francisco designed the original rainbow flag that was used as an epitome of gay pride. Hand-dyed versions of Bakers iconic flag were first used at the Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day March held in San Francisco in 1978.

According to the Library of Congress, Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, was the first president to acknowledge the Pride month in June 2000.

He said that the month recognizes the joys and sorrows that the gay and lesbian movement has witnessed and the work that remains to be done.

In June 2016, former U.S President Barack Obama declared the Stonewall Inn and the adjacent Christopher Park as the first national monument to honour the LGBT rights in the country.
The biggest political story over the last six months has been over what role Russia played in the 2016 presidential election in regards to helping Donald Trump get elected. Despite the evidence against him, Trump continues to deny any wrongdoing and is now putting the blame on former President Barack Obama.

Trump on Obama

For the year and a half that he ran for president, Donald Trump was forced to dodge allegations that he was in cahoots with Russia. The former host of "The Apprentice" didn't help his own cause when he refused to release his tax returns, while often praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the months that followed, past and present advisers and associates of the president were found, in one way or another, to have their own link back to Kremlin, causing further speculation from his critics and the mainstream media. Since Trump's inauguration, several well-respected news outlets, as well as multiple government agencies, have released information linking those close to Trump back to Russia. Regardless of what information has been made public, the billionaire real estate mogul has denied that he is in the wrong, and is now turning the attention back on his predecessor. During an interview with Fox News on June 23, Trump put the blame of Russian election interference on Barack Obama.

Joining Fox News host Pete Hegseth on Friday for a taped interview which is schedule to be shown over the weekend, Donald Trump elaborated further on blaming Obama for the Russian scandal. "I just heard today for the very first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, but no one wants to talk about that," Trump said.

Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017

"The CIA gave him information gave him information on Russia before the election, and I hardly see it," Donald Trump said, before adding, "it's an amazing thing." "If he had the information, why didn't he do something about it?" Trump wondered.

Following the release of the Fox News video clip, Trump returned to Twitter to double down on his allegations. "Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?" Trump tweeted.

Moving forward

While Donald Trump is now attempting to blame Barack Obama for the scandal involving Russia, he's not going to be able to use that excuse during the current investigation. With the pressure mounting, the president and his White House have taken part in a daily sparing match with the press on how to control the narrative when dealing with the Russian scandal, and only time will tell how it all plays out.
It's become commonplace for Donald Trump to express his disdain for the mainstream media, which as only expanded to included members of his administration. As the scandal involving Russia heats up, Presidential Counsel Kellyanne Conway is having a hard to defending the president.

Conway on CNN

The seeds of the Russian Scandal were planted during the early days of the 2016 presidential election not long after Donald Trump announced that he was running for president. From his refusal to release his tax returns, to praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, to past and present advisers and associates being caught with ties to the Kremlin, Trump has faced an onslaught of criticism and allegations linking him back to Russia.

Since his upset win over Hillary Clinton and eventual inauguration, the former host of "The Apprentice" has been forced to push back and defend himself, going as far as accusing the media of "fake news," while claiming the Democratic Party was pushing a "hoax" and "scam" as part of a larger "witch hunt" against him. In the latest update to the scandal, reports have confirmed that Putin instructed hackers to break into the Democratic National Committee's files in order to help sway the election, which was highlighted during a June 23 broadcast on CNN with guest Kellyanne Conway.

"You're not answering": @AlisynCamerota asks @KellyannePolls question about addressing Russia interference 7 times https://t.co/4OHxBW03YH  New Day (@NewDay) June 23, 2017

Joining CNN host Alisyn Camerota on Friday morning was Kellyanne Conway, and it didn't take long for the conversation to become heated.

Camerota quickly brought up the latest story about Vladimir Putin telling hackers to plant fake stories in the U.S. news, while asking Conway about the current position from the White House. "The president has said previously, and he stands by that, that he would be concerned about anybody interfering with our democracy," Conway said, before adding, "We saw a lot of people interfering with our democracy by saying he couldnt win here at home."

Putin denied meddling in the U.S. election. The CIA caught him doing just that. https://t.co/eqnzATwgrm  Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 23, 2017

Kellyanne Conway then shifted into blaming Democrats for being hacked, accusing them of not accepting help from the Department of Homeland Security.

Alisyn Camerota continued to press Conway on what Donald Trump was doing to push back against Russia, but the presidential counsel quickly became frustrated.

Show my response @NewDay @CNN: I answered question many times - even tho irrelevant to jobseekers, opioid addicts, vets, special elex voters https://t.co/4M5D9SaFWe  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) June 23, 2017

CNN clash

"I realize we just like to say the word 'Russia, Russia' to mislead the voters," Kellyanne Conway said, while taking a hard shot at CNN in the process.

"I know that CNN is aiding and abetting this nonsense as well, but youve asked me this question three times now!" Conway said. "And you haven't answered!" Alisyn Camerota replied back with frustration. "Yes I am!" Conway answered. The two continued to go back and forth with Conway unable to give a straight answer. Not long after the interview took place, Conway took to her Twitter feed to continue her smear attack on CNN, tweeting, "Show my response @NewDay @CNN: I answered question many times - even tho irrelevant to jobseekers, opioid addicts, vets, special elex voters."
Lacey Dawn Christenson, 26, and Colby Glen Wilde, 29, were arrested in June and arrested again on July 18. They currently face child endangerment and felony drug distribution charges. The couple allegedly gave their newborn daughter Suboxone (or methadone) the same day their baby was born, according to Sergeant Spencer Cannon, sheriffs spokesman for Utah County, UT.

The Elk Ridge couple is accused of giving their baby the drug within hours after she was born to mask her addiction to prescription pain medication and heroin, according to KUTV.

The infants addiction was passed from mother to child in utero due to Christensons heroin and pain killer use during her pregnancy.

The infants father admitted crushing Suboxone pills and applying the drug to his babys gums when medical staff was out of the room on April 9. After the couples infant tested positive for heroin, morphine, and meth, she was taken to the hospital. Christensons additional children  boys who are ages two, four, and eight  also tested positive for meth, CNN reported.

Theft of Walmart merchandise led law enforcement to finding drug addiction in baby

A robbery of a Walmart located in Spanish Fork on June 26 is what led to the discovery of the babys drug addiction. According to store employees, Fox 13 reported, Wilde went into the Walmart store with his baby, who was two months old at that time.

The employees reportedly spotted him taking products from a store shelf. He, then, took the items to customer service and obtained a refund as though he bought the merchandise.

After receiving cash for the store goods, he left the store. He was confronted by store employees about reportedly having stolen the items, Fox 13 noted.

When challenged about the alleged theft, law enforcement said the accused father ran away with his baby he was carrying in a car seat. He dropped her in the car seat when he slammed into the stores sliding doors. The car seat, with his baby, rolled a number of times.

Wilde struck a pillar with the car seat. He, once again, dropped his baby after he ran out of a second door, law enforcement said.

When witnesses tried stopping him, the father handed the car seat with his baby to a stranger. He ran to his car and sped away, deputies said.

After twice dropping baby in car seat, deputies make multiple findings of law breaking behavior

After a deputy caught up to the accused father, he took Wilde into custody for allegedly driving without insurance, DUI, meth, heroin, and drug paraphernalia. Wilde is also accused of theft and child abuse since police in Spanish Fork added the felony charges.

Christenson accompanied Wilde to the Walmart store with her older children, Fox 13 reported. She had an outstanding warrant. She was arrested and booked into the Utah County Jail. Her baby girl and her sons were taken into custody by Spanish Fork Police.

A woman who went to the couples home on June 28 to take care of the family pets purportedly discovered drug paraphernalia and drugs in the house. She contacted law enforcement. Fox 13 stated that deputies found drugs next to a childs sippy cup and bassinet. Among the drugs discovered was Suboxone, which is a prescribed medication used for addiction treatment and as a pain medication.

On June 28, Christenson was released from jail regarding her warrant. After posting a $7,500 bond on July 5, Wilde was released from jail. The couple was rearrested and booked on July 18. They were charged with felony counts related to law enforcement after discovering the infants drug addiction.

Bail for the couple is cash-only and is set at $10,000, according to Fox 13.
It was reported that on July 8, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the Hungarian government to put a stop to an ad campaign against George Soros because he believed it was spreading antisemitism across the country. George Soros is often placed in the cross hairs of right-wing movements for conspiracy theories that are spun through social media.

Netanyahu goes after George Soros

One might assume that Netanyahu's reason for his demand that the Hungarian government take down Soros attack ads was because the financier is Hungarian born and a Jewish-American.

Those are already qualifiers for what the Israeli Prime Minister feels is his responsibility to protect.

Initially, the statement made by Israel's foreign ministry to halt the ad campaign came under orders of Netanyahu. But on the following Monday, Netanyahu ordered the same foreign ministry to retract the statement. The spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Emmanuel Nahshon, said in a second statement -- also ordered by the Prime Minister -- that the ministry's initial request was to defend Jewish communities everywhere against antisemitism.

But the ministry also added that their statement was not meant to reject the Hungarian government's overall criticism of Soros. The statement was very clear as to why Israel believed that criticism of Soros was okay because it made references to George Soros' effort to finance organizations that were critical of the Israeli government and "seek to deny it [Israel] the right to defend itself," as quoted from the statement.

One of the reasons for making these statements is that Netanyahu was set to visit Hungary on July 18, a trip which was already rife with controversy. In response to the statements by the Israeli foreign ministry, there were calls by many Hungarian Jews for him to cancel his trip.

Accusations of antisemitism against Liberal leaders

According to the Jerusalem Post, the leader of the leftist Israeli Meretz Party, Zehava Gal-On, said that by allowing criticism of Soros, the Prime Minister was supporting antisemitism on a global scale. Netanyahu's system of accusations against other people and governments of antisemitism is specific to what Netanyahu believes antisemitism is.

For instance, during the 2016 presidential campaign, one surrogate to the Bernie Sanders campaign Cornel West, tried to push for the changing of language during a Democratic National Committee meeting of "occupation" in order to refer to Israel's forced presence within Palestinian territories.

BDS campaign targeted as 'hate-group'

Representatives of the Israeli government -- often through American politicians -- fought with West on the issue leaning heavily towards the view that West's effort was anti-semitic over occupation. In many campaigns against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions group (BDS), similar politicians have aggressively attacked the group's efforts to protest Israeli products, despite the fact that calls to boycott and sanction the Israeli government for their actions against Palestinians is peaceful enough.

This has not stopped Israel under Netanyahu to accuse even those efforts of being anti-semitic. Very often, the rhetoric against the group has been to ban them and to declare them a hate-group or even terrorists in order to discourage their influence, even in the United States.

Zehava Gal-On also added that the statements made by the foreign minister's spokesman on behalf of the Prime Minister would give neo-Nazis something to quote him on. But while Israel's leaders are divided when it comes to Soros, one recent event seemed to have united both sides of the aisle with regards to UNESCO. The World Heritage Committee's effort to designate the city of Hebron and its Tomb of the Patriarchs "endangered" is under Palestinian territory and was declared anti-semitic from all sides.
During a meeting with Senate Republicans at the White House last Wednesday, President Trump told them that he was "ready to act" and that he was "sitting in that office" with a pen in hand claiming that they've never had that before. In recent weeks, Trump has continued to say that he was ready to sign any bill sent to him that would reform health care whether it was to replace or repeal. During Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's statement on the Senate floor last week, he too said that President Trump was ready to sign their bill.

Proof that Trump measures success against self-created reality

In the first place, even though Donald Trump was elected as the next president, he did not win the popular vote which in that sense already makes him unpopular. Generally, the debate no longer makes any difference as he is already the president of the United States. But it is enough of an issue for him as he even started to attack the view that he was not popular enough to win on those grounds.

Evidence of this lies with him making an issue out of the number of people who showed up at his inauguration rally. The comparison was in contrast to the number of people that attended the last two inaugurations for former President Obama.

Then he accused the electoral process of being corrupt by claiming that millions of illegal immigrants had been bussed in to vote against him.

Rhetoric is one thing but the president followed it with action by putting together a voting commission that would investigate voter fraud. Overall, this suggests that the majority of the American people shudder to think that Donald Trump has any presidential authority and are disgusted when he brags about his power, such as when he said that he was ready to act with pen in hand.

Would rather win than serve the American people

Clearly, his claim that Senators have never had someone sitting in the Oval Office with a pen in hand simply isn't true as there have been 44 other presidents before him who have done the same thing. Of course it's also likely that he was specifically referring to Senate Republicans who did not have a president from their party who was ready to pass a Republican-led bill.

But Trump has already has built up capital with the public for twisting the truth and even creating his own reality.

More than once, over the past several months, President Trump has said that he's accomplished more in the first hundred days than any other administration in history. He made this claim when he reached the first hundred days of his presidency and again during a "kiss the ring" session with cabinet members. Within the context of passing health care reform, there is still no indication that the President knows or even cares that Americans have health care coverage. The only view that he has is that the party he leads wins and that he too wins no matter how devastating all of that "winning" is to American people.
The third season of Better call saul officially ended on Monday with the assumed tragic death of Chuck McGill (Michael McKean). Now, fans are all waiting for Better Call Saul Season 4, but AMC has yet to announce its renewal.

Although the Breaking Bad spin-off has not yet been picked up for another season, its creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are 100 percent sure it will be renewed. The shows writers revealed that the reorganizing happening now at Sony is the reason why the renewal is being delayed.

The cause of renewals delay

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould talked about the future of Better Call Saul Season 4.

AMC has been tight-lipped about the shows renewal. However, the television crime drama series creators are confident that they can continue the shows storyline until Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) becomes Saul Goodman.

Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht left Sony TV, thus there is some reorganization happening now at Sony. Although there are still people in control, the executive producers are not sure how long it will take for the renewal to be announced. Nevertheless, the two assured that things are going to be fine for the show.

They also find the timing of the reorganization a little unfortunate, but they believed that it is all going to work out fine. Although two guys have left Sony, there are still a lot of good people at the company.

Certainly, there is going to be more of the show and it is only a matter of time as to when it will continue. They even said that they are not worried about whats to come as they are sure they are going to move forward with the fourth season.

4th seasons possible release

The only question is when will it [sic] go on air, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould told the Hollywood Reporter.

The two executive producers explained that the indeterminate state of the show is because of the Breaking Bad season after season renewal. This made their fans a little worried that the television series might be canceled. They then insisted that they have a strong working relationship with Sony TV and AMC, thus the renewal of the fourth season is just a matter of when and not if.

To recall, the spin-offs first season started in February 2015 while the second chapter began in the same month of 2016. The third installment commenced in April 2017. so there are now strong assumptions that Better Call Saul Season 4 will be released in April 2018 at the earliest.
Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page.

Loading...

Checking your browser before accessing the website.

This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.

Please wait a few seconds.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Government has gazetted a new law which jails people who falsify information on proof of residence during the voter registration exercise which the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) is expected to open to the members of the public ahead of next year's crucial vote.The new regulations come as legal experts and civic society groups have expressed their disquiet over the requirement to show proof of residence during the voter registration exercise  arguing that this is exclusionary and would discourage people from participating in the eagerly-awaited 2018 polls.In new regulations carried in Friday's government gazette it is an offence to provide false information during voter registration and offenders would face jail of up to a year."Any person who makes a false statement in a residence affidavit shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding level ten or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding level 10 or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding a year or to both," reads part of the new regulations.The regulations also include the control of persons in premises used for registration whereby any person who disobeys an instruction of a voter registration officer given to maintain order shall be fined of jailed for up to a year or both According to Zec, prospective voters can obtain an affidavit to confirm their residency from a landlord, parent, friend, hospital, school head, and public institution, employer, councillor, farm owner, traditional leader, or any other documents with and address.Civic and opposition groups have accused Zec and the government of discouraging potential voters from casting their votes due to their insistence on proof of residence."Most urban youths do not own homes and find it difficult to obtain proof of residence being demanded by Zec while those in rural areas will be exposed to the whims of compromised traditional leaders to obtain proof of residence which will be given on condition that each headman will vote with his/her village in the now famous 'Sabhuku nevanhu vake/usobhuku labantu bakhe' tactic."The disproportionate distribution of registration centres under the proposed biometric voter registration (BVR) is designed to make it cumbersome to register in urban areas while making it easy but albeit much more exposing to register in rural areas," said Crisis In Zimbabwe Coalition in a statement.Constitutional law expert Alex Magaisa, while admitting that the proof of residence as a qualification for voter registration was in the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution, it did not make residential requirements mandatory. "Section 2 of the Fourth Schedule states as follows: "The Electoral Law may prescribe additional residential requirements to ensure that voters are registered on the most appropriate voters roll, but any such requirements must be consistent with this Constitution, in particular with section 67.""It is on this basis that the Electoral Law and regulations provides for residential requirements but it is important to scrutinise the meaning and impact of this provision."First, this provision does not make residential requirements mandatory. Rather, it says "the Electoral Law MAY prescribe additional residential requirements " which means it is optional.There is no obligation to impose residential requirements and they can be done away with if they are inconvenient to voters.It is arguable that where such residential requirements may lead to exclusion of voters, these requirements may be excluded," Magaisa argued in his blog yesterday."Second, the decision to impose residential requirements is subject to an important qualification: they "must be consistent with the Constitution, in particular section 67".The use of the word "must" means it is mandatory for additional residential requirements to be consistent with the Constitution and specifically section 67."Section 67 is part of the Declaration of Rights and provides for political rights. One of these political rights is the right to vote as provided for in section 67(2). The right to vote is a fundamental right which enjoys precedence and special protection."The intention behind the qualification is that additional residential requirements must not unduly interfere with or compromise the right to vote. If therefore additional residential requirements dilute and affect the right to vote, they can't be consistent with the Constitution or section 67.In my view, there is a strong argument against the imposition of additional residential requirements that compromise the right to vote," added Magaisa.The former advisor to MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai during the inclusive government, when he was prime minister, said the additional residential requirements affect the exercise of the right to vote. Magaisa said there were gender, class and age implications attached to the additional residential requirements which the Electoral Law imposes."First, most young people, the youth, have great difficulty providing proof of residence. In the past, these rules have had to be relaxed to ensure that the requirement does not exclude the youth. Second, most women, suffer the same difficulty as the youth since the majority of properties or even rent documents are registered in the names of men."The class issue is relevant in that compared to their wealthier and property owning counterparts, most poor people struggle to provide proof of residence. Most would have to rely on the cooperation of their landlords."Indeed, there are also homeless people who do not even have proof of residence. A voting system that discriminates between the rich and poor is not fit for that purpose," said Magaisa.
HA NOI  Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has sent a message to Cambodias King Norodom Sihamoni, expressing his thanks for the warm welcome given to him by the King, the countrys leaders and people.

In his message, the Vietnamese Party chief said he believes after his State visit to Cambodia from July 20-22, the friendship and long-term co-operation will develop to new heights. He also expressed his hope that Cambodia will reap more significant achievements in the cause of national building and defense.

Hoang Binh Quan, member of the Party Central Committee and head of the Central Committees Commission for External Relations, told the press that the visit to Cambodia by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong is an important historical milestone marking 50 years of diplomatic ties.

The two countries are aware that mutual assistance in recent years was invaluable and should be preserved and promoted, he said.

In any circumstances, Viet Nam and Cambodia must always be good, sincere, and faithful neighbours having close-knit ties, and all-faceted, efficient and concrete co-operation, the official said.

He added that for the first time, the two countries ministers of Foreign Affairs signed a joint statement enhancing the Viet Nam-Cambodia friendship and all-around collaboration, witnessed by the Vietnamese Party chief, the Cambodian Prime Minister and other leaders.

The two sides also signed a number of co-operation documents, including a framework agreement on connecting the Viet Nam-Cambodia economies; a protocol on coordination of rescue in the land border areas; a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on co-operation to develop hydropower projects and trade electricity; and a MoU on building Cambodias e-government.

Party General Secretary Trong and President of the Cambodian Senate Samdech Say Chhum and Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Minister of the Royal Palace Samdech Kong Som Ol on Saturday cut the ribbon to inaugurate a Viet Nam-Cambodia Friendship Monument in Preah Sihanouk Province.

The Party leader said construction of the monument reflects the tribute paid by the Parties, States, people and armies of the two countries to Vietnamese volunteer soldiers, as well as officers and soldiers of the Cambodian Royal Army who laid down their lives for Cambodias independence and freedom.

Senate President Samdech Say Chhum said the two countries have cooperated in building Cambodia-Viet Nam Friendship monuments in Phnom Penh and 16 provinces, including Preah Sihanouk, since the 1980s to pay homage to their soldiers who sacrificed their lives during the struggle against the Pol Pot genocidal regime.

Party General Secretary Trong visited the Preah Sihanouk International Seaport, the countrys only deep-water port, through which up to 73 per cent of Cambodias imports and exports are transported. It has contributed US$65 million to the countrys State budget in recent years.  VNS
by Le Huynh Lam* - Hue Phong

Painter Vinh Phoi has died of old age in his home city of Hue at the age of 81. He was well known as a pioneer of abstract paintings in Viet Nam, however, that was not the only genre of art he was famous for.

Born into a family with royal roots in the former imperial city of Hue in 1937, Phoi enjoyed favourable conditions to nurture his talent. At the age of 21, Phoi graduated from the National Fine Arts College of Sai Gon and moved to Rome to complete his higher education in general painting and sculpture from 1958 to 1966.

Vinh Phoi .  VNS Photo Tran Ba ai Duong

Upon returning to the homeland, Phoi became an abstract painter, working as a lecturer at the Hue University of Arts at the same time.

Phois large portfolio of abstract paintings used spirals to illustrate the endless nature of changes to peoples lives and their personalities and changes in society as a whole. His paintings were said to draw the viewer into the chaos created by these spirals to generate and foster the growth of new ideas and works.

Phois artistic variations aimed to lead the viewer into the depths of a forest where ones senses were heightened to perceive sound and light in their purest forms.

The artist held individual exhibitions in Rome in 1961, 1962 1963 and 1965. He also participated in exhibitions with other artists in Japan, France, Switzerland, Brazil, and Thailand.

Phoi did not only paint abstracts. His others works include still life, seminude and scenery paintings and sculptures.

His favourite subjects for still life painting were items from Vietnamese civilization and Oriental culture, including the three-door gate (popular in Vietnamese pagoda and communal house architecture), bronze drum, oriental extreme symbol, and yin yang symbol.

Phois abstract painting: Incarnation.  Photo Courtesy of Le Huynh Lam

Phois paintings also depict his home towns beauty, such as the landscape of Hue and the iconic Huong (Perfume) River. The artist also had a range of paintings depicting the theory of Buddhism. People say Phoi, through his paintings, presented day-to-day life in the context of the Buddhas teachings.

Phoi also designed three works of sculpture -- one dedicated to his late wife, the other depicting a man people believe is himself and a third work of art.

During his 60 years as an artist, Phoi was presented several awards. In the 1960s, he got the Targa dAgent, merits of Genovas spring exhibition, silver medal in international fine arts students exhibition Rome de Journale de Italia, and other distinctions.

He was also bestowed upon various tittles for domestic exhibitions, and today, several of his paintings are showcased at art museums in HCM City, a Nang and Ha Noi.

Phoi was also a master teacher who taught many generations at the Hue College of Arts, whose name was later changed to Hue University of Arts. Prior to his retirement in 1999, Phoi was awarded the titles of associate professor and elite lecturer, and assigned to be the universitys deputy rector.

However, for his students he was simply an extremely dedicated and humorous lecturer, and someone who always behaved in a noble manner befitting his royal lineage.

On the day he passed away on Monday, artist Phan Hai Bang said former students of the university bid farewell to their beloved master. He was a great master and a chivalrous artist. He was the only one in whom I could find the artist, the intellectual and the civilian in one body.

Phois abstract painting: Outer space.  Photo Courtesy of Le Huynh Lam

Artist ang Mau Tuu, another student of Phoi, said: He was dedicated to art. He spent almost his entire life seeking new elements to paint, thus his paintings mastered both the old and new facets of life.

The art circle in the country has mourned the death of Phoi, a person many people had great affection for. His friends have mourned the loss of a buddy who always made them laugh.  VNS

*Le Huynh Lam is a former student of the late artist Vinh Phoi.
News / National

by Staff reporter

President Robert Mugabe's deputies - Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko - are engaged in a cold war of sorts over the emotive succession debate notwithstanding the camaraderie they exhibit in public, the Daily News reported.No matter how hard they try to conceal the antagonism towards each other, events suggests that the two ex-combatants have struggled to jell ever since they were appointed to the presidium in December 2014.Analysts surmise that their differences were a result of the intense jockeying among bigwigs in Zanu- who aspire to succeed Mugabe, 93, in the event that he vacates the high-pressure job at Number 1 Chancellor Road. Mnangagwa, who fought on the side of Zanu's military wing, Zanla, during the armed struggle that ended with independence in 1980, has for long been touted as the incumbent's heir apparent, and is linked to a faction known as Team Lacoste, rooting for his presidency.A career diplomat, Mphoko is sympathetic to a rival faction that goes by the moniker, Generation 40 (G40), which is deliriously opposed to Mnangagwa's perceived presidential ambitions.He earned his liberation war stripes under Zipra  Zapu's military wing. In government, Mnangagwa is in charge of economic ministries, and doubles up as Justice, Legal and Parliament Affairs minister, with Mphoko overseeing social ministries, on top of being responsible for the promotion of national healing, peace and reconciliation. In spite of having clear-cut job descriptions, there is a world of difference to their approach to issues and style, which does very little to hide their differences.Otherwise known as the "crocodile" for his stealth approach to tackling his rivals, Mnangagwa rarely attacks his foes in public, unlike Mphoko who speaks his mind and does not want to be second guessed.Last week, Mphoko clearly broke ranks with Mnangagwa, who is at the forefront of implementing the Command Agriculture programme, in an interview with a State-owned weekly.Having trained in the Soviet Union during the liberation struggle, he hazard that the "planned" economy adopted by the then socialist country in the second half of the 20th century hardly works."I have trained in the Soviet Union and I know what a planned economy is, but I am saying and we must be very careful not to distort our programmes. Because if you give a headline on a particular subject or a title to a book stick to the title, don't distort it," Mphoko was quoted saying.The Soviet Union took most of the blame for the economic collapse of the union and North Korea, with scholars concluding that capitalism and free markets were indisputably more productive than socialism and command economies.As the face of Command Agriculture, Mnangagwa has found support in the form of Mugabe, who described the initiative as "beautiful", Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander, Constantino Chiwenga, and the State-run media.He has, however, encountered criticism from Higher and Tertiary Education minister, Jonathan Moyo, the private media and now Mphoko. In an apparent jibe directed at Mnangagwa, Mphoko also delved into the succession debate last week, using a biblical analogy to drive home the point that when Mugabe appointed his deputies he was not anointing anyone to succeed him."You see, what happens is that you cannot anoint yourself; you can't do that. You have to be anointed not by some. Go to the Bible and look at how King Solomon was appointed. David was very sick, he was very frail and one of his sons, Adonijah, slaughtered over 50 beasts and anointed himself, assisted by Joab, who was a general in the army. Joab and Adonijah were working together. In the meanwhile, the reality happened and David installed Solomon and those who had anointed themselves failed completely. Those are lessons you must learn," he said.Moyo was quick to back Mphoko as he wrote on his micro-blogging site, twitter, that the Vice President had used the Bible to expose the "myth that Mnangagwa is a Joshua!"Mphoko and Mnangagwa have previously contradicted each other on several occasions. When the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef) saga broke out last year, Mphoko claimed that Cabinet ministers could only be arrested with the approval of the president.A few days later, Mnangagwa made remarks that contradicted Mphoko saying that was not the case as no individual was above the law. Zimdef has lately been in the news for all the wrong reasons after Moyo was accused of abusing the manpower development fund's resources to advance his personal interests.The case is currently before the courts. In 2015, Mphoko went to the extent of correcting Psychomotor minister, Josiah Hungwe  a Mnangagwa ally  after the former Masvingo governor had insinuated that the "crocodile" was the first vice president and therefore senior to him."We do not have a first and second vice president in our structures. We just have two vice presidents," Mphoko thundered to a bewildered audience.While Mnangagwa's style has largely been to keep his views about his internal rivals to himself, his backers are known for taking no prisoners and give no quarter.The Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA), which has thrown its full weight behind Mnangagwa as the only suitable cadre in Zanu- to succeed Mugabe, has previously blasted Mphoko for wasting State resources by taking up residence in an up-market house worth $3,5 million and spending the whole year camped in a presidential suite at a five-star Harare hotel.ZNLWVA was also vicious in its criticism of Mphoko and his perceive G40 allies, among them Moyo, Saviour Kasukuwere and First Lady Grace Mugabe for being wasteful by embarking on whirlwind countrywide tours in 2015 which were seen as meant to prop up their faction.So bad has been the rivalry between Mphoko and Mnangagwa that at one point Mugabe chastise his party supporters for congregating around either of his deputies saying as far as he was concerned the party leadership was united.Academic and researcher Ibbo Mandaza said the war between Mugabe's deputies was rooted in factionalism and the battle to succeed the Zanu- leader."It is part of the succession battle and affects government business, there is obviously a tussle over policy," said Mandaza.Political scientist, Eldred Masunungure, said factionalism has now infected everyone in Zanu-, making it almost impossible to ensure policy coherence. "It speaks to the deeply factionalised character of the ruling party.Factionalism has now inflicted the highest organs, but in terms of policy it is frightening, when the VP utter such statements on policies that would have been enunciated by government it confirms policy discord; it simply means any hopes of policy coherence and the recovery of our agriculture will not be realised," said Masunungure."Factionalism is at two levels and it is pervasive  affecting both Zanu- and government," he added.
A Vietnamese boy who could barely walk or speak because of cerebral palsy gets two degrees at a US university and looks forward to new challenges, Phan Duong and Luong Huong report.

Graduation Day is special for all students, but the applause was particularly prolonged and resounding as Tran Manh Chanh Quans name was announced at the ceremony held at Georgia Gwinnett College in May this year.

The special applause for Quan was not just that he was getting two degrees, one in IT and another in mathematics, but that the wheel-chair bound student was also suffered from cerebral palsy, a condition caused by brain damage that affects body movement, muscle control and co-ordination, reflex, posture and balance.

Twenty-five years ago, when riding through a bumpy road in Ngai Giao Commune, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, Quans mother, Le Manh Nu Vinh Son, fell off her bike. She was seven months pregnant with him.

Quan was thus born with cerebral palsy. He could not sit by himself at the age of three. With monumental patience, Son and her husband trained their son with physiotherapy. It took a long time for Quans left hand to loosen a bit and for him to feel objects with it. He could only mouth a few words with great difficulty and the speech impediment is a lifelong condition, along with other disabilities.

Quan was able to stand by himself at four. To train him to walk, his parents had to tie splints to his legs and lift him up. Each step was painful for both mother and son, but over the next seven years, they would walk for 1.5km every day.

It was so painful sometimes that he begged me to stop training, but I was determined, and encouraged him to continue. When he fell and had new injuries before the old ones had healed, I could not help crying. Quan would console me then. Im OK mother, falling will help me walk, Son recalled.

His parents did not want him to attend school, given his condition, but Quan was keen on studying and integrating into the society from a very young age.

I used to enjoy watching scientific programmes on TV, and my parents never refused to buy me books when we went to a bookstore. Learning has been my hobby, until now, Quan wrote to Viet Nam News.

At seven when he was taken to school for the first time, he refused to attend first grade. He said hed already learnt all that they taught in first grade. He wanted to enter second grade right away, Son said.

Initially, Quan could only write words in very big sizes. After a while, he learnt to use his feet to hold the paper and write with his left hand, but it did not get much better. While other students used one notebook, Quan had to use up to three.

He was introduced to computers when his parents purchased one for him at the end of his fifth grade. To type, Quan asked his parents to tie his feet and forced his fingers to work. It took him months to manage to type with three fingers on the left hand instead of using toes, as he used to do earlier.

After primary school, he astonished his parents by saying he wants to attend a specialised school far from his house. Always worried about her sons condition, his mother did not want him to study too hard. She wanted him to be literate enough to read books and remain healthy. His persistence persuaded her, however.

I took him to see the principal and asked him to advise my son. But Quan told the principal instead that he did not see any provision prohibiting the disabled from sitting for the entrance examination. Then the principal was convinced, too, his mother said.

The mother stayed with her son for a month in Vung Tau City as he prepared for the exam. With the guidance of many good teachers, Quan passed the entrance exam with high marks in the major subjects.

However, his teachers and parents both worried that he was not healthy enough to sit for too many exams. To convince his parents to allow him to attend the national competition for excellent students in 11th grade, he climbed up over 1,000 steps of the Tao Phung Mountain, stumbling a lot on the way. On reaching top, he texted his teachers and parents: I have conquered the mountain peak. I have overcome myself. Im healthy enough to sit for the exam.

One person who has inspired Quan a lot is President Ho Chi Minh.

I read many about Uncle Ho when I was small and greatly admire his will. Then, teacher Pham Thi Nhung at the Le Quy on Specialised School is my living idol. Thanks to her, I have realised and learnt many things in life.

The most important thing I have realised is that living is not only eating and breathing. People should have their own ideals. A life becomes worthy only by living beautifully.

Quan spent most of his time studying. In the 12th grade, he won a consolation prize in the national computing contest, and then received a scholarship from Utica College in the US. In a new country, the young man faced innumerable difficulties, including his wheelchair getting stuck in the snow. But these did not deter him. He remained focused.

Im passionate about IT. I saw that I would have chance to get access to more advanced IT if I studied in the US, so I agreed to study abroad. It was very difficult for me.

In 2013, Quan switched to study at the Georgia Gwinnett College, which is located in more pleasant weather conditions and closer to his relatives. He was one of the best students to compete at contests held by the Association of Information Technology Professionals. He was also popular among other students.

In April this year, the college rewarded Quan with the Unsung Hero title for setting an inspiring example and his willingness to help other people.

Quan has recently applied to Google for a full-time job. Though he has not received the results yet, the trip to Google headquarters for the interview was a memorable one. He said that even if he did not get the position, he would not have lost anything, just gained more useful experience.

I used to have a complex, but I have become more optimistic. At present, I do not think that Im disadvantaged in comparison with others. There are only just physical differences. VNS

.
by Phan inh Minh

Nang was a bed-ridden patient whose whole body was scarlet, like a lobster after being boiled. The red hue to his skin made him a disgusting sight, bar his bright eyes and their sparkling, sad look.

From the moment I entered the twin-bed room with him, I realised that all he only paid attention to the ceiling and Nen, his pretty, chubby wife. She bathed him carefully every three days, applied ointment to his body in the morning and afternoon, and fed him three times a day. She also washed his dirty underwear daily and dried them on clothes line over the banister.

It seemed to me that without her devotion, he would die soon.

* * *

That morning, as I entered our room, a stout nurse pointed at the bed close to the scarlet lobster.

Sir, thats your bed. Put on your patients uniform on now, she told me after throwing it, together with a bedspread, to me then she walked out.

Well, nurse, nurse, I called loudly.

Sir, please dont disturb my husband. Hes just fallen asleep, said the pretty wife in a nervous voice.

How did such an ugly guy snare such a beautiful girl? I asked myself.

* * *

Nangs job prior to his serious disease was in the metropolitan morgue where few people dared to work, despite the riches on offer. His work was mainly composed of cleaning and enshrouding the bodies. He got the job by paying a huge bribe and saying he was ten years younger in his application to the hospital authorities.

His employment proved fairly profitable thanks to the huge expense of burial services, conducted at the mortuary arranged by him. After the autopsy, the rest of the funeral affairs were of no concern to the hospital authorities. The various payments for things necessary for a funeral like hired mourning clothes and head or arm black bands and more, were supplied by Nang, costing a pretty penny. The timing of the rituals, funeral procession and interment were all planned by him based on how big a bribe the family of the deceased would give him. They would pay him almost anything to ensure the ceremonies went smoothly. He made money hand over fist from the dead bodies lying in the 20sq-m room. He saved his earnings in a metal safe hidden under the stone altar in the morgue. It was there he worked diligently all day long, month after month and year after year. This was before he married Nen and he often left his old, haggard wife alone at home so he could work more.

* * *

After five years working, he had more money than almost anyone in the farming district of his hometown.

How did he get rich that fast? His father is merely a postman! wondered one of his neighbours.

Maybe hes a great gambler, replied another.

Oh no no! Its thanks to support from his elder brothers company. They import woodworks from Malaysia and Myanmar and provide coffins for Nangs mortuary, a highly profitable affair, said Miss Con of the local pharmacy.

Later, Nangs elder brother, who lived in the centre of the country, transferred his whole coffin business to Nangs mortuary.

Then on the day that Nangs magnificent new house was completed in his native village, he proudly introduced Nen, a beautiful girl from the highland region, to his family.

Nangs love story startled many hospital staff members.

Nens father came from the lowland province of Thai Binh. He settled down in the mountainous district of Bac Ha where he soon married a pretty girl of the white Thai ethnic group. They opened a small restaurant in the local market, where Nen in her late teens assisted her parents.

* * *

* * *

It was wrong to say that Nang was a bad guy. In fact, he was good-natured, quiet and very patient. Moreover, he was considerate about everything, big and small: from saving his money in buying a coffin, choosing a cheap urn for families to put the ashes of their loved ones, building his house and in getting married. All were considered minutely in detail, beyond the understanding of the residents of Tuong village.

For a time, Nang was sent to work at the newly-built Bac Ha hospital as a helper in its mortuary, pending them hiring someone full-time. As the ritual services at the mortuary were still little known and exotic to local practices, he had a lot of free time. The district hospital went for months without any patients, as did the mortuary. To idle away the monotonous and lonely moments in the boring remote area, he went to Nens restaurant to eat thang co soup. Day after day, she became very fond of him, a young man from the lowlands, whereas she was a rural girl who had never been in love. Soon they fell in love with each other.

Go downstream to the lowlands with me, will you? asked Nang one morning.

I must obtain permission from my parents first, she answered sweetly.

Well, let me ask for you.

One morning, on the way back to his hometown with the head of the city hospital inside, Nang stopped his car in front of Nen as he had planned without his seniors knowledge.

Can I get a lift down the road please? she asked as if she was a total stranger to Nang.

Why not? Get in please, my lovely wild flower.

They had secretly arranged the escapade the previous day. It was her first time away from home and she wanted to see the city in the lowlands. The trip proved to be a pivotal moment in her life.

Back home, he made up his mind to abandon his plain rural wife in the country, eight years older than him. They had one son together, who had died years ago in a road accident.

* * *

The local court agreed to their divorce by mutual consent. To free himself, he had to pay her two hundred million ong for her lengthy suffering.

A few years later, at the banquet for Nen and Nangs baby boys first birthday anniversary, guests came in great numbers. They were greatly surprised at the strong likeness between Nen and her son, except he had his fathers wide mouth.

* * *

One afternoon, Nang caught a cold. He coughed and coughed violently.

Go get some lozenges or some antibiotic capsules at the pharmacy, darling, he told his wife. If I keep on coughing like this, everybody will avoid me, he added.

Immediately, she drove her motorbike to Miss Cons place to buy some medicine.

After dinner, he took lots of the capsules. An hour later, he felt ichy all over. He had a splitting headache. He tossed about on the bed. She called a taxi to take him to the hospital. Luckily for him, Dr Tin, who was in charge of the food poisoning ward, was on duty. A draft treatment plan was devised. Consequently, Nang was put under his care as an in-patient.

After ten days in hospital, Nangs disease had only gotten worse. Blisters appeared all over his body, even in his throat. His skin went reddish like a boiled lobster. Worse still, twenty days later, his skin was falling away piece by piece, accompanied by yellow pus. All he could do was sit, not lie, and moan terribly. At night he just stood naked. His family was asked by the hospital to buy a powder sheet for him to lie on, a new one every three weeks, to ease his pain. The GP saw him as a patient who needed special care, quite different from others. After so many days of treatment, Dr Tin concluded that Nang had an extremely rare disease. It attacked Nangs entire immune system, which not only rendered it ineffective but also created an antibody that could destroy any benign skin tissues.

Might I be healed completely? Nang asked the physician.

The chances of your recovery are fifty-fifty. Your hopes of getting back to normal depend on many factors, he concluded.

Damn it man speak normally, what do you mean?

We need to keep treating you. By chance, working in the mortuary, have you ever been involved in any mischievous wrongdoings, may I ask?

Nang did not answer. Instead, he only looked upwards, his forehead wet with sweat.

Dr Tin walked out.

* * *

Sharing the room with Nang for weeks, I never heard a single complaints about the hardships she had undergone.

Many doctors and nurses have praised my pretty wifes dedication to me. Im proud of her, Nang said to me one day.

After more than a year of treatment, their property had dwindled away due to his huge expenses for costly foreign-imported medicine and for changing his expensive powder bed every three weeks. Nang had to mortgage his magnificent villa and vast orchard to pay the bank interest. Missing his little child Cuoc after a long stay in hospital, he asked that he meet him as soon as possible although the little one might be frightened to death at the sight of his sick father. His reaction was quite the opposite.

Surprisingly, at just a year old, he did not want to let anyone embrace him but his father, I said to Nen quietly.

Noticing what was happening between the two of us, Dr Tin looked away out of compassion.

Following him to the veranda, I asked him, Whats his disease, doctor?

Loss of immunity, as its known nowadays. His body will get worse and worse until it is ruined completely.

So, you fancy doctors with your machines and stethoscopes are the losers in this fight?

Yes, you could say so. No course of treatment has been shown to work yet, he replied. The immune system must be generated by the patient. Its not unlike a social malady, like bad behaviour. Its trivial at first, then it gets more and more serious with every passing day, until nothing good is left.

The click of his finger as he finished his rambling speech gave me chills.

* * *

The light in the corridor penetrated into the patients room. Nen, in her flowery nightgown, was sleeping on a folding bed. Accidentally, she revealed her attractive lily-white body to me. Not to beat around the proverbial bush, she looked stunning. Her nightie that curled up to her knees thanks to the ceiling fan displayed half of her slamming. My heart, among other organs, went pit-a-pat.

For more than one year, as her husband lay in his sick bed, she had been bereft of the passionate yet powerful touch of a man.

Time and again, a pair of lizards on the ceiling engaged in coitus turned my head. At night, the whole room seemed like a deserted island.

By now, Nang had been transferred to the emergency ward due to an ulceration and high blood pressure. In the meantime, Nen stayed in the patients room at the back of the corridor after waiting for her husband at the doorway for hours. Only she and I were left in the room. Exhausted, I fell asleep for a long while. Waking up I saw her in lying face upwards position. A few minutes later I fell back asleep. To my surprise, when I woke up I saw her sitting on the end of my bed, very close to my feet.

I got up. Suddenly, she embraced me tightly.

I cant stand this situation any longer. Please, hold me.

Oh dear

I was drenched with sweat.

This excited, beautiful woman was in my lap.

Our bodies clung to each other for a long while. I was bewitched by her sweet-smelling body.

The image of Nang with his scarlet skin lying just a few feet away and of Cuocs naive smile, flooded my randy brain. They stared at me reproachfully.

I was startled into sitting up.

Nen, I cant do this while your husband is being tortured by his illness in the emergency room, I said to her.

Please hold me, I need more energy to live like this. Im about to collapse.

Just sit here, leaning against me. Ill hold you tight so that you can sleep well. Tomorrow morning you may have more strength to look after Nang.

The more tightly I hugged her soft body the looser her arms gripped me.

I dropped off to sleep amid the fragrance of her body.

I awoke to full daylight.

Doctor, can I leave hospital today? I entreated while he was visiting us.

Hmm, you still have another treatment to go.

Well, could I take the medicine at home?

You might as well. Youll soon recover. Is today okay to discharge you?

Thats great! Many thanks, doc! I sighed with relief. Immediately, I took off the hospital uniform and put my own clothes on.

I quickly hurried out of the hospital without looking back. I was well aware that Nens red-rimmed eyes were chasing after me. It seemed as if a melancholy tune was reverberating around my head. Could the kind-hearted young wife have been gradually infected by a lustful virus? After her husbands grave illness, beyond recovery, would she be able to get their mortgaged assets back?

As to me, if I had stayed in hospital much longer, could I have kept resisting my urge to give in to that lusty womans advances?

Translated by Van Minh
Viet Nams taxi operations and booking habits changed forever in 2014, when two big rivals from aboard - Uber and Grab - officialy joined the taxi market to compete with giants like Vinasun and Mai Linh.

In a diversified and profitable taxi market like Viet Nam, where a bagful of tricks is thoroughly exploited to rack up impressive gross receipts at the end of the month and win customers, Uber and Grab have proven intimidating runners in the race.

The two have used slick promotion and state-of-the-art crowd pleasers in a bid to attract passengers and outnumber the traditional taxi fleet. These include the introduction of carpooling service, which enable the sharing of car rides.

Sharing rides reduces travel costs on petrol, tolls, and the stress of driving. Carpooling is also a more environmentally friendly and sustainable way to travel, curbing air pollution , easing traffic congestion and parking space demand.

Carpooling ban

However, last week the Peoples Committee of Ha Noi asked the authority of Transportation to ban carpooling services by contracted Grab and Uber taxis, after the Ministry of Transport had already issued a similar request to the ride hailing platforms.

The ministry said the request was designed to ensure the rights of passengers and prevent risks that might arise when using carpooling services. It also cited a 2014 circular limiting transport service providers to one contract with one passenger for one route, and providing for a fine of VN4 million (US$175) to VN6 million for violations.

A representative from the Ministry of Transport said carpooling services might inconvenience passengers who book a whole car and do not want to share it.

Grab started providing its GrabShare carpool service in HCM City in May and in Ha Noi earlier this month, enabling two passengers bookings to be completed in a single trip. Uber planned to provide a similar service called Uber POOL.

The carpooling ban is obviously a contentious issue.

Previously, the range of the two companies activities was only a threat to traditional ones. The ban could also prove a threat to clients.

Taxi crisis

Truong inh Quy, deputy director of Vinasun, one of the biggest taxi companies in HCM City, says Uber and Grab have created a crisis for traditional taxi firms, shrinking the numbers of drivers and cutting into the living standards of the rest. In the first quarter of 2017, an estimated 5,000 taxi drivers left their jobs, plus their incomes have dropped from VN8-9 million ($395) to VN4-5 million ($219) a month," he said.

The situation is exacerbated by promotion campaigns, such as zero ong programmes. "These can push many taxi firms to the edge of bankruptcy, Quy said.

Le ai Hai from the Ministry of Justice said Uber and Grab have many advantages like cheap fares and convenience, and are warmly welcomed by the public.

I think state agencies are not able to ban them. What we need to do here is find a way to manage these two efficiently to make sure there is no loss of taxes and customers rights are safeguarded, he said.

Nguyen Van Thanh, chairman of Viet Nam Automobile Transportation Association, admits the applications of Grab and Uber are popular with the public, hurting traditional taxi companies and their drivers, and says something must be done.

Customers opinions are mixed.

Nguyen Xuan Thai from Ha Nois ong a District argued authorities should not rely on public sentiment in deciding whether to ban the carpooling services. We must take into account the benefit for the country and people. Is the tax paid by these services sufficient for public transportation development? Or do we have to take from other sources?"

"For example, Uber and Grab drivers get two kinds of salaries - one for the job they do during regular working hours and additional pay for driving, while regular drivers only get paid for driving, and they pay more taxes. Who profits from the technology?

Tran Tien Hoang, a customer, seemed agree to disagree. Youre funny. Grab and Uber drivers work for eight hours and more, certainly they are paid more than us. Who are you to forbid them, as long as they are efficient at work? he argued.

A student said they should be banned, as it cost her VN150,000 ($6) to travel 3km from Nghia Tan to Cau Giay districts. Can you tell me if it was expensive or not?

A janitor who has been booking Uber for a long time added, Some of you are being ridiculous in this smart age. Grab Share and Uber Pool are cheap and suitable. If I am in a hurry, I will choose Grab Car or UberX. If I am not, then Grab Share is a perfect choice, saving 30 per cent. Before you get in the car, you already know the kilometres and fare. When you travel in bad weather, the price is higher, of course. I dont buy it when you say it costs VN150,000 for 3km.

"If you ask my opinion, Im not a fan of either firm, but in the era of smart technology we know these types of services are unavoidable. The choice is all yours. No one gets to decide for me, so I choose the most suitable taxi for me. And theres also this to consider, as my friend says: If you choose to share but no one goes with you all the way, then you only pay for the price of one. - VNS
MACAYLA RASMUSSON recently transferred to the portfolio department at TCF Equipment Finance, joining the special assets team as a special assets analyst. She has been with TCF since September 2010, and previously worked in TCFEFs Operations Department as a transaction coordinator.

AMBER BREITBACH, D.C., will join Align Chiropractic and Wellness in Cedar Falls. Breitbach, a native of New Hampton, graduated with a doctor of chiropractic degree from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport.

LORI NELSON joined The Sayer Law Group P.C. in Waterloo. Before she began practicing law, Nelson was an educator for 17 years in Iowa schools. She received her J.D. from Hamline University School of Law in 2014.

ABHAY NADIPURAM joined the Davis Brown Law Firm, Des Moines, as an associate in the litigation division. He was in-house counsel at the Principal Financial Group. Nadipuram, formerly of Waterloo, earned his J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law where he graduated with honors. He also studied political science and philosophy at Wartburg College.

JUSTIN SHOOK joined the Waterloo office of BerganKDV as an on-site care technician.

Cedar Valley Hospice welcomes four employees to its team. LISA CURTIS of Waterloo is a float nurse. She has experience working for the organization as an aide and has more than 30 years of experience in the health care field. She has degrees in nursing and medical office management from Hawkeye Community College and Kaplan University. STACY GERLING of Waterloo joined Cedar Valley Hospice as an admissions social worker. She has experience working with families and earned her bachelors degree in social work from Buena Vista University, a masters degree from St. Ambrose and is certified by the Bureau of Professional Licensure at the masters level. SARAH HOMAN of Cedar Falls also is a float social worker. She has a bachelors degree in social work from Loras College in 2016 and a masters degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017. KORTNI ISOM of Waterloo is a LINK palliative care and hospice social worker in the Waterloo and Independence offices. She is a recent masters of social work graduate from the University of Northern Iowa.

VGM Group Inc. hired four associates to its team. ASHLEY HAYNES is an account manager for VGM Insurance. She is a graduate of Upper Iowa University and previously was at PDCM Insurance. BREATTA SCHMITZ, KELSEY REUSCH and MOLLY MORRIS are patient care coordinators for VGMs Homelink division. Schmitz is a graduate of Hawkeye Community College and previously was at Veridian Credit Union. Reusch joined VGM from Illinois Bank and Trust, and Morris graduated from Upper Iowa University and previously was at CBE.
INDEPENDENCE  The body of a missing trucker driver has been found.

Authorities began searching for Michael Wallace after kayakers found a straight truck submerged in the Wapsipinicon River under the U.S. Highway 20 bridge around 11:45 a.m. Friday.

His body was still missing as of Saturday afternoon but has since been recovered, according to the Iowa State Patrol. The body was found in the river, but further details of the recovery werent available.

Wallace, 58, is a resident of Hazelcrest, Ill., according to the state patrol.

The circumstances of the crash are still under investigation. Troopers said Wallace was driving a delivery truck registered to Taylor Made Express west on Highway 20 when it left the roadway for unknown reasons, struck a guardrail leading up the bridge, traveled down the grass median and went down an embankment between the bridges two spans.

It wasnt known when the accident happened.
GOP chairman

visits Waterloo

CEDAR FALLS -- Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, will be keynote speaker at the Aug. 4 meeting of the Republican Women of Black Hawk County.

Kaufmann has been chairman of Iowas Republican Party since 2014.

The luncheon is the Clarion Inn, 5826 University Ave., Cedar Falls. The event will be from 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reservations are required by calling 268-0547 or 296-2363 no later than Aug. 1.

RWHBC does not endorse candidates, but provides a forum for all Republican candidates and elected officials.

Signals change

at intersection

WATERLOO -- New traffic signals will be operating in a flashing mode beginning Monday at the intersection of Greenhill Road and Progress Avenue in Waterloo.

The traffic signals will be in full operation on Monday at 9 a.m.

Motorists are encouraged to be cautious when driving through the intersection.
ELDORA  Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven has been on the job for a month. Hes not daunted by the challenges the agency faces and is eager to get input on how to make improvements.

If everything was just going wonderfully and perfectly ... Id have said thats not really what I want to do do, Foxhoven said last week. I like challenges, and thats especially easy when you have really good causes and people who care about what they do.

Foxhoven visited the State Training School for Boys in Eldora recently, telling employees they are valued and getting input on what would make their jobs easier.

If I have a strength, its that I recognize the people that do the work know more about it than I do and know more about the solutions than I do, so I think Im a pretty good listener, said Foxhoven, who replaced Charles Palmer, whose last day was June 16.

Foxhoven, 64, took over a department under scrutiny for closing two state-run mental health facilities, its oversight of the privatization of Medicaid and its handling of child protective services after the recent deaths of two teenage girls. He oversees services that help about one-third of Iowans.

But Foxhoven is focused on the departments successes, particularly at the State Training School.

They do an awful lot really, really well and under very difficult circumstances, Foxhoven said. Theyve done a really good job of maintaining this place with people who really care about the kids.

When the Iowa Juvenile Home for delinquent girls and other youths was closed in January 2014, there was fear the Eldora facility would meet the same fate.

Foxhoven said that wont happen under his watch.

Its not on the table. Its not under discussion. Its not going to happen, Foxhoven said.

He said a higher number of delinquent males need services in Iowa. There were fewer young women with the same needs, so the Toledo facilitys mission got mixed.

But the State Training School, like similar facilities across the country, faces the challenge of addressing the mental health needs of the young men there.

Foxhoven said hes not shrinking from the challenge.

I think we have to do better at recognizing the impact that mental health has on almost everything we do, Foxhoven said. There are people who say we criminalize mental illness right now, and Im not so sure thats not true in some ways. We just havent figured out how to deal with it.

The good news, though, is Foxhoven has people on staff he can ask.

Again, my experience is the people doing the work usually have the answers, so if we listen to them, they can help us, Foxhoven said. Then, the challenge for me will be to deliver.
WATERLOO  The need for a shelter for homeless female veterans and their families became a obvious after two women with children came to Kevin Dill, the county Veteran Affairs director, asking for help.

Dill said similar visits have occurred over the last few years, and the women were sent to the LZ Phoenix shelter for veterans in Waverly or similar locations.

Soon, they will be able to stay in Waterloo.

After the success of a home for male veterans  built last year on East Ninth Street and currently housing three men  Tim Combs, executive director for Americans for Independent Living, decided to provide the same service for homeless female veterans.

Combs teamed up with Home Depot and other organizations to purchase a two-bedroom house at 1368 Hawthorne Ave. in May, and renovations are underway. It soon will provide a home for the women and an opportunity to get back on their feet.

Were making connections and cooperating with a bunch of different companies to be able to offer various opportunities for internships or to go out and study and just bring somebody up to speed in the civilian world based on what they were involved with on the military side, Combs said.

The renovations  including new flooring, electrical wiring, drywall, paint and a new kitchen  will be complete in four to six weeks. Once the home is occupied, Combs and AFID will help veterans find jobs or go back to school as well as provide them with food and clothing thanks to an agreement with Goodwill.

The project relies heavily on connections with other organizations or companies. Funds to purchase the home, which was previously owned by a veteran and sold by his children, were earned through a grant with Home Depot.

Melissa Bowling, Home Depots associate coordinator, said Combs came in September to request the grant and begin the six- to eight-week-long approval process. Eventually, AFID was awarded $21,000 for the project.

Home Depot also supplied labor  employees have volunteered days off to help with renovations, which were postponed for a few weeks as another homeless veteran family resided there before moving to Illinois.

Combs is working on another transitional home next door to the E. Ninth St. location, and workers just finished putting the roof on.

As of now, there are no other programs providing a similar service in the Cedar Valley.

Weve got a good start, and I think weve made this an excellent movement in the community, Combs said.

And it wont end with these houses. Combs also provides home modifications for veterans with disabilities. He teams up with NuCara to renovate the homes to be more user-friendly. There are already around five of these projects scheduled.

Projects rely heavily on donations from the community.

Combs recently began to reach out to individuals with vacant or paid-off properties to ask if they would donate or sell them to the cause.

Donations of any size, shape or amount can be made on the website americansforindependentliving.org, or on its Facebook page.

We have kind of a running joke with everybody asking, Well, what will you take? and I say well take anything from a can of soup to a jet airliner. Well find a place to put it.
Opinion / Columnist

In 2005 government razed down informal structures throughout the country. A denuded Joburg Lines in Mbare, for example, gave you a sense of shock after the Murambatsvina blitz. The shabby laager of shacks gave way to the actual houses, a relatively neat landscape that you would never imagine existed before.Of course, the blitz was cruel and insensitive to the plight of thousands of the homeless poor who were left with bare options for accommodation. There is a good moral in there, nonetheless. It only takes a day's thinking and action to bring out good things in bad Zimbabwe. Murambatsvina, admittedly, is a crude reference considering the suffering it brought on the homeless.There is a better example, though - the Registrar-General's passport offices. This is where people go for vital documentation ranging from birth and citizenship registration through passports. Many people lost the satire when Harare municipality felled down the trees that bordered the passport offices premises last year. They complained that it ran contrary to the modern philosophy to green cities.But the truth is that the premises now look neater and better without the trees. Driving along Herbert Chitepo Avenue in the capital, you can even see through into the offices through the windows. You get a feeling of positive bareness and orderliness. The new and refreshing look is, in fact, a splendid reflection of how the offices now operate.This contrasts sharply with what used to obtain four or five years ago. Besides the shabby trees, uncut grass and dirt, the passport offices were a cauldron of bustling untidiness. There were noisy and endless queues, rowdy crowds of long-faced people coming from all corners of the country and beyond mostly to obtain passports. And passports were gold because almost everyone wanted to get out of Zimbabwe and away from the biting economic crisis. Gun-toting police and rude security manned the queues. They could just have spared themselves the trouble because their presence didn't serve any good purpose.Grannies and teenagers alike slept in the queues for days - sometimes weeks - to get passports and other registration documents. And it sometimes took a whole year, if at all, for one to get the documents. Come to think about it, sleeping in the queues was an exercise in futility because it didn't matter how early you were or how near you were in the line. Bedraggled touts ruled the roost. These were the errand boys for the officials at the passport offices. They allocated queue numbers to the document seekers and demanded bribes. Steep bribes if you asked. They were the gatekeepers, so you couldn't get through if you didn't go through them. The security personnel, police details and sometimes military officers formed the band of touts too.The untidiness at the passport offices frustrated many who were being forced to pay three or four times more for a travel document. Harare was particularly bad, so some tried their luck in smaller towns like Bindura and Chinhoyi. But the situation was also bad there because touts and nepotistic officers ruled the day. Those that failed completely opted to risk life and limb and travelled as illegal and undocumented migrants.A high demand for passports, coupled with a skewed governance culture within the RG's Office, had created a fat opportunity for corruption. Passport officials were the biggest beneficiaries. I know of many, both men and women, who turned into demi-gods only because they could give you access to the much sought-after documents. They took home as much as $4 000 a day.Public service security personnel jostled to be deployed to the passport offices pretty much the same way police officers are rushing to man the roadblocks these days. My neighbour then, a middle-aged woman who worked at the offices, hosted fairly long queues at her house in the evenings and at weekends as people hustled for her attention. She bought five houses in upmarket areas in under a year. Her fleet of cars made her the "heroine" of the neighbourhood.All her glitz is gone now, thanks to changes at the RG's offices. There are no more winding queues. Friendly officers greet clients and smile at them these days. They are just falling short of serving you coffee. People walk in and get served within an hour. And you get your ordinary passport within four to six weeks. This was unimaginable at the height of the madness at the offices. It only took the Home Affairs ministry, cabinet, the RG and his senior personnel a moment to realise that, after dollarisation, the office could make good money by driving corruption out. The RG's Offices now realises substantial revenue by just doing the right things, and no-one is asking questions.The point is, the RG's Office is a shining case of how the civil service can stop being corrupt and reap big benefits after all. It provides a good guideline on how government must stop the rot in the rest of the civil service. Nobody ever thought that the corruption at the office would end one day, but look where it is now. Perception surveys used to cite the RG's office as one of the most corrupt institutions, but that is no longer the case.Clearly, all that is needed is political will and dedication to good governance. The sea shift at the office demonstrates that corruption festers only when the high offices don't see a good reason to change things. Almost all the other high-profile civil departments are theatres of mass corruption. The pension office, police, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, parastatals, you name it. Currently, there is an angry public debate around police roadblocks. Key authorities in government have spoken against them, yet they persist. All because none of them has the motivation and sincere will to stop the road nuisance.In essence, there are no excuses whatsoever for corruption to prevail. The RG's Offices has given us a good narrative on that. Government ought to sit up, think and act and, presto, we will have a clean society once again.Tawanda Majoni is the national coordinator at Information for Development Trust (IDT), a non-profit organisation promoting access to information on issues relating to public and private sector good governance, transparency and accountability and can be contacted on majonitt@gmail.com.
CEDAR FALLS  You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but Lisbon native Morganne Reinboldt hopes to prove horses are a different story.

She has less than six months  with seven weeks remaining  to take 15-year-old male pinto horse Radin from unwanted and untrained to being a serious candidate for adoption.

There have been some bumps along the way. Literally, when Radin tried to join Reinboldt in exiting the straight-loading trailer through an escape door. And figuratively, when she struggled to get him to lope or to even accept getting sprayed with fly repellent.

But Radin has made amazing progress since he was acquired by the Minnesota Hooved Animal Rescue Foundation in April. The nonprofit has challenged nine trainers to groom neglected horses for adoption.

There are a lot of horses out there that this is a problem for; they dont have a purpose in their life, and maybe theyre not treated right, said Reinboldt, 20.

Meeting Radin

Reinboldt, a University of Northern Iowa student majoring in religious studies, wanted to spend the summer working with horses. She has loved equines since riding her first pony at 6 years old, but sold her horse before entering college.

When she came across the Minnesota nonprofit, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Reinboldt thought it was a great way to volunteer.

Weve found that an untrained horse is an unwanted horse, said Drew Fitzpatrick, founder and director of the Minnesota Hooved Animal Rescue Foundation. Were trying to give trainers a leg up to make a job of it, to support themselves by being horse trainers. The more trainers that are out there, the more horses that get trained, the less horses Im going to find in humane cases.

Reinboldt picked up Radin early in April after securing free boarding thanks to rural Cedar Falls family Nate and Lisa Wetzel, who asked only that Reinboldt help train their girls on the familys horses. Reinboldt also worked to secure riding locations so Radin doesnt get bored circling the same arena regularly.

Radin was nearly too old to be considered for the program. He was donated with two other horses by a family who never trained the animals after getting them for children who quickly lost interest.

It has been difficult for Reinboldt, a barrel racer, to get used to a more mature horse, but she has grown to appreciate him. She says hed be a great fit for a younger or older rider who wants an easy-going mount.

I think he understands that this is something big for him, and I understand that, so itll be really hard (to give him up). ... I think Im one of the first or few people who have ever given him this much attention, so thats hard to watch that go to somebody else.

She hopes whoever adopts Radin will reach out to her before his training is over so he can have a transition period to ensure a good fit.

I learned pretty quickly that he needs to be bonded with someone in order to do good work for them. He really thrives off of that deep connection, so I had to work on building that before I could really go from there, Reinboldt said.

People can follow Radins progress at their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MHARFRadin/ to see if he would be right for an adoptive home.

A forever home

Reinboldt will continue to train Radin until Sept. 16, when he will go to the Leatherdale Equine Center at the University of Minnesota. There they will join nine other pairs competing in the challenge.

The trainers will demonstrate their skills and the feats theyve accomplished and be eligible for cash prizes. More importantly, there will be a silent auction where pre-approved bidders can bid on the horses and adopt them.

Fitzpatrick said the foundation pre-approves bidders so the horses go to good homes. That also allows adopters to interact with trainers and horses and decide whats right for them.

The trainers have little incentive to mislead potential owners since they dont get any money from the auctioned horses.

More information about adopting Radin or other horses in the challenge can be found at http://mnhoovedanimalrescue.org/ under the trainers challenge tab.

I like him a lot, and I would like to keep him, so its even more important that he gets something really good, Reinboldt said. And if I can get to know them a little bit too  itll make it that much easier.
SUMNER  Heavy rains Friday night and Saturday deluged the community of Sumner, and basement flooding and sandbagging were taking place in several Northeast Iowa communities.

As much as 10 inches of rain fell near Fredericksburg during the stretch, according to one calculation. Fairbank and other area communities also were hard hit, many receiving 5 or more inches of rain Friday night and Saturday.

By Saturday evening, the waters had peaked or receded, but cleanup comes next.

In Sumner, everything was being done in the dark.

It has receded. I havent heard whether we are going to get more water from the Wapsi coming south, said City Clerk Lisa Oberbrockling as she sat in her office Saturday morning, illuminated only by a patch of light coming in through a window and the glow of her cellphone screen.

The Little Wapsipinicon River wasnt so little as it wound through the city. How much rain Sumner got was not available Saturday, but some reports stated Fredericksburg to the north received 10 inches Friday.

The phones were out at City Hall in Sumner. The whole city was without electricity. Oberbrockling was routing everything through her cell, which is (563) 578-5609, for anyone with questions or needing assistance.

In addition to the power outage  the citys main electrical carrier is down, and the municipal light plant that acts is a backup flooded  the city is under a mandatory boil order, and travel on city streets isnt advised.

Bremer County Emergency Management set up a shelter before down Saturday as the second round of storms drove people from their homes.

Kip Ladage, with Emergency Management, said officials had planned to open the shelter at the school, but when the power failed they moved the operation to the chapel at the Hillcrest long-term care facility, which is powered by a backup generator.

As of Saturday morning, the shelter had about a dozen people, but Ladage expected more to arrive because of the lack of power.

Also on Saturday, the Sumner Post Office was forced to close due to the flooding. Officials said there is no timetable as to when it will reopen Postal operations were relocated to the Fayette Post Office at 201 E. Water St., Fayette. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The water alone had a very sizable footprint that we have not seen before. But then once we lost power, that shuts off sump pumps. So we may see a large portion of the community has been impacted, Ladage said

He said the American Red Cross was assisting county officials. Staff and volunteers of The Salvation Army of Waterloo/Cedar Falls sent sandwiches, snacks and more than 1,500 bottles of water to aid flood victims and emergency service workers in the community. Additional resources were being brought in from Cedar Rapids to dispense food, water and flood kits throughout the evening and overnight hours.

Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bros. Bagels in Waterloo donated coffee and several hundred bagels for a breakfast for Sumner residents this morning.

Problems started around 8 a.m. Friday with flash flooding due to heavy rains, said Jeff Smith, a captain with the Sumner Fire Department.

The sandbagging operation started Friday outside the fire station. Volunteers said they went through three cement trucks worth of sand between Friday and Saturday.

The worst of the storms hit Friday night, and by early Saturday several homes had basements filled with water, and three or four suffered collapsed foundations.

Some reports estimate as much as 11 inches of rain fell in a 24-hour period, Oberbrockling said.

Smith said no injuries were reported, but firefighters executed one rescue - a disabled woman whose home was surrounded by the flood.

We used a Tommy lift on a pickup truck. We were still able to get in there. The water wasnt that deep yet. We were able to get her out on her wheelchair, and got her to safety, Smith said.

Fredericksburg

In Fredericksburg, numerous residents ended up with flooded basements when the storm passed through Friday night, said Ray Armbrecht, the citys fire chief and wastewater superintendent.

Heavy rains overtook streets in town and pushed a creek east of town out of its banks, forcing water over the U.S. Highway 18 bridge and closing the roadway. Firefighters blocked the road until the water withdrew. The highway was later reopened, and Saturday Iowa Department of Transportation crews were working on repairs.

City pumps were working to clear water from storm sewers.

The American Red Cross headed to Fredericksburg with cleanup kits for residents who suffered flooding, Armbrecht said.

Fairbank

Flooding in Fairbank meant a couple had to alter their wedding plans.

The couple had planned a Saturday ceremony on the small island park in the Wapsi River in the middle of town with a reception to follow at nearby Costas Sport Bar and Grill, said Brittany Youngblut, whose mother, Denise Youngblut operates Costas with Kevin Kaufman.

If felt terrible for them. They came yesterday (Friday) and set up. ... In here, they had a cake table, they had a backdrop set up. All the tables were decorated, she said.

By Saturday morning, the river was starting to overtake Costas. The outcome of the nuptials wasnt clear, and Youngblut said the couple was seeking a new venue.

As of Saturday evening, Costas had been spared the worst. Volunteers helped sandbag the establishment and a handful of businesses along the river banks  Dons Trucks across the street, the historical society, the food bank and the funeral home upriver.

From first thing this morning, all day long, more people showed up as the day went on, Youngblut said. She said Costas lower level got water, but the upper level was dry, and employees had enough time to move items upstairs.

Jason Kayser with the Fairbank Fire Department said the community showed up to help their neighbors.

Everybody is secure. We sandbagged the place, all the businesses and residences along the river. I think we are holding, and I think its dropping, said Kayser and he and other residents gathered along the river on Main Street to relax after a day of hard work.

Crews prepared about 100 pallets worth of sandbags, with about 60 to 70 bags per pallet, Kayser estimated. He said there is a 12-pallet reserve for those who need it.

With the river cutting the city in half, and with the route to travel from one side to the other involving a 30-minute detour, the Dunkerton Fire Department agreed to assist with emergencies on the west side of town, Kayser said.

We are not going to take our rig across this. We could probably drive a fire truck through, but an ambulance, it aint going to happen, he said.
One main issue in the past election was immigration reform. So far, our elected representatives have dithered about, loudly proclaiming they are going to do something along those lines, but to date they havent done squat. They could make a quantum leap on one aspect if they simply would examine our Constitution more closely.

Section 1 of Amendment 14 starts out: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.

The key word is born. Pregnant women from Latin America and Asia are coming here in droves to give birth to an American citizen based on that one word in Amendment 14. I hope to God someone in our Legislature reads this. The solution to anchor babies is incredibly simple. Democrats and Republicans should call for a constitutional convention simply to handle this problem. We can rework Amendment 14 or we can call for an Amendment 28. We can eliminate anchor babies by simply stating, A person born in the United States will be regarded as a U.S. citizen if at least one parent also is a U.S. citizen by birth or naturalization. There! Problem solved. All we have to combat are men marrying dozens of pregnant women to satisfy the one parent phrase. A lengthy sentence in a federal pen should deter creativity along those lines. DNA should prove otherwise.

Now, I am not taking credit for the above idea. It already is gaining steam across Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. However, I know neither political party will advance this suggestion. Why? Money backers for the Republicans want to continue fattening their bank accounts by having access to ultra-cheap labor. The Democrats are under the illusion great blocks of immigrants will vote for them, and they think they need these votes. It never occurs to them undocumented immigrants arent citizens and therefore cant vote. We as ordinary citizens must elect people with the honesty and guts to set greed and stupidity aside and solve the easiest aspect of our immigration problem.

As long as we are tinkering with the Constitution, I have an idea. This one is on me. The time is way past due to halt destruction of our democracy by the recent Supreme Court decision in the case known as Citizens United. The idea corporations are people and therefore can donate unlimited amounts of cash to buy (yes, buy) politicians to do their corporate bidding is enough to make a sane person vomit. So, since we have called for a constitutional convention for Amendment 28, lets expand that to eliminate one of the stupidest Supreme Court decisions since the Taney Courts Dred Scott decision of 1858.

As the anchor of our democracy, the Supreme Court shouldnt be allowed acts of stupidity every 150 years. All our new Amendment 28 has to do is to define person. Section 2 of our new amendment simply can forbid nonperson entities from taking part in the political process by any fashion or means. A person is defined as a human being, born or naturalized as a United State citizen, who can vote by any means provided in their respective states. Lets see a corporation show up at the polls and try to vote. Im sure Im no genius, but I bet if I were a poll attendant Id know something was wrong with that scenario.

OK, Ive given you two ideas I think should be considered. What are you going to do about them? For starters, find some politicians who put their country ahead of greed, power and prestige. You have the hardest job to do. Frequently, I have people come up to me and say, Mr. Smith, I read all of your columns. Flattering, but useless if I dont get people thinking and quietly acting to bring our country out of the mess its in.
About a year ago, Donald Trump Jr. met with a mysterious Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr. was purportedly eager to receive information that could damage Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign.

Veselnitskaya denies she was working for the Kremlin to lobby for favorable treatment for Russia. But in the past, Veselnitskaya has been connected with a number of Russian-related lobbying groups.

Trump Jr., for his part, proved naive and foolish to gobble such possible setup bait. The Russians proved eager to confuse, confound and embarrass everyone involved in the 2016 election.

This latest Trump family imbroglio piggybacks on six months of Russian collusion charges. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned less than a month into his job after being less than candid about his contacts with the Russians. Paul Manafort, Donald Trumps erstwhile campaign manager, had some questionable Russian business interests and resigned well before the election.

All these stories were luridly headlined in the press.

Yet several intelligence officials from the Obama administration  former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey and former Director of National intelligence James Clapper  asserted they had found no evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign to rig the election.

Former FBI head Robert Mueller is now overseeing the probe into possible Russian meddling as a special counsel. There are also several other Russia-related investigations being conducted by various agencies and congressional committees.

Some members of Congress are asking why Obama administration officials such as Brennan, Samantha Power and Susan Rice requested surveillance files on Trump campaign officials, may have unmasked names, and may have allowed those names to be illegally leaked to the press.

Earlier, some Republican anti-Trump operators (and later some Clinton campaign operatives) hired former British spy and opposition researcher Christopher Steele to compile a dossier on Donald Trump that would include some ludicrous Russia-related allegations. Weirder still, Steeles firm may have had some contacts with none other than Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Sen. John McCain, a former target of candidate Trumps invective, acquired the anti-Trump dossier and made sure the FBI investigated the phony dirt. Comey did just that.

In no time, the so-called Steele dossier was leaked. The website Buzzfeed admitted it could not verify any of the accusations but published the entire sordid file anyway.

One of the principals of the Clinton campaign, John Podesta, was a board member of a green energy firm that suddenly saw an infusion of Russian cash  purportedly in an attempt to sway Podesta.

Congressional science and energy committees and subcommittees are currently interested in whether the Russians funneled cash into American anti-fracking groups such as Sea Change on the expectation they might help derail American energy exploration and production.

The Russian government has lost nearly half its oil revenue because of the innovative American ability to frack gas and oil, which has crashed world energy prices. Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently will do anything to see it stopped.

Early in 2016, investigative journalists reported Russian interests donated to the Clinton Foundation and offered generous speaking honoraria to former president Bill Clinton, apparently in hopes of gaining leverage with then-Secretary of State and likely future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In one controversial deal, the U.S. government approved sales of a large amount of North American uranium deposits to Russian interests.

The list of Russian capers, collusions and conspiracies could be expanded, but the picture is clear: Putins Russia is in bad shape. It is economically weak and eager to do anything possible to hurt the U.S.  largely by using a fake-news disinformation campaign, spreading Kremlin cash and playing a gullible and often unprofessional U.S. media eager to find a scandalous Russian under every American bed.

So far the Russian disinformation program has worked brilliantly.

What foreign government could possibly entangle in truth, lies, half-truths, rumors and scandals the Trump family, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Comey, John McCain, John Podesta, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and a host of other Beltway grandees?

Who could prompt enough investigations and inquiries to overwhelm and distract the entire U.S. government at a time when North Korea is aiming missiles at U.S. territory, Iran is pressing ahead to develop a nuclear weapon, Syria is a genocidal mess and immigrants from the war-torn Middle East are sweeping across Europe?

Putin is now Americas puppet master  and we are his empty-headed playthings dangling from his Kremlin strings.
The suns steady rise slowly spreads its gathering light on the morning dew until the lawn dances with sparkles and the day with possibilities.

The July dew, soaking wet and glistening bright, almost always promised a day of sunshine, heat and humidity on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth. Jackie, the farms main field hand, explained the dew-heavy sun forecast this way: God doesnt waste water.

The epigram, my brothers and I learned, meant a morning with heavy dew usually delivered a day with heavy sun and a dry, and a no-dew morning often delivered a day with a good chance of rain.

Neither forecast mattered much to Jackie. Salaried, he was paid rain or shine, drought or flood. It did, however, matter to my brothers and me because we had our 50-cents-per-hour pay tied to work. Sunshine brought us dollars; rain brought my father a better corn crop.

The heavy work on those dewy mornings began early. Jackie, my brothers and me usually unloaded two, maybe three, loads of square alfalfa bales in the cavernous hay shed attached to the raised parlor where my father and Howard, Jackies older brother and our dairys herdsman, milked the farms 100 Holsteins.

It was a hard beginning to any day and the effort it required brought grunts from Jackie, a small man whose deeply brown arms, neck and face would glisten with sweat after just a few bales. He always worked the wagon  tossing bales to those who were stacking in the barn  and said little while working.

His silence led to our silence and together we worked like a bale-tossing, bale-stacking machine. Most mornings we worked so quietly we could hear the milking parlor radio give a weather forecast we already knew.

In between loads, Jackie moseyed to the shady, north side of the tin-clad barn for a brief respite. His preferred method was to squat on his haunches to slowly roll a cigarette and, even more slowly, smoke it to a pinched, brown-stained nubbin. The break was done when the cigarette was done. Jackie was no slacker.

A couple of hours later, the mornings dew was gone, the hay stacked and the cows milked. If there was more hay to mow, my father usually assigned me the job. Jackie would be directed to mow, chop and chew through the many acres of government ground the current farm program required us to set aside.

These government, or non-farmed, acres grew every weed known to mankind and one, giant ragweed  which we called horseweed  was a local specialty. By late July they were more like trees than weeds, taller than the Oliver 770s exhaust pipe and sturdy with woody stems as thick as your wrist. Worse, all were topped with brooms of yellow pollen.

Those drawbacks  the height of the horseweeds, the hot sun, the choking pollen, the heat of the no-cab, hardworking tractor  combined to make rotary mowing these set-aside acres one of the hottest, dirtiest jobs on the farm. Jackie often returned at noon soaked in sweat and stained, head to toe, in the fine, yellow pollen.

Then, when the alfalfa was fit to bale in the early afternoon, we baled. Although I never saw Jackie stack a load of hay in my life, I saw him unload nearly every load of hay in my life. This seemed to be some long-ago compromise between my father and him: we loaded hay, Jackie unloaded hay. Done deal.

After my father left us for the evening milking each day at 4, Jackie drove the baler while my brothers and I loaded the days final two or three wagons before his 6 p.m. quitting time. These were the loads that, like the dew, would await us in the morning.

Back then each days quiet, hard work delivered clear, solid results. No one shouted. No one called anyone any names. No one bragged. We worked because work was required. It was that simple. And, no, the times werent better than today.

We, however, were.
Russian roulette

BOB BLACK

WATERLOO  In the Korean War, Russian pilots flew fighters against our American fighters. They also trained Chinese and North Korean pilots. During Vietnam, Russian pilots flew for the North Vietnamese and trained their pilots as well as the Chinese. In both conflicts, the Russians fought and supplied arms to our enemies.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it. Excerpt from the Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776.

Conspiring, for whatever reason, with a government hostile to the United States should be considered treasonous and a threat to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to American citizens.

Health care

WALLACE HETTLE

CEDAR FALLS  The Republicans have seemingly abandoned their health care plan, which would have left 23 million Americans without insurance.

Rep. Rod Blum followed his leaders in this fiasco, voting to approve a plan that even his friend Donald Trump admitted was mean.

I do not know why Blum supported the bill; maybe he just did so out of Republican party loyalty. What I do know is Northeast Iowa deserves a better congressman.

Enough of Trump

MARK PIEL

WAVERLY  When is enough enough? How much more will it take? Where is the voice of protest and outrage to the lack of integrity within our executive branch centered in the Trump presidency?

Scandals continue to emerge almost weekly, many predicted and anticipated, but many more lurking behind the headlines. How low are many of our elected officials, most especially Republican leaders and members of Congress, willing to set the bar before they speak with courage to the national scandal and disgrace at hand, not to mention the international ramifications?

The hope our president and those around him would begin to develop a sense of ethical, compassionate, thoughtful and servant-oriented governing when he took office was clearly wishful thinking.

Its evident what we have seen is what we will continue to get. All Americans who have had enough need to stand up and be counted and demand our elected representatives do the same. We must denounce and speak forcefully to the lies, deceit and moral bankruptcy that characterize our president and his administration.

Quit tweeting

RONALD HETH

CEDAR FALLS  Im so glad I did not vote for the current president, Tweeter Don.

What an embarrassment he has become to our nation and the world. Why would anyone in their right mind chase away our long-time allies and cozy up to one of the most evil persons on the planet, Vladimir Putin?

He and his family need to remove themselves from the White House and Cabinet and move back to their shady deals in New York City.

We dont need the likes of them in our house. To tweet or not to tweet. It is certainly not becoming to the president to conduct our business hiding behind social media. I am a veteran who could have never called him my commander in chief. It has become quite obvious he does not deserve that title.

And get a decent meaningful salute, Don. Your salute to those in uniform is quite despicable. Watch a few You Tube videos to see how it should be done.

Impeachment looks like a viable option before the whole train is derailed. Good riddance.

Gilbertville Daze

MARK THOME

GILBERTVILLE  I want to thank all who helped with Gilbertville Daze. I hope all who attended the activities enjoyed themselves. The event is a way to showcase the town and people who make Gilbertville the special community it is. Looking forward to a even better event in 2018.

Letter response

CAROL (MRS. JOHN) PETERSEN

REINBECK  In response to David Mansheims July 16 letter, a response to Dennis Claysons column, it appears to assume health care is a right, citing the Declaration of Independence phrase Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It must be so, because no one can have much life or happiness without health care he said. He overlooked one word: pursuit. We only have a right to pursue what makes us happy, not to expect others to make us happy. We can put money away (we have nine months to save for a baby delivery), or work health insurance premiums into our monthly budget, but others dont owe us health care. Before Obamacare, people werent dying in the parking lots of hospitals having been refused care. Empathy and safety nets protected them with very few exceptions. Saying thousands would be under a death sentence without Obamacare is just a scare tactic.

Mansheim discounted another word: independence. All we have to do is read about Justina Pelletier and Charlie Gard (for whom their parents were denied their unalienable right to care) to know where government control of health care can lead. This reminds me of another word that was misconstrued by Mr. Mansheim: unalienable. That means God-given, not government-given.

Brick road

KATHY STEFFENEY

CEDAR FALLS  I recently bought original bricks from Rainbow Drive in Cedar Falls. When was Rainbow Drive reconstructed and bricks removed?

Gun talk

JASON VORTHMANN

SUMNER  To the gentleman who wrote the letter  silencer is a misnomer. The term suppressor is more accurate. A suppressed firearm does not make a noise like a school kid shooting a spit-ball, like in the movies. A suppressor, on average decreases the decibel level of a firearm by 30 db. Unsuppressed firearms average 140-190 db. A suppressed firearm is about as loud on the low end of the scale as a chainsaw or car horn from a little over a yard away.

This is far from silent. Supressors are, by themselves expensive, let alone the cost to modify a firearm to accept them. There is also a lengthy permitting process (including a fee, fingerprinting and background check). High-powered rifles are not legal to hunt with in Iowa. The newly legal rifles are required to fire handgun ammunition. To see the difference, look up .45 ACP ammunition vs. .308, .300 Winmag. If you are not familiar with firearms, the case size should make the difference apparent. As far as political contributions go in the last presidential race, in the list of top contributors, Michael Bloomberg was No. 10, George and Alexander Soros were No. 12 and No. 31, respectively. The Kochs were No. 53. This seems applicable  Matthew 7:1-2.
Opinion / Columnist

It has been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Zimbabweans cannot, must not, participate in another ZANU PF controlled election. That would be madness indeed!Yet that is the way we are heading. We have the same contenders that we have had in every election since 2002: Robert Mugabe v Morgan Tsvangirai; the same contending parties: ZANU PF v MDC-T together with a number of vote-splitting minor opposition groups; the same electoral process conducted by a ZEC that answers to ZANU PF; and signs of the same ZANU PF vote rigging, this time in the appointment of Nikuv International Project to manage, store and compile the voter data collected by Laxton Group's biometric voter registration system.Without game-changing electoral reform, we are inevitably heading for yet another Mugabe and ZANU PF victory at the 2018 election as we have had in every election since 2002.As commentator Vince Masewe tweeted recently, Zimbabweans must realise that liberation politics is now dead and we now need inclusive developmental politics led by a new breed.Seismic shiftThere is a seismic shift going on in politics in this country. It is incumbent on us to manage it to bring about free and fair elections and a peaceful, prosperous and democratic society in the new Zimbabwe.People are beginning to realise that Zimbabwe's crisis is not going to be solved by elections in 2018. This is now a liberation struggle. Our independence was won in 1980 but not our freedom. Now we want to be free.The last days of ZANU PF are upon us. The party is imploding as G40 and Team Lacoste battle it out and Zimbabweans continue to suffer during its death throes.ZANU PF is a failed brand. Gukurahundi and Murambatsvina, a collapsed economy, pillaging of natural resources, bungled land redistribution, shameless looting and personal aggrandisement, violence and oppression have deprived ZANU PF of any legitimacy. That party has no future in the new Zimbabwe. Now is the time for people of good will in ZANU PF to stand up and abandon it.Morgan Tsvangirai's greatest achievement has been to thwart Mugabe's vision of a one party state. However, he has run his race. It is time for him to stand aside and to allow new leadership to emerge in his party. If he stands as a candidate in the 2018 elections, ZANU PF will chew him up and spit him out as they have done before. If he retires now, Tsvangirai's future will be as an honoured elder statesman.The MDC-T's attitude that Tsvangirai has some kind of right to the opposition vote is disturbingly similar to ZANU PF's often-expressed sense of entitlement. We must eschew that kind of thinking in Zimbabwean politics.MDC-T vice president Nelson Chamisa has been reported as warning other opposition parties that they cannot expect to enjoy the spoils of a struggle that they did not sacrifice for as the parties endeavour to form a united opposition ahead of the 2018 elections.According to Chamisa, because the MDC-T has been in the trenches challenging ZANU PF since its formation in 1999, its leaders battered and incarcerated and its supporters attacked and murdered, only Tsvangirai is entitled to lead a grand coalition. Chamisa's view indicates that MDC-T does not really want a coalition; they are looking to absorb the other opposition parties. It is a view that cannot go unchallenged.A united oppositionThe grand coalition must be a coalition against tyranny and not a coalition for entitlement to political office. A united opposition will require a high degree of cooperation and respect for each other to get behind true leaders dedicated uplifting the people and restoring the nation. ZANU PF is tearing itself apart because its leaders are locked in a bitter struggle for power. A united opposition must avoid the same pitfall.A united opposition implies having just one opposition candidate in each electorate who is supported by all opposition groups. Otherwise the opposition vote will be split and that will be disastrous.The smaller parties will each make their contribution to a united opposition just as small streams fill bigger streams that become a raging torrent.Groundswell for changeThere is an increasing groundswell for change among Zimbabweans. The emergence of independent candidates such as Nkosana Moyo and Fadzayi Mahere, and moves in some quarters to urge Shingi Munyeza and Strive Masiyiwa to stand, are in response to deep public dissatisfaction with current leaders and a recognition that we cannot continue down the same path as before.Youth groundswellThere is a dramatic groundswell for change among Zimbabwe's youth. They know from social media what life is like in Zimbabwe compared with life in other countries that are rich in natural resources, that are well governed and where the people are educated. They want the same opportunities in Zimbabwe.All our children in Zimbabwe have known is starvation, unemployment, corruption, oppression and parents going for months without pay. They have learned to live with an intermittent electricity supply, bathing only when the water flows, and boiling their drinking water. They take for granted potholes in the roads and uncollected garbage by the wayside.Our youth have clearly heard the message to register and vote and this message is being widely promoted on social media by individual young people and by youth organisations. They do not want a President whose solution to youth unemployment is "go and herd cattle".Our children have never known freedom. We must stand with them now and fight to liberate them.ZANU PF's idea of nationhood has failed disastrously. A new generation is rallying to redefine a 21st Century nation.The way forwardI am impressed by ZUNDE's proposed roadmap to free and fair elections that consists of three basic steps:1. Mobilisation of the populace in peaceful mass demonstrations to petition the ZANU PF government to stand down.2. Putting in place an interim transitional authority as a caretaker government to administer Zimbabwe and ensure accurate and secure biometric voter registration.3. Internationally supervised free and fair elections. #ThisFlag and #Tajamuka have demonstrated that the people are ready to take action when they have courageous, innovative leaders. ZUNDE has called on Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the largest opposition party and the one best positioned to mobilise the populace, to show true leadership and mobilise his followers into organised and sustained public protests calling for the ZANU PF government to stand down so an interim transitional authority can be put in place.If he does this, he will guarantee that other opposition groups will join and support him. If he contests another election in 2018 under existing electoral conditions, it will lead to his political demise but, if he will lead us to an interim transitional authority, he will earn the enduring esteem of a grateful nation.We must not allow ourselves to be dragged into yet another stolen election. We must seek another way. We must demand change.Tapson Muchena is an academic and a keen observer of the Zimbabwe situation. He can no longer remain silent. tapson.muchena@gmail.com.
During his outburst, Congemi also told his rival's supporters that former U.S. President Barack Obama was your reparations.

Controversial Florida mayoral candidate, Paul Congemi, directed racially charged comments at his opponent's supporters during a meeting.

The 60-year-old Republican, who is contesting the St Petersburg mayoral race told black supporters of his rival Jesse Nevel to go back to Africa if they are not happy living in the US.

My advice to you, if you dont like it here in America, planes leave every hour from Tampa airport, the candidate continued, then directing his comments to Mr. Nevels supporters. Go back to Africa! Go back to Africa! Go back!

Congemi  who is considered a long-shot in the race  also told his rival's supporters that former U.S. President Barack Obama was your reparations, during his outburst.

Mr. Nevel, you and your people, you talk about reparations, Congemi said. The reparations that you talk about, Mr. Nevel, your people already got your reparations. Your reparations came in the form of a man named Barack Obama.

Im not politically correct, Congemi informed.



Nevels campaign is backed by the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, which holds the view that reparations are a precursor to discounting racial inequality.

Last year, a United Nations panel declared that the United States owed African Americans reparations for the countrys history of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality.

Congemi told The Washington Post that Nevel and the group that backs him are inept and unhappy about the whole system in America.

I had never met Jesse Nevel until last night, Congemi said. Its obvious he is a self-hating white man.

Congemi revealed that he had been a lifelong Democrat who switched parties after then-President Obama announced he was in favor of same-sex marriage. He now supports Donald Trump.

Congemi was arrested for felony elder abuse in Jan.

Congemi's arrest

Congemi, in a similarly scandalous incident, was arrested for felony elder abuse in January.

The affidavit from the detainment detailed that Congemis 87-year-old mother, who was in his care, had bed sores that were so neglected her tailbone was visible.

I wasnt aware of that, he said. "I set up the home health care and whatever.

Police were contacted after the elderly woman was finally seen by medical providers.

Congemi claimed that his mother had been receiving home health care, which he canceled due to cost. He added that he arranged for a replacement hospice to take over three days later.

They werent satisfied for the three days," he explained. "They said [...] I shouldve had somebody here. But I was setting up people to come in. It takes a couple of days before new people come in.

In 2009, Congemi made headlines after receiving a trespassing warning from a KFC for getting into an argument  with the fast food restaurant's employees  about his order.
A startup needs to test an idea quickly. For this, an MVP is created. MVP, Minimal Viable Product  a test version of a product or service with a minimum set of functions (up to one or two), which allows you to see the product's value for consumers and the market. MVP is created to test hypotheses and check the viability of the intended product: is it worth developing the project further, what changes should be made? The sooner a startup brings its MVP to market and tests the idea, the better. This article will look at how no-code technology can help founders achieve their business goals.

This article will try to cover everything that a founder needs to know about no-code at the initial stage of creating a startup.

What is no-code?

No-code, zero-code platform is a tool for creating websites, applications, chatbots, and other programs without the need for direct code writing by programmers. No-code is a valuable alternative to traditional development.

No-code is confused with low-code, but there is a difference in these terms. Low-code includes no-code and the ability to "finish code", add parts of code and the functionality.

A user of a no-code platform usually does not need to know layout, programming languages, or hire a team of programmers. The user of the no-code tool creates an application using a visual block constructor, which he fills with the necessary content and functions, and the no-code platform itself does the processing of requests, compiling the application and other "magic." It generates code using AI and/or contains blocks of code pre-written by programmers.

No-code allows the startup founder to create an MVP himself, entrust it to his employee with basic technical literacy and understanding of the project, or hire a no-code developer. Even in the case of hiring a no-code developer, the cost of creating an MVP will be significantly lower than with classical development with programmers. For example, you can read the interview of a startup and no-code developer on our website, who initially worked as a Product Manager and was able to master no-code for his project himself.

Benefits of no-code for a startup founder

There are the following key advantages for a startup founder in using no-code technology:

a large selection of no-code tools, platforms, and their integrations at the moment  already in 2022, there are many tools and platforms for creating an MVP, a larger project, or even a finished product on no-code, but few people still know about them, and others are far from all startups and founders use their potential;

cost  no-code development saves the money by speeding up the development process, not hiring professional programmers or no need to maintain a developer department, monitoring functions and quick bug fixes, avoiding or reducing the growth of technical debt;

speed is the main advantage over classical development  no-code allows you to build a simple application in a weekend, and a more complex one can be built in a month. In this way, you can test an MVP and even several versions of an MVP very quickly;

low entry threshold  to master a no-code platform, you often do not need technical education at all, but only an understanding of a company's business processes or product from the inside. In the case of pro-level no-code platforms, technical education is required, but you can get used to it hundreds of times faster than with any programming language. This makes no-code available to almost everyone who wants to work with technology;

ease of use  no need to write hundreds of code lines  just move the blocks and assign links between them. Work on a project can be entrusted to your employee without communicating with a team of third-party developers. You can speak "in your language" without the need to understand the "inner kitchen" of developers;

flexibility  with the help of no-code, it is easy for a startup founder to add new functionality and new features right during a project or a MVP testing without a significant increase in development costs.

Possible disadvantages of no-code for a startup founder

As often, any property can be, under certain conditions, both a disadvantage and an advantage. In no-code, many of the benefits with the wrong choice of tool can turn into disadvantages:

no-code is not always a budget solution for a project. Sometimes in a no-code development package, you get unnecessary functions and additions (on AppMaster.io you can separately connect the frontend and pay only for the backend or only for those functions that you are using); if you do not understand the needs of your project, then you can make a mistake with the choice of a no-code tool and not be able to implement the necessary functions on it, or it will be too difficult to implement them; often, no-code tools fail to ensure proper data security and contribute to data leakage (but AppMaster.io allows you to host a finished application on any server); no-code tools often do not provide the ability to upload source code or provide uploading in an inconvenient format, which makes it difficult to move to another tool or to your development. You have to choose a no-code tool "once and forever immediately" (AppMaster. io gives you the ability to download the source code. Also, we generate human-readable code and you will not have any difficulties with its transportation); most no-code tools on the market are not suitable for creating a finished product, and there are significant difficulties with scaling the project if the MVP is successful (AppMaster.io is a professional no-code platform and our capabilities allow us to implement and support the finished product and scale it in the future).

Forewarned is forearmed. Choose your no-code tool wisely and take full advantage of your choice.

Types of no-code platforms

Conventionally, all no-code tools can be divided into several types: no-code devices with a low entry threshold (you can create frontend and not very powerful backend on them), integrators that help connect applications and services, and professional no-code platforms (they strive to replace the code completely, provide the ability to create a robust backend and high bandwidth).

The basic principle of operation of your MVP and the choice of a no-code platform depend on such a conditional division into types. For example, if you make a simple application like a diary, you can limit yourself to a no-code tool with a low entry threshold and a beautiful design.

If your application has powerful potential, high bandwidth, multi-user interface, and works with large amounts of data or real-time data, it is better to choose a professional no-code platform like AppMaster.io or Direcual.

If you use several services at once, link them on integrators like Integromat and Zapier.

Adalo

An easy-to-learn designer with a relatively user-friendly interface. The free version is helpful for learning. The free version contains Adalo watermarks and does not allow you to upload your applications to GooglePlayMarket and AppStore. Beginners often choose this no-code platform to create their first applications with simple logic.

Bubble

It will take more time to learn Bubble , but the platform allows you to work with the backend, databases, business processes, and layout. There are many plugins. The free plan allows you to master the tool, and you can start developing at the middle rate. The price increase is due to the rise in the number of users.

Integromat

It is an integrator. Experts talk about it as a simple and affordable platform for linking applications and services. Scenarios can be created personally, or you can use templates. If you need to connect an application with a service not from the Integromat database, fill out the form and connect to its API via HTTP.

Zapier

This is an integrator for linking applications with each other or with other external services. You can transfer data between thousands of applications. There is a script constructor (one event starts a chain of necessary actions).

Directual

The no-code platform positions itself for creating MVP applications (Minimal Viable Product, minimum viable product) and full-fledged applications of finished products. Scenarios are the backbone of the platform. Using scripts, you can automate the backend logic of the application, create and combine workflows. The Directual catalog includes out-of-the-box connectors, HTTP requests, webhooks, database listeners, and integration with popular services.

AppMaster.io

No-code next-generation platform for creating native and web applications on a real backend. Visual drag-and-drop designer, user-friendly business process designer, one-click app publishing to AppMaster Cloud, or integration with any cloud platform. Push notifications, authorization using social networks. Networks, email, and more. Connect applications to hundreds of services or programmatically access them using APIs. The ability to upload source code and documentation in a human-readable format and transfer it to your servers. Documentation auto-generation. Modern and fast language GoLang at the core.

No-code perspectives for startups

No-code development is gradually gaining popularity around the world. There are already more than 500 no-code tools for creating websites and various types of applications.

According to the forecasts of IT world experts, no-code will develop more and more actively and capture parts of the market responsible for medicine, small online business, small business, and all niches where it is possibly necessary to optimize and automate development processes.

The mass shift of businesses and their customers online and to gadgets has increased the demand for the fast and inexpensive creation of mobile applications that would work according to a single quality standard and have a simple, understandable, user-friendly interface.

Conclusion

No-code is visual programming in the form of a constructor without directly writing code. Usually, basic knowledge in development is enough to build applications on no-code.

The logic of no-code constructors is intuitive: the application interface is assembled from blocks, icons, buttons, and text which are connected to the database. Usually, you can choose a suitable template or do everything from scratch. Speed and economy are the main advantages of no-code tools.

No-code is suitable for creating an MVP, testing an idea or new features in a product, saving time for solving standard tasks. PRO level no-code platforms can provide you with a finished product, an application.

If you don't have an account on AppMaster.io yet, join us. After registration, you will be given a free trial period for 14 days, in which all the basic functionality of the platform is available. It will allow you to learn the intricacies of working with a professional-level no-code platform and understand its potential.


Nara Rohith has just had a release in the form of Shamanthakamani, while he awaits the arrival of Kathalo Rajakumari. Meanwhile, Nara Rohith is also shooting for an action entertainer in debutant Pavan Mallelas direction.

This as-yet-untitled movies shooting is currently underway in Norway. The unit will be canning a couple of songs in this picturesque Scandinavian country. The films teaser will be released on July 25th, on Nara Rohiths birthday.

Regina Cassandra is the female lead, while Ramya Krishna will be seen in a crucial role in the movie. Saraschandrikaa Visionary Motion Pictures banner is bankrolling this movie.

Articles that might interest you:
Opinion / Interviews

TODAY we bring to a close the interview with Somandla Dube pseudo name Richard Machikito Mguni who survived the 26 February 1979 bombing of a Zipra Camp in Boma near Luso, in Angola.In his memoirs a Rhodesian Air Force officer, Preller Geldenhays writes that the four Canberras of Number 5 squadron struck deep into Angola to destroy the Zipra base in an Israel-type raid in reprisal of Zapu leader the late Dr Joshua Nkomo's shooting down of the second Viscount, in which, all 59 people on board were killed in an Air Rhodesia Flight 827 from Kariba to Salisbury (now Harare) on 12 February 1979.In the interview with our Assistant Editor Mkhululi Sibanda (MS) Dube gives a first hand account of the raid and he how wriggled himself from the jaws of death. Below are excerpts of the interview:MS: Dube man you please relate to us about the day of the bombing. What happened on that day?Dube: On 25 February 1979, the day prior to the bombing seemed to be one of the longest days in my life. Everyone was too anxious to embark on the "march to Salisbury (Harare)". I remember vividly one of the songs we sang toyi-toying , mocking our instructors, whose lyrics went like "amaroli ayeza uzosala lobani? (The trucks are coming, who will you remain with?" Indeed the trucks had arrived to ferry us to Zambia en route to Rhodesia for operations. I spent that night chatting in whispers with my close comrade, Vumindaba Magadalala (Dixon Lyton Khuphe) about how we were going to fight the Rhodesian soldiers and liberate the country.MS: On the day of the bombing how was the situation like when you woke up?Dube: As I mentioned in my earlier submission, Boma Camp was established on the premises of an old Roman Catholic Mission. A road flanked on both sides by gum trees, dissected the camp. Some of the trucks meant to take us to Zambia were lined up in an orderly manner along this road. Those trucks were the double-axled Cruz and GUZ, all Soviet made. Coming to your question, on the morning of that fateful day, it was a busy one, as final preparations, instructions and distribution of rations were being done. We had been told that the convoy was to leave in the early hours but for one reason or the other, there were some delays, something in my opinion which became a blessing in disguise, as the casualties were going to be more catastrophic had the Rhodesian war planes found the convoy in motion along the route to Zambia.MS: So it was a busy day?Dube: It was, some detachments had already received their rations and boarded the trucks. Some were receiving their rations when disaster struck. As for my company, which was Company 8, we were marching towards the kitchen to receive our rations. While we were doing that, someone at the OP (observation post), spotted the war planes flying at tree top level as they approached the camp. I heard a shout apparently from one of the Cuban instructors, "aviones!, aviones!" which meant war planes!, war planes!" Within a fraction of a second, all hell had broken loose. I saw flashes like lightning and deafening blasts as the first war planes hit their intended targets. I had dived for cover and one war plane seemed to fly directly above me as its deadly bombs hit some of the parked trucks. Within seconds, the whole camp was enveloped by a thick dark cloud of smoke and dust. There were shouts and screams all over. Someone screamed near me.MS: So there was no defence system?Dube: To be honest with you no one ever thought that the Rhodesian forces could travel all the way to Angola. Although people were alert like in any military set up, there was an atmosphere of complacency. Then as the first wave of attack from the three air-crafts faded, an instructor shouted "mucho palo-mucho correr al las trinchers" meaning run hard to the trenches. I jumped up, from my position, remembering where the trenches were and ran through the dust and smoke. Something hit me on my left hip, causing me to fall down. It was something blunt, probably a brick or rock thrown by a nearby blast. The pain kept me down as the next wave of the last two war-planes struck. I think these two did more damage than the first as they caught some comrades running to the trenches ripping them to pieces with their deadly fire. They then left.MS: There was chaos all over, I suppose.Dube: It was a terrible sight. One of those hit was my close comrade, Vumindaba. His belly was ripped open. As stubborn as he was, he was still shouting in Kalanga as we carried him to the trench, "toba loba koga" (we will hit them no matter what.) As I sat in the trench I felt some wetness down my right leg trousers. A shrapnel had hit my right thigh and blood was oozing. I flexed my toes and was lucky it was not a serious injury.MS: How was the camp like after the bombing?Dube: Within a couple of seconds, what was once a camp consisting of orderly set barracks, kitchen, logistics and instructors' quarters was reduced to a smouldering remains of blasted buildings, burning shells of Cruz trucks, fallen gum tree branches and huge bomb craters. The most haunting was the lingering smell of burning human flesh and the piercing cries for help. Among those needing immediate help was my close comrade Vumindaba.Fortunately for him, he made it and still lives with that huge scar across his belly. Plus or minus 200 comrades lost their lives and were buried in a mass grave behind Company 8 barracks where their parents never saw their resting place. May their souls rest in peace. However, their sacrifice was not in vain, as 10 months down the line, the final objective was achieved, that of attaining our independence. I have decided to pay tribute to my fallen and loving comrades by penning a television or film script titled, Operation Dragon Sword.MS: After the bombing where were you taken?Dube: The camp was re-organised into smaller bases with some going to Malanje. I was chosen to escort some injured comrades and ended up at the Zimbabwe House in Luanda, which was under Easter Ndiweni. Also at the Zimbabwe House were Cdes Machimini and John. There was also a logistics group at Viana Camp - some 40km outside Luanda. This group had Cdes like Castro, Mfundisi and others who were drivers. We used to go to the Zapu warehouse in Luanda where there were stocks and stocks of rations and uniforms for the comrades in the camps. Most of the stuff was from USSR and GDR. Some of the comrades who were bombed with us belonged to the fourth group, who had started arriving in Angola to start their military training.MS: So you remained in Angola for how long?Dube: I returned to Lusaka in December 1979 on a special mission to be part of the reconnaissance team that opened the Vanguard House in the then Salisbury. I was with Cdes Hlanangiso, Sifelani and others. I was there at Rufaro Stadium to witness the lowering of the Union Jack and raising of our flag. Since I had left school at a tender age before completing my Ordinary Levels, I was offered a scholarship by Zapu to study in Cuba. I believe we were the first group to be sent by Zapu for studies outside the country from a free Zimbabwe. It was good to meet comrades at the ZH in Lusaka in a post-war era. I remember meeting Jubane, who made our travel arrangements to Luanda and from there we went to Havana in Cuba. I returned home at the end of 1984 as a civil engineering technician.MS: On your return from Cuba where did you go?Dube: I worked as a teacher for two years before joining the DDF as a roads field officer where I worked from 1986 to 1999. In 2001 I joined the Ministry of Youth as a rural development officer in Plumtree in charge of youths projects. I was then seconded to the Border Gezi Camp in Mt Darwin in Mashonaland Central to work as an instructor for the first intake in August 2001. I worked closely with Brigadier-General Hurungudo, Retired Lt-Col Shumba who was the camp commandant, Killian Sibanda, the current MP for Nkulumane who was the administrative officer, Mawuba from Gwanda, Thalitha Ngwenya, Mbuyisa and Veronice Munkuli from Binga.MS: Did you play any role in the political front?Dube: I was actively involved in the Zanu-PF activities. I rose through the ranks to be Matabeleland South provincial youth secretary for security, a post I held between 2002 and 2004. In the provincial structures of the party I worked with Patrick Hove who was the provincial youth chairman with Patricia Mohadi as secretary for administration. I was part of the delegation to the party's congress that was held in Harare in December 2004.
Jul 23, 2017 | By Julia

3D printing has been called the way of the future, and the dawn of a new era in manufacturing  but what about a time capsule of the present? Thanks to an unlikely incident with a common house fly, the Internet is now exploding with conjectures about the possibilities of 3D printing as a 21st century fossilization technique.

Eifion Jewell, a senior lecturer in Engineering from Wales Swansea University, was going about his usual business last week 3D printing a plastic honeycomb structure, when he noticed a strange anomaly. A fly was trapped inside the print, and inadvertently preserved.

[The fly] settled in there during the print, Jewell explained in an email. Dont know what attracted him or why he decided to take a break when he did, but it led to his undoing.

The result is what some are calling a 21st century fossil  one thats uncannily reminiscent of the fossilized amber in Jurassic Park, complete with preserved fly. But where the fictional scientists of Steven Spielbergs 1993 blockbuster used the ancient fossil to extract dinosaur DNA, scientists of the future could interpret Jewells 3D printed fossil as a relic of the Anthropocene, and a glimpse into the additive manufacturing technology of the early 21st century.

While that may sound like a stretch, its not theoretically impossible: plastic polymers and resins are generally non-biodegradable. If Jewells honeycomb structure ends up in a landfill somewhere, theres no telling who could uncover it far into the future, and what they might deduce from our strange era.

In fact, a growing number of researchers are interested in 3D printing precisely for its potential in preservation and conservation. Cornell Professor Drew Harvell is currently working to perfect the 3D scanning and printing of a series of famous sculptures by historic glass blowers Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. As easily-damaged objects confined to museums, the Blaschka pieces can benefit from Harvells cutting edge project, which produces breath-taking replicas of these priceless glass works.



Meanwhile, an Italian preservation society is hard at work preserving and recreating the facades of the famous Castello di San Martino dallArgine building. After modeling the missing elements from the side chapels of the Mantova church, the group has been able to effectively 3D print them in polymer, and installing them directly onto the church.

The success of these initiatives means that wider audiences will be able to enjoy these precious artefacts for generations to come.

As Jewell discovered with his unexpected insect preservation, however, there are other lessons to be learned as well: as for the fly, wrote Jewell, theres a moral there somewhere about sleeping on the job.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

Maybe you also like:












Julia Felsenthal in Vogue:

There are roughly three New Yorks, E.B. White once wrote. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuterthe city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.

For White, that last New York, the city of final destination, the city that is a goal, was the greatest of all. The illustrator, graphic designer, cook, writer, and born-and-bred New Yorker Tamara Shopsin quotes this passagedrawn from Whites essay Here is New Yorkin her new memoir, Arbitrary Stupid Goal. Her book, among many other things, traces its authors unconventional childhood, growing up in a one-bedroom apartment on Morton Street with four siblings and her parents, Kenny and Eve Shopsin, the eccentric proprietors of their eponymous, legendarily idiosyncratic West Village grocery-store-turned-eatery. (If youre wondering about logistics, Shopsin writes that she slept in a bookshelf.)

Their business, Shopsins, or for those in the know, The Store, was housed for roughly three decades in a storefront on the corner of Bedford and Morton. In 2002, forced out by rapidly rising rents, Shopsins moved a couple blocks over to Carmine Street; then, a few years later, the restaurant moved again to its current home in Essex Market on the Lower East Side. Eve passed away in the mid-aughts. Kenny, The Stores burly, famously bellicose chef, still mans the kitchen with his son Zack.

Whites essay, writes Shopsin in her memoir, is written with so much love and grace its words become fact. Still, she quibbles with his conclusion. The third New Yorker, the non-native, takes a thing for granted too, she asserts. The third New Yorker knows they can live somewhere else. They have done it once, deep down if need be they can do it again.

More here.
School board, county commission and zoning meetings are this week

Here's a look at who's meeting this week and what's on the agenda.
US President Donald Trump has approved a plan giving the countrys navy more freedom to carry out patrols in the South China Sea and put pressure on Chinas efforts to enlarge its military presence by artificially building reefs and atolls in the area.

Analysts believe that the move will add to the uncertainties over Sino-US elations and regional security issues. It is also seen as a challenge to Beijings maritime claims over most of the South China Sea and its attempts to overrule overlapping claims by five other countries, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines.

The plan, submitted to the White House in April by the Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, outlines a full-year schedule of when the US navy ships will sail through contested waters in the South China Sea.

The navy will enjoy a lot more freedom than it did during the Obama administration, which insisted on the National Security Council approving major operational decisions.

The move will make it difficult for China to deal with its territorial disputes with other countries such as India and Japan at a time when the Communist Party is preparing for a conclave which will see major political changes.

In 2016, an international court at The Hague deemed Chinas maritime claims unlawful and excessive, but China rejected the ruling outright and has continued to build military installations and unilaterally declare no-fly and no-sail zones.

When a country makes an excessive naval claim, the US Navy challenges it by sailing its ships, usually destroyers, close to the disputed territory or through the disputed waters as a way of ensuring freedom of navigation for all.

China has responded forcefully to US incursions into the region, telling the US the moves were provocative and that they must ask permission, which doesnt align with international law or UN conventions.








Web Toolbar by Wibiya

Growth means a lot of things to an entrepreneur; improving brand awareness, increase in sales, attracting investment, expansion of product. In this age of digital technology, growth involves strategy building for online marketing of a small business.

No matter the marketing strategy you choose, it has to keep pace with the growing digital marketplace  and this is irrespective of the type of business you operate; could be a brick-and-mortar store, online store or the two in combination. This can be achieved through:

1. A well-defined goal

If your goal is not clear to you, how will you effectively communicate it to your audience? According to Lyndon Jonson, the founder of Toronto based public relations and marketing firm for entrepreneurs, Comms.Bar, Public relations is about building and maintaining relationships that are crucial to the success of a business. In digital marketing, these relationships are converted into online actions that add value to the business. A well-defined goal helps you track your success as well as customize your marketing strategy.

2. Begin your campaign offline

Relationship building has to start offline, "Whether it's to share something, to buy something, to make a recommendation, or to write a review, you've got to build those relationships offline first," Jonson advises. Starting offline will help you analyze the need and behavior of your target audience.

3. Contents must be genuine and consistent

Publishing or sharing insightful and quality content is a great way to strengthen your relationship. This could be videos, articles or podcasts shared through social media channels, blogs, and website. To build rapport, the content needs to be interesting and informative, says digital marketing leaders. A call to action becomes necessary at this point  this should come with some incentives.

4. Track your success

Marketing strategies need to be flexible i.e. allow you to make changes to its part. Tracking what works and what doesn't through a robust feedback system will help you to know where to put a little more effort or where to weed off. Insights into customer behavior can be achieved using Google Analytics  which is, by the way, a free tool.

It is up to you to decide how simple or complex your digital marketing campaign should be. But, how well you integrate your clear goals with the offline relationship, quality content, and analysis will determine how successful it becomes.
CAMEROUN :: VODAFONE CAMEROON SIGNS NETWORK SHARING AGREEMENT WITH CAMTEL TO EXPAND 4G FOOTPRINT

Vodafone Cameroon and Cameroon Telecommunications (CAMTEL) have signed a strategic national network sharing agreement which sees the next-generation operator expand its 4G coverage to residents of Douala, Yaounde and other cities of the country.

The terms of the agreement stipulate that Vodafone Cameroon will make use of CAMTELs existing network infrastructure, which covers 100% of both Douala and Yaounde cities, allowing Vodafone to expand its geographical coverage and indoor connectivity for a significantly improved customer experience.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Vodafone Cameroon CEO, Mr. Antoine Pamboro said, We are excited to partner with CAMTEL to bring world-class internet services closer to people. This expansion of our 4G footprint demonstrates that we are suitably positioned to play a pivotal role in supporting digital transformation and development of ICT in Cameroon.

CAMTELs CEO, Mr. David Nkoto Emane noted that the cooperation agreement with Vodafone Cameroon is a strong step in Camtels progress to become an integrated operator and reflects the growing demand for high-speed internet services.

This cooperation assures Camtels strategic objective of providing its customers with practical options and innovative solutions through strategic partnerships in our local market; it is based on our two organizations shared understanding and belief that all Cameroonians deserve to experience topnotch internet services. Additionally, it is valuable for our strategy and commercial development, as Vodafone is a world class brand with high quality standards and great ambitions in Cameroon, he said. Vodafone Cameroon now covers fully Douala and Yaounde with plans to expand its LTE network further.

About Vodafone Cameroon

Vodafone Cameroon launched its services on 29th September 2016 with a clear vision of becoming the #1 Next Generation 4G operator in the nation. Vodafone Cameroon aims to bridge the digital divide by providing bespoke internet solutions to both individual and business customers, supported by its world-class

4G LTE technology. For more information, please visit www.vodafone.cm and www.facebook.com/vodafonecameroon

About Afrimax Group

Afrimax is led by an experienced Management team with a successful track record in acquiring spectrum, building networks, and operating mobile services in diverse geographic markets, including Africa, and is backed by prominent private and institutional investors.

With an existing 4G License footprint covering 12 countries, population under License coverage of 250 million, and further Licenses being acquired, Afrimax is building the largest portfolio of 4G wireless broadband networks across sub-Saharan Africa. For more information, please visit www.afrimaxvodafonepartner.com

CAMTEL (acronym for Cameroon Telecommunication) is Cameroons public telecommunications operator. CAMTEL was founded in 1998 by the transformation of the Telecommunications Department (Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications) into a public limited company, to which was added the public company Intelcam, then responsible for international telecommunications. The company has deployed a wide range of technologies, including: Access to a CDMA network, 4G LTE, WTTS, digitization of the countrys telephone exchanges; and optical fiber across the country. www.camtel.cm

For further information contact: Emmanuel Ngando Quan : Head of Corporate Communication : Emmanuel.ngandonquan@vodafone.com
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Partly cloudy. High 74F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 42F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Here is the latest jail booking report from Hamilton County:

ALLISON, BRENDAN TYLER

127 GOODSON AVE CHATTANOOGA, 37405

Age at Arrest: 19 years old

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga

AGGRAVATED ASSAULT (DOMESTIC)

---

AUSTIN, WILLIAM LEBRON

110 ONEAL STREET APT E CHATTANOOGA, 37403

Age at Arrest: 48 years old

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga

FAILURE TO APPEAR

---

BEACH, JONATHAN DEWAYNE

800 MCCALLIE AVE CHATTANOOGA, 374032612

Age at Arrest: 27 years old

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga

CRIMINAL IMPERSONATION

---

BEARD, MICA DEVIN

2907 CALHOUN AVE CHATTANOOGA, 37407

Age at Arrest: 21 years old

Arresting Agency: Tenn Highway Patrol

DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE

---

BEASLEY, DORI LEVON

4530 WEBB ROAD CHATTANOOGA, 37416

Age at Arrest: 39 years old

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County

POSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIA

POSSESSION OF METH (SELL, DEL.

OR MANUFACTURING)DRIVING WHILE IN POSSESSION OF METHAMPHETAMINE 5 G---BIDDWELL, DAKOTA BLAKE171 DEMPSEY CIR SW CLEVELAND, 37311Age at Arrest: 19 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaPUBLIC INTOXICATION---BOSS, LARRY WAYNE9738 DAYTON PIKE SODDY DAISY, 37384Age at Arrest: 33 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyVIOLATION OF PROBATION(THEFT OF PROPERTY)VIOLATION OF PROBATION(VANDALISM)VIOLATION OF PROBATION(POSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHER---BRETT, DUSTIN WILLIAM3912 DIXIE CIRCLE LUPTON CITY, 37415Age at Arrest: 28 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyPOSSESSION OF METH (SELL, DEL. OR MANUFACTURING)POSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIA---BROOKS, JERMAINE CORTEZ5688 CROOKED CREEK DR OOLTEWAH, 37363Age at Arrest: 22 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaVANDALISM/MALICIOUS MISCHIEFEVADING ARREST---BROYLES, TIMOTHY LYNN3501 DAYTON BLVD APT B14 RED BANK, 37415Age at Arrest: 43 years oldArresting Agency: Red BankAGGRAVATED ASSAULTRESISTING ARREST OR OBSTRUCTION OF LEGAL PROCESS---BRUMLOW, JESSICA SUZANNE945 SIGNAL MTN RD CHATTANOOGA, 37405Age at Arrest: 27 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyPOSSESSION OF METH (SELL, DEL. OR MANUFACTURING)POSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIA---BUFORD, ADRIAN LEBRON2007 VINE ST CHATTANOOGA, 374042646Age at Arrest: 30 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaPOSSESSING A FIREARM WITH INTENT TO GO ARMED---BURNS, DENNIS JAMES2519 CRESCENT CLUB DR HIXSON, 37343Age at Arrest: 62 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaVIOLATION OF ORDER OF PROTECTION OR RESTRAINING OR---COFRANCESCO, HENRY III8114 HAMILTON MILL DR CHATTANOOGA, 37421Age at Arrest: 34 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyBooked for Previous Charges or Other Reason(s)---CORONADO, JUAN JOSE1447 PAULITA STREET SAN BENITO, 78586Age at Arrest: 71 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaDRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCEVIOLATING MINIMUM SPEED---DARRAH, DAMON RICHARD2402 ANTIOCH RD DALTON, 30721Age at Arrest: 22 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyFUGITIVE (ARREST FOR CRIME IN ANOTHER STATE)---DAVIS, EDDIE GENE2003 E 32ND ST CHATTANOOGA, 374071725Age at Arrest: 69 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaOBSTRUCTING DRIVERS VIEWDRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSENO PROOF OF INSURANCE---DEWOLF, ROGER PAUL800 MCALLIE AVE CHATTANOOGA, 37405Age at Arrest: 55 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaPUBLIC INTOXICATION---DO, NOT USE5519 WOODLAND DR CHATTANOOGA, 37411Age at Arrest: 25 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyFAILURE TO YIELD RIGHT-OF-WAYFINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITYDRIVING WITHOUT DRIVERS LICENSE / EXPIRED LICENSE---DO NOT, USE THIS22 RATHBUN CIRCLE ROSSVILLE, 37412Age at Arrest: 52 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaBooked for Previous Charges or Other Reason(s)---DOCKERY, ELLIOTT SEAN6906 STANDIFER GAP RD CHATTANOOGA, 37421Age at Arrest: 21 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaDRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCEOPEN CONTAINER LAW---DOUGLAS, DARIUS JERMAINE920 CARRIE LANE HIXSON, 37411Age at Arrest: 19 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyPOSSESSION OF MARIJUANA---DYKES, ROBERT ALLAN614 NORTHERN AVE SIGNAL MOUNTAIN, 373772851Age at Arrest: 46 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaASSAULT---EATON, JEREMY MATTHEW612 NORTH PARKDALE AVENUE CHATTANOOGA, 37411Age at Arrest: 31 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyFAILURE TO APPEAR---GENSEMER, CRYSTAL GAYLE1900 WISTERIA DR HIXSON, 37343Age at Arrest: 34 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyPOSSESSION OF CONTROLLED SUBSTANCEPOSSESSION OF HYDROCODINEPOSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIADRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSECONSPIRACY TO INTRODUCE CONTRABAND IN PENAL INSTITPOSSESSION OF METHAMPHETAMINE FOR RESALEPOSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIADRIVING ON REVOKED LICENSEFINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY---GIL, JOSE DOMINGO3501 DAYTON BLVD E 4 RED BANK, 37415Age at Arrest: 68 years oldArresting Agency: Red BankAGGRAVATED ASSAULT---GLADDEN, JEREMY RYAN2456 MOUNT VERNON COHUTTA, 30710Age at Arrest: 27 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyBURGLARYASSAULTCIVIL RIGHTS INTIMIDATION---GREEN, KEALEY DONTEZ2405 E 13TH ST CHATTANOOGA, 37404Age at Arrest: 20 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyVIOLATION OF PROBATION(ATTEMPT AGGRAVATED ROBBERY)---HAMILTON, ROBERT MITCHELL3629 THRUSHERWOOD DR CHATTANOOGA, 37415Age at Arrest: 35 years oldArresting Agency: Red BankDRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSE---HEADRICK, PHILLIP WAYNE22 RATHBUN CIRCLE ROSSVILLE, 37412Age at Arrest: 52 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaFAILURE TO APPEAR---HODGES, ANGELA DANIEILLE415 HEDGEWOOD CIRCLE RED BAND, 37415Age at Arrest: 42 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyFUGITIVE (ARREST FOR CRIME IN ANOTHER STATE)---HORTON, BRANDON QUINTIN727 E 11TH STREET CHATTANOOGA, 37403Age at Arrest: 23 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyFAILURE TO APPEAR---HOUSTON, ANITA MICHELLE2509 WILDER ST CHATTANOOGA, 37406Age at Arrest: 39 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyDRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSEFINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY---JOHNSON, JASON RAYMOND10746 PINEHILL ROAD MCDONALD, 37353Age at Arrest: 40 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyVIOLATION OF PROBATION (FAILURE TO APPEAR)VIOLATION OF PROBATION (THEFT OF PROPERTY UNDER 50VIOLATION OF PROBATION (FAILURE TO APPEAR)VIOLATION OF PROBATION (THEFT UNDER 500)---JOHNSON, TAQUELIA SHAUNTA2001 S LYERLY ST CHATTANOOGA, 37404Age at Arrest: 34 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaAGGRAVATED ASSAULT (DOMESTIC)---JUAREZ-RAMIREZ, EDVIN2416 DODDS AVENUE CHATTANOOGA, 374071242Age at Arrest: 19 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaTHEFT OF PROPERTY UNDER 1000---KIER, GERALD RAY225 E. BRYANT ST APT. 10 SMITHVILLE, 37060Age at Arrest: 44 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaFORGERY---KING, SYLVIE JUSTINE1031 RIVER BEND DRIVE CHATTANOOGA, 37419Age at Arrest: 22 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaPOSSESSION OF CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE (MARJ.)---LACKEY, DADRIAN LATRELL3929 MANOR RD CHATTANOOGA, 37411Age at Arrest: 30 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaDOMESTIC ASSAULT---LEUMAN, ULISES5519 WOODLAND DR CHATTANOOGA, 37411Age at Arrest: 25 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyVIOLATION OF PROBATION (DUI)---LOWE, RENYETTA MICHELLE2213 STUART ST. CHATTANOOGA, 37406Age at Arrest: 28 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyTHEFT OF PROPERTY---MCCOY, HEATHER ANN2456 MOUNT VERNON RD COHUTTA, 30710Age at Arrest: 31 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyPOSSESSION OF CONTROLLED SUBSTANCEPOSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIAPOSSESSION OF LEGEND DRUGS W/O PRESCRIPTIONBURGLARYASSAULTCIVIL RIGHTS INTIMIDATION---MCKEEL, BRANDON CHAD3783 GEORGETOWN ROAD CLEVELAND, 37312Age at Arrest: 45 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaTHEFT OF PROPERTY (CONDUCT INVOLV.MERCHANDISE) UND---METCALF, DAVID EDWARD4116 BILL JONES RD APISON, 37302Age at Arrest: 58 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyDRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSEFINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY---NOLLIE, KENNETH MARCEL3126 DWIGHT STREET CHATTANOOGA, 37406Age at Arrest: 46 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyBooked for Previous Charges or Other Reason(s)---PEACE, ASHLEY LAUREN724 SHELLY LANE ROSSVILLE, 37003Age at Arrest: 31 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyVIOLATION OF PROBATION (POSSESSION OF CONTROLLED S---PEREA, PARKER DAVID1011 8TH STREET CHATTANOOGA, 37404Age at Arrest: 20 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaUNDERAGE DRINKING---PERKINS, ROMEO ROMELL1110 GROVE ST. CT.APT. C CHATTANOOGA, 37402Age at Arrest: 18 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyAGGRAVATED ROBBERYFRAUDULENT USE OF CREDIT OR DEBIT CARDTHEFT OF PROPERTY UNDER 1000---PITTS, MICHAEL GRANT1300 EAST 3RD ST CHATTANOOGA, 37406Age at Arrest: 65 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaOBSTRUCTING HIGHWAY OR OTHER PASSAGEWAY---ROBERSON, KEVIN RAY4621 HIGHLAND AVE CHATTANOOGA, 374101911Age at Arrest: 48 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaDISORDERLY CONDUCT---ROMERO, EFRAIN CHAVERO1526 KEBBLE STREET EAST RIDGE, 37421Age at Arrest: 19 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaTHEFT OF PROPERTY UNDER 1000---SMITH, JEMICHAEL LAMAR3824 HOYT STREET CHATTANOOGA, 37411Age at Arrest: 32 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaVIOLATION OF PROBATION(DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE---SMITH, MARKEITH DESHAWN2626 ANDREWS ST CHATTANOOGA, 37406Age at Arrest: 24 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyVIOLATION OF PROBATION (DUI)---SPILLMAN, CHARLES HENERY1617 FERNWOOD CIR CHATTANOOGA, 37421Age at Arrest: 33 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyPOSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIAPOSSESSION OF METH (SELL, DEL. OR MANUFACTURING)---STEWART, TERRY LAVON2708 MOSES ROAD HIXSON, 37343Age at Arrest: 59 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyVIOLATION OF PROBATION (DRUGS GENERAL CATEGORY FORVIOLATION OF PROBATION (DRUGS GENERAL CATEGORY)---TEDESCO, CLAUDIA NASRINE300 KEITH STREET CHATTANOOGA, 37407Age at Arrest: 54 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaCRIMINAL TRESPASSING---THURMAN, JUSTIN ANTHONY1814 CHAMBERLAIN AVE CHATTANOOGA, 37404Age at Arrest: 27 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyPOSS. OF FIREARM DURING DANGEROUS FELONY---TO NOT USE, THIS ONE5519 WOODLAND DR CHATTANOOGA, 37411Age at Arrest: 25 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyVIOLATION OF PROBATION (DUI)---TOLAND, RODNEY LELL817 E 48TH ST CHATTANOOGA, 37410Age at Arrest: 55 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyPUBLIC INTOXICATION---TONEY, WINFIELD PATTON5501 KENYON RD CHATTANOOGA, 37406Age at Arrest: 39 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaCONTEMPT OF COURT (NON SUPPORT)---TOWNES, VICTOR BERNARD3908 MARIGOLD DR CHATTANOOGA, 37421Age at Arrest: 37 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaAGGRAVATED ASSAULT (DOMESTIC)DRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSE---TWIDDY, WILLIAM MARSHALL1802 A TUSKEGEE BLVD CHATTANOOGA, 37421Age at Arrest: 58 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaAGGRESSIVE PANHANDLING---VENABLE, ZACHARY LEE411 EAST GORDON ROSSVILLE, 30741Age at Arrest: 26 years oldArresting Agency: Hamilton CountyFUGITIVE (ARREST FOR CRIME IN ANOTHER STATE)---WERTZ, TRISTIN CAIN629 SPRING VALLEY LANE CHATTANOOGA, 37415Age at Arrest: 21 years oldArresting Agency: Red BankAGGRAVATED ASSAULT(DOMESTIC)AGGRAVATED KIDNAPPING---WOODS, CARLOS LAVARK2650 MUNICIPAL WAY TALLAHASSEE,Age at Arrest: 36 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaFALSE REPORTS---ZOLLMAN, NATHAN JON3812 LAMAR AVE CHATTANOOGA, 37415Age at Arrest: 27 years oldArresting Agency: ChattanoogaDRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCEFINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITYDRIVERS TO EXERCISE DUE CARE

Here are the mug shots:

AUSTIN, WILLIAM LEBRON

Age at Arrest: 48

Date of Birth: 02/19/1969

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

FAILURE TO APPEAR BEACH, JONATHAN DEWAYNE

Age at Arrest: 27

Date of Birth: 07/12/1990

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

CRIMINAL IMPERSONATION BEARD, MICA DEVIN

Age at Arrest: 21

Date of Birth: 08/10/1995

Arresting Agency: Tenn Highway Patrol



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE BIDDWELL, DAKOTA BLAKE

Age at Arrest: 19

Date of Birth: 12/04/1997

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

PUBLIC INTOXICATION BROOKS, JERMAINE CORTEZ

Age at Arrest: 22

Date of Birth: 04/21/1995

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

VANDALISM/MALICIOUS MISCHIEF

EVADING ARREST BROYLES, TIMOTHY LYNN

Age at Arrest: 43

Date of Birth: 11/12/1973

Arresting Agency: Red Bank



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

AGGRAVATED ASSAULT

RESISTING ARREST OR OBSTRUCTION OF LEGAL PROCESS BRUMLOW, JESSICA SUZANNE

Age at Arrest: 27

Date of Birth: 02/17/1990

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

POSSESSION OF METH (SELL, DEL. OR MANUFACTURING)

POSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIA COFRANCESCO, HENRY III

Age at Arrest: 34

Date of Birth: 10/21/1982

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Booked for Previous Charges or Other Reason(s)

DAVIS, EDDIE GENE

Age at Arrest: 69

Date of Birth: 12/03/1947

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

OBSTRUCTING DRIVERS VIEW

DRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSE

NO PROOF OF INSURANCE DEWOLF, ROGER PAUL

Age at Arrest: 55

Date of Birth: 03/08/1962

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

PUBLIC INTOXICATION

DOCKERY, ELLIOTT SEAN

Age at Arrest: 21

Date of Birth: 05/21/1996

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE

OPEN CONTAINER LAW DOUGLAS, DARIUS JERMAINE

Age at Arrest: 19

Date of Birth: 07/22/1997

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA DYKES, ROBERT ALLAN

Age at Arrest: 46

Date of Birth: 01/23/1971

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

ASSAULT EATON, JEREMY MATTHEW

Age at Arrest: 31

Date of Birth: 07/08/1986

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

FAILURE TO APPEAR FREEMAN, CEDRIC DOMINIQUE

Age at Arrest: 29

Date of Birth: 12/12/1987

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

CONTEMPT OF COURT

CONTEMPT OF COURT GIL, JOSE DOMINGO

Age at Arrest: 68

Date of Birth: 07/25/1948

Arresting Agency: Red Bank



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

AGGRAVATED ASSAULT GREEN, KEALEY DONTEZ

Age at Arrest: 20

Date of Birth: 09/17/1996

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

VIOLATION OF PROBATION(ATTEMPT AGGRAVATED ROBBERY) HAMILTON, ROBERT MITCHELL

Age at Arrest: 35

Date of Birth: 05/05/1982

Arresting Agency: Red Bank



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

DRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSE

HEADRICK, PHILLIP WAYNE

Age at Arrest: 52

Date of Birth: 11/16/1964

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

FAILURE TO APPEAR HORTON, BRANDON QUINTIN

Age at Arrest: 23

Date of Birth: 09/14/1993

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

FAILURE TO APPEAR HOUSTON, ANITA MICHELLE

Age at Arrest: 39

Date of Birth: 07/08/1978

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

DRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSE

FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY JUAREZ-RAMIREZ, EDVIN

Age at Arrest: 19

Date of Birth: 08/09/1997

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

THEFT OF PROPERTY UNDER 1000 KIER, GERALD RAY

Age at Arrest: 44

Date of Birth: 11/23/1972

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

FORGERY KING, SYLVIE JUSTINE

Age at Arrest: 22

Date of Birth: 03/24/1995

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

POSSESSION OF CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE (MARJ.) LACKEY, DADRIAN LATRELL

Age at Arrest: 30

Date of Birth: 11/09/1986

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

DOMESTIC ASSAULT LEUMAN, ULISES

Age at Arrest: 25

Date of Birth: 12/31/1991

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

VIOLATION OF PROBATION (DUI) MCCOY, HEATHER ANN

Age at Arrest: 31

Date of Birth: 01/21/1986

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

POSSESSION OF CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE

POSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIA

POSSESSION OF LEGEND DRUGS W/O PRESCRIPTION

BURGLARY

ASSAULT

CIVIL RIGHTS INTIMIDATION MCKEEL, BRANDON CHAD

Age at Arrest: 45

Date of Birth: 10/10/1971

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

THEFT OF PROPERTY (CONDUCT INVOLV.MERCHANDISE) UND

METCALF, DAVID EDWARD

Age at Arrest: 58

Date of Birth: 07/19/1959

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

DRIVING ON REVOKED, SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED LICENSE

FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PEACE, ASHLEY LAUREN

Age at Arrest: 31

Date of Birth: 09/21/1985

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

VIOLATION OF PROBATION (POSSESSION OF CONTROLLED S PEREA, PARKER DAVID

Age at Arrest: 20

Date of Birth: 12/05/1996

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

UNDERAGE DRINKING ROMERO, EFRAIN CHAVERO

Age at Arrest: 19

Date of Birth: 07/31/1997

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

THEFT OF PROPERTY UNDER 1000 SMITH, JEMICHAEL LAMAR

Age at Arrest: 32

Date of Birth: 05/21/1985

Arresting Agency: Chattanooga



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

VIOLATION OF PROBATION(DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE SMITH, MARKEITH DESHAWN

Age at Arrest: 24

Date of Birth: 07/12/1993

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

VIOLATION OF PROBATION (DUI) SPILLMAN, CHARLES HENERY

Age at Arrest: 33

Date of Birth: 02/17/1984

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

POSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIA

POSSESSION OF METH (SELL, DEL. OR MANUFACTURING) THURMAN, JUSTIN ANTHONY

Age at Arrest: 27

Date of Birth: 11/23/1989

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

POSS. OF FIREARM DURING DANGEROUS FELONY TO NOT USE, THIS ONE

Age at Arrest: 25

Date of Birth: 12/31/1991

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

VIOLATION OF PROBATION (DUI) TOLAND, RODNEY LELL

Age at Arrest: 55

Date of Birth: 12/16/1961

Arresting Agency: Hamilton County



Last Date of Arrest: 07/21/2017

Charge(s):

PUBLIC INTOXICATION




July 19, 2017

NABLUS, West Bank  Every morning, 20 women head to work at Abu Salha Sweets, the largest sweets factory in Nablus, in the northern West Bank. Abu Faya, 24, and her fellow halwanjiyat (female pastry chefs) now make up half of the factory workers. Breaking with tradition in this sector, like others, Palestinian women are ignoring prejudices and boldly competing with men for jobs.

Abu Faya told Al-Monitor, I graduated from the media department at An-Najah University two years ago. I have been looking for a job in my field of work in vain ever since. I had to resort to making sweets to make ends meet.

She said, I began working at the factory two months ago after seeing an online ad. A few months later, I excelled in making sweets. She noted that her relatives and friends were surprised at first that she worked in a job traditionally reserved for men, but they became more supportive with time as their perceptions changed.

May Hassouna, 25, agreed that the first reactions to women taking jobs that traditionally belonged to men have been a shock  everyone except her father, who always encouraged her.

Hassouna told Al-Monitor, I joined the team in early September 2014 and I was the first woman on board. I started as a clerk at the factorys shop. Then I was promoted to the sweets-packaging department until I became an expert in making sweets. I watched the process all day and took a training course at the factory.

Hassouna and her colleagues earn less than their fellow male chefs. She makes 1,500 Israeli shekels ($420) per month, while men are paid double that amount.

Majdi Abu Salha, one of the factory's owners, said, We have given women the opportunity to work at the factory since 2014, when six female graduates from An-Najah University in Nablus applied for jobs. He said that the rising number of women working there is because men are less interested in becoming pastry chefs.

Abu Salha said his business partners were surprised, as were some customers, to see women working at the factory at first. With time, they accepted the idea, and his partners even demanded more women be recruited, as they proved more competent than men at making sweets.

Abu Salha added that all new recruits undergo two to four months of intensive training before they start work. He noted that the factory pays each female employee 1,500 shekels, and the salary increases with merit.

He noted that the factory was planning to provide pastry courses for women who want to acquire these skills, an initiative that will also be supported by womens rights organizations, the Ministry of Labor and the municipality of Nablus.

This year's survey of the Palestinian labor force published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in April showed that in 2016, the percentage of employed Palestinian women reached 19.3% compared to 71.6% of Palestinian men.

Aisha Hamouda, the head of the womens department at the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, told Al-Monitor, The female pastry chefs in Nablus are examples of working Palestinian women who seek to earn money and support their families. She added that she has tracked their progress and noted that this group of women and others have become more willing to talk about their work as their confidence in their professional skills increased.

She said that women are taking over jobs that were reserved for men for several reasons. Women constitute around 20% of the total number of Palestinian workers, divided equally between the private and public sectors. Female university graduates outnumber male graduates: For every 100 men graduating each year, 145 women graduate, said Minister of Womens Affairs Haifa al-Agha.

Agha told Al-Monitor that the percentage of women working in the Palestinian territories remains low in comparison to European and Western countries, where employment rates for men and women are much closer and all jobs are open to men and women alike.

In Palestine, some of the jobs are closed to women by law. Women are not allowed to work in certain industries, such as mining, forestry, manufacturing or processing of asphalt, and the alcohol industry. Women's employment is high in the education and banking sectors.

Agha added that salaries of women, especially in the Gaza Strip, are lower than mens. She said that her ministry is working to compel employers to pay at least the minimum wage to their female employees.
July 21, 2017

Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the US commanding general of the combined task force of Operation Inherent Resolve, confirmed that the war against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq is not over yet, despite the great victory in Mosul and the end of IS occupation of the strategic city. He said there are still major challenges ahead for the Iraqi armed forces to establish security in Iraq.

During a July 11 press conference in Baghdad, he told journalists via satellite, There are still pockets of resistance in Mosul, holdouts, and hidden IEDs [improvised explosive devices] that will take weeks to clear, as well as remaining [IS] enclaves in Hawija and western Anbar. Iraqi Interior Minister Qasim al-Araji confirmed this, saying July 16 that "the battle is far from over.

One of the most important challenges facing the Iraqi forces is the loss of a large number of troops in the battles in Mosul. According to the US Department of Defense, the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) suffered 40% battle losses in Mosul. The CTS has played the most important role in the liberation of Mosul, and prior to that in many areas in Anbar and Salahuddin provinces; it enjoys a good reputation among Iraqis, due to its performance, professionalism and abstention from any sectarian conduct.

There are indications that the federal police losses were bigger than those of the CTS. When we compare the losses of the federal police with those of the CTS and the Iraqi army, we find that the federal police sacrifices were great, Hakim Zamili, chairman of the Iraqi parliament's Security and Defense Committee, said in a July 11 TV interview.

Townsend said the Iraqi forces need a period of rest before proceeding with the liberation of the remaining IS-occupied territories.

These losses underscore the importance of supporting the international coalition against IS. The coalition countries, especially the United States, provide hundreds of millions of dollars in support for the buildup and sustainability of Iraqi forces and offer support in many other fields.

CTS head Talib Shaghati said in a TV interview July 14, All the coalition countries played a prominent role, especially our close American friends, who had a clear role in providing support in the fields of intelligence, information and air reconnaissance, and also in training intelligence personnel to collect and extract the obtained information and make conclusions from it.

Townsend said the Iraqi government asked US troops to stay in Iraq until after the liberation of the country from IS. In addition, the United States plans to build new military installations in Iraq; however, these plans face fierce objections from Shiite factions, presaging a complicated security situation in the next stage.

The United States is aiming to occupy Iraq in an indirect hegemonic way and is also planning to establish an organization similar to the [Syrian Democratic Forces], Akram al-Kaabi, secretary-general of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, said in a statement published July 15.

Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba is an armed Shiite faction close to Iran with a military presence in both Iraq and Syria. Other Shiite factions had previously threatened to attack US forces should they decide to stay in Iraq.

In this unstable environment, the Iraqi forces need to adapt to the new IS forces situation in Iraq. Most military and intelligence reports say that IS will resort to guerrilla attacks on military and government positions and terrorist attacks on civilian targets. According to international reports, Iraqi forces have improved in combating such attacks. The Institute for the Study of War published a report July 10 that said increased security measures had inhibited a cohesive IS offensive in Iraq and Syria during Ramadan.

But this did not prevent IS from causing painful losses among Iraqi civilians. The bombing of an ice cream shop in Baghdad in May that left dozens of dead and wounded is the best proof of that.

The difficulty of fighting these movements lies in that IS members hide among civilians, making it difficult to single them out. Warding off such attacks requires trained and well-equipped security forces as well as an integrated infrastructure that enables the state to monitor the movements of its citizens in various fields such as communications, car purchases, house rentals and purchases, transfers of funds and other movements, and such an infrastructure is still missing in Iraq. In addition, IS takes advantage of the rampant financial corruption in Iraq to launch attacks.

But the main challenge facing Iraqi security forces appears to be political differences and the struggle for power and influence. In 2016, clashes broke out between forces from the Popular Mobilization Units and the Kurdish peshmerga forces in Tuz Khormato, south of the city of Kirkuk. Also, clashes between the Ninevah Guards, a Sunni force, and the Shiite faction of Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada took place in Mosul on July 20. There are fears that these clashes might expand into open warfare amid deep differences over the disputed areas extending from Jalula near the Iranian border, through Kirkuk province and into Yazidi areas near the Syrian border. Terrorist groups have been able to exploit differences over these areas for years to operate more freely. These very differences were behind the postponement of the liberation of Hawija in western Kirkuk province and Tal Afar in western Ninevah province.

Despite the remarkable progress made in the performance of the Iraqi forces, which led to the liberation of most of the IS-occupied areas, great challenges will seemingly complicate the security situation in the coming stages.
July 20, 2017

A senior PLO official told Al-Monitor that the diplomatic process taking place between the Palestinians, Israel and the United States can be defined as a fierce brainstorming as to who will be blamed by the Trump administration for the ultimate failure of its peace efforts. The official, who took part in the latest round of talks held by US presidential envoy Jason Greenblatt, said with cynicism on condition of anonymity, Trust the US, it will be the Palestinians fault. He added that having learned how President Donald Trump acts, the Palestinians do not expect an acknowledgment of failure, as with former President Barack Obama. Instead, the administration will probably state that progress has been made and that efforts continue.

With these words, one can detect a new tone in Ramallah in recent days  greater pessimism bordering on despair. The Palestinian leadership is witnessing that much of the Trump administrations efforts are focused on economic confidence-building measures. One such measure is building permits in the Israeli-controlled West Bank Area C, including the Qalqilya expansion plan, which is contested by some Israeli Cabinet ministers. Another measure is the plans for improving the West Bank water supply by creating a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea in coordination with Jordan and the World Bank. The PLO official said, The notion of economic peace plays right into [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahus hands and policies  anything but a two-state solution.

The Palestinians didnt have much luck with the US envoy, especially since he was accompanied in the last round of talks on July 11 by US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. They felt that with Friedman accredited to Israel only, so are his views. And so, the talks had little chance to progress. Ramallah leadership assesses that there are no concrete plans by the administration to launch negotiations, except to emphasize how important it is to the president. The PLO official said bitterly, We begin to sense that the talks are merely supposed to generate a positive impression of the US in Riyadh and in Cairo. We will not continue to play this window dressing role for very long.

The PLO official stressed that while there is good communication with Israel on tactical issues between security officers and officials, Netanyahus Israel is deaf on the potential negotiation process.

Despite his past moderate, pragmatic and even creative positions on the two-state solution, the senior PLO official now sounded alarmist about a possible outbreak of violence from the Gaza Strip and possibly also from the West Bank. He argued that if Israelis think that Palestinians have accepted the occupation in any way, they are wrong. That is not the case. While the mainstream Palestinian constituency is ready to give diplomacy a chance, and also give some credit to President Trump, we are nearing a breaking point after which a violent uprising in the form of sporadic attacks on Israelis or an armed intifada may be possible. This situation is also being inflamed by Hamas, given the severe economic conditions in the Gaza Strip.

Indeed, the outbreak of violence after the July 14 incident at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, Israel's attempt to alter the status quo at the mosques and the terror attack againt Israelis at the Halamish settement on July 21, should sound alarm bells in Israel. Another Al-Aqsa intifada is not out of the question.

Ramallah believes that decision time for this crossroads between diplomacy and violence will come after the UN General Assembly annual meeting in September. Or as the PLO official put it, This is our deadline, and we have informed our Arab partners that we see this date as the last chance for a successful diplomatic launch toward a two-state solution.

A senior Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs official who also took part in the talks with Greenblatt told Al-Monitor that Netanyahu is pleased with talks on economic confidence measures, yet these are conditioned on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas taking stricter measures on stopping official Palestinian incitement to violence. He stressed that this condition is ever more essential in the aftermath of the July 14 terror attack near the Temple Mount. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Israeli official said that as long as the talks focus on the prelude to talks on a peace conference, the government is pleased and its strategy is vindicated. Israel is convinced that nothing much will occur in 2017, as Abbas will not accept another Israeli condition to stop his government from paying families of Palestinian prisoners and terrorists, and with Trump preoccupied with US domestic issues.

Netanyahu also told French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on July 16 that Israel will agree to an eventual peace process only in the framework of a US-led process based on a regional anti-terror coalition.

And so, despite US shuttle diplomacy, with a gloomy mood in Ramallah and a more upbeat mood in Jerusalem, it seems that when it comes to a necessary peace process, both sides are losing.
July 21, 2017

RAMALLAH, West Bank  The people of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights have rejected the Israeli governments decision to hold local elections next year in four Golan villages: Majdal Shams, Bukata, Masada and Ein Qinya. To allow such elections, they said, would be to recognize the occupation.

Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri notified local Golan authorities July 6 of the decision to hold elections on Oct. 30, 2018. The elections would be the first under Israeli law since the Golan Heights was occupied in 1967. Israel has been accustomed to appointing local council heads and members in the Golan Heights, where nearly 23,000 people live. To many of those residents, there's a big symbolic difference between appointed and elected leaders.

After a general meeting July 11, the Golanese issued a statement that said, The Israeli goal behind the elections is to have the Golanese recognize the occupation as legitimate. They said, Israel has no right to impose its laws on the Syrian population and force it to give up its national identity.

Majd Abu Saleh, a lawyer opposing the Israeli decision, told Al-Monitor that under Israeli election laws, eligible candidates for local elections should have Israeli citizenship, which applies to only 5% of the Golanese. The rest carry Israeli IDs indicating permanent residency  but they are not entitled to run for office. That negates any democratic principle of the elections, Abu Saleh said.

The Golanese perceive local councils elected in accordance with Israeli law to be representative of Israeli authorities. The elections are therefore a means to provide local authorities with political legitimacy, which is something we are against," he said.

The population deals with the [Israeli-] appointed councils in terms of the services provided, and this is what we want. Their political stances, however, do not represent ours. Yet, if elected, the local councils will be entitled to represent us politically [and] those heading these councils will be pro-Israel.

Political activist Salman Fakhreddin told Al-Monitor, The Golanese deserve to have good civil services, which the occupation ought to provide under international law, without correlating these services with the populations political stances or national affiliation.

Fakhri Abu Saleh, the director of the Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies Golan Salon, told Al-Monitor, The elections are designed to bring the Golan areas under Israeli law, which could ignite a dispute among its social components and will not bring any significant gains to the population.

In light of the rejection by the Golanese, he said, Presently, there is no alternative to the appointed councils. Services provided by the elected local councils [elsewhere] in the Arab world are no different from those provided to us. The thing is that we are under an occupation force that we do not recognize and that has a responsibility toward us.

As the interior ministers decision is binding, the Golanese are required to mobilize their capabilities to face it. Majd Abu Saleh said, We will be turning to the ministers to abolish said decision to meet the wishes of the Golanese. In case they do not act, we will be resorting to the courts to object to the decision.

He added, Whether it remains in force or is canceled, we have decided not to deal with it, or with the potential emanating local councils that would provide the occupation with legitimacy. If enforced, we will boycott it; the ballot boxes cannot not be placed in the Golan.

The Golanese believe Israel is trying to firmly establish control over the Golan. As Israel marked the 50th anniversary of the Golan Heights occupations and the beginning of the settlements, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said June 6, The Golan Heights will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty. We will never leave the Golan Heights. Its ours.

Syria also voiced objection to the elections, which it believes would violate international law. The Syrian Foreign Ministry delivered letters June 8 to both the UN Security Council and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressing its categorical rejection of the Israeli occupations declaration to hold the so-called local elections in the occupied Syrian Golan villages. It added, The new Israeli decisions consist of a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, international humanitarian law and the [Fourth] Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war.

Majd Abu Saleh said Israel is "taking advantage of the Syrian crisis, while showing that the Golanese are well-integrated and harmonious with Israel."

He said, "This is in order to support Netanyahu's efforts to obtain the international recognition that will enable him to implement the Israeli laws in the Golan Heights.

Fakhreddin said, Israel desires to impose a new reality in the Golan Heights by holding the elections and taking advantage of the conflict in our motherland [Syria]. This is unacceptable for us. We are not trading our national and political positions for civil services.

The Israeli decision has reminded the Golanese of the open strike they staged Feb. 14, 1982, in protest against the Knesset decision to annex the Golan Heights and attempt to impose citizenship. The same scenario may be repeated in light of the populations objection. Israel could escalate measures to forcibly implement the decision, which could mean a confrontation is possible.
July 21, 2017

People with grim faces and black clothing stand in line as they wait their turn to shake hands in a video called A Wedding or a Funeral posted by Kafa (Enough), a Lebanese feminist nongovernmental organization (NGO). Toward the very end, a glimpse of a child bride is seen near the adult groom. The message is clear: Marrying a child is burying her dreams, her hopes and ambitions. It is not a wedding party, but the funeral of a girls future.

The video is part of the new campaign by the same name launched by Kafa on July 10, and it continues the organization's efforts that started in 2015 to end early marriage.

Around 6% of girls in Lebanon are married before their 18th birthday, according to UNICEF data. The numbers have increased with the massive arrival of Syrian refugees in the country.

Kafas Raise the Age national campaign aims to push the parliament to pass a new law that prohibits women from being married before they turn 18. The NGO also seeks the removal of two penal code articles. One, Article 505, allows rapists to marry their underage victims and the other, Article 522, allows rapists to escape penalties if they marry the victim.

In Lebanon, there is no legal minimum age for marriage. Confessional personal status laws, which encompass all the religious rules related to marriage, inheritance, divorce and custody within a confessional community, enable girls older than 15 to get married. On April 15, Human Rights Watch published a statement that read, Early marriage can have dire lifelong consequences, often halting or harming a girls ability to realize a wide range of human rights." The statement also said, "Girls who marry early are more likely to leave school and are at heightened risk of marital rape, domestic violence, poor access to decent work, exploitation, and a range of health problems due to early childbearing.

Kafa has been battling early marriage through videos with strong images and catchy titles. Its video, Legally Bride, (2015) won several international awards and went viral. A hidden camera filmed two actors taking wedding pictures on the famous Corniche in Beirut. Curious and often infuriated passersby watched or tried intervening, asking the young girl if she wants to get married and questioning her older "husband." It was obvious that many who stopped in their tracks were not aware that marrying a minor is allowed in Lebanon.

In Kafa's next video, Raise the Age, the young actress from Legally Bride and other girls sent straightforward messages about their legal rights, including, According to the law, I cant drive," "My signature is not legal yet," "I am not allowed to stay up late," "A child like me is not allowed to work," "I cant watch movies rated 18+" and "At this age I dont want anyone to call me Mom!

We were already working on the ground to fight child marriage through awareness sessions, especially in the Bekaa Valley where there are many Syrian refugees, with Lebanese and Syrian parents and teenagers, Maya Ammar, Kafas communications officer, told Al-Monitor.

She said, We realized that no matter what we do, early marriages will not stop until a law forbids them, so we decided to campaign. The first video was just meant to inform people about the situation, while the second one was more personal and a call for the parliament to pass a law that sets the age of marriage at 18, which corresponds to the legal age of full responsibility. The last video is a reminder for the members of parliament  who just prolonged again their mandate for another year  that the problem of early marriage still exists and that legal action is mandatory. We did it right after many religious leaders intervened publicly to say early marriage is OK, and so many people who used to support us preferred to believe them.

Ammar said the problem lies with religious institutions that make people think personal status laws are sacred and the state doesnt want to intervene. In March, a draft law that would set the minimum age of marriage at 18, prepared by the local NGO Lebanese Women Democratic Gathering, was introduced by parliamentarian Elie Kayrouz. But it has not been put on the parliament's agenda.

Artists are also tackling the issue of early marriage. In April, filmmaker Khalil Zaarour released the film Nour, which is the story of a young girl married off by her family to the wealthiest man of her village.

Zaarour told Al-Monitor, With my films I try to help Lebanese society change  like with my documentary fiction film Malaki, which portrays those who disappeared during the civil war. This time I met with girls who married at a young age and Nours story is based on their testimonies. The girls were mostly forced by their parents and they regret their parents decision. They told me they would rather see their daughters die than do that to them, too.

Zaarour invited members of parliament to the screenings of the film, and he plans to screen the film in schools and villages in remote rural areas in October. Awareness sessions run by AFEL, an NGO that specializes in child protection, will accompany the screenings. Many people dont know that early marriages exist in Lebanon, so I hope my film will help change people's mindsets and make lawmakers act to prevent child marriage, Zaarour said.

Ammar said, Any artwork is very effective to advocate a cause. Videos remind people in an efficient way about issues and they can also be used as an interactive tool in awareness sessions.
July 21, 2017

As Turkey steps up its pressure on the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) in Syria and Israel rejects a US-Russia cease-fire in the southwest of the country, a deal among Moscow, Ankara and Damascus may be in the works in Afrin.

Turkey has escalated its attacks on the YPG, and the US-YPG partnership, in recent weeks. On July 15, Turkeys ambassador to the United States, Serdar Kilic, labeled the US decision to liberate Raqqa in partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is made up primarily of YPG fighters, as a strategic mistake, Amberin Zaman writes. The SDF force, which numbers 30,000-40,000 fighters, is taking heavy casualties so far in the Raqqa offensive, according to the Pentagon, as Jack Detsch reports from Washington.

Zaman writes that in a further blow to US-Turkey relations, Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency has revealed what it claims to be the locations of 10 US military bases in the Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria, a move that will likely put a further dent in the rocky relationship between the two NATO allies.

Turkey has refused to allow humanitarian aid, including baby formula, into areas under YPG control, and it has shut down Mercy Corps operations from Turkey into Syria.

Fighting has intensified between Turkey and the YPG in Afrin. Zaman reports, Turkish forces reportedly kept up a barrage of artillery attacks targeting the YPG-controlled enclave of Afrin. The Syrian human rights group said Turkish forces had fired on the outskirts of the city and its environs for a second consecutive day, causing fires and other material damage. Thousands of residents infuriated by the deaths of a woman and her two children allegedly as a result of Turkish actions have taken to the streets in Afrin. The pro-Turkish daily Sabah confirmed that Turkish shelling of YPG positions was ongoing, labeling it a response to YPG aggression. It remains unclear whether Turkish forces were firing from across the border or from within Syria.

Zaman adds that the escalation in Turkey-YPG fighting may obscure the beginnings of a deal among Moscow, Ankara and Damascus to de-escalate the conflict in Afrin. A Turkish buildup inside Syria is meanwhile reportedly continuing amid widespread speculation over a deal supposedly being cooked up between Turkey and Russia. In sum, Russia is pressuring the YPG to allow Syrian regime forces to assume control over Afrin. As things currently stand, having regime forces in charge of Afrin would be a far lesser evil for Turkey, because keeping Afrin truncated from the rest of the Kurdish-controlled territories that lie east of Manbij is Turkeys strategic priority in northern Syria. It is no longer primarily concerned with overthrowing the regime. In exchange, Russia is believed to want Turkeys help wresting Idlib from Jabhat al-Nusras latest incarnation, known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Zaman writes.

In March, this column, referencing reporting by Zaman and others, asked whether Turkeys misstep in Manbij could be a template for Raqqa, meaning that a role for the Syrian government could be an acceptable least worst option for Ankara relative to YPG control of any liberated areas.

Hamidreza Azizi places recent developments in a broader context. He writes, Moscow has so far tried to build on its fundamental shared interests with Tehran and Ankara  for example, pushing for a political transition plan in Syria while preserving a minimum level of influence for each of the three parties in areas they deem vital for their national interests. But Russia also faces the task of bringing Iran and Turkey to a wider compromise on their long-term interests in Syria; this goal is difficult mainly because Iran prioritizes the defeat of all terrorist and armed rebel groups over the start of a political transition while Turkey wants to use the rebels it supports and the territories they have under their control as a bargaining chip in any future political talks.

Two weeks ago, this column suggested that the beginnings of a US-Russian understanding on Syria may be a welcome step toward a political settlement. It could also be a catalyst for a new alignment that brings Turkey closer to Syria and Iran, while testing the limits and extent of Moscows influence among the regional players.

Although Turkey was the main obstacle to an agreement at the latest talks in Astana, Russia seems willing to keep bargaining to gain Ankaras cooperation by giving it some points in northern Syria, an area vital for Turkey because of its concerns over the growing role of Kurdish groups. At the same time, by declaring that Tehran will host the next meeting of the Astana working group in early August, Moscow tried not to alienate Iran and to keep it active in the Astana talks, Azizi said.

One of the challenges for both Moscow and Washington is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus opposition to the US-Russia cease-fire agreement, arguing that it serves to enhance Irans position in Syria.

Over the past few months, Israel had been involved in the contacts between the parties that led to the implementation of the cease-fire, Ben Caspit reports. Israel had a foothold in all matters concerning the region discussed by the superpowers  the southwest, which Israel borders. Israel participated in these talks with the Americans, Jordanians and Russians. It also conducted separate talks with each of the parties. While discussions were underway, Israel reiterated on numerous occasions that there must be no Hezbollah or Iranian presence whatsoever in the buffer zones that will be declared along the various borders. Another Israeli demand was that Iran be prevented from establishing military bases in Syria, from creating or leasing a port along the Syrian coast and from rebuilding Syria's arms industry.

The US-Russia agreement, according to Caspit, irritates an old wound. The last time Washington reached a similar agreement was the nuclear deal with Iran, during the Barack Obama administration. Netanyahu fought against that until the very last minute and even beyond.

The question is how, and whether, Israel will respond. Netanyahu is raising the threshold and drawing another red line along Israel's northern front, Caspit explains. The question is how seriously these threats will be taken by the superpowers and by Israel's enemies. The last time Netanyahu made such a threat and drew red lines, it turned out to be an idle threat. Over the past few years, Netanyahu has stated time and again that if the international community does not know how to block Iran's race to obtain nuclear arms, Israel will act alone.

Moscows management of the expectations and interests among the regional parties remains a precarious balance. Russias key objective, according to Azizi, is to prevent any escalation that could potentially lead to its further involvement in the Syrian crisis. At the same time, these various sets of agreements could potentially introduce Moscow as the real peace broker in Syria.

Given the widely divergent interests of the various parties involved, Aziz continues, what lies ahead may perhaps prove too difficult a task for Moscow  especially when it comes to its so-far successful cooperation with Iran. Acknowledging the three main Iranian interests in Syria as maintaining the government of President Bashar al-Assad, preserving access to Lebanon through Syria and protecting Syrias territorial integrity, one is left to wonder how the Russians plan to simultaneously pursue diverging commitments. How can Irans access to Lebanon be preserved while still addressing Israels security concerns?  Moreover, how will Moscow work toward preserving Syrias territorial integrity while also aiding the division of the country into different zones of influence?

As we noted here earlier this month, the emerging and complex interests of the regional parties will test Putin, who welcomes and needs a US partnership to stabilize Syria, but whose leverage with Damascus, Tehran and Ankara could be weakened, rather than strengthened, by closer ties with the United States. Putins endgame is relief from US-led sanctions, and whether Trump can hold off the even more intensive bill pending before the House of Representatives. If no sanctions relief is forthcoming, Putin will have little interest in carrying Trumps water at the expense of his regional ties. Russia might therefore undertake an outwardly passive and inwardly supportive role that allows the regional parties to take the initiative against the Syrian Kurds or others. Moscow might see that as the winning hand.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort have both agreed to negotiate with the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide documents "and be interviewed... prior to a public hearing" in regards to its Russia probe, according to statement from the office of committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.



Representatives for both Trump Jr. and Manafort did not respond to requests for comment from ABC but previously said they are cooperating with the Congressional investigations.



The announcement comes a day after senators threatened to subpoena the pair in pursuit of their investigation into Russian election interference. Both Grassley, R-Iowa, and committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had expressed confidence on Thursday in achieving cooperation with the president's son and former campaign chair.



Im not concerned, because if they dont they will be subpoenaed," said Feinstein.



On Wednesday, the committee invited the men -- who have come under scrutiny for their attendance at a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in which Trump Jr. believed they would receive incriminating information about Hillary Clinton -- to appear at a hearing next week and turn over documents related to their contacts with Russian nationals. They will not appear at Wednesday's session in light of their willingness to cooperate, according to an aide to Feinstein.



Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS, a research firm hired by Trump political opponents to investigate the GOP nominee's Russia ties, was also invited to next week's hearing, but declined, according to the statement from Grassley's office.



"A subpoena has been issued to compel his attendance," the statement said.



"Simpson's attorney has asserted that his client will invoke First and Fifth Amendment rights in response to the subpoena," continued the statement.



While Trump and Manafort will be cooperating with the committee, the statement adds that the panel "reserve[s] the right" to issue subpoenas for each in the future.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
11/11/2022

The City of Collegedale invites the public to join them at their new holiday tradition, Christmas in Collegedale, celebrating the most wonderful time of the year. Friends and neighbors are ... more
July 22, 2017

On July 18  three days before US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hosted his Omani counterpart, Yusuf bin Alawi, in Washington  Sultan Qaboos became the latest Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) head of state to speak directly with US President Donald Trump.

In their conversation, Trump stressed the urgency of countering Irans ascendancy shortly after Washington implemented new sanctions on Iranian individuals and businesses despite the Trump administration's certifying Tehrans compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), at the same time maintaining that Iran has breached the JCPOA's spirit. This call also came one week after Alawi visited Tehran to discuss the ongoing Qatar crisis after he spoke by phone with Tillerson about Qatar and Yemen.

It is no secret that the Trump administration and Muscat have not been on the same page on a host of regional issues. The JCPOA, which Oman played a pivotal role in helping the Obama administration and Iran negotiate, was in Trump-the-candidates words "the worst deal ever" and he vowed to rip up the historic accord. In April, each GCC member, save Oman, strongly endorsed Trumps decision to launch dozens of missiles at Syrian regime military infrastructure near Homs. On the Yemen front, the Saudi/United Arab Emirates-led military campaign, which the Trump administration has stepped up US support for, has irked Oman. Also, Trumps urging of US allies throughout the Muslim world to help Washington counter Iran has not prevented Muscat and Tehran from continuing to maintain a close defense relationship as neighbors and co-owners of the Strait of Hormuz.

In the grander picture, Oman and the Trump administration's not seeing eye to eye on regional security issues has much to do with Muscats uniquely cooperative and normalized relationship with Tehran. While the Trump administration sees Iran as the Middle Eastern state most responsible for the outgrowth of terrorism and regional instability, Muscat views Iran as an important strategic partner across a diverse host of sectors. Furthermore, ongoing developments within the GCC in light of the Qatar crisis are prompting some smaller member states, including Oman, to constantly assess the strategic depth from Saudi Arabia that Iran offers them.

Omani-Iranian relations have led Muscat to conduct a foreign policy that is quite interactive with a host of state and nonstate actors across the Middle East, making Oman unique in the GCC. For example, Oman was the only GCC state to maintain official relations with the Syrian regime throughout the past 6 years. Earlier this year, Muscat responded to suicide bombings in Damascus that left scores of people killed and wounded by sending Bashar al-Assads regime a message of condolence. Also, Omanis have strong feelings about their countrys historic ties with all of Yemens communities, including the Houthis. There is also strong disagreement with the Saudi/UAE-led military campaign in Yemen, which Oman has been the only GCC member to have stayed out of since the March 2015 launch of the operation.

Trump, Oman and the Qatar crisis

When Trump delivered his speech at the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh two months ago, he commended all GCC states, save Oman, for their counterterrorism cooperation with the United States. While Trump was in Saudi Arabia, Omans Deputy Prime Minister Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said had a scheduled meeting with the American president that was canceled for reasons unknown to the public, as was Tillersons meeting with Alawi. This administrations budget blueprint for the next fiscal year hints at a 35% decrease in US military aid to Oman, which is notable given the extent to which the White House has been inking landmark arms sales with other GCC states.

Perhaps the main variable that led to Trump and Qaboos first conversation was the Qatar crisis, which has likely prompted Washington to turn to Muscat as a regional mediator between GCC states. To be sure, Kuwait, and not Oman, has been leading inner-GCC diplomatic efforts to resolve this years row, and Washington has fully supported the Kuwaiti emir in doing so. Yet the Trump administration might be encouraging Oman to step up its own role in the ongoing row to help defuse the crisis in pursuit of reconciliation. Unquestionably, with the United States Sunni Arab allies divided, there is much potential for Iran to take further advantage of friction between the GCCs various members to advance Tehrans own political agenda in the Arab world.

Last month, the White House communicated to Qaboos that Omans economic relationship with Iran is not one Washington expects the sultanate to sever; this message was delivered when CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Trump's deputy national security adviser, Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Ricky Waddell, held a secret meeting with Qaboos. Pompeo and Waddell called on the Omani leader to do more to crack down on smuggling routes linking Iran to Yemens Houthi fighters allegedly via Omans ports and land border with Yemen. Although there is no solid evidence that Oman has facilitated this transfer of weaponry to the Houthis, the Trump administration and other GCC states seem to believe this narrative of Muscats role in the Yemeni civil war, which Omani officials unequivocally deny.

Most likely the Trump administration is not going to be entirely welcoming of Omans independent foreign policy and unique relationship with Iran. An unsettling question for Oman is the following: If the Houthi fighters obtain long-range missiles capable of striking Riyadh from Yemen, would the Trump administration believe that some blame belongs on Muscats doorstep? In any event, as the Qatar crisis threatens to disintegrate the GCC, the Trump administration is turning to Oman, whose relationship with America dates to 1790, for help mediating the row.

Over the years, Muscat has been a useful ally of the United States during challenging times. Now, with Washington deeply concerned about the GCCs future, the White House has seemingly, albeit slowly, begun to show appreciation for the value of Oman as a unique ally that can help this administration navigate the Middle East.
As U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks and U.S. Sen. Luther Strange fight for their political lives leading up to next month's Republican primary in the state's special Senate election, Roy Moore has largely disappeared from the conversation.

And that's because Brooks and Strange are trailing him in the polls that he's leading and one of them is going to be left out of runoff, Moore said.

"They're fighting for second place," Moore said in an interview with AL.com last week following a Senate candidate forum in Athens.

Though there have been no public polls of the GOP or Democratic primaries released, political insiders generally site polls that put Brooks, Moore and Strange in a distant lead over the other six candidates.

Moore has typically been at the top of those polls, though polling indicates the race among the top three is close.

But with the crowded field, it seems almost a certainty that no candidate will cross the 50 percent vote threshold to win the race outright in the Aug. 15 primary. If there's a runoff, the top two vote-getters will face off at the polls on Sept. 26.

The GOP primary takes on added significance because the primary's winner may well be elected to the Senate - given Alabama's strong Republican lean -- in the general election on Dec. 12.

Moore said he fully expects to be in the runoff. And if that's the case, it only leaves one spot for Brooks, Strange and the rest of the field.

"It's not strange when you're pretty far ahead and they're fighting to get in the runoff," Moore said when asked if it was odd that no one is talking about him in the GOP primary.

"It's not unusual because (Brooks and Strange) know if they don't overcome the other, they'll be completely out. I don't think it's unusual."

Brooks has been a target of pro-Strange ads, which have said he didn't support President Trump.

In fact, the Senate Leadership Fund - a super PAC backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell - has launched a website attacking Brooks right down to the URL. The website is mobrooksmolies.org.

"To me, it is a sign of increasing desperation on the part of Luther Strange's campaign," Brooks said of the website.

Strange himself has also released campaign ads attacking Brooks for critical pre-election comments the congressman made about Trump.

Meanwhile, pro-Strange camps have not released any campaign ads attacking Moore.

The Strange campaign declined to comment for this story.

Brooks has responded to the attacks he didn't support Trump - the congressman led Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential campaign in Alabama - by saying he backed the Republican candidate after the GOP convention. That support included Brooks' political action committee writing a $2,500 check to help pay for Alabama voters to travel to Florida to campaign for Trump in that swing state.

Strange also issued a press release earlier this month linking Brooks with Tuscaloosa developer Stan Pate - a vocal Trump opponent who has donated more than $8,000 to Brooks' Senate campaign, according to a Strange campaign press release. Such a connection, according to the Strange campaign, demonstrates that Brooks is a Trump opponent.

In endorsing Brooks on Friday, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith -- chair of the House Science, Space & Technology Committee - said "there should be no doubt" that Brooks will support the Trump agenda if elected to the Senate.

Brooks said Strange's campaign strategy is seeking to eliminate the congressman in the primary, then defeat Moore in the runoff.

"Luther Strange's deceitful, negative attacks on me - someone who has helped lead the Republican Party for 35 years from the wilderness to our current governance position - that strategy is why they are leaving Roy Moore alone right now," said Brooks, referring to his role in GOP politics since first being elected to the state legislature in 1982.

"They want Roy Moore in the runoff. They don't want Mo Brooks in the runoff because they know Mo Brooks will beat them."

As all the back and forth continues between Brooks and Strange, Moore moves toward the primary election with little attention even as he is perhaps the race's frontrunner.

"I'm glad no one's attacking me," he said. "I suppose if I get in the runoff, somebody will be attacking me. Until that time, I'm not going to get involved in their conflict."
A 22-year-old Lawrenceville, Georgia woman was found dead in a hotel on Saturday, Decatur Police say.

Police have arrested and charged Cary Davis, 25 of Norcross, Georgia, with murder. Morgan County Judge Jennifer Howell set Davis' bond at $250,000.

Police responded to a call around noon Saturday at the Quality Inn at 2120 Jameson Drive SW and found Tiara Alexandra Cole dead. After investigating, they determined she'd been the victim of a homicide.

Efa Mboto, Cole's brother-in-law, told AL.com the news came as a shock to their tight knit family. Cole lived with her mother only about 10 minutes down the road from he and his wife in Lawrenceville.

"She was a born leader, but she didn't always step into that - she was a people person," Mboto said. "She was always making friends wherever she went, fairly quickly and easily."

Mboto and his wife, who is Cole's older sister, have four children together. Mboto said he's known Cole since she was around 12 or 13, and as long as he's known her she was a competitive gymnast and cheerleader. She didn't have children of her own yet, but she loved to play with her nieces and nephews, who called her Auntie T.

"She was the fun aunt," Mboto said. "She was starting to teach them different tumbles and flips, cheerleading and gymnastics."

Detectives with Violent Crimes are investigating the homicide. Police are asking anyone with information to contact the Decatur Police Department at 256-341-4660 or Detective Mike Burleson at 256-341-4633.

Updated 11:25 a.m. Sunday, July 23 with interview with Mboto. Updated 12:34 p.m. with arrest information.
An Alabama woman was arrested in Panama City Beach after police say her 2-year-old chihuahua was found dead in a hot car on Saturday.

Police arrested Angela Delandra Rogers, 29, for aggravated animal cruelty, a third degree felony. Rogers lives in Banks, Alabama, which is just outside of Troy.

Someone called the police around 12:30 p.m. Saturday about a dog left in an unattended vehicle that wasn't running in the parking lot of the beachfront Calypso Condominiums. The windows were open about an inch and there was no food or water inside the car.

Rogers told police when questioned that she left the dog inside the car while she was working cleaning condos.

According to the National Weather Service, Saturday's temperatures reached 90 degrees with a heat index of 100 degrees. Cpl. Kevin Burns said the temperatures inside the car was estimated at around 115 degrees.

"It was a black car in a black paved parking lot," Burns said.
Birmingham Police are investigating after finding the body of a woman who was stabbed to death in Birmingham's Druid Hills neighborhood.

Police said they found the body of Vergil Angela Cook, 57, around 11 p.m. Friday in the 1300 block of 21st Street North. It appeared that she'd been dead for several days.

YiKoia Cook, 35, said she called her mom on Wednesday and she never called back. She was concerned, so she called her grandmother, who also called Vergil Cook and got no answer.

"I got a call Friday night around 11 p.m. ... They got the police to come, but you know, police are not allowed to kick in the door with no answer," YiKoia Cook said. "I immediately got on the freeway and drove straight to my mom's house and kicked in the door myself."

There, she discovered her mother's body. Initially police said it appeared that the death was a result of natural causes, but on Saturday investigation revealed she died as a result of being stabbed.

"It's unfortunate to find a loved one deceased, but to then find out someone took their life can make the news harder to deal with," Birmingham Police said in a press release. "The victim may have known her attacker, and so our priority is finding whoever is responsible."

Birmingham police are asking anyone with information to contact the Homicide Unit at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.

Don Johnson, another one of Vergil Cook's children, said his mother loved to decorate, blog and read books. She loved her dog and her grandchildren.

"She was very outgoing, very humble, very down-to-earth," Johnson said. "Whether you're white, black; no matter your religion or political views, she was just a welcoming person."

But at the time of her death, Cook was herself grieving. In October of 2015, her brother, Otis Tyrone Cook, had been murdered in front of her. He was 62 at the time; police say he was shot by his neighbor during a dispute over his niece playing in that neighbor's yard.

"We lost two family members within two years to murder," Johnson said. "It's tragic for someone to do something heinous like that. I don't have the words for that at all."

YiKoia Cook said she's confident police will arrest her mom's killer.

"I know they will. Because I'm going to help them," Cook said.
Social tensions and conflicts [of] today can be traced  to the divisions that tore apart the nation in 1967.

A half-century ago America changed forever. For better or worse, Detroit has been at the centre of the nations change for twice that time.

In the early 20th century, Detroits economy boomed as the Motor City drew hundreds of thousands of workers to the automobile factories that made American industry the envy of the rest of the world and one of the greatest centres of wealth in human history. As those autoworkers organised and engaged in militant strikes, Detroits labour movement established a national standard of wages and benefits that elevated millions of white Americans and European immigrants into the middle class.

This was the American Dream in action. Why, then, did the city explode on July 23, 1967, in one of the biggest urban rebellions the United States has ever seen?

Three key issues dividing the nation in 2017  racial discrimination, police brutality, and economic dislocation  began to tear apart dozens of its cities during the 1960s. In Detroit, when the dust settled and fires smouldered after more than four days of heightened unrest, 43 people were dead, over 7,000 more were arrested, and scenes of 17,000 police and military occupying the streets gave the appearance that the city was a warzone.

As racial oppression has deep roots in US history, the struggle for civil rights and racial equality began decades before the 1960s. The Detroit uprising, nevertheless, marked a dramatic turn in the battle over alternative futures, and it was central to an overall pattern of social rebellion, anticolonial revolts, and global uprising of the oppressed in 1967-68. In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King Jr broke his silence over the Vietnam War and emphatically declared that the nation must undergo a radical revolution of values to conquer the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.

It is an understatement to say Detroit has never been the same since 1967.

Whites were already fleeing to new homes in the suburbs, where federal funding supported new construction and subsidised mortgages. This process of white flight  accompanied by an exodus of jobs and investment  accelerated after the rebellion, turning Detroit into a national symbol of racial segregation and a widening economic chasm.

Divide and choose

Many of those who fled Detroit did not hesitate to state that the riots ruined the city. They are now likely to favour the citys current comeback, driven by white billionaires focused on gentrifying downtown and the imposition of an autocratic emergency manager that stripped away black voting rights and political representation won from the struggles for civil rights and black power.





The citys 2013-14 bankruptcy imposed draconian austerity, privatisation, and anti-union measures. Trumps Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, played a central role in the dismantling of Detroits public education system.

In this way, Detroit offered a preview of the conservative movement to make America great again. Nostalgia for the citys so-called golden age before 1967, however, overlooks a plethora of inconvenient truths about pervasive and long-standing patterns of injustice in Detroit and America.

As historians Sidney Fine and Heather Ann Thompson have pointed out, the Detroit Police Department remained less than three percent black through the 1950s and reached only five percent by 1967. The citys police commissioner reported that 90 percent of the citys cops were bigoted.

They subjected African Americans to humiliating and stop-and-frisk searches and routinely beat suspects to enact justice through the alley court.

Corruption was rampant within the ranks and led to shakedowns that particularly heightened the abuse of black women sex workers. As city leaders refused the consistent demand for a civilian review board, police misconduct was rewarded and reinforced through the racism and corruption among prosecutors and judges.

Most of the 43 people who died during the riot were killed by the police or National Guard.

Whites lived in an alternate reality from African Americans when the subject of race was broached in general, but especially when the focus was on policing.

Roughly 80 percent of whites in Detroit considered the police to be fair and unbiased. However, then and now, a better way to assess fairness in these situations would be to conduct a societal version of the divide and choose cake-cutting process: one side gets to cut the cake but does so knowing that the other side will choose first.

In the case of Detroit and dozens of other cities, white America shaped the nations economic and political structures. They did so knowing that they were also defining the role race would play in structuring opportunities and privileges. In other words, whites, especially wealthy and elite whites, got to metaphorically cut the cake and pick the slice they wanted. The movements of the 1960s exposed this double standard.

The language of the unheard

Recognising that a riot is the language of the unheard, Martin Luther King Jr lamented that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquillity and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

While he denounced looting and violence, he simultaneously stressed the need to condemn the intolerant conditions that left many with no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention.

As Detroits rebellion unfolded, President Lyndon B Johnson was forming a bipartisan National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to study the civil disorders and issue recommendations for a new way forward. The commissions call for unprecedented social investments to bridge the nations divisions was largely ignored, even by the president himself. Detroit was increasingly mocked or forgotten by the rest of the nation. The rebellions and the progressive movements of the 1960s sparked a right-wing backlash driven by a politics of fear.

The national call for a war on poverty became a war on crime. Mass employment was replaced by mass incarceration, especially within majority black and nonwhite cities like Detroit. Detroits poverty rate was estimated to be 16 percent in 1967. In 2015, the US Census placed it at 40 percent.

The sad reality is that the social and political disasters millions of Americans fear from authoritarian, one-party rule in 2017 have probably already beset Detroiters.

For this reason, however, Detroit was at the forefront of the resistance long before Donald Trump became president. Today, as a half-century ago, it behoves us to keep our ear to the ground and identify the sources of hope and change.

Scott Kurashige is a professor at the University of Washington Bothell. This article has been adapted from an excerpt in his book The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the US Political Crisis Began in Detroit (University of California Press, 2017).

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Heres a breakdown of why the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem is a constant point of contention in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

INTERACTIVE: Inside al-Aqsa: A 360 tour of Jerusalems holiest mosque

1. Why al-Aqsa is so important

Al-Aqsa is the name of the silver-domed mosque inside a 35-acre compound referred to as al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, by Muslims, and as the Temple Mount by Jews. The compound lies in the Old City of Jerusalem, which has been designated a World Heritage site by the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, and is important to the three Abrahamic religions.

The site has been the most contested piece of territory in the Holy Land since Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, the conflict dates even further back, to before the creation of Israel.

In 1947, the UN drew up a partition plan to separate historical Palestine, then under British control, into two states: one for Jews, mainly from Europe, and one for Palestinians. The Jewish state was given 55 percent of the land, and the remaining 45 percent was for a Palestinian state.

Jerusalem, which houses the al-Aqsa compound, belonged to the international community under the administration of the UN. It was granted this special status for its importance to the three Abrahamic religions.

The first Arab-Israeli war broke out in 1948 after Israel declared statehood, capturing some 78 percent of the land, with the remaining areas of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza coming under Egyptian and Jordanian control.

Israels increasing encroachment on the land intensified in 1967, after the second Arab-Israeli war, which resulted in the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, and eventually the illegal Israeli annexation of Jerusalem, including the Old City and al-Aqsa.

The illegal Israeli control of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, violates several principles of international law, which outlines that an occupying power does not have sovereignty in the territory it occupies.

READ MORE: 1967 war  How Israel occupied the whole of Palestine

Over the years, the Israeli government has taken further steps towards controlling and Judaising the Old City and East Jerusalem as a whole. In 1980, Israel passed a law that declared Jerusalem the complete and united capital of Israel, in violation of international law. Today, no country in the world recognises Israels ownership of Jerusalem or its attempts to change the geography and demographic makeup of the city.

Palestinians in Jerusalem, who number around 400,000, hold only permanent residency status, not citizenship, despite being born there  in contrast with Jews who are born in the city. And, since 1967, Israel has embarked on a quiet deportation of the citys Palestinians by imposing difficult conditions for them to maintain their residency status.

Israel has also built at least 12 fortified Jewish-only illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, housing some 200,000 Israelis, while rejecting Palestinian building permits and demolishing their homes as punishment for building illegally.





2. The compounds religious significance

For Muslims, the Noble Sanctuary hosts Islams third holiest site, the al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock, a seventh-century structure believed to be where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Jews believe the compound is where the Biblical Jewish temples once stood, but Jewish law and the Israeli Rabbinate forbid Jews from entering the compound and praying there, as it is considered too holy to tread upon.

The compounds Western Wall, known as the Wailing Wall to Jews, is believed to be the last remnant of the Second Temple, while Muslims refer to it as al-Buraq Wall and believe it is where the Prophet Muhammad tied al-Buraq, the animal upon which he ascended to the sky and spoke to God.

Referring to Trumps intention to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital, Saudi Arabias king said: such a dangerous step is likely to inflame the passions of Muslims around the world due to the great status of Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque.

3. The sites status quo

Since 1967, Jordan and Israel agreed that the Waqf, or the Islamic trust, would have control over matters inside the compound, while Israel would control external security. Non-Muslims would be allowed onto the site during visiting hours, but would not be allowed to pray there.

But rising Temple movements, such as the Temple Mount Faithful and the Temple Institute, have challenged the Israeli governments ban on allowing Jews to enter the compound, and they aim to rebuild the Third Jewish Temple in the compound.

Such groups are funded by members of the Israeli government, though it claims a desire to maintain the status quo at the site.

Today, Israeli forces routinely allow groups, some in the hundreds, of Jewish settlers who live in occupied Palestinian territories to descend on the al-Aqsa compound under police and army protection, stirring Palestinian fears of an Israeli takeover of the compound.

In 1990, the Temple Mount Faithful declared it would lay a cornerstone for the Third Temple in place of the Dome of the Rock, leading to riots and a massacre in which 20 Palestinians were killed by Israeli police.

TIMELINE: Al-Aqsa Mosque

In 2000, Israeli politician Ariel Sharon entered the holy site accompanied by some 1,000 Israeli police, deliberately reiterating Israeli claims to the contested area in light of then Prime Minister Ehud Baraks US-brokered peace negotiations with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, which included discussions on how the two sides could share Jerusalem. Sharons entrance to the compound unleashed the Second Intifada, in which more than 3,000 Palestinians and some 1,000 Israelis were killed.

In May 2017, the Israeli cabinet held its weekly meeting in tunnels below al-Aqsa Mosque, on the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, to mark the liberation and unification of Jerusalem  a move that infuriated Palestinians.

Israel already restricts Palestinian entry into the compound through several methods, including the separation wall, built in the early 2000s, which restricts the entry of Palestinians from the West Bank into Israel.

Of the three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, only those over a certain age are allowed access to Jerusalem on Fridays, while others must apply for a hard-to-obtain permit from Israeli authorities. The restrictions already cause serious congestion and tension at checkpoints between the West Bank and Jerusalem, where tens of thousands must pass through security checks to enter Jerusalem to pray.

4. Recent tensions

Tensions have been simmering near Al-Aqsa for years. On May 5, 2021, Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and wounded many Palestinians while arresting dozens. The incident later led to a response by Hamas and that was followed by an 11-day Israel war on Gaza.

Most clashes in the compound have occurred because of Israeli settlers trying to pray within the compound, which directly violates the status quo.

Tensions rose after Israel shut down al-Aqsa Mosque compound for the first time since 1969, after a deadly gun battle between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Israeli forces.

The attack, which took place on July 14, ended in the deaths of two Israeli police officers and three Palestinian attackers. Israel subsequently closed the site for Friday prayers and reopened it the following Sunday with new measures of control, including metal detectors and additional cameras, at the compounds entrances.

Palestinians refused to enter the compound until Israel removed the new measures, which were seen as the latest move by Israel to impose control and Judaise the city. Meanwhile, protesters prayed outside the gates.

During Friday prayers in July 2017, thousands of Palestinians came out to pray in the streets outside of Lions Gate, one of the entrances to the Old City. Tension raged after peaceful demonstrations were violently suppressed by Israeli forces, resulting in hundreds of injuries. Four Palestinians were shot dead in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, one of whom was shot by an Israeli settler.

Israel had deployed 3,000 Israeli police and border police units around the compound.





5. The greater context

Al-Aqsa is a small area within Palestine, but symbolically it is a large part of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Though the mosque itself is significant for Muslims especially, Palestinian Christians have also protested against Israeli encroachment on the compound, joining Muslims in prayer outside Lions Gate on Friday.

The issue of al-Haram al-Sharif stands as a symbolic, but very strong catalyser of the routine of injustice and oppression that Palestinians in Jerusalem are facing, and that causes a continuous eruption of popular anger and uprisings, Yara Jalajel, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian minister of foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera in July 2017.

With more restrictions placed on Palestinian access to the compound and ongoing calls by Israeli religious groups to allow Jews to pray at the site, many Palestinians fear a possible division of the compound.
In a now widely discredited 1990s-era theory of international relations, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman advanced the argument that no two countries with a McDonalds would go to war with one another.

The logic behind the so-called Golden Arches Theory suggested that states with economies that were strong and stable enough to support investment by multinational corporations like McDonalds would be constrained from launching destructive conflicts against one another. The theory was roundly criticised and disproved with numerous examples, including wars between India and Pakistan, Israel and Lebanon, and Russias military interventions in neighbouring countries.

The ongoing crisis between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states has seemingly posed a new version of the same question: whether wealthy states with major economic disincentives could nevertheless engage in a debilitating conflict with each other. In looking at the Saudi-led groups isolation of Qatar, a reinvigorated Friedman may even suggest that no two countries with a Four Seasons have ever gone to war.

But what such end-of-history style arguments have frequently missed is that the triumph of neoliberal economic expansion has not resulted in the capitalist peace that was promised. Rather, as has become apparent from the recent adventurism by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, states that enjoy considerable wealth can afford to endure untold economic losses in the pursuit of their ideological or political goals.

READ MORE: Can Qatar-Gulf rift be repaired?

For all of the discussions about Qatar punching above its weight by leveraging a small countrys strong economic position to influence regional politics, so too have its Gulf neighbours relied on vast oil revenues to impose a regional order at great cost to their economies.

After sponsoring the 2013 military coup that toppled the presidency of the Muslim Brotherhoods Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, the Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti governments offered a staggering $23bn to keep the regime of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi afloat during its turbulent first 18 months. The $1.7bn in aid that the United States provides Egypt each year, which is so often invoked as a lever of influence on Egypts rulers, pales in comparison to the unprecedented level of assistance provided by Sisis Gulf sponsors. Predictably, Egypt was the first non-GCC country to join the boycott of Qatar.

Similarly, the first year of the disastrous war in Yemen cost $5.3bn, contributing to Saudi Arabias first budget deficit in decades in 2015  not to mention the unspeakable devastation it wrought on the citizens of one of the most impoverished countries in the world.

Saudi and Emirati leaders have also devoted billions of dollars towards influencing the outcome of Tunisias political transition and backing local forces in the destructive civil conflicts in Libya and Syria.





When they withdrew their ambassadors and cut economic ties with Qatar last month in an attempt to rein in their neighbours foreign policy, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain were not expected to allow the crisis to drag on. After all, Qatar conducts $9.5bn in trade annually with the three countries and provides the UAE with a third of its natural gas.

But this is not the first time that these governments have placed their political agenda above their economic interests. In responding to the global collapse in the price of oil in 2014, Saudi Arabia made the calculated decision not to cut its production levels, though that would mean diminished revenues.

Although the policy emerged largely out of an attempt to challenge the growing American shale oil sector, it also consciously targeted Iran, Saudi Arabias rival for regional supremacy. Maintaining production levels despite falling prices was sure to harm Saudi state income in a country with a growing poverty rate, but because it also undercut Irans oil revenues, it was deemed necessary.

Estimates have put the collective losses in oil revenue by Gulf states at $890bn since 2015, leading Saudi Arabia and other countries to cut subsidies, introduce taxes and seek international loans for the first time in their recent history. Meanwhile, defence spending has risen sharply in recent years, even before accounting for the mammoth $110bn deal that US President Donald Trump coaxed from the Saudi regime during his May visit to Riyadh.

Perhaps these regimes simply look upon these policies as sunk costs in a battle to impose a singular vision for the future of the Arab region. Or maybe they are part of a long-term investment strategy expected to reap future rewards when neighbouring states come into the fold of Saudi hegemony. In either case, the longer that this crisis drags on, the less likely it is that the economic arrangements that have long defined relations within the GCC can be restored.

READ MORE: All the latest updates on Qatar-Gulf crisis

For its part, Qatar has already reoriented its trade towards Turkey and Iran, from whom it has begun to import goods that once came through Saudi Arabia.

Following US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons failed attempt at shuttle diplomacy, the blockade of Qatar is expected to continue indefinitely, resulting in something like a regional cold war. Having already deployed most of the economic weapons at its disposal, the Saudi/Emirati group has little else to do beyond the self-defeating act of expelling Qatar from the GCC, an organisation that was founded largely to consolidate an anti-Iranian regional alliance under Saudi leadership.

Since the mid-1990s, Qatar has proven itself to be the dissenting member of this council, as it promoted anti-establishment voices across the region and pursued a less hawkish stance towards Iran, with whom it shares one of the worlds largest natural gas fields. Qatar resumed development of the gas field last April after a 12-year freeze, a move that was undoubtedly viewed with some degree of suspicion on the part of neighbouring oil producers.

The gradual shift in global energy demand from oil to natural gas and the diverging foreign policies were bound to create a state of rivalry between Qatar and the rest of the GCC states. But the actions of Saudi Arabia and its allies have transformed that rift into a chasm and have done so in spectacularly short order.

The only possible upside to the rapid pace at which Qatars isolation has occurred is that the blockading states did not cultivate the atmosphere of hostility that normally precedes such escalation. While the requisite propaganda campaign has since commenced in earnest, the regimes have yet to convince their citizens about Qatars newfound status as primary enemy or the timing of their alarming escalation.

Judging by the harsh punitive measures awaiting Saudi, Emirati and Bahraini citizens for public displays of sympathy with Qatar  or even expressions of doubt as to the efficacy of the blockade  it would appear that these governments believe that large swaths of their populations do not support their actions.

That is likely because the maximalist demands that these states have put forward as a precondition to ending the stalemate, from suppressing opposition groups to shutting down media organisations, aim to cement the repressive political conditions that have long defined their rule. The high cost of the recent escalations has shown that they are willing to mortgage the future of their citizens to do so.

Follow Abdullah al-Arian on Twitter: @anhistorian
A woman has been arrested in the murder of 28-year-old Eric Burchfield in Hixson early Friday morning.

Police identified her as Ember Lee Cash Elm.

She was booked as Emily Leanne Brooks Johnson, 26, of 4024 Woodmont Dr.

At 3:25 a.m., Chattanooga Police responded to a person who had been shot at the Kangaroo Express at 4849 Hixson Pike.



Officers were on regular patrol in the area and located the victim lying face up under a sign at the gas station. He was suffering from a single gunshot wound to the back. The body was next to his vehicle.

A spent 380 caliber casing was at the scene.

An officer who went to the home of the victim's mother said she told him, "Ember killed him."

She gave a description of the suspect that closely matched that of a witness at the gas station.

The victim's cell phone was examined and it "displayed messages consistent with two parties being at odds."

The suspect was located at her residence at 6210 Tall Pine Lane.

While detectives were waiting for crime scene technicians to arrive, she escaped from handcuffs. However, she was quickly apprehended.

While she was free, she tried to retrieve an item from an unzipped pouch of a back pack. An officer kicked the backpack so she could not reach it.

The pouch was found to contain a black 380 semi-automatic handgun.

She is charged with criminal homicide and unlawful possession of a weapon.

Her bond is $1 million on the murder and $5,000 on the gun charge.

Emily Leanne Brooks was arrested in East Ridge for domestic assault in 2015. Her record also includes arrests for theft, disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing.

The victim's funeral will be Tuesday at 1 p.m. at The Ministry Center.

He was a graduate of Red Bank High School and Chattanooga State Community College. He was a member of the Ministry Center.

Survivors include his parents, Robert and Sheba Coppit; a brother, Steven (Brittany) Burchfield; a niece, Katie Burchfield; a nephew, Chase Burchfield; father and step-mother, Richard and Marlene Burchfield.

Interment will be in Hamilton Memorial Gardens.
Pahar Haschey (The hills are smiling) is the slogan used by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to describe the peace and prosperity of Darjeeling under her regime. That is a difficult smile to manage given the regions history of colonisation and poverty, and the current agitation that has been going on for a month.

Violence and repressive governance have been an integral part of the history of the Darjeeling hills in the Eastern Himalayas. Beginning with British colonisation in the early 19th century, this colonial legacy has been continued faithfully by the extractive, neo-colonial political and financial institutions of successive West Bengal governments. Poverty, inequality between Darjeeling and other parts of West Bengal, and repression are some of the forms of violence experienced by the people of the Darjeeling hills every day.

However, a generation of young hill people has grown up in the shadow of a more sinister form of violence that is perpetuated, controlled and used by the state as well as different groups: the homeland movement.

The movement for a separate homeland for the Gorkhas of India is being spearheaded by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha party (GJM). Since June 8, 2017, the Darjeeling hills have been engulfed in a series of violence and counterviolence  indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians by the state police, arson by members of different political parties  all of which are obviously denied by the respective groups. As accusations and denials continue, so does the violence. There have been a number of civilian deaths while many more are still smarting from the lacerations caused by the lathis (batons) of the West Bengal police. In retaliation, police stations and public property have been set ablaze by homeland supporters.

These latest skirmishes gave rise to a sense of deja vu. Entrenched in the collective memory of Darjeeling hills is the trauma of the homeland agitation of 1986, which brought violence on a scale and intensity that had never been experienced previously. Those who experienced this agitation first-hand still recall painful memories of being terrorised by the police, countless family tragedies, disappearances, extrajudicial killings, arson, inter-party violence and counterviolence.

This agitation concluded in 1988 with the formation of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DCHC). The demand for a separate homeland remained latent, only to resurface in 2007 and in 2011 with the formation of Gorkha Territorial Administration (GTA). But this second administrative set-up also failed to bring lasting peace and prosperity to the region. While both DCHC and GTA were supposed representations of a regional devolution of power, in reality, they were mere tokens of appeasement as every aspect of hill administration was still controlled by Kolkata.

Repression and dissent

Unfortunately, these recent instances of violence involving local citizens and political leaders have proven that colonial narratives will continue to dictate how the Darjeeling hills and its people are romanticised, governed or repressed. by

More than three decades after the two-year long, violent Gorkhaland struggle that began in 1986, in June this year, the state government proposed a law that would make the Bengali language compulsory in the predominantly Nepali-speaking hills. Though withdrawn, this policy of cultural imperialism has been enough of a catalyst to galvanise the local population for another homeland movement.

Although there are layers of local and regional political machinations behind the last wave of protests, the states attempt to repress dissent with violence played a crucial role in the latest escalation.

Paranoid about losing territory and resources, the West Bengal government refuses to acknowledge the demand for Gorkhaland as a political issue. It has always viewed homeland movements as law and order problems, which can best be resolved by beating the hill people into submission. This neocolonial attitude, while evident in different policies pertaining to the hills, has been most prominent during the agitations of 1986 and 2007, as it is again in 2017.

Taming the native

On June 15, 2017, a police raid on the house of the GJM leader Bimal Gurung led to the discovery of a cache of items that, according to state authorities, no peace-minded person would store. The confiscated items included a khukuri, a machete shaped knife used as a domestic implement by the Gorkha, agricultural tools, as well as bows and arrows  items which are common in Himalayan households.

The underlying assumption that justifies labelling these common and culturally significant items as dangerous is the age-old colonial discourse that classifies hill people as inherently irrational, sentimental, and prone to violence. Owing to popular public narratives around bravery, loyalty and sacrifice for India, there is an expectation from the hill community that their contributions will be politically acknowledged through the formation of a separate state. Instead, their agricultural tools, which are apparently a confirmation of violence latent within hill people, are confiscated.

Unfortunately, these recent instances of violence involving local citizens and political leaders have proven that colonial narratives will continue to dictate how the Darjeeling hills and its people are romanticised, governed or repressed. When the stereotypical, docile hill person protests against years of subjugation, status quo must be established through violence.

In India, state violence has become the language of politics for silencing the poor, the lower castes, minorities, and the disenfranchised. In different spaces of such confrontation around the country, state brutality that includes excessive use of force and torture remains constant.

Cycles of state-led violence, ceasefires and counterviolence have established a framework of violence which has penetrated local political institutions and communities and transformed Darjeeling into an exceptional zone.

The tactics of repression that was at its height during the Gorkhaland movement in the 1980s  intimidation, disappearances, threats and harassment  are now visible in their diluted version in local politics in Darjeeling and are once again shaping the political terrain of the region. The hills may not have descended into complete chaos yet, but the fear of violence is affecting everyday decision-making and making it impossible for conflicting parties to reach an agreement for lasting peace.

Regarding the current violence, GJM leader Gurung has said that all the protests so far are a trailer. The real violence is yet to begin. The anxiety continues as the Kolkata High Court has asked for extra security forces to be sent to the hills and the Supreme Court of India have appealed to all citizens for peace.

In a multiethnic space like Darjeeling, where every call for an ethnic homeland stokes fires of interethnic conflict between the Nepali/Gorkha and the Bengali communities, it is important to acknowledge the culture of violence that has become a part of political institutions. To achieve sustainable peace, state actors and local community representatives should have a dialogue bereft of mutual suspicion and they should work towards stemming the culture of violence locally.

In the 1980s, after the Gorkhaland Agreement was signed, the West Bengal state broadcaster started beaming a half-an-hour cultural show called Nepali Programme on television every evening at 5:30pm. For Darjeeling to breathe easy, in 2017 the state has to think beyond the tokenism of a 30-minute cultural inclusion on state TV and a smile from the chief ministers imagination.

Mona Chettri is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is the author of Constructing Democracy: Ethnicity and Democracy in the eastern Himalayan Borderland (Amsterdam University Press, 2017). Her current research focuses on de-facto special economic zones in Sikkim.

Arijit Sen is a human rights researcher. Arijit is a three-time recipient of Indias Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism for his reporting.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
President Emmanuel Macron was born after the end of colonialism but he very much displays colonial thinking.

These days in Dakar, Bamako and elsewhere in Francophone Africa, everyone is talking about French President Emmanuel Macron.

President Macron, born long after French colonies became independent, displays an ostensible modernism, and  at least on the surface  attacks the obsolete political apparatuses, which, according to him, harm the vitality of the French society. As a result, perhaps too naively, many Africans expected him to change the old Francafrique  Frances relations with its former colonies in Africa  for the better.

But the reality is more than disappointing. So far, Macron not only insisted on the continuity of Frances economic dominance in the region as a former colonial power, but he also signalled his support for French military presence in the continent. Within the first weeks of his presidency, he has also clearly demonstrated that his assumptions about Africa and Africans are just as racist and colonialist as his predecessors.

The colonial money

Earlier this month at the G5 summit in Mali, Macron responded to the leaders of several countries of the African franc zone who see this currency as a cause of economic misfortunes.

If you feel unhappy in the franc zone, you leave it and create your own currency as Mauritania and Madagascar did, the 39-year-old president said. If you stay there [in the franc zone], you must stop demagogic statements, making the CFA franc the scapegoat of your political and economic failures and France the source of your problems.





This statement, as one might expect, triggered a flood of protests in Africa, and revived the debate on the viability and the colonial legacy of the CFA franc.

The CFA franc, the franc of the French colonies of Africa, was created on December 26, 1945, in the wake of the Bretton Woods conference, in which allied countries decided on what the international financial order should be like after World War II. According to French authorities at the time, the main purpose of this new currency system was to cushion the colonies from a strong devaluation of the franc.

In 1958, to settle the independence movements that were gaining ground all over colonial Africa, a new constitution was passed in Paris, transforming the French Union into the French Community  a federation of states with their own self-government. Under this new governance system, the CFA franc became the currency of the French Community of Africa. But this status quo did not last long, as almost all states in the newly formed African French Community declared independence from France in the two years that followed the constitutional change.

The CFA franc, however, managed to survive the declarations of independence.

The problems Africa face today are completely different  and are civilisational. by Emmanuel Macron

After independence, several countries did choose to leave the franc zone: Tunisia in 1958, Morocco in 1960, Guinea in 1959, Algeria in 1964, Madagascar and Mauritania in 1973. But a total of 14 countries, 12 of which are former French colonies, decided to continue using CFA franc as their official currency.

At the moment, the CFA franc is the official currency of the African Financial Community comprising eight countries within the Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa (UEMOA), as well as the Financial Cooperation in Central Africa, with six countries in this region.

The CFA franc is guaranteed by the French Treasury. It had a fixed exchange rate to French franc until 1999, and now  to the euro under agreements that force the countries of the franc zone to deposit 50 percent of their reserves in foreign currency to the French Treasury.

This currency, which is manufactured in France, follows the fluctuations of the euro, thus depriving the countries that use it from monetary sovereignty. That the CFA franc is bad for the economies of the 14 countries using it is clear. A country cannot have an independent economic path to development without control over its monetary policies.

The complaints of African leaders are justifiable and by far not demagogic. Macron made this statement knowing full well that the colonial set-up of the CFA franc makes it quite difficult for countries to launch a unilateral withdrawal, given the high costs involved.

Frances continuing military presence in Africa

Macron made his first official visit in Africa to Mali  a country that is considered to be a brilliant symbol of French militarys triumphant return to the continent.

France launched an intervention in Mali in 2013 to push out fighters linked to al-Qaeda who had overtaken key northern cities. That mission evolved into the current Barkhane deployment launched in 2014 with an expanded mandate for counterterror operations across the Sahel. Currently, more than 4,000 French soldiers are participating in the operation in five Sahel nations alongside UN and Malian troops.

The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history ... They have never really launched themselves into the future. by Nicolas Sarkozy

From Serval to Barkhane, French military operations in Africa are allegedly aiming to fight terrorism and more specifically to return to Mali its sovereignty over Timbuktu and Kidal. But, of course, another objective of these military operations  if not the primary one  is to protect French economic and geostrategic interests in the region, such as exploitation of Nigerien uranium and Malian gold. Also, it is well known that France is behind the creation of the G5 Sahel (an institutional framework for regional cooperation in development and security policies, incorporating Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad). The G5 helps France seal its militarys influence in the region and President Macron seems to be committed to maintaining the current unfair status quo.

During his visit to Mali, the new French president reaffirmed Frances commitment in the fight against terrorism in Africa and assigned a quasi-subordinate role to G5 Sahel countries, indicating that they can form indigenous armies, to combat drug and human trafficking at the border areas.

During the same visit, Macron also managed to offend Algeria, the mediator in the Malian crisis. At a joint press conference with the Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Macron said: I will have a stronger demand from the states of the Sahel and Algeria, he said, before stressing that we cannot show any weakness whatsoever with regard to terrorist groupings, regardless of domestic political reasons.

Macrons comments were meant to suggest that Algeria is supposedly allowing al-Qaeda-linked individuals to freely move in its territory.

Africas civilisational problems

But the harsh words on the CFA franc and the subtle accusations against Algeria were nothing compared to his comments at the G20 summit in Hamburg regarding Africas so-called civilisational problems.

The young French president managed to make several stigmatising declarations about Africa in the short time period that he has been in office, reducing Africans to something sub-human. His declarations were akin to the ones that have been used, since slavery, to justify the extractions of African resources.





During a press conference at the G20 summit in Hamburg, as he was responding to a question about the necessity of a Marshall Plan for Africa, Macron made his most offensive declaration about Africa to date.

The problems Africa face today are completely different  and are civilisational, Macron told a reporter from former French colony Ivory Coast.

What are the problems? Failed states, complex democratic transitions and extremely difficult demographic transitions. He said that although France accepted to help with infrastructure, education and healthcare, a simple money transfer was not the answer.

Its by a more rigorous governance, a fight against corruption, a fight for good governance, a successful demographic transition when countries today have seven or eight children per woman, Mr Macron added.

Macrons words bordered on deliberate provocation, especially since the memory of the outrage caused by Nicholas Sarkozys Dakar speech is still fresh a decade later.

The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history  They have never really launched themselves into the future, Sarkozy had said in that speech delivered in July 2007.

The African peasant only knew the eternal renewal of time, marked by the endless repetition of the same gestures and the same words, he said. In this realm of fancy  there is neither room for human endeavour nor the idea of progress.

Like Sarkozy and the countless other French leaders before him, Macron sees Africa only through the prism of colonialism and white supremacy. He carries, like a disease, the profound collective European feeling of civilisational superiority and parallel fear of the demographic strength of Africa.

Colonialists have long sought to control African womens fertility, as colonial masters dreaded being outnumbered and overpowered by the people they were enslaving and oppressing. Perhaps it was Africas demographic strength that helped it survive centuries of abuse and colonialism.

What Mr Macron and the rest of Frances political elite need to understand is that our problem is neither demographic, nor civilisational. Our problem is colonialism and the entrenched system of corruption and exploitation that Europe has set up and maintained in Africa.

Europe and North America continue to approach the continent with this extractive behaviour and demand to deal with African leaders not as equals. Historically, those who have resisted have either been corrupted or killed.

What Mr Macron et al need to understand is that times have changed and as much as the old system is entrenched, Africans are now more than ever aware and ready to resist it. And they would not take any more insults in silence.

Pape Samba Kane is a Senegalese journalist and political analyst.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Brussels-based human rights group calls for end of sanctions against Qatar to alleviate suffering of ordinary people.

A European human rights organisation has called on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to end their blockade against Qatar and help alleviate the suffering of citizens on disputing sides.

A 16-member delegation from the Brussels-based Alliance for Freedom and Dignity, AFD, travelled to Doha to investigate and document the humanitarian impact on ordinary citizens resulting from the blockade imposed on Qatar on June 5.





The group said during a press conference on Sunday that it met many of the victims in Qatar including women and children who are unable to reunite with their fathers because they are citizens of the blockading countries.

The group particularly decried the blockading countries separating families and denying students of receiving their diplomas or do their exams because they are citizens of Qatar.

Abdelmajid Mrari, the director of AFDs Middle East region, said his group has reached out to all of the countries involved in the crisis in order to investigate the suffering of ordinary people in the region.

Mrari said that only National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) in Qatar responded positively to their inquiries and invited his delegation to Doha to investigate the situation on the ground.

He said Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain did not respond either way to AFDs inquiries and requests to visit their countries.

READ MORe  Qatar-Gulf crisis: All the latest updates

Asked by Al Jazeera if AFDs final report might be viewed as one-sided or biased since the group only visited Doha and not the other countries, Mrari said his group had tried its best to reach out to the blockading countries but to no avail.

They cannot accuse us of bias or one-sidedness when they have not afforded us the opportunity to hear their side, he said

AFDs final report will be presented to the UNs Human Rights Council and the European Parliament for recommendations on how to resolve the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Dr Francois Deroche, a French medical doctor and a member of the delegation, told Al Jazeera that he documented six cases of autistic children whose fathers are citizens of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE and are left in the care of their Qatari mothers alone.

It is inhumane to subject children with such medical condition to such treatment, Deroche said.

Francois Burgat, a French political scientist and the director of research at the Institute for Research and Studies on the Arab and Muslim World, told Al Jazeera that the reason many European countries did not rush to take the side of Saudi Arabia and the UAE was because they can see that these countries are not what they present themselves to be especially when it comes to their anti-terrorism claims.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut off their political and economic ties with Qatar. They also imposed a sea, land and air blockade on the country, accusing it of supporting extremists in the region. Qatar strongly denied the allegation.

The AFD is a non-profit organisation established in 2006 and is dedicated to promoting human rights worldwide, according to its website.

Follow Ali Younes on Twitter @ali_reports
A key section of the bill mandates a congressional review if Trump attempts to ease or end the sanctions against Moscow.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats in the United States announced on Saturday they had reached an agreement on a sweeping Russia sanctions package to punish Moscow for meddling in the presidential election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria.

Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, said legislators had settled lingering issues with the bill, which also includes stiff economic penalties against Iran and North Korea.

The US sanctions targeting Russia, however, have drawn the most attention due to President Donald Trumps persistent push for warmer relations with President Vladimir Putin and ongoing investigations into Russias interference in the 2016 campaign.

OPINION: Trump and Putin  An awkward first date

Passage of the bill, which could occur before Congress breaks for the August recess, puts Capitol Hill on a possible collision course with Trump. The White House had objected to a key section of the bill that would mandate a congressional review if Trump attempted to ease or end the sanctions against Moscow.

But if Trump were to veto the bill, he risks sparking an outcry from Republicans and Democrats and having his decision overturned.

The sanctions review was included in the bill because of wariness among legislators from both parties over Trumps affinity for Putin.

According to the bill, Trump is required to send Congress a report explaining why he wants to suspend or terminate a particular set of sanctions. Legislators would then have 30 days to decide whether to allow the move or reject it.

An essential sanctions bill

The precise mechanics of how involved House Democrats would be in the review process had been a key sticking point, but Hoyer said hes satisfied with the outcome.

The legislation ensures that both the majority and minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the administrations implementation of sanctions, Hoyer said.





Senate Minority Leader Democrat Chuck Schumer called the sanctions legislation strong and he expected the legislation to be passed promptly.

Given the many transgressions of Russia, and President Trumps seeming inability to deal with them, a strong sanctions bill such as the one Democrats and Republicans have just agreed to is essential, said Schumer.

The House and Senate negotiators addressed concerns voiced by American oil and natural gas companies that sanctions specific to Russias energy sector could backfire on them to Moscows benefit. The bill raises the threshold for when US firms would be prohibited from being part of energy projects that also included Russian businesses.

The sanctions on North Korea bar ships owned by North Korea or by countries that refuse to comply with UN resolutions against it from operating in American waters or docking at US ports. Goods produced by North Koreas forced labour would be prohibited from entering the US.

The sanctions package imposes mandatory penalties on people involved in Irans ballistic missile programme and anyone who does business with them. The measure would apply terrorism sanctions to the countrys Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and enforce an arms embargo.

READ MORE: Week of protests launched for anti-Trump demonstrators

House Majority Leader Republican Kevin McCarthy posted a legislative business schedule that shows the sanctions bill will be voted on Tuesday. McCarthy had pushed to add the North Korea sanctions to the package. The House had overwhelmingly passed legislation in May to hit Pyongyang with additional economic sanctions, but the senate had yet to take up the bill.

The senate last month passed sanctions legislation that targeted only Russia and Iran.

Congressional aides said there might be resistance among Senate Republicans to adding the North Korea penalties, but it remained unclear whether those concerns would further stall the legislation. The aides were not authorised to speak publicly and requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

North Korea, Iran and Russia have in different ways all threatened their neighbours and actively sought to undermine American interests, McCarthy and Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement.

The bill the house will vote on next week will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions.
Power-sharing accord with Gaza ruler to see Egypt border open and power outages ease, says exiled Palestinian official.

An exiled Palestinian politician, Mohammed Dahlan, has for the first time discussed the details of a power-sharing deal with former rival Hamas movement for governing Gaza.

Dahlan, a former Gaza security chief, said in a phone interview with the AP news agency published on Sunday that he expected the quietly negotiated agreement to lead to opening the blockaded Palestinian territorys border with Egypt in late August and an easing of crippling power outages.





Funding has been secured from the UAE for a $100m power plant to be built on the Egyptian side of the border, said Dahlan from the United Arab Emirates.

Several dozen of Dahlans lieutenants and key supporters are expected to return from exile as part of the arrangements. But he said he will remain in exile.

Its better for Gaza that I stay in the diaspora and approach everyone who can extend a helping hand to Gaza, Dahlan said.

The 55-year-old said his chemistry with Gazas newly-elected Hamas chief, Yehiyeh Sinwar, helped forge the once-unthinkable alliance backed by Egypt and the UAE.

The two grew up in the streets of southern Gazas Khan Younis refugee camp before joining rival camps, Hamas and the mainstream Fatah movement, respectively.

We both realised its time to find a way out for Gaza, Dahlan said in an hour-long conversation on Saturday.

Report: Israel, UAE, Egypt plan to install Dahlan Gaza leader

The deal, which gives Dahlan a chance to return to Palestinian politics, is still in the early stages of implementation.

If it goes ahead, the accord could further sideline Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, 82, who presides over autonomous enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Abbas has a toxic relationship with Hamas, which seized Gaza from him in 2007, and with Dahlan, a former top aide.

The objectives of the Dahlan-Hamas deal  ending the border blockade, reviving Gazas battered economy  could also weaken Palestinian statehood aspirations by creating a mini-state in Gaza.

For more than two decades, Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, have unsuccessfully sought to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in negotiations with Israel.

Not separatists

Dahlan dismissed concerns that his deal with Hamas will gradually turn Gaza into a separate entity.

We are patriots, not separatists, he said, adding that he would do everything in his power to prevent a further drifting apart of the Palestinian territories.

The multi-millionaire with far-flung business interests in the region and close ties to leaders of Egypt and the UAE said he no longer aspires to replace Abbas.

I have no ambitions to be president, he said. Maybe that was the case when I was younger, but now I see the situation: 70 percent of the land is in the hands of the Israelis, and they have no intentions to give us a state.

Azzam al-Ahmed, an Abbas aide who negotiated with Hamas in the past, said on Sunday that the Dahlan-Hamas understandings are going nowhere.

He said Abbas Palestinian Authority supports Gaza with $1.2bn every year, covering wages of ex-loyalists, social welfare payments and electricity. He suggested Dahlan and Hamas would be unable to cover such sums.

Al-Ahmed also said Egypt assured Abbas that they are not going to help any new entity in Gaza.

However, the lengthy negotiations between Dahlans representatives and a Hamas team in Cairo last month would not have been possible without Egypts blessing, participants said.
Two Jordanian men were killed and an Israeli man was seriously wounded by gunfire at the Israeli embassy in Amman.

Two Jordanians have been killed and an Israeli wounded by gunfire in a residential building in the heavily fortified Israeli embassy compound in Jordans capital Amman, the kingdoms Public Security Directorate said.

The shooting took place on Sunday evening in a residential building used by embassy staff.

On Monday, Israels Foreign Ministry said a security guard shot and killed the Jordanians in a confrontation.

Police said that the two Jordanians worked for a furniture company and entered the embassy compound to carry out repairs.

Israeli media say the guard opened fire, killing the 17-year-old Jordanian. The reports say the Jordanian owner of the apartment was hit by gunfire inadvertently and later died.

The Israeli was in unstable condition, reported news site Hala Akhbar, linked to the Jordanian military.

READ MORE: Jordanian sentenced to life for killing US trainers

We have started a large-scale investigation into the incident and ordered the prosecutor general to look at all the details, the police said in a statement.

Jordanian security forces were deployed in the streets around the embassy, police said.

Mounting tensions

The incident comes at a time of mounting tensions between Israel and the Muslim world over metal detectors Israel installed around the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Earlier on Sunday, Jordan requested an urgent meeting for Arab foreign ministers to discuss the situation.

Thousands of Jordanians took to the streets of Amman after Friday prayers to denounce the Israeli measures at the al-Haram al-Sharif mosque compound.

Jordan is the official custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
Qatar and its neighbours should agree clear principles and a roadmap to resolve row, says EUs foreign affairs chief.

European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini has called for swift direct talks to resolve the Gulf crisis between Qatar and its neighbour states.

Mogherinis remarks came in a statement issued on Sunday after she met Kuwaits Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al Sabah and expressed EU support for his relentless mediation efforts in the dispute.

She called on all the parties to enter into negotiations to agree clear principles and a roadmap for a swift resolution of the crisis.

The statement said the EU was ready to support the process of negotiations and assist in the implementation of a plan for the resolution of the crisis, in particular in the area of counterterrorism.

READ MORE  All the latest updates about the Gulf crisis

Sheikh Sabah has been mediating to resolve the crisis after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting extremist groups. Doha strongly denied the allegation.

The quartet imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Qatar and issued a list of 13 demands.

The move has been condemned by various international rights groups, the United Nations and multiple governments. Qatar has rejected the demands.

On Friday, Qatars Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said in a televised address that his country was ready for dialogue to resolve the dispute, but stressed that any solution to the crisis must respect his countrys sovereignty.
Group formerly linked to al-Qaeda affiliate consolidates grip on Idlib as main rival rebels Ahrar al-Sham withdraw.

Fighters formerly linked to al-Qaeda took control of Idlib in Syria on Sunday after rival rebels withdrew, strengthening their grip on the northwestern city and its province, one of the last beyond regime control.

At the same time a car bomb exploded in Idlib killing 11 people, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

The latest developments come after the armed group Hayet Tahrir al-Sham, which is dominated by a former al-Qaeda affiliate and known as HTS, agreed a ceasefire on Friday with Ahrar al-Sham rebels.

Ahrar al-Sham withdrew from the city of Idlib which is now under the control of Hayet Tahrir al-Sham, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP news agency.

READ MORE: Syrias civil war explained from the beginning

Hundreds of rebels left the city aboard dozens of vehicles heading towards southern Idlib province, he said.

The truce ended a week of fierce fighting between HTS and Ahrar al-Sham, which is backed by Turkey and some Gulf countries, that killed at least 92 people including 15 civilians, the Observatory said.

Abdel Rahman said the HTS set up checkpoints across the northwestern city.

The fall of the city and provincial capital is symbolic.

It comes after HTS captured in a bloodless takeover more than 31 towns and villages across Idlib province over the past two days, the monitor said.

Former allies

The HTS is dominated by the Fateh al-Sham faction, which was previously known as al-Nusra Front before renouncing its ties to al-Qaeda.

The HTS and Ahrar al-Sham were once allies and fought alongside each other to capture most of Idlib province from Syrian government forces in 2015.





The truce they agreed to on Friday calls for the release by both sides of prisoners and the withdrawal of armed groups from the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey.

Bab al-Hawa, which had been controlled by Ahrar al-Sham, would be handed over to civilian administration, it said.

Abdel Rahman said the presence of Ahrar al-Sham rebels had been greatly diminished in Idlib province, which they once dominated. Rebels were left only in Ariha town and part of Jabal al-Zawiya in the southeast.

Ahrar al-Sham has also been hit by the defection of hundreds of its fighters to HTS.

Syrias conflict erupted in mid-March 2011 with peaceful anti-government protests that were brutally repressed by the government.

It quickly evolved into a war involving local, regional and international players on a multitude of fronts, which has killed more than 330,00 people and displaced millions from their homes.
Nine people dead and more than 20 critically injured in what police are calling a horrific case of immigrant smuggling.

At least nine people died after being crammed into a sweltering tractor-trailer found parked outside a Walmart in the midsummer Texas heat, authorities said on Sunday in what they described as an immigrant-smuggling attempt gone wrong.

The driver was arrested, and nearly 20 others rescued from the rig were hospitalised in dire condition, many with extreme dehydration and heatstroke, officials said.

Were looking at a human-trafficking crime, Police Chief William McManus said. He called it a horrific tragedy.





Many of the victims looked to be in their 20s and 30s, and there were apparently two school-age children, the police chief said.

Authorities were called to the San Antonio car park late on Saturday night or early Sunday and found eight dead inside the truck. A ninth victim died at the hospital, said Liz Johnson, spokeswoman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The victims were very hot to the touch. So these people were in this trailer without any signs of any type of water, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said.

Based on initial interviews with survivors of the weekend tragedy, more than 100 people may have been packed into the back of the 18-wheeler at some point in its journey, ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan said.

Thirty-nine were inside when rescuers arrived, and the rest were believed to have escaped or hitched rides to their next destination, officials said.

Some of the survivors told authorities they were from Mexico, Homan said.

Authorities did not say whether the rig was locked when they arrived, whether it was used to smuggle the occupants across the border into the US, or where it might have been headed. San Antonio is about a 240-kilometre drive from the Mexican border.

The temperature in San Antonio reached 101 degrees (38 Celsius) on Saturday and didnt dip below 90 (32 C) until after 10pm. The trailer didnt have a working airconditioning system, Hood said.

Federal prosecutors said James Mathew Bradley Jr, 60, from Clearwater, Florida, was taken into custody.

No immediate charges were filed.

READ MORE: Deadly human trafficking business on Mexico-US border

A person from the lorry initially approached a Walmart supermarket employee in the car park and asked for water late on Saturday night or early on Sunday morning, police Chief William McManus said.

The employee gave the person the water and then called the police, who found the dead and desperate inside the truck.

Investigators checked store surveillance video, which showed vehicles had arrived and picked up other people from the lorry, police said.

The US Homeland Security Department stepped in to take the lead in the investigation.

It was just the latest smuggling-by-truck operation to end in tragedy. In one of the worst cases on record in the United States, 19 immigrants locked inside a stifling rig died in Victoria, Texas, in 2003.
New video online shows senior leader reading charges and carrying out executions before talks between rival factions.

A group of 20 suspected fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group have been executed by the forces of General Khalifa Haftar in Libya, according to a video posted online.

Mahmoud al-Werfalli, the senior leader of Haftars forces, is seen reading the charges and carrying out an execution himself in a new video posted online on Sunday.

It is believed the executions were carried out on July 17.

READ MORE: Haftars forces declare victory in battle for Benghazi

On July 18, the United Nations called for Haftars Libyan National Army (LNA), which controls the eastern part of Libya, to investigate summary executions of prisoners.

In May, Haftar rejected a resignation letter submitted by Werfalli calling him one of the sincere fighters who has given a lot in the battlefields for years.

Rival factions to meet

Reports of the executions come as the leaders of Libyas rival factions are planning to meet in Paris on Tuesday to discuss a deal to end the political crisis

The talks between the head of the UN-backed government Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj and Haftar are aimed at stabilising the oil-producing country, which has been mired in chaos and fighting since rebels toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Foreign governments are pushing the UN-backed political agreement that installed Serrajs National Unity government, but Haftar, whose forces have gained ground in the east of the country, has refused to accept the governments legitimacy.

The two rivals held talks in Abu Dhabi in May, the first in more than a year and a half.

General Haftars forces have gained control in much of Libyas east, with backing from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
At 11 a.m., when her classmates have completed their morning exercises and started their academic courses, Jessica Doolin is the only person in the training room, practising with her hula hoops.

The Irish woman knows she has to work harder than her Chinese peers to become a successful acrobat.

Doolin, 27, is the oldest student at the acrobatics school in Wuqiao County, Hebei Province, known as the Chinese "hometown of acrobatics." Her classmates range in age from seven to 16.

"Being a performer has always been my dream, so it's never been too late to realize it," she said.

From Hairdresser to Hula Hooper

Doolin is the youngest of four siblings. She previously worked as a hairdresser in Dublin, Ireland.

"Working at the same place and doing the same thing all year long was dull," she recalled, saying that she longed for a job where she could travel.

At the age of 22, she saw a hula hoop performance at a music festival which reignited her dream to become a performer.

"I just fell in love with it, and decided to become a performer," she said.

Initially her mother did not support her decision, partly because she worried her daughter was too old to learn and may get injured.

But Doolin insisted. She quit her hairdressing job and for two years, she studied with the performer she met at the music festival.

"When my mother saw my show on stage for the first time, she finally agreed," she said.

As she was older than most entry-level acrobats, Doolin was not accepted at European acrobatic schools, which require years of experience.

So she searched the Internet, and registered at a theater school in Beijing in 2015.

"I know China is the best for acrobatics, so I chose to come here."

She studied in Beijing for eight months before a friend who had been to Wuqiao introduced her to the hometown of Chinese acrobatics.

Doolin ran out of savings and she returned to Europe, performing in hotels and theaters across Britain for five months. She saved enough for the 30,000-yuan (4,400-U.S.-dollar) tuition fees, and arrived in Wuqiao to begin the one-year training program last October.

Wuqiao is considered the cradle of Chinese acrobatics and the performance style can be dated back some 2,000 years to Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-220 A.D.).

The Grand Canal, the world's longest man-made waterway, passed through the county, enabling acrobatic troops to travel north to Beijing and Tianjin, and south to Hangzhou and Yangzhou to give performances.

In 2006, Wuqiao acrobatics was listed as a state-level intangible cultural heritage.

Mu Hongyuan, who runs international communications at the acrobatic school, said it has trained around 400 international students. The first group of students came from Africa in 2002, as part of an aid project sponsored by China's Ministry of Commerce.

Other international students have come from the United States, Japan and Britain.

Through the Hoop

For Doolin, the most frustrating thing at first was not hard training, but the loneliness.

"Unlike in Beijing, where many people speak English, I could barely find anyone to talk to here," she said.

The situation prompted her to study Chinese. Eight months after arriving, she could speak conversational Chinese.

"Now I have made some Chinese friends," she said.

Doolin earns around 1,000 yuan per day for performing at tourist resorts, 1,500 to 2,000 yuan per show at theaters, and 2,000 yuan per day for TV performances.

"My income is not stable, but it's much better than being a hairdresser back home," she said. "Chinese audiences like my show."

She plans to travel and perform across China after graduating in October.

"I have already been to Guilin, Yangzhou, Taiyuan and Shanghai. I'm hoping to see more," she said. Enditem
Palestinians say they reject any Israeli security measures after installation of CCTV cameras at al-Aqsa entrance.

Israel has installed new security cameras at the entrance to a contested Jerusalem holy site, as officials began indicating it was considering alternatives to the metal detectors at the shrine that set off a weekend of violence and raised tensions in the region.

Speaking from occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeeras Imran Khan said Palestinians had feared that Israel would place CCTV cameras at the entrances to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

The Palestinians are very angry about this because they consider this an additional security measure, he said. Theyve always maintained that the metal detectors may be the first move in the Israelis taking over the compound.

Israel introduced the new security measures last week after Palestinian gunmen opened fire from the shrine, killing two Israeli policemen. It said they were a necessary measure to prevent more attacks and were deployed routinely at holy sites around the world.

But Palestinians alleged Israel was trying to expand its control at the Muslim-administered site and have launched mass prayer protests.

Hussein Dana, a 76-year-old Palestinian, told Al Jazeera that he rejects the cameras because they disadvantage Palestinians further.

These cameras are made to identify the faces of people who are barred from entering al-Aqsa Mosque, Dana said.

We pray each morning here, and the police assaults us. I intend to keep praying here until Israel removes all what is new, he added, referring to the security measures.

The cameras were installed just outside Lions Gate. Israeli police barred journalists from going through the gate.

READ MORE: Israeli measures at al-Aqsa will increase resistance

Major General Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Israeli defence body for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel was open to alternatives to lower the tensions.

The only thing we want is to ensure no one can enter with weapons again and carry out another attack, he said. Were willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors as long as the solution of alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack.





However, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, told the Voice of Palestine he demands a complete return to procedures that were in place before the initial attack at the shrine, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

In a statement on Sunday, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, of which he is a part, said they affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation.

A top adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said a series of consultations are under way with various countries to try and lower tensions in Jerusalem.

Abbass diplomatic adviser, Majdi Khaldi, said the Palestinians are coordinating with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and others.

On Friday, Abbas announced he would freeze ties with Israel on all levels until the new security measures Israel imposed at the site after the deadly shooting there were removed.

He did not say whether this means halting security coordination, which would have far-reaching repercussions and sharply raise tensions with Israel.

Tense weekend

On Friday, several thousand Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, protested against the security measures during noon prayers. Israel responded by firing rubber and live ammunition, tear gas and stun grenades.

Three Palestinians were killed, and more than 400 were injured, the Red Crescent said.

Late on Friday evening, a 20-year-old Palestinian identified as Omar al-Abed jumped over the fence of the Halamish settlement and entered a home, and stabbed four members of a family, killing three of them.

Speaking at his cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to level Abeds family home.

The house of the despicable terrorist will be demolished as soon as possible, Netanyahu said. We are also acting against those that incite acts of murder and glorify it.

Abed said in a pre-attack Facebook post that he expected to be killed in the assault and his father said he was motivated by the violence at the Jerusalem shrine.

The army said soldiers searched the house and measured it in preparation for demolition. Anticipating this, local residents said the family emptied its home of valuables.

Later, the Israeli army sealed off entrances to Abeds village of Kobar.

Israel placed its forces on high alert after the attack in the West Bank. The Israeli military said it carried out a wave of overnight arrests of 29 Palestinians, including nine members of the Hamas group.

Additional reporting by Ibrahim Husseini
Ahmad al-Fliti, who was mediating between Hezbollah and Syrian opposition fighters, was killed when his car was shelled.

A Lebanese mediator was killed on Saturday in the second day of fighting between the powerful Hezbollah group and fighters near the border with Syria, the official news agency ANI said.

Ahmad al-Fliti, who was mediating between fighters and Hezbollah  was wounded when his car was hit by shelling of unknown origin in Juruod Arsal, ANI said.

He later succumbed to his wounds.

Lebanons army said Fliti, who was the former deputy mayor of Arsal, was killed in shelling by the terrorist organisation of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front.

An escort of his was also injured in the attack, the army added.

Hezbollah on Friday said its fighters had begun an operation against fighters on both sides of the countrys border with Syria.

On Saturday, Hezbollah announced several advances in the mountainous border area of Juruod Arsal.

Funerals were held on Saturday for 11 Hezbollah fighters killed in the clashes, nine in Beirut and two in Baalbek.

Lebanons army has not officially announced its participation in the offensive, but said on Friday it had targeted terrorists in the area.

According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, an estimated 45,000 Syrian refugees live in informal camps in Juroud Arsal after having fled the six-year war in their home country.

But security in the area has also long been a concern, with Lebanese forces battling rebels in the area in 2014.

Hezbollah on Friday also announced fighting on the other side of the border in Syrias Qalamoun, where the Lebanese Shia group has fought for years alongside President Bashar al-Assads army against rebels.

Syrias air force on Saturday carried out air raids near the border, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

More than a million refugees have flooded into Lebanon since the Syria conflict erupted with anti-government protests in March 2011.

Their presence has been largely tolerated despite testing the limited resources and ageing infrastructure of a country of just four million.
Israeli forces have injured more than 900 Palestinians since clashes over al-Aqsa Mosque compound erupted on July 14.

More than 900 Palestinians have been injured in confrontations with Israeli forces in the last 10 days over the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Palestinian hospitals, already overstretched, fear a large influx of injured if tensions, which erupted on July 14 after Israel closed the sensitive site in occupied East Jerusalem, continue.

They also highlighted that most of the injuries inflicted by the Israeli forces were from rubber-coated steel bullets.

International human rights groups have long condemned Israels use of such bullets.

READ MORE: Mahmoud Abbas freezes contact with Israel over al-Aqsa

The 39-year-old Mohammed Ismeal, currently being treated at Al Maqassid hospital in East Jerusalem, was apparently shot with a stun grenade in the head, which left him drifting in and out of consciousness.

He wasnt disabled. But now look at him. He cant recognise anyone. Its like hes lost his memory, Muataz Ismeal, the patients brother, told Al Jazeera.

Suleiman Turukman, the doctor in charge of Mohammeds case, said he feared for his patients life.

His condition was serious. He was about to die. He is now improving slowly. But is disoriented and cannot recognise his family due to the trauma.

The clashes with the Israeli forces that started with the closure of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound have continued since its reopening as Israel introduced metal detectors as a security measure at the entrances of the site.

The Palestinians see the move an attempt by Israel to expand its control at the Muslim-administered compound.

On Sunday, Israel installed new security cameras at the site which also angered the protesters.

READ MORE  Israel installs security cameras at al-Aqsa compound

Hussein Dana, a 76-year-old Palestinian, told Al Jazeera that he rejects the cameras because they disadvantage Palestinians further.

These cameras are made to identify the faces of people who are barred from entering al-Aqsa Mosque, Dana said.

We pray each morning here and the police assaults us. I intend to keep praying here until Israel removes all what is new, he added, referring to the security measures.

Major General Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Israeli defence body for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel was open to alternatives to lower the tensions.

The only thing we want is to ensure no one can enter with weapons again and carry out another attack, he said. Were willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors as long as the solution of alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack.

However, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, told the Voice of Palestine he demands a complete return to procedures that were in place before the initial attack at the shrine.

In a statement on Sunday, the Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, of which he is a part, said they affirm the categorical rejection of the electronic gates and all the measures of occupation.

A top adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said a series of consultations are under way with various countries to try and lower tensions in Jerusalem.

Abbass diplomatic adviser, Majdi Khaldi, said the Palestinians are coordinating with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and others.
Armed group al-Shabab claims responsibility for attack on security convoy near Baidoa in countrys southwest.

At least four soldiers were killed and several others wounded when a roadside blast targeted a security convoy in southwestern Somalia, police said.

The attack took place near the town of Baidoa, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) south-west of the capital Mogadishu, on Sunday.

Somali-based armed group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.

Four soldiers from the southwestern state forces were killed in the blast, Mowlid Mohamed, a police officer in Baidoa, told Turkeys Anadolu news agency.

READ MORE: Car bomb kills four outside Mogadishu police station

Four soldiers were killed, and more than two others were wounded after a security convoy was targeted, he said.

The wounded soldiers were rushed to Bay regional hospital for treatment as they sustained life-threatening injuries, he added.

The convoy was travelling from the village of Daynunay to Baidoa, capital of the Bay region.
Monitoring group says air attacks hit rebel-held towns just 24 hours after a ceasefire was agreed.

Syrian government forces have carried out several air attacks in the eastern Ghouta area outside of Damascus, a day after the Syrian military declared a cessation of hostilities in the area, according to a UK-based monitor.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Saturday had been relatively calm after the ceasefire took effect with isolated incidents of shellfire.

But on Sunday, six air attacks hit the towns of Douma and Ain Terma in rebel-held eastern Ghouta, it said.

Al Jazeeras Mohammed Jamjoon, reporting from Gaziantep, on the Turkey-Syria border, said the Syrian military released a statement saying that the spirit of the agreement had first been breached by Jaish al-Islam  an armed opposition group.

READ MORE: Syrias civil war explained from the beginning

This goes to show how difficult it is to try to make these agreements, he said.

The cessation of hostilities was signed yesterday, but less than 24 hours later the situation is in tatters.

Syrias military declared a cessation of fighting activities starting at noon on Saturday in besieged eastern Ghouta.

A statement from the Cairo-based political opposition movement Al-Ghad said the agreement had been reached in Cairo, sponsored by Egypt and Russia and with the involvement of mainstream rebel groups.

READ MORE: Trump ends CIA support for anti-Assad Syria rebels

There was to be a full ceasefire in eastern Ghouta; no government forces would enter the area and aid would be allowed in, it said.

Numerous attempts at a lasting ceasefire in western Syria, where rebels have lost ground to government forces and their allies over the last year, have collapsed with both sides trading the blame.

The United States, Russia and Jordan reached a ceasefire and de-escalation agreement for southwestern Syria this month, which has reduced violence. That agreement did not include eastern Ghouta.
Taywara and Kohistan were overrun by the Taliban after days of clashes with security forces.

Taliban fighters have overrun two district centres in northern and central Afghanistan, as Afghan forces fight to contain a growing rebellion across the country.

Ghors Taywara district fell to the Taliban early on Sunday after several days of clashes with Afghan security forces, Mohammad Mahdavi, deputy chief of the provincial council for Ghor, told DPA news agency.

The central province of Ghor shares borders with two insecure provinces, Farah in the northwest and Helmand in the south, both of which are known as strongholds for Taliban fighters, Mahdavi said.

READ MORE: US air raid kills Afghan police in Helmand

Another district in northwest Faryab province also fell to the Taliban early on Sunday.

A large number of Taliban [attacked] Kohistan district centre from several directions around 9pm on Saturday, said Javed Bedar, a spokesman for the Faryab governor.

According to Bedar, both security forces and the Taliban suffered casualties, but no exact numbers were immediately available.

The Taliban launched four assaults on Ghors Taywara police headquarters and we had no choice but to retreat, provincial police chief Mohammad Mustafa Moseni said.

He said police have taken up positions about 8km from the headquarters while they wait for reinforcements to launch a counterattack.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that the fighters had captured both Taywara and Kohistan district centres and said the group had killed scores of Afghan security forces and captured of a large amount of weapons.

READ MORE: Rejected asylum  From Karachi to Germany and back again

In Faryabs Lawlash district, two police officers were killed late on Saturday when Taliban used the cover of darkness to attack and set fire to the police headquarters buildings, Abdul Karim Yourish, the provincial police chief spokesman, said.

There has been a surge in fighting in several northern and southern Afghan provinces in recent days, including in Helmand in the south where 16 Afghan police officers were killed by a US air raid on Friday night.

The attack, the latest setback in Washingtons efforts to pacify the country, hit a compound in Gereshk district, large parts of which are under Taliban control.

Afghan troops and police are battling largely alone on the ground against the anti-government forces, after US-led foreign forces withdrew from most combat operations in December 2014.

The United States is actively considering sending more troops to Afghanistan and US commanders there have requested thousands of extra soldiers on the ground.

The US contingent now numbers about 8,400, and there are another 5,000 from NATO allies, a far cry from the US presence of more than 100,000 six years ago. They mainly serve as trainers and advisers.
UK foreign secretary hails Qatars call for talks and urges Saudi-led group to take steps towards lifting the embargo.

Britains government has praised the Qatari emirs willingness for dialogue to resolve the ongoing diplomatic dispute with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt.

I welcome the Emir of Qatars commitment to combat terrorism in all its manifestations, including terrorist financing, Britains Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in a statement on Sunday.

The Emir also pledged to resolve the remaining differences with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain through dialogue, negotiation, and Kuwaiti mediation. These steps will help to resolve the dispute, Johnson added.

READ MORE: Qatar-Gulf crisis  All the latest updates

Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said in a televised address on Friday that his country is ready for dialogue to resolve the diplomatic dispute with the Saudi-led group, but stressed that any solution to the crisis must respect his countrys sovereignty.

Johnson said Britain hopes that in turn, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain respond by taking steps towards lifting the embargo, and that this will allow substantive discussions on remaining differences to begin.

The UK will continue to engage our partners in the region to help them reach a solution, including assisting Kuwaits important efforts in whatever way we can, Johnson added.

British Prime Minister Theresa May had previously urged the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to take steps to reduce tensions in the region

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, and Bahrain cut diplomatic ties with Qatar last month, and imposed a sea and land blockade while accusing Doha of supporting terrorism. Doha denies the accusation of terrorism and contends the blockade is a violation of international law.
Insight into the rivalry of the two men who helped end apartheid and shape a new multi-racial democracy in South Africa.

Editors note: This film will be removed on February 13, 2020.

On February 11, 1990, South Africa  and the world  turned its eyes to Victor Verster prison to see Nelson Mandela released after 27 years in captivity.

Four years later, Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) would rise to power in a landslide victory against the National Party. He would become South Africas first black head of state, uniquely supported by two vice presidents to illustrate the governments movement in the direction of national unity; they were Thabo Mbeki and Frederik Willem de Klerk (commonly known as FW) of the National Party (NP).

In politics, it happens ... We have divorces and then, later on, you become a bit more mature, you are able to come back; and you might not be in love but if you find friendship again, you go through thick and thin. In politics and struggle, we see this all the time: And it happened very much with Mandela and de Klerk. by Ronald Kasrils, South African politician

History seemed to place Mandela and de Klerk on a collision course that put them in the centre of one of the great political turnarounds of the 20th century  the dissolution of apartheid and recognition of the black right to govern South Africa.

However, the two leaders, though joint in purpose eventually, were often at odds with their respective political views.

Mandela founded South Africas first black law firm and his name has always been synonymous with the ANC. However, after initially joining the party and leading the Youth League arm for a decade, Mandela grew weary of the lack of change resulting from the ANCs peaceful ways.

In 1960, following worldwide condemnation of the Sharpeville Massacre, where dozens of peaceful protesters were shot down by armed policemen outside the Sharpeville police station, Mandela founded the armed wing of the ANC, formally known as Spear of the Nation and nicknamed MK.

On December 16, 1961, the MK announced its creation with a series of bombings intended to place pressure on the government. Mandela viewed this as the best way to provoke a reaction without any casualties.

Less than a year later, he was arrested alongside fellow activist Cecil Williams. The arrest would lead to a two-year trial and Mandelas eventual sentencing to a lifetime in prison.

On the opposing side of the political spectrum, de Klerk had a reputation for conservatism for the majority of his career. His father, Johannes de Klerk, was a senior National Party politician and his family was heavily embroiled in the growth and development of the NP.

It was de Klerk, however, who momentarily abandoned his views in order to try and end apartheid and ease the deadlock that had crippled South Africa for decades.

Upon then-President Pieter Bothas resignation due to illness, de Klerk was elected to a full five years as state president.

I think de Klerk, when he took over as president in 1989, was faced with a choice. He knew that the countrys economy was in really deep trouble. He knew that we were almost facing a civil war inside the country, says journalist Max du Preez.

Was he going to do more apartheid, more repression, more police, more military, destroy the economy, getting to a civil war  or was he going to be the historical figure that ended all that? I think the Berlin Wall helped him a lot because it was a strong argument to use to say, We had to fight ANC because they were communists. But now communism is dead so we can talk to them, which made the message easier to accept by the white people, du Preez adds.

In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk jointly received the Nobel Peace prize. They were credited with accomplishing a political miracle  the transformation of their country into a multi-racial democracy without civil war. The transfer of power was fraught with difficulty and although their political rivalry spilled over into the public arena, the relative peace afforded to South Africa was undeniable.

Timeline

This timeline displays key moments in the relationship between Nelson Mandela, the iconic leader of the ANC, and FW de Klerk, the last white president of South Africa, as they worked together to put an end to apartheid.
A photographer from Homs becomes a youth leader after his photos of life in a refugee camp are noticed in Canada.

Editors note: This film is no longer available to view online.

Legally blind Syrian refugee Hani al-Moliya started taking photos of his life in a refugee camp in Lebanon, where he and his family apply for asylum in Canada.

His photography helps him see what would normally be out of focus and, even though he can only see shapes and outlines, Hani discovered he has a talent.

With his photos, Hani reveals the humanity of the people of the tents.

When Hanis family gained asylum in Canada, he kept documenting the lives of his parents and siblings, exposing the challenges of settling down in a new country far away from the home they had to leave behind.

Within months of his arrival in Canada, Hanis photos were noticed by the media. He was elected to be part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus National Youth Council.

The boy from the camp became a role model for youth and Syrian refugees in Canada.

FILMMAKERS VIEW

By Zahra Mackaoui

As a documentary maker who has been filming in the Middle East for more than a decade, it seemed inevitable that at some point I would find myself covering the Syrian conflict. What I hadnt anticipated was that it would be a journey that continues even today.

I met Hani at the end of a year filming the refugee camps across the Middle East. I had witnessed scenes of despair over and over again, and yet Hani immediately made an impression on me.

Here was a young man who had lost everything, who also suffered from a debilitating eye condition, but who refused to give up. He picked up a camera and began taking photos of his life. Before long, hed made a name for himself as the photographer of the camps.

Two years after I first filmed Hani, he informed me that his family had been accepted for resettlement in Canada. I returned to Lebanon to document his journey.

The story could have ended there, but I was curious to see what would become of Hani in his new surroundings, so I continued to follow his progress. His arrival in Canada coincided with a sudden peak of interest in the Syrian refugee cause, as record numbers of refugees were travelling to Europe. In Canada, newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees.

The last time I returned to film Hani in October 2016, he was addressing a stadium with more than 20,000 Canadian youth and families in it as part of the global youth movement WE.org. Watching him expertly manoeuvre his way across the stage, telling his story to an enraptured audience, I thought of the young refugee I had met in the tented settlements just three years before.

At a time when anti-refugee sentiment is on the rise, amid growing influence of populist movements across Europe and the US, and just six months after President Trump set out to suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees, Hanis story reminds us of the individuals behind the numbers who refuse to give up on their dreams.
Residents of Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, have flooded into local blood donation centers, following an explosion that killed two and injured 45 others on Friday.

Firefighters work to control a blaze caused by a gas blast in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on Friday. At least two were confirmed dead after the blast involving three restaurants happened at around 8:30 am. [Photo: Xinhua]

As of Saturday morning, seven of the injured, two males and five females, remained in critical condition, and doctors have traveled from Shanghai to assist with their treatment, according to provincial health authorities.

Yang Jing, director of the provincial health and family planning commission, is leading the treatment plan.

The explosion ripped through the ground and second floors of three restaurants at around 8:30 a.m., destroying an area of 200 square meters on Gudun Road near West Lake. The blast shattered the windows of passing vehicles, including a bus, which caused most of the injuries.

Bottled liquefied petroleum gas has been blamed for causing the explosion.

Liang Chao said he was lucky as he took a detour on his way to work on Friday morning to avoid a traffic jam.

"I drive along that road every day, and could have been one of the victims," he said, while waiting in line to donate blood along with his wife, surnamed Chen.

After hearing about the explosion, the couple rushed to a blood donation center just 300 meters from the blast site.

"We often eat at these restaurants. Many of the injured were here to have breakfast or wait for buses outside," said Chen. "I hope we can help them by donating blood."

Simon Quirin, a German national working in Hangzhou, was among the donors waiting at the center. "I saw a news report about the blast, and as it's been enough time since I last donated blood, I am able to donate again now," he said.

Hao Weichen and many others who regularly donate blood were quick to arrive at the blood donation centers.

"As experienced volunteers, we know we are needed following the accident like this," said Hao, who has donated blood over 200 times.

According to the provincial blood donation headquarters, 1,448 people had donated blood as of 11 p.m. Friday.

The blood donation centers have announced they will extend opening hours on Saturday.

As of 8 a.m., the six hospitals treating the blast victims had used 21,600 mm of red blood cells and nearly 30,000 mm of plasma as transfusions for the injured.
Here we are today; the AHA has seemingly crashed and burned because some Republicans were too afraid -- most are always afraid -- while others were just too pure of heart -- they would rather accept defeat than vote for something that was merely an improvement and not the whole ball of wax.

The frightened balked at the block-grant formulas for Medicaid, while the indomitable ideologues objected to the preservation of the 3.8% net investment tax on passive income, capital gains, and dividends as well as the 0.9% Medicare surtax on income and wages for couples making more than $250 thousand a year or singles making more than $200 thousand per annum.

Medicaid was originally designed as a program to guarantee healthcare for the poor. ObamaCare was in reality, mostly an expansion of Medicaid. After the passage of the ironically named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) most of the boasted increase in those with coverage ended up in Medicaid metamorphosing the program into healthcare for the poor and non-poor alike. Along with this came the establishment of one-size-fits-all insurance policies. In other words, policies that were designed to include Democrat politically perceived universal exigencies instead of individual healthcare needs.

This made purchasing health insurance in America like buying cable where people are not allowed to pay for only the channels they want to watch. They have to pick from definitive plans offered by the cable companies. Hence, viewers always find themselves with a plan including things like the Sudanese State Channel and badminton from Suriname. The plans even have similar names. Silver, gold, and platinum are appellations liberally attached to plans offered by both health insurance and cable industries. With respect to healthcare, people are often forced to buy much more coverage than what is wanted or needed.

The bill that failed (ostensibly) in the Senate would have kept the 3.8% tax on investment income and the 0.9 payroll tax. Still, it was also an attempt to transition the [Medicaid] program to per capita block grants and equalize payments for the poor and the disabled compared to ObamaCares Medicaid expansion population of able-bodied adults. The revision is too generous in the early years and has a long runway to give Governors time to plan and adjust, but it shifts to a budget growth rate in a decade that is fiscally sustainable, a change that over the next decade will save $772 billion, according to a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

That same Journal article also said that the bill would have provided for a modest expansion of Health Savings Accounts and a version of Ted Cruzs freedom option, which would allow insurers that sell ObamaCare-compliant plans to also sell deregulated plans. Combined with state waivers, this could lead to significantly lower premiums for most consumers. In other words, it was a halfway measure to eliminate the laws requirement to buy more coverage than desired or required.

This wasnt good enough for some Republicans and too much for others, and the result was legislative failure (supposedly). None of that matters at this point, because prospects for the passage of any bill on the subject of healthcare in the Senate, while not dead, are not particularly bright despite some late-inning arm-twisting by the president.

Yet, you never know. Repeal and replace, which had become partial repeal and repair at some point may become simply repeal -- or perhaps, some Republican senators may surprise us all by showing some spine and others, a willingness to accept limited victory instead of total victory and AHA will breathe new life. Trumps working them, so we shall see.

Senator Schumer, one of the oiliest of the Democrat contingent, has complained bitterly about his party not being afforded the opportunity to write the legislation to accommodate their predilections as well as the use of Reconciliation for the passage of any bill. An outright liar or senescent scoundrel with memory issues, he acts as if he doesnt remember how Democrats used legislative trickery to give us ObamaCare, not only without any opposition input but also without a single Republican vote.

Brian Sussman explains what happened succinctly:

Nancy Pelosis Democratic majority in the House of Representatives was unable to pass their version of a healthcare law. Because all revenue bills have to originate in the House, the Senate found a bill that met those qualifications: HR3590, a military housing bill. They essentially stripped the bill of its original language and turned it into the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), aka ObamaCare. The Senate at that time had 60 Democrats, just enough to pass ObamaCare. However after the bill passed the Senate, Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy died. In his place, Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown. That meant that if the House made any changes to the bill the Senate wouldnt have the necessary number of votes to pass the amended bill (because they knew no Republicans would vote for ObamaCare). So Senate Leader Harry Reid cut a deal with Pelosi: the House would pass the Senate bill without any changes if the Senate agreed to pass a separate bill by the House that made changes to the Senate version of ObamaCare. This second bill was called the Reconciliation Act of 2010. So the House passed PPACA, the Senate bill, as well as their Reconciliation Act. At this point PPACA was ready for the President to sign, after the Senate passed the Reconciliation Act.

To sum up, they wrote and passed a million-page bill (hyperbole) that admittedly, no one had read, without opposition input or votes, in the dead of night, on Christmas Eve, using legislative trickery. It has failed spectacularly, and now, it's everyone else's fault.

According to Valerie Jarrett, all it needs is more money to tell everyone how great it is. I'm sorry, but no!

Enough with these people. What happened to leaving office with dignity and letting the next administration have the benefit of doing the things the people elected them to do?

Jarrett and her ilk are graceless autocrats who think Americans are morons with absolutely no memory of what went on with this abomination while having no idea of how much their healthcare costs have increased -- in some cases, astronomically.

Yet, Im not sure passing anything would have any benefit to the nation. The way I see it the Republicans have two options:

Pass AHA and then Republicans can claim victory and gather momentum, which they will need to pass tax reform, comprehensive or partial, whatever is doable. After passing tax reform and as the economy begins to pick up they can more fully concentrate on total repeal and replace. Forget about ObamaCare for the moment and let the Democrats own the monster as it collapses all around them while Republicans concentrate on tax reform, which in my opinion, should have come first anyway. As above, they can circle back later when tax reform begins to lift the economy, employment and wages.

Newt Gingrich made a good case for the first option when he said:

When I worked with President Reagan, he had a constant desire to force a successful negotiation, get as much as he could, and then come back another day for another step forward. Reagan understood that dismantling the big government system was like eating an elephant -- you must take one bite at a time to succeed.

Myself, Im leaning toward the second option because clearly, the Democrats have not forced Americans to suffer enough for Republicans to have sufficient political capital to get a more comprehensive repeal and replace through both houses of congress. AHA doesnt really matter because short of a full repeal of ObamaCare it will remain brimming with provisions that hurt the economy, employment, and wages. This will give license to the Democrats to blame ObamaCares inevitable death spiral on Republicans by saying it was perfect before they touched it -- all it needed was a little more money (Doesnt everything?). Lets face it; Republicans do not have a reputation of either willingness or ability to fight back against bad mouthing by the Democrats in the media.

It might be better to let the program fail, with full Democrat ownership and after tax reform, charge in and address healthcare then.
Never in American history has a sitting president (and his family) been hounded with unfounded criminal investigations as has President Trump. While still a candidate, the Democrats and their propaganda arm in the mainstream media brought forth the scurrilous charge of Russian collusion with not a shred of evidence to support their charge. It's a fishing expedition in search of a crime.

Not a week goes by without a new revelation of an alleged meeting between members of President Trump's cabinet or family members with perceived Russian agents. General Michael Flynn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and now Ivanka Trump whose security clearance is now being challenged have all been accused of collusion. That and the recent announcement by appointed Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller of his intent to broaden the investigation into Trump's businesses is symptomatic of tactics used by police states to threaten their opposition into compliance, surrender or removal. It is un-American and a danger to our Republic.

Last June, Fusion GPS, a Washington firm that specializes in opposition research for the Democratic Party hired Christopher Steele, a former M16 British spy to create a fake dossier to hurt Trump's candidacy and his Presidency. The plot was paid for by a reported Hillary Clinton backer. Although the dossier was unverified, John McCain, a vocal critic of President Trump, brought the unverified dossier to the United States and gave it to the FBI. Fusion then released the unverified dossier to the press and they along with Democratic operatives have been using it ever since to continue to harm the Trump administration.

In a similar effort, a plot was concocted to ensnarl Donald Trump, Jr. in a Trump Russia narrative through an arranged meeting between him and Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya was a paid Russian lobbyist, photographed at anti-Trump rallies and photographed sitting in the front row, behind the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul,at a House Foreign Affairs Committee just five days after her meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. last June. It should be noted that McFaul was a frequent guest on NBC and MSNBC during the 2016 campaign and after the election discussing the Russian conspiracy narrative.

The meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and Veselnitskaya was arranged by Rob Goldstone who, too, is associated with Fusion GPS. Although her visa had expired, it is unclear why the Obama administration granted her permission to remain here. It raises the possibility the meeting was a set up by the deep state to justify the FISA warrant used by the Obama administration to spy on the Trump team

What we do know is that Gen. Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador was illegally recorded by the Obama administration which routinely spied on the new incoming administration and the new president. The unmasking of that conversation was then illegally leaked to the press. The leaker has yet to be identified, but it is widely perceived that holdovers from the Obama administration are leaking like a sieve classified information within a highly politicized Justice Department and Intelligence Community created during Obama's eight year reign.

The entire Russian collusion affair stinks to high heaven. There is no smoking gun to justify an independent counsel. Nada! Yet, Robert Mueller, best buddies with fired FBI director James Comey, who admittedly leaked classified information to ensure a special prosecutor would be appointed is now extending his investigation to include the Trump Organization.

Mueller as a former FBI director purged all anti-terrorism training material at the request of the Council on American Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing trial here in the United States. In 2007 Mueller met with CAIR and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), both Muslim Brotherhood front groups here in America and he caved in to their demands to purge material they deemed offensive to Muslims.

Today he is stacking his staff with former Clinton donors who are in search for a smoking gun which will lead to the removal of President Trump from office. This witch hunt could not take place without a complicit Republican Establishment in control of the House and Senate.

Instead of Democrats standing together in front of news cameras with continuous new charges against President Trump, why are we not instead witnessing McConnell and Ryan center stage asking for an investigation into Obama's collusion with the Iranians or for spying on the Trump transition team? Why are Republicans not calling for an investigation into John Podesta's ties to Russia or into Comey's leaks while head of the FBI, or into Clinton's sale of 20% of our uranium to Russia which led to substantial kickbacks to the Clinton Foundation?

Why are Republicans silent about former Attorney General Loretta Lynch's secret meeting with Bill Clinton while Hillary was being investigated by the FBI or why Lynch asked Comey not to call it an "investigation", but instead to call it a "matter"? Why is there no call for an investigation between the Clinton campaign and Ukraine? Why is there no call for an investigation into the corrupt Clinton Foundation? The silence of the Republican House and Senate in the face of evidence of real corruption speaks volumes about a spineless failing GOP.

Police State tactics are commonplace in authoritarian Third World dictatorships, but not in the United States, a country once governed by laws and not men. Unfortunately, the left and their cohorts in the Democratic Party have become a criminal enterprise which poses an existential threat to our liberty and to our Republic. They must be stopped!

Shari Goodman is an educator, activist, and journalist. Her articles have appeared in American Thinker, World Net Daily, Israel Today and other publications.
A society where commonly held beliefs could not be questioned. A system of higher learning that attempted to indoctrinate according to unfounded dogma. A civilization that brutally attacks the reputation of individuals who dare attempt to think for themselves. This was Europe in the 16th century. In 1517, however, one friar transforms Germany and Western civilization. Martin Luther's 95 Theses posted 500 years ago (Oct. 31, 1517) outlined the injustices of the Catholic Church. It was revolutionary at the time, and its effects are still felt through most mainstream Christian churches today. It is often difficult for those living in 2017 to fully grasp the magnitude of the Protestant Reformation because of the current secular society, but it is that movement that led to a non-theocratic West. Three parallels exist between 1517 and 2017 that may have many in America identifying with Martin Luthers struggle.

The 16th century conventional wisdom was not a politically correct moral relativism, but the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church. The church at the time were the sole keepers and translators of the word of God. In medieval times, those who challenged the Church found themselves burned at the stake. The Catholic Church fought against the translation of scripture into a common language precisely to avoid any challenges to their interpretation of the Bible.

Today certain positions unpopular among some political activists are labeled offensive. Once these anti-free speech factions have ideas labeled offensive they seek to have the ideas stripped from any public forum. The left, which has been noticeably silent when members of their faction use these attacks, has begun to see its dangers. Bernie Sanders, who is a frequent proponent of this political strategy, is recognizing the negative consequences of suppressing opposing views. Those attempting to silence their political opponents claim they are doing so to protect those who may be offended, but the result is very different. The forced uniformity of any belief system breeds unrest in society. Meanwhile, an independence of thought is crucial, especially in a society that claims to favor respect for the individual. Societies that oppress differing viewpoints are no longer representative of their community. This society would be closer aligned to the tenets of fascism instead of republicanism.

In 1517, it was not public colleges indoctrinating its students, but school systems run by the church. In the medieval times, period schools were created by charters issued by the pope and the Holy Roman Empire.[1] These denominational schools taught their doctrine with no room for interpretation. This created a ruling class of priests and bishops who were monolithic in their interpretation of scripture. Having a group of individuals come to the same analysis over scripture is not a problem if done independently or with academic integrity. That was not the case at the time of Martin Luther. The fact that he dared to question the use of indulgences and the role of faith in salvation made him an enemy of the religious institution. We have seen the data recently that point to the overwhelming number of liberal faculty in higher education. The Washington Post reported in 2014 that 60% of professors describe themselves as liberal or far left. Liberal professors outnumber conservative professors at almost a 12:1 ratio. William F. Buckley, Jr. points out in his seminal work God and Man at Yale that the faculty at Yale forced liberal beliefs on its students. This is not an isolated instance of indoctrination, but representative of many of our major universities.

Luther and his followers were not targeting the large bureaucratic organization of the state, but the robust administrative body of the church. Looking beyond theological differences in the Protestant Reformation, (there are many and worth exploring) part of what plagued the Catholic Church was its growing bureaucratic governing body. There were bishops, popes, priests who decided what was scriptural and in accordance with church tradition. This was an exclusive group of clergy who thought they knew better than the rest of society. Their word alone carried the magnitude of the Gospel. There seemed to be no recourse for a common man who felt there may have been improprieties in how the Gospel was being presented. Today, a bureaucratic state attempts to govern every aspect of the individual's life. The EPA in 2016 attempted to fine a Wyoming welder $16 million for building a stock pond in his backyard. The agency pointed to the broad power given them by the Clean Water Act. If not for a significant backlash on the agency this fine would have remained. When such power is placed in the hands of a few individuals, whether it be the power of the federal government or the power to be the sole interpreters of biblical truth, there will be tyranny. As Thomas Jefferson stated, If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. The founders of the American government and the architects of the Protestant Reformation both attempted to reduce the capacity of a powerful governing body.

The effects of Martin Luthers actions are difficult to quantify. The posting of the 95 Theses forever changed the way Christians viewed their worldly church authorities. Large segments of the West now view religious authorities and governmental authorities with much skepticism. This is not to say that many did not share this skeptical view prior to Luther, but that Luther made it mainstream. One man standing up to the religious hierarchy of his day. Questioning what was to never be questioned. Luther wasn't just facing shame or public ridicule for these unpopular beliefs. He was facing death. Martin Luther spoke for truth at a time when truth could cost him his life. George Washington stated in a letter to Charles Thruston that "Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light." Speaking truth when it is most difficult is precisely the time when it should be spoken.
The so-called Women's March, which should be called the March of Liberal Women Only, has called out radio host and NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch for doing promo ads depicting the importance of firearms in protecting our liberties against criminals and anarchists while chiding the hypocrisy of the left on this issue.

The Women's March supports abortion as part of the right of women to control their own bodies. Well, if women are in control of their own bodies, why can't they protect those bodies with a firearm? A gun in the hand of a trained and truly empowered woman is the best rape whistle ever invented. The marchers accuse conservatives of being sexist oppressors who want to keep women barefoot and pregnant; at the same time, they claim that women are defenseless waifs who should be disarmed.

Spokespeople for the Women's March have called Loesch a pretty face exploited by the NRA to sell guns to men:

The "feminist organization" Women's March that protested the NRA because they were butthurt that Dana Loesch's video called for everyone to tell the truth, says she's nothing but "a pretty face to sell guns to men". In front of the NRA HQ building, an unidentified man with the March stepped up to the microphone to address the NRA Spokeswoman, saying, "Dana Loesch: it's not too late to join these women up here! You're a woman, too. Don't let the NRA use you, Dana  as a pretty face to sell guns to men!"

Okay, so she's a pretty face, but the NRA doesn't sell guns, and the NRA and Dana Loesch are merely advising people of both genders, even transgenders, of their constitutional right to self-defense. The Second Amendment was put in the Bill of Rights to protect the other nine.

Loesch has shot back with a withering critique of the marchers' hypocrisy in claiming to be empowering women while trying to disarm them. As reported on the pro-gun website BearingArms.Com:

It's a good question  why are members of the women's march, who claim to be about empowering and championing women, trying to disarm them and render them defenseless? Dana Loesch, NRA spokeswoman and host of The Dana Show, called out the Women's March agenda when she asked: "Why are they trying to make statistics and victims out of people like me? It's ridiculous," Dana said. "Don't claim to be the champion of someone that you want to keep under your boot, and that's what this ideology is doing."

Loesch has rewritten the old feminist song with new lyrics that say, I am woman, hear me lock and load. Her idea of a women's magazine has 30 rounds. That has liberal heads exploding. They think women should march, but only in lockstep with their agenda.

Loesch thinks otherwise:

On Monday, NRA Spokeswoman Dana Loesch joined NRA TV's Grant Stinchfield to discuss the hypocrisy of the Women's March protest of the NRA. "I didn't particularly take to being Progressively mansplained by this Women's March speaker," Dana told Grant. "Newsflash to this sexist, you know  women can vote, too  we had the right to bear arms before we had the right to vote and you can come and take that out of my cold, dead hands." "This guy speaking at this protest embodies everything that anyone ever needs to know about the gun control movement, it is the ultimate war on women, it is the ultimate in class warfare and sexism."

Perhaps the feminists who believe that women should be armed only with pathetic "rape whistles" should listen to the testimony Amanda Collins gave before the Colorado legislature when it was considering the issue of students, particularly female students, carrying guns on campus. As Investor's Business Daily editorialized:

Collins was raped at gunpoint in a University of Nevada-Reno parking garage in October 2007. Nevada law prohibited her from carrying a gun on the campus, but her attacker had one. She was raped 50 feet away from the campus police department office. Her attacker was James Biela, a serial rapist who raped two other women and murdered another. He attacked her at gunpoint in a gun-free zone. At the time of the attack, Collins had a concealed weapons permit but not her firearm due to university policies prohibiting carrying concealed weapons on campus. Just such a gun-free zone policy is why the Aurora, Colo., shooter chose the theater he did. As she ended her compelling testimony, she asked the committee, "How does rendering me defenseless protect you against a violent crime?" ... "Had I been carrying that night, two other rapes would have been prevented and a young life would have been saved," Collins told NRA News host Cam Edwards, defending students' right to carry weapons on campus. "A call box above my head while I was straddled on the parking garage floor being brutally raped wouldn't have helped me one bit," she said.

So-called feminists want women to be as defenseless as Carol Bowne. The 39-year-old New Jersey woman with a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend was murdered by that boyfriend while she waited for her application for a gun permit to wind its way through a process that takes at least two months to complete. It wasn't completed soon enough:

The Berlin Township woman got a restraining order against a former boyfriend, installed security cameras and an alarm system to her home and began the months-long process of obtaining a handgun, friends said. But it wasn't enough. Bowne, 39, was stabbed to death in the driveway of her Patton Avenue home on Wednesday night.

Bowne was a victim of domestic violence. She didn't have a gun in her home. Gun control zealots tell us a gun in the home is dangerous, but then so too is an ex-boyfriend, one Michael Eitel, with a knife. That is why gun rights advocates say women should own guns  because a restraining order is just a piece of paper. So Bowne sought permission from the government to exercise her Second Amendment rights:

According to news reports, Eitel had previously went to the salon in Somerdale where she worked and broke the windows on Bowne's vehicle[.] ... Bowne then went to Berlin Township police in mid-April to apply for a gun license. According to reports, she went to check on the process  which takes about two months to complete  as recently as this week.

Why don't women's rights include a right to self defense against rapists, gang-bangers, and vengeful ex-boyfriends? If Carol Bowne had gotten her gun, she would likely be alive today. Keeping people like Carol Bowne disarmed does not make us or our daughters, mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends safer.
Invoking an unusual defense, the I-Team has learned that a west suburban woman and five associates accused of aiding ISIS say they were engaged in "legitimate warfare." Mediha Medy Salkicevic, a mother of four from Schiller Park, was arrested in February 2015 on charges of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists and providing material support to terrorists, including the Islamic State and al-Qaida in Iraq. Investigators say Salkicevic, a Bosnian Muslim refugee, wanted to "bury unbelievers alive" and bring death to infidels. (snip)

The awful logic of sharia is on display in Chicago. Meet Mediha Medy Salkicevic, a mother of four working at an air cargo company at OHare Airport, who was arrested two years ago on charges of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists and providing material support to terrorists, including the Islamic State and al-Qaida in Iraq. Her defense strategy, revealed Friday, is eye-popping. WLS reports:

I must presume that M. Salkicevic was offered refugee status in order to escape from warfare. Rather than gratitude for help from the United States, she is applying the logic of sharia, which is in the end a doctrine of warfare itself.

On Friday attorneys for Salkicevic and the others filed a motion to dismiss two charges : conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. The defendants are claiming that they were engaged in a legitimate war and providing aid to forces opposing Syrian strongman Bashar al Assad-just as the U.S. has done. Their argument is that "under United States law, acts of legitimate warfare during a civil war are not murder and are entitled to combatant immunity." They say that Americans are "protected from prosecution as acts of legitimate warfare under the doctrine of combatant immunity."

The awful logic of sharia is on display in Chicago. Meet Mediha Medy Salkicevic, a mother of four working at an air cargo company at OHare Airport, who was arrested two years ago on charges of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists and providing material support to terrorists, including the Islamic State and al-Qaida in Iraq. Her defense strategy, revealed Friday, is eye-popping. WLS reports:

Invoking an unusual defense, the I-Team has learned that a west suburban woman and five associates accused of aiding ISIS say they were engaged in "legitimate warfare."



Mediha Medy Salkicevic, a mother of four from Schiller Park, was arrested in February 2015 on charges of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists and providing material support to terrorists, including the Islamic State and al-Qaida in Iraq.



Investigators say Salkicevic, a Bosnian Muslim refugee, wanted to "bury unbelievers alive" and bring death to infidels. (snip) On Friday attorneys for Salkicevic and the others filed a motion to dismiss two charges: conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. The defendants are claiming that they were engaged in a legitimate war and providing aid to forces opposing Syrian strongman Bashar al Assad-just as the U.S. has done.



Their argument is that "under United States law, acts of legitimate warfare during a civil war are not murder and are entitled to combatant immunity." They say that Americans are "protected from prosecution as acts of legitimate warfare under the doctrine of combatant immunity."

I must presume that M. Salkicevic was offered refugee status in order to escape from warfare. Rather than gratitude for help from the United States, she is applying the logic of sharia, which is in the end a doctrine of warfare itself.

Hat tip: Jihad Watch and Blazing Cat Fur
The House and Senate have reached an agreement on new sanctions on Russia. The bill will be sent to the president sometime this summer, at which point Trump will have to decide if imposing new restrictions on Russia will interfere with his administration's diplomacy.

ABC News:

In addition to the new sanctions on Russia for its interference in the U.S. 2016 election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria, the bill also gives Congress the power to review any effort by the Trump administration to ease or end sanctions against Moscow. The bill also includes stiff economic penalties against Iran and North Korea. "The legislation ensures that both the majority and minority [parties] are able to exercise our oversight role over the administration's implementation of sanctions," said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the number-two House Democrat. The deal on the legislation comes amid concerns expressed by both Democrats and some Republicans that the Trump administration may be considering returning to Russian control two compounds in Maryland and New York that were seized by the Obama administration in December as punishment for the election meddling. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, announced Saturday morning that a vote on the bill -- the Russia, Iran and North Korea Sanctions Act -- will take place Tuesday. He tweeted that the bill sends a message to countries that "threaten America and our interests."

Giving Congress a veto over whether the administration wants to ease or end sanctions against Moscow grew out of an unconfirmed report last spring that the Trump administration was looking at unilaterally easing the sanctions. At the time - in January immediately before the president took office - the administration was reviewing all sanctions imposed against every country - not just Russia. But some bedwetters at the State Department, looking to fan the flames of the Trump-Russia narrative, went to Congress and sounded the alarm.

So Congress has pre-empted the president in deciding if easing sanctions or ending them would be diplomatically sound. President Obama eased sanctions on Iran without going to Congress, but apparently, Trump is different.

Outside of that, are new sanctions a good idea? The Russians have actually been behaving themselves in Ukraine - mostly respecting the cease fire and restraining their rebel proxies. And in Syria, after killing thousands of civilians, the Russians have dialed back their bombing campaign and established "safe zones" for civilians in consultation with the rebels.

This by no means indicates that Putin is done meddling in the Ukraine or becoming a responsible citizen in Syria. But it leaves the issue of Russia hacking the emails of the DNC and probably John Podesta which caused problems for the Democrats.

"Hacking the election" is a misnomer. Revealing embarrassing information about the Democratic party is not the same as "stealing" or "hacking" the election itself. If the Russian government was behind the hacks, they certainly deserve to be sanctioned. But the only question that matters should be, will the sanctions interfere with the administration's diplomatic efforts to bring about closer cooperation between Russia and the US?

That is the question facing President Trump. Of course, the political question is unavoidable. If Trump refuses to sign a sanctions bill, the media will hit the roof, claiming more evidence of "collusion." Trump should ignore that kind of noise and decide on the basis of US interests, and nothing more.
Pacific Rim countries tend to imitate one another because they are so integrated by trade, and the questionable trend of shooting drug dealers without trial has now come to Indonesia, following similar practices in Thailand and Philippines. It would not be surprising if Malaysia followed.

It underlines, above all, the inherent nationalism in these countries, many of which had independence struggles in the post-World War II era, as well as their willingness to thumb their noses at international institutions, which will tut-tut the moves. None of them fear the international courts in the Hague. And yes, it's nationalism at work: Note that Indonesia, the latest country to follow this trend, has a president who has explicitly condemned foreign drug dealers importing trouble into the country.

It also channels the Asian loathing for illegal mind-blowing drugs, a bad Western habit as they see it, that they don't want imported into their home countries. It likely has its roots in China, which was laid low by the opium trade as a nation, and then lost much of its sovereignty in the aftermath of the 19th century Opium War with Britain. Asian governments do not like drugs.

But there is also an obviously internal struggle going on that is probably greater than the problem of foreign drug dealers, who have been around for awhile. Every drug dealer who plies his trade in these places - where incomes are rising - has willing buyers. What's notable is that the worst-affected areas are the ones with the most Islamofascists. In Indonesia, the epicenter of the drug scene is Aceh, where pot-smoking scenes, full of hostile losers are pretty common. Whenever you run into a drug den in Indonesia, someone from Aceh is likely to be a connection, something I observed in my travels in the country. Aceh, the country's northwest area on its northwest large island, Sumatra, is also linked by trade most closely to the Saudi and other Islamic states and is considered the 'most Islamic' part of the country. Shariah law has been introduced into the area.

It jibes with the two other states that have done wildcat wars on drugs - Thailand, whose battles with drug dealers took place in the north and out on the borderlands as well as on the Isthmus of Kra, was heavily populated with Muslim areas in parts. The bulk of Philippines drug war is in the south - once again, the Muslim area.

What it points to is some internal crisis in Islam, that so many young people would turn to drugs, while others would be vulnerable to Islamofascist terrorist recruiters. Obviously, young people don't feel good about themselves in Islamic areas and some are turning destructive, whether through drugs or terrorism. V.S. Naipaul often wrote about Islam's incapacity to reconcile itself to the modern world. No place has been modernizing as quickly as Southeast Asia.

The other thing it points to is the adage of terrorism expert Rachel Ehrenfeld who has contributed many pieces to American Thinker: That all terrorism is narcoterrorism. Iran and Afghanistan are also well-known for their problems with the illegal drug trade. Illegal drugs may be the problem of choice in those areas because alcohol is prohibited - hashish has long been used in that area as a substitute. But it wreaks a havoc equal to or worse than alcohol ever did. If the choice is drugs or terrorism, many are going to go for terrorism.

And that brings up the inherent nationalism of the Southeast Asian states once more. Both Islamism and illegal drugs are threats to the state. It shouldn't surprise anyone that these nations are taking things into their own hands as they are, by fair means or foul.
Palestinians are leading themselves towards a third Nakba (Arabic word for catastrophe), a term used widely by Palestinians Arabs in describing the establishment of the State of Israel. Palestinians mark Israels founding in 1948 as a catastrophe. Some also see Israels victory in the 1967 Six Day War, where Israel defeated the attacking Arab armies and captured East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (West Bank), and the Golan Heights, as a second Nakba. As usual the Palestinians are deluding themselves through the use of new terror and violence against the Jews, just as they did in 1948 and 1967.

This past week, Palestinian terrorists used Al-Aqsa, known as the Temple Mount, Islams third holiest religious site as a safe haven to smuggle in automatic weapons that were used by 3 Palestinian terrorists under the pretense of prayer to shoot and kill 2 Israeli Police Officers protecting Al-Aksa.

This past Friday, a 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist infiltrated into the settlement of Halamish and stabbed to death three family members as they sat at their Shabbat dinner table celebrating the birth of a grandson.

Despite the non-stop incitement by Israeli Arab political leaders and the Palestinian Arab leadership, who are leading the Palestinians towards disaster, the escalation of daily violence, rioting, and terror over the Temple Mount, and the massacre of an Israeli family, will not lead to a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising. However, it will lead towards a third Nakba. Learning nothing from their own historical experience, and repeating the same destructive expression of hatred and rejection of anything Jewish, the Palestinian Arabs will lose exclusive control of the Temple Mount, just as they lost control of large territories designated for them in the past. If the Palestinian Arab violence and terror continue, the whole situation will spiral out of control, and the end result will be their third and final Nakba. Palestinian Arabs have the most to lose as their leadership leads them towards disaster, and as we say in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, three strikes and youre out. This is exactly what happened in 1948 and 1967  the Palestinian Arab delusion that against the Jews, we have Allah. Hell protect us. and well go and bash our heads into the wall, even if we become martyrs, is typical of the failed mindset and delusional religious beliefs of generations of Palestinian Arabs who have nothing to show for after a century of violence and terror.

Reviewing the reactions of the United Nations and its many member states, it is Israel exclusively that lives under a microscope with the events in Jerusalem scrutinized by the nations of the world. Russia invades Crimea, Sudan enslaves, China oppresses, Pakistan rapes, Iraq slaughters, North Korea fires inter-ballistic missiles, Iran nuclearizes, Syria massacres, Afghanistan tortures, ISIS beheads, and yet Israel remains the sole pariah state, put under the magnifying glass by the morally bankrupt world.

What the nations of the world fail to note is that the Palestinian Authority and the rival Hamas terror organization are actively supporting a terror campaign starting in the Temple Mount, for the same reason thousands of missiles rained down on Israeli cities -- even though it created more destruction for Palestinian Arabs. Their goal is keep the Palestinian Arabs focused on resistance -- a synonym for endless war that wont be solved by Israeli territorial concessions or greater sensitivity for the Muslim desire to deny Jewish rights in the Temple Mount.

The point about the current violence in Jerusalem is that nothing we Israelis are doing -- whether it be the simple installation of metal detectors at the entrance of the Temple Mount for the safety and protection of all worshipers visiting the Temple Mount -- has altered by one iota the current status quo between Jews and Arabs. What we do simply does not matter to them and it will never sink in that they are facing a country that is here to stay behaving as any sovereign nation would act in a similar situation.

For countless centuries, our ancestors have been praying to return home to Zion. For those of us born in this generation that did in fact return home to Israel, we can only cherish and uphold the immense blessing that we feel for being part of this amazing historical and almost biblical period.

In 1947, Israel accepted the "two-state solution" declared by the United Nations, focusing her efforts on moving ahead, never looking back. Since then, Israel has made a desert bloom. We have built roads, schools, hospitals, universities and great cities. Despite the many wars Israel has had to fight, the people of Israel have never stopped looking forward becoming a world leader in innovaton.

Israel has shown time and time again its willingness to make painful sacrifices for the sake of a genuine and enduring peace with its Arab neighbors. Israeli Arabs have infinitely more human rights in Israel than Jews ever had in any Arab nation, or that Arabs have in any Muslim nation in the Middle East. Not surprisingly these fundamental freedoms seem to be always overlooked by the very Arabs that enjoy and benefit from democratic rights in Israel. The hearts and minds of the Palestinian Arabs continue to be overwhelmingly "occupied" with Jew-hatred. This is the true narrative about the so-called occupation.

Once again a new generation of Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Arabs, are actively taking part in terror and violence in order to kill Jews to further that same futile aim and in the name of this ancient hatred. Though many of Israels enemies promote the notion that the violence is caused by Jewish actions, this latest terror campaign, if it continues, will be very much like every other episode in the Palestinian Arabs hundred-year war against Zionism. The third Nakba however, will be the final curtain.

Those that wish the Palestinian Arabs well should urge them to try to shake off this rejectionist mindset, lest they waste another century in pointless conflict. Should they continue ramming the shore, like the great whales do until they die, they will in the very soon future lose it all, and can only blame themselves. The Sunni Arab world wont shed a tear.

The writer, a 25-year veteran of the I.D.F., served as a field mental health officer. Prior to retiring in 2005, served as the 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 Psycho education programs to communities in the North and South of Israel. Today, Ron is a strategic advisor to the at the Office of the Chief Foreign Envoy of Judea and Samaria. To contact: medconf@netvision.net.il
General Tony Thomas heads Special Operations Command for the United States Army, which makes him one of the most important warriors in fighting the defensive war against violent jihad. In a public conversation at the Aspen Security Forum, speaking with Catherine Herridge of Fox News, General Thomas appeared to blame the New York Times for allowing the head ISIS to escape. Fox News reports:

ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been dismantled, with tens of thousands of its jihadist fighters dead, but a promising lead on its leader went dead after a media leak, according to a key U.S. military official.

We have absolutely dismantled his network, Gen. Tony Thomas, speaking of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, said at the Aspen Security Forum. I mean everyone who worked for him initially is dead or gone. Everybody who stepped to the plate the next time [is] dead or gone. Down through a network where we have killed, in a conservative estimate, 60,000 to 70,000 of his followers, his army.

In a wide-ranging interview moderated by Fox News' Catherine Herridge, Thomas, who leads the Special Operations Command, said his team was particularly close to Baghdadi after the 2015 raid that killed ISIS oil minister Abu Sayyaf. That raid also netted his wife, who provided a wealth of actionable information.

That was a very good lead. Unfortunately, it was leaked in a prominent national newspaper about a week later and that lead went dead, Thomas said. The challenge we have [is] in terms of where and how our tactics and procedures are discussed openly. There's a great need to inform the American public about what we're up to. There's also great need to recognize things that will absolutely undercut our ability to do our job.
Judging by the standard used by the authors of State Department's reporting on Israel in the newly released Country Reports on Terrorism for 2016, the Palestinian terrorist who violently stabbed to death three Israelis and seriously wounded another as they celebrated the Shabbat and the birth of a new grandson should not be held responsible.

Why? Because as the State Department puts it, it is the "frustration" with and "perception" of Israel's policies that drives Palestinian terrorists to murder Israelis.

The State Department's report claims that the "[c]ontinued drivers of [Palestinian] violence" are Israel's policies. Accordingly, Palestinian terrorists like this one commit violence not because schools, television, newspapers, mosques, and social media are constantly inciting to violence against Israel and its Jewish citizens. Moreover, the report praises Mahmoud Abbas's "commitment to fight terrorism" and call for "culture of peace and tolerance and the renunciation of violence and extremism." It also notes that the "PA's Palestinian Broadcasting Company's code of conduct does not allow programming that encourages 'violence against any person or institution on the basis of race, religion, political beliefs, or sex.'" Apparently, in a thin effort to disguise State's siding with the Palestinians, the report admits that "[i]n practice, however, some instances of incitement took place via official media. There were also some instances of inflammatory rhetoric and the posting of political cartoons glorifying violence on official Fatah Facebook pages." "[S]ome instances"? Try every day, everywhere, all the time.

The Palestinian terrorists, according to the State Department, are driven to such extreme violence because of "lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood, Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank ... [and] the perception that the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount." Moreover, the report also blames the IDF for its effort to curb such violence "with tactics that the Palestinians considered overly aggressive."

The authors of the report don't consider Palestinians murdering Israelis at their homes, streets, bus stations, stores, and coffee houses, "overly aggressive." If this outrageous attitude continues, how long before the State Department describes the actions of Palestinians breaking into Israeli homes and murdering the elderly, women, and children at their dinner table as "defensive actions"?

In addition to murdering a 70-year-old grandfather who was celebrating the birth of a new grandson with family, the terrorist severely wounded his 68-year-old wife, who is fighting for her life at the time of this writing. The rest of the family, including grandchildren, escaped a brutal death because their mother succeeded in hiding them, and a neighbor shot and neutralized the terrorist.

The report's justification of Palestinian terrorism and violence while blaming Israel reads like another Al Jazeera propaganda piece.

This is not surprising, considering the State Department's intervention on behalf of Qatar, as noted by Norman Bailey's Globe article, "US support lets Qatar off the hook." Because Qatar is the host of the biggest U.S. base in the Middle East, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson forced the Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt to cancel their thirteen "non-negotiable" demands that Qatar stop its sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamic incitement and terrorism, and its support of the Iranian and Turkish regimes. Qatar, and its mouthpiece, Al Jazeera, also sponsor and promote Palestinian terrorism.

The U.S. intervention on behalf of Qatar, and the State Department praise of P.A. president Abbas and the Palestinian leadership for their imaginary intolerance of "[e]xplicit calls for violence against Israelis, direct exhortations against Jews," at the time President Trump repeatedly, publicly, at home and abroad, condemns Islamic terrorism, Iran, and P.A. sponsorship of terrorism, highlights the inconsistency of U.S. foreign policy. Moreover, this puts another obstacle in the way of President Trump's declared ambition to achieve "peace between Israel and the Palestinians."

Since last week, Palestinians have been violently clashing with Israeli security forces because Israel had finally installed metal detectors and additional security cameras at the entrance to Temple Mount, the holy site to Jews and to Muslim. Israel has installed them to prevent terrorist attacks only after Muslims carried weapons into the al-Aqsa mosque to kill three Israeli soldiers.

Similar and much stricter security measures exist in Mecca and are present at major mosques in the Muslim world. Nonetheless, the Palestinians are using deadly violence to force Israel to remove the metal detectors. They are violently rioting again because they know that no matter what President Trump says, the State Department most likely, as evidenced in the latest report, would claim Israel efforts to prevent terrorism on Temple Mount as "the driver" of Palestinian violence.
If there's one thing that has marked the struggle of Chris Gard and Connie Yates, the parents of Charlie Gard, it is the almost inhuman indifference to the plight of the parents by the Great Ormand Street Hospital, who insist that the parents should have no hope of improvement in their son and acquiesce in his death.

The latest outrage by the hospital is incomprehensible. At a hearing in the family division of Great Britain's High Court, attorneys for the hospital presented the judge with the latest scan of Charlie's brain. But the hospital had failed to share the scan first with Charlie's parents. This proved too much for them and they stormed out of the courtroom.

LifeNews:

Gards father yelled evil after a lawyer representing Great Ormond Street Hospital broke the news that a report on a new scan on Charlie made for sad reading. And Charlies mother burst into tears as attorney Katie Gollop told the judge that hospital officials had a negative view of the new scan. Justice Francis was analyzing preliminary issues at a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London on Friday prior to scheduled trial on Monday. Gollop told the judge that doctors had produced a report on the newest scan and said: It makes for sad reading. Then Charlies mom began to cry and said: We havent even read it. Chris Gard yelled evil and added: Im not f****** listening to this biased s anymore. The couple then stormed out of court and then the hospital attorney apologized.

It's clear from this incident that the hospital, and the British nationalized health service, no longer see Chris Gard and Connie Yates as Charlie's parents. Charlie's life now belongs to the state. Parents are superfluous in this case. They only get in the way.

Chris Gard and Connie Yates want to take their son to the United States for an experimental treatment. They raised more than $1.5 million for his care. His parents said they know the chance of the experimental treatment working is slim, but they want to try anyway for Charlies sake. However, the courts and hospital have refused to allow them to transfer their son to another hospital. About a month ago, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the hospital can remove Charlies life support and allow him to die. The hospital recently agreed to consider new evidence involving Charlies condition before taking him off the ventilator. Justice Francis will consider the new information Monday and Tuesday in court.

Just to make clear, the NHS would not be out a penny if the transfer were made. Charlie's parents have raised the money to bring him to the US.

Then why the resistance?

I've pointed this out before but it bears repeating. To the hospital bureaucrats, this is not about life or death. This is about winning or losing. In their bureaucratic wisdom, the hospital has decided that Charlie must die. To carry out that bureaucratic directive is of paramount importance. The parents don't count. The US Congress granting Charlie residency doesn't count. The money doesn't matter.

Not sharing Charlie's brain scan with those primarily responsible for the baby's well being - the parents - is a clear signal of who the hospital believes has control over Charlie Gard.
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 decision to go for indigenisation of spares is part of the govt's overall approach to enhance battle readiness of the Army.

The Ordnance Factory Board has decided to bring down import of spares and components from current 60 per cent annually to 30 per cent in the next three years. (Photo: Representational/AFP)

New Delhi: With delays in import of critical equipment severely affecting its combat readiness, the Army has decided to fast-track indigenisation of key components and spares for battle tanks and other military systems.

The Ordnance Factory Board, an umbrella body of 41 ordnance factories, has decided to bring down import of spares and components from current 60 per cent annually to 30 per cent in the next three years, a senior Army official said.

The Master General of the Ordnance (MGO), responsible for artillery and other key military supplies to frontline bases, has also started extensive talks with leading Indian defence firms to evolve a strategy for indigenisation of key spares and components of tanks and other weapons systems.

The MGO and OFB procure spares worth over Rs 10,000 crore annually, the official said.

It has been a long-standing grievance of armed forces that supply of critical spares and equipment from Russia takes a long-time, affecting maintenance of military systems procured from that country. Russia has been a major supplier of military platforms to India.

The decision to go for indigenisation of spares is part of the government's overall approach to enhance battle readiness of the 1.3 million strong Army after a thorough review found "gaps" in its operational preparedness.

The official said the Army plans to involve micro, small and medium enterprises to produce smaller parts of the weapons systems. Extensive discussions were already held with around 80 MSMEs. A policy document finalising the roadmap is likely to be issued in the next couple of weeks.

The initiative to go for indigenous production of spares is in sync with defence ministry's policy to cut import bill on defence and promote the domestic industry.

Earlier this month, the government had empowered the vice chief of Army to directly procure ammunition and spares to maintain readiness for short duration "intense wars".

The full financial powers was given to the Army after an internal review found that optimum level of "war stores" were not being maintained.

The Army has been pressing the government for ensuring speedy procurement of key military platforms citing evolving security challenges.

In April, top Army Commanders had brain-stormed over the prevailing security scenario as well as external threats facing the country and decided to enhance combat effectiveness.
The team mobilised several columns of troops along with specialised equipment and trained manpower to boost the ongoing rescue operation.

Gandhinagar: The Indian Army's Golden Katar Division personnel on Saturday rescued 35 people from flood in Surendranagar district's Kuda village and distributed food and medicines to aid the flood victims.

The team mobilised several columns of troops along with specialised equipment and trained manpower to boost the ongoing rescue and relief work in the worst flood affected district after receiving a requisition from the Gujarat government.

The Army's rescue teams comprised of the Engineer Task Force and a medical team that rescued citizens.

The rescued people were evacuated and taken to a safe place.
Tyagi further stated that the meeting was held to send a message to all the three parties to keep the grand alliance strong.

New Delhi: The Janata Dal (United) on Sunday said the meeting between Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi was held to call on the Grand Alliance to maintain its strength and unity.

"The meeting was just a courtesy call. The ongoing issues in India are known to all. Rahul Gandhi and Nitish Kumar's views are similar on the issue of corruption, as both believe that there is no place for such practices in the country," JD(U) leader KC Tyagi said.

Tyagi further stated that the meeting was held to send a message to all the three parties to keep the grand alliance strong, and to maintain its shine.

"This party does not belong to a single party, but it belongs to all the three parties. Grand Alliance is not in trouble, it is just facing a period of turbulence. Parties should carry out their activity faithfully," he said.

Nitish met Rahul at the latter's residence in the national capital on Saturday, in the backdrop of clouds of uncertainity hovering over the ' mahagathbandhan' in Bihar.

Reportedly, Nitish Kumar attended a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee in the national capital.

The meeting took place amid speculation of growing tension within the grand alliance in the state after corruption charges were levelled against Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family members, including Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.

The situation saw an escalation after Nitish Kumar extended his support to National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) Presidential candidate and now elect Ram Nath Kovind.

The two leaders, reports say, discussed the charges against Tejashwi.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a corruption case against Lalu, his wife Rabri Devi, son Tejashwi and others on allegations of awarding the tender for development, maintenance and operation of hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2006.

Lalu had earlier made it clear that his son Tejashwi Yadav, who is facing corruption charges, will not resign as Bihar Deputy Chief Minister.
Meanwhile, on the perennial Ram temple issue, Mr Shah reiterated the old stance that the party is committed for the construction of the temple.

Jaipur: BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday said his party had opposed GST while in Opposition but changed the track after coming to power. He said the party was against the manner in which UPA government had proposed the bill.

Meanwhile, on the perennial Ram temple issue, Mr Shah reiterated the old stance that the party is committed for the construction of the temple, but at the same time it want this to be done as per law.

Addressing a press conference on the second day of his three-day visit, the BJP president said the party was not against the GST, as such, instead we were against the way it was drafted. The states were asking for 100 per cent compensation for the loss of revenue. Had the UPA government accepted this demand, the Act would have been passed at that time. Our government accepted it to clear a major hurdle and all the states came together to pass the bill, he claimed.

However, Mr Shah was not so forthcoming on other tricky question of demonetisation, farmers problem, cow vigilantism and reservation. When asked about a survey by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) that estimated loss of 1.5 million jobs due to demonetisation, he evaded the question saying he had not seen the survey. I have not read it, besides it needs to be ascertained on what parameters the survey was conducted, he said.

Replying to a question about agrarian crisis and farm-loan waiver, the BJP president said Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has made it crystal clear that it is a call of the state government, and they will have to do it from own resources. However, he refused to disclose anything about the discussion on farmers problem in the party, saying it is not for public consumption. Yes, we have been discussing but this is not to be discussed on public forum, he said.

On the issue of provision of creamy layer in reservation, Mr Shah deflected it saying all parties should discuss and take a collective decision on this matter. About cow vigilantism and mob lynching, he said the BJP-ruled states have enacted law against cow slaughter. But, when he was asked a question about Goa CM Manohar Parrikars statement that the government would ensure that there was no shortage of beef in the state, Mr Shah again feigned ignorance. I have not read his statement. I do not know what he has said but when I visit the state I will speak to him about it, he added.

On the perennial Ram temple issue, Mr Shah reiterated the old stance that the party is committed for the construction of the temple, but at the same time it want this to be done as per law.

On his meeting with Shankar Singh Vaghela, who broke ranks with the Congress, Mr Shah said it was a formal meeting. It should not be linked to politics. There should not be an atmosphere in the country where meeting of two political leaders is seen with suspicion or political motives, he said. While, replying to another question about Gujarat, he expressed confidence that the party will win 150 seats. I have been saying this all along that we will 150 seats in Gujarat, he added.

Mr Shah also showers praise on Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje for good work and said, The party will return to power in Rajasthan.

The BJP president categorically denied that there was ever a deliberation on replacing her while replying to a question on periodic speculations about her removal. Vasundhara ji has pioneered many good schemes like Bhamashah and I have asked other chief ministers to follow it. She has been working as per public expectation, he said.
Madhur Bhandarkar has been given security also by the Maharashtra government following these protests.

New Delhi: After Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia hit out at the upcoming movie, Indu Sarkar, Congress MP Veerappa Moily is doing the same. Mr Moily said, It hurts the sentiments of many Congressmen and that is what the present Prime Minister wants. Ultimately, it will (hurt) him (Narendra Modi). All these ruinous activities will help in the exit of the BJP. More and more they do it, more the exit door will be opened. The film, Indu Sarkar, is being made by the Madhur Bhandarkar. The Congress claims that there is an agenda to target and malign Congress leader and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the movie. Madhur Bhandarkar was part of the tolerance march with actor Anupam Kher to the Presidents house.

The film, Indu Sarkar, is based on the 1975-77 Emergency period. Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, however, said he would include a disclaimer, stating that the film was mostly fictional. There have been several protests against the film by Congress workers in Maharashtra.

Mr Bhandarkar has been given security also by the Maharashtra government following these protests. The film is expected to be released in August this year. The film has also run into trouble with the Central Board of Film Certification.

(CBFC), which has demanded 14 cuts in the movie. The trailers of the film also show protagonists with striking similarities to the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi.
The arrest comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Rameswaram on July 27 to inaugaurate Kalam memorial.

Two others from Ervadi, identified as Syed Abu Thahir and Abdul Aziz, who had allegedly promised to help him in procuring narcotics, were also arrested by police.

Ramanathapuram/ Chennai: A 60-year-old Pakistani national, who was staying in a lodge in the coastal district of Ramanathapuram without a passport and other travel documents, was arrested on Saturday. He had at least four fake Aadhaar card copies with him.

The arrest comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Rameswaram to inaugurate a memorial for the former president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on July 27.

The person was identified as Mohammed Yunus, from Karachi. He was arrested from a lodge in Ervadi, police said. He was carrying Rs 2,500 in Pakistani currency and Rs 3,000 in Indian currency. He is a narcotics dealer, who posed as a businessman dealing in nuts, police disclosed.

During interrogation, it came to light that he had come to Tamil Nadu illegally by a boat from Sri Lanka in the month of May and visited Ramanathapuram, Madurai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Ajmer. After travelling to several places in trying to procure narcotics he had reached Ervadi, from where the police picked him up on Saturday. Two others from Ervadi, identified as Syed Abu Thahir and Abdul Aziz, who had allegedly promised to help him in procuring narcotics, were also arrested by police.

The Pakistani national was produced before a magistrate at his residence.
Naidu had resigned from both the Cabinet and the party to contest the vice-presidential polls.

New Delhi: NDA vice-presidential candidate Venkaiah Naidu has warned Pakistan against continuing to support terror and asked it to recall what happened in 1971. In the 14-day war that ensued in December that year, the Pakistan Army suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of India, leading to the liberation of the erstwhile East Pakistan which became Bangladesh.

Terrorism is the enemy of humanity, it has no religion. It has unfortunately become Pakistans state policy, Mr Naidu was quoted by a news agency as saying. Our neighbour should understand that aiding and abetting terror will not help them, they should recall what happened in 1971, he said, while speaking at the Kargil Parakram Parade in New Delhi. The event was organised to honour the Kargil martyrs. We are peace loving people, we never attacked any country and this is our speciality. We dont want war, we dont want confrontation, we dont want violence, we want to have peace, we also want to have good relationships with the neighbours, but they should also reciprocate the same. They should remember that Kashmir is an integral part of India and not an inch of even PoK will be allowed to be taken by anybody, he was quoted as saying. Dissent is agreeable but disintegration is not at all acceptable, Mr Naidu added.

The comment follows the deterioration in ties between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, with the Pakistan Army continuing its policy of pushing in terrorists into J&K from across the LoC.

Mr Naidu, till recently the information and broadcasting minister in the Union Cabinet and a senior BJP leader, had resigned from both the Cabinet and the party to contest the vice-presidential polls. The NDA had announced his selection as its candidate for the polls.
Protests demanding justice for the murdered girl continued with protesters blocking the Hindustan-Tibet road in Theog, 32 kms from Shimla.

New Delhi/Shimla: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday took over the investigation of the alleged rape and murder of a schoolgirl in Shimla, and registered an FIR in the case which has triggered angry protests against the Himachal Pradesh government.

The agency has constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to be headed by a Superintendent of Police of the agency, CBI spokesperson RK Gaur said.

The team also comprises an Additional SP and a Deputy SP.

"It was alleged that a minor girl had gone to school on July 5, 2017 but did not return home. Her body was found in the morning of July 6 from a nearby forest. On a complaint lodged by her father with Police Station Kotkhai, District Shimla, the FIR was registered against unknown persons," Gaur said about the case which has been filed under sections 302 (for murder) and 376 (for rape) of IPC, and section 4 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

Under section 4 of POCSO, if convicted for the offence of sexual assault of a child, a person can be imprisoned for a minimum period of seven years, extendable to life.

Gaur said after filing of the FIR this evening, the SIT left for the scene of the crime.

The CBI will also probe a related case of the death of one of the six accused in the case, under alleged mysterious circumstances in police custody. It has registered a separate FIR for it.

The post-mortem of accused Suraj, who died in police custody at Kotkhai police station, was conducted at IGMC Hospital here but the CBI has asked the state police not to hand over the body to his family members.

The CBI took over the cases on the order of Himachal Pradesh High Court.

Meanwhile, protests demanding justice for the murdered girl continued with protesters blocking the Hindustan-Tibet road in Theog, 32 kms from Shimla, for several hours as hundreds of vehicles were left stranded.
Both face trial over killings, disappearances of many women

New Delhi: A special CBI court in Ghaziabad on Saturday convicted businessman Mohinder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surender Singh Koli of murdering a 20-year-old woman, one of the several cases in Nithari serial killings of 2006.

Special CBI judge Pawan Kumar Tiwari held both the accused guilty of murder, attempted rape of a 20-year-old woman, Pinki Sarkar, and destruction of evidence. Koli was already in judicial custody whereas Pandher, who was out on bail, was taken into custody by the police after the judge pronounced the conviction. The judge said that it would pronounce the quantum of sentence on July 24.

Koli has already been sentenced to death in seven out of 16 cases lodged in the Nithri incident. Pandher is facing prosecution in three more cases. The CBI, probing the incident, had lodged FIRs in around 16 cases of serial rape and murder under Sections 302, 376, 364, 201 and 120 (B) of the IPC on December 29, 2006.

Mohinder Singh Pandher

Prosecution lawyer J.P. Sharma had argued that scientific evidence has proved that Koli abducted, killed and raped the woman and tampered with the evidence. Pandher was earlier convicted by the trial court in another case in 2009 but was acquitted by the Allahabad high court. He is, however, facing trial in three other cases.

Nithari came into the limelight in 2006 following disappearances of many women, including minor girls. The police and later the CBI found skeletons in the premises and from a drain near the house of Pandher. The girls were lured into Pandhers house where they were killed after being assaulted sexually, the CBI said.





According to the prosecution, on October 5, 2006, the victim was on her way to home from work when she was abducted, raped and killed by the accused. The CBI alleged that Koli carried the body to the first floor of the bathroom and dismembered it with a knife. Later the accused threw her head and garments behind the house. The court ruled that Pandher was involved in the entire conspiracy. Devraj Singh who was appearing for Pandher argued that his client was not present at the house when the crime was committed. My client was at that time in Dehradun, he argued. But after listening to both prosecution and defence the court rejected the claim of defence counsel and held both the accused guilty.
Mr Ramesh said the BJP does not believe in the Constitution and it is weakening parliamentary institutions.

Bengaluru: Mr Narendra Modi loves acronyms. His name itself is an acronym that stands for Murder of Democracy in India. Modi as PM is consistently shrinking space for parliamentary debate, while also hijacking Ambedkar. This is hypocrisy, said Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, addressing the media during the Dr. Ambedkar International Conference, here on Sunday.

Mr Ramesh said the BJP does not believe in the Constitution and it is weakening parliamentary institutions. He claimed that the BJP and RSS were hijacking human rights advocate Ambedkar, just the way, they did with Mahatma Gandhi.

Dr Ambedkar would not approve of Modi in the last two years for bringing in all bills through the money bill. He even included Aadhaar in the money bill, Mr Ramesh said.

On the Dalit and other minority groups as a vote bank, he admitted that there was a competition between political parties, be it Congress, BSP or BJP for Dalits, Tribals and other minorities.

The Congress has believed in social empowerment of weaker sections. We are launching leadership programmes for younger Dalits. 20% of the popular vote was for congress in 2014 elections. It is a challenging situation now and we recognise its seriousness. We need aggressive outreach for women, Dalits and other minorities, Mr Ramesh said.
From Opposition, only Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik were present; sources said the invitation was sent to all chief ministers.

New Delhi: After breaking ranks with the Opposition to support the NDA presidential candidate, Ram Nath Kovind, JD(U) chief and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar attended a farewell dinner for President Pranab Mukherjee, which was hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday.

Besides Mr Kumar, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) chief and Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, whose party had also voted for the president-elect, too, was present at the dinner.

From the Opposition, only Mr Kumar and Mr Patnaik were present.

The notable absentees were West Bengal and Delhi chief ministers Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal. Congress-ruled Punjabs chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh too did not attend the dinner hosted at Hyderabad House, as chief ministers of Congress and Left-ruled states stayed away.

Sources said the invitation for the dinner was sent to all chief ministers across the country. On July 23, members of both Houses of Parliament will host a farewell function for the President.

Mr Kumars presence in the dinner signals a clear divide within the grand alliance of JD(U), RJD and Congress, which is ruling Bihar. Though earlier in the day, the Bihar chief minister met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi at the latters residence to apparently discuss the political scenario emerging in the state.

The early signs of Mr Kumar swinging away from the Opposition were first seen when the JD(U) decided to support the candidature of NDAs presidential candidate Mr Kovind, despite efforts from the RJD to talk Mr Kumar out of it.

Quite similar to the Bihar chief minister have been the actions of Odisha chief minister Mr Patnaik, whose BJD voted for Mr Kovind in the presidential elections, while just like JD(U), he has decided to back the Oppositions vice-president nominee Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

The BJD, though in the Opposition, appears to be a clear fence sitter, as it has always chosen the middle path by not being an out and out critic of the NDA, but at the same time playing the role of a constructive Opposition party.